Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

R is a zombie. He lives in an airport with lots of other zombies, including his best friend M. When the urge takes them they go hunting for the Living. The Living have barricaded themselves inside a stadium so the zombies can’t get them. However, the often need to leave the stadium to scavenge for supplies. It’s on these trips that they are vulnerable to attack by zombies. R and his gang attack a group of teenagers getting medical supplies. R eats the brain of a boy named Perry. Eating a brain gives you the memories of that person for a while; makes you feel alive. Perry’s brain contains memories of his girlfriend Julie, who is also on the scavenging trip. R becomes intrigued by Julie and decides to take her back home with him. At first Julie is scared but the more time she spends with R the more comfortable she is around him. He also seems to be gradually changing. It’s almost as if he’s becoming more human.

I really like the idea of this book; zombie meets girl, zombie falls in love with girl, girl starts to fall in love with zombie. The book is nicely written as well. The start is a monologue from R on what it’s like to be a zombie. He’s retained enough of his humanness to see the humour in what has happened and to just get on with it. The book gets more serious as it goes on but the beginning is quite funny.  R is philosophical about how his life turned out and I think it helps him to cope that zombies don’t feel emotions the same way that the Living do. R does like to make the distinction that while yes technically he is dead, he hasn’t ceased to exist. He also hasn’t decomposed to just bones like the Boneys. He’s a corpse but he can still walk and grunt.

R is an excellent narrator. He is intelligent for a zombie and hasn’t gone feral like some. Although impulse is what drives him to take Julie and change his life, he is usually quite calm and just takes things in his stride. Just because he is a zombie doesn’t mean he can’t have friends. M is the kind of friend you want in a crisis. He will stand up for you against the Boneys and isn’t afraid to attack them so that you can get away. R would not be the hero that he is without M. Julie is a strong female character. She doesn’t go screaming and fainting all over the place. She does what she needs to in order to survive. She helps R a lot and shows him what he can be.

The book is a retelling of Romeo and Juliet with humans and zombies. There is even a balcony scene. I enjoyed this part of the book and thought it was cleverly done. Apart from the characters, the book didn’t really have anything new to offer. It had all of the clichés that you would expect to find in a romantic book or film. Basically the book was just asking to be made into a film. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good book and worth a read but ultimately it’s not as unique as it first appears. Zombies having the ability to become human again if given a bit of love and compassion is a good idea and the author has written it well. Would recommend this book to older teenagers and young adults as it is a fun read.

Overall rating 4 out of 5.

The Silver Linings Play Book by Matthew Quick

Pat Peoples has just left a mental institution and now has to adjust to life outside the ‘bad place’. He moves back in with his parents and tries to work out what he’s going to do. The thing he wants most is to be reunited with his wife Nikki but no one around him will talk about her. Pat slowly discovers that he has been in the ‘bad place’ for years rather than months and that Nikki has moved on. His friend Ronnie sets him up with his sister-in-law, Tiffany, and together they form an unlikely friendship. Tiffany’s husband died and she had a break down. They are both damaged and end up helping each other, going running together and visiting a local diner. Pat struggles to come to terms with what happened before his mental collapse and how different life is now. He is constantly looking for his silver lining but won’t necessarily get what he wants.

I didn’t massively like Pat as a character but he is very damaged. At the beginning of the book he is very childlike and relies on his mother to help him. He focuses on getting fit in order to win Nikki back. That is his sole train of thought throughout. He believes that she is his silver lining and he can make himself worthy of her. With the help of his mother, brother Jake, friend Ronnie and therapist Cliff, Pat resumes a somewhat normal life. His mother takes him shopping; his brother takes him to football games and Ronnie takes him out to places like the beach. Tiffany is an interesting character as she seems manipulative but she is also vulnerable. I would have liked to spend some time in her mind just to see what was going on in there.

There is a lot of American Football running through the whole book which confused me greatly. I have no idea about any teams or how to play the game and what the players do. I have no interest in knowing either. I understand that it was an important piece of bonding for the males in the book but I struggled with it. The atmosphere and camaraderie of the game was emphasised but I just couldn’t imagine how it could take over a whole town like that. That part of the novel would definitely help if you were an American reader.

Pat sees his life as being a movie. He has hit a low point and the only way is up. That’s the way it works in movies; it seems as if the couple will never get back together and then, after several near misses, they finally are reunited in their happy ending. Pat believes this is going to happen with Nikki and himself. He is told she has a restraining order against him but that’s a mistake; if he can just talk to her, just see her even, everything will be fine. It added a bittersweetness to the book; Pat knowing exactly what’s going to happen but it never does.

