Skip to main content

Books I pretend to read and that make me laugh #bookadayuk

Ok so blog was lost to me yesterday due to work commitments but I’ve managed to steal 5 minutes today to write about yesterday’s bookaday and todays.

Yesterday was a book ‘I pretend to have read’. Now regular readers of this blog will know I always finish a book once I start it so there isn’t an obvious candidate as if I waived about War and Peace on the bus but accidently started to read the first page then I would simply have to read until the end, which I did.

I’m not a snobby reader, well I tend not to like classic chick lit genre but I certainly love a good Jilly Collins, jumped on board with the Hunger Games and read all of the Shades of Gray series (really not worth it). So, whilst I would like some day to have read Ulysses, Paradise Lost, The Complete Works of Shakespeare and Les Mis. backwards twice. I have no desire to pretend that yes I have read them and weren’t they very good!

So what can my nomination be? Like a light bulb switching on inspiration hit. I have not one but two books I like to think I have read but haven’t actually. They are (drum roll please) Watership Down and The Hobbit. Shock horror! I can’t possibly have not finished a book and then pretended to can I? Well no because, you see, when I was younger I went on a couple of European holidays with my auntie and uncle and my cousin. They had in their car a tape player, and in that tape player they inserted audiobooks of which they only had two which were (yep you guessed it) Watership Down and The Hobbit. Now Tolkein is not very sparse with his word content but even with his helping hand the number of times the two tapes were repeated on our 24 hour journeys to Switzerland and the South of France were numerous. Not only did my cousin and I became word perfect the latter tape had such an effect on my impressionable younger cousin that he has never fully recovered and now wears his hair long, owns a bow and arrow and would like to be an elf!

So if someone happens to mention Watership Down I freely comment how heartbroken I was and tell everyone who will listen that I haven’t a clue how Peter Jackson has made the Hobbit into three films when really it’s not that long but I hold my hands up and admit, I've never read them and in view of the fact I can still quote from Watership Down (“whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you”) I’m honestly not sure if I ever will.


Today’s book a day is a book that ‘makes me laugh’. Obvious choice for this one, the recently read The Rosie Project. It’s not too often a book makes me laugh but this one did. What made it stand out was the fact that it had so much more to give than just a few chuckles. Rather than repeat myself here I refer you to my previous blog on the very book (see post from February 2014)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Mount by Jilly Cooper #inbetweeny

I'll start this blog with a warning, this post does contain spoilers. So if you haven't read the book then please don't read this blog, yet. Of course you should read this post just wait a little while until you've read the latest installment of Rupert Campbell Black (RCB). Warnings out of the way I'll begin. I was massively looking forward to reading this book having hugely enjoyed the previous ones. RCB is my (not so) secret trashy pleasure and has been for many years. This book had all the ingredients of a classic, pages of wonderfully named characters, a few tortured souls and of course RCB with all his horses, dogs and now grandchildren. The book got off to a good start full of characters from old but also plenty of new ones to mix it up a bit. The horse's really played a starring role in this book but I also really loved Gav and at first Gala. Yep only at first as she went strongly down hill and I bet you can guess why. RCB. Here is where I fell o

Stitch Up (A Best Defence Mystery) by William McIntyre #BlogTour

OK hold on everybody for MY FIRST EVER BLOG TOUR!!!!!!!!! Did I like it? Did I manage to read it in time? Did I forget to post my review when I should have done? Yes, yes and (thankfully) no! Stitch Up is the ninth in the Best Defence Series featuring Scottish defence lawyer Robbie Munro. As a solicitor not a policeman who successfully runs his own law firm, is recently married and has a daughter the book immediately set itself apart from your standard crime thriller. The book begins with Robbie's ex girlfriend asking him to investigate the apparent suicide of her new boyfriend (awkward!). At the same time a convicted child-murderer is attempting to have his conviction quashed (if I remember the term correctly Mr McIntyre?) claiming Robbie's dad ex sergeant Alex Munro planted key evidence at the scene of the crime (double awkward!). I liked the two stories running along side each other which kept the pace of the book moving swiftly forwards. In real life McIntyre is

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray and a 30 a day habit.

Nothing like challenging oneself in the New Year and rather than giving up alcohol and only eating steamed kale the Book Club decided on reading the 900 odd page doorstop that is Vanity Fair . I ordered it at once and (using something vaguely like maths) worked out I needed to read 30 pages a day to have it read in time for the meeting. I was surprisingly undeterred by this and thought if nothing else I could use the book as a dumbbell when working off the chocolate orange.   I found I actually liked hitting my 30 a day target (much like all the other New Years' resolutioners like hitting their ten thousand steps) and it motivated me to just squeeze a few more pages in here and there so I was ahead of target. I haven’t really approached a book this way before but then it is longer than my copy of War and Peace and there are over 50 books on my bookshelf waiting to be read (now in 'to read' order due to much prating about over Christmas).        I didn’t know anything a