The Great Gatsby by Francis Scott Fitzgerald

My immediate thought when I finished this book was okay I’m obviously just not intelligent or cultured enough to truly understand what was going on here and then I thought no. I’ve read Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte and loved them. I’ve read Dracula and Frankenstein and understood everything that was going on. This was just not good.

I really don’t get what the big deal about this book is. Maybe when it was written it was a very brave and different novel to what was out there at that time but then why has it lasted through the ages as such a classic? It had nothing truly gripping about it. In fact most of the characters are extremely unlikeable and impossible to connect with.

Maybe we, as a society, have just become so jaded to the possibility of a drug dealer living next door. And then the love story is just plain weird. Daisy seems to have extreme mental issues but then so does Gatsby so I suppose they’re well matched.

I don’t know. I don’t think I ‘got it’ but to be honest I’ve no inclination to either. It was boring and weird and just.. bad.

 

Prisoners of Birth by Jeffrey Archer

For what this is it’s pretty good. For a crime thriller I mean. I’ve only read one Jeffrey Archer book previously and I remember not being a huge fan of it. This was definitely better but it still lacked a certain something.
The story centers around a man who is wrongly convicted of the murder of his best friend and future brother-in-law and sentenced to life in prison. A series of events lead to him escaping prison and seeking revenge on the four men who were the real culprits of the murder in question. It was exciting for sure if not a tad unbelievable. But hey, I read fantasy all the time and don’t give out about he unrealistic factor so I don’t think that’s the thing that really bothers me. It’s the characters.

The four hoity-toity murderers were suitably horrible. They’re the stereotypical ‘my daddy’s rich’ posh side of London, arrogant assholes who think just because of who they are they can do whatever the hell they like and get away with it. Including kill someone.

My problem wasn’t really with them it was with the main character Danny. He bothered me for some unknown reason. I don’t know whether it was the fact that he seemed so uninterested in his child whenever he was around her or the fact that when he did get out he slept with some randomer instead of contacting Beth. He kind of irritated me.
It was still a good book and it was definitely gripping. To be honest I’m not even sure what truly made me dislike this book even a little but I did.

 

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Look I’m obviously a very ignorant person because I hadn’t a clue what this book was ‘really’ about until I looked it up afterwards. I guessed because of the fact that its premise and story are so stupid that it had to have some kind of political or controversial hidden meaning to it to make it onto nearly every Best Books list I’ve ever seen. Yep nail on the head for me it’s based on the Russian Revolution.

So being the ignorant person that I am I have very little knowledge of the Russian Revolution and any of the main players in it. If I did know more then I think this book would have made buckets of sense but as of now I put it down thinking ‘What in the hell did I just read?’ I’m going to look at it as just a story with a good moral I think. I’m going to forget about the whole political meanings and that crap and just look at it for what it is. A story.

It’s kind of depressing to be honest.

The pigs are evil, the horses are hardworking and abused, the sheep are brain washed fools, the dogs are the tough guys and so on and so forth. You know you could kind of apply all these animals to groups of people within society during any time period not just the Russian Revolution so that’s what I did and yes it was scarily correct in a lot of ways.

It was also pretty boring and depressing and I’m sure I sound very ignorant and stupid by saying this but, ya I didn’t like it. At all.

 

A Dance With Dragons Part 2 by George RR Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire #5)

So I’ve finally caught up with everyone else and guess what? It sucks… Big time. 

Not the book. NEVER the book. It’s the sad reality that I now have no more Song of Ice and Fire books to read. Sob…

The thing that worries me about George Martins slow writing speed is the fact that he’s not getting any younger and like… Have you see him? He’s not exactly a walking health advertisement. All I’m saying is that if he pops his clogs before he finishes this series I’m going to be seriously pissed. I’ve invested a lot in these characters, I need to know what happens them! Just, you know, try to look after yourself a bit better George. Maybe if you exercised more you’d have more energy to WRITE?! 

Anyway on a more related note this book was great. There were a few characters that I wish we would have seen more of though and some we didn’t see at all. Jaime and Brienne were barely touched on. Sansa and Peytr we didn’t see any sign of, and also Samwell was not even mentioned. Even though I felt like I missed out on characters I also felt like there was too much going on. I know this sounds very contradictory of me but the one or two chapters from some people just left you wanting more. And obviously it being a George Martin novel there were more questions asked than there were answered. 