At the beginning of the book I wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about; I didn’t like Pat and I couldn’t see myself liking him at any point. He grew on me though. You can’t help but feel for him. He really wants his silver lining; wants it so much he’s blind to the fact that he won’t get it. I thought the issue of mental illness was handled well here and portrayed realistically. There’s no quick fix for this; it takes years to work through it and find a new normal. By the end of the book Pat ends up being and better and stronger person than ever. It’s not easy or simple but with a little bit of help it gradually gets better. It’s a good book with a nice message and I enjoyed it more than I thought I was going to. I would recommend people give this book a read, it may surprise you.

Overall rating 4 out of 5.

The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

The Perks of Being a Wallflower follows fifteen year old Charlie through a year of his life. He hasn’t really been making friends at school and has gone through some tough times recently with the death of his aunt Helen and his brother moving away to college. He makes friends with Sam and Patrick who are the same age as his older sister. Sam and Patrick introduce Charlie to their friends and with them Charlie experiences new things such as alcohol, drugs and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Throughout the novel Charlie reads twelve books given to him by his English teacher and these have an influence on him, as well as the new things he goes through. It’s a coming of age book in the same vein as a novel like The Catcher in the Rye.

I thought I would like Charlie as he is a nice guy, a bit shy and very intelligent. He also escapes into books which I can relate to. However, there was something not quite right about the way he is written. There are various things that have happened to Charlie that could account for this but for me it affects how realistic the book feels. Charlie is immature for his age and cries a lot. It’s difficult to imagine him having friends his own age, let alone friends older than him. I just can’t see him being accepted into the group as one of them. He does get more mature as the book goes on though. The characters of Sam and Patrick felt more real to me and it may have been a better book if it focused on them more. Sam has trouble with finding the right guy and Patrick is gay but the boy he loves isn’t as open as him which frustrates Patrick.

The book is written in the form of letters. It’s not clear who it is that Charlie is writing to, or if you would be able to work it out from reading the book a few times. To begin with the letters aren’t very complex but as Charlie’s English teacher helps him improve his writing through setting him essays, Charlie’s letters get better written. This is a nice touch and I think that would happen in reality if someone saw potential in you and encouraged you. My problem with the way the book is written is that I’m not sure Charlie is the most reliable narrator and it might have been nice to get things from a different person’s point of view. I think Charlie’s unreliability may be intended to add a certain charm to the book. In some ways it does and some ways it doesn’t.

The book deals with a lot of issues all at once and, being less than 250 pages, this is a big ask. It has sex, drugs, alcohol, mental health and abuse in it. It sort of felt like an episode of Skins, where it is a twisted, overly romanticised vision of what it is to be a teenager. To be fair, a lot of teenagers feel able to relate to Charlie but I don’t know how many of them would go out and get drunk and take drugs a lot. I get that Charlie is an outsider and everyone feels like that at some point in their lives until they find a group of friends that is like them and they don’t feel so alone. Really, this is enough of a story; it doesn’t need all the embellishments to make it more dramatic. It’s just over the top.

I didn’t like this book as much as I wanted to; I think I’m probably too old. This book and Looking for Alaska by John Green felt quite similar to me. I’m not sure why we can’t have a contemporary teenage novel that doesn’t have drugs and alcohol in it. Obviously yes a lot of teenagers do experiment with that kind of thing but that’s not true of everyone. I suppose it makes the book more exciting but it also glamorises it and it just feels like an easy plot device that lacks imagination. The book would have been a lot better if Chbosky had just stuck with the theme of abuse and gone with that, rather than feeling like he had to throw everything into the book.

Overall rating 3 out of 5.

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt

The Sisters Brothers are essentially hired killers in America in 1851. Eli and Charlie Sisters are employed to find a man named Hermann Kermit Warm and kill him. Their friend Henry Morris has been sent on ahead to scout out where Warm is and what his habits are. It turns out Warm has headed to California for the gold rush so the Sisters brothers must follow him there. Along the way they meet a colourful cast of characters and must try and survive long enough to get to their destination. Eli, the narrator, begins to question what they do for a living and whether they should be hanging up their pistols. Charlie has no such thoughts and Eli, being the younger, sort of goes along with Charlie all the while trying to assess his life and what it means.

I enjoyed spending time in Eli’s head and was interested in his inner conflict of wanting to give up his job but not wanting to leave his brother. Charlie would not have been a good narrator as he is drunk a lot of the time and isn’t fully aware of what’s going on around him. He is very alert when he needs to be and can’t be beaten in a gun fight. Eli doesn’t have a killing instinct to the same degree as Charlie but you still don’t want to mess with him. In another era, Eli would have been a really nice guy and may have been able to leave a double life, with a wife and kids but leaving on ‘business trips’ to go and kill people. Even in this era he’s a nice guy, just confused.

