A Clockwork Orange #review #bookreview

A Clockwork Orange

Author: Anthony Burgess
Publisher: William Heinemann

Published: September 6, 2012 (originally published, 1962)
Page count: 352
Genres: scifi, dystopian, speculative, horror

Date read: August 9, 2019

Number of times read: 1

Format: audiobook
Source: Audible

Summary

A vicious fifteen-year-old droog is the central character of this 1963 classic. In Anthony Burgess's nightmare vision of the future, where criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, who talks in a brutal invented slang that brilliantly renders his and his friends' social pathology. A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil, and the meaning of human freedom. And when the state undertakes to reform Alex to "redeem" him, the novel asks, "At what cost?"

This edition includes the controversial last chapter not published in the first edition and Burgess's introduction "A Clockwork Orange Resucked." -- via Goodreads

Review

This is not a book you read for pleasure. 

This is not a book you "like" in the way you like Harry Potter or ice cream.

You don't "enjoy" it...but you do respect it for what it achieves as a piece of writing. It is a very well constructed piece of writing. Linguistically marvelous for sure. Burgess's NADSAT is up there with Tolkien's elvish in terms of language creation, which makes sense when you read that Burgess, like Tolkien, had a background in linguistics. The melange of Russian and British with NADSAT points to influence by Russia onto the British youth culture in the novel's dystopian alternate timeline. Even though it's not an influence that is ever explored, probably because our extremely unreliable narrator is a 15-year old boy who couldn't give a flying fuck about the influence of other countries on his own, it's an interesting thread for the reader to consider alongside everything else Burgess presents. 

A Clockwork Orange is a disturbing book from the outset. From the very first sentence you know you're in for a brutal "what the fuck is Burgess thinking?" ride. There's such an extreme level of violence and depravity that the narrator engages in that Burgess coined his own NADSAT phrase for it, ultra-violence, which has seeped into popular culture to describe random acts of violence simply for the sake of violence. Because Alex is the narrator, the reader is treated to a first-hand journey into the depth of his depravity. He spares no expense describing what he does in lurid detail, I think the linguistic oddities of NADSAT are the only reason I could actually get through reading the book. If it had been written in plain English the level of description would have been far, far too much for my overactive imagination. It was hard enough with the NADSAT. It's not a take I've seen often in fiction, where an author fully immerses the reader in the mind of a deranged teenager and sends them down the rabbit hole of their darkness. I can think of only two other times I've experienced it. Stephen King's novella Apt Pupil and Christopher Pike's TheWicked Heart, both of which eerily enough involved Nazi influence on the narrators.

The next bit of this review is going to be a bit spoilery so I'm adding a jump cut...

The Royal Treatment #bookreview #canadiancontent

The Royal Treatment

Author: Melanie Summers (M.J. Summers)
Publisher: Gretz Corp

Published: September 13, 2017
Page count: 294
Genres: romance, chic lit, contemporary

Date read: March 23, 2019

Number of times read: 1

Format: paperback
Source: Borrowed it from Angie, who won it

Summary

For fans of Bridget Jones and The Princess Diaries comes a laugh-out-loud, feel-good comedy with a sizzling side of romance…

Ultra-private, ridiculously handsome Crown Prince Arthur has always gotten by on his charm. But that won’t be enough now that the Royal Family is about to be ousted from power once and for all. When Prince Arthur has to rely on the one woman in the kingdom who hates him most, he must learn that earning the love of a nation means first risking his heart.

Twenty-eight-year-old Tessa Sharpe, a.k.a. The Royal Watchdog, hates everything about Prince Arthur. As far as she’s concerned, he’s an arrogant, lazy leech on the kingdom of Avonia. When he shocks the nation by giving her the keys to the castle, Tessa has no choice but to accept and move in for two months. It’s lust at first sight, but there’s no way she can give in to her feelings—not if she wants to have a career or a shred of pride left when her time at the palace ends…

Can two natural enemies find their forever in each other’s arms, or will they ruin each other to save themselves? -- via Goodreads

Review

Let me start my review by telling you the story of how I came to this book because it really set my expectations for how I read the book. Angie won the book in late 2017 and read it in January 2018. I commented that it sounded like something I'd want to read and that I'd have to borrow her e-reader the next time I visited her. She informed me that she'd won an autographed physical copy and then sent it to me in the mail and it sat on my bookshelf ever since. For her birthday this year, I wanted to buy her the second and third books in the series as paperbacks to match her first book. And then I thought to myself, "Ooooh I wonder if I reach out to the author if I could buy some signed bookplates off of her so I can really get Angie a matched set." So with that in mind, I hunted down the email address for Melanie Summers, who is a Canadian author, and I emailed her and told her the whole story. I certainly was not expecting the response that I received or especially the speed with which she responded. Melanie is absolutely lovely, and based on this interaction she is now one of my favourite authors. Within two hours of receiving my email, she emailed me back to tell me that she loved my idea so much that she was going to send Angie personalised autographed copies of both books 2 and 3 on my behalf. So I was obviously stupidly excited about that. I told Angie that her birthday gift might be delayed because I know what Canada Post can be like about shipping to England, but it arrived early, and when Angie opened it she was absolutely over the moon.

