Ellie's (elliepotten) reading and viewing for 2018 (2)

Hello again! Welcome to my second thread of the year, hopefully soon to be home to more food photos, more cats, more sexy famous people, more movie and TV reviews, and maybe a little more actual reading to compliment all of the above? We can but dream...



If you want to check out my first thread, you can click here - there's a proper intro/welcome up top, photos of cats and bookshelves, GIFs of various attractive (and often partially clothed) individuals, and a bunch of mini book, movie and TV reviews.

Now, on to how things are going RIGHT NOW!




BONUS: Number of ROOT (Read Our Own Tomes) books completed, as per my thread here: 21/30

Currently reading:
- Reasons to Stay Alive - Matt Haig
- Scribbles in the Margins: 50 Eternal Delights of Books - Daniel Gray
- Berserk - Ally Kennen

ELLIE'S READING FOR 2018

** Books in bold are my favourites so far! **

Thread 1:
1. Night - Elie Wiesel
2. The Gifts of Reading - Robert Macfarlane

This thread:
Bonus: How It Works: The Cat - Jason Hazeley and Joel Morris (message 14)
3. A Good Year - Peter Mayle (message 28)
4. The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2 - Jayne Poynter (message 40)
5. A Voice in the Distance - Tabitha Suzuma (message 69)
6. Everything, Everything - Nicola Yoon (message 108)
7. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (message 120)
8. Three Men on the Bummel - Jerome K. Jerome (message 141)
9. Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief - Rick Riordan (message 147)
10. Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters - Rick Riordan (message 169)
11. Vox - Nicholson Baker (message 178)
12. Bohemian Manifesto: A Field Guide to Living on the Edge - Laren Stover (message 180)
Bonus: The Tale of Peter Rabbit - Beatrix Potter (message 182)
13. Love, Simon (Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda) - Becky Albertalli (message 184)
Bonus: The Tale of Benjamin Bunny - Beatrix Potter (message 182)
14. Exhibitionism - Toby Litt (message 192)
15. Lost in Translation - Ella Frances Saunders (message 193)
16. Mort - Terry Pratchett (message 196)
17. The Rules of Attraction - Bret Easton Ellis (message 201)
18. Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami (message 210)
19. Doctor Sleep - Stephen King (message 215)
20. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey (message 218)
21. Fifty Shades of Grey - E.L. James (message 220)
22. The Hit - Melvin Burgess (message 227)
23. Crash - J.G. Ballard (message 231)
24. Jason and Medea - Apollonius of Rhodes (message 232)
25. The Kiss Quotient - Helen Hoang (message 241)
26. Finding Audrey - Sophie Kinsella (message 248)
.
.



ELLIE'S VIEWING FOR 2018

** Movies and TV shows in bold are my favourites so far! **

Thread 1:
1. Lucky Jim (1957) - starring Ian Carmichael and Sharon Acker
2. Imagine Me and You (2005) - starring Piper Perabo and Lena Headey
3. While We're Young (2014) - starring Ben Stiller and Adam Driver
4. Bio-Dome (1996) - starring Pauly Shore and Stephen Baldwin
5. Girls Seasons 1-3 (2012-4) - starring Lena Dunham and Allison Williams
6. Matilda (1996) - starring Mara Wilson and Embeth Davidtz

This thread:
7. Capote (2005) - starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Clifton Collins Jr. (message 22)
8. Volcano (1997) - starring Tommy Lee Jones and Anne Heche (message 29)
9. A Good Year (2006) - starring Russell Crowe and Marion Cotillard (message 38)
10. Infamous (2006) - starring Toby Jones and Sandra Bullock (message 39)
11. Bad Moms (2016) - starring Mila Kunis and Kathryn Hahn (message 55)
12. My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) - starring Nia Vardalos and John Corbett (message 70)
13. Sydney White (2007) - starring Amanda Bynes and Sara Paxton (message 71)
14. Everything, Everything (2017) - starring Amandla Stenberg and Nick Robinson (message 113)
15. Lolita (1997) - starring Jeremy Irons and Dominique Swain (message 130)
16. Pretty Boy (2015) - starring Nick Eversman and Rebekah Tripp (short film) (message 132)
17. The Durrells Series 1 (2016) - starring Keeley Hawes and Josh O'Connor (message 133)
18. Strike: Career of Evil (2018) - starring Tom Burke and Holliday Grainger (message 136)
19. The End of the F**king World (2017) - starring Alex Lawther and Jessica Barden (message 143)
20. Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (2010) - starring Logan Lerman and Alexandra Daddario (message 157)
21. Anastasia (1997) - starring Meg Ryan and John Cusack (voices) (message 162)
22. Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters (2013) - starring Logan Lerman and Alexandra Daddario (message 170)
23. Gifted (2017) - starring Chris Evans and Mckenna Grace (message 173)
24. Chatroom (2010) - starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Matthew Beard (message 177)

This came from Katie's mega-non-LT-challenge thread; ideas for books for each prompt are in italics, and completed prompts are in bold, complete with touchstones and ticks (✔)!



2018 PopSugar Reading Challenge

✔ 1. A book made into a movie you've already seen - A Good Year by Peter Mayle
2. True crime - Mindhunter, Manson, Columbine, One of Us, The Night Stalker, Life After Death, Go Down Together, Orange is the New Black
✔ 3. The next book in a series you started - Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan
✔ 4. A book involving a heist - The Hit by Melvin Burgess (two characters hold up a liquor store)
5. Nordic noir - The Dogs of Riga
6. A novel based on a real person - The Paris Wife (the Hemingways), Sleeper in the Sands (Carter/Carnarvon), 11/22/63 (Kennedy/Oswald), Look Who's Back (Hitler), The Danish Girl (Lili Elbe), On the Road (Kerouac, Cassady et al)
7. A book set in a country that fascinates you - Sleeper in the Sands, Tracks
✔ 8. A book with a time of day in the title - Night by Elie Wiesel
✔ 9. A book about a villain or antihero - Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
10. A book about death or grief - Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
11. A book with a female author who uses a male pseudonym - The Cuckoo's Calling, one of the Bronte sisters' first three novels (before they revealed their true identities)
✔ 12. A book with an LGBTQ+ protagonist - Love, Simon (Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda) by Becky Albertalli
13. A book that is also a stage play or musical - The Phantom of the Opera, Matilda
✔ 14. A book by an author of a different ethnicity than you - Everything, Everything - Nicola Yoon (Jamaican American)
15. A book about feminism
✔ 16. A book about mental health - A Voice in the Distance by Tabitha Suzuma (bipolar disorder)
✔ 17. A book you borrowed or that was given to you as a gift - The Gifts of Reading by Robert Macfarlane
18. A book by two authors
19. A book about or involving a sport
20. A book by a local author - Black Dog, twist prompt to Pride and Prejudice (WRITTEN locally)
21. A book with your favorite colour in the title - Anne of Green Gables
22. A book with alliteration in the title - Darkly Dreaming Dexter
23. A book about time travel
✔ 24. A book with a weather element in the title - Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
✔ 25. A book set at sea - Meg by Steve Alten
✔ 26. A book with an animal in the title - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
27. A book set on a different planet - The Martian
✔ 28. A book with song lyrics in the title - Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakamai
29. A book about or set on Halloween - Something Wicked This Way Comes
✔ 30. A book with characters who are twins - Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips (the gods Artemis and Apollo are twins)
31. A book mentioned in another book - Beneath the Wheel (Norwegian Wood), Carry On (Fangirl), The Secret Garden, Pride and Prejudice (Matilda), To Kill a Mockingbird, Walden, On the Road (The Perks of Being a Wallflower), The Hobbit, Middlesex (The Borrower), The Communist Manifesto, I Capture the Castle, Brave New World, Little Women, Romeo and Juliet (Among Others), Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Othello (The Secret History), Persuasion, Sense and Sensibility (The Marriage Plot), Sherlock Holmes (The Thirteenth Tale), Murder on the Orient Express (The Dinner), Lolita (Wild), The Little Prince, Flowers for Algernon, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Stranger (Everything, Everything), Bel Canto, the Sookie Stackhouse series (The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry), a book from The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend or the Thursday Next series
✔ 32. A book from a celebrity book club - Finding Audrey by Sophie Kinsella (Zoella Book Club)
33. A childhood classic you've never read - The Wind in the Willows, The Little Prince, Treasure Island, Pippi Longstocking, Pollyanna, one of the later Laura Ingalls Wilder books
✔ 34. A book that's published in 2018 - The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang
✔ 35. A past Goodreads Choice Awards winner - Doctor Sleep by Stephen King (Best Horror, 2013)
✔ 36. A book set in the decade you were born - The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis (written and set in the 80s)
✔ 37. A book you meant to read in 2017 but didn't get to - Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
✔ 38. A book with an ugly cover - Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome (see message 141!)
39. A book that involves a bookstore or library
✔ 40. Your favorite prompt from the 2015, 2016, or 2017 POPSUGAR Reading Challenges - The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2 by Jane Poynter (2015 challenge, prompt 14, a non-fiction book)

TOTAL READ: 21/40

Advanced Reading Challenge

1. A bestseller from the year you graduated high school - 2005 - Never Let Me Go, Twilight, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Voices from Chernobyl, Stuart: A Life Backwards
2. A cyberpunk book - Ready Player One
✔ 3. A book that was being read by a stranger in a public place - Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James (half the people on the plane/at the airport/around the pool on holiday, the year it went stratospheric)
4. A book tied to your ancestry
5. A book with a fruit or vegetable in the title - A Clockwork Orange, The Five Orange Pips, Blueberry Muffin Murder, Orange is the New Black
6. An allegory
7. A book by an author with the same first or last name as you
8. A microhistory - Colour, Rabid, Stationery, A History of the World in 6 Glasses, The Devil's Cup, At Home, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Blood, Birth, Columbine, Living With Enza, something by Mary Roach
✔ 9. A book about a problem facing society today - The Pleasure's All Mine: A History of Perverse Sex by Julie Peakman (about how sex is approached in medicine, law, society etc, including repression, feminism and and modern sexuality)
10. A book recommended by someone else taking the POPSUGAR Reading Challenge - True Grit (Katie)

TOTAL READ: 2/10

GRAND TOTAL: 23/50

Happy new thread!

Happy new thread, Ellie! That kitty in >1 elliepotten: looks a bit like our Leonard :)

Happy new thread!

Happy new thread, little English muffin. Hope your weekend is shaping up to be ab fab. ;)

Happy new thread, Ellie!!

I fell behind already...

Happy new thread, Ellie!

Oh look shiney.new thead! Happy new one Ellie.

Happy new thread!

Uhtred from Bernard Cornwell's The Last Kingdom book series as embodied by Alexander Dreymon.

>12 richardderus: Hmmmm, a bit babyfaced for my tastes - but those eyes! Guyliner is WORKING for that blue. >:)

Bonus book: How It Works: The Cat, by Jason Hazeley and Joel Morris (3.5*) - nonfiction

Well, I'm not counting this one, for... well, anything... because it took me approximately two and a half minutes to read - but it was fun, so whaaaaatever. It's one of the better 'Ladybird Books for Adults' that I've come across so far, though as always, towards the end the barrel gets scraped a bit (I think they ran out of cat pictures) and I STILL firmly believe that charging the price of a full novel for something that repurposes old illustrations and takes ninety seconds to read is criminal. Luckily this one came my way for free, via my sister, so I was quite happy to just chortle my way through the blend of nostalgia and deadpan humour during a mid-cleaning coffee break! Worth picking up if you find one going (super-)cheap somewhere, and they do make fun little gifts.

"Cats are perfectly equipped for life as predators. They climb up trees using their sophisticated sense of balance and sharp, forward–facing claws, and climb down using a fully crewed Dennis Rapier XL fire engine."

>14 elliepotten: I bought my daughter and son-in-law matching How It works: The Husband and The Wife for their first wedding anniversary, in case they hadn't quite worked it out themselves!

Happy new thread Ellie!

>14 elliepotten: Some of those are really funny (although I hear what you're saying about the price) - I will look out for the cat one.

>15 CDVicarage: >16 souloftherose: I think we've had The Shed, Mindfulness, The Mum and The Cat through the house so far. The Mum was my runaway favourite, but The Cat's probably second!

oh Kitties! Hi Ellie just to let you know there is a vote going on over on my thread

I am a bit slow these days but happy new thread, Ellie. Lovely to see you back posting more regularly. xx

>17 elliepotten: I've bought a few of these for work and I get a chortle out of them.

Happy new thread Ellie!

I have never seen Capote. I need to remedy that.

Movie: Capote (2005) starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Clifton Collins Jr.

Weirdly, I don't have much to say about this one. The acting was superb, as you would expect from old hands like PSH and Catherine Keener (who plays Harper Lee). PSH managed to capture some of Capote's odd mannerisms and flamboyant style - though he never quite seemed to inhabit the character fully - and Clifton Collins Jr. (playing Perry Smith) was utterly mesmerising. He played it sad, and smart, and thoughtful - all the facets of his character that so drew Capote in - and then there was one intense Death Row scene where his face suddenly moved from innocent and slightly mournful to utterly murderous with barely a shift of his features, and you suddenly saw someone capable of terrible things. I had to replay it, it was so perfectly done.

And yet, despite the talent on display, there was something entirely cold, detached and forgettable about this movie. It just wasn't as gripping and sparkling as the reviews led me to hope, despite its pedigree, and there wasn't really enough of any one element to get me really invested. There might be a couple of minutes of Smith-Capote interaction, a couple of minutes of partying and exchanging witticisms with unnamed hangers-on, a few minutes of Capote sitting at his desk writing, then it'd go round again. And again. The end was memorable, sure, but that's because a man got violently hung, not because it was the conclusion to a satisfying story arc.

I dunno. I loved In Cold Blood, I enjoyed the movie of In Cold Blood, and maybe this just couldn't live up to the thrill and the intrigue of the book itself. Or maybe it was just that this film and I didn't gel that well, and that I'll enjoy Infamous more, I don't know. I plan to find out though - it's on Prime video right now so it's right near the top of my watch list!

>18 BBGirl55: Oh no, I was away with house guests and then a multi-day migraine, ugh! (One may have contributed to the other, haha, I'm rubbish when people are at the house!) Am I too late?

>19 PaulCranswick: Hey there stranger! Hopefully I'm striking the right balance between 'posting regularly' and 'posting so much no one can keep up', haha. Give you all a fighting chance at joining the conversation. ;)

>20 MickyFine: I will never turn down the opportunity to read one if it comes my way gratis, you can be sure of that! And I'm SURE they'll start arriving in charity shops soon, they've sold so many of them over the last year or two!

>21 SuziQoregon: Well worth watching. I'll be watching Infamous soon (the following years' take on the same story, with Toby Jones, Sandra Bullock and Daniel Craig), see what I think. People seem to come down heavily on one side or another! I feel like the pace might be better, that it might be more enjoyable as a film, but also that they might veer a bit further towards the ridiculous, especially with Capote himself. And I just can't see Daniel Craig as Perry Smith. Maybe he'll prove me wrong though! :D

READING AND WATCHING UPDATE:
I'm actually riiiiiight near the end of both A Good Year and The Human Experiment - less than fifty pages of each to go - so there should be actual book reviews on the horizon at last! As for movies, it'll be A Good Year, Infamous and maaaaybe Volcano? That's on actual telly and I'm not sure if I can be bothered to watch two hours of people running away from lava tonight though, so maybe not. And some of the books on my 'potential next up' list include This Is Where I Leave You (so I can watch that movie), something Austen-y, and maybe Fingers in the Sparkle Jar by naturalist, TV presenter and fellow Aspergian (?!) Chris Packham... I listened to his Penguin Podcast with Richard E. Grant yesterday and it really whetted my appetite again, he's so knowledgeable and eloquent, and the audiobook extracts they played were wonderful!

something Austen-y Ooooh, what?

>14 elliepotten: some of those ones are hilarious! And that page in particular :) :) :)

>24 MickyFine: Probably either Northanger Abbey (first novel, short, one of the two I haven't read yet) or Sense and Sensibility (haven't read it in about 15 years, really want to rewatch the BBC series soon). I'm wavering between the two at the moment!

>25 LovingLit: It definitely seemed the most appropriate for LT! :D

Hi. Just so you know the Vote on my thread was tied, so please go vote again. Thanks.

3. A Good Year, by Peter Mayle (3.5*) - fiction

Awwww, this was a nice way to kick off my fiction reading for the year. I'd actually been considering watching the movie again, for the first time in years, then suddenly remembered that I used to have a copy of the book lying around. Lo and behold, I found it, sitting forlornly in the office, consigned to my 'to sell off' box. I rescued it, read it, and here we are!

It's about Max Skinner, a young Englishman who loses his job in London and inherits his uncle's shabby-chic old house in France, all in the same week. He sets out to see the place, somewhere he adored and spent a lot of time as a child, and ends up falling in love all over again - with the house, the vineyard, the lifestyle, and a voluptuous local restaurant owner. Throw in a whopping dollop of good humour, an unexpected visitor (a storyline I liked), a little casual wine fraud (a storyline I could have done without), and a whole cast of wonderful characters (I especially loved Madame Passepartout, Max's housekeeper), and this was a really charming little read.

After all, what better way to spend a week of our English winter than dreaming of a Provençal summer? Mayle's book (as you might expect) perfectly evokes the feeling of sunshine on skin, the golden light warming the vines, the murmur of a village cafe, and the simple delights of good food, good wine and good company. I had to go out today and buy a crusty loaf of fresh bread, slices of ham, vine tomatoes and a bag of choc chip madeleines, just to get me through tonight (when I'll hopefully watch the movie over dinner). *sighs happily* I'm really glad I took a chance and read this one instead of sending it straight off to Ziffit for a few measly pennies!

This book also counts for:
- ROOT challenge (on shelf probably since the late Noughties, after the film came out)
- PopSugar challenge, prompt 1 (a book made into a movie I've already seen)

Movie: Volcano (1997) starring Tommy Lee Jones and Anne Heche

Gotta love a good enviro-disaster movie. After watching Dante's Peak a couple of months ago, this one was next on my 'OH CRAP! A VOLCANO!' to-watch list. Despite my rubbish internet connection I managed to catch almost all of it on Film 4 last night (just a couple of minutes missed in the first half hour while the screen reloaded after a series of connection breaks, ugh).

