Normal People – by Sally Rooney

5 02 2020

Some people see a book everywhere and think they’re above it. Not me. I see a book everywhere and think, well, if everyone else is reading it, that must mean it’s good! And so I grabbed this in Tesco a couple of weeks ago. I started it Saturday night and finished it tonight, just under four days – not very like me, but I’ve been off work ill, so I had a lot of time!

There are a few things about this book that are a bit different:

  • None of the dialogue is in quote marks, you just have to work out where they’d go.
  • Each chapter starts by jumping forward in time, anything from a few days to a few months (and on one occasion, five minutes). I guess in that sense it had a bit of a feel of One Day about it?
  • The chapters are written in the present tense, apart from the fact that there’s a lot of catching up on what happened in the meantime which is written in the past tense, so it jumps backwards and forwards quite frequently – tricky to start with but you get used to it by the end.

All these put together mean it takes concentration, but I did find it engaging. It’s not often I can read 50 pages of a book without falling asleep, but I did that on three occasions with this book!

Connell and Marianne start the book at high school, his mum is her mum’s cleaner, she’s a bit of a loner, he’s got a load of friends, and they start sort of secretly seeing each other a bit. As usual I don’t want to give too much away, but as we go through the next few years including university, we follow the two of them and, as the blurb says, they “try to stay apart but find that they can’t”.

[There’s a few occasions in the book which get a little graphic, they’re fairly brief when they do happen, but just a warning if that puts you off.]


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The Cross and the Switchblade – by David Wilkerson

1 02 2020

Just over a year ago I read a couple of books which you’d probably describe as Christian Autobiography – God’s Smuggler by Brother Andrew of Open Doors, and The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom about her experiences in WW2 – and found them incredibly compelling, so I was excited to pick up this very well known book about David Wilkerson, who was called by God from his quiet country parish to work with the gangs in 1950s New York.

It’s another tale of God’s provision at just the moment it’s needed, starting with enough money for him to drive to and from New York the very first time, right through to when they’re buying a building to house those in trouble for tens of thousands, whilst having about $100 in the bank. But it’s not just about money – at one point they’re trying to find a gang member’s family to try to get permission to see him in prison, and so pulling their car over and walking down to some boys to ask if they know where they need to go, they find they’ve parked right out the front of his family’s home.

Their mission is to tell these kids about Jesus, but there’s so many hurdles to get over, probably most notably, drugs and knife crime. But the work they manage to do is incredible.

Definitely a book to challenge our levels of faith!


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Northanger Abbey – by Jane Austen

24 01 2020

Before this I’d read two of Austen’s books, but for a long time hadn’t read anymore. But it’s a new year, and I thought I’d give it a go again – picked a shortish one so it was more manageable, and it turned out it was way more readable than I remembered!

I’ve watched the ITV adaptation several times so I had a good idea of the plot, but didn’t remember it being funny! For example, from the very first page: “Her father was a clergyman, without being neglected, or poor, and a very respectable man, though his name was Richard – and he had never been handsome.”

This is the story of Catherine Morland, who is taken by family friends to Bath and while there meets both the Tilneys and the Thorpes. The first half of the book focuses on the friendships with these, while the second half takes her to Northanger Abbey as a guest of the Tilneys. Catherine has read a lot of Gothic Horror novels and has something of an overactive imagination, which in that environment gets her in a bit of trouble!

I like how Austen on a few occasions in the book takes a breath and talks to the reader; at one point saying how she isn’t going to do something that most novel writers do, at another referring as to how few pages are left and so obviously we’re near the happy ending, and ending with a question for the reader of: “I leave it to be settled, by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.”

It’s an Austen novel, so you know there’s going to be class, romance, drama, and a happy ending, but it was a good read, I really enjoyed it – the idea of picking up another Austen is less scary now!


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The Infographic Bible – by Karen Sawrey

14 01 2020

Who doesn’t love a good infographic? And a whole A4 hardback book of them – lovely! The book works its way through the Bible from beginning to end, but with interludes for some that cross the whole book.

The font is very small in some places, I had to decent lamp if I was reading it in the evenings, and sit by a window in daytime, but I guess it was that, remove some of the information or release an A3 book, so I think this was the best option! But definitely remember your glasses!

I read the book from cover to cover, but you could easily just pick it up and open a random page. Definitely was more interested in some than others, I found when some were really text heavy I’d just read headers and take the gist, but all of them were so brilliantly presented and easy to understand.

They’re good at quoting sources at the bottom of each page, and there are always keys to help you follow what’s being shown to you. Also, I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but when it went from Old Testament to New Testament, the pages went from matt to gloss!

If you’re into infographics and the Bible, there’s not much to dislike about this!


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The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse – by Charlie Mackesy

27 12 2019

I started to see this book everywhere late autumn this year as I started my Christmas shopping, then the illustrations started popping up all over social media, and really enjoyed them! The author’s instagram account has loads of pictures from the book and more, and I’ve put a couple of examples below.

I put it on my Christmas list, and my brother and his girlfriend got me a copy! I read it in one sitting on Christmas day, in maybe only 20min! It’s very illustration heavy, at most a sentence or two on each page, and the paper is quite thick, so it’s much shorter than it looks.

There is a very loose story going through it, but pretty much each page stands alone as it’s own thought, or even piece of art!

I really loved this, would recommend it! It’s the sort of thing you can probably read several times and get something different out of it each time.


