My Review of The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas

For the PopSugar topic of "a book that makes you cry," I added  book that I have wanted to read for a long time, but just have never seemed to have gotten around to. The book I chose was The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne.

I'm not entirely sure where to start with my review, but I'll start by being honest and admitting that I hated this book. Hopefully I will be able to coherently explain as to why.

The first few pages of the book I found the writing style to be extremely strange and it took me a while to get into the flow of how Boyne wrote. I also found a lot of the metaphors and similes extremely odd, for example on page 7 we had this simile " 'Say Goodbye to them?' he repeated, spluttering out the words as if his mouth was full of biscuits that he'd munched into tiny pieces but not actually swallowed yet."  To me that just seems really long winded and awkward.

SO MUCH REPETITION

The descriptions of some of the characters physical actions are also odd, the fact that Bruno (who is 9) feels his arms stretching out at his sides in surprise, is something that my toddler does when he's surprised or excited. A child of 9 would have grown out of this a long time ago. Also the amount of people whose mouth formed the shape of a O is quite ridiculous. There are so many better ways of describing this facial expression such as " his jaw dropped in surprise," "her mouth was agape" I could go on, but you get the picture.

SO MUCH REPETITION

Another thing I found infuriating was Bruno's mispronunciation of Auschwitz and Fuhrer. It felt as though Boyne was just trying to avoid actually using the words in his book. It is just plain unbelievable that a child of one of Hitler's top men would be allowed to go on in this manner, oh and don't let me forget that he believes that saluting and saying "heil Hitler" is a way of saying "goodbye and I hope you have a nice day".....yeah....oh, oh and a high ranking Commandant's son that does not know what or rather who a Jew is. I do understand that a lot of people at the time were sadly unaware of what was happening around them, but as someone who is living right next to Auschwitz and who is surrounded by soldiers, it just seems unbelievable in my opinion that Bruno would know so little. My feelings are that Boyne used this time period and the atrocities that happened to write his "fable" but was then too scared to actually use any form of correct representation of what was actually going on.

SO MUCH REPETITION

As children of a Commandant, there is no way they would have been allowed to have been out of education for even a short amount of time or some form or military style training. By 1943 (which is the year I'm guessing this is set in due to Bruno being 9 and born in 1934) the Hitler Youth and the subdivisions were recruiting children as young as 10, so though Bruno wasn't quite old enough, he would have being prepared for it and Gretel would definitely have gone as I believe only 10 or 20% of German youths avoided being drafted.

SO MUCH REPETITION (is it annoying yet)

I felt that the children were portrayed in such a way that they appeared much younger than any child, especially in a time of war, would seem. Children are extremely intelligent and know a lot more than any adult would like to think. Their characters just didn't seem to fit the ages that were given as 9 and 12, I don't feel that Boyne can write children very well at all, the way they talk, think and act just don't seem natural.

SO MUCH REPETITION

And we come to the ending, if you don't want to be spoiled, stop reading here...Ok the ending for me came completely out of nowhere and was surprising, however I am apparently the only person who hadn't been spoiled for the ending as even my husband knew what happened and he has neither read the book or seen the film. I did not cry at the tragic end as I'd not felt any connection to any of the characters and I felt that though yes you should definitely mourn the loss of one boy, the book almost sidelines the fact that millions of people died. Even the final sentences were kind of insulting "Of course all this happened a long time ago and nothing like that could ever happen again. Not in this day and age."

Did I mention - SO MUCH REPETITION (Ok I'll stop now)

The only part of the book that I actually found quite interesting was the implied affair between Bruno's Mother (who was never even given a name) and Lieutenant Kotler. But we never really get anything in a way of payoff as we're following the story through the eyes of a child. All that happens is that Kotler is sent away, whereas I would have thought he would have suffered an "accident" but maybe that's just me.

I do kind of feel that I am cheating using this book as the one that made me cry as it did not. I am going to stand by it as I could cry with anger and frustration at how history has been used to produce this book. There are even now more things that I could comment on (the fence not being electrified, no guard patrols, a child in Auschwitz being able to sit around all afternoon without anyone noticing, the fact that that child was alive, the fact there was a way under the fence and not one person tried to escape) about how much I dislike this book, but have chosen to only include the most prevalent in my mind while writing this.