Now, backstory out of the way, let's get to my actual review of the book. My expectations going into it were high based on the fact that Angie loved it and that I had such a positive experience with the author. I wanted to love it, but I was also a bit nervous because it's described as a romantic comedy and I am VERY much hit or miss with romantic comedies. I really don't like most of them I find a lot of romantic comedies too awkward and as an awkward and anxious person watch or reading about people in long, drawn out, awkward situations sets off my own anxiety. But I really enjoyed the book. Sure, there was some awkwardness, that just goes with the territory for a romantic comedy, the awkwardness tends to be where the comedy comes from. However, what made this book make the list of romantic comedies I enjoy, is that not ALL of the comedy came from awkward moments, and the awkward moments were far enough between and not so drawn out that they made me uncomfortable. Summers does a very good job of tempering awkward humour with witty humour and has a fantastic mix of sweetness that runs throughout all of it.

Tessa is, for the most part, an incredibly relatable and realistic character. It's incredibly easy to sympathise with her and to put yourself into her shoes. She's supposed to be the average, everywoman character who the reader can imagine themselves as. But she's unique enough, intelligent enough, and independent enough to really stand out and stand up on her own. Being the only daughter in a family of highly intelligent and highly dickish brothers (one of whom is an astrophysics professor, and I'm only mildly disappointed she just didn't make the obvious rocket scientist joke) who treat her like crap it shouldn't come as a surprise that the author has also given her a crap history with men. But for all that Tessa is strong-willed, she knows what she wants, and barring disastrous accidents is for the most part pretty good about making it happen on her own for most of the book. She's a woman who has been beaten down by men her whole life and so she doesn't trust them, and this is especially true of Prince Arthur.

Prince Arthur, I'm so glad to bring him up. I love him as a character. He is a case study in subversions in a lot of ways. As is his relationship with Tessa really. To me, he really seems to almost take on the feminine role in the relationship with Tessa. Usually, in this genre you see the girl trying to change herself for the guy, trying to get him to fall for her etc. But here, it's Arthur doing those things and I love that Summers has subverted the gender expectations that way. It makes me incredibly happy, that of the two main characters. Arthur is the one to fall in love first and the one to acknowledge his feelings. Now don't get me wrong he still really stands in the masculine role as well. He starts off as a cocky womaniser, but those are learned behaviours that he got from his awful father and you watch him grow out of them as he grows closer to Tessa. 

The plot wasn't anything revolutionary. Your standard romantic comedy set-up of two seemingly incompatible people meeting under unusual circumstances, hijinx ensue, love happens. What makes this book stand out is the characters and the specific hijinx. You've got a disgraced journalist cum political shock blogger (pun VERY much intended for those of you who have read/will read this book) who finds herself living in the palace with the very family that she advocates against on her blog. You've got a prince who is trying to get some good PR because he's scared the country is about to oust his family. You see what's going to happen from a mile away, but you enjoy every moment of getting there with Tessa and Arthur. Overall, I really did enjoy the book, and I'll definitely be finishing the series.

If you watched Julia Stiles's The Prince and Me film, and enjoyed it, then I think you'll really like this book because it's in the same vein.

Overall Rating

4 bolts

2018 Reading Challenge Recap #blogmas (Pt. 1)

All right, it's the last day of December, the last day of 2018, and that means also the last day of Blogmas! I did it, guys! I actually posted every day in December! I am impressed with myself for this feat haha. So because it's the last day of 2018 that means it's time for my annual reading challenge recap, aka the longest post I make all year. How did I do you ask? Well, I set out to do 4 challenges, and I completed 2 of them. Interestingly one of the ones I failed was the one I created myself back at the beginning of the year. I realised in about June that I had been waaaaaaay too over ambitious with my challenges this year and knew I wasn't going to finish them. In addition to the challenge of my own devising, I attempted Book Riot's Read Harder challenge, which is you've been following my Blogmas posts you'll know that I won. I also attempted to do PopSugar, but my over ambition got the better of me there too so I didn't finish that one either. My last challenge was, of course, the annual Goodreads challenge I pledged 100 and ended up at 122. That's down from last year, but it's still the second most I have ever read in a year so I am freaking psyched.

The problem was, instead of doing what I did last year and trying to find books that fit multiple challenges, I was trying to do a different book for every single challenge. And with the way, I'd split out some of them, that worked out to be over 160 books which is more than I read last year. That was daunting and actually impacted my speed because I overwhelmed myself with the sheer amount of things I planned to read and therefore put off reading it. So I went back today and had a look at what books I read that could work for multiple challenges. I still failed, but by a much narrower margin haha.

