andintothetrees's reviews
554 reviews

The Man of My Dreams by Curtis Sittenfeld

4.0

Before I begin, I’d like to confess that until I googled for an image to accompany this review I had no idea Curtis Sittenfeld is a woman (I have previously only come across men with that first name, maybe that’s just a British thing though). Not that the gender of the author matters, but it does rather negate the point I was planning to make about a male author having written a very convincing female lead character. Anyway, the cliché “don’t judge a book by its cover” is well known, but in this case I think “don’t judge a book by its title” is equally well placed. When my friend Ingrid recommended Curtis’ books to me I decided to see what the library had available and I must admit I felt embarrassed to check out a book with such a cheesy title (I would rather have checked out her first novel, Prep, but the only copy was a giant hardback that would have been difficult to carry around). This was no feather-light “chick lit” novel however, despite the impression its name may give.

... [Read the rest of my review here: https://whathannahread.wordpress.com/2011/12/11/the-man-of-my-dreams-by-curtis-sittenfeld/]

The Bullet Trick by Louise Welsh

3.0

I wanted to like this book – and I loved Louise Welsh’s debut novel, The Cutting Room – but I was left with a feeling of nothing but disappointment once I got to the end. Perhaps because The Cutting Room instilled within me high expectations, or perhaps just because it just wasn’t very good.

... [Read the rest of my review here: https://whathannahread.wordpress.com/2011/12/17/the-bullet-trick-by-louise-welsh/]

Whip It by Shauna Cross

4.0

The book that inspired the film, and was apparently first published under the much more to-the-point title, Derby Girl. I am not ashamed to say that I love the film version of this story, and so naturally I wanted to read the book too. It’s always better to watch the film before reading the book, I think, as book versions tend to provide more detail and add to your enjoyment of the story, plus you already have pictures of the characters in your head. If you read the book first you usually just end up annoyed that things were missed out and that people don’t look as you imagined. Shauna Cross wrote both this novel and the screenplay for the film version so, as you would expect, they are very similar – nevertheless I gained a good deal of enjoyment from reading this.

... [Read the rest of my review here: https://whathannahread.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/whip-it-by-shauna-cross/]

So You Think You Know about Britain? by Dr Danny Dorling, Dr Danny Dorling

3.0

This is one of those books where I feel torn between giving it a 3 or a 4 star rating. I’ve gone for the 3 stars however because I was glad to get to the end of the book and move onto something else. Perhaps that was because I read it all in one go and it would be better enjoyed a chapter at a time, in between other books. The information here is interesting, but it began to feel rather relentless.

... [Read the rest of my review here: https://whathannahread.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/so-you-think-you-know-about-britain-by-danny-dorling/]

The End of Everything by Megan Abbott

2.0

I wanted to like this book, I really did. Firstly, because it was a gift, and I know the person who gave it to me will read this – I hate to sound ungrateful by admitting that I didn’t enjoy it, or as though I am criticising her taste (she has given me other books that I have loved and we usually enjoy quite similar books, so this review is definitely not intended to do that. This was just a rare time we happened to disagree, or perhaps she hadn’t read it herself before giving me a copy). Secondly, because it was the first book I read in 2012, and I don’t want to start the year on a downer, books-wise. Unfortunately however I just didn’t enjoy this book at all, and that shows in the length of time it took me to finish reading it and hence the delay between my last post and this one. There is no point in writing this blog if it isn’t honest, however, so brutally honest I must be.

... [Read the rest of my review here: https://whathannahread.wordpress.com/2012/01/14/the-end-of-everything-by-megan-abbott/]

What I Did by Christopher Wakling

4.0

The content of What I Did would seem much more original had this novel come out before Christos Tsiolkas’ The Slap and Emma Donaghue’s Room, as it combines key elements of both books – using an act of physical punishment/child abuse (depending on your point of view) to drive its plot and telling the story through the eyes of a child. I am aware that both of these factors may seem very off-putting to some readers, but I (generally speaking) love novels with child or teenage protagonists and work supporting people who have experienced abuse so for me What I Did was a must-read.

... [Read the rest of my review here: https://whathannahread.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/what-i-did-by-christopher-wakling/]

The Rapture by Liz Jensen

4.0

I’ll be honest – I wasn’t sure if I’d like this book when I picked it up from the library. Liz Jensen was on my list of “authors to check out”, and after a thoroughly unsuccessful library visit I decided to give this book of hers (the only one they had in stock) a go despite the initial premise not really appealing to me, figuring it was better to do that than return home empty-handed. I soon found myself drawn in however and, whilst it is not without its flaws, it was far from disappointing and has inspired me to read her other novels too (which, interestingly, seem to inhabit a sprawling breadth of genres).

... [Read the rest of my review here: https://whathannahread.wordpress.com/2012/02/16/the-rapture-by-liz-jensen/]

The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis

4.0

Often as I read The Rachel Papers I thought “I have no idea how I am going to blog about this once I’ve finished” – which I suppose is the measure of a good book, one that leaves you not knowing what to think. I was inspired to read it as a lot of reviews for Joe Dunthorne’s Submarine (one of the best books I read last year and the first I blogged about here [link]) cited the two novels as being similar. There are some parallels between them, notably their usage of a male teenage antihero as a protagonist, but Submarine has a much broader subject matter – as I remarked to my partner on a number of occasions whilst reading The Rachel Papers “this book is just about one guy’s sex life”. Having got to the end of the book I can see that it is about much more than that, but at times I felt I was wading through never-ending descriptions of intercourse and references to the lead character’s “rig”.

... [Read the rest of my review here: https://whathannahread.wordpress.com/2012/02/18/the-rachel-papers-by-martin-amis/]

Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult

3.0

I have ample time to read these days, since I spend most of my waking hours (and many of those I would prefer to be sleeping) breastfeeding baby Freddie. I must confess that I have not spent as many of these hours reading books as I would ideally like to – the lure of reading random blogs and playing endless rounds of Words With Friends on my phone has proven too much – but I did manage to finish this bad boy yesterday. It was pretty much your typical Jodi Picoult book, and delivered what I hoped it would: distraction without the hassle of being made to think too much, and a completely over the top plot. I can’t with any honesty give it more than three stars though as it wasn’t good literature in any sense, and although it wasn’t one of her worst books (The Tenth Circle, anyone?), it certainly doesn’t compare to the un-put-down-able The Pact or Plain Truth (the latter of which I particularly enjoyed for its exploration of the Amish community’s way of life).

... [Read the rest of my review here: https://whathannahread.wordpress.com/2012/02/26/sing-you-home-by-jodi-picoult/]

Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones

3.0

Chavs wasn’t as ground-breaking a read as I had hoped. This potentially has less to do with Chavs itself and more to do with my having read two books which cover broadly the same points in the past year – So You Think You Know About Britain? by Danny Dorling (reviewed here) and Hard Work by Polly Toynbee (which I read before I started this blog, but you can look at the book on amazon). I also felt that its title was a bit misleading, as Chavs is much more of an examination of class/wealth divides in the UK than an analysis of the chav stereotype.

... [Read the rest of my review here: https://whathannahread.wordpress.com/2012/03/09/chavs-the-demonization-of-the-working-class-by-owen-jones/]