When I picked the Science Fiction module for my university course, I was hoping that I would be reading some brilliant novels that I could really get stuck into. I did not think that one of them would be about monks and would span hundreds of centuries and that it would bore me to death. There were obviously a couple of redeeming qualities otherwise I wouldn’t have given it 1.5 stars, but it was just a complete yawn-fest. …
Ahhhh yet another graphic novel that has completely let me down. How is it that the blurbs for graphic novels sound so interesting, and their illustrations are brilliant, but the story just isn’t there? This is the second graphic novel in a row that has disappointed me so much, but oh well…
When I read the premise of this graphic novel on Netgalley, it sounded so good… It sounded like the kind of graphic novel that I would instantly go for in a book shop. Alas, whilst reading it, I found it confusing and just straight up boring. …
I’m am going to be very honest and very brief about my thoughts on this book: I don’t think that I am going to be reading any more of Virginia Woolf’s books. I’ve come to the conclusion that they aren’t for me… Which is a shame because I really do want to love her writing and enjoy her stories, but I just don’t. And I’m not going to force myself to read books that I know that I’m not going to enjoy, there is no point… …
I bought Lament for the Fallen by Gavin Chait ages and ago (and I still haven’t read it) so when I was given the opportunity to read another one of his novels: Our Memories Like Dust, I jumped at the chance. And now, I really wish I hadn’t… …
I always love reading novels that centre around family dynamics and it’s actually one of the types of books that I look for the most. Gone are the days where I want to read about unrequited love all of the time; I want to read about families and the troubles or happiness that they go through. All the Ways the World Can End is one of those books. …
I don’t even know what happened in the first half of this book. I picked up this book about three times and I ended up getting bored at around 22%. But I knew that I had to write this review, so that meant that I had to try and get through as much of this book as possible, so I started it again and forced my way through it… And finally, I finished it, and this is my verdict.
If someone told me that I wouldn’t enjoy a book about diving then I would have just laughed in their face and told them they didn’t know what they were on about. I love swimming, I love the water. My parents always joked that I was a fish. Water is my affinity.
The Art of Not Breathing is about free-diving: an extreme sport where you dive underwater for as long as possible, and to do this, you have to learn how to hold your breath for a long time. The main character is this book manages four minutes.
A love affair story set in New York and written like a dictionary? Yes, please!
This sounded like such a good idea when I was recommended to read this book by a friend and since I’m a huge fan of David Levithan anyway, it didn’t take much convincing.
It turned out that we had both met people online before, and we had both slept with people on first dates before, and we had both found ourselves falling too fast before. But we comforted ourselves with what we really meant to say which was: “I don’t normally feel this good about what I’m doing.”
In 185 snapshot moments, The Lover’s Dictionary tells the story of a love affair between two people in New York. Moving, funny, heart-breaking and life-affirming, it is a story that anyone who has ever fallen in love will recognise.
Not once during reading this book did I feel moved, did I laugh or feel heartbroken. I felt confused and I felt bored. This story just felt so disjointed, there was actually no story. It felt like a patchwork book where everything is jumbled together and there is no meaning.
There were a few moments where I thought this book had potential – those feelings were near the beginning of the book, but I still had them – but I just got let down. The book is very quotable and Levithan uses this book to portray the ups and downs of a relationship and even mentions how little pet hates make you feel frustrated like when your other half leaves the cap off of the toothpaste. However, a book being ‘quotable’ does not make it a good book.
The plot was so disjointed that I didn’t even know what going on. Once I had finished the book, I actually turned to my Mom and said ‘I don’t know what happened’. I genuinely had no idea what story I had just read. I know that there were two lovers, I know that they’re together for two years but in what ‘chapter’, the narrator exclaims about being cheated on but then in the next ‘chapter’, everything is happy and like no cheating has happened. One ‘chapter’ is about the first date and then the next is when they’ve been together for one year. It isn’t in chronological order and it makes no sense.
I do think it’s a clever way for a book layout and I even got to learn the meaning of some different words that I can add to my vocabulary, but as I said before: it had so much potential and I just got let down.
The only other time that I would read this book is to see if I could make any sense of it a second time around.
Sorry, David Levithan, but this book was not good at all.
