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Noll's 2016 Books and Cross-Stitch


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Where did the wondering come from? :D

From something I was going to mention in a review.  :)  I am *so* behind on my reviews.  Behinder™ than I have ever been before! :o  :blush:

 

I read The Blue Lagoon by Henry De Vere Stacpoole and one of the characters speaks in a... stereotypical 'Oirish' colloquial manner (Musha, musha.  Oh begorra. That sort of thing) and as I was reading it I was feeling a bit cross with the author... but when I Googled him I discovered he was born in Kingstown, which is now called Dún Laoghaire, so I sort of forgave him!  From his name I didn't have him pegged as Irish and thought he was being rude!

 

If I'd just looked at Wikipedia yesterday I'd have seen how it was pronounced (I've just looked now, as I forgot what it used to be called!)  :D

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From something I was going to mention in a review.  :)  I am *so* behind on my reviews.  Behinder than I have ever been before! :o  :blush:

 

I read The Blue Lagoon by Henry De Vere Stacpoole and one of the characters speaks in a... stereotypical 'Oirish' colloquial manner (Musha, musha.  Oh begorra. That sort of thing) and as I was reading it I was feeling a bit cross with the author... but when I Googled him I discovered he was born in Kingstown, which is now called Dún Laoghaire, so I sort of forgave him!  From his name I didn't have him pegged as Irish and thought he was being rude!

 

If I'd just looked at Wikipedia yesterday I'd have seen how it was pronounced (I've just looked now, as I forgot what it used to be called!)  :D

 

I think it's actually worse if someone from Ireland writes/talks/acts like that, because they should know better :roll: 

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#12 The Black Snow - Paul Lynch
 
Genre: Fiction
Synopsis: In Donegal in the spring of 1945, a farmhand runs into a burning barn and does not come out alive. The farm's owner, Barnabas Kane, can only look on as his friend dies and all 43 of his cattle are destroyed in the blaze. Following the disaster, the bull-headed and proudly self-sufficient Barnabas is forced to reach out to the community for assistance. But resentment simmers over the farmhand's death, and Barnabas and his family begin to believe their efforts at recovery are being sabotaged. His teenage son struggles under the weight of a terrible secret, and his wife is suffocated by the uncertainty surrounding their future.  In The Black Snow, Paul Lynch takes the pastoral novel and--with the calmest of hands---tears it apart. With beautiful, haunting prose, Lynch illuminates what it means to live through crisis, and puts to the test our deepest certainties about humankind.

*** 

Review: Wow, what a start to my Irish Counties Challenge. I hardly feel worthy to review this novel as I'm pretty sure Paul Lynch utters more beautiful turns of phrase whilst mumbling in his sleep than I can when at my most articulate. Although relatively short, this novel forces you to take your time with exquisite prose that you'll want to savor. Slow moving and not consisting of a huge amount of plot, the flowery writing and gentle pace actually serve to exaggerate the turmoil and devastation felt by the characters in the novel. It took me well over a week to read this book, because I had to take it in short bursts, but despite the dense prose and lack of speech punctuation there is a simplicity to the story and a realism to the characters that makes it easy to pick up and recall everything with ease.

I feel I should probably warn potential readers that this is an immensely bleak book, which depicts the gradual self-destruction of Barnabas Kane and the fallout of that cast onto his family. I sincerely hope, however, that would not put anyone off reading it. There is so much to love about this book, offset as that is by the tragedy it portrays. The characters are so credibly drawn, but more than that, striking is the picture of a rural community set in its traditional ways, stubborn, opposed to newness and change; of conflict caused by the 'local strangers', the Kane family, as Barnabas impinges on community belief and heritage in his attempt to salvage his livelihood from misfortune.

A subplot featuring the Kane son, Billy, is told through diary entries, and while interesting in its own right, is ultimately never solidly tied back into the main story. Towards the end, I thought more was going to be outrightly resolved than actually was - in fact one pervasive question is never answered at all - but this did not detract from the story, which actually shocked me three separate times with dramatic events and, while unexpected, in hindsight it feels like things could not have gone any other way.

A beautiful, heart-breaking story absolutely worth reading.