I mean, I'm all for movies starring young Pierce Brosnan, and I liked the whole 'there actually is a volcano here, why wouldn't it erupt again, you twerps?' angle of that one, but Dante's Peak went a little too far down the nightmare route for me. Y'know - nowhere to run, about 2% chance of making it out alive, and every time you try to escape something else happens. Acid lakes. More explosions. The wind changing direction. There has to be hope in a movie, or I just start to feel like that moment in the nightmare where you give up, stop running and wait to wake up in a cold sweat.

Happily, this one had hope. Instead of just running for their lives for three quarters of the movie, these characters were doing something about the situation, in a very heroic and all-American way: working out what was happening, and why, and what would happen next, and formulating plans to work with the disaster, using its natural properties to contain and channel it and therefore save as many lives as possible. I liked that more proactive, methodical storyline - it was a lot more interesting (and less exhausting) to watch.

There was also just the right amount of cheese, some seasoned actors playing against young new faces, the ubiquitous daughter to keep safe, the dog in peril that gets saved at the last second, the spectacular action shots, it was ALL THERE. A fun way to spend a couple of hours on a Tuesday night!

The best part of Dante's Peak is a line my cousin and I quoted with regularity: "Coffee! Coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee. Cappuccino! Java! Yes!".

>26 elliepotten: You haven't read Northanger Abbey? But it has my literary boyfriend Henry Tilney in it. *swoons*

>29 elliepotten: Oh Volcano. It's enjoyable but I cannot suspend my disbelief enough to accept that they stop a massive lava flow with some concrete beams. I'm pretty sure lava would melt concrete easy, peasy.

>30 bell7: Oh yeah! That bit made me laugh. Mostly in recognition. >:)

>31 MickyFine: Yeaaaaah, I did have to suspend my disbelief there. Especially given how quickly everything else succumbed. I guess, maybe, if they were thick enough, they could have only STARTED to melt through - they didn't leave it more than a minute or two before they sent in the helicopters and hoses to douse it. I dunno, there are always huge plot holes in movies like this, but I'm quite good at zooming over them and just going along for the ride!

And no, I haven't read Northanger or Emma yet - but I've heard delicious things about Mr Tilney! Played by JJ Feild in the adaptation too, better and better... :P

>32 elliepotten: I vote for Northanger, obvs. :)

Oh gosh, I LOVE disaster movies!! So. Much. So cheesy and fun.

What Amber said. The Wayne and I are eagerly awaiting the release of 'Geostorm' to Netflix or Amazon Prime...

Oh cheezy disaster movies. I haven't watched one in ages.

EXACTLY! There's something so satisfying about CDMs (as they will now be known). The peril! The tropes! The complete denial of impending doom by everyone except the actor gracing the front of the DVD cover! The odd bout of dodgy 90s special effects! *sighs happily*

Sooooo I now have two movie mini reviews to write - A Good Year and Infamous - and I'm only a handful of pages away from the end of The Human Experiment, so that's a book mini review on the horizon as well.

And guys... I am frazzled. We have house guests for the third weekend in a row, the latter two of which have been the kind of house guests that require the whole place to be deep cleaned and then normal life to stop so you don't mess it up again before they arrive (TOAST! NO! THINK OF THE CRUMBS!), and I've had to do literally all the cleaning this time even though they're people I haven't seen in fifteen years and I'm basically planning to hide upstairs for as much of their visit as possible, and THEN there's a possibility that they'll stay here an extra night too, on their way back from wherever they're going tomorrow (because they're not coming to see us, oh no - we're just a convenient free hotel en route.) Ugh. And now I've got to help cook for them tonight as well, because Mum's also frazzled, and my stepdad's sod all use even though they're HIS RELATIVES. I'm all fried, my hip's completely frozen up from the vacuuming, the cat's had a bit of a litter tray mishap again, my stomach's gone haywire, I could happily just nap all afternoon because I woke up in the wee hours thinking about what to clean next and couldn't get back to sleep, and all things considered, I've ended up enlisting the services of my Squease (deep pressure) vest to calm my general frazzledom down a bit. UGH.

I mean, I'm okay and all, just in need of a lil vent before I doze off in a sunbeam or something, make the most of the last two hours before they turn up... *deep breaths* Once they're gone, I'm having a couple of days off, I swear. Lots of reading, relaxing, eating the Gu maple and pecan cheesecake pot I've got in the fridge - and I'm not so much as looking at a duster or a vacuum cleaner for another fortnight! Oh, and I'm going to have a wander round the threads on here as well. Between the visitors and the cleaning and the migraine in the middle, I'm so far behind!

OH! In better news, a very pretty book arrived in the post! I bought a second-hand copy of The Diary of a Bookseller, by the dude who runs the biggest second-hand bookshop in Scotland. It's one of my Thingaversary book picks, and I thought it would bring back some fun memories. The entry on the back cover made me laugh already:

"An elderly customer told me that her book club's next book was Dracula, but she couldn't remember what he'd written."

Yeah, I think I'm gonna love this one - and find some of it hilariously familiar! :D

Movie: A Good Year (2006) starring Russell Crowe and Marion Cotillard

Well, well. I actually didn't like this movie anywhere near as much as I used to; it was far sweeter in my memory. I mean, I still enjoyed it for the beautiful scenery and the more developed backstory of young Max staying with his Uncle Henry at the estate every summer, but it didn't feel like the inspiring, wanderlust-y vision of idyllic Provençal life that it did ten years ago.

I couldn't help ringing the changes against the book - and the book won. Max is such a knob in the movie (not to mention older and decidedly less attractive than he's meant to be in the novel), and bits and pieces of the book's subplots are shoehorned in with very little explanation and nowhere near as much coherence. Not only that, but the romance is far less genuine, healthy or, well, romantic in the movie - because again, knob. There's no gentle attraction between Max and Fanny, no harmless flirtation and growing regard: it's just lots of anger and bad behaviour followed by this strong woman apparently abandoning her entire life philosophy to date him.

Stellar work here by Albert Finney, and Tom Hollander and Freddie Highmore are both a delight as always - and I maintain that Marion Cotillard is one of the most beautiful women and most natural actors on the planet (she took my breath away the first time I saw this movie) - but I think I'll be more inclined to return to the book next time I want a 'wine and sunshine' fix. Shame.

Movie: Infamous (2006) starring Toby Jones and Sandra Bullock

Another surprise. After watching Capote last week - Oscar winner, critically acclaimed, etc etc - I'd expected this one to be the poorer of the two. But no! It completely blew Capote out of the water - for me, anyway. Where Philip Seymour Hoffman imitated Capote, Jones became him, physically and emotionally. I was watching an interview with Capote today, and looking for a picture to go with this review, and a couple of times I had to do a double take, they look (and speak, and move) so alike. It really did make a difference. Not only that, but Sandra Bullock was exactly how I always imagined Nelle Harper Lee to be (less demure, more Scout Finch!) and they actually had a Dick Hickock with a stone-cold attitude and a kind of deadly good cheer, rather than him just looking like a smug git.

This film had amazing music by Rachel Portman, a stellar cast (including Isabella Rossellini, Jeff Daniels, Lee Pace and Sigourney Weaver), it explained who was who in Capote's social circle, it had tremendous heart to go with its intelligence, and it was much better paced, incorporating more of Capote's personality and life alongside his work, rather than taking Capote's cooler approach and rendering him mostly narcissistic, manipulative and even a little childish. In short, it was a revelation.

The only weak link, for me, was Daniel Craig, who just made such an odd choice for Perry Smith. If Clifton Collins Jr. could have been slotted into this movie, but with a little more of Daniel Craig's menace and bad temper to set against his more sensitive portrayal, I reckon it would have been damn near perfect. I loved it - and if I'd been a little more timely and had seen the two films back when there were whole forum debates about them, I'd definitely be #TeamInfamous. Now I kinda want to read George Plimpton's book Truman Capote, which I conveniently found on a charity shop shelf soon after I read In Cold Blood... SO MUCH CAPOTE, SO LITTLE TIME!

4. The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2, by Jane Poynter (4*) - non-fiction

Well, this was fascinating. After reading - and adoring - The Terranauts by T.C. Boyle (my favourite book of last year), I was intrigued to find out that the biosphere was a real thing (I would only have been a teeny tiny child at the time of the experiments) AND that the biospherians had written books. The one that most piqued my fancy was this one, which the reviews suggested was the most readable: more personal and more concerned with the actual experience of living inside Biosphere 2, as opposed to just explaining the science and logistics behind it. I think I made the right choice!

For those who don't know, Biosphere 2 is a giant glass and steel structure in the Arizona desert, comprising several painstakingly recreated wilderness biomes as well as more human-orientated areas (a rainforest, ocean, desert, savannah, marsh, a farm and a human 'Habitat'). In the early 90s, it became home to eight biospherians and a multitude of other creatures, who would live, work, eat, breathe and sleep inside its closed system for two years, nothing going in, nothing going out. Not unless it became a 'do or die' situation, anyway - which did happen a couple of times.

Much has been written about the Biosphere over the years - some true, some false, some overblown to sell newspapers - so this is Jane Poynter offering her own account, many years later, reflecting on the entire experience. The book took a while to actually get to Closure itself, with Poynter talking a lot about her life and rather unorthodox training beforehand - but once the design, building and operation of the Biosphere got underway, I was utterly hooked. She really does talk about the good, the bad and the ugly here, everything from wonderful parties and triumphs on their farm, to their struggles when the oxygen level declined and several crops failed, to the bitter and seething clashes between biospherians and management that rounded out their two years inside. She covers the science of the building and the research projects they worked on inside, but also shares what they ate for Christmas and her favourite places to hide herself away for a moment's peace. There's a good balance there, I think.

In short, this was a tremendously insightful, interesting and inspiring read about a pioneering vision, and the quite extraordinary people (both inside and outside) whose determination first brought it to life and then saw it through to its turbulent end. I'm sure I might have had a slightly different take on the whole thing if I'd read one of the other books, perhaps John Allen's or Abigail Alling's, but I'm glad I chose this one; Poynter is engaging and seems fair, and she has a warm tone that I found very appealing. It lost a star for the tiny black and white photos, the occasional confusing sentence, and the over-long stretch of pre-Biosphere stuff, but I'd definitely recommend it if you have any interest in the subject. It's such a unique story!

Next up, I'm planning to watch the talk that Poynter did with her husband (and fellow biospherian) Taber MacCallum for One Young World, which I found on YouTube. It'll be nice to actually hear some of these anecdotes and findings from their own lips, and maybe see some extra photos and footage from inside as well!


↑ The miniature ocean (with coral reef and beach!) in Biosphere 2

This book also counts for:
- PopSugar challenge, prompt 40 (your favorite prompt from the 2015, 2016, or 2017 POPSUGAR Reading Challenges - 2015 challenge, prompt 14, a non-fiction book)

I don't think I'll be picking that one up but I'm glad you enjoyed it. :)

>41 MickyFine: Definitely one of my more niche reads, perhaps. :P

I've picked up something quick 'n' easy today - A Voice in the Distance by Tabitha Suzuma, the sequel to A Note of Madness, both YA-slash-New Adult novels about a young pianist at the Royal College of Music and his battle with bipolar disorder. I'm all headachy and tired BUT I also have an entire Sunday free, so... yaaaaaay! My grandmother arrived bearing a sausage roll, so lunch is sorted, I have an easy dinner planned, and other than that it's reading, coffee and snacks all the way! :D

Happy Sunday, Ellie. It looks like I missed the opening of your New Thread. Belated Congrats! Hope life is treating you grand.

Good review of The Human Experiment. Sounds like a good one.

>43 msf59: Hey Mark! Come on in - at least I've had time to spruce the place up a bit, install a few reviews, that kind of thing, before you came to visit. :D

And yes, it was! The Terranauts completely captured my imagination last year; I have such fond memories of sitting at my kitchen table every night, eating giant bowls of cornflakes, sinking into the warm fuzzy feeling of my evening meds, cranking the heater up to keep my feet from freezing, and just devouring the pages. A fair bit of this book felt like I was reading about a familiar setting and familiar people, like I could already picture everything pretty accurately - Boyle obviously did his research - so it was nice to kind of round out the 'real picture' and get an actual biospherian's take on how they kept themselves informed, entertained and ALIVE, and what it was like to live and work in such an intense environment, physically and psychologically. This stuff's like my catnip, seriously - everyone in my house is sick of me raving about it! :P

>39 elliepotten: Oooh - good to know this one is good. I need to reread In Cold Blood.

Hmmm . . . The Human Experiment sounds interesting.

Wheeeeee, so, today I went on a 'TREAT YO SELF' jaunt into town to celebrate there being no more interlopers in my house in the imminent future, and even though it was sleeting and I got 'chugged' by an (admittedly hot) guy pushing direct debit donations to an animal charity, it was still fun. The Chesterfield observation wheel was up, looking very impressive towering over the town, and it's been months and months and MONTHS since I last did a little tour of the charity shops - I had a lovely time!


↑ I'm totally going on it if I'm in town one nice sunny day!

I didn't buy stuff in every shop, but British Heart Foundation (the first and most expensive) yielded Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (didn't really like Decline and Fall but I'm giving him another go) and a near-perfect unread copy of How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran, £2 each. I've actually already read that one, but I gave my copy away and then kinda regretted it, so... yay!

The RSPCA shop had a copy of the Jaws anniversary edition DVD, which I've SHAMEFULLY never seen despite reading the first two novels years ago. £1, get iiiiiin!

The Bluebell Wood Children's Hospice shop had a BOGOF sale on DVDs so I got Sydney White (a Snow White retelling from Amanda Bynes' teen movie heyday, fancied rewatching it sometime soon) and a really beat up copy of Mamma Mia which I'm not sure will even play to be honest, and my sister has a copy already, but there was nothing else I wanted so the lady made me take it anyway! 99p for the two together. I also picked up a battered copy of The Fault in Our Stars by John Green for another miniscule 99p. I've owned it before and gave it away, unread, but I keep drifting back and thinking I ought to at least try one of his books, so here we are.

CEX, the entertainment exchange, which I can't BELIEVE I only discovered last year, had Midnight Special for £1.50 (want to see) and Pretty Woman for £1 (haven't seen in about 15 years).

Aaaand finally, Oxfam Books had maybe my favourite find of the day: an absolutely pristine, untouched copy of Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Younge, a non-fiction book about gun-related deaths of minors in the US, which I've had on my wishlist since before the hardcover came out. £1.99!

So that's five DVDs and four books for £11.47. A morning well spent - lots of walking round, and going to outlying bits of town when I'm normally too anxious to venture that far, and speaking to actual other humans - and not too much of a dent in my bank balance either!

And THEN we hit the newly-opened Patisserie Valerie to buy special 'it's been a long few weeks and Valentine's Day sucks and well done Ellie for going outside' cake. Mum brought home a piece of the caramel, honeycomb and chocolate cake, and I honestly had to leave her alone with it after lunch because I was starting to feel uncomfortably like a third wheel. I went for the Chocolate and Strawberry Moment, a whopping slab of chocolate layer cake with strawberry cream and fresh berries. I shall eat it tomorrow, as a Valentine's Day gift to myself. Maybe I'll watch Jaws at the same time, really get that romantic spirit going... :D



And theeeeeen when I got home I ordered a copy of Me Before You, which I looked for in every shop but didn't find, and I really want to read it soon so I can watch the movie on Netflix. :)

And now I need a shower, and coffee, and then I'm going to sit my butt down and read as much of the rest of A Voice in the Distance as I can cram in, and maybe watch some readathon BookTube videos to round out the afternoon. *sighs happily* Sounds perfect. :D

That sounds like just about a perfect day, Ellie! And that cake.... *drool*

>46 elliepotten: Sounds like a wonderful day! I never have that much luck finding books at thrift shops. And that cake looks amazing.

>47 katiekrug: >48 foggidawn: It got even MORE perfect when my lovely mum revealed that while I'd been raiding the charity bookshelves, SHE'D been raiding the M&S food hall and had snagged our favourite smoked salmon and cream cheese deli filler and a pack of super-squidgy sub rolls. Soooooo now dinner's sorted as well! Maybe I'll have half the cake afterwards, it's definitely big enough to split between two evenings. Ooooooh! *hops up and down like a maniac* *instantly regrets it as her overwalked old lady hip seizes up again* :D

Sounds like a fabulous day topped off with some excellent nibbles. So happy for you!

What a great day!

>50 MickyFine: That is EXACTLY how I felt! *hugs Patisserie Valerie box and squees quietly*

>51 norabelle414: I haven't had such a book shopping-y day in a while, it's true. And tomorrow, that cake's going IN MY FACE and it will be glorious. I should go outside my bedroom more often! *snorts* Yeah, that's not going to happen. :D

Strawberry cheesecake "lasagna"...regular cheesecake on the crust, another thinner crust layer, fresh-strawberry cheesecake on that, then sour-cream-enriched whipped cream with naked fresh strawberries on top.

You're welcome, sweetiedarling.

>53 richardderus: For me?! Awwwww, thank you so much! And Happy Pal-entine's Day to YOU, old friend! (I'd say Happy Galentine's Day, a la Leslie Knope, but... well, that didn't really seem to fit. It's the beard!)

I spiralled into the hormonal headache from hell for a while this afternoon, BUT before that Mum and I hit Tesco and treated ourselves to beautiful little bunches of crimson roses (muscling the last-minute panicked dude-shoppers aside to find the nicest ones, obviously), and I bought a bar of my favourite Cadbury Marvellous Creations jelly and popping candy chocolate as well. My stepdad doesn't really do romance, and my fictional boyfriends can't, so sometimes us ladies just gotta take matters into our own hands!



And then I came home, consumed my never-fail mega-headache remedy combo - strong painkillers, caffeine (a giant cup of coffee), something sweet (that amazing strawberry and chocolate cake) and something salty (crisps), the only thing missing was the banana for potassium - read a little bit from each of my two main books-on-the-go, watched some of BooksandLala's old readathon vlogs, cuddled Domino, and now I think I'm going to make MORE coffee and see if I can finish A Voice in the Distance, now the headache's subsided a bit!

