If We Were Having Coffee

So I saw an excellent blog post recently, and I feel like a terrible person because I can’t remember where and I wanted to link back to it so as not to just be an idea stealer. Although, I’m pretty sure they’d seen the idea someplace else anyhow so perhaps it’s ok, and it’s not like I’m taking credit for it anyway, just sort of saying ‘kudos, that’s awesome, I’m going to have a go at that….’

The feature was called If We Were Having Coffee and it’s pretty much just a chance for me to talk at you about things that are on my mind that may not always be book related because sometimes I like to try and shake things up a bit. Who knows, if I like it I might make it a semi regular thing. I say semi regular because hello look at my blog please, there’s nothing regular about it: I am shamefully sporadic at best.

A Quick(ish) Catch Up

I’m pretty grumpy today, mostly because it’s freezing cold and I’m not caffeinated enough and also because I got up late and didn’t have time to straighten my hair (think Hermione circa CoE) – or I guess I could have straightened my hair but then I would have had to drive to work and I’m trying not to drive to work because I keep eating Crème Eggs and large(r) lunches and If I’m going to do that I need to do walking and so I’m sat in the office in a hoody with mahoosive hair and that’s fine, normally but today I got an unexpected visit from a supplier I am in a battle with and not only did I not know they were coming, the girl was also all high heels and smart suit and perfect hair and makeup and I’m looking the most unprofessional ever and felt totally wrong footed. I’m grumpy about it. Glamourous people scare me. & holy run on sentence, batman. & I have one of those hurty pieces of skin sticking out of my nail bed, you know the ones? OUCH. Ill probably rip it off later and it will bleed and hurt more and I’ll have regrets. Such is life.

Blog Tour: Burned and Broken

I’ve always liked a good detective novel. I used to power through the Dalziel and Pascoe books like nobody’s business when I was a teenager and OK, maybe I don’t read as much crime fiction these days as I used to, but I still like to get all engrossed in one every now and then. That’s why I jumped at the chance to get involved in this blog tour, actually: Burned and Broken looked like being A Good Read. It was nice to go back to a police procedural, in this world of the psychological thriller.

Blog Tour: A Boy Made of Blocks

I don’t mind telling you that I liked this book a whole lot.

I also don’t mind telling you that actually I was a tiny bit unsure that I would, at first. I don’t really know why that is, because let’s be real here: look at the blurb. It is entirely up my street. But I was dubious. I think perhaps it was the title? I don’t know. And it doesn’t matter really because I read it and I liked it a whole lot and that’s the best ever isn’t it? When you love something that you kind of really didn’t think you would?

Blog Tour: Relativity Review

Things I know, both about myself and about book blogging: I should probably never say no to a book.

Which makes it sound like I said no to this book. 

I didn’t. 

When the email landed in my inbox very nicely asking if I was interested in taking part in the blog tour for Antonia Hayes' novel Relativity, I absolutely said yes. That's kind of my (long and convoluted) point: that I should always says yes to all the books even if I know little about them because there's always a chance that doing just exactly that will make me vair happy. This book made me happy. It made me laugh and it made me a tiny bit teary sometimes and it made me angry and sympathetic and all kinds of conflicted and pretty much just a whole spectrum of unexpected emotions. I thing that’s A Good Thing though. I like books that do that to me: feelings.

So. Relativity. Lemme talk at you about it for a little minute.

Book Review: Sirens

Let us talk for a moment about a book that’s released this week and that really, actually, I think everybody should probably be reading.

Joseph Knox’s debut Sirens is a book  I think everybody should be reading. Unless you are a person who values sleep above all else. If you’re that person then maybe this book isn’t for you because I am telling you now: you will not be able to put it down. You won’t. Actually, even if you are that person, read this book. You’ll be immersed but just trust me on this: sleep is so totally overrated anyhow. I was hooked, and not just because it’s set in Manchester and so has that air of familiarity about it. I do so like a book that’s set in my sort-of neck of the woods. I like when I recognise places and names and landmarks.

