Nollaig

I very badly haven't actually been online to update my progress, but here's what I've done since Thursday: Thursday: Nothing on Earth - Conor O'Callaghan 161 pages (finished) Friday: The Escape - C. L. Taylor 280 pages Saturday: The Escape C. L. Taylor 153 pages (finished) The Slap - Christos Tsiolkas 177 pages (finished) How I Lost You - Jenny Blackhurst 140 pages So my aim is to finish How I Lost You today. Very happy with my progress, as I'm now one book ahead of schedule and should be two ahead by the end of the day!

Yesterday I read a short book called Nothing on Earth by Conor O'Callaghan. It was very odd. I loved it, but it was very very odd. It wasn't written like a supernatural mystery or horror, but it has elements of that in an otherwise fairly 'ordinary' book. I use the term 'ordinary' loosely as it follows a slightly odd family living in a show house in a ghost estate. It's very difficult to say anything about it, other than that it completely drew me in. I'm also nearly finished The Slap. Still enjoying it, but not as much. My next read will likely be The Escape by C. L. Taylor. I've read a book by Taylor before, and while it wasn't amazing, it was the kind of easy to read thriller I like tearing through every now and then, so I'm looking forward to The Escape.

43 as of last night, and 50 pages from the end of 44. Hoping to read another book over the weekend and bring it up to 45.

I might join in this time! Three day weekend here, and I've been in a reading mood the last couple days (I read a book, yesterday, a short one, but still!) I have another book I'm trying to get finished and then I'll be starting something new.

@More reading time required It saves automatically! But I'm hoping I can replay from a chapter near the end and get a better ending that way.

Think it's a light dinner this evening, I'll be having mushroom soup and OH will be having some pasta.

Cloudy and cool, but humid.

I'm getting towards the end of The Slap so I've also started The Good People by Hannah Kent. Looking forward to this, as I loved Burial Rites, but am also wary as it's set outside Killarney in Co. Kerry, Ireland, which is pretty much where I'm originally from!

It's good fun. You press up to four buttons corresponding with the four corners, and flip on the axis of those corners. Also, if you fall on the floor, you start becoming inedible bread, so that's how you can lose. Options for toasting yourself include light fixtures, the oven top, the fireplace etc. It's very funny I finished Heavy Rain! I got a pretty bad ending. Having googled a bit, it's not the WORST ending, but it was pretty bad. I was disappointed, as I did really well up to near the end, but I accidentally made one character do the opposite of what I intended, and couldn't manage to do what I wanted with another. MAJOR ending spoilers below, but for anyone who has played it you can see the ending I got.

I can't even *see* my toes unless I bend forward a bit, so don't feel too bad! I've been terrible (ish) with the health and fitness lately. I went on the exercise bike yesterday evening but only did 5km rather than my usual 7-10km. I hardly went on the bike at all last week, and we've had way too much unhealthy food in the last few days.

I don't 'like' any of them, but do find them interesting to read about. I honestly can't say why. I'm finding the 'Greek culture in Australian culture' element interesting too.

That's fair. The entire book is full of selfish, self-absorbed people complaining about the state of everything around them. I swear like a sailor, unfortunately, and really don't get offended by language (though I do agree, there is a lot quite fast in this book. It doesn't let up!) so that aspect doesn't bother me. I can absolutely see why people wouldn't get on with it, I'm just weirdly fascinated by the characters!

I'm still always going to read his books, because for the most part they're such a pleasure to read. The Ritual, for the first two thirds or so, was so scary I actually couldn't read it in the dark at night (on my tablet). Books never have that effect on me! Thanks Gaia So, I suppose a general thriller is any thriller really where the police don't take a central role - it's told from the perspective of the victim/s and/or perpetrator. The police might only turn up towards the end to finish the story. Regular thrillers will pretty much always have a killer and victims, although the killer might just be a threat even quite late into the book. There's a sense of threat and danger. They're also usually stand-alone, not in series. If it has unreliable narrators, or really gets inside the heads of the characters, then I'd consider it a psych thriller. The ones with killers and victims are straightforward, but there might be no police or victims at all. For example, in Exquisite, there's nothing too mysterious, it's just a pair of unreliable narrators talking about their relationship. It's psychological because it's driven by two unreliable, arguably odd people. It's a thriller, allegedly, because it's tense and exciting and you don't know what's going to happen but there's an undercurrent of threat or danger. Another example would be Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty. That's a subdued thriller - same undercurrent of threat, danger, and mystery about some terrible events, but it's largely a character-driven courtroom drama. Still thrilling. And a crime thriller is just that, it's actually told from the perspective of the police/detectives on the case. A lot of crime thrillers are in series, featuring one main police character and their team, and often have mysteries in them (solving one mysterious murder over the course of the book, or a mysterious series of murders by one killer who is profiled as the book goes on.) That's just my own way of categorizing them. I couldn't possibly just say the Matilda Darke novels and Exquisite were all just 'thrillers' because they're just so different - I like to be a bit clearer.

Started The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas. It has very polarised reviews, with a lot of people hating it but some people praising it highly. So far, I'm enjoying it and am really interested in the characters and their viewpoints.

@Raven It is. My brother used to play it. It can be a very time-consuming game because there's so much you can do in it. My brother says that some people just go into selling/trading and most of their time is spent in Excel spreadsheets tracking their business.

I have indeed read The Silence, enjoyed it a lot.

Watched Movie 43. Apparently it was slated when it came out, but I found it pretty funny. Gross, stupid humour, but funny. What I liked most was probably the cast - knowing all those stars have that kind of sense of humor is great.

I always think of science fiction which involves science fiction concepts (like time travel, or faster than light travel) without explanation as regular sci-fi, and the stuff with proper science behind it as 'hard sci-fi'. I think there's too big a distinction between a fantasy book with magic set in a technology-free world, and a sci-fi book with unexplained or makey-uppy science to say they're both fantasy.

@bobblybear OH is waiting to get that from one of the lads at work. I have the original one at home, but he wants to play the remastered one. I haven't played either version of it, must do that. I started Heavy Rain, but got distracted. OH is out this Sat night so might play it then. Also had a go of a game called I Am Bread, in which you are a slice of bread flopping around rooms finding ways to become toast. It's bizzare and surprisingly tricky, but fun. Also thinking of buying Oceanhorn, a little action role-playing game being hailed as a 'love letter' to Zelda (which I love.)

That's okay. I have low standards when it comes to thrillers - even though I frequently come away with three star ratings of them and pointing out flaws, I still actually enjoy reading them

Pretty kitty! Is she a tortoiseshell? (I'm bad at cats.) Stunning colours.

My 12 year old self with my collection of labelled cassette tapes would delight at that concept!

Yes, once, when it aired in 2011. My memory is not that good!

@Michelle It would definitely be an experiment! But I suspect we'll see the people wearing blindfolds and the 'threat' will be just out of shot all the time.