Happy Galentine's/Pal-entine's/Valentine's Day all! :)

Movie: Bad Moms (2016) starring Mila Kunis and Kathryn Hahn

I stuck this on the other night, just because it was on Prime and I fancied watching something girlie and a bit mindless for a change, and actually, I rather enjoyed it! I mean, it wasn't the best movie ever, and the trailer had kinda put me off - it looked a bit slapstick-y and silly for me (in the Bridesmaids vein, which I HATED) - but as it turned out, the dafter bits were nicely countered and complimented by a lot of other types of humour. There was the gorgeous Mila Kunis playin' it straight, Kristen Bell playin' it innocent, Kathryn Hahn playin' it downright filthy, and the 'alpha moms' at the school (led by Christina Applegate) playin' it deliciously satirical. Even the bit parts were pretty good, like the long-suffering football coach, and the main character's hipster boss.

There were a couple of scenes that made me laugh so hard I cried (if you've seen it - when they're getting ready for a night out, the 'trying to find something to wear' scene followed by the 'Kristen Bell and her hoodie' *cough* 'instructional' scene). Then at the end, I suddenly and unexpectedly found myself actually crying, as in a rather lovely twist, the main actors and their mothers were given spotlights during the end credits, chatting about their own 'bad mom' moments, funny childhood anecdotes, and the love and respect they have for each other today. SUCH a wonderful end to the movie, seeing all these strong ladies side-by-side, sharing their stories. I might even be tempted to watch Bad Moms Christmas when December rolls around!

>55 elliepotten: - I was dragged to that one in the theater by a group of my friends who are all mothers, and I was like, UGH. But I ended up really enjoying it, too :)

>56 katiekrug: Yeah, I thought maybe you'd have to be a mum to get it - but nope, not that kind of movie. I love it when I take a chance on something on Prime/telly/Netflix and it turns out to be really fun. :D

Thanks, Ellie, and happy Pal-entine's to you too.

Heh. Love that neologism.

Great to see you having fun in here!! Love all the pictures in this thread and the previous one. Happy Valentine's/Palentines/Galentine's Day!!

So Millie (tiny ginger cat) has decided to celebrate Valentine's Day by vomiting in her cat bed, vomiting a bit more all over her cat tree, then scratching me to bits. To be fair, it wasn't exactly her fault - my famously clumsy sister knocked over my mum's entire earring tree, right down the back of the radiator for that really resonant metallic clatter, and poor lil Millie was like "AAAAAARGH!" and tried to execute a kind of Free Willy-esque escape leap over where I was sitting on the floor, but she didn't QUITE go high enough, so at the apex of her flight I suddenly got a faceful of cat and scratches to my forehead and just above my eye, then as she hurtled past my shoulder on the descent she also managed to pepper puncture marks down the top of my arm, all of which began to bleed immediately.

So Mum's there like MY EARRINGS! and I'm there like MY FACE! and my sister's there like: -



- and that's the story of how they 'got ready to go to yoga' (with my sister calling "Bye Scarface!" as they left), how Millie exhausted herself for the evening, and why I'm sitting upstairs very quietly, stinking of Germoline and sipping hot tea, alternating between chortling to myself, taking deep breaths, and checking to make sure nothing's looking infected. :D



I'm gonna go make a sub roll, watch BookTube and read now. *wanders off slightly dazedly*

>60 elliepotten: That is an epic tale, Ellie.

>39 elliepotten: you did what I fully intended to do after I read In Cold Blood. Durn it- I *still* haven't seen those films!!

>60 elliepotten: yes, he is *nice*.

>61 MickyFine: As epic as this stay-at-home cat lady is likely to achieve anytime soon, anyway. :P

>62 LovingLit: To be fair, it took me a while. According to my catalogue I read ICB in 2012! Feels like about two years ago, how time flies... And he does look particularly good in that GIF, I must admit. ;)

So I told Mum that I'd posted about the Millie Incident, and after she finished laughing so hard she nearly choked on a Rich Tea crumb, she got really thoughtful and said, "Did you tell them that Hannah graciously informed you that if Millie had slipped a bit and taken your eye out, she'd have changed her wedding to a pirate themed one to match your new eye patch?"

My family, ladies and gentlemen. :D

>64 elliepotten: Does that mean it's now gangster-themed, since you're "Scarface"?

Your family sounds awesome.

>65 London_StJ: Now THERE'S an idea. *screenshots and sends to sister*

>66 katiekrug: Awesome, batsh1t crazy, tomayto, tomahto... Seriously though, the ladies of this family are a force to be reckoned with. :P

>64 elliepotten: Bahahaha! Oh such family love. :)

5. A Voice in the Distance, by Tabitha Suzuma (3.5*) - fiction

Hoo, boy, this was an emotive one. It's the second and last book in the Flynn Laukonen series, the sequel to A Note of Madness (my review of that one's on the book's page if anyone's interested). Flynn is a student at the Royal College of Music in London, a near-genius-level pianist and composer - and he is also bipolar. A Note of Madness has him living with his best friend Harry, veering between manic productivity and crippling depression until he is finally diagnosed with bipolar disorder and gets the help he needs.

This book picks up a couple of years later. Flynn now lives with his long-term girlfriend (and even longer-term friend) Jennah, and his carefully monitored daily dose of lithium seems to be keeping his life stable and happy... until it stops working. The cycle of mania and depression begins again, both reaching terrifying new proportions as Flynn veers wildly up and down, taking everyone around him along for the ride. It touches on several massive elements of the 'mental health experience', including suicidal intent, hospitalisation, blindness to one's own mental state, and medication non-compliance (a huge issue amongst people with manic depression who want to hold on to their hypomanic motivation, inspiration and general good feeling). And good grief, it was hard to read. For several reasons.

A bit of background here - I was previously diagnosed with bipolar II disorder. Now, around seventeen years down the line, as an adult, that diagnosis has been reconsidered and replaced with Asperger's, severe recurring depression and anxiety. My 'happy' hypomania, as it turns out, was actually just a propensity for unusual exuberance during good times, and extreme motivation and joy when it comes to the things I love and am most interested in. My 'mixed' hypomanic episodes can be attributed to meltdowns and anxiety, culminating in shame spirals and subsequent crashes into dangerous levels of depression. In short, my symptoms and signs were - and in many ways continue to be - remarkably similar to a bipolar patient; we were just looking at them through the wrong lens.

Because of that, reading this book felt very personal, often painful and even deeply shameful. I felt horribly vulnerable as I turned the pages. Unlike the first book, this one is written from two perspectives - Flynn's and Jennah's - which meant I was having to read both sides of some very familiar situations. Suzuma writes depression so perfectly that I couldn't help reliving some of my own experiences through Flynn's. When it came to Jennah's thought processes, I was seeing how things out of my control impacted the people around me in horrible and hurtful ways. When Jennah's mother found out about Flynn's illness and started asking difficult questions (can Jennah cope, is he dangerous, what sacrifices will be involved in being with a mentally ill person), I couldn't help reflecting that back against my life now - because people say the exact same things about autistic people. When her mother asked "Is it worth it?" all I could think was, "Someday someone's mum/dad/friend might be asking them the exact same thing about me." And that made me so very sad.

Sooooo, this isn't really a review in the end, more an explosion of personal vulnerability and neuroses and thoughts about what is, was and might one day be. The book was really well done, once again - particularly the mental health elements - but where A Note of Madness had hope (boy in bad situation, gets help), this one veered the other way (boy in good situation, devolves into an absolute living nightmare, everything falls apart), and that felt so draining and emotional to read that I couldn't give it the maybe four stars it objectively deserves. It lost a star anyway for occasional 'was that the right word?' moments (eg. a 'slither' of something, rather than 'sliver'), calling St Pancras station 'St Pancreas', and for the absolutely impenetrable music jargon early on that lost me completely. Needless to say, it just veered a little too close to the bone for me, so I definitely wouldn't ever choose to read it again!

Quotes:

- "I hate myself more than they could ever hate me. I am so, so sick of it. This is the overriding feeling. They say depression is an incredible sadness, an unbearable mental pain. No, it doesn't have to be so dramatic. Sometimes it is nothing more than feeling tired. Tired of life." - Flynn

- "The words 'mental illness' suddenly take on a whole new dimension. What kind of illness makes life want to bring about its end? It goes against every natural instinct!" - Jennah

- "... when you feel that bad, that low, you stop caring. About everything and everyone. You can only think of yourself... The pain is so... big, it takes up all the space in your body, in your mind, and there isn't room for anything else. All you can think about is your own suffering, and how to stop it - you'd do anything to stop it. Anything. I really mean anything... Often it's your body too, and every part of you hurts. But you don't really care about your body, it's your mind. Every thought hurts like hell. Everything you see is awful, twisted, pointless. And the worst - the worst of it is yourself. You realize you are the most ghastly person in the world, the most hideous, inside and out. And you just want to escape, you just want to get rid of yourself, of your suffering, of the pain inside your head... A-and death is the only option left because you've been through this time and time again, thought and thought about trying to change yourself, the way you think, the way you behave, the way you live. Yet it always comes back to this - the fact that you just d-don't want to be alive-" - Flynn, trying to explain his depression to Jennah

This book also counts for:
- ROOT challenge (on shelf since August 2011)
- PopSugar challenge, prompt 16 (a book about mental health)

Movie: My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) starring Nia Vardalos and John Corbett

Awwww. As far as '00s romcoms go, this HAS to be up there with Bridget Jones's Diary as one of the most iconic, quotable and downright hilarious of the bunch. From "Inside the lump... was my twin" and "There's a hole in this cake!" to "WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE DON'T EAT NO MEAT?!" and "Why you want to leaaaaaave meeeee?"*, My Big Fat Greek Wedding is filled with wonderful moments, hilarious characters and pitch-perfect comedy. I also love that it's so good when it comes to strong women leading the way: I love Ma Portokalos's wise lady advice and her expert manipulation of her less enlightened husband, I love the sweet moments between generations of women, the misplaced confidence of Aunt Voula (surely one of the best characters, hands down), the way Toula's courage inspires her brother to follow his dreams too, and the madcap camaraderie of the thousand tulle-clad bridesmaids. I love John Corbett standing around like a bewildered tall glass of water, and of COURSE, I have learned the most important life lesson of them all: PUT SOME WINDEX ON IT. Love it.

Has anyone seen MBFGW 2? Worth a watch? Let me know!

* No lie, I use this line every time the cat tries to leaaaaaave meeeeeee. EVERY TIME.

Movie: Sydney White (2007) starring Amanda Bynes and Sara Paxton

From iconic '00s romcoms, to one that no one ever seems to have heard of! Back when Amanda Bynes was a teen movie sweetheart, she made this adorable film: a modern retelling of Snow White set on a college campus. Expelled from her late mom's old sorority house by the evil queen bee, tomboyish Sydney is taken in by the motley bunch of seven dorks who live in a decrepit old house nearby. They are won over by her heart of gold (and vice versa), and together they set about reclaiming their college from the Greek elite - with a little help from Prince Charming of course... It's really fun, really feel-good, and I love all the smart little nods to the original story. The seven dwarves are all represented in a variety of clever ways (though in a cheeky twist, I believe Happy is entirely replaced by Spanky, the randiest of the bunch!), and there are riffs on everything from the poisoned apple to the magic mirror. This was my second time watching it, and I'm SO GLAD I spotted it at one of the charity shops I went to on Tuesday! I think it'll be one of my go-to cheer-me-up films from now on. :)


↑ Our modern-day Grumpy has his own rant blog, obviously

Oh my goodness, I love My Big Fat Greek Wedding!!!! *Ahem* I haven't seen the second, though, so interested in seeing what folks chime in about the sequel.

How is your scratch? Your sister's comment about the pirate theme actually made me think "Huh, sounds like my family..." except the helpful comment would most likely come from one of my brothers.

>72 bell7: I heaaaaard it was just as good as the original, but I'm a bit wary about it... I might try and pick it up second-hand from somewhere, just give it a go!

The scratches are okay, I think? All, like, twelve of them, haha. One or two are still a bit sore - I'll keep re-Germoline-ing those ones for the time being. I'm more wary with cat bites, and Millie's an indoor cat anyway, but better safe than sorry, right?! :)

Sooooo, what's next on the bill? I read another piece from A Passion for Books today, which I'm not gonna lie, is just not inspiring me very much. Too many obscure essays and things that are just too niche and elitist for most modern readers to really relate to. Or maybe it's just me, who knows? I still haven't really dipped back into Bohemian Manifesto either, because after a charming and whimsical start THAT has turned into a bit of a one-trick pony, veering from 'fun and insightful' rapidly towards 'cliched and ridiculous'. I haven't given up on either though, so maybe they'll redeem themselves yet.

After finishing A Voice in the Distance yesterday, I took a long hard look at the little TBR pile I created with love and care literally two days ago - and picked up something else entirely. A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White, to be precise, which jumped out at me from my PopSugar ideas list and is another of the longest-standing books on my shelf. I'm not complaining - my TBR shelves are arranged (roughly) chronologically by when I acquired each book, and it's a long time since I've gravitated towards the earliest ones quite as often as I have recently!

In screen terms, talking on Luxx's thread about my favourite Psycho T-shirt/cushion/bracelet reminded me that I got Bates Motel season 4 for Christmas (and that the final season's out to buy as well!). I'm starting way back at the beginning with season 1 over dinner tonight, and oooooooooh! I'd forgotten how utterly perfect it is. I got goosebumps almost immediately. The incredible music and exquisite cinematography! The first shot of the iconic house, with Norma posing like a fifties pinup and Norman staring up at his new home! The moment the Bates Motel sign is switched on for the first time! The creepy Oedipal relationship between mother and son! The first time Norman glances up at the lit windows of the old house, watching his mother moving around in her bedroom! Just like in the original movie... Gaaaah, it's amazing. I wonder if I'll get all the way through all five seasons without hitting overload, like I normally do with longer-running series? Sometimes I don't even make it to the end of a season, I just... stall.



*sighs* I'll try to do better this time. *slides unfinished Girls season 4 DVD quietly under a pile of papers* *Also Community Season 3* *And Criminal Minds Season 1* *And 2 Broke Girls Season 4* *And Frasier Season...8?* Oh shut up.

Oh, and possibly over the weekend I might either rewatch The Day After Tomorrow, which is on Film4, or maaaaybe try My Cousin Rachel, which is currently on discounted rental on Prime. I found one of the new chicken, pepper and onion Chicago Town deli pizzas at Tesco this week, so I thought pizza and a movie would be fun. I dunno. I might end up doing pizza and reading, or pizza and a Bates Motel binge, who knows?! Or rewatch Psycho instead, go back to the original before I get too far through the prequel, maybe catch even more of the many references this time? I pretty much have the weekend free though, as far as I know, so I'll be making the most of it one way or the other! :)

>70 elliepotten: The sequel is pretty good. I definitely laughed a lot when I saw it in theatres but I wouldn't say it's just as good as the original. Temper your expectations and you'll probably enjoy it.

When I was in the early dating stages with The Fiancé, my best friend (who also set us up) was predicting that we'd be married within a year to a year and a half. One time while discussing him with her she hit me with:



Enjoy your pizza and whatever viewing/reading option you go with! :)

>75 MickyFine: Ahhhh, Gus. So infuriating yet so adorable. According to the CEX website my local branch has a copy for a measly £1.50, I'll go see if I can find it next time I'm in town! :)

Well, I ended up DNF-ing A Boy's Own Story after about 60 pages. An interesting style - lots of detail and little musings on things - and I get that it's a seminal work of early gay fiction and all, but jeeeeez I was just getting so bored. Nothing was really happening, and I was starting to get REALLY creeped out by White's apparent insistence that all men (should) want to sleep with their fathers, and that he himself was desperate to seduce and love his own. This isn't just in character, by the way - it's in his author introduction as well. There's a lot to enjoy and appreciate here, for the right reader, but it just wasn't for me. I certainly couldn't imagine plowing through another 150 pages of it.

Oh well. Thank you, Nancy Pearl - MOVING ON!

Oooh, and P.S. I'm back on Instagram! For the time being, anyway, see how I like it. If any of you are floating around on there and fancy dropping by, I'm @bookaddictedblonde. :D

Ellie, go follow @Bookriot on Instagram and enter their $500-of-Penguins contest!

>22 elliepotten: I very much liked Movie: Capote (2005) starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Clifton Collins Jr.. Philip Seymour Hoffman was stellar in his depiction of Capote.

Happy Weekend to you Ellie!

>77 elliepotten: Mmm, I don't see that one as one for me, either.

Lovely to see you more active again this year, Ellie. xx

>78 richardderus: Is it only open to the US and Canada though? They usually are... *potters off to find out*

>79 Whisper1: I definitely liked both movies - I just liked Infamous rather more. I felt like I was watching Truman Capote on screen instead of an actor doing a good impression, and it had a warmer and more human vibe to it that I liked. I found Clifton Collins Jr's Perry Smith to be the more convincing of the two though. I tried Googling the two movies together after I was done, see what other people thought - and back when they came out, there were whole forums dedicated to arguing about which was best! Kinda fun to read, even if I'm ten years late! :)

>80 PaulCranswick: I started Lolita instead. An entirely different kettle of fish, obviously, but it feels like Nabokov does what White WANTED to do in his book, which is to describe little things so beautifully and effortlessly that it makes you stop and go 'wow, that image is perfect'. White just pushed it a bit too far, it felt forced and some of the imagery just made me scratch my head instead of nodding in recognition!

OH! And I got my Instagram handle wrong in my last message (it's edited now)! Used to be that my blog was Book Addicted Blonde, but the closest I could get on social media was BlondeBookGirl - so that was my handle everywhere else. That is NOT the case now - so I'm @bookaddictedblonde on Instagram! My bad... >:/

>70 elliepotten: My Big Fat Greek Wedding is one of my favorite rom-coms ever! I did go see the second one; it was good. Not as good as the first one, but definitely worth watching if you can find a copy for £1.50!

>81 elliepotten: It's weird what's already been taken. I've run into a few places where "hibernatorslibrary" is taken. Seriously? hibernatorslibrary??!

>83 The_Hibernator: Right?! It was even worse when I was renaming my old blog a few years ago. I think I made a list of about 30 potential names and only about four were still 'unclaimed', as it were. At least with a social media handle you can just contract it or add a couple of numbers to the end and you're okay. :D

Y'know, it's really easy to just 'forget' I have Asperger's when it's just me, my room, my cats, my books, my home, my routine, my bed, my chair...