Onto the recaps! What were the challenges and what did I read for them:

Book Riot Read Harder 2018

24/24 = 100%

A book published posthumously

The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams [published in 2002, Adams passed away in 2001] [7/11/18]

A book of true crime

Who killed my daughter? The startling true story of a mother’s search for her daughter’s murderer by Lois Duncan [17/11/18]

A classic of genre fiction (i.e. mystery, sci fi/fantasy, romance)

Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper [middle grade/YA fantasy] [3/9/18]

A comic written and illustrated by the same person

Hostage by Guy Delisle [8/1/18]

A book set in or about one of the five BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, or South Africa) Android Karenina by Ben H. Winters [Russia] [13/8/18]

A book about nature

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood [8/10/18]

A western

Wizard and Glass by Stephen King [13/5/18]

A comic written or illustrated by a person of colour

Monstress, Vol. 1: Awakening by Marie Liu and Sana Takeda [28/5/18]

A book of colonial or postcolonial literature

Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson [described in reviews as “postcolonial redemption story.”] [4/12/18]

A romance novel by or about a person of colour

Winds of Salem by Melissa de la Cruz [paranormal romance by a filipina author] [11/12/18]

A children’s classic published before 1980

Last Battle by C.S. Lewis [first published in 1956] [27/4/18]

A celebrity memoir

Nerd do Well by Simon Pegg [27/12/18]

An Oprah Book Club selection

Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson [Oprah’s Summer Reading club] [30/12/18]

A book of social science

Free Speech on Campus by Sigal R. Ben-Porath [29/12/18]

A one-sitting book

The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis [18/1/18]

The first book in a new-to-you YA or middle-grade series

Loki’s Wolves by K.L. Armstrong & M.A. Marr [6/1/18]

A sci-fi novel with a female protagonist by a female author

Cress by Marissa Meyer [4/11/18]

A comic that isn’t published by Marvel, DC, or Image

Princeless vol.2: Get over it [Published by Action Labs Entertainment] [29/5/18]

A book of genre fiction in translation

Inkspell by Cornelia Funke [fantasy - translated from German] [27/5/18]

A book with a cover you hate

The Hunchback Assignments by Arthur Slade [2009 Harper Collins Hardcover edition] [22/9/18]

A mystery by a person of colour or LGBTQ+ author

A Study in Scarlet Women by Sherry Thomas [25/4/18]

An essay anthology

Out Behind the Desk: Workplace Issues for Lgbtq Librarians edited by Tracy Nectoux [28/1/18]

A book with a female protagonist over the age of 60

A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie [Miss Marple] [14/7/18]

An assigned book you hated (or never finished)
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley [I hated this book when I was assigned it in my undergrad English program] [28/10/18]

Because this post is so long I am inserting a cut. Keep going if you want to see PopSugar. My TBR challenge will come as a seperate post tomorrow because this one is making my browser lag haha.

Book Riot Read Harder 2018 in review: Alif the Useen #BookReview #ReadHarder2018 #Blogmas

Category 13: An Oprah Book Club selection (my choice featured on one of Oprah's Summer Reading Lists) 

Alif the Unseen

Author: G. Willow Wilson
Publisher: Grove Press

Published: June 19, 2012
Page count: 433
Genres: scifi, cyberpunk, fantasy, mythology

Date read: December 30, 2018

Number of times read: 1

Format: audiobook/hardcover
Source: Audible/Laurier Library

Summary

In an unnamed Middle Eastern security state, a young Arab-Indian hacker shields his clients—dissidents, outlaws, Islamists, and other watched groups—from surveillance and tries to stay out of trouble. He goes by Alif—the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, and a convenient handle to hide behind. The aristocratic woman Alif loves has jilted him for a prince chosen by her parents, and his computer has just been breached by the state’s electronic security force, putting his clients and his own neck on the line. Then it turns out his lover’s new fiancé is the "Hand of God," as they call the head of state security, and his henchmen come after Alif, driving him underground. 

When Alif discovers The Thousand and One Days, the secret book of the jinn, which both he and the Hand suspect may unleash a new level of information technology, the stakes are raised and Alif must struggle for life or death, aided by forces seen and unseen.-- via Goodreads 

Review

Written by the author who brought us Kamala Khan as the new Ms Marvel (which is an awesome run, I finally got around to starting it this year haha), this book is very much in the same vein as Cory Doctorow's Little Brother and Homeland which predate this book by a few years. It's in the same vein but it's also wholly original. As I was reading Alif I keep seeing similarities in theme and action to things that happen in Little Brother, they're mirrors of one another tackling the same sort of issues but from completely different directions. Doctorow's book is a decidedly Western treatment, and Wilson's Alif is absolutely an Eastern perspective. One of the central aspects of Wilson's book is Islamic mysticism/mythology. This is the first time I've ever seen science fiction blended with Islamic mythology, it makes me want to email my Islam professor from undergrad, Meena Sharify-Funk, and see if she's read it because I think she would absolutely love it...in fact I am going to take a couple of minutes and do that. And done. 