It’s confusing okay. I’d need to read over this series at least twice more before I’d be comfortable knowing exactly who’s who and what’s what and also where’s where. The way I work it now is I just take an educated guess and I find I’m right around eighty percent of the time. I’m happy with that percentage.

So Jons still at the Wall trying to get the Wildlings and the Nights Watch to work together in some semblance of harmony. That doesn’t end well for him. Arya is becoming some kind of weird sorcerer/priest/witch doctor/assassin thing over in Bravos and that’s going well enough for her. To be honest she’s one storyline that I have no clue where it’s going. Cersei’s still a complete bitch but she’s been caught in her lies and so is having to fake atonement which, as you can imagine, is really hard for her. Dany has got married to some dodgy Hisdahr guy but then flys away on her crazy dragon to find herself and so ensues a whole drama back in Meereen. With no Dany around to keep the peace the whole town just goes to shit basically. And finally Tyrion, my sweet lovely Tyrion, was… kind of boring in this book. Honestly I expected more from him and felt his storyline was too rushed and vague. I want him to be the ringleader of the entire circus like he was in Kings Landing, instead he begins the novel as a slave and ends it only slightly better. 

It was still a great, exciting book but the world may be growing too large for even Martin to control. Oh and yes he kills people in this novel. And yes they are people you love. I’m sorry for your loss in advance. 

 

 

The Silent Wife by ASA Harrison

This book is nuts. Like seriously nuts. I’m not sure if psychological thrillers are my thing. At times throughout this book I really thought I loved it and at other times I was thinking what the hell am I reading?! 

It was tense. Very, very tense. The author did a fantastic job of getting the reader into the two main characters mindset. Both characters had major issues, however, which made for pretty tough reading as you could kind of feel yourself slipping into those mindsets along with them. That’s possibly because I suffer from mental illnesses myself though so maybe that’s not an everyday reader problem. Not that I’m about to go and hire a hitman to kill my husband or anything! But I can understand how quick a mind can spiral downwards. 

You do empathise with both characters even though they are pretty horrible, messed up humans. He’s a cheating philanderer and she’s a closet psychopath masquerading as a psychologist. However both have reasons behind their strange life decisions and even if you don’t agree with them it’s hard not to understand them at least a little. 

I liked the book and it was definitely one that I read pretty fast as I found it hard to put down. However it was tough going at times and I definitely would not like to read two books in this genre one after the other as I don’t think it would be good for me, mentally. Not bad though. Not bad at all. 
 

 

The Client by John Grisham

So I’m ashamed to admit my copy of this book was sitting on my shelf for the past eighteen years when I stole it from my sister who was the ripe old age of thirteen at the time. It’s clear we were both prolific readers from an early age. I honestly don’t know if I’ve read it before but if I have I don’t remember it so I said I’d take it out and give it a go. 

It was good, it was definitely good. Was it the instant amazing classic that I kind of expected? I’m not sure. John Grisham just has that name, doesn’t he, of being an amazing author. I’ll admit I’ve never read anything from him before so I probably shouldn’t have been so presumptuous. 

Basically the book centres around Mark, an 11-year-old boy, who unwittingly becomes involved in a huge crime involving the Mafia. He witnesses the lawyer of a Mafia killer commit suicide but before the suicide takes place the lawyer divulges some important info to Mark. The location of the body the FBI so desperately need to nail the Mafia for the murder of a U.S. senator. So ensues drama upon drama for poor Mark and his little family. 

I liked the characters of Mark and Reggie. They were instantly likeable and had just enough emotional baggage to be interesting. I had a slight problem with Marks obvious knowledge of a lot of things I don’t think eleven year olds should really have knowledge of. There was a huge amount of ‘I know because I saw it in a movie once’ phrases in this book. How many violent, Mafia-based movies can a tween have seen? 

It was fast paced and exciting though and I never once got bored. However it wasn’t ground breaking. Maybe it was when it was first written but my main feeling after finishing this book was yes this is a good novel but it’s nothin I haven’t read before.