Several Reviews

Easter for me has always been associated just as much with books as with chocolate. Coming downstairs in the morning, I'd usually be far more fascinated with the small stack of books on the table than the pile of eggs in the corner. Any and all chocolate is always appreciated, but I suppose my real craving is the written word.

So, since today is the first day of the Easter holidays, and I don't really have anything planned, I thought I'd run through some of the stuff I've been reading lately. I haven't updated in a while, school is murdering me, so this is what I've read since my last To-Read List.


Playing the Game - Belle de Jour

I was slightly disappointed by this - but only slightly. I have to admit, I didn't really read the blurb, and just assumed it would be a continuation of the Intimate Adventures. Instead, it was 'Belle's first foray into fiction' - not dislikeable as a whole, but since it saw her leaving the sex industry, it was less than I expected. Still, the girl can write - her style is fantastic, concise and witty, and her candidness is much appreciated, when most of the 'erotic' literature available is all soft-lit fantasy and swooningly hot dark men with beautiful, perfect women. Reading Belle really feels like having a conversation with that one friend you've known so long you have no boundaries with. Keeping this hidden down the side of my bed in case my parents got the wrong idea was well worth the warmth and fun to be found when I fished it up from its hiding place!


Engleby - Sebastian Faulks

I really didn't enjoy this. I don't know what it is about Faulks, but I just can't have any compassion for his bland male leads, and the few women lucky enough to get speaking roles (Charlotte Gray being no exception) are shallowly sketched caricatures. The difficulty which all Faulks' characters have making relationships with the real world does make me wonder about his own social skills - he seems so obsessed with loners, it's hard not to wonder why. Bits of the story were interesting; I'll admit a weakness for boarding school, whether good or bad experiences. But overall, the bitterness of Engleby made it hard for me to enjoy reading his point of view. The revelation about three quarters of the way through that 'oh yes, I forgot, I did kill her' was clunky and poorly built up, so that all through the last part of the novel, I was just reading, unabsorbed in the story, unfeeling, just wanting to get to the last page. I'm sorry, but even a story about a drug-addicted loner psychopath needs to create some bond between the character and reader, to have some spark of redeeming feature, or I'm just not going to care. Maybe I'm missing the point here. Maybe I just shouldn't read anything else by Sebastian Faulks.


We Need To Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver

I re-read this in the bath last week, all in one go. This time around I had a lot more sympathy for Eva, whereas before I really disliked her for her cavalier attitude towards parenting - 'let's have a baby 'cause I'm bored', essentially. The ending was as shiver-making as previously, and I was surprised at how little of its shock factor it lost in the fact that I knew what happened. It's still sickening. It's still a wonderfully powerful book. I still don't know why I like it, but I really, really do.

Marked and Betrayed - PC and Kristen Cast

Well, I was expecting the usual Vampire Academy trite sort of stuff, with pretty vampires and all that, but these books were impressive. I read them both straight off one after the other on a north-south train journey, and I was lefting wishing with all my heart that I'd bought the other three as well. Zoey quickly grows out of the slightly annoying 16 year old she is in the first couple of chapters, and though it's slightly cliched in terms of both the high school and the vampire genres, it works, for some reason, far better. The romantic (or vaguely sexual) bits are raw and gripping and realistic, better than the norm; they feel not idealised, but truthful to how a teenager loves. The male lead is slightly sketchily drawn to begin with, but I'm not arguing, because he becomes more rounded quite quickly. I also love Damien, because he manages to avoid being the token cheerful gay character and is actually very amusing. The twists are pretty good, with the Casts not afraid to reveal good characters as evil, or to kill main characters - something I've rarely seen outside of Farscape, which if you haven't watched, you must! Anyway, the House of Night series looks set to become one of my all-time favourites in this genre...


How to be Popular - Meg Cabot

Dire. Shockingly dire. I didn't think the Princess Diaries were that bad, although I grew out of them about four books in. But this, this is horrific. Self-absorbed, unpopular yet 'adorable' main character? Check. Vapid male jock love interest, guaranteed never to look at her? Check. Trusty (surprisingly hot) male best friend with a crush on her? Check. Trusty female so-called best friend who gets ignored mostly until suspicions of a fling between her and male best friend? Check. Dodgy plot? Check.

Okay, I could have guessed the plot before I started the book. Unpopular girl magically becomes popular then realises she was happier before, falls in love with the right guy and everything is perfect at the end, because she is happy in herself. Bleh. I skimmed the book. I was right. I'm not even sure why I picked it up.