I really enjoyed this book as it was simultaneously familiar but also very new and different for me. The way Wilson blends modern high technology and contemporary political concerns with the fantastical elements of Islamic mythology is engrossing. She posits a metaphorical link between computer programming and mysticism that is actually really intriguing to think about as someone who only has a moderate level of knowledge about each. I've heard comparisons between scientists and the religiously devout, but never with computer programmers before, but it makes a certain amount of sense to stop and think about. There are a couple of times where it goes very deep with these lines of thought and manages to stay as realistic as something that contains magical jinn can.

One thing I found really problematic was the character of the Convert and her treatment. She is never given a name, she is referred to as the Convert or the other girl or the American from the time that she is introduced right up to her last mention. It's incredibly frustrating and I don't understand the choice on the part of the author, who is herself a convert to Islam. Maybe this was something she herself experienced and so she decided to put it into the book? I don't know but it's not a good choice in my opinion. Other than that one issue I thought it was a very well handled portrayal of everything she was trying to portray. I think it was a smart choice not to give her Eastern security state any specific identity it's just a generic desert town in the Middle East. It's representative of the issues not of any one specific locale.

The Jinn are very interesting. I wish she'd spent more time to focus on them and their society or included an appendix or something about them. We learn that there are many different types and that there seems to be a hierarchy, but beyond that, even though we spend quite a bit of time with the Jinn we never really learn much more about them. We don't learn everything they are capable of and we don't really learn about their society. I can understand that because they weren't the central focus of the book, but I wish there was some way for us to get more information about them.

The book ended at a very abrupt point, we're in the middle of a revolution that started because of Alif's actions and the plot of the book. But we just end on Alif and Dina walking back home after the climax. We never find out what actually comes from the Revolution, and we don't get definitive endings for Abu Talid or the Convert which I find unsatisfying.

Have you ever read a book that mirrored another book that you've read? Did you find yourself thinking about the juxtapositions while reading it?

Overall Rating

4.5 bolts

I did it! I completed Book Riot Read Harder 2018! It was a very near thing this year, but I did it haha.

#Review : Bellewether by Susanna Kearsley #BookReview #CanadianContent #Blogmas

Still working on books 13 and 14 for Book Riot Read Harder. So another interlude, this time building on a short book review that I wrote a few months ago for an ARC I received from NetGalley. This review was originally posted in a much shorter format to both NetGalley and Goodreads.

Bellewether

Author: Susanna Kearsley
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Canada

Published: April 24, 2018
Page count: 414
Genres: romance, historical

Date read: March 25, 2018

Number of times read: 1

Format: ebook
Source: NetGalley

Summary

Some houses seem to want to hold their secrets.

It’s 1759 and the world is at war, pulling the North American colonies of Britain and France into the conflict. The times are complicated, as are the loyalties of many New York merchants who have secretly been trading with the French for years, defying Britain’s colonial laws in a game growing ever more treacherous.

When captured French officers are brought to Long Island to be billeted in private homes on their parole of honour, it upends the lives of the Wilde family—deeply involved in the treasonous trade and already divided by war.

Lydia Wilde, struggling to keep the peace in her fracturing family following her mother’s death, has little time or kindness to spare for her unwanted guests. French-Canadian lieutenant Jean-Philippe de Sabran has little desire to be there. But by the war’s end they’ll both learn love, honour, and duty can form tangled bonds that are not broken easily.

Their doomed romance becomes a local legend, told and re-told through the years until the present day, when conflict of a different kind brings Charley Van Hoek to Long Island to be the new curator of the Wilde House Museum.

Charley doesn’t believe in ghosts. But as she starts to delve into the history of Lydia and her French officer, it becomes clear that the Wilde House holds more than just secrets, and Charley discovers the legend might not have been telling the whole story...or the whole truth. -- via Goodreads

Review

This book is written by an author who lives pretty near to where I live actually, which made me find the book even more intriguing than I would have based purely on its premise. Kearsley is from Brantford, ON and I live in Waterloo which is less than an hour away in good traffic haha. What really made me request this book though was the premise. It's a multiple POV double romance novel that unfolds over two timelines. There's the present timeline which focuses on Charley the curator of a historic house museum. She really appeals to me as a character because something I've really been thinking about for the last few years (if I ever get my hands on the vast sums of money that would be needed to make it happen) is setting up a historic house museum in a couple of WWII era historic houses. The other thread in this novel is about Lydia, one of the occupants of the historic house that Charley is working at. Lydia's story takes place during the historic period of the Seven Years War. 

Now, for those of you who didn't have to study the Seven Years War in school as children, please allow me to do a quick recap for you. It was the first global war in that it was the first war in which battles were fought in Europe, India, America, and at sea. Given that this happened in 1756 and lasted until 1763 it happened in the period before Canadian Confederation, and this is important to remember because before Confederation France was still in charge of Quebec, and Britain for the rest of what would become Canada. It's also important to note that several states were still British colonies at the time. This mainly matters because primarily this war was between Britain and their allies against France and their allies. The outcome of this war was the Treaty of Paris which was eventually the basis for Confederation.