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The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man – by Jonas Jonasson

23 12 2019

This is the sequel to The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window And Disappeared – he certainly enjoys a long title!

Jonas Jonasson actually never intended to write this book – here’s an excerpt from the forward:


“I’d already said everything I wanted to say about what was perhaps the most miserable century ever. The idea had been that if we reminded one another of all the shortcomings of the twentieth century, maybe it would make us better at remembering and less inclined to make at least those mistakes again. I packaged this message of mine with warmth and humour. Soon the book spread all over the world.

It sure as hell didn’t make the world a better place.”

We start where the last book left off, on an island in Indonesia with Allan and Jules and a fair amount of cash! However around Allan’s 101st birthday things start to get complicated again and before you know it, we’re off on a North Korean ship with a load of uranium…

Where the first book ran two timelines, this just follows from this point onwards, yet we bump into several world leaders and all sorts of trouble. Allan has found himself “a black tablet” which he fast becomes obsessed with, and infuriating for the others he’s with. He’s a brilliant character, ridiculously laid back in even the most stressful situations.

The whole book is just silly funny, even though it sounds so political, it’s all just a bit ridiculous – in a really warm way.


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Postscript – by Cecelia Ahern

4 11 2019

When I was at uni I read P.S. I Love You, to which this is the sequel. I’ve never really got emotional at books but one day as I sat reading the book on the bus back from campus, I ended up in tears! The film was never as good, they changed way too much. But when I heard Cecelia Ahern had written a sequel, I was very excited to read it (and I read everything she writes anyway!). I was going to behave and wait for paperback, but then my friend very kindly lent me her copy!

P.S. I Love You was about Holly in her grief following the premature death of her husband, Gerry, from a brain tumour, and the monthly letters he left her. In this book we’re seven years on, she’s coping much better, she’s met someone and been with him for two years, things are going well. She ends up on a podcast to tell her story, and a group of people get in touch with her, each of whom is suffering from a terminal illness and wants her help to do something similar to that which Gerry did for her. The book follows her journeys with these people while she also tries to work out if it’s making things worse for her, if it’s affecting her relationship.

By the nature of the plot it’s a sad book, getting to know people and then losing them, but it really was still a warm and comforting read with a lot of hope.

Given that it was probably about 11 years or so since I last read it, it took me a while to remember where things had been left, but you don’t need to have read the first to read the second, it works on it’s own if you want it to.


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Looking For Alaska – by John Green

21 10 2019

I read a load of John Green when The Fault In Our Stars was a big thing, and at the time bought several of his books, this one has sat there a while, but at only 260 pages it seemed a good one for my Dark Materials break!

It’s a John Green book, so of course it’s got teenagers and drama. Miles hasn’t got many friends at school in Florida, so at 16 goes off to boarding school in Alabama. He has a thing about famous peoples last words, and reads a lot of biographies to collect them. He quickly makes friends with people very different to his previous life (think stereotypical smoking and drinking), one of whom is a girl called Alaska, who is a bit unpredictable. I won’t go any further because of spoilers, but I read this in 3 or 4 days – crazy fast!

A couple of days ago I saw an advert on TV for a series they’ve made of the book which literally went live on Friday and is available on iPlayer, so that’s something else to fit in!

He writes books that are so easy to read and just enjoy. I have one more of his books on my shelf, so I think I’ll be picking that up again in the not too distant future.


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The Subtle Knife – by Philip Pullman

14 10 2019

Having read Northern Lights a few months ago, I thought it was best to pick up the sequel before I forgot too much about it! I’m also unsure if the new TV series covers just the first book or the full trilogy!

The first book was set in one universe, this one moves into 3, and what I found really helpful, was that in the margin of each page was a little icon that related to the universe you were currently in, so if you picked up the book you could remember where you were – or sometimes even mid-reading!

There was one point around a third to halfway through where I very nearly gave up – I’d read the same page so many times over several days and just couldn’t get into it to get past it, but I’m glad I carried on. That bit was in what felt like a bit of a side plot that at that point I just didn’t care about yet, but it was needed for later on.

This book left off on what felt like an even bigger cliffhanger than the first one, and I’ve had a lot of people advise me when I was struggling to carry on with this book, that this is one you just had to get through to get to the third which sounds like it might be deemed the best of the three, so I’m looking forward to picking up the next one! Might just find something else to read first to help divide the books in my head so they don’t all merge into one 🙂


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The Little Mermaid and other fairy tales – by Hans Christian Andersen

27 08 2019

My brother and his girlfriend live in Denmark, and got me this beautiful edition of these fairy tales for my birthday this year. (They do a few other books in this range if you’re interested). It contains illustrations but also things that fold out or move to make it more interactive.

It contains twelve of his stories, some of which I knew, some I thought I knew, some I knew the title, and some I knew nothing about at all:

  1. The Little Mermaid
  2. The Nightingale
  3. The Ugly Duckling
  4. The Swineherd
  5. The Tinder Box
  6. The Princess and the Pea
  7. The Emperor’s New Clothes
  8. The Red Shoes
  9. Thumbelina
  10. The Steadfast Tin Soldier
  11. The Little Match Girl
  12. The Snow Queen

Some of them turned out to be more violent, gruesome or heavy than the maybe filtered versions we know – there is very little of The Little Mermaid in the Disney film of the same name. She’s not called Ariel, she has her tongue cut out, she goes to kill the prince with a knife in his sleep, all sorts of chaos!

It’s a really beautiful book and really interesting to read the original versions of the stories.


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