Rating: ★★★★★ (It was amazing)

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I think it's actually worse if someone from Ireland writes/talks/acts like that, because they should know better :roll:

Hmm - I hadn't though of it like that.  

 

Accents/dialects are funny things, aren't they!  I'm from Kent born and bred.  People here (in Somerset) can detect that I'm not a local but can't quite work out where I'm from.  They know it's somewhere south of here.  However, when I visit the South East they say I've lost my Kentish accent!   I don't think I ever had a particularly strong one - my parents would pick me up if I ever said 'garrige' instead of 'garage', or 'gel (with a g sounding like the g in gate, rather than a j in jelly!) instead of 'girl', - conversely at secondary school my friends gave me lessons in saying words like suit and duvet because they said I sounded posh!  :lol:

 

I think I'd be more offended by someone trying to use dialect that wasn't their own - hence me being a bit cross with the author before I knew he was Irish.  At least he's more likely to have been accurate than I would if I tried to type in an Irish dialect.  :)

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The accents are indeed interesting.  I had to buy the audio of Trainspotting, just to make it out!  While it added a lot to the story, I had mixed emotions about the slang and broken Scottish.  Tough read.

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I've never read Trainspotting, but thicker Scottish accents (particularly Glaswegian and very affected Highlands accents, in my experience) can be nigh on impossible if you're not local. I watched a Glaswegian film featuring Robert Carlyle, who in many things has an accent that barely sounds Scottish at all, but in this film (can't remember the name) I hadn't a clue what he was saying.

 

Everyone in Ireland makes fun of Irish accents from other regions. Fortunately I have a fairly generic Irish accent that can't really be pinned down so I don't get mocked too much for it :D

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I've never read Trainspotting, but thicker Scottish accents (particularly Glaswegian and very affected Highlands accents, in my experience) can be nigh on impossible if you're not local. I watched a Glaswegian film featuring Robert Carlyle, who in many things has an accent that barely sounds Scottish at all, but in this film (can't remember the name) I hadn't a clue what he was saying.

It was nearly an entire different language!  It was strange though, I could understand it spoken, but reading it was omg impossible (hence, the audio version!).  Still, a good, if not harsh, read.

 

It'd be neat, to hear what we all sound like.

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Accents/dialects are funny things, aren't they!  I'm from Kent born and bred.  People here (in Somerset) can detect that I'm not a local but can't quite work out where I'm from.  They know it's somewhere south of here.  However, when I visit the South East they say I've lost my Kentish accent!   I don't think I ever had a particularly strong one - my parents would pick me up if I ever said 'garrige' instead of 'garage', or 'gel (with a g sounding like the g in gate, rather than a j in jelly!) instead of 'girl', - conversely at secondary school my friends gave me lessons in saying words like suit and duvet because they said I sounded posh!  :lol:

 

I'm a Londoner who has lived in West Yorkshire for some 40 years now.  In West Yorks, I'm unmistakeably a southerner (I even have to consciously modify my short u in words like 'mud' to the northern way of speaking so that the children in my class understand what I'm talking about when we're talking about vowel phonemes; equally the short a in words like bath).  When I go south, I'm told I'm obviously from the north, much to the hilarity of my wife and son, who are true Yorkshire.  That was until the day when somebody (in Scotland) asked if I was from Bradford......!

 

Good to know I've actually been OK with the way I've been pronouncing Dun Laoghaire! Thanks Noll.

Edited by willoyd
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Good to know I've actually been OK with the way I've been pronouncing Dun Laoghaire! Thanks Noll.

 

No problem! I find that fascinating and would love to know how you would sound to me, as London and Yorkshire are (generally very distinctive but also) very distinctive even to me! Also curious where you got the pronunciation of Dun Laoghaire from, as it's obviously not phonetic! :D

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#13 About Sisterland - Martina Devlin

 

Genre: Dystopian/Extremism
Synopsis: Welcome to Sisterland. A world ruled by women. A world designed to be perfect. Here, women and men are kept separate. Women lead highly controlled and suffocating lives, while men are subordinate – used for labour and breeding. Sisterland’s leaders have been watching Constance and recognise that she’s special. Selected to reproduce, she finds herself alone with a man for the first time. But the mate chosen for her isn’t what she expected – and she begins to see a darker side to Sisterland. Constance’s misgivings about the regime mount. Is she the only one who questions this unequal society, or are there other doubters?
*** 

