Cramlington Book Club

I have wanted to read  Alice for ages stumbling across it on Twitter and purchasing Lost Boy, the Peter Pan reworking, at the same time. I mention reworking but sequeal to Alice in Wonderland is probably a more accurate description of Henry's tale. I thought it a very clever idea - a tea party gone wrong leaving Alice mentally disturbed/traumatised by what has happened to her. The White Rabbit is present as is the Cheshire Cat , although as evil gang lords there is little to liken them to Disney's interpretation of the Carroll classic. Whereas I loved the concept, I thought the book floundered in the actual telling of the story. There seemed to be a lot of walking around interspersed with very brutal, descriptive passages. Some very powerful scenes (particularly the Alice/Hatcher scene at his grandmother's house upon their escape) followed by some very weak sections. The villains were portrayed as pure evil yet their confrontations with Alice and Hatcher were tame in c...

I was inspired to read this by reading over the shoulder of someone on a sun lounger last, last summer. It was about World War 2, was considered a classic and was very slim (bonus) so I jetted home and ordered it from Amazon only for it to gather dust in my endless pile of books to be read. Much reorganising of the book shelf later meant that Slaughterhouse 5 was suddenly next on my list and I picked it up with glee. It's funny how sometimes you can breeze through 900 and odd pages (well not quite breeze but something up there with wind related progress) yet sometimes you can struggle through a mere 177. Vanity Fair was the former, Slaughterhouse 5 was the latter. In fact if it hadn't been only 177 pages I think I would have considered whether to give it up as part of my recent change of heart when it comes to reading 'the book, the whole book and nothing but the book' (see my post  'to read or not to read' ). ...

The gloriously named The Stars' Tennis Balls was randomly purchased for me one Christmas. I like Stephen Fry from QI and such but wasn't familiar with any of his writings and had never heard of this particular book. I can only emphasise (again) how good it is to read books outside of your norm, released some years ago now and without film rights I was never going to stumble across this at Sainsburys in the 'Top 10' book or DVD section yet what a find! The book is unlike any I have read previously, twisting and turning so that I still had no idea how it would end by the last chapter. It started off as a teen love story (which I found quite bizarre coming from Fry) graduated to an upper class school boy rivalry story to something very dark and mentally disturbing. Throw in some lectures about the differences between strategy and tactics in chess (very different apparently) and you have a very original take on revenge. It was quite gruesome ...

I was aware  'Salem's Lot (short for Jerusalem's Lot did you know?) was about vampires but that's about it Whereas most vampire/horror stories can be very far fetched I found this one to be quite sensible, if there can be such a thing as a sensible vampire story. The characters were aware very early on as to the possibility that the strange occurrences were down to the supernatural - everyone has heard of Dracula, or at a push Twilight, so why wouldn't people put two and two together? It was understandable that most people's initial reaction was disbelief and tried to let science and machines explain the suspicious circumstances. Yes there were certain stereotypical moments 'lets split up, what a good idea!' but not enough to make me shout out loud in exasperation plus it was all set against your typical American small town that King just does so well. The characters were good and plentiful. The reader given subtle reminders as...

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 kno...

Well what a book! I don't quite know how to review The Night Watch without revealing too much of the story line. This isn't a plot based book as such and so to gloss over what little there is in this blog might take something away from the reader which I don't want to do. The book was lent to me from a friend (who has an excellent blog by the way:    https://beverleyhasread.wordpress.com/ ) but to be honest I didn't really fancy it from the blurb which I thought was the weakest part of the book. However I had previously read two of Waters' books ( Tipping the Velvet and the excellent Fingersmith ) and with it being strongly recommended I set to work. The book skips about in London during the second world war and is centred around 3 women and 1 man. It took my a while to get to grips with everyone and it was strange to have a man interspersed within the women's stories. However Duncan's story fitted into the overreaching arc of the book and provided an...

I have always always finished a book once I had started it. Recently however I have ended up with a few books that weren't ones I had chosen, had been on my shelf for a while and felt more like a chore to read and I found myself alternating between ones I wanted to read and ones I felt I had to read just to get them off my shelf. Now this approach sometimes throws up some blinders ( On Beauty by Zadie Smith an excellent example) however it also throws up some duds (I'm not naming names, you are on my blog and can read my previous reviews). Anyway I've started to question why I always plough on with a book. The book club certainly don't, some without a moments hesitation yet I have always ploughed on in the eternal hope that all will come good and it will be worth it in the end. Those more psychologically inclined could take this as I'm an optimist. When it came to reading An Air That Kills an English detective story based in 1950's about a ...