I originally gave this book 2 stars on Goodreads, just due to the surprise ending (for me) and then I dropped it to 1.5 and now as I've been writing my review I have decided it is only a 1 star.
I started reading this book on the 23rd of June 2015 and finished it on the 26th of June 2015

Can I Borrow a Feeling - My Review of The Borrowers

Back to PopSugar for this reading choice, and I opted for "a book my mum loved" It took a good while for her to decide what she would suggest., but her final decision was to suggest The Borrowers by Mary Norton which made me really happy as it was a book I loved as a child, so off I went to borrow it from my local library.

The book started off extremely slow and I found it very hard to get into, I kept putting it down and finding pretty much anything else that I could do instead of finish reading it. Sadly I think the book has aged badly due to it's casual mentioning of smacking children and being firm handed with your wife, The idea of the story itself is brilliant and with the amount of things I put down which disappear, I'm inclined to believe in Borrowers.

When Arrietty meets the boy, some of the magic I remembered came back into the story and it seemed to pick up the pace of the story as before she was "seen" the story was just meandering along with no real purpose or destination.

I think my favourite part of the book was in the back, where there were loads of quizzes and activities to do once you had finished reading. One of the activities was to draw your own Borrower family and make up a story around them which I think is a fantastic idea.

I started this book on the 19th of May 2015 and I finished reading it on the 6th of June 2015
I gave this book 3 Stars on Goodreads

Cyborgs, Princesses and Fairy Tales Oh My! - My Review of Cinder

I've been doing a lot of the PopSugar categories recently so I thought it was about time to get into some of the Book Riot Read Harder challenge categories. I chose "a book that is a retelling of a classic story" and the book I chose was Cinder by Marissa Meyer.

I will hold my hands up and confess that before reading this book, I really thought I was going to hate it. I don't like cyborgs and I'm pretty sure this is the first retelling book I've ever read so I did not know what to expect and I had made a judgement before I even started.

The writing throughout Cinder is fantastic and Meyer has created a world and characters that you can instantly recognise and relate to. I absolutely adore the characters of Cinder, Iko and Kai and in complete contrast I absolutely hate Queen Levana with a passion, though I think there's more to her character which I'm looking forward to hopefully finding more about in one of the other books.

I really enjoyed the fact that we had a bit of back story for the prince in this story too as I sometimes feel we get the princesses story and then prince charming just rocks up to save the day without us knowing much about him (this isn't true for all fairy tales, just some of the ones I can think of off the top of my head).

I loved this book and was gob smacked it ended when it did, I don't have the next book and I NEED to know what happens next.

The only...not negative but something I want to point out is that I figured out pretty much on page one who Princess Selene was, to be honest though surely everyone must have known. Am I right?

I started this book on the 23rd of May 2015 and I finished reading it on the 24th of May 2015
I gave this book 5 Stars on Goodreads

Hot! Hot! Hot! - My Review of The Scorch Trials

The Scorch Trials by James Dashner is the 2nd instalment of my choice for the PopSugar "trilogy" category. There was nearly a month between me reading this and The Maze Runner, but the story was still really clear in my mind and I knew exactly where the story had left off which is a good sign that I had really enjoyed the book.

I feel like I've said it a lot recently but this book definitely got start with a bang, Dashner does an amazing job of creating the feeling of confusion and fear with the fast paced and bizarre goings on. You feel alongside the characters and need to keep reading to find out what on earth is going on.

With how much was happening, I got around 50% through the book and I needed a break, I was just so tired with all the adrenaline rushes. After I got past this though, I flew through the second half of the book and I'm really looking forward to finding out, hopefully, how these trials are helping design a cure for anything or how it will help save the world putting children through so much trauma in the final book.

I did enjoy the addition of the new characters Brenda and Jorge though I wasn't sure about them at first, I really grew to like both of them. I do feel really sorry though for all the peripheral characters that survived the Maze, that we never even learn their names and they keep getting killed off like red shirts in Star Trek.

I'm going to have another small break before reading the final book in this trilogy (eventually I am planning on getting the prequel and reading that too), but I really can't wait to continue the journey with Thomas and the gang.

I started reading this book on the 20th of May 2015 and I finished it on the 23rd of May 2015
I gave this book 4 stars on Goodreads

May 2015 Book Round Up

I said earlier this year that I would start to do a round up of the books I'd read each month as I was only blogging reviews of books on my reading challenges and I have finally got organised enough to be able to do it! Yay! These are the books I've read during May with the rating I gave them on Goodreads.

