The Forgotten Army - Brian Minchin

I'll keep this short because I didn't like it at all.





I'm a life long Doctor Who fan and I like my Doctor Who dark, scary, original and imaginative. This wasn't. It was quite the opposite. It's pretty terrible.




It isn't particularly well written and apart from the main two characters, most of the characters are one dimensional, walking talking cliches. It didn't have me on the edge of my seat and it isn't a page turner.


I wanted to throw this book out of a window.



But the main problem with 'The Forgotten Army' is the plot. It's completely unrealistic. Childishly so.
In any book, especially Sci-Fi, you can get away with a lot. But at the end of the day a plot has to be realistic within itself or the reader will just won't buy it. And I have seen CCB puppet shows with a more realistic plot than this. It went from the sublime to the ridiculous.




I won't give any examples because I don't want to even relive what I've just read.






Bizarrely enough the finale was okay. If only the rest of the book was written in the same manner.




So basically two good things about this book. The ending and the fact that it was only 248 short pages long.





I don't think I've given a 1 star for a long time but here you go.





1/5

Gulliver's Travels by Johnathan Swift

I'm guessing everybody over a certain age has heard of Gulliver's Travels but not everybody has read the actual book. I've had a copy since I was around 10 and it's the one with the lovely red cover as in the picture above. But I never got round to reading it until now and I'm a lot older.



I think part of the reason I never read it as a kid is because it's not necessarily an easy book for a kid to read and even now I can't imagine many kids enjoying it.



It's split into two parts. The first part is where Lemuel Gulliver finds himself washed up on the coast of Lilliput, the land of tiny people. And the second part he ends up in the land of the giants, Brobdingnag. Gulliver's Travels is way ahead of it's time for a book written in 1726 and is probably one of the oldest book I've ever read. It is imaginative and pretty clever in the way it describes Gulliver's experiences. You wouldn't really know it was written so long ago if it wasn't for a few places where the book gets bogged down in political and social commentary and those parts are pretty hard to read.





On the whole it's a pretty cool book and I enjoyed it as an adult. It's very different from today's Children's Books. There isn't a lot of action and excitement and I'm not sure what children today would think about it, but I liked it. It's imaginative and clever more than it is exciting. And if you like a bit of political satire and commentary there is a huge chunk of it in this one but I preferred not to get bogged down in all of that. Of the two stories I enjoyed the second and least famous one the most.


It's nice to eventually get to read this beautifully bound book that I've owned since childhood. It really is a lovely cover. And for me its a 4 out of 5 Stars.

Misery by Stephen King

A best selling Author get's kidnapped by his number one fan.






I don't know why it's taken me so long to get hold of this. As a life long Stephen King fan I guess I never really fancied this one. It's also probably got something to do with the hype that the book and the film generated. Hype usually puts me off a little. Even before I turned the first page I had a feeling I wouldn't enjoy it. I mean a guy gets kidnapped and locked into a room? How can you spend over 300 pages reading about that?



I was thankfully wrong. This is superb. And I think it may well have toppled 'Bag of Bones' as my all time favourite King novel. I think the guy that invented the phrase 'a real page turner' should read this book. I read the first 30 or so pages and fell in love with it and I hoped it wouldn't become one of those books that start well and fizzle out. It didn't fizzle out. It gripped me from the beginning and didn't let go.


This is Stephen King at his best. It is creepy, horrifying and brilliantly written. It didn't keep me on the edge of the seat, I was hiding behind the sofa. It has everything I want in a book from the beginning to the spine tingling finale.






Only Stephen King could write something so gripping about a guy that is essentially stuck in a room.





5/5

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Set in the deep American South this follows a young girl's journey into adulthood amidst a world of inequality, racial tensions and poverty. Abused by the man she calls 'Pa' and separated from her devoted sister, Celie struggles to carve out a future of her own.




In many ways I like this book. I like the characters, the clever way Alice Walker integrates and uses the unique voice of the main character and it is also quite educational. The story kept my interest all the way and overall it's not a bad read.




But I did feel kind of disconnected from the story. You know sometimes when you read a really good book and you feel like you are not just reading a book but actually 'consumed' by it? I didn't get that with this book. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's because there is so much historical hype about the Color Purple and whenever there is hype, genuinely I tend to be a little disappointed. Or maybe it's because this book isn't really aimed at me at this point in my life. I do feel like it's more of a woman's book and even though I'm not exactly a blokey bloke, maybe I'm still not the intended reader.





But I also think part of the reason I felt detached from this one is because there are simply too many characters to hold on to. I found myself struggling to keep up with what I can only describe as a literary version of ' Who's who.'  There are so many characters in this and so many locations it's not easy to keep up. It's not helped by Alice Walker's use of the 'Mr --' thing instead of just using people's surnames. But maybe that's the kind of thing the main character would have done in those days.







I did like this book but I didn't love it. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I had read it when I was younger.




4/5

Hard Water by Jean Sprackland

First published by Cape Poetry in 2003.






I have always had a love hate relationship with poetry but I still try to read a handful of poetry books a year. This jumped out at me at our local library and it's a handy quick filler of a read.





This honestly has to be one of the best collections of poetry I have read. There's not really a damp squid in there. Jean Sprackland's writing is fresh and quirky and, in places, reassuringly northern. Her writing reminds me of Billy Collins who is still my favourite modern day poet.






 A few notable crackers: Hard Water, Caravan, Shocks, The Man Who Comes To Collect The Bottle Bank, The Light Collector and the unique and disturbing A Baby In The Filing Cabinet. I'd say the Light Collector is the pick of the bunch.







Overall a fab collection of poems.








4/5

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

The Buddha in the Attic recounts the trials and tribulations of the many Japanese women who travelled to America in search of a better life, clutching the photos of their new husbands to be, in the early 1900's. Some of them were as young as 12. Some of them were seasick. Some of them never made it across.





I've never read a book written in First Person Plural and I didn't know anything about the Japanese picture brides before I read this book. It's a book that shouldn't work. It should be boring. It is borderline Non-Fiction and there isn't really a traditional plot to grab hold of. But it does work. A lot of that is down solely to the wonderful prose that Julie Otsuka weaves the story with. Every line is significant. Every line is powerful. Every line is totally gripping.


The story is an eye opener. It's educational. It is tragic and inspirational. It's just the right length for the story that it tells and I think the biggest compliment I can give the Buddha in the Attic is that is has given me something different. It is unique in a great way and I can't ask for more than that.







5/5

Helen's Babies by John Habberton

There is something I find incredibly annoying about listening to Librivox recordings. I can't quite put my finger on it but I don't think I've ever listened to one that I didn't find annoying.



This is an old book and it's perfectly harmless. It's a book for children or a book for families, which ever way you want to look at it. It's about a well groomed city guy who spends a week looking after his sister's young children. He initially finds the children annoying but he ends up literally falling in love with them. They get up to all kinds of scrapes and mishaps but forgive me, I wasn't rolling around on the floor in hysterics.



I just found it boring. Maybe if I had read the book instead of listening to a woman reading it to me I would have appreciated it more. I just found her annoying, especially when she was reading the children's voices. I just wanted to chuck this book-less book at her!





Not my cup of bovril.




2/5