Review: About Sisterland started off exceptionally well - so much so that I was actually surprised that it is so little known. Martina Devlin is no newbie to noveling, and yet this book has very few reviews or ratings on Goodreads. Comparatively, YA dystopia Only Ever Yours (also dealing with extremism, but related to aesthetic pressure on women) absolutely blew up the YA and Irish book worlds. Granted, towards the end of this novel - maybe two thirds of the way through - I began to feel it was losing its way and it never quite recovered - ultimately not packing nearly as strong a punch as the aforementioned OEY, but it's still a very original, interesting spin on extreme dystopia. It also throws local lingo at the reader without explanation (other than a glossary at the back), so the reader is forced to pay attention and catch on quickly. This is one of the few dystopian books that has successfully drawn me in on that front.

This book is extremely easy to read - I read two thirds of it in one evening, and finished it the next afternoon - and the dystopian setting constructed by Devlin is wonderfully detailed and equally fascinating. From the outset, small unsettling details like the covering of womens faces with masks, and the apparent inability of women to feel, will strike unease in the reader. Over the course of the novel, a complex, allegedly utopic society is gradually deconstructed by Constance and the followers of her deceased other, Silence. One of my favourite aspects of this novel is the portrayal of men as base creatures, slaves to female governance - a lot of dystopian books I've come across either subjugate women, or a mixed-gender class of society. But I also loved that women did not get off Scot-free either - this is not the story of men rebelling against female overlords, it a chilling, thought-provoking study of multi-faceted extremism - enforced slavery and pleasant brain-washing.

So why then, did I only like and not love it? Unfortunately, the last third let it down in my opinion. The pace began to change, too much happened too easily and without enough explanation. Several things were mentioned, but not elaborated upon. Many of the characters, aside from Constance and Harper, blended into one for me, and I found myself unable to discern specific characters beyond their political allegiances. And ultimately, the final third just packed in too much unnecessary content that felt like a drawn-out epilogue, for a resolution that could have been brought about far more simply. It felt disjointed, and not a natural conclusion for an otherwise great story.

All the same, worth a read if the premise intrigues you.

Rating: (I liked it)
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In other news, as I attempted to write, format, and place that review everywhere it needed to go, I realised how complex I've made everything by now using goodreads and allocating some books to an Irish Counties Challenge, in addition to my personal book blog and my blog thread on here.

 

So I made a set of instructions.

 

You know your reviewing is going too far when you need instructions to do it. :giggle:

 

post-4797-0-42974400-1455024305_thumb.jpg

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No problem! I find that fascinating and would love to know how you would sound to me, as London and Yorkshire are (generally very distinctive but also) very distinctive even to me!

From what others tell me, my accent is essentially a fairly anonymous 'southern' one. However, I do find myself flattening some vowels, but not consistently. Thus I almost always say 'grarss' and 'barth', but will sometimes find myself saying Newc/a/stle rather than Newc/ar/stle.

 

 

Also curious where you got the pronunciation of Dun Laoghaire from, as it's obviously not phonetic! :D

I've always said it that way, so must have heard it so at once upon a time.
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In other news, as I attempted to write, format, and place that review everywhere it needed to go, I realised how complex I've made everything by now using goodreads and allocating some books to an Irish Counties Challenge, in addition to my personal book blog and my blog thread on here.

 

So I made a set of instructions.

 

You know your reviewing is going too far when you need instructions to do it. :giggle:

 

attachicon.gifreview.jpg

Nice :giggle2:. I have done something similar :).

