Looking for Alaska

Looking for Alaska by John Green is a book that I’ve intended to read pretty much from the day I found the vlogbrother’s channel on YouTube a few years ago, but due to difficulties in picking it up locally and a hesitation to buy online, it’s only now, with another sick day spent reading, that I’ve gotten around to it. It’s only now that I get to enjoy the piece of literary genius that it is.

Seriously, what a book! Brilliantly set up, the mysterious countdown to an unknown event captures you and from then on, the perfect balance of humour, action and wit keeps your attention ’til the very end. The characters are all fantastic, extremely vivid and very easy to connect with, leading you to share their laughs and join their cries as you travel on this emotional roller coaster through teenage rebellion, the seeking of a Great Perhaps, and the search for an escape from this labyrinth of suffering. Linguistically, it is beauty and poetic throughout and it can easily be seen that this has all the potential to become the biggest young adult cult classic in the future, the new The Catcher in the Rye.

Now, on to the rest of my Life’s Library.

The Hunger Games

The last few days I’ve been sick and having devoted Sunday to mindless FIFA playing, I didn’t wish to waste Monday in the same vein. So, having woken at 10am, I dug out the Kindle, flicked through it and settled on The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. It’s showing in the cinema at the minute and I want to go see it, so I said I might as well read the book first. I knew the general plot summary of the book, having listened to a friend state that it was plagiarism of Battle Royale on more than one occasion, so I knew exactly what to expect.

And it was exactly as I expected. A teenage girl, Katniss, is sent off to fight to the death with other teenagers from around Panem, a futuristic and chaotic state that emerges from the remains of America, in a spectacle that is televised as a reality TV like programme on which the rich citizens of Capitol can bet on who they think will be the last person standing. It centres around Katniss, and her struggles in the fighting arena, while simulataneously filling in the blanks in her background through flashbacks, and dreams. While entertaining, it is overall very superficial in terms of character development, where we learn very little about 21 of the 24 competitiors in these Hunger Games, and there are moments where it seems as if the author just wrote pages as buffer to reach a quota, when there is nothing at all happening. With that said, by the end of the book, these periods are almost forgotten and it still managed to keep my attention for the day up until the moment I finished it, and I will probably read the next one in the series as well, so take from that what you will.

Circle of Friends

So, it’s been a while since my last post. I had started to read Flann O’ Brien’s The Third Policeman after The Old Man and The Sea but due to a very eventful March and a deadline with which to read Circle of Friends, it had to be abandoned a week before the deadline arrived and into my first Maeve Binchy book I started. 

For anyone who is familiar with Maeve Binchy’s work, you will know that she is famous very specifically as  an author of books for woman. Circle of Friends is no exception. Alternating between Dublin city and a fictitious village called Knockglen, COF tells the story of two childhood friends who go to Dublin to attend college where they enter a world of romances, parties and betrayal. Boom! In reality, the story is no where near as exciting as that may sound and although mundane in its plot, it wasn’t as irksome as I had thought it would be. Binchy does well to create authentic and believable characters, and when read in a relatively short period, a week in my case, the otherwise slow plot seems a lot more substantial than it otherwise may have.

Overall, it wasn’t quite as big a chore as I thought it would have been and it may have even been slightly enjoyable in parts.

The Old Man and The Sea

OK, I finished Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea Wednesday last.

  It is a very well written book which tells the story of Santiago, an small fisherman of advancing years from Cuba. He is down on his luck and has not caught any worthwhile fish in quite some time. Throughout the book, Hemingway centres the story on Santiago and his battle with old age, and a very determined fish, to change his luck.
  It’s not a long book, somewhere about 100 Kindle pages on small font, with each page averaging about a minute reading time. It is an enjoyable read, which tells a worthwhile story, though Hemingway’s descriptions tend to overuse the work phosphorescent throughout. It is a lovely book, and it manages to create a very well-developed character, but I seem to have missed all bible references in it, and one of the proposed themes, religion, went completely over my head. Overall, it was an enjoyable read, but don’t talk my word for it, put aside 100 minutes and go read it yourself.

In the last few days, I have also picked up a copy of Circle of Friends. This means I will have to read it soon. Not looking forward to it but it must be done I suppose.

A Feast of Crows – George RR Martin

[This blogpost shall contain spoilers throughout, you have been warned]

So, yesterday, well Monday afternoon since we are now into Wednesday, I finally finished A Feast of Crows.

Cover Art

It dragged on time wise quite a lot time wise in the end until I eventually sat down on Sunday and decided I was going to finish it. I read 30% between Sunday and Monday, finally bringing it to an end. And wow, what an ending! Martin again succeeded in sucking me into his story line and he has me itching to jump straight into A Dance with Dragons, but unfortunately I shall be forced to read Binchy’s Circle of Friends for school beforehand. Other reviews I have read of AFOC tend to criticise Martin for the pace set in the book, particularly Brienne and Samwell’s story lines. I can’t say I noticed, though I did hold a certain excitement for and affinity to the Arya storylines throughout which weren’t there for other characters. I’m glad to see Cersei finally getting her cumupance though I was disappointed to see what has become of Catheryn Stark. The loss of the Hound was another disappointment. He was a fantastic character and I think Martin may struggle to find someone to fill the empty helm left by him in the story line.

While I am waiting to pick up Circle of Friends, I have begun The Old Man and The Sea by Hemingway. It’s regarded as classic and was cited as one of the reasons for his Nobel Prize for Liturature so I hold high expectations. About halfway through, it does seem to be a beautifully written book but I shall hold judgement for another post.

The Blurb

So hopefully this will become a reading log for me over the next few months. I recently got a Kindle so I intend to make good use of it, and reignite my love for reading after a few apathetic months. I will try to pass some comment on every book I read on here but we’ll see how that goes. I’m generally not very dependable at keeping blogs going, but I’ve good intentions for this one.

Anyway, I’ve an idea of some of the books I plan to read, from out and out fantasy, to biographies, and everything in between, but there will always be complete unplanned books I will stumble across on my way, so the list is far from definite.

At the moment, I’m reading A Feast of Crows, part of George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. After this, I will be moving straight onto A Dance with Dragons, the newest book in this series released sometime around July last year.

When I’ve that done, hopefully by mid-February, I shall start into my extensive To Read list. I have no idea of order yet, but I do know some of the books on the list. These include:

• Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
• The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
• A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
• Inheritance – Christopher Paolini
• The Third Policeman – Flann O’ Brien
• 1984 – George Orwell
• Storm Front – Jim Butcher
• Looking for Alaska – John Green
• The Fault in Our Stars – John Green (dependent on how I find Looking for Alaska)
• Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy – John le Carre
• Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
• Skippy Dies – Paul Murray
• The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
• Lord of the Flies – William Golding
• The Millenium Series – Stieg Larsson
• Steve Jobs – Walter Issacson
• I also have to finish the last quarter or so of American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, having abandoned it.

As I said, quite a long list with a rather odd assortment of books. I do not promise to abide by this list, but at the moment, this is my plan. There is always the danger I may get caught up in the Butcher’s Dresden Files when I start them or some other series as I go along, but isn’t that the joy of reading anyway?!

Any comments or recommendations for me? Feel free to comment.

J.