Then we have a day like Tuesday, when we had a bunch of the house's windows replaced, and suddenly I'm like... "Oh yeah. This is it." The van pulled in before 8am and I thought they'd be done in the morning, but they were still only about halfway through at gone 2pm. There were sheets everywhere and the mess was growing. People were drilling and banging and stomping and talking, and there were two radios on, one on either side of me, and the cats were scratching to get out of their temporary prison, and everything smelled of sweaty unwashed workmen, and I couldn't get into my own room - but two strangers were in there, violating my safe space - so I was shut in the office, growing progressively more panicky.

I was drumming my fingers on the desk and spinning tight half-circles on the twirly chair, but it didn't help enough. I donned my pressure vest and inflated it as far as it would go. I clamped my hands over my ears and screwed my eyes tight shut, tears smarting behind my eyelids, but every bang and judder underfoot made my insides hum and my skin crawl. I put my headphones on and turned my music up, but that only made me retreat inside my own head, which was already black with anxiety. I took deep breaths and moved restlessly and shook out my nervous energy and screamed internally and tried to distract myself any way I could think of. I hadn't eaten all day, and I desperately wanted a shower. I wanted to go back into my room and vacuum and air it out and make it feel like my safe haven again. I was so tired. Surely it would be over soon.

By the time Mum called the all-clear I was slumped across the desk, utterly exhausted, watching a very long ASMR-type video of a guy playing with a Spirograph set. Round and round and round, different pens, different colours and shapes, scratching and swooping. Coming 'back to myself' was like swimming up from the depths of the ocean, blinking and gasping as I broke the surface. Mum gave me a big hug and all but helped me back to my room.

And right there, after veering towards a meltdown, now careening towards a shutdown, on the edge of falling apart, that's when I look at my diagnosis and wonder how we ever missed it before. Maybe I just see things more clearly now and allow myself to be autistic where before I'd just be like, "THIS ISN'T NORMAL PUSH IT DOWN AND GET IT TOGETHER." I don't know. I'm still learning.

***

Cheers for reading, sorry this is a rather odd post, equally sorry if it bores or bothers anyone, I just don't have anywhere else to share, explain, vent and muse these days, and my LT thread sort of feels like home in that regard. I wrote a fair bit of this on Tuesday itself, and then never posted it, and I didn't know if I should - but, ah sod it. It'll be interesting for me to look back on later, maybe. :D

In less... anxious... news, my rewatch of the first season of Bates Motel continues to be as mind-blowing and immersive as ever, even though I've seen it before. I'm having fun taking creepy screencaps to use as laptop backgrounds and screensavers. Also raving about it to Mum and seeing her glance surreptitiously at the knife block every time I say the word 'Mother'. :D

I spent about three days this week 'recovering' from Tuesday - my muscles had tensed and quivered so much, the next morning I felt like I'd had flu, everything hurt - while simultaneously trying to get through the other errands, visits and excursions of the week, all with a raging headache. I did manage to go into town though, with my mum and my equally nervous grandfather (he likes it when we take on these outings together), and had cappuccino in a little cafe, and took photos of the observation wheel in the market square (one of which made it onto Instagram), and bought a handful of second-hand books and a hunk of chocolate-toffee-honeycomb cake (ditto).

Let's see, what did I get? The Green Mile, an old paperback copy. A collection of Daphne du Maurier's short stories, and The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst. Steve Jobs on DVD. A nearly new copy of The Da Vinci Code for 50p, just because I've read it twice, loved it both times but don't have a copy. The Penguin Lessons by Tom Michell, from a charity shop I didn't even know existed, for a measly £1. Oh, and I got James Herbert's The Fog for free from a market stall, because I was already buying two books there and I think the dude was flirting a bit. :)

Today I've finally woken up headache-free and returned to Lolita, which, though a slow read, is so gorgeously and dryly written that I think it might end up on my favourites list at the end of the year. As soon as I'm done - or almost done - reading I can finally watch the Jeremy Irons movie as well. I don't even want to think about how long that's been sitting on my DVD shelf unwatched. Almost as long as the book has been unread, I suspect. I might try and visit a few of the many threads that have been sitting neglected all week long, and then tonight I plan to watch something and eat chicken goujons dunked in ketchup and a chunk of popping candy chocolate. Start afresh for a new, less unpleasant week.

Oh, and next weekend I might do a readathon! #ReadathonbyZoe, to be precise. Zoe doesn't really read the same stuff as me, but her BookTube channel's all peppy and colourful, and her readathon videos are great - her snarky sister and lovely dad usually make an appearance, and she usually goes book shopping somewhere in the middle of the day - so I thought I might take part via Instagram? It runs midnight to midnight wherever you are, right through Saturday, so I might try to get up early-ish on Saturday morning and then just read until the end? Maybe? I'm such a snail-like (and tired) reader these days, it might not work - but I'm armed with pizza, and it'll be fun to try at least!

>85 elliepotten: Oh, dang, Ellie, what a crap experience for you! I'm so sorry that there were there so long and that it took such a toll. Gentle hugs for you.

>87 scaifea: *sighs* I do not cope well with people invading this house... On the plus side, I felt entirely like I deserved yet more Patisserie Valerie cake when we made it into town, and it was delicious. And at least we don't have any more home renovation-y type work scheduled for anytime in the near future! Cheers m'dears. :)

OF COURSE you deserve more cake!

That sounds like a terrible experience; I’m sorry you had such a bad time of it. At least there is cake, right?

>90 foggidawn: And yet, pretty much normal for everyone else in the house. Still takes me by surprise sometimes, y'know?

And yes. There was cake. :D

Hooray for cake! And good job making it through the invasion.

>85 elliepotten: That sounds really tough Ellie - definitely deserving of cake!

>92 Crazymamie: I will always - ALWAYS - find a way to work some variety of junk food into the aftermath of a traumatic day. It's what makes it worthwhile. :D

>93 souloftherose: I should probably buy another piece next time we go to town though, right? Just in case IT WASN'T ENOUGH? ;)

You are so inspirational- you see, I watched Infamous, and then within the week, Capote! Thanks for giving me the push :)
I was surprised that the films were so similar, I had the impression that they would be completely different stories. I know they played out slightly differently, but the first quarter was play by play the same! I think I agree with you on which version I prefer, too.

>85 elliepotten: Hugs for you, Ellie. So glad that having a diagnosis helps you understand why you have the reactions you do.

>86 elliepotten: Sounds like a decent outing. Congrats on the respectable haul. ;)

>91 elliepotten: Yum!

Sorry about the house window replacement day. Just blergh!

Hang in there, Ellie! The window replacement ordeal sounds truly dreadful, and I'd say a piece of that delicious cake was the bare minimum reward you deserve for getting through it!

>95 LovingLit: Woohoo! I feel bizarrely victorious and also a bit flattered. Nobody in this house ever listens to my recommendations, haha. :)

>96 MickyFine: It does make a difference! I like the self-awareness route, helps me pinpoint what's going on, rationalise it and do something about it if I possibly can. (And all the cake was amazing. Sadly I've missed my chance at another one of the chocolate strawberry slices, it was a Feb special and March's doesn't look like my thing really - but maybe April's will be some delicious concoction again?)

>97 SuziQoregon: 'Blergh' is the succinct post I SHOULD probably have gone for, haha. Less... rambly.

>98 rosalita: It wasn't fun - but at least it's long over now. I'm always willing to reward myself with MORE cake though, haha. Took a shower today? CAKE! Read a good little chunk of my book? CAKE! Went outside my front door? CAKE! :D

We're thoroughly snowed in at the moment, so I've been concentrating on trying to get to a point where I might be able to finish Lolita tomorrow so that I can watch the Jeremy Irons movie tomorrow night, go to bed early, then get up in the wee hours of Saturday refreshed and ready to start something new for 'ReadathonByZoe', which is happening midnight to midnight. I have pains au chocolat and fruit for breakfast, chicken and pepper pizza for main meals, chocolate and mini biscuits for snacks, I am READY - I just really don't want to be reading a very lyrical classic for it, haha. Back to my book. It's 9pm, I've got less than 24 hours to finish it if my plan works out and I have nearly 100 pages still to go!

...finish Lolita tomorrow so that I can watch the Jeremy Irons movie tomorrow night
Not looking.
I don't need any more prompts to see the film adaptions of classic works of literature. Don't you know I have a thesis to write!!? ;) *must resist*

Hope your efforts to finish Lolita went as planned and that you can read all the fluffy things for your readathon. :)

{{{Ellie}}}

We all learn and most of us are too silly to talk about it. Kudos.

>100 LovingLit: I watched it. I'll review it later, just as a head's up in case you want to don your protective earmuffs and close your eyes. :D

>101 MickyFine: I was thirty pages from the end by close of Friday, ugh. Totally gave in and watched the film, though, I'll finish the novel tomorrow maybe. I'm reading Everything, Everything for the readathon right now and was startled to find myself 100 pages through already. Took me a week and a half to get that far in Lolita, lol. Then I can watch THAT movie tomorrow, I already rented it on a deal on Amazon so I need to watch it before it expires! ALL THE ADAPTATIONS! :D

>102 richardderus: Awwwww, thanks for the hug Richard, I needed that. I'm VERY good at talking about it - too good, sometimes, Mum thinks I'm too honest with people and give away too much. But y'know what, it's finding OTHER people talking frankly about stuff in various places that's helped me most, given me those all-valuable hints and tips and little comforts and me-too moments, so... stuff it. IMMA TALK. :D

Sooooo, yeah. Readathonning! I'm Insta-Story-ing most of it (food, predominantly), I'm about 110pp into my first book, and the pizza's going in the oven as soon as I finish this mug of coffee. We're still snowed in - we cleared aaaaaall the snow yesterday, then it unexpectedly came down again overnight, so now all we have to show for it is a couple of gritted bare patches of ground and a few post-shovelling aches and pains. I think I trapped a nerve in my thumb jabbing at the ice at some point, I've lost most of my grip strength in my left hand, ugh. Every year without fail... ANYWAY. Pretty much the perfect day for reading and eating! ONWARD BOOKISH SOLDIERS!

Sounds like your readathon started off well. I look forward to the full report when you've recovered from the sleep deprivation. ;)

>104 MickyFine: LOL sleep deprivation. Nope, I slept as normal this time! The readathon went midnight to midnight wherever we were, so I got up around 6am, read a book, watched the movie of the book, then went to bed again before 12. I have NO stamina for this stuff any more, it seems... :D

Ellie--Delurking to say Hi! Sorry you had a rough time with the worker dudes in your space. Glad you have the readathon! I do love your posts. Even when you rant. ; )

>105 elliepotten: I've done the occasional readathon but I definitely allow myself time to sleep. Pulling an all-nighter is just not fun for me. Ever.

Welcome to the responsible adulthood group who are unwilling to give up precious sleep. ;)

6. Everything, Everything, by Nicola Yoon (4*) - fiction

Well, this was a nice surprise. It's a YA novel about Madeline, an eighteen year-old girl with SCID: she is essentially allergic to almost everything. She lives in a sterile, lonely home where air filters and disinfectant rule, and the only people allowed inside are her mother and Carla, her nurse. She's content enough with her books, her mum-and-daughter evenings and her internet life... until a new family moves in next door and she strikes up a friendship with the teenage son, Olly. Suddenly the glass between her and the world starts to feel more like a prison than a haven - she begins to discern the difference between existing and living - and everything starts to change, twist and fall apart.

I really enjoyed this. I flew through it during the readathon, helped enormously by the collage-y feel of the novel. There are 'normal' prose sections, yes, but there are also one-line book reviews, drawings, emails, IM conversations, lists and other little bits and pieces, which slotted in nicely and made it a breeze to read. I guessed the surprise change of direction of the novel literally from the very first clues near the beginning - the mention of the accident, and that her mother was her only doctor; I immediately guessed that all this was about her grief and need to keep Maddy safe - which probably lessened the impact of that a bit, but at the same time, because I'd spotted it so early, it was fun to watch it play out (and Yoon still managed to chuck in a red herring or two to make me doubt myself!).

What really got to me, personally, was the similarity between some of Madeline's experiences, thoughts and regrets (being stuck in her house with SCID) and some of my own (being stuck in my house with agoraphobia). Her longing for certain things, her frustrations, her loneliness, the way she tried not to dream or think too hard about what 'could' be because it would only make her miserable - all of that was very familiar. I marked so many pages with little comments and quotes that made me pause for thought, and I didn't expect that to happen! I ended the book smiling and inspired, and I have a feeling I'll be rereading it in the future.

Quotes:

- "You can find the meaning of life in a book."

- "I shift my body again for no reason, pulling my legs into my chest and wrapping my arms around them. Our bodies are having their own conversation separate and apart from us. Is this the difference between friendship and something else? This awareness that I have of him?"

- "Life is a gift. Don't forget to live it."

- "I almost wish I hadn't met him. How am I supposed to go back to my old life, my days stretching out before me with unending and brutal sameness? How am I supposed to go back to being The Girl Who Reads? Not that I begrudge my life in books. All I know about the world I've learned from them. But a description of a tree is not a tree, and a thousand paper kisses will never equal the feel of Olly's lips against mine."

This book also counts for:
- ROOT challenge (on shelf since September 2016)
- PopSugar challenge, prompt 14 (a book an author of a different ethnicity to you - Nicola Yoon is Jamaican American)

>106 Berly: Hi Kim! Yeah, I'm good at ranting, lol. I try not to do it TOO often. :)

>107 MickyFine: Haha, yes, exactly. Plus I have really drowsy-inducing medication now, which doesn't help. It's okay in the morning when I've just slept and I can have coffee with it, but at night, when the bed's there, and I've had dinner, and it's dark outside... Yeah, I pretty much don't read after about 8pm and then I conk out a couple of hours later. :D

>108 elliepotten: I'd managed to go so long without putting that one on The List but you've gone and struck me with a BB. Thanks. :P

>109 elliepotten: Boo for drowsiness. I spent most of January fighting a viral nasal infection thing and spent many evenings just going to sleep super early. Hopefully the side effect will pass.

>110 MickyFine: I've been on it about two years already, haha. It just does the thing, every time, without fail. Quite handy in some ways, it's kind of a sedative even though I'm not taking it for that! Not so great if I actually want to do something that requires mental alertness though...

And sorry about the BB. Also not sorry, obviously. :D

>108 elliepotten: I've been wondering how that book was.... thanks for the review!

Movie: Everything, Everything (2017) starring Amandla Stenberg and Nick Robinson

It was somewhere around 7pm when I finished the book on Saturday, and it was time for dinner and meds, so I decided that rather than starting another novel I'd watch the movie to round out my readathon day! It was the right choice. As adaptations go, this was a very good one. It was an almost word-for-word translation between page and screen at times, and it hit all the right beats at all the right moments - except for maybe the subtleties of that twist I mentioned in my book review, which didn't really come together. Amandla Stenberg was absolutely charming from start to finish, and they had such wonderful chemistry with Nick Robinson, which gave it a genuine warmth that I really liked. Once again, I rounded out the film with a stupid grin on my face, and went to bed feeling very happy and more productive than I thought I'd be that day, haha. I think I'll get myself a DVD copy of this one soon - I got it on a Prime deal on Amazon, as a rental - because I think it'd make a great rainy-day movie. Another lovely surprise!

>112 norabelle414: Better than expected! I thought it might be a standard fluffy 3-3.5* but I liked it way more than that in the end. I've given it 4* for now but I'm leaning towards a 4.5*, even. Partially because of the 'speaking to me on a personal level' thing, I'm sure - but it was a lot of fun to read anyway. Plus you can fly through it, which was great given that I'd been reading Lolita for weeks before that! :)

>114 elliepotten: Flying through a book after reading a dense book is the best feeling.

>113 elliepotten: I've seen trailers for that but I didn't recognize Nick Robinson with his hair long! He's a busy guy these days.

>114 elliepotten: Ugh Lolita *gag*
I'm glad I have read it once so I never have to read it again.

>113 elliepotten: - it's nice when a movie is a good adaptation of the book. Rare, but nice.

>113 elliepotten: Ooo! An adaptation getting praise! *adds to queue*

>115 MickyFine: Isn't it? Hopefully I'll get a second go after Three Men on the Bummel... >:(

>116 norabelle414: Busy and CUTE. And yeah, I don't think I'd read Lolita again, it was hard going at times - but as far as literature goes it was something else.

>117 SuziQoregon: Nothing's topped The Perks of Being a Wallflower yet, for me, though I've had some close calls...

>118 richardderus: Don't get too excited. It's still YA fluff, just really nice, ADORABLE YA fluff. :D

7. Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov (4*) - fiction

"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul... Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita."

Lordy, where do I start?! Maybe with the fact that the 'quality literature' buzz around this novel turned out to be absolutely correct; it's one of the most beautifully written books I've ever read, I think. It was incredibly dense, yes, and occasionally difficult - but it was worth the persistence and the effort of reading it. Likewise, it occasionally slowed almost to a standstill, or veered off into an odd flight of literary allusion that I didn't always understand - but each time it kick-started itself, its flow returned and I was glad I'd pushed through the tough patch. As a study of character, of a broken person breaking someone else in turn, and how the ripples of that breaking spread outwards to the people around them and inwards into their own beings, it was almost flawless. As a study of place, it worked almost as well - all motels, trees, lakes, suburban neighbourhoods, shabby towns, and the relentless rising dust behind an old car. And yet, despite its brilliant execution, I can't say I loved the book. Respected, yes. Enjoyed, yes. Loved, no.

There was more humour in the book than I expected, which was a pleasant surprise - exactly the kind of dark, sardonic and dry humour I find amusing. There was also an almost overwhelming amount of sadness, tragedy and obsession. It was definitely a novel of contrasts: humour and despair, innocence and corruption, honesty and deception, love and hate, old and young, past and future. I'm still not sure what to make of Humbert Humbert (beyond the obvious 'child molester' stamp). He demonstrates such startling self-awareness at times, and such confusion at others. I also still don't know quite where the balance of worldly and innocent was in Lo herself: which encounters (if any) were perhaps precipitated by a young girl in the first flush of sexuality getting in way over her head, which were out-and-out assaults merely framed that way by Humbert's rose-tinted memories, and at what point the prematurely-jaded Lo began to exploit Humbert's pathetic attraction for money and favours. He's an unreliable narrator, sure, but HOW unreliable?