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You know your reviewing is going too far when you need instructions to do it. :giggle:

 

:giggle2:

 

I wrote instructions to remind myself of all the places (online sites, BCF, book cataloguing software, spreadsheets, challenge lists etc.), where I have to edit things when I buy a book or get rid of one. Unfortunately I never ever remember to refer back to the instructions.  :doh: I don't think I have a single up-to-date list anywhere, except perhaps the forum!  :blush2:

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Lists, lists and more lists :)  I just convinced myself I need a new list full of wish list audiobooks :P

 

I do love lists, but not so much when they're telling me what to do rather than what I should buy! :D

 

:giggle2:

 

I wrote instructions to remind myself of all the places (online sites, BCF, book cataloguing software, spreadsheets, challenge lists etc.), where I have to edit things when I buy a book or get rid of one. Unfortunately I never ever remember to refer back to the instructions.  :doh: I don't think I have a single up-to-date list anywhere, except perhaps the forum!  :blush2:

 

I don't think I have a single up-to-date list *anywhere* full stop! I'm still reformatting all my posts on my blogger blog from like two iterations ago when it looked totally different. A bookworm's work is never done :thud:

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#14 The Love That Split The World - Emily Henry

 
Genre: Fantasy/Magical Realism/Romance/YA
Synopsis: Natalie’s last summer in her small Kentucky hometown is off to a magical start... until she starts seeing the “wrong things.” They’re just momentary glimpses at first—her front door is red instead of its usual green, there’s a pre-school where the garden store should be. But then her whole town disappears for hours, fading away into rolling hills and grazing buffalo, and Nat knows something isn’t right. That’s when she gets a visit from the kind but mysterious apparition she calls “Grandmother,” who tells her: “You have three months to save him.” The next night, under the stadium lights of the high school football field, she meets a beautiful boy named Beau, and it’s as if time just stops and nothing exists. Nothing, except Natalie and Beau. Emily Henry’s stunning debut novel is Friday Night Lights meets The Time Traveler’s Wife, and perfectly captures those bittersweet months after high school, when we dream not only of the future, but of all the roads and paths we’ve left untaken.

*** 

Review: Hnnnnng, how I wanted to love this book. And for a while, I did love it. The good things that I have to say about this book almost made me rate this as 4 stars, even though ultimately the plot made me only like, not love, it.

First and foremost, the writing is fantastic. The dialogue between teenager characters is hilarious, witty, authentic, modern. I genuinely felt like I was listening to people of my generation having real conversations about things. But even outside of that, Henry really has a way with words. Aside from being a teensy bit obsessed with the space between bodies during romantic scenes, she writes beautifully. Even though I did not ultimately love the plot, I adored her writing.

Some aspects of this book are extremely unique and surprising. Featuring a main character who does not have white heritage and who struggles with being raised by a white family and with her sense of self - being a white Irish girl I can't relate, but I can appreciate the inclusion of some diversity. Additionally, the main character is (paranormally) visited by an old Native woman she calls Grandmother, who shares folk tales and parables designed to guide Natalie. These are a prominent aspect of the book, and are just wonderful. Creative, disturbing, seemingly senseless at times, they show Henry is a true storyteller and bring something really original to the mix.

However, there were a lot of things I didn't like. Firstly, the completely unbelieveable romance between Nat and Beau. It's a love-at-almost-first-sight kind of deal - but it's largely the magic of their meeting that draws them together, not anything about them as people. Romance scenes are a dime a dozen and slightly repetitive, usually serving little purpose and taking up space where far more interesting things could be occurring. Secondly, if you're gonna throw some actual scientific theories into the mix, don't throw them in at the end long after any rational person would have suspected them over 'magic girl and magic boy do magic things'. Thirdly, the ending. Complete cop-out. I'm sure it'll delight a lot of people, but ugh.

So I guess the tl;dr here is - while I adored a lot of the detail, quirk and originality, the broader picture was a massive letdown, and because of that I can only honestly say I liked it, nothing more.

Rating: 
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So I made a set of instructions.

 

You know your reviewing is going too far when you need instructions to do it. :giggle:

 

 

I know I'm a bit late but I just saw this and it made me laugh. Your instructions are obviously good though because you do always have a very nicely organised thread! 

 

It's a shame about the poor romance and ending in The Love That Split the World, the synopsis did sound promising and it's always annoying when you feel like a book wasn't as good as it could have been. Like Athena, I hope your next read will be better  :smile:

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#15 The Girl With No Past - Kathryn Croft

 
Genre: Psychological Thriller/Mystery
Synopsis: Leah Mills lives a life of a fugitive – kept on the run by one terrible day from her past. It is a lonely life, without a social life or friends until – longing for a connection – she meets Julian. For the first time she dares to believe she can live a normal life. Then, on the fourteenth anniversary of that day, she receives a card. Someone knows the truth about what happened. Someone who won’t stop until they’ve destroyed the life Leah has created. But is Leah all she seems? Or does she deserve everything she gets? Everyone has secrets. But some are deadly.