Book 1 - Half Bad by Sally Green  - 4 Stars
Book 2 - Ketchup Clouds by Annabel Pitcher - 5 Stars
Book 3 - Four: A Divergent Collection by Veronica Roth - 5 Stars
Book 4 - Superman: He'l On Earth by Scott Lobdell - 5 Stars
Book 5 - Superman: Godfall by Michael Lane Turner - 3 Stars
Book 6 - Gone by Michael Grant - 4 Stars
Book 7 - The Scorch Trials by James Dashner - 4 Star
Book 8 - Cinder by Marissa Meyer - 5 Stars
Book 9 - Half Wild by Sally Green - 5 Stars

9 Books, not a bad month if I do say so myself. Currently I am 52% the way through my reading goal of 100 books this year and I am 11 books ahead of schedule according to my Goodreads reading challenge counter thingy. I am however really slacking in my 2015 Reading Challenge, my Classics Challenge (though to be fair this is a 5 year target) and my Panels Challenge, I really need to make more of an effort to start ticking books off my lists.

My Review of The Maze Runner

My original choice for PopSugar's reading challenge category "a trilogy" was the Bourne Identity, I have owned the books for years and have only watched the 1st movie (which I wasn't overly enthralled with) and thought now was a perfect time to read it. As I've got more into my challenge, I have decided they are just not what I fancy and I didn't want to get myself into a reading slump by reading something I wasn't interested in. So I decided to choose something a little more fast paced and something I wanted to read and that was The Maze Runner trilogy by James Dashner, the first book being The Maze Runner.

I'll start by saying that I'm not really sure why everyone seems to think that this book starts off slow, I think it starts off great and just keeps going. There is pretty much action from page one and it just builds from there.

James Dashner has done some excellent things in this book, the memory erasure was extremely well thought out and explained really well, he creates an incredibly creepy feeling during the book with the maze and the artificial environment. Did I mention how horrendous the Grievers sounded?! Urgh! One thing that really irritated me throughout the book was the weird slang that the boys used, I really didn't feel there was any need for it at all as they all knew the correct words and slang for what they were saying. To me it feels like Dashner came up with this language at some point in the past and wanted to use it in one of his books.

I did very much enjoy this book and I am looking forward to reading the rest of the trilogy (though I've now found out that there is a prequel? I'm not counting that though I will probably still read it). As much as I did enjoy it though, I felt like there was something missing and I could happily put the book down and not be constantly wondering when the next time I could pick it up would be, not enough to make me dislike it, just enough to make me like it less than other books I have read recently.

I started reading this book on the 17th of April 2015 and finished reading it on the 25th of April 2015
I gave this book 4 stars on Goodreads

Things that go bump in the night - My review of The Haunting of Hill House

I took my time choosing the book for the PopSugar challenge topic "a book that scares you" as I wanted something scary, but not too scary, because as I've got older, I just can't deal with horror the way I used to be able to and now pretty much everything terrifies me. I decided on a classic that sounded more psychological than outright horror and it's one I have wanted to read for a long time, the book I chose was The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. There will be a spoiler in this review, so you have been fairly warned.

The first thing that struck me about this book was the writing, it seemed slightly "off" to me. The book was written/published in 1959 and yet the writing seemed to try and make it feel like it was written a lot earlier than that. Once I got into it though, I got used to how it sounded and it felt natural.

The story itself took almost half the book to get started, but I did enjoy the character building with Eleanor. I absolutely love how Eleanor made stories in her head about things that she saw as she was driving along as I do the same thing when I'm out and about. Something I didn't like was the conversations between the guests at the house, I know it was written in a different time, but seriously who has conversations like these people do? All the make believe and non sensical stuff at times took away from the story and I found I didn't really follow what they were talking about.

This bit contains the spoiler. After finishing the book, there are a few things I'm still unsure about so if you can answer any of them or have your own thoughts please let me know! I'm not 100% sure whether there actually was any paranormal activity or whether it was just fear creating fear. And finally the ending left me confused, did Eleanor really exist? Did she kill herself? What happened?

Overall though I enjoyed this book and I'm glad that I got around to reading it.

I started reading this book on the 2nd of April 2015 and finished reading it on the 4th of April 2015
I gave this book 4 stars on Goodreads

My Review of Throne of Glass

I'm currently trying to make a concerted effort to read my 2015 Reading challenge books as I'm actually finding it quite restrictive even though I thought it would help widen my horizons with genre, content and authors etc. I think next year, I may come up with my own challenge which will allow me a lot more freedom, but we'll see how things go.