In short, this is one of those rare books that might take months to process and actually work out my feelings about it, about the story and the characters and exactly what happened on that rollercoaster ride of a read. In the meantime, I highly recommend Adrian and Dalton at Stripped Cover Lit's discussion about it. They get a couple of things wrong where they just missed little details along the way - Dolores's fate, for example, which requires returning to the very beginning of the book with fresh eyes - but they also have some interesting insights to share. I really enjoyed their video!

Quotes:

- "I knew I had fallen in love with Lolita forever; but I also knew she would not be forever Lolita."

- "This, to use an American term, in which discovery, retribution, torture, death, eternity appear in the shape of a singularly repulsive nutshell, was it."

- "I have often noticed that we are inclined to endow our friends with the stability of type that literary characters acquire in the reader's mind... Whatever evolution this or that popular character has gone through between the book covers, his fate is fixed in our minds, and, similarly, we expect our friends to follow this or that logical and conventional pattern we have fixed for them. Thus X will never compose the immortal music that would clash with the second-rate symphonies he has accustomed us to. Y will never commit murder. Under no circumstances can Z ever betray us. We have it all arranged in our minds, and the less often we see a particular person the more satisfying it is to check how obediently he conforms to our notion of him every time we hear of him. Any deviation in the fates we have ordained would strike us as not only anomalous but unethical. We would prefer not to have known at all our neighbor, the retired hot-dog stand operator, if it turns out he has just produced the greatest book of poetry his age has ever seen."

This book also counts for:
- ROOT challenge (on shelf since August 2011)
- PopSugar challenge, prompt 9 (a book about a villain or antihero)

>120 elliepotten: Gorgeous review, Nora. You still haven't convinced me to read Lolita but you got pretty close.

>121 MickyFine: Haha, not Nora (ELEANORa?) but thank you. I'll take that as a win! :D

Okay, so I do actually have a bunch of reviews to catch up on - the movie Lolita, season 1 of The Durrells, a lovely short LGBTQ film called Pretty Boy, and AN ACTUAL BOOK, Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome. I'm having a break from classics now and devouring Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (for the second time) with the idea of actually carrying on with the series at last! I looooved the first book when I read it a few years ago, I have no idea why I haven't continued yet. I'm probably one of the only three people on the planet who likes the movie too - mostly for the satisfying 'hell yeah, he's the son of Poseidon!' moments and for Logan Lerman's bed hair and beautiful blue eyes. What can I say. I'm deep like that. :)

>122 elliepotten: Dangit. I don't even know where my brain pulled that one, Ellie. *hides in corner of shame*

>123 elliepotten: There are worse reasons for liking a movie. Friends of mine watched the second movie solely for Nathan Fillion. ;)

The Durrells!!!!!!!!

>125 norabelle414: ^^^what she said!!!!!!!!!

Oh, and speaking of LGBT films from Merrie Olde Englande, go. see. God's Own Country. It is amazing. In the good way.

BTW I'm still processing Lolita 39 years after my first read thereof.

>120 elliepotten: As a study of character, of a broken person breaking someone else in turn, and how the ripples of that breaking spread outwards to the people around them and inwards into their own beings, it was almost flawless
Love this sentence! Loved your review :)

Eta: couldn't thumb it as you haven't posted in to the book page. *hint* post it to the book page so I can thumb it :)

^^ What Megan said.
I hope to get to Lolita later this year.

>124 MickyFine: *drags out of the corner of shame* My dad regularly calls me by old pets' names (and possibly several relatives' and acquaintances' as well) before he hits on mine. And the second movie's already waiting for me, haha. I haven't seen that one yet, but I'm reading the book AS WE SPEAK. :D

>125 norabelle414: SERIES 3 STARTS TONIGHT AAAAAAAAARGH.

>126 richardderus: Aaaaaaaalready on the list. Josh O'Connor is rapidly becoming one of my new favourites. :) Actually I tried to order a copy a couple of weeks ago but the seller couldn't find it and refunded me. I'll try again in the next couple of days.

>127 LovingLit: Does it deserve to be on the book page?! I never put reviews on there any more, there's always some personal waffle when I talk about books I've read so I had to sort of rejig them to fit the general audience. I could start again, maybe...?? (And thank you. One of the most daunting books to talk about, it's so contentious!)

>128 FAMeulstee: It's been on my shelves for about eight years, haha - it was time. It felt like time. You'll know when you're ready. :)

Movie: Lolita (1997) starring Jeremy Irons and Dominique Swain

Weeeeeell, this one was a big disappointment, actually. I got the same feeling that I did with The Shining: that I was supposed to love and appreciate it as a cinematic masterpiece, but that in reality the book was so complex and so vastly superior that the film just sort of deflated quietly in comparison. The music was beautiful and the performances were superb, but it was also one of those movies that seemed to last an awful lot longer than its actual running time (not usually a good thing). So much of the book's compelling nature lies in Humbert's narration - his sarcastic pseudonyms for the people he meets, his humour, his little digressions and flights of thought - as well as in its sublety. There's no room as a viewer for wondering how much of the story is real, how Lo really behaved or reacted, and so on, because it's all there on the screen. It becomes little more than a particularly nicely shot tour of the motels of small-town America, with a disturbing abusive 'romance' on the side. I don't know if I'll even bother watching it again, to be honest. I liked chunks of it, and the ending definitely got to me, but I also think I'd have been more gripped had I not read the book already, which is rarely the case with me. Oh well...

>125 norabelle414: We won't get series 3 in the US until October *pouts*

Movie: Pretty Boy (2015) starring Nick Eversman and Rebekah Tripp
There's no touchstone for this one, so clicking the link will take you straight to the film on YouTube.

This is an award-winning LGBTQ+ short film - a little over 30 minutes - and it's SO GOOD. I started watching it on a whim one evening and before I knew where I was the whole thing had sailed by and I was sitting on my bed with happy-sad tears rolling down my face. It's about a young man, Sean, and the events of his eighteenth birthday. His mother has died, he's being beaten and bullied at school, and now his Christian father has driven him to a motel for his birthday to 'cure' him of his gayness and turn him from a 'pretty boy' into a 'proper man'. Katie, the prostitute he's hired to fix his son, however, has a rather different perspective on the world, and takes Sean under her wing for a night that will prove cathartic for them both.

It's SO WELL DONE, I loved every minute. The dichotomy between the 'sinful' prostitute and the intolerant father waiting out in the car was super satisfying, and Nick Eversman, in particular, was an absolute revelation. This film required Acting with a capital 'A' and the two stars made me feel every single emotion at every single stage of Sean's one-night journey. It was a hell of a rollercoaster ride, and ended on a bittersweet high of tolerance, self-acceptance and strength that hit just the right note. Highly recommended - I'll definitely be watching it again!

TV Series: The Durrells Series 1 (2016) starring Keeley Hawes and Josh O'Connor

I'm in love with this series. No two ways about it. I was already a fan of Gerald Durrell's books (my mother introduced me to those very early on!), and I love the way Simon Nye has extrapolated all of the warmth, humour and wonder of them and brought us this colourful, charming adaptation that gives everyone in the family their fair dues. The cast is so strong that every single character, English or Greek, has a clearly defined individual personality - not always the case, especially in a first season - as well as coming together and feeling like family from the outset. And the SETTING! I want to drop everything and move to Corfu this week... Even the opening credits are a work of art (seriously, Google them if you've never seen the show before). I'd hoped to read on with The Corfu Trilogy and rewatch series 2 before the new one landed - but lo and behold, the schedules got shuffled and suddenly it's back on our screens again on Sunday nights. No matter. I want it to go on forever anyway, the re-enjoyment can wait!

>133 elliepotten: The credits! The setting! The animals! The outfits! The sassy children! I love it so much!!!

>134 norabelle414: The sassy kids are basically what I live for. The new series started last night and Gerry's grown up so much since the last one! And has the most fabulous highlights. They've got new updated opening credits too, still the same gorgeous style. I'm almost considering going outside this summer now. :D

TV Series: Strike: Career of Evil (2018) starring Tom Burke and Holliday Grainger

Ahhhhh, another dose of Cormoran and Robin, dashing around England together solvin' crimes. Weirdly, I always find the actual plots of these Robert 'J.K. Rowling' Galbraith adaptations kinda forgettable - the suspects, the intricacies of the investigations - probably because I haven't read the books yet, but there's something about them that makes them a must-see every time they arrive on our screens. Clearly I just can't get enough of Holliday Grainger being smart and beautiful, and Tom Burke lumbering around in his big coat swigging pints and being sarcastic, and the moody shots of grimy London streets, and that amazing sultry theme song and title sequence that's reminiscent of some old noir movie. All I can say is, I'm going to need the awful petulant husband out of the way soon so that Cormoran and Robin can AT THE VERY LEAST have a nice kiss somewhere, because their chemistry is amazing. And I need to get reading the books before the next one appears, because then maybe I'll enjoy the story as well as the *cough* 'scenery' next time!

Coming up next (in case you were despairing of book reviews ever returning): Three Men on the Bummel (book), The End of the F**king World (TV), Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (book AND movie), Anastasia (*once upon a Deceeeeembeeeeer*), plus I'm halfway through Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters (book, movie on standby). I don't normally read series back to back any more, but given that I always INTEND to read 'one on, one off' until I get to the end but in ACTUALITY wind up waiting six years then starting again, I thought I'd go with it this time. My hands may have been wandering across my TBR shelf, but my head was still in Camp Half-Blood, so here we are. Sea of Monsters, baby!

>137 elliepotten: I do the exact same thing. I feel like I shouldn't read series back to back because my reading should be varied and diverse, but then I put off reading the sequels until I've long forgotten what happened in the previous book.
I loved Three Men on the Bummel and am anxiously awaiting your review.

>138 norabelle414: Exactly! And... not exactly. I wasn't the biggest fan tbh. Review on the way! :)

>133 elliepotten: *whispers* I didn't like it. I know. I'm terrible.

>137 elliepotten: *waits eagerly*

Also count me in on the "not reading series back to back and then completely forgetting the previous book" club.

8. Three Men on the Bummel, by Jerome K. Jerome (3*) - fiction

This was one of those books that started off wonderfully and then slowly descended into a sort of forgettable plod; at the beginning I was laughing so hard that tears were rolling down my face, absolutely delighted by the wit of it all - but by the end I just wanted it to be over. I had the same experience with Decline and Fall, another highly regarded comic novel about a very English hapless hero. In case you weren't aware, in this book Jerome's original Three Men in a Boat protagonists (minus the dog) go off on a jaunt around Germany, getting into all kinds of Pickwickian scrapes along the way. Bizarrely, this jaunt doesn't actually start until something like 70 pages in (it's a 200-page book), and there are a whole lot of random digressions about nothing, which are quite amusing and charming one at a time, but thrown together in one small package just got a bit much. I seem to remember having a similar feeling at the end of Three Men in a Boat, only I happen to like picturesque English waterways and boats more than picturesque German towns and bicycles, so... I dunno. Bit of a disappointment, but given that it's literally one of the five longest-standing TBR books I have on my shelves, I'm glad I finally read it!

Bonus points:
For the really quite spectacularly prescient and completely out-of-place diatribe near the end of the book (which was published in 1900, I think?) about how the German people are so in thrall to authority figures that they will unthinkingly obey the orders of anyone in uniform, without question. It's meant to be sort of amusing, an extended riff on how Germans love policemen and following orders on signs, that kind of thing - but the tone feels a little different to other similar observations elsewhere in the book, and honestly, my jaw kinda dropped. *cue Twilight Zone music*

Quotes:

- "...it was always foolish to go half-way to meet trouble that might never come..." - I NEED THIS TATTOOED ON MY FOREHEAD OR SOMETHING.

- "He was one of those men that begin quietly and grow more angry as they proceed, their wrongs apparently working within them like yeast."

- "English spelling would seem to have been designed chiefly as a disguise to pronunciation. It is a clever idea, calculated to check presumption on the part of the foreigner; but for that he would learn it in a year."

- "We did not succeed in carrying out our programme in its entirety, for the reason that human performance lags ever behind human intention. It is easy to say and believe at three o'clock in the afternoon that: 'We will rise at five, breakfast lightly at half past, and start away at six.'"

- "We prate about our civilization and humanity, but those who do not carry hypocrisy to the length of self-deception know that underneath our starched shirts there lurks the savage, with all his savage instincts untouched."

This book also counts for:
- ROOT challenge (on shelf since Nov 2004)
- PopSugar challenge, prompt 38 (a book with an ugly cover!)

>140 MickyFine: Whaaaaat?! Have you a heart of stone?! Can we AT LEAST agree that there are lots of nice looking people in it, and that the scenery is actually to die for? *stares fiercely in the general direction of Canada*

TV Series: The End of the F**king World (2017) starring Alex Lawther and Jessica Barden (no TS)

Well, wasn't this just the surprise of the week? I'd heard enough people raving about it to fancy giving it a go, so the other day, burned out on 45-minute drama episodes, I skipped over to give these 20-minute darkly funny ones a try. 48 hours later I was done with the series and very glad I'd persevered past the opening couple of minutes, in which our young (anti)hero killed a cat just as I was eating my lunch. Not cool, James. Not cool.

At the beginning, both of our main characters - James, who thinks he's a psychopath, and Alyssa, who hates her family - are brassy, awkwardly confident, and supremely unlikable, their actions largely those of faux-rebellious teens being difficult for the sake of it. Within a couple of episodes, however, that surface layer starts to peel away, and gradually these two broken, vulnerable and utterly overwhelmed children appear. Some of the black humour gets lost, which is a shame, but in its place was this sort of enchanting and touching fusion of a US road trip movie, Bonnie and Clyde and Broadchurch. I laughed, I cried, I outright sobbed - and the MUSIC! Oh, the music. Old American classics galore; I made a whole playlist in the space of eight episodes.

This won't be for everyone - it's very British and yet doesn't feel it at times, and there's animal death and human death and gore and triggering topics thrown in when you least expect it - but if you can get past the intentionally dry and flat opening, there's so much heart and soul in here to fall in love with. Bittersweet and wonderful.

>143 elliepotten: Hmm, I could not get past the opening but maybe I will add it back to my list.

>142 elliepotten: The scenery is beautiful and the cast is pleasant to look at. But I just didn't like the characters.

>144 norabelle414: It gets better! Give it a couple of episodes and see - that's only 40 minutes, after all... :)

>145 MickyFine: *sighs* We revere Gerald Durrell in this house. I'm probably biased. :D

9. Percy and the Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan (5*) - fiction

Life is about to get very interesting for Percy Jackson. Slightly unusual things have been happening to him his whole life, but when he accidentally vaporises his maths teacher during a school trip, it becomes apparent that something much bigger is afoot. Within a matter of days he has arrived at Camp Half-Blood, met a god, discovered that his best friend is a satyr and his father is Poseidon, and been accused of stealing Zeus's master lightning bolt. Can he find the bolt and return it to Olympus before the gods turn on each other and ignite a cataclysmic world war?

It's really a very clever premise - if it had been around back when I was a young teenager, I'd have been in the library poring over books on the Ancient Greek gods before you could say Apollo. The story roars along at a cracking pace, with lots of exciting action and adventure and some hilarious little touches - like Cerberus, the three-headed canine guardian of Hell, playing catch with a red rubber ball, which made me smile. Riordan mixes the modern world with the mythology of the Greek gods beautifully, bringing them right up to date while maintaining their dignity and all-powerful other-worldliness. I loved it all over again - in fact, I think I rated it higher this second time!

Bonus points: for the Capture the Flag 'claiming' scene, which is one of the most satisfying moments I can remember ever reading. I don't why, it just got right under my skin and I got all goosebump-y, it was great!



This book also counts for:
- ROOT challenge (haven't reread it since 2011)
- PopSugar challenge, prompt 24 (a book with a weather element in the title)

I loved Greek mythology as a kid but I still have not been compelled to pick up this series. One day, maybe.

>148 MickyFine: I'll carry on soon and let you know how the rest go! Seems like it's going to be building to something involving the original Titans (particularly Kronos, kind of evil incarnate) vs the Gods of Olympus, which should be a fairly epic finale to the series. :)

>147 elliepotten: Hi Ellie- I'd second your endorsement of the Percy Jackson series - I read it a few years ago on the recommendation of one of my students (actually borrowed his copies), and loved it and wanted more.

>148 MickyFine: I was a big 'ol mythology fan as a kid as well - that, dinosaurs, and outer space. I'd say "go" to trying out the series.

Another great series for mythology nerds is The Iron Druid Chronicles, which y'all may already know. The ninth and final installment is arriving next week.

*waving* Hi Ellie! Hope you're having a great weekend! I read several of the Percy Jackson series and remember enjoying them. Somehow I just dropped off reading Riordan's series a few years ago and have never gone back...

>149 elliepotten: It's not that I'm against picking them up, it's just there's so many other books to read and Percy hasn't jumped up and down in front of me screaming, "READ ME NOW!!!" So he continues to wait.

Hope you had a lovely weekend, Ellie!

All caught up here, Ellie! You got me with The Durrells - I had not heard of that one. And Amazon Prime has it, so hooray!

And I am totally jealous that you get to watch Strike and Robin, as that is not yet available here. *sob*

Hoping your Friday is full of fabulous!

>152 MickyFine: Haha, I definitely have a lot of THOSE books too. The "sit down and wait your turn, please, ladies and gentlemen" books. :)

>153 Crazymamie: My internet's been a bit patchy lately, so I haven't caught up with series 3 yet - but I've returned to series 2 on DVD in the meantime! Such great feel-good telly.

Hello everyone, and Happy Easter (if you celebrate it) and/or Happy Eat Your Body Weight In Chocolate Day (if that suits you better)! I'm trying to lose a few pounds before my sister's wedding, so I've been almost angelically good so far this weekend - but I do have a Cadbury Marvellous Creations jelly and popping candy Easter egg to crack open tonight. We've had house guests for the weekend and they'll be leaving before tea (hallelujah) so that'll be my time to make myself something yummy for tea, eat chocolate, watch something, maybe read a little? YASSSSS.

I hope you had a fabulous and tasty evening.

