It Starts and Then It Ends

The Top Ten Tuesday this week - as seen on The Broke and the Bookish deals with the top ten opening and closing line[s], which is a topic that made me go 'ooooh' because whilst the body of a book is obviously of great import, it's how it starts and how it finishes that counts. If it starts awfully then you might not read past that first line and likewise if the ending leaves a bad taste in your mouth then it can taint the whole experience. Also, it made me have to do thinking and remembering because it's not just 'oooh that was a book I liked' it's 'how did it start and how did it finish and were either of those things better than all the other books?' 

What a fun way to spend a lunch break, hey?

And so (never in any particular order):

1.       I Capture The Castle – I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. 
Best opening to a book ever. Possibly. Not only is it a super opening, because let us be real here, who doesn’t want to know what happens after that, it’s also a really great quote. It’s really a really great book too, which helps.

2.       A really great book with a very good end: “Only the margin left to write on now. I love you, I love you, I love you.”

3.       Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. 
It’s an opening that hooks you in, because you want to know more about these Dursley folk and what it is about them that makes them feel they need to proclaim their normality.  More than than though that it’s what it represents: the first sentence to a series of books that has changed lives; that changed mine.

4.       Life of Pi  “Very few castaways can claim to have survived so long at sea as Mr. Patel, and none in the company of an adult Bengal tiger."
I loved Life of Pi; I loved the journey the book took me on and I loved how the conclusion made me question everything I’d read. The ending just felt right.  

5.      Looking for Alaska: "Thomas Edison’s last words were: 'It’s very beautiful over there.” I don’t know where there is, but I believe it’s somewhere, and I hope it’s beautiful'."  
John Green, you’ve done it again and I love you. Looking at this book as a whole, making the last words 'last words', is genius and these last words are perfect.

6.       The Graveyard Book “There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife.”
I love you Neil Gaiman, talk about building suspense from the very first second.

7.       Deathly Hallows: All was well."
*uncontrollable sobbing* [FYI the epilogue will forever displease me but these three words? God, the first time I read this book they slayed me.]

8.       TKAM: He turned out the light and went into Jem's room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning."
I just love the whole thing, honestly. Wouldn’t change a word.

9.       The Book Thief: "A LAST NOTE FROM YOUR NARRATOR. I am haunted by humans."
I am haunted by humans.  I will never be over this book. If you haven't read it, then read it. You need to have read it, and felt it, and lived it to understand why this ending is so heart-hurtingly perfect.

10.   The Blind Assassin: Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." 
 A good opening line makes you want to know the story. Even now, when I know the story, this opening line makes me want to read on. I love this book so hard.

Top Ten Books Dealing with Difficult Subjects

This week’s topic for 'Top Ten Tuesday' (yes, I know it's Friday. Whoops.) was ‘Top Ten Books Dealing with Difficult Subjects’ which plays right into my hands actually, because I read rather a lot of books dealing with difficult subjects. I was practically rubbing my hands together because books that are challenging and emotive and punch me right in the feels? Those are the kinds of books I can’t seem to not read.Often I'll be in a bookshop and Helen will call out to me from the other side of the shop, 'hey, Jo, this is a book about Hitler, you'll love it' and I'll be able to feel everybody's eyes on me as I look around cagily and protesting, like some kind of confused Tinkerbelle: I don't love Hitler, I don't, I don't. 

What I do love is being affected by a book. I don't always want to read a book, smile and say 'well, that was good' before moving onto the next one. I like a dystopia that makes me think; I like characters that are raw and funny and human and palpable; and, I like books that break my heart and stay with me for days.

So, have at it. The best of the bunch (today at least):

 Cancer is a difficult subject. Pretty much every person ever has been affected by it to some degree and you can’t get away from the fact that it sucks. The thing I love about John Green – scratch that, one of the things I love about John Green – is that he doesn’t shy away from that. He doesn’t pretend it doesn’t suck.  He doesn’t pretend it’s all going to be ok.  He lets these two very real characters fall crazy in love regardless. It’s a beautiful story, all the more so because it hurts.

 Wasted: This incredible book about Myra Hornbacher’s struggle with eating disorders is the very definition of a book dealing with a difficult situation. It’s raw and hard-hitting, it pulls no punches. It's so brave too. Hornbacher really does bare her soul inside the pages, so it feels.

 

 The Book Thief is one of my favourite books of all time. Set in Nazi Germany, it broke me into tiny pieces. I love it so much I daren’t re-read it.  I have no words.
  

Rape and racial inequality – does it get much more ‘difficult’ than that? This is a book that changes you – it makes you think, really think. The best time I ever had at school was studying this and I’ve read it countless times since. Also, Atticus.

 Aaah, Perks. This is another one of those books that just made me feel so many things. It’s so so so well done.