I do not like when I am driving through Manchester late at night, with this book not quite finished and as such at the forefront of my mind and the road is closed and I am sent on a diversion through dark and dingy back streets that look like they could have stepped right off the pages of this book with Beetham Tower all imposing in the background and I am slightly freaked out. Not at all. Although it’s a testament maybe to how good this book is, that it got under my skin and lingered there; that even when I wasn’t curled up reading it, I couldn’t leave it alone.

A (Small) Bookish Catch Up

Today we are going to catch up. And by catch up I mean I am going to talk about Chris Cleave’s Everyone Brave is Forgiven which I loved more than I have loved anything for a long long time and also Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children which I should have read a long time ago and which freaked me the hell out and the new book by Jennifer Niven which I have mixed feelings about. Get comfortable lovelies.

I love Chris Cleave. Or at least I loved the only other book of his I’ve read (The Other Hand) so I was super excited to get my hands on a copy of Everyone Brave, and the proof is so pretty too, all black cover and red pages and my copy has a signature. Lush.

It’s a really really beautiful book on the inside too this one, it doesn’t just look good, it tastes good too, I’m not even kidding: ‘…a galaxy of seeds that crackled in his mouth like bereaved punctuation.´ well, just seduce me with your pretty words why don’t you Mr. Cleave.

And it’s such an incredible story. It’s set in WWII and follows young socialite Mary, determined to make a difference, Zachary a little boy who can’t be evacuated because he’s black  and nobody wants him and art restorer Alistair who finds himself in the army and it hurts and it’s wonderful and it’s witty and hurty and so freaking smart. It’s just….it’s kind of mind-blowingly good, this epic novel full of love and war and loss and bravery.

In which I am thankful for my peepers.

So it's been a pretty rough two weeks really, which if you follow my Twitter and/or Instagram (or know me away from the internet) you probably already know because I am ashamed to say I have been wallowing in a sea of self pity expressed mostly via social media. I know. I've been That Person. And I'm sorry.

It's been a scary time though. I've had eye problems like I've never known before. A corneal ulcer - or ulcerative acanthamoeba keratitis if you wanna be fancy; I got the eye doc to tell me that yesterday  - which was actually just the physical manifestation of a really nasty eye infection that started on my cornea and worked its way inside my eye. I know, right?
It hurt like a bitch (seriously I never knew my eyes could hurt like that) and my vision was really messed up (is still pretty shit truth be told) and everything was rubbish and for a few days there I was genuinely terrified I was going to lose the sight in my right eye. Genuinely terrified. And not just because I was being a DQ either; it was a genuine possibility.
There have been trips to the eye doctor and all manner of tortuous tests and antibiotic eye drops that I had to apply every hour - even through the night, which, well not so much fun at all  - and other drops which paralysed my eye and it's pretty much been a horror from start to finish.

However, I got the all clear yesterday. The infection has gone and the scarring is only at the edge of my iris which is as good as it can be, really and things are so much better, I just have to wait (and hope!) my vision rights itself over the next few days and I am so relieved, you have no idea.
And the whole thing has just made me realise how lucky I am you know, not just to have my sight (but oh wow, that. I will never ever take my sight for granted again) but that I have the people in my life that I do. I really am the luckiest: my parents who drove me to appointments and sat in on consultations and loved me and made it so clear that actually you're never too old to need your Mum and Dad; and the not family members, the people who called me multiple times a day just to check in and who talked me down when I was verging on hysteria, who made me laugh when actually I just wanted to cry, who drove me to the pharmacy at 9 in the morning on a Sunday, who drove me to the hospital at 9 in the morning on a Wednesday with a one year old in tow, and sat in the waiting room and didn't cry, who took me for brunch and pub lunch and pretty much kept me going, who listened and talked and rationalised and text and who figuratively 'stroked my hair and told me I was pretty.'

I am SO lucky. So lucky. I have amazing people in my life and I haven't lost my sight and actually, my life is pretty damn good and I am so grateful. So very grateful.

I guess my point is be grateful for the little things, appreciate the people that are there for you - even when times are hard and you're not at your best. Especially then - and look after your eyes. Please look after your eyes. And for the love of all that is good, don't sleep in your contacts because corneal ulcers suck.

