Booklog #5

This week I finished: 

Let me describe the book I finished this week and see if you think it sounds familiar:

Socially awkward teenage girl is forced by circumstances to start a new school in a dreary grey place where she feels trapped.  She meets an alluring boy who constantly blows hot and cold towards her, leaving her unclear where she stands with him.  She tries to find out more about him from other students and school records.  Along the way she ends up in hospital after a terrible incident.  Eventually she confronts the boy about his feelings for her only to find that he's a supernatural being and has been trying to put her off him in order to keep her safe.  Despite this eventual declaration of love (which she has yearned for) she continues to fret that she's not good enough for him and wonder how he could possibly be interested in her.  When they have to part she pines for him.  

Okay, so things do take a different path in the second half of the book, but up to that point you'd have been hard pushed to deny that I was describing Twilight wouldn't you?  It's actually Fallen, by Lauren Kate, but despite the fact it felt a tiny bit 'been there, read that' I still enjoyed it a lot and really got caught up in the action.  The supernatural beings aren't vampires, which makes a nice change - you can probably guess from the title what they actually are...plus I think I gave it away last week!  There's a good balance of action and dialogue, and the school and its colourful cast of pupils are described very well (though I wouldn't want to visit).  I like this because I find it really frustrating to finish a book and still have no real grasp of how any of it looked.  I think you enjoy a story so much more if your subconscious is able to use the words provided to paint a picture as if it's going on around you, making you feel involved as opposed to just a spectator.  Definitely something to aspire to with my own writing!  4/5

Other than that, it's been a quiet week in terms of reading.  I haven't had chance to start anything new, mainly because I've got such a backlog of magazines built up that I've had to try and clear some before they take over the house!  However, my book club should be starting a new book this week, hopefully a good ol' whodunit this time. 

I'm still reading:
* Pillars of the Earth ~ Ken Follett
* The Children's Book ~ A.S. Byatt (I've slogged my way through another chapter, now up to 22!)

Till Wednesday then - happy reading!  :o)
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10k Day

'10k?' I hear you thinking, 'she's been running when she should be at home writing?'  There are many reasons why the answer to that is a resounding NO - 1) it's cold here and there would have to be a very good reason for me to leave the house and 2) run 10k - me?  Have you met me?  Okay, no, most of you haven't met me, but I can assure you that I couldn't even run 1k, let alone 10.  I'm not overweight but equally I am just not that fit! 

No, 10k Day is a concept thought up by my new writing buddy Milli Thornton over at Fear of Writing whereby writers commit to trying to write a whole 10,000 words in one day, checking in periodically to post updates on their progress (and what snacks are helping them get through it!).  As one of them fell on my Writing Wednesday I thought it would be silly not to at least try, so after a late start (I won't bore you with why that was) I applied the BICHOK principle (Bum in Chair, Hands on Keyboard) and began. 

I chose to work on my NaNoWriMo project, which has been sadly languishing while I've been working long days and/or studying. #shame#  Fortunately, I'd thought ahead and done some plotting last night so that I had a bit of a route map to follow today, rather than having to think of the plot AND all the words.  So I got off to a flying start...if you're a friend on Facebook then you may have noticed my status and subsequent comments keeping the world updated with how I was doing.  I also updated my 'Toyah the Writer' Facebook page (feel free to look it up and 'like' it if you wish!) which in turn automatically updated Twitter (again, 'ToyahTheWriter'...do you see the branding I'm trying to apply?).  I do so love all this social media! 

Keeping tabs on the Fear of Writing blog page, which is where we were all checking in and updating each other, I forged ahead with periodic spurts of inspiration where the words really did just flow from my mind, down my arms and out of my fingers into the laptop.  It's quite a magical feeling!  Nourished by a bacon sandwich, chocolate biscuits and numerous cups of tea and coffee I managed to get to 3576 before it was getting dark outside and my stomach was telling me it was time for dinner...not the 10,000 I'd been hoping for, but certainly better than I've managed to get down in one day before now.  Progress! 

If you have something you're working on (not necessarily NaNoWriMo, it can be anything at all) and are in need of motivation, the next 10k Day is this Saturday (27th) - check out Milli's blog for more details and to check in.  The feeling of camaraderie is quite something, it's just so nice to have people cheering you on when you feel like it's just you and your laptop struggling along! 
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Booklog #4

Firstly, apologies for being a day late - November is Birthday Month in our family and it seems like barely a weekend can go by without meals out to celebrate various relations turning a year older.  It was too late to engage my brain last night when we got home (and is almost too late now, but luckily I drafted this on paper during my lunch break). 

This week I've sampled two 'Quick Reads' - novellas by well-known authors, intended (I presume) to tempt you to read their full-length novels.  I've never been a massive fan of short stories as I prefer to get really immersed in a long book, but these were less than a pound to download to the Kindle so I couldn't resist...  Oddly, they both have similar names - The Perfect Holiday (Cathy Kelly) and The Perfect Murder (Peter James).  But that's where the similarity ends! 

I haven't read any Cathy Kelly before but I have to say that I quite enjoyed The Perfect Holiday.  I don't usually go for what I would call 'normal life' stories, i.e. stories that aren't predominantly comedy, fantasy, history, thriller or whatever.  I don't know why but they've just never appealed - perhaps because part of me thinks that they wouldn't be different enough to normal life to be interesting.  However, I liked the way that the stories of the various characters staying at the same hotel are interwoven and also how the events that unfold lead to their lives changing in different ways.  Although it touches on serious subjects (alcoholism, bereavement) it's not overly gritty and serious and still feels quite warm and touching.  Without wishing to sound condescending, it just has a nice feel to it and I think I'll most likely go on to try some of Cathy Kelly's novels.  4/5

The Perfect Murder, on the other hand, has no such warmth and humanity - quite the opposite!  The main characters are a middle-aged married couple who are so fed up of one other that they each plot to murder the other.  I won't throw you any spoilers of course, but will just say that it's a clever plot with a good ending.  I've read Peter James' Looking Good Dead which is also very good - if you're looking for a new thriller writer to try, you could do worse than him.  4/5

And so to wrap up...

This week I finished:

The Redbreast ~ Jo Nesbo
I think you've probably gathered from my previous posts that I didn't enjoy this much.  Everything does get resolved and explained in the end, but to be honest I was so annoyed with it that I read it as quickly as possible and someone else from my book club had to explain it to me!  2/5

Angels ~ Marian Keyes
Now that I've finished it, I think this has just about the right balance of comedy and seriousness.  Things are revealed well into the second half of the story that explain a lot of issues lightly touched on in the first half and I found myself less and less able to put it down the further in I got. It starts out seemingly quite frothy and light but becomes a very compelling read.  4/5

This week I started:
Fallen ~ Lauren Kate (seems quite Twilight-esque so far, but with fallen angels instead of vampires)

I'm still reading:
Pillars of the Earth ~ Ken Follett
The Children's Book ~ A.S. Byatt (up to chapter 21)

That's all for now - happy reading!  :o)
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