The Year of the Flood

This is the sequel to Oryx and Crake and I really enjoyed it, in fact I preferred it . I think that is simply because Margaret Atwood is just a far better writer when she is narrating from a woman's perspective.  Plus this book just had a meatier story line. (Metaphorically speaking as there isn't any meat we would recognise left in this futuristic world, apart from human.)
 What I love most about Atwood's futuristic world is that she takes advances in science, which we all recognise as normal,  and takes the progress to the nth degree. Ultimately this ends in the most nightmarish conclusions where all control and ethics have vanished.
This book happens concurrently to the action retold in Oryx and Crake just before the 'Flood' which kills off all humanity. This book has more colour though as you see how life is in the  pleeblands which are the ghetto areas where most of the people live if you don't work for a multi-national company.
  Society has disintegrated to the lowest denominator and Margaret's outlook is extremely bleak as mob rule takes over the world in graphically violent imagery.
 Amongst all this carnage there are God's Gardeners, a cult created around the sanctity and beauty of the Earth who try to keep old traditions alive. The two female protagonists come from this cult and their knowledge and forethought enables them both to survive through the 'Flood'   This cult is totally believable but all of the sermons at the beginning of each chapter did bore me a bit, maybe because I'm not such a big ecological or environmental warrior as Atwood. For me Atwood has enough grit and realism in this book  just to stop short of it being a preachy tome being thrown at my head!
I loved how people survived through these hard years before the 'flood' and also how characters from Oryx and Crake appeared in this novel .  The endings of the two novels end up at exactly the same point with charaters and plots interweaving. Very Clever!
 Now I have to wait for her to release the third book, what the hell is going to happen?!
I love Margaret Atwood because she takes risks in her writing.  She is so passionate, writes beautifully and even though she is sometimes annoying her stories keep you hooked.

Fifty shades of Grey

OK,  I've done it.  I've read it and it's over.   Hats off to E L James (That's all I'm taking off.) She's orgasming all the way to the bank because of her published phoawwwwanomen.
Yes, I read it in 2 days and parts of it were funny/weird/kinky/addictive.   But to be honest I just found Mr Christian Gray deeply, deeply disturbing and Ana just damn annoying.  Parts of the plot reminded me of the flat lining development of the fourth Twilight book. But  I don't think this book is read for plot development.
Calling this Mommy Porn is an insult to Mom's and porn, but hey who am I to write anything because 1000s and 1000s of women have swallowed this book whole with no gag reflex at all.
Maybe I'm just a snob, but I think not...I did manage to read it and enjoyed some of its bonkers content but to be honest I found most of it dull. Oh dear! Oh my! Yawn, yawn...my inner Goddess was losing the will to live but occasionally I did have to read things twice...really? what the hell???!!!!
This book is all over the media and press and the best article I read was comparing this book to a Gregg's pasty.  When you eat a Gregg's pasty you know exactly what you are going to get and you secretly enjoy it. You wouldn't buy a Gregg's pasty otherwise.
 Brilliant, to me this book was a  ham and cheese pasty. Yum!

The Sense of an Ending

What a bargain! I bought this after work today in a charity book shop in Bicester for £1. It's a thin book and I have always thought that paying £7.99 for both the kindle and book version was a total rip off so I grabbed this brand-new unread copy off the shelf without a moment's hesitation. 

I then started reading it in the garden after work and  I have just finished it in one sitting. I  have always thought that Julian Barnes is a bit of a posho, intellectual, poncy kind of writer and in a way he is but this book gripped me from start to finish and I totally enjoyed it.

 He starts with a boring man reflecting on his dull life. The first half is about him looking back at his life at school and his Uni days. Because the only important person is himself you can slowly begin to see why life has been such a safe,grey, bubble for him. 

When he receives a solicitor's letter with money left in a will from his dead girlfriend's mother things begin to unravel for him. 

