Re-reading Harry Potter and the Philsopher's Stone

Every summer I decide to reread the Harry Potter series. I think the last time I followed through with it I hadn't sat my GCSE's yet, so it's been a long time. It's always a goal that seems a little unachievable, but I'm feeling determined this time round, and with one now under my belt, and the second one started, I'm hoping that I can actually see this through. 

It's been SO long since I read HP and the Philosopher's Stone, that I can now see everything in my mind in the way it is in the film. That aspect of imagination has been totally lost on me. It kind of sucks, but I'm glad that as a child I got to read the book before the film came out. I also found it interesting to see how closely the film stuck to the book. I honestly think this is why the film franchise has done as well as it has. Bar a few mishaps with how things are staged, and the debacle that is Ginny on screen, everything kept really close to the OG novel, and it meant that the movie didn't disappoint.

I found that I could have whizzed through the book: I'd completely forgotten how short it was. But I really didn't want to. I wanted to savour every moment. I really wanted to go slow, and enjoy meeting all the characters for the first time, and gradually descend into the world of magic.

Reading back now, I'm still bowled over by the fact that J K thought of everything. There were no parts where I realised that the later books had contradicted what was said. It really feels as though she had the whole saga planned out from the beginning. For example, Snape has a dear place in my heart, and going back to this book has made me see how Snape could completely hate Harry. Here he comes, being celebrated, getting special treatment, and looking exactly like the man who made Snape's life a misery. Snape hates Harry, but could never harm him, and it just makes my heart bleed to think about his love for Lily. 

The book made me fall in love with so many characters all over again. I'd forgotten how innocently obsessed Mr Weasley is by all things Muggle, and how much I loved him asking questions about how things like plugs work. I'd forgotten how defensive I felt of Hagrid, and how sensitive he is. I'd forgotten how funny the Weasley twins are, and how great Ron's one-liners could be.

I'm so glad I actually did pick this up to re-read and I can't wait to get onto the rest!

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Review of 'Station Eleven' by Emily St John Mandel

Every so often I find a book that I get obsessed with. And this is one of them. When I finished this, I spent a good couple of hours trawling the Internet to see if there's a sequel to the novel out yet. Spoiler alert: there isn't. I almost cried at the news.

Station Eleven is a novel that I really wasn't expecting much from. The blurb made it sound a little like The Walking Dead, which I love, but is honestly so repetitive. Thankfully, there was none of this in Station Eleven. 

The novel has no main protagonist, but rather centres around a group of characters that are all in some way connected with an actor named Arthur Leander. We meet his best friend, a couple of ex-wives, and a girl who worked on stage with him when she was a child. Arthur Leander passed away just before the virus hit, but many people weren't so lucky.

The virus was always going to be a fad, right? Like bird flu or swine flu, or any of the other flus that get eradicated almost instantly. After weeks of panic of course. This virus however, should have been taken seriously, but it spread too quickly for many people to even get a chance to hear about it, let alone become concerned.

Who knows why the virus killed off the people it did, but within a few months 99% of the population of America was gone. We travel through most of the novel with a travelling symphony, who believe that 'survival is insufficient' (in the words of Star Trek). They live 20 years after the virus hit, and have learnt that even with hardly any people left, some are willing to kill for territory, food or sport. 

Society has lost its way, naturally. There's no electricity, no processed food, no laws, and no governing power. There's a divide between people who can remember the 'before' and people who can't.

Alongside this aspect of the novel, we follow the life of Arthur Leander in a disjointed manner, through the accounts of various people involved in his life. This gives the reader a jarring comparison between the 'now' and the 'before', and shows us how trivial concerns were before the flu.

I found the book utterly terrifying, and intensely gripping at the same time. It was so real that I had nightmares about our world being hit with the same kind of virus, and I spent so long daydreaming about how I would handle life if I survived. 

This has honestly been my favourite book I've read in months, and I'd definitely recommend that you all give it a go!

Have you read it? What did you think?

Review of 'The Thirty-Nine Steps' by John Buchan

June marked the two year birthday of my one true love, aka MR Kindle. So, I decided to tie up some loose ends on it. When I first got my kindle I was a little eager beaver, wanting to download a tonne of the free classics you can get on a kindle because the concept of free books was totally new to me. This was one of them, and as you can (presumably) tell, it sat on my digital bookshelf until now. Whoops. 

Since graduating last year, I've been on an anti-classics rampage. No longer governed by my professors, I've been free to read whatever I want, whenever I want, and it's been glorious. However, recently I noticed that I felt as though there was something missing in my literary life: I'm done with being wayward, and want to get back to my roots of reading anything and everything, and delving into history through classics.

So, with a little spring in my step, I finally embarked upon reading The Thirty-Nine Steps ... and was met with a dark, almost Gothic novel. Did you ever read The Secret Seven or The Famous Five as a child? Well imagine them, but with a little more death and dark mystery, and you have The Thirty-Nine Steps. Even the title has an almost Blyton-esque air doesn't it?

Buchan himself described the novel as a 'shocker' - something which shocks the reader, but liminally remains believable. When I was reading the novel, I was faced with the query - why has this gone down in history as a classic? It's a good book, but the storyline is nothing too special. However, what I failed to recognise at this point is that the book was extraordinary at the time of publication. Modern filmmakers and writers often feature plots that are based around a man on the run, a thriller of movement - this was one of the very first of the type to be published.