Anyhoo, onto my review of Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas, which I chose for the topic "a book with a love triangle" for the PopSugar part of my reading challenge.

The story certainly gets right into it from page one, so it grips you from the get go and you want to carry on reading to find out what is happening. I felt that the world was really well built and I could picture each place perfectly in my head with the descriptions given. I do feel though that you could tell at times that this book was written by a younger person, not that it mattered or was in any way detrimental to the book, but I noticed it enough to feel like I should mention it.

The characters for me are great and I love the characters I'm supposed to and love to hate the characters I'm supposed to hate, which means that the author has done a good job. Having read Divergent just prior to reading this, I felt that Celeana actually seemed younger that Tris even though Celeana is 18 and Tris is only 16. I can't put my finger on why I felt this, but there was just something that made me feel that their ages were reversed.

The hints of magic throughout the book are tantalising and I can't wait to see more of it as the series continues, the story is also left at a perfect jumping off point, leaving me wanting to read more.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I am looking forward to continuing with the series.

I started this book on the 8th of April 2015 and I finished it on the 12th of April 2015
I gave this book 5 Stars on Goodreads

Preston Table Top Day 2015

The 11^th of April this year was the 3^rd annual International Table Top Day. International Table Top Day was created three years ago as a way for board gamers around the world come together and celebrate table top gaming and this year I was able to go to an event to celebrate it. The event that I went to was Preston Table Top Day and it was held in the Foster Learning Building at the University of Central Lancashire, UK.

When we got there (finally, university campuses are confusing!) we were welcomed into the building by the organisers and pointed in the direction of the room the event was being held in. Inside were tables galore laid out ready for people to play games, game tables all ready set up for bigger games and stalls to buy table top goodies.

We stopped by was The Museum of Gaming table, who were showing some ancient games and letting people play. Me and my husband had a go at a game called Rota from Roman times and it was so much fun. It’s very much like noughts and crosses, except that it is circular and there is a second stage in which you can then move your pieces into empty places to try and win if no one matches their three counters in the first stage.

We had a look around and watched some people playing family games and a man painting game pieces. We chatted to the stall holders about games and what they suggested and our friend bought himself One Night: Ultimate Werewolf (which we played and it was awesome). The final game we played was Cube Quest, which was incredibly fun! It’s kind of a strategy game that involves flicking cubes across the board.

Preston Table Top Day was family friendly and I took a 6 year old and a 21 month old with me and they both thoroughly enjoyed themselves. There were so many games and activities to get involved in and there was something there for everyone. We would definitely go again and would recommend that people go and get involved on International Table Top Day.

I was cheeky and asked if I could ask the organiser, Millie, some questions and she was good enough to agree:-

Can you tell me the history or story behind Preston Table Top Day?

Preston Table Top Day was part of International Table Top Day, Wil Wheaton has a YouTube show called Tabletop (yes it’s Wesley from TNG) and they created the holiday back in 2013. I went to an event last year at Harlequin’s Game Shop, it was great. I recorded a radio show about it and was lucky enough to have a phone interview with Boyan Radokovich (the producer and “games guru” of the show) You can listen to the show here.

How did you get involved in being the organiser of the event this year?

I thought it would be great to have a HUGE event for the day and level it up from the one I went to in 2014. So I chatted to people and spoke to people on Facebook and Twitter and a lot of people agreed that it would be a good idea. So I went on to set up a Kickstarter page to help fund the event, thinking that I would just get enough to cover the cost of the venue and the insurance. We ended up with almost double the amount so we were able to get make special t-shirts for the backers, have a game designed for us, there were prizes and promotional items that were given away through a free raffle, a Pandemic tournament was run with prizes and the entrance was free for everyone who came. It also meant that the people who volunteered to help got some drinks and I was able to give them each a thank you present.

But I’ve waffled away from the question, I was the organiser because I wanted there to be a giant Table Top Day event, so I made it happen. There were some amazing people, who I couldn’t have done it without, but basically I wanted it to happen in my City so I did everything I could to make it.

Can you tell me about your day job?

I make podcasts, some YouTube videos and I write some blogs. But really I’m a stay at home mum; I take the kids to school, cook tea, load the washer and wash the dishes. There’s fun stuff too, I’m very lucky that I get to spend so much time with my family, see my kiddies grow up and spend time with my husband, it’s actually great fun.