I remember learning about the Seven Years War for years in elementary school and I remember hating it. I just remember it being delivered in a very dry fashion, but that could also be because that year I was in French immersion and we were studying history in French... Anyway, when I realised this was set partially in that era, I was a little bit wary. I shouldn't have been though. It's an amazingly well-written book and it tells a compelling, beautiful story. I gave me a new sense of appreciation and wonder for that era, and actually makes me want to go and learn about it now, and that to me is always the mark of good historical fiction. Kearsley clearly knows her subject matter well, it's thoroughly researched - which becomes less surprising, but no less awesome when you read her explanation of her research and inspiration in the post-text.

I love the way she seamlessly wove in both strands, the contemporary story of Charley, the curator at the Wilde house Musem, and the historical strands of Lydia Wilde and the French Prisoner her family took in. The book was like an onion in a very good way, exposing its layers as you got deeper into it. Lydia and Jean-Philippe's story is absolutely beautiful and charming, you really can't help but root for the two of them. It's a very strange situation initially. You have Jean-Philippe who is a French officer, being held, hostage with an English family in New York. Jean-Philippe doesn't speak any English, and he just wants to do what is necessary to ensure the safety of his men. He also doesn't want to be a burden on the family that is hosting him. It's a very strange arrangement to wrap your head around when all your previous context for prisoners of war is that they were treated wretchedly. That is definitely not the case here at all as Jean-Philippe manages to become a valued member of the Wilde household.

The juxtaposition between Lydia and Jean-Philippe's story in the past with Charley's story in the present is very interesting. We're watching her go about her life in a new place as she researches Lydia and Jean-Philippe's story while restoring the Wilde House to get the museum ready to open. Paranormal events occur leading you to spend most of the book wondering which spirit from the story we're following in the past could be helping Charley out in the present? Charley is a very interesting character she's moved to New York State to help take care of her niece after her brother passes away and she takes on the Wilde House museum and finds herself growing closer and closer to her lead contractor on the restoration. It's two very different stories but Kearsley really has woven them together so well.

It also ended in a magnificently satisfying way. I will be seeking out more of this authors work to read in the future.

What do you think of books that take place in multiple timelines simultaneously?

Overall Rating

5 bolts

Book Riot Read Harder 2018 in review: Nerd do Well #BookReview #ReadHarder2018 #Blogmas

Category 12: A celebrity memoir

Nerd do Well

Author: Simon Pegg
Publisher: Arrow

Published: February 24, 2015 (first published January 1, 2009)
Page count: 368
Genres: nonfiction, autobiography, comedy

Date read: December 27, 2018

Number of times read: 1

Format: paperback
Source: OwlCrate

Summary

Zombies in North London, death cults in the West Country, the engineering deck of the Enterprise: Simon Pegg has been ploughing some bizarre furrows in recent times. Having blasted onto the small screens with his now legendary sitcom Spaced, his rise to nation's favourite son status has been mercurial, meteoric, megatronnic, but mostly just plain great.

From his childhood (and subsequently adult) obsession with Star Wars, his often passionate friendship with Nick Frost, and his forays into stand-up which began with his regular Monday morning slot in front of his 12-year-old classmates, this is a joyous tale of a homegrown superstar and a local boy made good.-- via Goodreads 

Review

Some parts of this book really, really annoyed me. The "comic" interlude, for example, the story about the adventures Simon's alter-ego and his android companion Canterbury? So goddamned annoying and I could have easily, easily done without that 'story'. I put the word story in quotes there because it's clearly just there as filler and fluff and fanservice. It's barely a story being more of a self-indulgent male fantasy and making no apologies about it. Don't get me wrong it had its funny bits and the reveal of the villain and his motivation was clever, but it was sexist, crass, and stupid and should have been edited out of the first draft. The adventures of Simon and Canterbury take up 62 pages out of 368, that's 67% of the bloody book which means there's more of that damn adventure than there is actual memoir content and now that I've actually calculated that I am angry! As a nerd, who very much enjoys Simon Pegg and the films I've seen him in (and the work I plan to seek out from learning about it in this book) I think I am the target audience for this book. But I must be wrong because with two-thirds of the book being a sex-fuelled sexist romp with his "dashing" alter-ego this book seems very much targeted to male nerds who are into comedy, horror and scifi (because of course, it is those genres themselves tend to be pretty sexist in their fandoms sadly...). Another way this book comes off as exclusionary is some of the ways Pegg phrases things. I remember saying to a couple of my friends in late November when I was still only a short way into the book that I was pissed off at Pegg for the way he'd generalised his experience to be the same experience that "everyone" has while at the same time claiming to be really open towards marginalised groups, many of whom probably did not experience things that way. This was mainly in reference to a time where he said that everyone goes through that stage where they exploratorily play doctor with members of the opposite sex as children and explore each other. Yeah, that's not an experience I ever had as a child and you implying that I clearly should have because "everybody" does just makes me annoyed at your book sir and then by extension at you.