The second half makes us aware that this guy is an unreliable witness. His memories are shady...nothing is what it seems. Was his girlfriend such a bitch and if so why?  What went on with the Mother? Is he responsible for the actions of his friend or is he being too self-important? What things is he leaving out or repressing? How can memory distort the reality? 

 He desperately wants to find out what the hell is going on but his ex-girl friend from over 40 years ago is keeping important information from him. The guy remains dull and self-centred, (all the imagery of masturbation make it clear that he really is a wanker!) He never asks questions or enquires about other people's feelings. He just reaches conclusion from what he imagines and makes conjecture without any solid facts. ( I supposed everybody does this...this is what makes this book so real, the guy is just Mr/Mrs Normal.)

In the end, the main protagonist being pretty unlikeable and boring is not really a problem. It's all about how Julian Barnes has manipulated you, the reader, to come to your own conclusions.

   Yes, the ending is totally left dangling and you are left with just a Sense of an Ending.

Julian Barnes is having the last laugh...he's left a lot of readers totally confused, me included!  

But I think that's the point...it doesn't matter that no ending or final conclusion is drawn up.  That's the whole purpose of the book.

I think this book is an allegory for 'history', the only class in school which all the friends attend together. The teacher says 'without all the facts history cannot be recorded properly and that sure happens in this book!

This book ends up being  just the self interested opinion of one side and even when the guy thinks he  has become  'enlightened' he hasn't. 

 For me nothing has shown me how clearly and cleverly you can be deceived than this annoying, yet deceptively clever little book!  Julian Barnes is a total show-off and I thought there would be a high probability of me disliking this book but I didn't...I loved it. 

Oryx and Crake

The Handmaid's Tale is one of my favourite books so therefore I was looking forward to reading Margaret Atwood's later dystopian novel.  Mostly I enjoyed it a lot but at times it got a bit downright strangely weird.   Even now I am still unsure if Oryx was a real character or a computer implanted figment of the imagination.

Anyway,this book is set in the near future and is about what will happen if  the unimpeded progression of scientific advances of today continue  and therefore,the consequential  terrible results.

People who work for big corporations live in heavily protected compounds whilst the world around them collapses as people die due to uncontrollable airborne viruses, wars,floods, storms and famines.  Society has ceased to function at any level and corporations run the show/world.

the world has no fish or meat to eat due to extinction and there is a severe lack of natural food. The corporations have bred new spliced animals. For instance..  Pigs mixed with racoons (Pigoons) for human transplants and a new kind of chemical chicken for 'natural' protein, which has no brain (hence can feel no pain) and is just a load of chicken breasts growing around a central point. People mostly just live on bland fake soy and piles of pills and drugs.

Droughts mean nothing really successfullly grows any more and the people who are lucky enough to live within the corporation boundaries literally live in a bubble, protected from the horrors of the outside world.

Crake is a super intelligent, delusional scientist who also suffers from believing he is God. He decides to kill off all humanity with an uber-super drug after splicing the perfect human beings called the Crakers; who eat nothing but grass, have no need for language or sun cream and are peace loving and incredibly beautiful.   Love and jealousy don't exist either because women just go into heat like dogs and four guys are chosen to service the  woman for a 3 day shagathon. Children are bought up as part of an extended faimily.

One poor guy is left alive to look after the Crakers. (Crake chooses his best mate and secretly immunises him against the killer virus.)  His name is Snowman (due to always being wrapped in a bed sheet to keep the intense sun rays off his skin). 

  The book is really just a stream of consciousness based around Snowman and his memories.  Parts of it are really funny (Especially when he remembers the food he used to eat and the  computer games and shows he used to watch as a kid).  Other bits are just down right weird.  But hey, I respect Atwood for writing such a mad book.  Parts of it make no sense and I feel like she was off her head whilst writing it...but hey, she's passionate and her energy and ideas kept me hooked. 