>155 MickyFine: I did, thank you, haha. And yet still somehow managed to lose 4lb this week towards my goal of looking lovely for my sister's wedding in September. It's been a good week. :)

Movie: Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (2010) starring Logan Lerman and Alexandra Daddario

Okay, hear me out - because I love these movies. Yes, this one in particular is occasionally startling wooden (especially the veterans, like Catherine Keener and Sean Bean, weirdly), and they miss out (or add in) a ton of stuff, but they're so FUN. I'd really have liked the 'claiming of Percy Jackson' scene to be in there - they completely did away with any mystery from the beginning on that front - and some amazing set-piece scenes in the Underworld could have been impressive on screen, but... FUN. There are still some satisfying moments to cheer for, and Grover is very amusing, and the combined (and considerable) charm of Logan Lerman and Alexandra Daddario go a long way to overcoming the rest. The book's better - but I still keep returning to the movie on rainy afternoons when I just want something... FUN. :)



I may be a bit out of practice at this review thing. Bear with me. *FUN* :P

>157 elliepotten: There is absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying something because it's fun. Glad that one is a feel good film for you. :)

>158 MickyFine: Haha, these ones just seem to inspire the wrath of about 90% of the book fandom, it's VENOMOUS! I mean, I can see why the films might have been disappointing for die-hard purist types - but I'm not really so I'm free to just happily enjoy things. It's the best way. And I DO have a soft spot for Logan Lerman! :D

>157 elliepotten: I have not seen it, so I can't weigh in really. My sister is on the venomous side about this one - I seem to recall she thought Annabeth in particular was just wrong. But I'm totally with you - if it's fun, it's fun and you should definitely enjoy it.

Speaking of fun, I saw Ready Player One today.

>161 elliepotten: Oh yeah, Annabeth's completely different, looks-wise at least. But she's also Alexandra Daddario, who has the eyes of a goddess already, so... swings and roundabouts. :P

I really REALLY need to read Ready Player One. And Love, Simon. And Annihilation. And The City & The City. And everything else that has an adaptation out right now. I suuuuuuck!

I AM reading, just very slowly and far too many different books at once. My main read at the moment is Stephen King's Doctor Sleep, which I'm supposed to be reading for an April Bookstagram readalong. I'm over a week behind on it at the moment, BUT I'm also really enjoying it, so I'm plodding along anyway, sans readalong for the time being.

In order to read that, I've put One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest aside for the moment - but I'll be going back to that once Doctor Sleep is finished. Then on top of that, I have FOUR non-fiction books going, all of which I started because I wasn't feeling the others at the time. Bohemian Manifesto is a beautiful book but kinda ridiculous so I have to be in the mood. A Passion for Books is bookish (obviously) but some of the essays are on the 'dull and dense' side unless you specialise in very old or rare books. Reasons to Stay Alive is great so far, but my mood's swung way over to the positive side since I started reading it (when I was feeling a bit wobbly) so I've not felt the urge to pick it up for a few weeks. And lastly, Lost in Translation, which is gorgeous and can be dipped into anytime I want anyway.

Oh, and I'm watching The Durrells season 2 and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air season 1 on the side!

I just want to finish something... I'm hoping a little time outside in the sun this week (it's given proper spring temperatures for the first time so far this year) with coffee and a book will be exactly what I need to finally push through my little reading slump and start completing books instead of just starting new ones! :D

Movie: Anastasia (1997) starring Meg Ryan and John Cusack (voices)

I looooove Anastasia! I spotted it on Film 4 the other day and had one of those "DROP EVERYTHING, IT'S ON RIGHT NOW!" moments - I even sent out a blast on Instagram, haha. Public service announcement. This movie was one of my favourites growing up - and my sister's, too - and it still makes me laugh, cry and sing along twenty years later! The animation is gorgeous, the music is spectacular, the characters are wonderful, the dialogue crackles with humour and warmth, the plot flies along at the speed of one of Rasputin's evil minions, Once Upon a December is one of the best animated movie songs ever written and still gives me goosebumps... it's just all-round great. I'll leave aside the 'BUT HISTORY!' element because OF COURSE it's not real and there were massive complexities and tragedies around the real Romanov story - but it's a lot of fun, it has a glorious happy ending, and it seems to have been getting kids interested in the real Anastasia ever since it was released, which is probably a good thing. If you've never seen it, do yourself a favour and give it a go, it's a treat. :)


↑ *couple goals*

>136 elliepotten: I'm currently listening to {Career of Evil. I wanted to finish all three of the existing books in the series before the TV adaptation airs in the US in June or July (I can't remember which right now). I loved Tom Burke in The Musketeers where he also did plenty of lumbering around and pint swigging and being sarcastic. I'm totally looking forward to seeing what this. Having listened to the books Holliday Grainger is perfect casting for Robin.

>162 elliepotten: I didn't know Meg Ryan an John Cusack voiced Anastasia! The is cool :)

>162 elliepotten: It's been on my Netflix list for ages. Maybe I'll watch it this weekend.

>162 elliepotten: I'm gonna download the film since you recommend it so highly Ellie.

Have a lovely weekend.

>165 MickyFine: Went looking for it and it's currently disappeared from Netflix. Sigh. Isn't that always the way.

Hope you're having a lovely weekend!

>163 SuziQoregon: Haha, yup, Athos was probably my favourite of the four. So dark and sarcastic. I haven't read the Cormoran Strike books yet - but Mum has all three, so there's no excuse for me not catching up before the next installment appears!

>164 LovingLit: As soon as I hear, "What, were you a vulture in another life?" I picture Sally saying it to Harry. It's such a Meg Ryan movie line. :D

>166 PaulCranswick: Hope you enjoy(ed) it! From the moxie to the music. :)

>167 MickyFine: Noooooo! So near yet so far. It'll come around again, maybe. *crosses everything*

10. Percy and the Sea of Monsters, by Rick Riordan (4*) - fiction

After I finished Lightning Thief, my head was so thoroughly stuck in Camp Half-Blood that I plunged straight into the next book. Quite unusual for me! I didn't find Sea of Monsters quite as compelling as its predecessor, probably because the elements of self-discovery and wonder were obviously lessened a year down the line - but I still very much enjoyed it. This one builds and develops on what came before, with Percy and Annabeth heading off on a rescue mission that brings new characters into the series and once again ropes in a whole cast of Ancient Greek mythological figures, creatures and monsters, from Hermes to hippocampi and Cyclopes to Circe. My main gripe was with Percy's powers, oddly enough; I felt like he suddenly had a phenomenal grip on them, and a real self-assurance about what he could do. It seemed quite at odds with his lack of confidence in the first book, and those scenes felt a bit clunky as a result.

Thanks to the seventy-five books I still have on the go (or so it feels, anyway!), I haven't continued on to The Titan's Curse yet - but I aim to finish all five by the time summer really sets in, so that I maybe have chance to tackle another series of some description before the end of the year. :)

This book also counts for:
- ROOT challenge (on shelf since December 2011)
- PopSugar challenge, prompt 3 (the next book in a series you started)

Movie: Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters (2013) starring Logan Lerman and Alexandra Daddario

I finally got to watch the second movie! (As per my standard 'read then watch' rule...) I was actually quite impressed by this one. A few characters that got nixed from the first film appeared (Dionysus, the Oracle of Delphi, Clarisse), and with the exception of Tyson, who was completely different from his book counterpart, it felt a little more faithful to the source material. The replacement of Pierce Brosnan (as the centaur Chiron) with Anthony Stewart Head was a surprise but worked rather well, and Nathan Fillion's Hermes was very amusing. The camp itself also felt a lot more demigod-like this time; it had a certain je ne sais quois, an edge and bustle, that wasn't quite there in the first film. I just wish they'd kept Circe's 'health resort' in during Percy's quest, that would have been fascinating on screen! Bottom line: more cheese, more fun, more snappy humour, more Logan Lerman. I liked it.

Nicely done with two reports, Ellie. I've seen big chunks of the second Percy Jackson but without the sound (I was on a plane and my Mom and I had great fun guessing at the plot). The Fiancé has been listening to the audiobooks lately so I may end up watching the films with him. We'll see.

>171 MickyFine: Haha, we did that with Man of Steel. It possibly improved the experience, from what I've heard. :D

Still a bunch more to go - for Gifted (the Chris Evans movie), Chatroom (the Aaron Taylor-Johnson movie), Vox by Nicholson Baker, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air season 1 (woohoo!) and Bohemian Manifesto by Lauren Stover.

Then I'm halfway through Doctor Sleep by Stephen King and still wandering through Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig and Lost in Translation by Ella Frances Saunders, and THEN at the weekend it's Dewey's 24-Hour Readathon so I might start something totally different and more readathon-friendly for that. I already have a heap of snacks, wheeeeee!

Movie: Gifted (2017) starring Chris Evans and Mckenna Grace

Awwww, this one was nice. And heartbreaking. And a bit confusing. Then nice again. Basically, Chris Evans is a major UILF (uncle I'd like to... y'know) to this small, incredibly smart child. Her mother is dead, and she's about to start school for the first time. Her pretty teacher, Jenny Slate, is fascinated because the kid basically reenacts the 'you know how to multiply big numbers?' scene from Matilda, and then when she realises the kid's uncle is Chris Evans she is even MORE fascinated. Because who wouldn't be. And THEN Lindsay Duncan and Octavia Spencer get involved, and it veers into Good Will Hunting territory, and it all gets very dramatic, and honestly I got a wee bit confused-slash-bored because this 'what's best for the child' conflict was kinda implied to be the whole focus of the film and it isn't really. But... did I mention Chris Evans is a major UILF to a small, incredibly smart child? And that Jenny Slate's in it?

>173 elliepotten: I'm probably going to be watching this one this weekend as The Fiancé has it checked out from the library. Happy to see you mostly liked it. And then we're watching Waitress because I have it checked it out. :)

>173 elliepotten: Sounds like half a good movie. *smooch*

>174 MickyFine: The Keri Russell one? I haven't seen that for YEARS - I borrowed it off my sister - but I remember being really pleasantly surprised by it. I think I cried. And had to go buy a pie. :D

>175 richardderus: The Chris Evans half was good, definitely. ;) *smooch right back*

Movie: Chatroom (2010) starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Matthew Beard

This is one of those movies that I just keeeeeep coming back to. Some of the acting is pretty stilted, which can be jarring, but it's also got GREAT acting from talents like Daniel Kaluuya, Michelle Fairley (Catelyn Stark!) and the incredible Matthew Beard. It's a cleverly-done film in which chatrooms are made real on-screen in a kind of hotel of nightmares. Doctors chat in the corridor outside one, a party runs wild in another - but then you turn a corner and there are little girls being preyed upon by middle-aged men and teenagers killing themselves via webcam. Into this arena wanders William, a depressed and somewhat disturbed young man who sets up a chatroom called Chelsea Teens, amasses a little group of 'friends', then sets about systematically destroying its weakest members. The movie flits between the virtual world and the characters' lives outside it, until the two clash in a finale so nail-biting that I still find myself on the edge of my seat several viewings later. Again... Matthew Beard. A revelation. It may have its issues, but there's just something about it that keeps pulling me back, I love it!

11. Vox, by Nicholson Baker (4.5*) - fiction

This one was a complete surprise! I got it in a bag of free books from an old friend, and I'd never heard of it - but it sounded right up my street, and then a friend on Bookstagram spotted it in a picture and singled it out as one they'd really enjoyed. I started it the same day, and whaddaya know? I loved it. It's only short, and it just goes and goes and goes, but unlike other books that run like that (The Library of Unrequited Love, I'm looking at you), I never wanted it to end!

The whole thing is one long conversation between two strangers - one man, one woman - who have each rung an adult chat line, rather taken to each other, and have now been transferred to a private call to talk more. Hours later, they've covered everything from their outfits to their masturbatory habits, their little personal quirks to their sexual fantasies. It's funny and sweet and honest and erotic all at once. A couple of times they veered so far off on a conversational tangent that the book dragged momentarily - hence the dropping of half a star - but as with real-life conversations, it always got pulled back and eventually they got their *cough* happy ending. :P

After I finished it I went straight out and bought Nicholson Baker's most famous book - The Fermata (author blurb: 'The funniest book about sex ever written') - so I'll definitely be reading that one in the next month or two!

>176 elliepotten: That's the one. I was listening to the soundtrack from the stage production (which is great btw) and ended up with a hankering to watch the film again.

12. Bohemian Manifesto: A Field Guide to Living on the Edge, by Laren Stover (2.5*) - non-fiction

I feel like I've been reading this forever! This rather jumbled book seeks to explore contemporary bohemianism in a tongue-in-cheek way, starting with dividing people into groups with shared characteristics: Beats, Dandies, Zens, Nouveaus and Gypsies. Through these groupings Stover wanders through everything from fashion to music, decor to literature, with a few broader bonus sections thrown in for good measure.

She is definitely at her best when it comes to real-life details and examples - drawing from the lives of artists, writers and muses, amongst others - and the fictional portraits at the end are quite fun and pleasantly whimsical. The design of the book itself is glorious, with heavy glossy paper, patterned endpapers and gorgeous watercolour illustrations by Izak Zenou.

Sadly, at times all of that was eclipsed by the deafening sound of the barrel being thoroughly scraped. Some of Stover's endless pages on 'what bohemians do' were so ridiculously specific (and specifically ridiculous) that I wondered whether to DNF it once or twice. It also feels quite dated now, with some elements screaming 'insufferable hipster' rather than 'eccentric spirit', and there are a few jarring moments of cultural appropriation, poor language choices and making fun of mental illness.

It's been on my shelves for a good ten years, so I'm glad I finally read it - but I'm not sure yet whether I'll be keeping it for the 'better bits' and design elements, or letting it go off to a new home. I suspect probably the latter. Disappointing.

This book also counts for:
- ROOT challenge (on my shelf since something like Christmas 2008!)

>179 MickyFine: I've heard a few of the songs on Radio 2 here, I think. They do a 'musicals, stage shows and films' show on Sunday afternoons with loads of cast recordings and Disney songs and old musical numbers, it's great! :)

Bonus books: The Tale of Peter Rabbit (4*) and The Tale of Benjamin Bunny (3.5*), by Beatrix Potter - fiction

I got a bunch of battered old Beatrix Potter hardbacks from a friend recently, and I couldn't resist picking a couple up over a cup of tea one rainy morning! They're just so charming, and the illustrations are so adorable. I definitely like Peter Rabbit better, though the story of little Benjamin Bunny helping his traumatised cousin get his jacket and shoes back (with a little detour into Mr McGregor's lettuce patch - do they ever learn?) is kind of sweet too. Until they get caught and whipped by Benjamin Bunny Sr. anyway.

I got all nostalgic after I read them and was remembering the old TV show we had here in the UK. The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends, it was called. When we were tiny girls, my sister and I used to watch them at Easter, sitting side by side on the sofa with a little bowl of Easter chocolate. It had this long opening scene each episode, with Beatrix (played by Niamh Cusack) out painting on the hillside, and then the rain starts to fall so she has to quickly pack up and run home, past fox cubs and a hedgehog, through a gaggle of ducks outside her house ("Out of my way, Jemima!") and into the warmth with a cup of tea and her pet bunny, Peter. She sits down to write a new story, and the show switches to animation as she tells it. Then when she's finished her tale, there's a closing scene to match the opening, where the rain's stopped and she walks off to the postbox to send it, with this lovely music playing over the top.

Aaaaanyway, I found it on YouTube, and it was one of those where the emotions hit so hard I cried all the way through the opening, haha. I'm going to binge watch a bunch of them one of these days, now I know they're there! Anyone else remember them?

>182 elliepotten: We loved them, Ellie. I expect my children are about your age and I can remember us all watching them at Sunday teatime. We have DVDs of them and always watch The Tailor of Gloucester at Christmas.

13. Love, Simon (Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda), by Becky Albertalli (4*) - fiction

My last read of April! This engaging little novel was Attachments meets You've Got Mail, all tied up in a rainbow ribbon and presented to the YA reading community with a flourish. In fact, the last time I made 'eeeee!' noises like that at the 'good bits' of a book probably WAS Attachments!

I liked Simon, I found him very relatable (more so than any of the female characters, weirdly), but my favourite parts were the emails between Simon and the mysterious Blue. I loved spotting the little clues as to who he might be, and watching the attraction growing between them in such a pure way - no visuals, no identity, just a meeting of minds, experiences, tastes and humour. SO satisfying!

The only thing that let it down a bit for me (like Attachments again, albeit in a different way) was the very end. It sort of fizzled out a bit after the big reveal, and the talent show scene in particular felt more like a different story altogether - the opening of a sequel perhaps, one belonging to the girls in Emoji - rather than a part of Simon and Blue's character arc. Overall I really enjoyed it though! A solid four-star 'happy read'. I can't wait to see the movie now; I might even be tempted to pre-order the DVD for this one. :)

Quotes:

- "Fall air always smells like possibility."

- "It is definitely annoying that straight (and white, for that matter) is the default, and that the only people who have to think about their identity are the ones who don't fit that mold."

This book also counts for:
- PopSugar challenge, prompt 12 (a book with an LGBTQ+ protagonist)

>183 CDVicarage: Hooray! I mentioned it on Instagram as well and now there's this happy little wave of nostalgia going on in the comments that's just... scrummy. The first episode covers Peter AND Benjamin, so I might watch that over dinner tonight or something. :D

Aaaaand I'm pretty much caught up on reviews! For the first time in ages! Well, mini reviews anyway. Posts of some description about things I've been enjoying. :) Possibly thanks to the fact that I've been reading more lately, so the movie bingeing has slowed down a bit in turn, haha. I'm housesitting at my sister's for the next couple of nights, so my first order of business will be to get cracking on all the books still on my 'currently reading' pile:

- Doctor Sleep by Stephen King (a failed April readalong, but about halfway through and enjoying it!)
- Lost in Translation by Ella Frances Sanders (dipping into this one occasionally, mostly pictures)
- Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig (taking it a few pages at a time, not one to rush really)
- Exhibitionism by Toby Litt (short stories, weird but fairly quick to read - about a third of the way through)

After I finish those, I'm thinking of detouring into It's Not Me, It's You by Jon Richardson - which I've had FOREVER - for a little light relief, and then heading back to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which again, I'm partway through. It'd be nice to have a clear slate at SOME point in May to just start with a couple of fresh books. I'm getting a bit sick of having six of them yelling at me at once and wanting to read pretty much anything but! :)

>184 elliepotten: You're right on the money, there is a sequel book that came out last week about Leah.
The movie is very good. It eliminated almost all of Leah, but the parts about Simon and Blue are pretty perfect. I wasn't sure how they were going to handle disguising Blue's identity but they did a good job.