Richard Hannay, the novel's protagonist and narrator, is instantly intrigued when a man appears on his doorstep declaring to be 'already dead'. Soon, Hannay is informed that the man has faked his own death, and needs somewhere to hide out from the people that are hunting him. So Hannay, ever resourceful, helps the 'dead man' Scudder to find a real dead body and arrange it so that no one will be able to tell that Scudder is alive and free. Their plan all goes well until Hannay returns to his apartment one night to discover that Scudder has in fact now really been murdered. Feeling implicated in his new found friend's death, Hannay feels as though there is nothing for it but to continue Scudder's work.

It's 1914, and Europe is on the brink of war. Scudder is not merely some unimportant man living amidst the masses in London, but a spy, trying to save England from invasion. Now that he's gone, it's up to Hannay to pick up where he left off. The only problem? Now he's on the run, and the only thing he has to help him is the little coded black book Scudder left behind.

If you're a fan of murder mysteries, then this is definitely something I would add onto your to-read list of Summer 2016!

Review of 'Shattered Rose' by Tammy L. Gray

My recent reviews have all been for vaguely chick flick-esque novels, and this one is another that fits into this category. I really wanted to take some time off of 'serious' reading, and read a few things that I could just kind of glide through with ease and comfort. Having said that, I've now started A Tale of Two Cities, so I'm back to getting the ol' cogs whirring.

Anyhow, if you have a Kindle, you can pick up Shattered Rose as a free ebook, and as free ebooks go it's really not all too bad. It's the first part of a trilogy, which I'm currently considering forging through after my current tome. However, unlike many free e-books you don't get half a story here, so that you basically have to go out and buy the second installment to actually understand the plot somewhat. Here we're given a full, stand-alone novel, with romance and some serious issues at stake.

TRIGGER WARNING - eating disorders

I'm so pleased that more and more authors are tackling serious mental illnesses, but I am honestly looking forward to a time at which there are warnings for triggers in a blurb, or at the start of a novel. Although it adds to the suspense I guess, there's nothing worse than suddenly coming across something that you didn't expect in a novel which can suddenly put your own mental health or recovery at risk. Avery, the protagonist of the novel, is under a great deal of pressure at college, and engages in a number of concerning behavioural patterns as a result of this. She tells no one at the college about her eating disorder, and grows more and more isolated as her recovery worsens. 

The novel tracks the toxic impression that people can have on someone struggling with an eating disorder. Avery begins to fall in love with her roommate's cousin, Jake, and the happiness that comes with their relationship means she becomes less and less reliant upon her eating disorder in terms of controlling her life. However, she also falls behind on college work. When Jake ultimately breaks her heart and she is alone once more, the stress of how behind she is piles on to her feelings of being unwanted: her eating disorder becomes worse than ever. I was a little disappointed to find that it improved once more when she finds a new man that her loves her; the author really seems to suggest that the 'cure' to an eating disorder is having a man to support you. I think this gives off a truly worrying impression to readers, especially young teenage girls (this is after all a young adult novel), as it indicates that being single makes you 'less worthy' of recovery, as Avery feels, when in fact this is not true.

Have you read it? What did you think?

Steph

Review of 'The Girl on the Train' by Paula Hawkins

I think we're getting to a stage with this book where it's harder to find someone who hasn't read The Girl on the Train than who has. It was heralded as THE thriller to read in 2015, so I had high expectations. Naturally these were so high that I was a little disappointed in the end - I was told to expect to be scared and honestly thought the train would have more of an impact, but ANYWHO, it was a good book!

Rachel still takes the train to work every morning, despite not needing to. As she heads into London one particular street catches her eye, and the signalling problems on the line often mean that she ends up opposite Blenheim road. She loves to imagine Jess and Jason, a perfectly happy couple, staying their in marital bliss as she often sees them out, content on their porch sipping on a glass of wine. 

But suddenly Jess goes missing, and Rachel finds out that the couple are in fact called Megan and Scott Hipwell. Perhaps it's because she got so attached to the couple she saw everyday, perhaps it's because she's searching for meaning in her life, or perhaps it's because her ex-husband and his new Mrs live only 7 doors down, but whatever the reason Rachel feels a need within her to help find Megan. 

However, there's one issue: Megan's an alcoholic. She knows she was on Blenheim road the night that Megan went missing, but what she did there she has no idea. The police won't accept anything she says as being true when her memories start to get triggered and return because of her alcoholism. Megan feels as though she therefore only has one choice: go to Scott directly and tell him what she saw that day on the train and what she thinks happened on the Saturday night his life got turned upside down. What Rachel doesn't anticipate is just how much she gets caught up in this mystery, and how it will impact her entire life.

Have you read it? What did you think?

Steph x

TBR Pile

As of Wednesday, I have officially completed all the work for my degree (cue cheers and presumably copious alcohol!) aka I can read things I want as well as things that will probably educate me. So, in order to motivate myself to push through this last week of intense work I downloaded a couple of books I've wanted to read for ages on to my kindle. I've heard loads about these in the blogosphere over the past couple of months, so I'm hoping they live up to scratch!

Have you read any of these? What did you think?

Steph x