   

The Cellist of Sarajevo: If you haven’t read this then you should. This story is that of a cellist – based, I believe, on Vedran Smailovic -  who played for 22 days as snipers fought each other in the buildings surrounding him during the Siege of Sarajevo in the 1990’s. It will make you bone crushingly sad but it will also fill you with wonder.

This book actually broke my heart. I finished it, looked at Iam, said ‘I think I’m sad’ and then just sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. It makes me feel cold just thinking about it. Set in 1941 it follows a teenage Lithuanian girl sent to a work camp in Siberia. It’s incredibly moving; it’s incredibly haunting; it hurts and not even remotely in the good way, it just plain hurts. It feels like ripping open a wound, rubbing salt in it and then jumping up and down on it in spiked shoes. How can I recommend it so highly when I describe it so horrifically? Because it matters, because it matters and because whilst your heart breaks into tiny little pieces and you wonder how the hell this can have happened [ and if you’re me how you didn’t really know: we did a lot on the Nazi Concentration Camps in school but barely even touched on this] you’ll also marel at how love and hope can still bloom even when everything else is so hopeless – the love, the hope, the strength, the determination, the joy. That’s what hurts and that’s what makes this book important.

  Wonder is frank and moving and real and so important. Every child, every teenager, every person should probably read this book. This is a book that matters.

  

Junk won the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children's Fiction Award and rightly so. It's the story of teenage runaways who fall into a life of heroin addiction. It's open, honest and upfront - it was slated at the time I think, by critics saying it was encouraging young people to take drugs.  I was a teenager when it eas published and I think it had the opposite effect. Seriously, what Gem and Tar go through, it's not pretty. I think the people that have a problem with books like this really need to have a greater respect for  the target audicence. Drug abuse is a real issue, we shouldn't hide from it and that we need more books like Junk.

  My Sister Lives on the Mantlepiece deals beautifully with loss and what that means, particularly to children. S'good. I think I blogged about it when I read it actually because I thought at the time that it was good at what it did. Children deal with death - grandparents, pets, maybe even a parent or a sibling and it's a hard thing to understand - it's hard for adults so it's got to be a million times harder for children. Books like this definitely have a place. It also handles the topic of racism pretty nicely too.The best thing I think is that it remains accessible: the subject matter is tough but the story itself isn't and that's really important.

Top Ten Books When You Need Something Light & Fun

[Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted at Broke and Bookish Here is what they have to say: Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created here at The Broke and the Bookish. This meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list complete with one of our bloggers answers. Everyone is welcome to join. All we ask is that you link back to The Broke and the Bookish on your own Top Ten Tuesday post AND sign Mister Linky at the bottom to share with us and all those who are participating. If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Don't worry if you can't come up with ten every time..just post what you can! ]

I stole this idea from Musings of a Bookshop Girl who in turn I believe follows the meme over at Broke and Bookish and thought it sounded like fun.

This is yesterday's TTT, but better late than never, right?

So, here we go: Top Ten Books When You Need Something Light & Fun [in no particular order...]

The Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovoch: 

These books are totally my guilty pleasure. When I've had a ad week, or I'm tired, or I need to not concentrate or let's be real I just need a laugh I turn to Stephanie P,um. Stephanie, grandma Mazur, Ranger - who is super hot inside my head, Joe Morelli the asshat. These books are laugh out loud funny and I love them.
Agatha Raisin - MC Beaton
Pure unadulterated escapism in the Cotswolds.

Angus, Thongs & Full Frontal Snogging et al - Louise Rennison  
Even at 30 years old I still think these books are full of fabnosity. Now, I am away laughing on a fast camel to re-read, because they haven't gotten old yet. I still quote Georgia a lot a LOT.
In fact, on a regular basis I have the following conversation with my BFF.

Me:Helen, do you love me?
Helen:Yes.
Me: Lezzer.

James Herriot
I can remember laughing out loud at these when I was a kid and still love them now.

My Family and Other Animals - Gerald Durrell
See above. A rec from my mum that was totally on the money.

Roald Dahl who surely speaks for himself.

All My Friends Are Superheroes - Andrew Kaufman
This book is clever and witty and adorable and the best way to spend an afternoon.

Weird Things.. - Jen Campbell.
Because JEN and also because sitting in a pub reading snippets of this aloud is the best

The Jackson Brodie series by Kate Atkinson
I love Kate Atkinson and I love this series, Jackson is a literary hero and these books are so easy to read

Alice in Wonderland/Through The Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll
All the love, all the time. ALL THE LOVE. The thing about Alice is that it's absolutely perfectly insane. I love it.

That's it. There's a few past TTT's that I plan to go back and look at so watch this space and let mwe know, of you fancy, what books you think are light and fun.