I only got as far as book two in the Percy Jackson books. Just never felt compelled to continue after that one.

>186 norabelle414: Yeah, I saw that. Leah on the Offbeat... The talent show bit definitely felt like it could have been the opening to THAT book. Though I did like the 'two hours unsupervised' bit afterwards, haha. ;)

I'm so tempted to pre-order the movie. I mean, the book's great, and Nick Robinson is SO charming... Not sure about reading Leah's sequel though. I don't know, a lot of readers seemed to love her the best. I thought she was a bit of a bitch for giant chunks of the book actually. I liked Abby and Nora way more!

>187 SuziQoregon: See, I'm feeling a tiny bit the same at the moment. I loved the first book, really liked the second book, and yet I've felt no compulsion yet to pick up the next one. I will though, I have all five so I'm determined to actually finish them. I'm SO bad with series, and these books only take a couple of days each to fly through, I really have no excuse this time. :D

>188 elliepotten: I liked the Leah parts of the book because I felt like the overall theme was how you don't really know everything about a person, no matter how close you are to them. Simon didn't know Blue's identity even though he ate lunch with him every single day, and he didn't know what Leah was going through even though they were best friends, and he didn't know what was going on with Nora even though they live in the same house. I can understand how the events of the book would be frustrating for Leah and cause her to lash out, but I really really liked her ending.

Wishing you a lovely Sunday, Ellie. xx

>189 norabelle414: Yeaaaaaah, I could definitely understand her, I just didn't like her as much as I feel like everyone else who read it did? If that makes sense? Like... rather than being all "YASSSS, QUEEN" I was a bit more "girl, chill the fuck out for five seconds, you're giving me a headache." Whereas Abby was like human sunshine and Nora just rocked. She's a lot of people's favourite character though, so maybe it's just me being a grumpy biatch. Not for the first time, haha. >:)

>190 PaulCranswick: A very late thank you, Paul! Wishing you a lovely Wednesday! :D

14. Exhibitionism, by Toby Litt (2*) - fiction

Well, this was yet another massively disappointing read. I don't seem to be doing particularly well on that front this year! It promised to be a playful, witty and sharply observed bunch of short stories, but... well, it really wasn't. Not for me, anyway.

A couple of the stories were broadly okay (the one about a young man touring Highgate Cemetery and getting distracted by a pair of gothic lesbians on the hunt for Radclyffe Hall's tomb was maybe the best), but every single one without fail fizzled out with a sad splutter, rather than ending on a punchy note of intrigue, satisfaction or explanation. Some were outright incomprehensible. A couple obviously thought they were saying something very profound - but whatever it was whistled right over my head. Not that I cared by that point.

You just never know with short stories if the next one is going to be The One, the one that makes it all worthwhile, so I kept reading - but The One never came, and by the end I just couldn't wait for it to be over! Shame. I never do that well with short stories, but I still have high hopes that collections by Palahniuk, du Maurier or Dahl might hit the spot where others just... haven't. Oh well.

15. Lost in Translation: An Illustrated Compendium of Untranslatable Words from Around the World, by Ella Frances Sanders (3.5*) - non-fiction

If I had to describe this book in three words, I'd say it was 'pretty but flimsy'. There are some wonderful words and concepts to explore, and some lovely illustrations that really stood out - but likewise, some of the illustrations were underwhelming and seemed uninspired, and several of the captions on each opposing page felt like they were trying way too hard to be cute. I also had real trouble with the font choice on the illustrated pages: it was so hard to read!

Don't get me wrong, it's a nice idea and it would make a lovely gift. I'll probably hold on to it for a while to flip through again. BUT I definitely won't be rushing to shell out a tenner on the next one for myself. :(

A couple of my favourite words/concepts

- Komorebi (Japanese) - The sunlight that filters through the leaves of the trees

- Tsundoku (Japanese) - Leaving a book unread after buying it, typically piled up together with other unread books. - I think we can aaaaall relate to this one!

This book also counts for:
- ROOT challenge (on my shelf since early 2016)

>193 elliepotten: Hi, Ellie! I hereby vow that I will find a way to work tsundoku into every conversation I have about books from now on!

An Ellie appears! Huzzah!

16. Mort, by Terry Pratchett (3.5*) - fiction

Only Terry Pratchett would sit down and think, "Yes, but what if Death took on a young apprentice? And his name was also kind of Death but he was just too human for the job?" It's a stroke of genius. Death (sorry, DEATH) was always one of my favourite Discworld characters, and I loved the dynamic between him and Mort in this novel.

Admittedly, this took a lot longer to read than I expected. It's been years since I picked up a DW book, and I'd forgotten how much it's like reading a very long stand-up comedy show; you have to be 'on' all the time, every line a clever reference or funny twist or world-building detail. There are no chapter breaks either, which I find can sometimes make even an enjoyable book feel a bit relentless. Some of the world details got a bit repetitive, and the magical plot got a bit confusing towards the end.

On the other hand, I loved Mort and Death's strangely heartwarming parallel journeys, and the secondary characters were mostly a delight. I imagined Binky the horse as Maximus from Tangled all the way through. And the DESCRIPTIONS! Pratchett has a way of so perfectly capturing things in a throwaway manner that made me laugh, sigh, and often wish I'd written it. (One of my favourites was the small fat irate lady he describes as looking like 'an angry cottage loaf'!) And the final line of the book is just... *kisses fingers a la Italian chef*

I'm glad I picked one of these up again (it was my first choice for the rather ingenious 'birth year readalong' being hosted by a friend over on Instagram; I'm still reading the second, The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis), but I'm not sure I'll be hurrying to read any more just yet. If I do it might be the next in the little Death run, perhaps. Mum has the whole lot, so I'm all set anytime the urge arises!

Quotes:

- "The frost had tightened its grip on the forest, squeezing it until the roots creaked."

- "When she spoke again it was in the thin, careful and above all brave voice of someone who has pulled themselves together despite overwhelming odds but might let go again at any moment."

- "As long as he caught nothing Terpsic Mims was one of the Disc's happest anglers, because the Hakrull river was five miles from his home and therefore five miles from Mrs Gwladys Mims, with whom he had enjoyed six happy months of married life. That had been some twenty years previously."

- "He opened his eyes and stared up blankly into Ysabell's face. Then the events of the previous night hit him like a sock full of damp sand."

- "Expressions flitted across the old wizard's face like cloud shadows across a hillside."

This book also counts for:
- POSSIBLY the PopSugar prompt about death and grief, at a push. We'll see about that one later in the year!

>194 rosalita: Riiiiight? It's such a tangible thing, it kinda makes you wonder why we DON'T have a word for it in English tbh.

>195 MickyFine: Y'know what it is - I haven't been bingeing on telly, haha. Books take longer. :D

Seriously though, I've been on Instagram a LOT (@bookaddictedblonde, if anyone's over there), and reading a fair bit, and I've been agoraphobia-busting like a champ. Walks, outings, it's all been happening. Very slowly, naturally, organically but STEADILY, the horizon widens... Which is probably the best way. No jumping the gun and assuming everything's fixed because I've had one successful giant day out but actually done no work on the little things, y'know? Fingers crossed, third time might be a charm... :)

>197 elliepotten: Happy to hear all things are well with you and that there's lots of reading going on. :)

>198 MickyFine: It's made a nice change, haha. Though the books have been kinda dud-esque, which is a bit disappointing. I'll be going into June with five or six books on the go, several from back in April, and May's tally is kind of crap. Ugh. I think the coming month will have to be my 'catch-up' month, finish my current reads, see if I can actually stay on top of a planned Insta-readalong of Norwegian Wood that I somehow got roped into, and then get to July able to start afresh. Wouldn't that be nice? :)

>199 elliepotten: Bummer about the dud reads. Hopefully you can power through what you have left and start some fun summer reading.

17. The Rules of Attraction, by Bret Easton Ellis (4*) - fiction

Having enjoyed American Psycho way more than I expected, The Informers was probably going to be my next Ellis novel - but then that ingenious 'birth year readalong' happened and this was one of my top couple of contenders. And honestly, I'm so glad I read it. Not only was it one of Ellis's earliest books, so I've sort of filled in some background for whichever of his interlinked novels I pick up next, but it was also my first four-or-more-starred read in a while, which was VERY refreshing.

Like American Psycho this one was a rollercoaster ride through a variety of sexual shenanigans, drug trips, spoiled characters and debauched parties, featuring a fundamentally unlikeable yet strangely engaging Bateman brother. Unlike American Psycho, this one does not feature prostitutes, rats, cannibalism or extended descriptions of cufflinks, and instead of Wall Street, it's set on a college campus in New Hampshire. Bonus points for The Secret History crossover references. :)

I don't think I'm going to remember the details of this one for long - again, like American Psycho - but I really enjoyed the reading experience. The narration is divided up between multiple characters, and seeing their stories unfold from several perspectives, sometimes wildly different from one another, was often amusing, occasionally sad, and made me wonder if the truth lay in any one account or somewhere in between. Ellis throws everything in here - sex, drugs, parties, classes, conversations, abortion, suicide, travel, food - and still manages to draw it together into a solid and deliciously self-aware little read. Bring on the next one. And the movie, which I haven't seen!

This book also counts for:
- PopSugar challenge, prompt 36 (book set in the decade you were born - written and set in the 80s)

>200 MickyFine: Ooooh yes, I hope so! They're all good reads, but they were started so long ago that they feel more like cool-weather books. A bit heavy for summer, or I'm just not really in the mood for them any more. Buuuut I've also put hours into them already, so if they're decent enough it seems a shame to write them off, even temporarily. It could be years before I pick them up again once they go back on those bookshelves! JUNE. JUNE WILL BE THEIR MONTH.

I adored Love, Simon the movie and the book is probably going to be my next read, because then I can read Leah's story after, too. I'm looking forward to reading all the parts that had to be taken out of the movie for time (and all the extra email details :-D ).

Also, catching up on your thread as made me very glad I'll be back in the land of Patisserie Valerie soon :-)

Love the words you shared from Lost in Translation

>203 archerygirl: The movie isn't coming out until August on DVD, grrrrr! Wish I'd managed to catch it in the cinema now. :(

>204 SuziQoregon: Right?! Sometimes I wonder why we DON'T have some of these words. Some are very specific to a culture or place, but others are so universal and relatable!

There is only one solution to the "no proper words" problem: we make them up ourselves! I vote for "Smoofledoodle."

>205 elliepotten: I'm really glad I caught it in the cinema. And now I've read the book, which has some differences from the movie, but in ways that made me love that, too. I loved both of them, for their differences as well as their similarities, if that makes sense? And Leah on the Off-Beat was brilliant, too :-)

Ellie--Way behind on all things LT and just trying to get caught up here. Nice job pushing yourself on your walks and such. I hope you get to enjoy the wider horizon you are creating. And I hope your books get better, too!

>206 Ape: Is that a marshmallow, a cookie or a kind of small gerbil?

>207 archerygirl: I think I'm going to preorder the DVD. I reckon it might just be a new happy comfort watch! :)

>208 Berly: Ohhhh I am so behind on everything! I'm walking most days for about an hour and fifteen minutes now. Reading and walking, or blasting my iPod and striding out. I'm starting to feel stronger and healthier and like a frickin' majestical woman again for the first time in yeaaaaars, it's intoxicating!

On the reading front - I didn't finish all the non-fiction I'd got on the go during June, but I read a little from each of them. I HAVE finished Norwegian Wood, Doctor Sleep and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, so reviews of all three are on the way. Now I'm finally caving to curiosity and my general need for fluffy reading now the weather's hot and am buddy reading Fifty Shades of Grey. Well, I say buddy reading - he finished it in two days and I'm only halfway through several days later. But I've volunteered to read on after this and see how the other two books are! :D

18. Norwegian Wood, by Haruki Murakami (3.5*) - fiction

Okay, I'm going to hold my hands up here and say that a couple of weeks after I finished it, I still don't know how I feel about this one. I expected to love it, and there WAS a lot to enjoy in its pages - humour, description, musings on mental health and recovery - but something was just missing for me.

It has some beautifully written moments and perfectly worded sentiments that had me reaching for a pencil to underline and star and heart and annotate, but likewise it had clunky or oddly worded ones that made me wonder if the translation had gone slightly awry. I had mixed feelings about every character - was Naoko a beautifully tragic figure or a personality vacuum? Was Midori feisty and vital or an emotionally abusive manic pixie dream girl? Was Toru a sympathetic narrator or a bit of a dick? I STILL DON'T KNOW. I actually thought I was going to DNF it for the first hundred pages or so, but I'm glad I carried on. It was worth reading, and perhaps it will be one of those book that grows on me with time and reflection, but I don't think I'll be installing it on my favourites shelf anytime soon. Shame.

Quotes:

- "If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking." - Shame the character who says this - one of Murakami's most famous quotes - is so utterly snobby and revolting.

- "That's the kind of death that frightens me. The shadow of death slowly, slowly eats away at the region of life, and before you know it everything's dark and you can't see, and the people around you think of you as more dead than alive. I hate that. I couldn't stand it."

- "The most important thing is not to let yourself get impatient... Even if things are so tangled up you can't do anything, don't get desperate or blow a fuse and start yanking on one particular thread before it's ready to come undone. You have to realize it's going to be a long process and that you'll work on things slowly, one at a time."

- "I'm much better at bringing out the best in others than in myself. That's just the kind of person I am. I'm the scratchy stuff on the side of the matchbox. But that's fine with me. I don't mind at all. Better to be a first-class matchbox than a second-class match."

- "... no truth can cure the sadness we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness, can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see that sadness through to the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sadness that comes to us without warning."

This book also counts for:
- ROOT challenge (in my LT catalogue since March 2010)
- PopSugar challenge, prompt 28 (a book with song lyrics in the title)

>209 elliepotten: Yay for completed books and fluffy reading!

>209 elliepotten: Sometimes a fluffy read is exactly what you need :-)

Have fun with Fifty...I read the first three but gave up on the fourth from they guy's POV. Keep up the walking--it sounds like it agrees with you!

>211 MickyFine: >212 archerygirl: >213 Berly: It really wasn't as bad as I thought it would be... In ANY sense of the word... Huh. But yeah, Kim, I'm not sure I'll read Christian's spinoffs afterwards. And I definitely need a break before I read the next one, a week and 500+ pages with the pair of them was enough for now. Might watch the first movie though. Just for the eye candy. :D

19. Doctor Sleep, by Stephen King (4*) - fiction

I can't believe it's been going on five years since this book came out! I bought it almost the same day, all excited - and then finally started reading it for an Insta-readalong in April. THIS year. I suck. To my surprise, it actually took me a fair while to get into this one, and like Norwegian Wood, I even contemplated (temporarily) DNF-ing it a couple of times. Given how many times that's happened recently perhaps it was my mood rather than the book.

In the end, however, I really enjoyed it - though it had a very different feel to The Shining, spanning states and years. I LOVED getting to know grown-up Danny, struggling with the trauma of his past and the legacy of his father, and trying to use the remnants of his shining for good. His journey back towards the light was the best part of the book. I also loved new character Abra, a little girl with an incredibly powerful shine trying to make sense of it and - again - use it for good.

The antagonists of this particular novel - a band of vampiric travellers called the True Knot - did less for me. The fact that they featured so heavily near the beginning of the book might have contributed to my difficulties with it early on. Their needs were cloudy, their provenance vague and their abilities a little too convenient for me. Aside from their leader - the colossally overdone Rose the Hat - none of them were really fleshed out, made particularly monstrous OR sympathetic.

Still, I liked it. It was satisfying and exciting, as complex as you could expect from a King novel, it had its moments of genuine creepiness and shocking horror, and enough throwbacks to The Shining to keep me on my toes - including one that took me by surprise and made me sob violently into my dinner. Apparently there's an adaptation on the way featuring Ewan McGregor as Dan - and honestly, that is great casting right there. Recommended.

This book also counts for:
- ROOT challenge (in my LT catalogue since October 2013)
- PopSugar challenge, prompt 35 (a past Goodreads Choice Awards winner - Best Horror, 2013)

>214 elliepotten: I've read excerpts for a library program and I don't think I could do the whole book, nevermind the whole series. But I'm glad the experience was a decent one for you. :)

>216 MickyFine: It was a buddy read so we were kind of in it together, haha. TBH I was just curious to see what all the fuss was about - on both sides of the fence. But it was just... fluff. Straight down the middle of the road fluff. Nothing particularly awful about it, nothing particularly great about it either. Which is WAY more than I was expecting, haha. :D

I'm actually reading a Melvin Burgess book right now - he wrote sort of cult Brit YA novels like Junk and Lady: My Life as a Bitch and I thought he was meant to be pretty great - and to my horror, it's WAY worse than 50SoG! Dreadfully written, characters suddenly acting out for no reason, typos and editorial slips every couple of pages...

20. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey (4*) - fiction

Another one of the longest-standing books on my TBR shelves toppled! I'm doing quite well at reaching back into the depths of my book acquiring history this year! I'm still sorting through my feelings about this one; like Lolita, it was objectively accomplished and memorable, but it also had moments that dragged or got jumbled which slowed my reading down a bit and meant I didn't always want to pick it up again at the end of a long day.

Now. I've never seen the film, so all I knew was that it was about a man who may or may not be sane, entering a mental ward and taking on the evil Nurse Ratched. It's actually written from the point of view of 'Chief' Bromden, a giant Native American man who has always been taken to be deaf and dumb but who actually sees, hears and understands everything despite his occasional forays into psychosis. When Randall McMurphy arrives on the ward, all genial humour and effortless machismo, he turns their cowed and frightened lives upside down, raising hell, questioning everything and shattering the fine line between sanity and insanity.

I took to McMurphy immediately - wow, Jack Nicholson is great casting, haha - and once I got Chief Bromden's narrative voice straight in my head and started to understand him better, I grew very fond of him too. I loved the escalating shenanigans between McMurphy and the Big Nurse, and the sudden little insights into how people OUTSIDE the ward perceived what went on in there. The last few pages I had to read at a crawl because every one ripped my heart out and trampled on it, but I wouldn't have had it any other way. I'm looking forward to the movie now - but I really need to be emotionally ready for that. A brilliant, perceptive and unforgettable book, despite the occasionally bewildering moments that threatened to take over near the beginning. Highly recommended!