Other things that annoyed me were how much this damn book jumped around. I'm actually really mad at Ben Dunne at Century for the things he let slip through the editing process. It's all over the place with early anecdotes telling me he'll get to certain points related to them later in the book, but by the time you get to that part of the book you've completely forgotten the reference because of Simon and Canterbury's adventures and because you've gone through about twenty other topics and anecdotes since then. And Pegg's use of pseudonyms for some people in his life doesn't make that easier. He mentioned that he was calling one girl Eggy Helen early on in the book but said that he wasn't going to talk about her until later. By the time he finally got to Eggy Helen, I couldn't for the life of me remember what he'd originally said that caused him to bring her up so far in advance of her actual significance...

The book got better later into it once Pegg started talking about his career and his personal life from University up to the book's present of 2009. He talks about the movies and TV shows he's worked on and the connections he's made within his Hollywood network and what that's been like for him having grown up a nerd and idolising some of the people he's now working alongside. The latter half of the book is much tighter and more coherent. Which makes a certain amount of sense as those are more recent memories and experiences rather than things he is trying to recall clearly from childhood. He spends a good deal of the first half of the book rambling and shambling through anecdotes trying to tie them together into a linear series of events that shaped him into the man he was at the time of writing this book in 2009. The times when he does film analysis are the best; he's incredibly good at analysing films, which I now know makes sense given his educational background. He also mentions Carrie Fisher quite a bit throughout due to having had a decades-long crush on her before he finally got the chance to meet her. I feel like saying without a doubt that the memoir of hers that I read last year was so much better than this one. This one really was just mediocre. It needed a lot more in the way of editing.

Do you like Simon Pegg? What celebrity memoirs have you read?

Overall Rating

2.5 bolts

Getting the gift of reading 2018 edition #Blogmas

Just a quick post tonight because it's been a whirlwind marathon two days for me of Christmas socialising with family. I am exhausted, compounded by the fact that I slept horribly last night. Since I talked about the books I gave yesterday I thought I could do a quick post today on the books I received!

There aren't actually very many, but what I did get, was a lot of potential books. Meaning that I got quite a few gift cards for stores that sell books. I got three Amazon gift cards, at least one of which I've already earmarked for a video game. One Kobo gift card to get some ebooks. And three chapters gift cards. For once I am not going to do what I usually do, which is on boxing day immediately log into the websites and buy all sorts of books. You see, I have 398 unread books that I own, you can see them all in my catalogued Library Thing collection which tracks every book I own. Because that's such a high number, and because for the last two years running I've managed to buy over 100 books in each year without really ever stopping to notice, I decided that in 2019 the only books I will buy are those that come from my Audible subscription, new books from my favourite authors, and books that are a part of ongoing series that I am reading. This should cut back on my book buying significantly until I have made a massive dent in my TBR pile. So I should be able to use the gift cards throughout the year to get all of the books that I want/need.

So all that being said, what actual books did I get for Christmas this year?

Bygone Badass Broads: 52 Forgotten Women Who Changed the World by Mackenzi Lee (who I didn't realise until I was cataloguing the book is the same author who wrote another book I loved, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue.) "Based on Mackenzi Lee’s popular weekly Twitter series of the same name, Bygone Badass Broads features 52 remarkable and forgotten trailblazing women from all over the world. With tales of heroism and cunning, in-depth bios and witty storytelling, Bygone Badass Broads gives new life to these historic female pioneers. Starting in the fifth century BC and continuing to the present, the book takes a closer look at bold and inspiring women who dared to step outside the traditional gender roles of their time. Coupled with riveting illustrations and Lee’s humorous and conversational storytelling style, this book is an outright celebration of the badass women who paved the way for the rest of us." (via Goodreads) I'm really excited to read this along with my cope of Rejected Princesses which I got in 2017. I love reading about the interesting women in history who paved the way so that I can have the rights I have today.

The other book that I received is something that I know right now Angie will want to read when she comes over in May. Published by the British Library I have Harry Potter: A Journey Through A History of Magic which is based on the special exhibition that they did of the same name. "An irresistible romp through the history of magic, from alchemy to unicorns, ancient witchcraft to Harry's Hogwarts – packed with unseen sketches and manuscript pages from J.K. Rowling, magical illustrations from Jim Kay and weird, wonderful and inspiring artefacts that have been magically released from the archives at the British Library.

This spellbinding book takes readers on a journey through the Hogwarts curriculum, including Herbology, Defence Against the Dark Arts, Astronomy, Divination and more. Discover the truth behind making the Philosopher's Stone, create your very own potion and uncover the secret of invisible ink. Learn all about the history of mandrake roots and dragons, discover what witches really used their brooms for, pore over incredible images of actual mermaids and read about real-life potions, astronomers and alchemists.

