Made of Library

I’ve decided to take part in a reading challenge this year. Book Riot run a challenge every year called the Read Harder Challenge, aimed at getting you out of your reading comfort zone. You can find this year’s challenge here . It’s only 24 items long so I’ve added some self-imposed rules to make it better match my own reading goals. No double ups. Each item on the list must be a different book. Even if a book qualifies for different items I can only count it for one of them. Wherever possible the book needs to come from my already existing reading list . These are books that I already have a copy of, either a hard copy or on one of my devices. This serves the double purpose of getting through some more items on my TBR list as well as stopping me from spending too much money on new books. Here’s the challenge list and the books I’ve chosen to read for each one. I still have three items that I haven’t chosen books for. I’ve either been unable to find anything on my

I went to see this production on the final night of it’s run. I was unsure what to expect as I’ve often found that amateur theatre can be quite uneven; somewhat hit and miss in whether it manages to pull off what it was intending to achieve. Considering the historical importance of this document, a miss could be almost blasphemous. It’s been quite a few years since I read the book, and mostly what I remembered what that it was very much the diary of a young girl. It was full of complaining about parents and how no one understands and puberty and dealing with all the usual emotional ups and downs that teenagers have to deal with. I remember being somewhat surprised at how normal all of that seemed, despite the uniqueness of Anne’s situation. I was worried, that the theatre version was going to be a couple of hours of emo whining by a young and inexperienced actor. Thankfully there was more to it than that. Henny Walters played Anne, and I found her acting to be somewhat for

Only about a quarter of the book was written by the author. The rest was excerpts of interviews with people who Ali knew and with Ali himself. Basically it was a collection of interview excerpts arranged in a logical order. One of the most eye opening parts of the book was how much it taught me about the Nation of Islam. I had no idea of the extent of the black supremacy that was part of it. Even though Ali later changed his views I was surprised at his stance on segregation early on. No one had anything bad to say about Ali, and I guess that’s ok as long as you remember this is a book more about celebrating his achievements than an accurate historical account. I am a martial artist but boxing is not my preferred discipline. I keep half an eye on what’s currently going on in the boxing world, but I don’t know a lot of boxing history. I think someone who knew nothing of the boxing world could read this and not be lost in the history and terminology of the sport, yet t

The English Patient is the story of four people brought together by war. Hana, the English Patient, Caravaggio and Kip all end up in the same crumbling Italian Villa. The story moved slowly, lazily. Not slow as in boring or lazy as in poorly written, but slow like a Sunday afternoon in the sun, like laying down on the couch for a nap, like watching proceedings through a haze of morphine. It was beautifully written and so evocative that I could see Hana wandering the fallen halls of the villa alone at night. I love the way the character’s stories intertwine. As we learn more about one of them we inevitably learn more about them all and what brought them all together. The move away and come together again in a kind of literary dance. I was only slightly disappointed by the ending. The ending that I wanted to happen would have put too sweet a tip on it, but that doesn’t stop me still wanting it. Like that last spoon of ice cream when you’re already full. The ending came too so

Part two of the Kingkiller Chronicles continued Kvothe’s story. We see him move beyond the university and into the broader world, learn new skills and meet new people. I still enjoyed the second novel in the series, but it lacked something that the first had. This time round I found it irritating that Kvothe was so good at everything he turned his hand to. Be it composing songs, combat or love making, he was able to master the skill in an exceptionally short amount of time. It’s starts to rub after a while. No one can be that good at everything. There wasn’t as much advancement in Kvothe’s the elder’s story as I would have liked, but it still moved toward telling us more about the Chandrian, which is now the main plot line that is pulling me into this series. Overall I found myself getting irritated at Kvothe’s perfection, especially given that he’s only 16 years old during these events. It’s certainly asking us to believe a lot that someone so young can have such a mature ou

It’s a been a long time since I've enjoyed a fantasy book this much. I’ve read a lot of fantasy and so much of it is just derivative and formulaic and brings nothing new. I usually have a number of different books on the go at once across different devices and different locations. One book on my for phone for reading on the bus, a physical book for at home on the couch, one on my Kindle for reading in bed. Once I’d started The Name of the Wind I had to stop everything else I was reading until I’d finished it because it was so engrossing. Considering the outline of the story there’s nothing to set this apart from any other stock standard fantasy story. But something Gestaltian happens with this book and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Kvothe is a young boy with an aptitude for music and survival. He’s intelligent and has the ability to talk his way out of just about any situation. The character is somewhat of a male ‘Mary Sue’. He’s good at everything

It took me a long time to get into this book, and even then I wasn’t entirely convinced that I enjoyed it. The concept is intriguing and unique, but it took me a long time to work out what the concept even was. This novel creates a very strange universe and I would have appreciated some more time spent telling me about the world I was in before delving into the story. There was very little dialogue throughout the novel. It was heavy on descriptive passages, yet somehow managed to give me very little imagery of the physical places described in the book. One rule of writing that I’ve heard on a number of occasions is to avoid too many unnecessary adjectives. The Tyrant had no problem breaking this rule and I found myself having to reread passages to mentally cut out the extra adjectives and clauses to actually understand what was going on. To compound this the use of commas to separate adjectives or clauses within a sentence seemed optional. Sometimes they were there, but

Disclaimer: I was given a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review I was asked to write a review for this book because I had written a review for Starship Troopers and was told this book was similar. There were a few similarities, but there are other books to which it is more akin, such as Ender’s Game. The first third of this book is set up and backstory to let us know where Tek/Deuce came from and why he is like he is. I don’t have a problem with story that builds the world and introduces us to characters, but each section of the back story felt as though it had been specifically written with one key scene in mind to let the reader know where a particular aspect of Deuce’s character came from. Each piece of the backstory felt contrived to show one specific plot point, whether it be a personality trait, a particular event or a dynamic between characters. Stories have to advance, but it was blatant what the ‘point’ of each scene was. I don’t want to see the skel