Quotes:

- "He tells me once about how tired he is, and just his saying it makes me see his whole life on the railroad, see him working to figure out how to read a watch, breaking a sweat while he tries to get the right button in the right hole of his railroad overalls, doing his absolute damnedest to keep up with a job that comes so easily to others they can sit back in a chair padded with cardboard and read mystery stories and girlie books. Not that he ever really figured to keep up - he knew from the start he couldn't do that - but he had to try to keep up, just to keep them in sight. So for forty years he was able to live, if not right in the world of men, at least on the edge of it."

- "While Harding's telling the story he gets enthusiastic and forgets about his hands, and they weave the air in front of him into a picture clear enough to see, dancing the story to the tune of his voice like two beautiful ballet women in white."

- "The sun was prying up the clouds and lighting the brick front of the hospital rose red. A thin breeze worked at sawing what leaves were left from the oak trees, stacking them neatly against the wire cyclone fence. There were little brown birds occasionally on the fence; when a puff of leaves would hit the fence the birds would fly off with the wind. It looked at first like the leaves were hitting the fence and turning into birds and flying away."

- "... McMurphy laughs. Rocking farther and farther backward against the cabin top, spreading his laugh out across the water... Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, to keep the world from running you plumb crazy. He knows there's a painful side... but he won't let the pain blot out the humour no more'n he'll let the humour blot out the pain."

- "Guilt. Shame. Fear. Self-belittlement. I discovered at an early age that I was - shall we be kind and say different?... And I got sick... it was the feeling that the great, deadly, pointing forefinger of society was pointing at me - and the great voice of millions chanting, "Shame. Shame. Shame." It's society's way of dealing with someone different."

This book also counts for:
- ROOT challenge (in my LT catalogue since February 2008)
- PopSugar challenge, prompt 26 (a book with an animal in the title) - I may change this to the stage play prompt at some point though, mix the books around to fit!

Oops, it duplicate posted for some reason. Ignore this message... :)

21. Fifty Shades of Grey, by E.L. James (3*) - fiction

Oh man, I am gonna get SO MUCH STICK for this one so I'm going to get the TL:DR part out the way early, okay? THIS WAS NOWHERE NEAR AS BAD AS I EXPECTED IT WAS JUST MIDDLE OF THE ROAD FLUFF. Whew, there we go.

I buddy read this with an Insta-friend, both of us interested in its unashamedly unoriginal provenance and the sheer level of hype around it and the subsequent movies and spin-offs. He's a maaaan, I'm a womaaaan, and we both thought it was actually surprisingly readable.

Having seen so many quotes and raging opinion pieces and all that stuff, I was honestly expecting it to be more dubious and uncomfortable to read. It wasn't. There were a couple of skeevy moments - the phone tracking near the beginning when Ana gets into trouble, for instance - but there was also a lot of talk about consent, power and control, even if it wasn't perfectly done.

It wasn't that kinky and shocking - but at the same time, the sex scenes were more varied and better written than I had expected. Like Bella Swan, Ana is bland and inexperienced enough for the reader to project herself and her own experiences and fantasies onto, biting her lip and blushing and mulling over everything extensively with her various 'Inner Whatevers' (I was imagining them like the little cartoon Lizzie in Lizzie McGuire) - but she also has flashes of genuine wit and strength. I actually loved the emails between her and Christian (my reading buddy found them too filler-y) because they both had more personality there than anywhere else.

And yes, I kinda want to know where James is going with this. How does Ana end up getting the upper hand (the trailers for the last movie piqued my interest on that front), and what exactly happened to Christian as a boy? I want to know, dammit!

Yeaaaaah. There's not much else to say really. It wasn't fine literature, it was full of tropes and melodrama and repetitive elements - but it was nowhere near the half-a-star unfinishable monstrosity I thought it might be either. I've read far worse, by far more respected writers - and yes, I've just ordered a secondhand copy of the next one. :)

Quote:

- "... immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control things..."

This book also counts for:
- PopSugar challenge, advanced prompt 3 (a book that was being read by a stranger in a public place) - pretty much everyone in the airport and by the pool was reading it the summer it went stratospheric!

>19 PaulCranswick: I didn't even realize there was a sequel! I will have to find that one. Thanks!

Saw One Flew, but maybe I should read the book, and, yes, I also read Fifty Shades of Grey. And #2 and #3, but not #4 which is from his point of view. Enough is enough! LOL

Happy weekend.

I only read the second book in the Fifty Shades series, and I can't remember why that was the one I read. I agree it wasn't nearly as dreadful as it could have been, but I also thought it wasn't nearly as transgressive as the public reaction had led me to believe. I dunno; maybe I've just read a lot of smut?!

>210 elliepotten: I think I liked this one more than you did! I might have even given it 5 stars!!!

>220 elliepotten: :) :) :)
*not judging*

>221 Berly: Haha, yes, I'm not sure I'll read Christian's take. Grey OR Darker. I wonder if she's writing Freed as well, literally completely doing over her own trilogy?!

>222 rosalita: Right?! Even my sister read it (the first book) and was like, "Is that it?!" I expected it to be a lot more out-there sex-wise given the enthusiastic response from so many ladies, and a lot more problematic too given the opposite response from so many OTHER ladies. I didn't find it particularly swung either way tbh. It wasn't perfect but it wasn't awful either.

>223 LovingLit: I SEE YOU THERE. Haha. And a lot of people LOVE Norwegian Wood. I did it as a readalong with a mix of other readers and the die-hard Murakami-ers were NOT happy that it got such a varied response... I thought it was beautifully written, it just didn't get under my skin enough to be a new favourite and I kinda wanted to throw Midori out a window one too many times. :D

>218 elliepotten: I'm popping back in, after missing over 150 posts, so I've missed quite a bit. I used to teach OFOtCN, and so read it once a year for six or seven years (and now have a burlesque routine as Nurse Ratched). so many ideas, but I'll save the lecture and just say I'm glad you've toppled another book, and enjoyed the experience. The film (which I also taught) is an entirely different experience, but equally enjoyable on its own merits. Highly recommended.

>225 London_StJ: I definitely very much enjoyed the experience, it'll be one of my top books of 2018 for sure... and a burlesque Nurse Ratched is just a level of brilliance beyond my imagining, I think. :D

22. The Hit, by Melvin Burgess (2*) - fiction

Well, this was a colossal disappointment. Coming from the man who wrote such cult YA novels as Junk, Doing It and Lady: My Life as a Bitch, I was expecting an interesting and well-executed read – what I actually got was a shambolic and poorly-written novel, riddled with typos, that barely resembled its own blurb.

Marketed as a not-quite-dystopian story about a new drug that gives people the ultimate week of life before it kills them, I’d expected a sort of meditation on what it means to live and die, and how a person’s choices might change when their future is taken away. That doesn’t really happen, because tacked onto this is a whole other mess of a story involving some kind of revolutionary uprising, gangsters and drug manufacture. The main antagonist of the novel isn’t death, it’s a 90s-dressing ‘raving psycho off his meds’, the son of a drug baron, who’s really into kidnap, torture and attempted rape. Fantastic mental health representation right there. At one point he has a conversation with himself that is almost play for play Gollum’s “They stole it from us! Sneaky little hobbitses…” monologue from the end of The Two Towers movie.

It was ridiculous. The whole thing was bad. I mean, I finished it, because I wanted to see what happened, but I didn’t really care about any of the characters, the storylines were jumbled, the motivations and personalities of the characters careened wildly all over the place in a melodramatic and completely unrealistic way… Hot mess. It was a hot mess. Would not recommend.

This book also counts for:
- ROOT challenge (on my shelf since March 2014)
- PopSugar challenge, prompt 4 (a book involving a heist) - two of the characters hold up a liquor store

>227 elliepotten: Sorry to hear it was such a dud. Hopefully your next read is much better!

>227 elliepotten: Bah humbug on that one

>228 MickyFine: Much better ones coming up!

>229 London_StJ: *grumpy fist bump* :D

23. Crash, by J.G. Ballard (3.5*) - fiction

I'm not quite sure what rating to give this one. I'm not quite sure how to DESCRIBE this one. My go-to explanation so far has been "American Psycho, except with car crashes and vehicle parts and bodily fluids instead of murder and cocaine and suit brands." There is a lot of repetition of events and details and things that are otherwise important to the main characters, layered up in such a way that it falls into a kind of hypnotic rhythm that almost makes sense - just like Patrick Bateman's inner monologue.

The basic premise is that a guy has a car accident, falls in with a weird scientist who is OBSESSED with the idea of dying in 'the perfect crash', and is gradually drawn into the world of symphorophilia - car crash fetishism. There is a lot of sex, a lot of death and violence, a fair bit of swooning over dashboard curves, and a whole maelstrom of other WTF-ery, but it kind of works. I got exactly what I expected from it - I appreciated its style and raw energy, but didn't love it. My star rating is veering between a three and a four. Definitely not for everyone, or even most people (as I believe I wrote in my American Psycho review once upon a time), but if you're a fan of Ellis's writing or have an interested in twisted psychology, trauma and deviant sexuality, you might enjoy it. Or appreciate it, at least!

I haven't seen the film (1996, with James Spader and Holly Hunter), or read any of Ballard's other work - yet. Anyone know how they compare?

24. Jason and Medea, by Apollonius of Rhodes (3*) - fiction

I don't have a whole lot to say about this one to be honest! It's one of the tiny Penguin Little Black Classics, and is an extract from The Voyage of Argo (or The Argonautica), as translated by E.V. Rieu. This little section of the Ancient Greek epic covers Jason's attempt to win the Golden Fleece from King Aeëtes, with a little help from the princess Medea. Lots of heartache, romance, heroism and godly meddling, of course, and I DID enjoy stumbling across the 'originals' of some of the mythology woven into Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters, which I read earlier this year - in particular, the Colchis bulls, forged for Aeëtes by the god Hephaestus, which play an important role in this extract.

It wasn't mind-blowing. It wasn't the most dull thing I've ever read. It probably makes more sense as a part of the whole - though Penguin did a good job of picking a fairly self-contained vignette here - and it HAS reassured me that I could probably get on with The Voyage of Argo, even if it took me a while to plough through!

Quote:

- "Speech, by smoothing the way, often succeeds where forceful measures might have failed."

This book also counts for:
- ROOT challenge (on my shelf since March 2015)

Okay, so since that review posted twice and this message/post is suddenly going spare - an update!

Reviews are coming for The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang (reverse Pretty Woman with an Asperger's female lead), Finding Audrey by Sophie Kinsella (girl with extreme anxiety and PTSD trying to recover in madcap home environment), Meg by Steve Alten (prehistoric megashark rises from deep sea trench) and, most importantly, The Very Hungry Caterpillar (a caterpillar is very hungry).

I'm CURRENTLY reading a bunch more books, but I'm also feeling The Need To Tidy Stuff AND I've been in a terrible mood AND I've had a migraine for like three or four days, so they're aaaaaaaall taking a bit of a backseat this week in favour of BookTube vlogs and dusting stuff and generally trying to stay above water. Oh, and raising a baby pigeon called Wanda, who Leo presented to us a few days ago as a gift. There are videos and stuff on my story highlights on Instagram, if any of y'all are on there. She's like a baby dragon crossed with a dinosaur and it's kind of adorable. In a 'what the hell are we going to do with this pigeon when she won't just nap in a shoebox any more' kind of way. :)

Sorry to hear about the migraine but it sounds like life otherwise is nicely full. :)

>233 elliepotten: Any chance on getting a photo of the pigeon??? :D

Sorry to hear about the migraines and general terrible mood and hope things are better.

>234 MickyFine: The migraine has sadly made way for a prolonged IBS flare-up which is making me tired and achy and bleh - buuuuuuuut it's great for reading, haha. I've bought a load of really bland food and set myself up for a few days of R&R (reading and recuperation). There's a readathon on right now as well - reading 25 hours in 5 days - so all in all perfect timing. :)

>235 bell7: If you're on IG they're all on my stories? @bookaddictedblonde is my handle. If not let me know and I'll upload one on here! :)

>236 elliepotten: Boo for prolonged health woes. But yay for lots of reading time. Hope the books you've got stacked up for yourself are utterly enjoyable!

>236 elliepotten: Oh excellent I found you & followed you. (I keep mine a private one 'cause I'm often posting location and photos of my family)

Dang! Migraine and IBS. That is a horrible combination. Hope you recover from both soon. Have fun with the readathon!

>237 MickyFine: I read Northanger Abbey! A little Austen-y goodness was really lovely. :)

>238 bell7: Oh, yay! Wanda has her own section in my story highlights. I should post a new one actually, she's actually flapping so hard now she can lift off the ground and get to a perch or whatever. She'll be out in the shed soon strengthening up!

>239 Berly: Ugh, tell me about it. Today was going to be my first day attempting to actually get back to a fully 'normal' day - and I woke up to a brand spanking new migraine. Exactly two weeks after the last one, grrrrrrr. After a lot of pain (and painkillers) this morning, a pile of toast, a bit of chocolate and twenty minutes watching a sitcom very quietly seem to have hit the spot juuuuuuust enough for me to get a few things done! Stupid head. :(

25. The Kiss Quotient, by Helen Hoang (4*) - fiction

This book was so cute! And super sexy, which I loved. It’s a kind of reverse-Pretty Woman set-up (wealthy woman hires long-term male escort) only with the added twist that our main character, Stella, has Asperger’s Syndrome. Her mother announces that she wants grandchildren, Stella thinks she’s terrible at sex and relationships, so… she hires a 'practice boyfriend'. Outside the box yet simultaneously extremely logical thinking right there. Gorgeous Michael arrives in her world, complete with his own life baggage, and we’re away!

As a romcom, it was adorable and refreshingly filthy, if predictable (not really a bad thing in a novel like this, to be honest), and it did get slightly bogged down near the end in the inevitable ‘big misunderstanding everyone’s stewing on their own failures WHY WON’T THEY JUST TALK TO EACH OTHER FOR FIVE SECONDS’ part, which lost it a star.

Where it really shone for me was the depiction of Asperger’s. For the first time, I was reading a novel about a capable, opinionated, independent autistic woman looking for love and acceptance, exploiting her strengths and aware of her weaknesses. Often her traits are shown to be both – for example, sensory sensitivity being wonderful for playing the piano but terrible in a club environment – and it’s made clear that the behaviour and lack of understanding of other people are often a bigger issue than the autism itself. This is an autistic woman written BY an autistic woman, not someone who’s read an Asperger’s guide then crammed every (largely male-leaning) trait in there to make their character ‘quirky’ – and what a difference it makes. From major character-building moments to tiny details, positive and negative, Stella reflected me back at myself; it was quite an intense experience at times, to the point that it could have been painful had the overall novel not been so full of hope, love and understanding.

All of which is to say, I may be biased because this became quite a personal and vulnerable reading experience for me – particularly since several people I know were reading it at the same time – but I really enjoyed it. It’s spicy and sexy, there’s a bit of a twist to the romcom formula but with enough familiar tropes for it to feel cosy, and the diversity (of Stella’s ASD and Michael’s Vietnamese-Swedish heritage) is beautifully played without being overblown. A great little summer read – and I’m definitely pre-ordering Hoang’s next book, The Bride Test!

This book also counts for:
- PopSugar challenge, prompt 34 (a book published in 2018)

>240 elliepotten: *swoons over Henry Tilney* Seriously, my favourite Austen hero, which is a tough competition.

>241 elliepotten: I've got that one on hold right now and I'm looking forward to giving it a spin when it arrives.

>242 MickyFine: Riiiiight?! He swept straight to the top of my list too. So cheeky and smart and KIND. And yay! It's absolutely filthy, I loved it. :)

>241 elliepotten: You got me with that one, Ellie! Onto the library wishlist it goes.

>243 elliepotten: It doesn't hurt that in my head he is now J.J. Feild.

>244 rosalita: Enjoy... So deliciously blushworthy. :)

>245 MickyFine: HELL. TO. THE. YES. He was JJ Feild in my head aaaaaaall the way through! *insert numerous heart-eye emojis here* I might have to rewatch Austenland soon. Get another fix. :P

>246 elliepotten: He's so charming in both. Do a double feature!!!

26. Finding Audrey, by Sophie Kinsella (3.5*) - fiction

I had really high hopes for this one. The story of a girl who is basically confined to her house and struggling with anxiety after a traumatic event at school, I thought I'd relate to and maybe even take strength from it. Agoraphobic and anxious myself and all...

I mean, I kind of did? I definitely had a lot of 'Yes!' moments reading it. It's written with a lightness of touch which I really appreciated, and I laughed out loud several times (including once unexpectedly when I was reading and walking, just as I passed a fisherman. Dammit. He looked quite startled.) I loved Audrey's brother's deadpan sense of humour, and the scripts that stand in for Audrey's therapeutic exercise - making a documentary about the people in her house - were hilarious, reading more like a sitcom at times.

At the same time, once Audrey's anxiety and desire for recovery were established, it kind of lost its way a little bit. The reader never actually finds out what happened to Audrey, which is clearly a deliberate narrative choice but for me failed to provide any sort of background or context to set her journey against. The love interest is sometimes a bit of an idiot (to be honest he could almost have been nixed altogether), some of the things Audrey does in the name of recovery are questionable, and the whole thing just seemed to happen very quickly and in quite a disjointed way. Still, it pulled together by the end, and the final page did choke me up a bit.

It didn't quite have as profound an impact on me as I expected in the end - but Kinsella's depiction of anxiety and the strange things it does to your mind and body (and relationships) is spot on, so perhaps a younger audience might find the wisdom and reflection of themselves that they need. For me, sadly, it's looking likely to be one of the more forgettable reads of 2018.

Quotes:

- "I've often noticed that people equate 'having a sense of humour' with 'being an insensitive moron.'"

- "When you're tired, just rest. Don't fight it. Your body's mending itself."

- "You'll go up and you'll go down. But your progress will be in the right direction. It is in the right direction. You've come a long way..."

- "... what I've learned is not to fight my lizard brain, but kind of tolerate it. Listen to it and then say, 'Yeah, whatever.'"

This book also counts for:
- PopSugar challenge, prompt 32 (a book from a celebrity book club - Zoella chose this one, apparently...)

I think it might be time to move across to a new thread. Stand by! :)