The ending is really unclear too which would have annoyed me if I didn't have the second book to read... I've already started that.  Bring on the horrors!  Let's hope it all starts to make a bit more sense after book two.

Catching Fire and Mockingjay

What can I say about these two books. The first Hunger Games Book was OK, an interesting read really. But my God, these two are complete drivel. I finished the second really quickly hoping the final instalment would be better but I have just abandoned it. The characters, storyline, love triangle crap and whiny main character are just too much for me. 
Everything is rushed, explained badly and totally unconvincing. NO, this is not because I am too old to read these books. that's just insulting to teenagers and me. It's because the books have been quickly churned out to make a profit from innocent readers on the back of the first book. Characters are  made from cardboard/tissue paper and the different zones of tyranny are just farcical.
 Everything just takes a back seat to Katniss whining on. Katniss, the feisty main character, ends up being so pathetic. It's ended up mirroring what happened to Bella in the Twilight series. Why do these girls become so bloody useless?! 

Maybe I am being too serious and hard on these books but I really don't think so.  I read for pleasure and there was no pleasure to be found here! In fact the problem was this poor author was actually trying to get a serious point across about 'freedom, love and war and stuff '. But labouring it all in such a naff way it just turned to complete mush. 
I hope she is happier and richer now she has finally been released from the tyranny and torment of writing this dross.

The Pickwick Papers

The Pickwick Papers is like Sausage and Mash or Jacket Potatoes  to me, comfort food in book form.  I've been dipping in and out of it and I love it still. It was Dicken's first novel and was initially serialised in pamphlets over 18 months. Because it's like the first soap opera ever written it's easy to just pick up where you left off.  When you are feeling low  the mad characters, ridiculous story lines,slap stick humour and the miles of charging around the country by horse and carriage ending with copious amounts of drinking and story telling in taverns will soon sort you out.
It's definitely Dicken's most upbeat book (especially the first half.) There is hardly any plot but whenever Mr.Pickwick or his gang of traveller mates get into trouble you always know that Sam Weller will be there to sort things out...Sam Weller is my Hero, if only I could find a guy like him these days!

Alone In Berlin

I  finished this book in 5 days and to be honest I'm exhausted! What a dark, dark book. What a testimony.. I was totally gripped and have been reading late into the night to get this finished. It's taken me on a roller coaster ride and to be honest I'm glad it's over because it kind of took me over.  I just needed to know what was going to happen ( I had already  guessed  that there would be no happy ending!)I will never forget the power this book held over me whilst I was under its spell.

 I can't believe I'd never heard of this book before I found it in a charity shop. Hans Fallada wrote it in 1946 in just 24 days and it is probably the first real testimony of what it must have been like to live under the Nazis. Fallada was one of only a few authors/artists who didn't leave Germany during the war.   Unfortunately he died before this book was published and for some strange reason it was only translated into English a few years ago.(Maybe because some publishers thought Fallada was complicit with the Nazis, as are so many of the normal, everyday characters in this book.)
 I found out more about Fallada later; his life was totally bonkers too...

Anyway ,the style of the book was pretty easy to read, almost like a newspaper report with added parts of black humour (pitch black humour). the translation is obviously modern and it's like a book written in the last 10 years. It also has an amazingly beautiful end section...which is incredibly positive even in such dire circumstances.

 I think it's the the most heartbreaking book I've ever read about fighting against injustice. The main character drops hand written postcards around the city denouncing Hitler and the Nazis.He innocently believes that if people read them there will be a people's uprising but instead 95% of the cards are instantly handed into the Gestapo and a massive man-hunt begins.

I loved the way he perfectly crafted his characters, the strength of some people against the cowardly behaviour of others. All kinds of low-life people appear in this book...and their weaknesses and strengths are so well described..(To be honest most of the characters are foul.)
 It does ramble off in places and could have been shorter but ultimately I enjoyed (if that's the right word) reading this book but I am looking forward to a far less harrowing read now!