December was an excellent reading month for me in the sense that I felt really productive and enjoyed most of the books that I read. Unfortunately I didn't complete all of my TBR, but then I was expecting that. I still have a few things that I want to finish off in January, but let's have a little look at what I did manage to complete this month.
1. Educating Rita by Willy Russell
This the first book that I completed this month and I absolutely loved it! Educating Rita tells the story of a working class hairdresser in the north of England who takes an Open University course in the hopes of bettering herself. Her tutor is English Literature professor Frank who is actually just a drunken, disillusioned poet.
The chemistry between the two characters was wonderfully written and something that I can't quite define. They fluctuate from being friends, to having almost a father/daughter relationship and then at times there is a thick coating of sexual tension. However, there was one definitive change in their relationship from Act 1 to Act 2 and that is at the beginning of the book Frank is a true believer in the "game" of academia and the way in which it is performed, whereas Rita is much more literal and much less pretentious. In the second act we see that this has been reversed and the third act obviously brings it all to a close. I loved this switch and I liked how it really showed the impact that being born to one school of thought instead of the other can have.
I loved the message that this book was portraying. It's look at class and the way in which people view university and books was deeply interesting to me. It spoke to me much more on a personal level as a council house kid who went to university and so I felt that I could really relate to Rita and her struggle. The challenges that she faces are not only due to her class, but also because she is a woman and therefore is expected to get pregnant and be a mother. This was also something that resonated with me and so this book quickly catapulted to one of my favourite books.
I loved this and am keen to read more of Willy Russell's work.
Rating: ★★★★★
2. Hobson's Choice by Harold Brighouse
After the success I had with the two plays that I had read previously to this I had high hopes for this book. The premise sounded promising with it being set up north again in the shop of a widowed bootmaker during the Industrial Revolution. It had the sound of an Elizabeth Gaskell novel about it and I love North and South.
Sadly, it just didn't live up to that. It started off promising enough in the first few scenes, but I just struggled to connect with any of the characters and didn't find any of them particularly likeable or even that well-formed. The structure of the play wasn't the standard three acts that I had been expecting and I just didn't understand the direction that the story was taking. The ending did very little for and I found it to be an all-round disappointment.
Rating: ★★
3. Living Dead Dallas by Charlaine Harris
I started the Sookie Stackhouse or Southern Vampire Mystery Series this time last year and liked the first book. It didn't occur to be until the end of the second book that in actual fact all of the books are separate mystery novels and this is actually my favourite aspect of them.
I will be doing a full review of this book in the near future so that I can record my view of the series as a whole as I progress through it so all I will say for now is I enjoyed reading it.
Rating: ★★★
4. Phosphorescence by Raffella Barker
I picked up this book expecting it to be somewhat of a cheesy YA romance which is exactly what I wanted in the long slog of December. It turned out to be much different to that. Lola, the protagonist was a girl that I expected to be at least 16, but was in fact only 14 and the romance element of this book seemed to be non-existent. Having said that it turned out to be much more than I could have imagined.It followed the life of Lola whose parents divorce and so she is forced to move from her sleepy seaside village on the East coast of England to a whole new life in London. Lola is torn between who she was and who she wants to be and is juggling a whole load of hormones at the same time.
It was a nostalgic look (for me) at what it means to be changing from a child into a young woman and all of the things that go a long with that. There was a part particularly in the middle of the book that broke my heart and had me almost crying on the train. I wish that I could have read this when I was actually 14 as think that I would have enjoyed it more then. However it was still an enjoyable read. If you like Jacqueline Wilson's Girls series then I think that you would like this.
Rating: ★★★
5. Nobody Does It Better by Cecily Ziegesar
After not quite getting what I wanted in Phosphorescence I decided to pick up a book that I knew would be very teenage and frivolous and that was number seven in the Gossip Girl series. I won't say much about this book as it is so far into the series, but I do want to point out that they are much better than the TV show and a quick, fun read.
This one did have quite a homophobic attitude that I wasn't at all appreciative of and is never something that I have notice before. I deducted a star for this alone. I hope that I don't see any more of that in the rest of the books in the series because up until now I have been enjoying them.
Rating: ★★
6/7. Saga Volume 2/3 by Briak K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples
As is clear from my December TBR graphic novels were high on my list during this holiday period and these two books were greatly anticipated. I absolutely loved them which is unsurprising considering I loved the first one so much. I read them both in one sitting and am overjoyed that the fourth one has come out, though sadly my library doesn't have it in yet.