*** 

Review: I didn't have overly high expectations for this one, having glanced at the reviews on Goodreads, but like many other readers I was sufficiently curious about the 'thing' in Leah's past that is so terrible, that I happily read the entire book. That's not to say that it's a notably bad book or anything - the writing leaves... well, a lot, to be desired, but conceptually there's actually quite a lot to like about the book. I suppose my biggest complaint would be that really not a lot happens for about two thirds of the book - Leah spends her time systematically verifying the innocent of a list of people she believes could be bestowing her ill fortune on her. While this is happening, we are occasionally taken back to Leah's teen years and the terrible event is gradually unfolded.

In fariness, the terrible event is pretty terrible. It's grim, realistic, and I would have had to put the book down if the scene hadn't ended where it did. The subsequent climax of the book, resulting decades later from that event, is also really interesting and exciting to read (as is one last little twist towards the end). So the final third does a pretty good job of keeping the pages turning rapidly, but unfortunately the characters are largely so flat and unbelieveable, and the writing in the first two thirds so dull and uninteresting, that the decent ending does not balance out everything that came before it.

I'd love to have seen this book done well - there's nothing overly original but there's a realistic setup that just falls flat in the details. I'd almost give it three stars to say I liked it after that ending, but I know my attitude for most of it was 'meh', so two stars it is.

Rating: (It was okay)
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I know I'm a bit late but I just saw this and it made me laugh. Your instructions are obviously good though because you do always have a very nicely organised thread! 

 

It's a shame about the poor romance and ending in The Love That Split the World, the synopsis did sound promising and it's always annoying when you feel like a book wasn't as good as it could have been. Like Athena, I hope your next read will be better  :smile:

 

Ha thank you - it might *look* organised but believe me it gets messy trying to remember everything that needs to be updated!

 

That a shame that it was a bit of a letdown, as the synopsis sounds great!

 

It does. And the book started out great. And the writing is pretty great. I definitely haven't been put off reading more by the same author. :)

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#16 Breeding Ground - Sarah Pinborough

Genre: Horror
Synopsis: Life was good for Matt and Chloe. They were in love and looking forward to their new baby. But what Chloe gave birth to isn t a baby. It isn t even human. It s an entirely new species that uses humans only for food and as hosts for their young. As Matt soon learns, though, he is not alone in his terror. Women all over town have begun to give birth to these hideous creatures, spidery nightmares that live to kill and feed. As the infestation spreads and the countryside is reduced to a series of web-shrouded ghost towns, will the survivors find a way to fight back? Or is it only a matter of time before all of mankind is reduced to a Breeding Ground?

*** 

Review: In some ways, this was a fun and pretty well-written read. Nothing overly original, but an interesting spin on common constituent parts with some decent characters, including one or two I loved. However, the things that I did not like about it impacted sufficiently on my overall view of it to knock it down to a 'It was okay' rating. The biggest problems were how terrible a human being the narrator was, being gratuitously extreme, and lack of explanation for anything.

The narrative draws attention to itself, as though it is a journal or unmarked series of diary entries, stating that the narrator is leaving his version of events in the hope that someone someday will read what has transpired. However, it reads like a novel, and there is one part of the book where the narrator literally goes, 'I feel like I need to write everything down and be honest', and then goes on to describe in detail I've seen only in Fifty Shades a several page long sex scene. Now, I don't mind sex in books at all - I don't even mind that degree of sex. But I don't think anyone would describe sex like that in a document about how the world ended. It's not required reading for anyone. If he hadn't drawn attention to the purpose of his narrative immediately before, I might even have forgotten sufficiently for it not to feel so.... bizzare. It was just bizzare. Also, Matt's complete inability to rein himself in around women, and his apologetic nature regarding such 'because he's a man', is actually offensive to men.

Aside from that, not a huge amount really happened. The more I think about it, the more unsure I am what I liked about it at all. I must have liked something though, coz I finished it pretty easily.

Rating: ★★✰✰✰ (It was okay)

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