The perfect gift for aspiring witches and wizards and any Harry Potter fan. Celebrating twenty years of Harry Potter magic, and produced in association with the British Library to support their major exhibition, Harry Potter: A History of Magic." (via Goodreads) I was so disappointed that Angie and I never actually got to see the exhibition, but at least I can read about it now that I have this book. This book is a companion to the Harry Potter: A History of Magic book, also published by the British Library that I recieved for Christmas last year. You guys should know by now that I love all things Harry Potter, so I am really excited to read both of these books. I wanted to wait until I had both to read them because they really do go together. Also, because I am a sucker for both Harry Potter and Natalie Dormer this year I also got myself Harry Potter: A History of Magic
An Audio Documentary which Natalie Dormer narrates. I'm just going to be all up in the history of magic with these three haha.

Giving the Gift of Reading 2018 edition #Blogmas

You should all know by now how much I love giving my friends and family books as gifts. I think I've talked about the books I've given as Christmas gifts every year Angie and I have had this blog, so let's continue the tradition.

We'll start with my friend Matt, well, one of the Matts anyway, there are two and they both got books from me this year haha. For the first Matt, I was placing an order at BookOutlet.ca and was also trying to cut back on the number of books I was buying. Book Outlet's prices are insanely cheap and in order to get free shipping you need to spend $45 minimum, which usually nets me 8 or 9 books, but I didn't want that many haha. So I asked Matt and our friend Mel if there was anything either of them wanted which got Matt and I discussing the books he's missing from his Stephen King collection. He mentioned he's been having a hard time tracking down an inexpensive copy of Cujo. Well, I went hunting and found a copy at The Book Depository that cost less than what Chapters or Amazo were selling it for, so that's what he got.

Mum and I also got some of the kids books for Christmas this year, but I can't remember which ones now and they're already wrapped up! That wasn't smart of me haha. There's a 5-minute stories Disney storybook collection, and a Disney bedtime story collection for the youngest one and then for one of the older ones there was a Star Wars DIY crafting book. I got my mum quite a few books for Christmas too. She's always complaining that she's run out of new books to read so she's rereading books she's read loads of times, so I always try and get her at least three new books for Christmas. This year I got her four. I got her two Max Hastings books, Das Reich : The March of the 2nd SS Panzer Division Through France, June 1944 and The Secret War : Spies, Codes and Guerrillas 1939-1945. She's a military history buff and apparently, Max Hastings is an award-winning writer in the genre (which is not a genre that is my personal forte). She seemed really excited about them both when she opened them. I the same vein I also got her The Railway Man by Eric Lomax, which is a memoir of one of the POWs who worked on the Burma-Siam Railway. The last book I got her was also nonfiction, but not military this time, she's also interested in reading about the Romanovs, so I got her The Race to Save the Romanovs: The Truth Behind the Secret Plans to Rescue the Russian Imperial Family by Helen Rappaport. Which was only published this June, she didn't even know it existed yet so she was quite surprised to get it.

Then lastly there's the other Matt. He's a little tricky to buy for in that I'm never sure what he already had in his collections. See he's a big fan of both Batman and Doctor Who. He has pretty big collections of merch from both fandoms, so I like to add to his collections where I can by getting him things that he doesn't already have. My contribution this year to his Batman collection for Christmas was a rubber duck dressed as Batman. I was in the process of writing a sentence about how I think he'll feel about the duck and then he literally messaged me at that exact moment to tell me he and his wife opened their gifts so I don't have to speculate on what he thinks of the duck, I can just tell you. They really liked them :) (I got her an R2D2 kitchen timer because she loves cooking and baking and she collects Star Wars merch). Now to the book, I got him, that was for his Doctor Who collection. I was looking for Doctor Who merch on Etsy when I came across a store that sells used books and she had a small assortment of Doctor Who choose your own adventures from the 1980s. So, obviously I bought one, so my friend Matt is now the proud owner of a 32-year-old copy of Doctor Who: Mission to Venus.

Angie didn't get any books from me for Christmas this year because Amazon still hasn't made it so that you can buy people Kindle books as gifts! Come on Amazon, get your act together on that haha. I do have a book for her that I got from a used book fundraiser at the university I work at though, she knows about it and I'll be sending it along with her birthday gifts. Brenda Novak's Until You Loved Me.

#Review : Riders by Jilly Cooper #BookReview #Blogmas

Break time from the Book Riot Read Harder Challenge reviews, because I am still not finished the books for categories 12, 13, and 14...I'm NEARLY done them so they will get interspersed with non-Book Riot reviews this week. It's been hectic lately, I've had so much to do with work and holiday stuff that I haven't really had time to actually sit down and read. Especially since I decided to replay my way through all of the Kingdom Hearts games in anticipation of Kingdom Hearts III finally coming out next month. I have been waiting for that game for over 10 years now. Anyway, for this non-Book Riot review, I decided to go with another book that's up Angie's alley that I read this year. In fact, she'd read this one. I found my way to this book thanks to a joke that I didn't realise was a joke from Richard Hammond in an episode of Top Gear. Hammond was teasing the old Stig (who wrote a book) by calling him romance novelist Jilly Cooper, and at the time I had never heard of Jilly Cooper and wondered if this really was a pen name for him. Curiosity led me to look up Jilly Cooper on Goodreads and discovering Riders which luckily fulfilled a PopSugar challenge for this year. I finished this book but ended up failing PopSugar overall so the less said about that part the better haha.