Review: The Cursed Child

Holy Smokes but this review has taken all of time to write. Seriously, I cannot actually remember the last time I found it hard to put my feelings about a book into words. I mean I know I flail sometimes and I have kind of made the incoherent keysmash into an art form of my own (and I am eternally sorry for any and all posts that are basically just READ THE DAMN BOOK) but I hardly ever sit and just think ‘well then.’

Thing is, ‘well then’ is pretty much what I did think when I got to the end of The Cursed Child and now I don’t know quite what to do or say. WHAT SHALL I DO OR SAY?

I’m not going to talk about it lots. I could, and maybe I should. But I’m not going to, partly because see above and partly because I know some people haven’t read it yet and I don’t want to be SPOILER GIRL. I’m basically going to say that I have feelings and they’re mixed and a lot of that might be down to what Harry Potter means to me, and how despite myself my expectations for The Cursed Child were unrealistically high. So high though, you don’t even know. They were always going to be. Harry Potter owns a part of my soul, my love for this franchise knows no bounds. For all of time I have – for all of time I will – make grabby hands at anything new that JK Rowling and her cohorts want to throw at me. I will grab it all and I will want it all and I will devour it all, and I will expect it all to fill me with the same wonder that the books did the first time around.

And when it doesn’t, I will feel sad about it.

I think that’s perhaps what I’m feeling now. Sad. Because you see, I remember so well the last time a new Harry Potter book arrived on my lap. I remember Deathly Hallows release day so well. I remember how it was so very very worth the wait. I wanted to love The Cursed Child, believe me I did. & I read part one and made myself stop for the night because I didn’t want it to be over too fast – who knew when (if ever) I was going to get this again, I didn’t want to rush it. & it felt good to be back at Hogwarts, it did. So good. I giggled, and I rolled my eyes and I thought ‘yeah, of course he said that’ and I snorted at Draco and Harry and I was mildly irritated by Ginny and I felt strangely calm and settled and like as JKR promised me, Hogwarts was still there to welcome me home. It just….wasn’t entirely the Hogwarts I was expecting. 

& still, I don’t want to say too much, I don’t want to spoil and I don’t want to bias and to a point I don’t actually want to say anything negative about a part of something that I love so hard (writing this review is hard, dammit. I feel like a house elf.)

I’ll tell you a few things though and the main one is, is that it’s glaringly obvious that a JK Rowling piece of work this is not. Jo very kindly agreed to let somebody play in her sandbox and that’s fine because it’s nice to share your things, but it’s not Harry Potter in the way I know Harry Potter. It doesn’t feel to me to be Jo Rowling’s Harry Potter and I have feelings about that, because it kind of should be, you know? Jo’s Hogwarts is also my Hogwarts and this, this is something else. I didn’t want something else.

It was weird to read too, in some ways, perhaps because it was a script and not prose. We lost a lot there, a mon avis, because a lot of Harry Potter is in the storytelling; the world JKR built; in the way she used her words. So much of what made me fall in love with the whole damn thing in the first place was lost, and I missed it and it was so obvious to me that it wasn’t Rowling’s writing and that made me sad. You don’t get the same level of description in a script, the same level of detail. The detail is what made Harry Potter and without it, at the risk of sounding like a poor and broken record, it just wasn’t the same.

Also, there were flaws in the plot: things that really bugged me and things that felt too convenient and things that needed explaining and things that made me facepalm so hard and there were some pretty major issues with characterisation, such as (sometimes) Hermione (holy feminist issues batman do not let me get on that soapbox because I was a little bit ragey) and Ron (who albeit had some excellent lines) coming across like he was a caricature of himself.

& then there was pretty much everything about Harry as a parent. I felt like some key issues from the books had been conveniently cast aside in order to try to make the story work. Anyone else remember Sirius, and Remus and how thanks to them Harry sort of did have a father figure? Ok, good. Because all of that stuff, the Harry as a father stuff… actually, no. Let’s not. Don’t get me get on the Sirius Black train, it won’t be pretty.

