In My Mailbox #4

In My Mailbox is a weekly meme hosted by Kristi at The Story Siren, and gives bloggers a chance to share what books they've purchased/received/dug up as buried treasure.

This week, I just have one new book:

Gayle Forman - If I Stay

A couple of weeks ago I posted about getting a copy of Forman's Where She Went from the library, and wondering whether it was okay to read it without reading If I Stay first. Thanks to some advice from Melissa and Hilda, I decided to hold off until I could get hold of If I Stay. I picked it up from the library today, and I'm excited to get started!

What's in your mailbox this week? Leave me your links!

Fangirl Five Friday (#1)

Fangirl Five Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Evil Eva at Nancy Drew Is My Homegirl, in which bloggers list the five things they're fangirling over this week.

I first discovered this via YA Crush, and finally decided to take part! So, in no particular order, here is my list:

1. (Almost) new Game of Thrones!
I am a massive SOAIF/GoT fan. The first HBO series is how I discovered the books in the first place. In the space between series, I have worked my way through the first three books, and am incredibly excited to see the second book come to life. (Sadly, SPOILER ALERT after the trailer...



...minus Sean Bean, who when I was a kid I thought was the most famous man on earth, given that he and I are from the same neck of the woods, and he was always on our local news programmes.) This primer from The Guardian is a handy little guide if you're struggling to remember how it went the first time around...

2. Bob's Burgers returns!
Okay, I promise not all these will be to do with television (despite the fact that I just discovered I can watch Wallander online through my Lovefilm subscription - the Swedish version starring Krister Henriksson). But the boy and I caught up with the first two new episodes of Bob's Burgers last weekend, and I am back to coveting that pink rabbit ears hat again. H. Jon Benjamin is one of my favourites. (Archer is my other current favourite.)

3. Sunshine
Being in Brighton last weekend, I got to enjoy the unexpected sun right by the sea. The sun is never my best friend, because I burn in the time it takes most people to put on their shoes. But that doesn't stop me being excited to be able to sit outside and write, or walk miles without pulling out the winter coat, or jump in the pool knowing that it's lovely and warm outside for once!

Sunset on Brighton beach (via me)

4. Soundgarden tickets!
Last week I managed to book tickets to see Eddie Vedder in London. (You have no idea how exciting this is to me. The boy and I are already seeing Pearl Jam for the fourth time this summer, but this was a delicious little bonus.) Yesterday, said boy booked tickets for... Soundgarden. As Pam might say in Archer: Holy shitsticks. Our grunge quadrology (erm...) will be complete come the summer (Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Mudhoney, and Soundgarden). Long live flannel.

Looking good, guys. Eddie Vedder & Chris Cornell, via Grunge Report

5. Baking cookies
My friends and I had dinner together this week, which we do periodically. We all bring different parts of the meal, and this time it was my turn to bring the dessert. As we were having American-themed food, I brought cookies. I baked them for the first time ever, and they were (modesty alert) AMAZING. I am now convinced of the necessity to bake homemade cookies every week. (This article states that PhD baking is not uncommon, given its built-in study breaks and focus on completely different parts of the brain. I did copy edit an article in between cookie rounds, so maybe it really is the future of study...)

Honourable mention to The Hunger Games film, which I talked about earlier this week. No fangirling, but definitely a renewed appreciation for the book after being pleasantly surprised by the film.

And finally: I have been largely AWOL this last week. Blame a mixture of complete computer failure, a trip to the beach to see the boy, and general PhD/journal madness commitments. I am now back from the beach, and possess a new shiny computer. Given that I am still buried in the third year of my thesis and still the editor of a journal, expect the madness to continue on that front.

Also, has anyone else noticed that Blogger has gone all country-specific? My URL now reads ".co.uk", as does anyone else's Blogger blog that I visit, regardless of their location...

On The Hunger Games

I went to see The Hunger Games last Sunday evening. This was after vowing, in no uncertain terms, that I would not go and see The Hunger Games at the cinema.

This was mostly due to the incessant fan-girling (fan-boying?) and hype that has surrounded its release, the fact that after reading Catching Fire I was very disappointed, and the 2h20m screening time that sends me running for cover however much I want to see a film. (Film studies bias, maybe. I have to watch a lot of films. If you haven't said it in 100 minutes, I start to lose the will.)

