Party Pooper – that means spoilers (Friday Book Club)

It’s been a disappointing reading week this week.
It started off sort of ok, I found a free teen romance book in the iBookstore that was exactly what I expected it to be. But then everything started going down hill from there.

I finally picked up the last Mortal Instruments book.

I really don’t know why I bothered. I haven’t actually finished reading it, I have two chapters and the epilogue to go, but I’m not going to finish it. I ended up skipping ahead to the epilogue anyway and skimming it to see what happens and it’s basically the same as all the other books. And it doesn’t have a proper ending. The world isn’t saved in the end and Clare has left it open for yet another sequel. I am so over this world and its characters that I want to end in fire and brimstone. It was a massive waste of my time. Don’t read them.

I don’t mind series. I have resigned myself to the fact that this is the way Young Adult fiction is going. But don’t keep writing just to make money. You actually need something interesting and engaging to say.

I also read two picture books this week.

Neither of them was what I expected and I wasn’t actually pleasantly surprised either. Just disappointed again.

I usually love Lemony Snicket, but I am not very musical so I found his picture book to be boring and repetitive.
And I fell for the old

don’t judge a book by its cover

adage
With Varmints because it looks awesome but it is really just a rip off of The Rabbits.

Maybe next week will be a better week for reading.

Coming up on my next blog: Maybe I need to crack out the new Margaret Atwood.

City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare (Friday Book Club)

Honestly, I don’t know how good this review is going to be. I finished this book last weekend and am about half way through the next one in the series. I keep reading because I kind of want to know what will happen, kind of because I want to say that I have, but mostly because I don’t really have anything else to read at the moment. So I am just really reading them because they are there.

So this is the second book in the series, and while it is not getting any better it isn’t getting any worse either. More stupid things happen and the whole love interest thing gets a bit tedious.
But there is action and some interesting twists and it did make me want to pick up the third book so I guess the author does have some skill in telling a story.

I guess, for me at least, the reason I can’t get into this series (or like it as much as some of the other teen fiction I have been reading lately) is because its not a dystopia. I think I am over just your general run of the mill fantasy stories. I don’t really care much for the genre anymore. And these books are just so fantasy. There are so many fantastical elements to them it is a little overkill.

And yet, I am still reading them.

Coming up in my next blog: I have some more ideas about time…

Second Time Lucky (Friday Book Club)

This week I have finished another three books.
And they are very different.
One Young Adult novel, one Adult novel, and one Non Fiction text.
It was a week of second chances and perseverance.

The first book I finished was City of Bones by Cassandra Clare. I have been meaning to read this book since I heard they were turning it into a movie. I like teen fiction in general and like to read them before they get stylised by Hollywood, usually I don’t end up seeing the film because I like the books too much.
I tried to start reading this book about a month ago. I went and borrowed it specifically from the library. I read maybe two pages and didn’t really get what was going on and didn’t really care and so I stopped reading and returned it to the library. It wasn’t really the books fault that first time. When I started reading I was in a loud place where I couldn’t really concentrate and that gave me a bad experience. I can’t read in loud places, I need absolute silence. Sometimes I find it hard to write with noise going on around me, like now I had to switch from the radio to my own music even though Triple J are broadcasting from Splendour because I can’t concentrate while they interview the acts. And I can’t even sleep if there is any light or noise. I need the conditions to be vampiric. I am just a little bit hysterical in this way.
The twist at the end of this novel is stupid. The author has really shot herself in the foot because she has dashed the hopes of all her teen readers (and me) in terms of one way the plot could (and should) have developed. Not to worry though, there are four more in the series (and then two more in the same world I think). And they will probably make up next Friday’s post.

Then on Monday a work colleague leant me the new Patrick Ness novel that I have been wanting to read but didn’t want to pay for. Now that I am finished it and reflecting I kind of feel that it reminds me a bit of the JK Rowling adult novel The Casual Vacancy. I probably feel this way because she has been in the news a lot this week and Ness’ novel is also set in suburban England. But that is really where the comparisons end.
Ness has built his own story around the myth of The Crane Wife and makes explicit reference to The Decemberists’ version of this story, an album I own and have enjoyed for years. I love Ness’ writing style, he is such a good writer that I couldn’t finish his Chaos Walking series because he was making bad things happen to characters I liked. He just has a really eloquent style.

I have been reading this non-fiction book for almost a whole year. I bought it at the British Museum when I was in London in September last year. It’s not that I couldn’t have got a copy at home, it’s just that was the first place I saw it and I wanted to get something of a souvenir from the museum besides Egyptian cat book ends. It took me a long time to read because it made me really drowsy. And because it’s non-fiction it does not really have a compelling plot that keeps me reading.
Basically each chapter is about one important object in the Museum’s collection. Which in itself is interesting. But it was written for a radio show, so there are bits of expert opinion interspersed in with the main narration. It just doesn’t really flow. I think it would have been better if I had been reading the text as I was walking around the museum looking at all these objects.

Coming up on my next blog: Insightful social commentary and the like.