Oh, and I missed people that I thought should have been there – where was Hagrid please? Where exactly was Hagrid. Perhaps Jen was right (and I don’t mind telling you that our live texting of this was a world away from our live texting of DH) and they just didn’t know how to stage him, ha, but still. WHERE WAS HAGRID???

It’s just….I was from the fanfic era you know? I read a lot of fanfiction back In The Day. A lot. And some of it was out of this world excellent. I read fix-it fic, which essentially is what this play was and whilst I was totally a Marauders fangirl, after Deathly Hallows I also read a fair amount of Next Gen fic and that’s kind of what this felt like to me. Next Gen Fix-It Fanfiction. I already knew this version of Albus and Scorpius because I’d met them – they felt like they’d been lifted straight from the internet.  (& if you want to tell me that Scorpius has a thing for Rose then sure, go right ahead, but that’s not the play I read.)

On the flip side, the Voldemort storyline made my skin crawl in the way I imagine it was supposed to and there was also a scene with Harry that ripped out my heart in a way that I was not prepared for, fuckety fuck and also ouch.

There was some excellent and very moving Snape stuff (good God is anything to do with Severus Snape ever not going to destroy me?) and, there was Scorpius. Oh, Scorpius Malfoy, how I love you. If JKR wanted to write an actual book about that kid, I would so totally be down for reading that thanks.

& despite my misgivings I can totally see that it would be pretty impressive on stage, and I really want to see it. I also loved the little bits of JKR that shone through – I mean look at Albus’s initials and tell me she hadn’t already sorted him when she wrote the epilogue. There are zero coincidences in Harry Potter and I have always loved Jo for that. Those little bits, the blink and you’’l miss it foreshadowing, the ‘fuck yes’ moments of realisation, the seemingly insignificant details that turn out to be epically important, the things. Those are what I love. This play was lacking in things. I WANT ALL THE THINGS. 

TL;DR: If you want to read some really excellent fan fiction then start here. For the love of God if you’re going to read The cursed Child because you’re a Harry Potter fan, then read this because wowzer.

If you want to read something that’s been for actual real published then read this and then read this because Rainbow Rowell is a genius. 

& you know what, read The Cursed Child. Let’s be honest, you’re a HP fan so you’re going to anyway. Just, just remember that it was never meant to be read like this, it was supposed to be seen and remember that JK Rowling didn’t write it, and don’t expect it to be like the books, and make your own mind up afterwards.

(Sad Jo is still sad about this whole damn thing.)

Quick Quick Catch Up

People of the blogosphere, dance with me: it’s pumpkin spice season. Or autumn, we could just call it autumn if you’d like. Either way, it is the season of joy and delight. The season of the Pumpkin Spice Latte (Starbucks I love you *other coffee shops are available) and leaves underfoot; of conkers and so many colours; of fingerless gloves and woolly jumpers and delightfulness. The colours of autumn though, are they not just lush!? Last October my pal and I walked through St James’s park and the colours were so stunning they took my breath away a little bit. I went a bit snap happy because I am totally girl of the instagram generation, today (for work related purposes I hasten to add) I photographed my socks. Anyhow. That’s another story.

Autumn is my favourite I think, partly because of the PSL which may well be the most delicious coffee related beverage in the history of time. There’s a pumpkin spice Bailey’s this year, did you know? DID YOU KNOW? Oh, but I am excited to get my little hands on a bottle of that. I also love autumn because it’s perfect for reading. The nights start to draw in and you find that you feel deliciously melancholy somehow and so you (and by ‘you’ I obviously mean ‘I’ and I am so sorry for projecting) feel less guilty for curling up under a blanket and shutting the world away. A blanket, a cozy spot, a cup of coffee and a good book. Is there a pleasure in the world that is equal to that? NO THERE IS NOT. It’s totes a cliché, but it’s a freaking excellent cliché and I am all over it. LET ME BE THE GIRL IN THE OVERSIXED JUMPER WITH THE AUSTEN NOVEL PLEASE.

& so because it’s autumn and it’s a time for reading and because I have been awfully lax of late (my last post was in June and I hate myself a little bit for that) here are some books I’ve read recently that I feel like should be on reading lists everywhere right now, along with some exciting looking autumnal releases.