In the end, though, I enjoyed the film. I liked that it was still Katniss' story, and it didn't bow to any kind of overt Team Boy #1 / Team Boy #2 ridiculousness. (This is what almost put me off reading THG in the first place: a couple of years ago, I attended my local Nanowrimo meet ups and ended up sitting with a bunch of young teenage girls, who were massive and passionate THG fans, and who had managed to reduce the entire series into one big Peeta-vs.-Gale monstrosity.) I always enjoy seeing Donald Sutherland on screen, and I thought Lenny Kravitz and Jennifer Lawrence were both good, too. I liked seeing the build up in the Capitol, and would have probably liked more of the behind-the-scenes stuff if I'm honest, although in an already-long film that would have been pushing it. Although I'd argue that she isn't always particularly likable, Katniss as a character is compelling, and I thought this translated well to the screen.

This morning, I read this blog post at Body of a Geek Goddess, which sums up a lot of the things that bugged me about the film. Not enough to make me dislike it in any way, but I do think a lot of the more nuanced elements of the book were lost. Perhaps this was inevitable, but in the end it made me appreciate the book more than I did on my original reading. When I first read THG, I enjoyed it as a good, solid, exciting book that was sadly diluted by my reading of Catching Fire, which I felt was distinctly lacking. Having seen the film, I'm tempted by a re-read (and maybe even a library reservation for Mockingjay...)

Review: The Summer I Turned Pretty (Summer #1), Jenny Han

The Summer I Turned Pretty (Summer #1)


Jenny Han

Puffin, 2010 (2009)

Every year Isabel spends a perfect summer at her family friends' house.


There's the swimming pool at night, the private stretch of beach - and the two boys.


Conrad: unavailable, aloof - who she's been in love with forever.


Jeremiah: friendly, relaxed - the only one who's ever really paid her any attention.


But this year something is different. They seem to have noticed her for the first time. It's going to be an amazing summer... and one she'll never forget.

From the moment everyone seems to suddenly "notice" Belly because *gasp!* she got contacts, I had a horrible feeling this was going to be one of those Sweet Dreams-style makeover affairs, where the girl takes off her glasses and her scruffy trainers and the boys all realised she's the girl of their dreams. Fortunately, that did not actually happen here.

I read this book in the space of two or three hours. The fifteen year old that secretly lives inside me wished this book had existed when the outside me was also fifteen, and could read endless books about ordinary girls who just need a bit of confidence in themselves. Twenty six year old me (who still has yet to swap the glasses for contacts) felt more melancholy, particularly as the book approaches its end. The book is about new beginnings, but more than that it seemed to me to be about endings - the end of summer, the end of being a kid, and the fact that some of that stuff can't be taken back.

For the most part, though, it's a lighthearted and fun book. Belly is at the beach for the summer with her brother, her mum, her mum's best friend Susannah and Susannah's two sons, Conrad and Jeremiah. Belly is desperate for Conrad to notice her, but there are other boys noticing Belly, and plenty of mixed signals and whatnot floating around. I will own up now to being disappointed by the coupling at the end, though!

Belly is a little bit whiny and a little bit self-centred, and while that's kind of annoying, it also seemed to be a pretty accurate depiction of a fifteen year old, particularly one who feels so left out of the boys' games. The relationships she had with her brother and her mother were also well-drawn - not horrible, not perfect, but somewhere in between. There is nothing earth-shattering about the plot of TSITP; rather, it's a gentle and realistic coming of age tale that made for an enjoyable afternoon read.

Overall rating: 7/10


Book source: Borrowed from the library.

I have to say, I much prefer the US (?) cover of the book to this one, which is the UK paperback edition.

Review: The Laughing Policeman (Martin Beck #4), Maj Sjowall & Per Wahloo

The Laughing Policeman (Martin Beck #4)


Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö

Harper Perennial, 2007 (1968; trans. 1970)

Translated from the Swedish by Alan Blair

On a cold and rainy Stockholm night, nine bus riders are gunned down by an unknown assassin. The press, anxious for an explanation for the seemingly random crime, quickly dubs the killer a madman. But Detective Inspector Martin Beck suspects otherwise: this apparently motiveless murderer has managed to target one of Beck's best detectives, found dead in his seat with his service revolver in his hand. Surely he would not have been riding that lethal bus without a reason...

