jennyreadsabook-blog

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Clarifications!

Reading back my last review, I’ve realised I made it sound like I hated ‘Gone Girl’. On the contrary, it was a great story. I just feel that it was let down by bad characterisation and sloppy story telling. It could’ve been so good, and it just wasn’t quite there, which annoyed me..!

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Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Right, so, I have been recommended this book by lots of people, everyone told me that it was fantastic, clever and definitely worth reading. Apart from my Grandma that is, who told me it was awful and that I’d wasted my money buying it. I recently had to take an 9 hour long train journey to Scotland, and so I took this along for the ride so that I could make a judgement for myself.

The first problem I had was not actually to do with the book, if anything it was more to do with the mass exposure the book and film have had which meant that, somewhere along the line, I had been exposed to the major ‘plot-twist’ already, and knew where the book was headed before it got there. This meant that I read the book with slight anticipation for what was to come, which in this particular case possibly didn’t help it.

I have to say, I wasn’t thrilled by the book. It was gripping, had direction, was definitely clever and wasn’t awful, but I just thought that it was too contrived and everything felt too false. 

Characterisation is a big issue for me with this one. I just felt that there was a tendency to typecast that let the book down. I liked the change in voice between ‘Diary Amy” and “Real Amy’ as I thought it really contributed to the plausibility of the narrative; Amy was probably the only character who I felt connected to in any way as she had some real depth to her. But, I personally failed to warm to Nick at all and found Go, Marybeth and Rand to be too flat and unrealistic to emphasise with them in any way.

In this book, the plot was the focus, with everything else pandering to that plot-twist, and it was a good plot-twist. Admittedly it might have been better if I hadn’t known it was coming, but it was still worthwhile. However, that was just about the only thing that was good, and this is where this book falls down for me. It’s a brilliant idea, but it doesn’t fit, for me, the rest of the story. The characters aren’t right, the setting seems irrelevant and the narrative is constrained so that it doesn’t hinder the plot. Even the ending seems flat, as though the story just lost it’s energy and couldn’t keep going on.

Overall-Underwhelming: a good story but a not so good book. I’m siding with Grandma on this one. 

Let me know what you thought of this book!

[jennyreadsabook-blog]

Day 3(00)

Yeah, so um, that review “tomorrow” didn’t happen. Woops. Great. Now you all know how awful at commitment I am.

Right, so I did finish ‘The Hundred Year Old Man’, and I really liked it. Though I have to say exact feelings about it left me a long time ago. I’m sorry. I promise I’ll never abandon the blog ever again!

For now though, I’ll get cracking with other things.

New beginnings and all that, yes? 

Maybe...

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Day 2

So, I'm still reading "THYOMWCOOTWAD", check my previous post if you, like me, can't tell what those initials stand for, and OH MY GOD I FREAKIN' LOVE IT!!!

It's just so good! I love the crazy plot, the crazier characters and the randomness of it. I have so much respect for Jonas Jonasson because, man, it must have take you ages to weave those story threads together! I'll do a full review tomorrow, but at the moment I'm only 30 pages from the end and gripped! I need to go and find out how it ends! though, to be honest, it's not the kind of book that really ends, if you know what I mean? It just keeps going...

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Day 1

The first book I'm going to read is "The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window and Disappeared" by Jonas Jonasson.

I had a big book spree in Foyles today; oh how much I love that shop, and bought £80 pounds worth of books, both fiction and non-fiction, and this one in particular caught my eye!

First of all, I love the cover art work. The typeface and the slightly unusual layout of the front page drew me to the book immediately. The bold black and white font against the bright background works extremely well for me and, although I know you should never judge a book by its cover, I'm a sucker for eye-catching designs.

My second reason for choosing the book was that it was written by a Scandinavian author; Swedish Jonas Jonasson. We might as well establish at this point of the blog that I am a Scandinavian freak, particularly Denmark and anything Danish, but Scandinavia in general does it for me too. This is not a good reason to choose a book. Though, in recent years, Scandinavia have produced many acclaimed screenplays, novels and other literary works, so who knows, maybe I'm onto something? 

My final, and definitely most valid reason for choosing the book was that the plot sounds perfect. Witty, imaginative and original but with possible serious undertones and a valuable message. Maybe I'm reading into the blurb a little too much, but it does sound as though it's worth reading. I guess I'll soon find out. Until tomorrow, Jenny xx

[jennyreadsabook-blog]

Hi everyone!

I have always been an avid reader and have decided recently that I wanted to create a creative outlet of some kind; therefore a book blog seemed like the perfect idea. This blog will literally be a daily account of what I'm reading and my thoughts on it.

I can't guarantee to only read a particular genre as I'm quite a 'pick up whatever I find and read it' type of reader, but I hope that I can guarantee some interesting points for discussion, some humour and a valid point of view.

From now on though, I'll let the blog speak for itself!

Happy reading,

Jenny :D