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Book Reviews
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The Girl Who Fell From The Sky
Margaret12 June 2013
This is a beautifully written book, tense, atmospheric with a slow yet unrelenting build up to an inevitable conclusion. Highly recommended.
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Rabbityness (Child's Play Library)
Susannah02 March 2013
Beautiful, subtle, positive, and perfect for introducing issues surrounding loss, while celebrating individuality. You discover the joys of doing 'rabbity' and 'unrabbity' things and finding ways to celebrate life and loss by remembering people's 'gifts'. In glorious colour and great for reading aloud and together, brings up great opportunities for discussion.
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michelle swanston31 December 2012
a really good read , once i started reading i couldnt put it down
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Carolyn Smith31 October 2012
Absolutely brilliant, and it's true I wish it was true! Can't wait for the film (if there's ever going to be one - there should be) and I want to be in it! Carrie, age 49, Lancashire
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Phantom, One Last Chance (Pony Detectives)
Anonymous16 October 2012
an awesome new series. well worth reading all 4.. follyfoot meets famous five. they are brilliant new books
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Penny B.10 October 2012
I read this earlier this year. It left me shell-shocked. This book amazed me in a big way because it's partly true. To think that time moves fast well it surely moved Jack in an incredible way. Everyone should read this.
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Penny B.10 October 2012
I finished reading this one yesterday and thought it was very good. It's easy to read and the chapters not too long. The characters take hold of you at the beginning of the book. The issue on homelessness is quite brutal and yet kindness No receives from Lou makes you feel happy as if YOU the reader are experiencing the love as well.
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Matt Brew30 September 2012
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." These are the last words in the novel, and sum up its theme. Our minds (like moths to the light) are drawn irresistibly to the most wonderful moments we have experienced. Our mistake is then to build our future around them, not realizing that they can never be recaptured. In pursuing the past into the future, we deny ourselves the real potential of the future.
The Great Gatsby is developed in novel form around the story line of a classic Aristotlean Greek tragedy. Nick Carraway, Gatsby's neighbour, is the narrator, portraying a hypocritical, modernist view that Fitzgerald is so eager to criticise. The novel is constricted by the tragic form, even as Gatsby's future is by his immobilization by the past. If you like that sort of irony, you'll love The Great Gatsby.
Nick knows both Gatsby (his neighbour in West Egg, Long Island) and Daisy Buchanan (his cousin who lives in East Egg, Long Island). The story's literal narrative revolves around their relationship; which started before Gatsby left to fight in the Great war. Gatsby is once again trying to win Daisy's heart "reaching out to that green light at the end of the bay." This surmises the theme of the novel, trying to recapture the past will only hold back the future.
The story is set through the romantic perspective of the Roaring Twenties, which does present the issue of the lack of connection a modern reader would find. Why would someone want to read this book? Perhaps not for the empathy that the characters allow but for the majestic use of language throughout the novel. No words are wasted and each one is expressive in its own right. We see Fitzgerald manipulate what a relationship truly and see him raising questions that are still relevant today. All events in the novel can be linked to modern day happenings and perceptions. To read this is not to read a narrative it is to see a developed allegorical statement about society's flaws at it hurries towards the world of commercialism and greed that we live in today. Fitzgerald, in one sentence, gives you a clue about how to read the novel. "He didn't say any more, but we've always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that."
These are not characters you will find uplifting. "They were careless people, Tom and Daisy -- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness . . . and let other people clean up the mess they had made." Why did Fitzgerald create such characters? Precisely, because he did not approve and did not want you to approve. 'Everything that glitters is not gold' is another way of summing up the lessons of this novel.
After you have read the book, I would encourage the self-examining reader to consider where in one's own life the current focus is dominated by past encounters rather than future potential. Then consider how changing that perspective could serve you and those you love better. A great and inspirational read that comes very well recommended. -
Kev Ryan31 August 2012
'Gone Girl' is a New York Times No.1 bestseller and the third novel from Gillian Flynn.