Saga is a sci-fi graphic novel that centres around two creatures from warring worlds who fall in love, defying both their native planets which causes problems for both races. In an attempt to keep this union secret so that the on-going war can continue an array of pursuers are sent after the pair.
This one is well worth a read even if you are not a fan of graphic novels or sci-fi. I know that this series has been receiving some high praise and in my opinion it is completely deserved.
Rating: ★★★★★
8. Lollipop Shoes by Joanne Harris
This is the second book in a magical realism trilogy by Joanne Harris and I read the first book Chocolat about 6 years ago now and absolutely loved it. I think I realised that this was in fact a trilogy about two years ago and have had Lollipop Shoes on the go since then.
The book is nearly 600 pages long and so was going to take some time to complete either way. However, that is not the reason that this book too me so long to complete. It spent many months living in a completely different city to me which made it quite difficult to carry on with, but also because the tone and pace of this book I felt were different and slower than the first one.
It is quite likely that I will do a review of this book and reread Chocolat and do that same for that so that I can compare my thoughts on all of the books in the series. I hope to read the third book some time this year.
Rating: ★★★
9. Ghost World by Daniel Clowes
This is a graphic novel that tells the story of Enid and Rebecca who are just messing around through a summer. They go on a series of non-adventures and this is really all the plot that there is. I understood and appreciated the fuzziness of the narrative. It had the real-life feel of an endless, boring summer where entertainment is rare and exaggeration is the key to getting through it.
I thought that the artwork in this book was well done and the green tones that were used were interesting and new for me. I have no idea if Clowes has more work, but is something that I'll be looking into. I also hear that this novel is a film and it is one that will definitely have a look at.
Rating: ★★★
9. Ghost World by Daniel Clowes
This is a graphic novel that tells the story of Enid and Rebecca who are just messing around through a summer. They go on a series of non-adventures and this is really all the plot that there is. I understood and appreciated the fuzziness of the narrative. It had the real-life feel of an endless, boring summer where entertainment is rare and exaggeration is the key to getting through it.
I thought that the artwork in this book was well done and the green tones that were used were interesting and new for me. I have no idea if Clowes has more work, but is something that I'll be looking into. I also hear that this novel is a film and it is one that will definitely have a look at.
Rating: ★★★
10. Hawkeye: Earth's Mightiest Marksman by
This is a graphic novel that collects a few of the solo adventures of the character from the Marvel Avengers comic book series and are from the 80s and 90s. I haven't ever read any of the Marvel comics before and I was definitely intimidated by the extensive history that these stories are a part of. However, seeing as this collection did focus mostly on just Hawkeye I was able to pick up what was going on for the most part.
I enjoyed the first story better than the second which followed Hawkeye after the death of his wife, which is in some way a new beginning and so a way for a newbie like me to get into his life. I like Hawkeye in this story as I could empathise with his guilt and grief and really enjoyed the way in which he was a loner, who still felt as though he wanted to help people and genetically modified werewolf creatures.
The second story was less enjoyable for me. There was a host of characters that I was unfamiliar with and who I didn't feel were introduced well. It was obviously that this story had been picked from an on-going series and I just couldn't keep up. I also didn't like how the other characters impacted on Hawkeye's personality. I though that he was so unlikable in the second story that I almost didn't want to continue with the story. He was arrogant and vain and I did not find him in any way relatable. His character was also very demeaning to the only female hero that we see and I didn't like at all.
I also found the artwork in this to be quite confusing as I wasn't always sure in which order I should read the panels when there were panels, which often there wouldn't be, at least not in the traditional sense. However, I loved the colours and thought that there was a great use of white in a lot of the artwork which I haven't seen before, but thought was quite clever and a good way of keeping costs down in order to make the original comic more accessible.
Overall I thought that this collection was ok and I haven't completely been turned off Hawkeye as a character, but I might look to more modern imaginings of him in the future.
Rating: ★★
So they were all of the books that I completed this month. I did also start the Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 8, Volume 1 graphic novel which is absolutely huge! I've read the first story which is in four parts and so I am getting a taste for it. I have quite a lot of mixed feelings about it at the moment, but am hoping to finish it in January so I will be able to talk more about it then.
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