What have I been reading, then; what do I think you should all read now that it’s September?

The Ship by Antonia Honeywell is a book I was super excited about because when it was released last year it was everywhere and I was hearing All The Good Things. All of them.  & I liked it. It starts of in dystopian London (I love me a good dystopia. Everybody knows it) where everything is bad: Oxford Street burned for week, people are homeless and desperate and squatting in the British Museum and not having an identity card doesn’t only mean you don’t exist, it means you’ll be shot. Lalla is 16, her dad is a (really creepy) visionary and thanks to him she gains passage on The Ship which is kind of like Noah’s Ark for humans – 500 humans, one ship and no talk – ever- of a destination and nobody seems to think that’s weird, except Lalla. It’s good, and interesting and a pretty unique twist on the whole dystopia thing. I liked it. It’s also a pretty cool coming of age story and you cannot get enough of those am I right? I’m right. Anyway, it’s worth a read.

Robin Wasserman’s Girls on Fire is good. It paints a terrifyingly accurate picture of how crazy and passionate and intense female friendship can be. It’s like, imagine your late teen self (some of us have to imagine that ok, for some of us it was a while ago) and then exaggerate it by some and you have Hannah and Dex and even though it’s really extreme you kind of relate to it because it can be like that, female friendship more potent and intense and under-your-skin emotional than any romance and this book gets that. It’s also super pretty, which, I am always all about the pretty words, and mindblowingly observant, there’s ordinary and also extraordinary all tangled up as one and the same and ain;t that just how life goes sometimes? And it’s set in the nineties. THE NINETIES.  Fascinating, gripping, different. It’s messed up and it’s addictive and full of fucked up characters and destructive relationships and completely unreliable narrators. All those excellent things.

I read Sarah Pinborough’s The Death House last year and adored it so I was ridic excited when I saw she’d got a new book out there: Thirteen Minutes. Totally different to The Death House but still quite, quite excellent. AND SO DAMN CLEVER. So clever. Natasha is pulled from a freezing river. She was dead for thirteen minutes. She has no idea how she got there, what happened or why but the more she tries to figure it out the more it looks like perhaps somebody tried to kill her, and perhaps that somebody is a person she loves. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer and all that, but what if you can’t tell them apart? Reading this made me question why I don’t read more psychological thrillers because I do love them so.

You should also look at Louise O’Neill’s Only Ever Yours which I read last week and plan to come back and review properly because I have feelings. It freaked me out.

As far as new (and upcoming) releases go I feel like you should keep an eye out for these babies. I haven’t read any of them, yet (although Today Will Be Different is next on my list) but I want to, because they all sound marvellous.

Today Will Be Different – Maria Semple who wrote Where’d You Go, Bernadette (which I haven’t read but feel like I should) is about a day in the life of one woman, about tackling the little things, and about life often gets in the way of doing just that.

Holding Up the Universe from Jennifer Niven who wrote All the Bright Places because would I be me if I didn’t hit you with a YA rec? It sounds a little Eleanor & Park.

Here I Am, the new novel from Jonathan Safran Foer sounds interesting and relevant and rather excellent and I really liked Extremely Loud so you know, fingers crossed.

The Wonder is the latest from Emma Donoghue which I shall likely read even though I am mad at her because I watched Room recently and my heart broke a little bit.

Ali Smith’s Autumn because hello, it’s called Autumn.

And, GARY OLDMAN and Douglas Urbanski’s BloodRiders. GARY OLDMAN. COWBOYS. VAMPIRES. VAMPIRE COWBOYS. Do I need to say more. It will either be incredible or awful. Or incredibly awful. Frankly, I don’t even care.

So there you have it. I’m back, I think. I have Only Ever Yours to talk about, and I’ve been trying to get my thoughts about The Cursed Child in order for weeks so expect to see me talking about that at some point and I’m reading the new Chris Cleave right now (and I love it, don’t wait for my review: read it now) and my BFF’s baby is one now and is making me want to talk about picture books so that might be a thing and I feel like I might be back to having Things To Say. Hurrahs.