Top Ten Books of 2013 (so far)

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

This week's Top Ten Tuesday topic is Top Ten Books of 2013 (so far), and I decided to participate and share some my favourites since January! Some of these are 2013 releases, but for the most part they're just my top reads.

1. Life In Outer Space - Melissa Keil
Quirky Australian YA with a great, believable trio of teenage boys at its centre.

(The US edition of this book looks to be currently 'Read Now' on Netgalley, if you're interested!)

2. The Dinner - Herman Koch
Dutch novel that busies itself skewering the middle classes over appetisers.

3. Steal My Sunshine - Emily Gale
More Australian YA, this time focusing on an uncertain teenage girl and the secrets of her grandmother.

4. Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn
Twisty, genuinely gripping thriller that everyone and their aunt seems to have read by now!

5. Lola and the Boy Next Door - Stephanie Perkins
A worthy follow up to Anna, and another YA novel from Perkins with real, heart-warming characters and one of the coolest protagonists I've met in a while.

6. Speechless - Hannah Harrington
This one totally exceeded my expectations - bratty girl is transformed by her pledge to remain silent after a horrifying incident.

7. Geek Girl - Holly Smale
Fun British YA - smart and daft and highly recommended.

8. Nemesis - Philip Roth
Roth's final novel, and a poignant one at that, focusing on the polio epidemic in New Jersey in 1944.

9. Be Awesome - Hadley Freeman (review coming soon!)
Friends with kids, terrible dating advice, magazines that do nothing but tear women's bodies apart - and how to deal with it all. Extremely funny.

10. My Mad, Fat Teenage Diary - Rae Earl
It's 1989, and 17 year old Rae is writing her diary in the depths of Lincolnshire, agonising over boys, analysing shitty friendships and writing bad poetry. A wonderful, hilarious book.

Review: My Mad, Fat, Teenage Diary, Rae Earl

My Mad, Fat, Teenage Diary

Rae Earl

Hodder, 2007

Goodreads

It's 1989 and Rae is a fat, boy-mad 17-year-old girl, living in Stamford, Lincolnshire with her mum and their deaf white cat in a council house with a mint off-green bath suite and a larder Rae can't keep away from. This is the hilarious and touching real-life diary she kept during that fateful year - with characters like her evil friend Bethany, Bethany's besotted boyfriend, and the boys from the grammar school up the road (who have code names like Haddock and Battered Sausage).

My Fat, Mad Teenage Diary evokes a vanished time when Charles and Di are still together, the Berlin wall is up, Kylie is expected to disappear from the charts at any moment and it's £1 for a Snakebite and Black in the Vaults pub. My Fat, Mad Teenage Diary will appeal to anyone who's lived through the 1980s. But it will also strike a chord with anyone who's ever been a confused, lonely teenager who clashes with their mother, takes themselves VERY seriously and has no idea how hilarious they are.

Rae Earl is 17 and living in Stamford, Lincolnshire. If that wasn't bad enough, she's just had a spell in a mental health facility, and she's addicted to food. Hence the title: my mad, fat, teenage diary. It's 1989, and Rae is juggling mock A levels with nights down the pub, crumbling friendships, and boys. Not to mention - can a Sagittarius really ever get off with a Scorpio without it all going to pieces?

Rae's diary is a joy to read - not because it's particularly happy, and not even because it's jammed full of entertaining events, but because it is undeniably real throughout. And of course it's real - this is Rae's real diary - but more than that it's full of that strange and yet completely relatable teenage minutiae: lists of boys and their current status with regard to Rae (friends? more than friends?); conversations rendered in exquisite detail, a few lines imbued with the hefty weight of meaning; lines of poetry; rants at her mum.

I have read a few reviews that have been disappointed with the lack of things happening in this book, with the unresolved ending, with the repetitive diary entries, and I was a little bit apprehensive going into this - having really enjoyed the TV series that was made recently for Channel 4 - but all I can say is: give it a try. There were some proper laugh out loud moments - one of my personal favourites was the list Rae made of illnesses and conditions she could expect to suffer from in later life, courtesy of her mum (my mum does this to me, too). Rae's diary isn't trying to be anything, because it already is something: a year in the life of a teenager dealing with bitchy friends and ridiculous boys and that awkward point between childhood and adulthood (no, Britney, no).

In Rae's case, everything is made that much harder by the fact that she is fat - fat enough that a group of boys will routinely chant "Jabba" at her when she passes, and her best friends will suggest that if only she could lose some weight, a boy might like her in more than a pitying way. Rae's struggle with her weight and her self-image was all the more powerful for not being an easy fix: this is not fiction, and Rae does not suddenly transform just by willing it to be so. Those reviews I have read that appear frustrated with Rae - "why doesn't she just stop eating biscuits?" - seem to miss the point. This is not a redemptive piece of teenage fiction: this is real life, where the narrative isn't always just going in one, better direction.

Overall rating: 8/10

Book source: Borrowed from the library.

Showcase Sunday #26

Showcase Sunday is hosted by Vicky at Books, Biscuits and Tea.

If you follow me on Goodreads, you might have noticed that I have launched into a reread of the Harry Potter series, so this week's Showcase Sunday is a little bit Potter-heavy...

I picked these up from home when I went to visit my family last weekend. I also picked up Agatha Christie's The Murder At The Vicarage (borrowed from my stepmum), which is my second attempt at a Miss Marple mystery this year. I normally prefer Poirot, but I decided to give Marple a go for a change. Unfortunately, the first Marple book I picked up from the library a while ago was The Moving Finger, which hardly features Marple at all - this is meant to be more of a classic!

I also got My Mad, Fat, Teenage Diary by Rae Earl from the library. This is the actual diary of Rae, and was the basis for the recent E4 programme My Mad Fat Diary.

Recent reviews:
All That I Am - Anna Funder (7/10) - based on the true story of German citizens who resisted Hitler's rise to power in the early 1930s
Dare You To - Katie McGarry (DNF for making me go ARGGGGH throughout the first few chapters)
The Whole of My World - Nicole Hayes (6.5/10) - Australian YA with a footie backdrop
Twerp - Mark Goldblatt (7/10) - funny MG featuring Julian and his journal

Thanks for stopping by!