This is the first Sjöwall and Wahlöö book I have read, and it turned out to be a solid, gripping, good old fashioned police procedural. It's 1968 in Stockholm, and Beck and his team are chasing a multiple murderer against a backdrop of Vietnam protests and a changing Swedish society (heightened consumerism and police distrust, but also more benign details like a switch to right hand traffic to fall into line with neighbouring countries). These little background details set the scene and made the book more interesting.

Before Wallander driving around Ystad in his Volvo and drinking too much in his own company, there was evidently Martin Beck, sleeping on the sofa and failing to connect properly with his kids. Beck is likeable, though, and I liked his friendship with fellow detective Kollberg. The characterisations are subtle, but they do differentiate the different policeman and inject some personality into the proceedings.

In the end, there are two crimes to solve in The Laughing Policeman, and they both come together in the last few pages. Given that the original murders take place right at the beginning, the in-between is mostly police slog, interviewing witnesses and following up sparse clues. Essentially, the layers are revealed gradually, and I found it compelling rather than boring as the police went about their investigations. There are no great leaps of faith or convenient clairvoyancy going on here, which was, in the end, refreshing. I will definitely be returning for more Sjöwall and Wahlöö in the future.

Overall rating: 7.5/10


Book source: Borrowed from the library.

Review: Queen Camilla, Sue Townsend

Queen Camilla

Sue Townsend

Penguin, 2007 (2006)

The UK has come over all republican. The royal family exiled to an exclusion zone with the other villains and spongers. And to cap it all, the Queen has threatened to abdicate.


Yet Prince Charles is more interested in root vegetables than reigning... unless his wife Camilla can be queen in a newly restored monarchy. And when a scoundrel who claims to be the couple's secret love child offers to take the crown off their hands, the stage is set for a right royal showdown.


But the question for Camilla (and the rest of the country) must be: queen of the vegetable patch or queen of England?

Queen Camilla is, loosely, a sequel to The Queen & I. I say loosely, because as a huge fan of The Queen & I,   this seemed to be part sequel, part rewriting, and part shadow of its former self. I am a big Sue Townsend fan, and the humour and the writing was spot on as always, but the plot of Queen Camilla, and its execution, left a lot to be desired. At the end I found myself wishing I'd just re-read The Queen & I for the millionth time, instead.

The royal family are still living in Hell Close, but this time around, the street is part of the Flowers Exclusion Zone, and Big Brother is in full force, spying on the residents and making their lives a misery. The republican government are in danger of losing the election to their 'New Conservative' rivals, who wish to reinstate the monarchy. Neither the Queen nor Prince Charles (who is more interested in his chickens and his organic vegetable garden) want to be monarch, but the arrival on the scene of an unexpected family member threatens to upend all these plans.

The book also features a plethora of talking dogs, who communicate with each other, unbeknownst to their owners. I actually didn't mind this device, although it was reasonably odd. What did bug me more was the characterisation. In The Queen & I the characters were rather more nuanced, whereas here they relied more on caricature and broad sweeps of the brush. Numerous characters were downright unlikeable.

As a fan of the first book, the little inconsistencies between the two were annoying (supporting characters changed first names, or which house they lived in, for example). Not a whole lot seemed to happen, in the end, and although Townsend's writing remained enjoyable, the book itself just fell short.

Overall rating: 5.5/10


Book source: Borrowed from the library.

In My Mailbox #3

In My Mailbox is a weekly meme hosted by The Story Siren, where bloggers can share the books they've received this week.


From the library:

The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han


This has been on my TBR list for a while, so I'm hoping for a good read!


Where She Went by Gayle Forman


I haven't read anything of Forman's before, and I didn't realise until I got this from the library that it follows from If I Stay, but I'm hopeful that it won't matter too much.


Bought:

Apologies for the slight blurriness!

Borkmann's Point by Håkan Nesser


A Swedish crime novel, #2 in the Inspector Van Veeteren series. Again, I haven't read the first, but this was being promoted in my local Waterstones. (For some reason, they have created a makeshift section called "Scandi" for such Scandinavian crime novels.)


How To Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran


Finally out in paperback, and again on promotion. I used up the rest of my book token on this, which I've been dying to read for ages!


Have you read any of these books? What's in your mailbox this week?