The tale of Nick and Amy Dunne, a late 30's couple living in the town of North Carthage, Missouri, it begins in July 2012 on the day of their fifth wedding anniversary, when Nick returns home to find the front door open, furniture overturned and his wife missing. We follow attempts to discover what has happened from Nick's point of view and watch as his evasiveness, inappropriate behaviour and at times lies quickly lead the police and media to point the finger at him. Intercut with the present day chapters are entries from Amy's diary for the previous seven years detailing the history of their relationship from first meeting to just days before her disappearance. She paints a picture of a golden couple living a glamorous New York life, him a handsome, laid-back charmer her a smart, beautiful, perfectionist. Slowly though, the forced perkiness and small inconsistencies of her story start to seem a little off and the suspicion grows that Amy might be as unreliable and manipulative a narrator as Nick.
Flynn was a film and tv journalist for 10 years, and the pacy prose and short chapters are packed with clever pop culture and film noir references and some particularly sharp analysis of the 24-hour news cycle and the true-crime media circus that quickly forms around Nick. What starts as a smart, often darkly comic, mystery about a woman's disappearance steadily morphs into a tense psychological profile of a toxic marriage that asks the question 'How well can you ever know the person you love?'. A tense, twisted thriller that at times has touches of horror like a blend of Patricia Highsmith and Alfred Hitchcock.
Pervading everything is the theme of endings and deaths. Nick and Amy both lost their journalism jobs in the dying print industry thanks to the internet. They lost their lifestyle when Amy's trust fund disappeared in the economic downturn. They relocated to Nick's hometown to be with his mother who is dying of cancer and his estranged father drifting into dementia. And the setting of North Carthage is a portrait of a decaying town where laid-off factory workers roam the streets in lawless packs and sleep out at the abandoned shopping mall. Everywhere dreams, relationships and lives seem to be imploding.
The novel's first third is ingeniously plotted and breathtakingly tense and it is perhaps too much to expect that pace to be kept up for the full 400 pages. A plot turn at halfway starts to let the air out of proceedings and while the ending makes sense in an inevitable film-noir way it may not deliver the satisfying/disturbing emotional punch the author intended. Still these are small criticisms. 'Gone Girl' is a tense and beautifully written story with horrifyingly believable characters and a dark, toxic heart. For many it will be the best thriller they read all year. -
Erin Britton28 August 2012
An intelligent, philosophical comic book series, Promethea is Alan Moore at his best. Covering topics ranging from mysticism to superhero mythology, spirituality to science fiction, Promethea Book One collects issues 1 to 6 of the comic series and centres on university student Sophie Bangs. Sophie lives in an alternate version of New York where life is dominated by scientific wonders. It's a real science fiction wonderland where endless skyscrapers glow with neon lights, talking billboards advertise all manner of fantabulous gizmos, and people travel place to place in hover cars.
Sophie Bangs is a bit of an outsider since she is more interested in myth than science, specifically in the recurring myths and stories of a powerful warrior woman named Promethea. Promethea's origins seem to lie far away in 5th century Egypt when a young girl fleeing from her father's killers stumbles into the realm of ancient gods known as The Immateria.
Researching all mentions of Promethea through the centuries, Sophie visits Barbara Shelley, the widow of the man who wrote the most recent chronicles, and finds herself drawn into a dangerous world of magic and vengeful spirits. During a deadly chase across the city, Barbara reveals the truth behind the Promethea legends and Sophie discovers that she can accept the power necessary to save them.
Promethea was originally published from 1999 to 2005 and ran to 32 issues. To complete the whole series (and its well worth doing so) there are another four graphic novels to get after this one. Promethea features Alan Moore's trademark combination of scholarly mysticism, technological disaster and subtle pop-culture lampooning. The focus here is on the impact of stories and the power of ideas, with each concept being executed flawlessly. The whole series is beautifully illustrated in full colour by JH Williams III, with the cityscapes and historical recreations being particularly striking.
Promethea is an amazing series. Alan Moore's story is clever without being pretentious and manages to be a whole lot of fun as well as being thought-provoking. In the same way as The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Promethea is a series that really celebrates literature and the joy of stories. Promethea is what so many comic book series aspire to be and so few manage. It's a series that I could read again and again.