Riders

Author: Jilly Cooper
Publisher: Transworld Digital

Published: December 23, 2010 by  (first published January 1, 1985)
Page count: 928
Genres: romance, chick lit, sports

Date read: June 16, 2018

Number of times read: 1

Format: ebook
Source: Kobo

Summary

‘Sex and horses: who could ask for more?’ Sunday Telegraph

Set against the glorious Cotswold countryside, Riders offers an intoxicating blend of swooning romance, adventure and hilarious high jinks.

Brooding hero Jake Lovell, under whose magic hands even the most difficult horse or woman is charmed, is driven by his loathing of the dashing darling of the show ring, Rupert Campbell-Black. Having pinched each other’s horses and drunk their way around the capitals of Europe, the feud between the two men finally erupts with devastating consequences at the Los Angeles Olympics . . .

A classic bestseller, Riders takes the lid off international show jumping, a sport where the brave horses are almost human, but the humans behave like animals.

‘Joyful and mischievous’ Jojo Moyes 
‘Exhilarating, irresistible and one of our nation’s most beloved novels’ Jill Mansell
‘Jilly Cooper is the funniest and the sharpest writer there is’ Jenny Colgan
‘Flawlessly entertaining’ Helen Fielding -- via Goodreads

Review

To give you a very quick and dirty idea about my feelings towards this book I present how long it took me to read: I started this book on January 26, and I finished it on June 16. That's very nearly 5 months. Because I kept getting so frustrated that I would have to put it down for long stretches before I could bring myself to come back to it. Why? Well, because every single one of the characters is horribly flawed and melodramatic and I just couldn't handle it in big doses. This book is a door stopper! It's longer than a Harry Potter book and nearly as long as the longest two Dark Tower books!! It's like taking the entire eight seasons of Desperate Housewives making it about athletes and turning it into a book. The drama just never, ever stops, it continues to get crazier and crazier right up to the end. Every time you think there is going to be a moment's reprieve something completely crazy happens! There was one point in the book that very, very nearly made me want to give up on the whole enterprise and it certainly turned me completely against Billy, I was kind of rooting for him up until the trip to Africa. But that put me completely off him, and I already didn't like Janey and hated Rupert so that incident really just made me hate them even more.

It's really weird to consider this book one thing, it really does feel more like I am reviewing a season or series of a television show simply because of the scale and scope. There are about 14 characters who could be considered "main characters" the ones with the most focus are Jake, Rupert, Helen, Fen, Billy, and Janey but there are loads of other characters who could be considered MCs. And they're all absolutely horrible. A couple have some redeeming qualities, out of the above-listed ones Fen and Helen aren't completely irredeemable. Jake comes close to being completely irredeemable but scraps it together at the eleventh hour and sort of manages to at least partially redeem himself. Rupert, Bill and Janey though? They can go to hell. I hope Rupert gets some comeuppance in the rest of the series but I expect he won't because he's considered Cooper's dashing 'hero' figure. He's a sexist, misogynistic pig. He treats his wife and son appallingly (to put it mildly). He's abusive among other things, completely and totally reckless, and has anger issues. He's even guilty of animal cruelty. I just can't find him likeable. He was definitely responsible for a lot of the times when I had to put the book down and take a break. It would be fine if he'd ever actually faced any real justice for the awful things he did, but he never ever did, by the end of the book he's come up smelling of roses, and Jake, who was bad, but nowhere near Rupert's level of asshole, has lost almost everything and everyone that matters to him.

The plot is very much like a soap opera. It's a years-long feud between two show jumpers, Jake Lovell and Ruper Campbell-Black. Rupert's the spoilt, filthy rich aristocratic athlete, whereas Jake is an orphan, part-gipsy, and is very much working class especially compared to Rupert. But Jake is more naturally talented than Rupert and has a lot more compassion for the animals, so their styles clash. Plus Rupert used to bully Jake when they went to the same school. Any time that show jumping is happening in the book it's, in my opinion, the absolute best parts of the book. Cooper has done an amazingly detailed portrayal of what it's like to run in show jumping circles and to actually participate in an event. She definitely did her research for that. I definitely would have rated this book higher if not for how angry 99% of the characters made me. 

Also, I love the ridiculousness of that cover, it's fantastic haha.

Do you think it's fair to judge a character written in the 80s by today's standards of behaviour?

Overall Rating

3.5 bolts