Was there a final tally as to how many people attended?

178! The real count is a little higher, there were some kiddies there that didn’t count towards the door tally and also the vendors and volunteers aren’t in that total. But 178 people played games at Preston Table Top Day!

What is your favourite board game?

I love a game called The Resistance; it’s a social game where you’re either a spy or a Resistance member. The aim of the game depends on what team you’re on. If you’re a Resistance member, you need three successful missions. If you’re a spy, you want to sabotage three missions. Everyone’s roles are hidden; it’s a game full of social deduction, lies and convincing your friends that you’re really on their team…even when you’re not.

Will there be a Preston Table Top Day 2016?

I think so, I’m currently deciding on if I should try another Kickstarter or if we should charge a really small ticket price and see if we can get a bigger venue or a bigger area of UCLAN.

A big thank you to Millie for your time and effort in organising this event and thank you for answering my questions

This was originally published on the IGGPPC blog which you can view here.

A Non Divergent Opinion - My review of Divergent (Some Spoilers)

It's been quite a few days now since I finished this book and I finally feel that I can (maybe) put my thoughts and feelings into words. As part of the PopSugar reading challenge (see my 2015 Reading challenge) I chose to read Divergent by Veronica Roth for the topic of "A book that became a movie" I knew absolutely nothing about it (apart from that a load of people of book tube had read it) and chose it off a Goodreads list of books that became movies. My plan was to keep a lookout for it at the library or maybe wait till later in the year and see if I could pick it up somewhere, Now, my hubby obviously pays more attention to me than I thought as this is I think the second time he knew something was on my reading challenge list and when he saw the trilogy box set in a bookshop, he picked it up for me!

Going into reading Divergent, I really didn't hold up much hope of me liking it, but knew it'd be quite a quick easy read, I was so incredibly wrong! I was instantly hooked from the first page and I genuinely loved everything about this book. The characters are all well formed and have their own individual personality and identity. The world design and the idea of the 5 different factions is extremely interesting to me and I look forward to learning more about it all in the next books. I'm incredibly glad I have all three of the main books (though I now need the Four book too!!) so I can just get straight on and carry on with the story.

I'm late to the party, but how awesome is Four/Tobias?! Seriously I absolutely adore his character, though I have to admit that I thought his character was late twenties until they actually said he was only 18. I'm really looking forward to getting the book containing four novellas of scenes from the book from his perspective,

There is one thing I was really sad about and that was the death of Tris' mother. Her character was amazing, interesting and full of strength and I would have absolutely loved to have seen more of her in the following books. However the death worked well in the story and didn't feel just put in for shock value.

I cannot recommend this book enough to anyone and everyone, you all need to go out and read it. It has been the first book in a long time that I have not wanted to put down.

I started this book on the 2nd of April 2015 and finished it on the 4th of April 2015
I gave this book 5 stars on Goodreads

A Trip Down Memory Lane - My Review of The Enchanted Wood

Choosing a book for the "a book from your childhood" section of the Popsugar reading challenge was very difficult due to the fact I loved so many books! I ended up choosing the first book in The Faraway Tree series, The Enchanted Wood by Enid Blyton.

Re- reading this as an adult, I was worried that it may have lost its charm, however I was wrong. I still thoroughly enjoyed Beth, Joe and Franny's adventures in the Enchanted Wood and up the Faraway Tree. I love the imagination and thought that went into each of the worlds that they found at the top of the tree. Each of the characters has its own personality and I particularly like Mr Whatizname as a grumpy old wizard who loves his sleep. I look forward to my little ones reading this series and seeing what they make of it.

The only things I did notice (as an adult) is that the children aren't just "mischievous" they're downright naughty. Sneaking out at night, disobeying their parents and doing things they know that they shouldn't. Though I think that my parent might be showing! There was also one story where the characters were all turned into toys and Silky was turned into a doll and everyone kept saying how pretty she was and that they wanted to take her away. This made me feel a little uncomfortable, but when this was originally released in 1939, it was a completely different time.

Overall I still really enjoyed this book and will probably now go back and re read the whole series. It brought back great memories of reading this as a child and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone.

I started this book on the 26th of March 2015 and I finished it on the 1st of April 2015
I gave this book 4.5 stars on Goodreads (rounded up to 5 stars)