I wasn’t sure about reading this book to begin with. The first chapter is about the brothers’ horses and had the rest of the book been like that I probably wouldn’t have continued. I haven’t seen or read any westerns because I didn’t think I would find any interest in them. This one was a nice read. It wasn’t too focused on being a western and had a lot more to it. There was some psychology stuff and plenty of action. I was able to get into the world fairly easily but I couldn’t manage to really enjoy being in the world.

I think it helped that the book was nicely written and didn’t take very long to read. The book is split into three parts with a couple of intermissions. I didn’t really understand the point of the intermissions and whether they were real or some sort of dream sequence or something. As the book has an element of mystery in it, you have the build up, the journey and the conclusion. This worked well too as it is a familiar formula to most readers so it is something else that helps ease you in to the world of the western. I don’t imagine it can really be called a western in the true sense of the word but it certainly gives you a taste of it.

The book was better than I expected but I didn’t feel a big connection to it. I did find myself liking Eli and enjoying his struggle. I can understand why this book gained award attention when it first came out because it’s so different to most other books out there. Except, when you look at what it’s actually about, it’s not that different really; it just has an unusual setting. I’m not really sure what to rate this book as it was really good but I just can’t bring myself to give it four stars. I’d be interested to see what this author writes next as it should be interesting. I would recommend people give this book a chance and not dismiss it because of what it appears to be.

Overall rating 3.5 out of 5.

The Skin Map by Stephen R Lawhead

Kit meets his great-grandfather, Cosimo in an alley in London. He finds out that Cosimo uses ley lines to travel through time and dimensions. Kit also has this ability. His girlfriend, Mina, doesn’t believe him so he takes her through to another dimension. Except, as he doesn’t know what he’s doing, she ends up in Prague in 1606. There she meets Etzel and together they set up the first coffee shop in Prague. Kit, meanwhile, is with Cosimo and his friend Sir Henry. In order to try and work out where Mina is they must get the Skin Map. This was made by a man named Arthur Flinders-Petrie who also travelled like them. He made a map of where ley lines were and where they went in tattoos on his skin. After he died his skin was made into a map. However, there is also a man named Burleigh who is after the map, and so after Kit and Cosimo.

I really liked the sound of this book when I read the blurb on the back. I am a sucker for a good time travel novel. As with every time travel book, there are rules to the travel. In this case, you cannot travel to the future, only the past. This is fine because there is plenty of past to go to and plenty of parallel universes to visit. In this book you go to England, Prague and Egypt. You spend a lot of time in Prague with Mina but I think Egypt could have done with a bit more description. I couldn’t really picture where they were.

As usual, there were characters I liked and characters I didn’t. Unfortunately one of the characters I didn’t like was Kit and he is essentially the main character. He is supposed to be an adult but just acts like a child. To begin with I wasn’t sure about Mina but I really liked her towards the end and can’t wait to see how she develops in the next book. Cosimo was a fun character to read; he’s just a fun old guy who doesn’t take things too seriously, even when he is in serious danger. I’m interested to learn more about the baddy, Burleigh. It’s not clear what his agenda is and what exactly he wants from Cosimo. So far he is not nice at all so hopefully he will be a formidable opponent for Mina, Kit and their friends.

The writing style is okay; I felt it improved as the book went on and I was more engaged with the characters. Okay is pretty much how I felt about the whole book up until the last chapter. It ends with the reader asking a lot of questions, which I suppose you need to read the nest book to find out. There was also an epilogue with a teaser for some new characters in the sequel. Half way through I didn’t think I would be continuing the series. Now, provided we have less from Kit’s perspective and more girls kicking butt, I’m going to have to read the second. This is a planned five part series, so we’ll see how it goes as to whether I’ll be reading the whole series.

It was an alight read but nothing that special for me. It’s not very long so if you wanted a quick read I think you would enjoy it. It might also be a good read for teenagers wanting to get into adult books as it is part of a series and it’s easy to read. I have read better time travel books but it certainly could have been a lot worse.

Overall rating 3 out of 5.

Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick

Wonderstruck is two stories in one. Ben is from a remote town in America in 1977. His mother has recently died and he has moved in with his aunt, uncle and cousins. One stormy night he is looking through his mother’s things and finds a book called Wonderstruck. In it is a bookmark to his mother from a man. He wonders if this man is his father and so decides to investigate. The only problem is that it would appear that his father lives in New York, which is miles away. There is also the fact that he has recently become deaf, following an accident and can neither sign nor read lips. The other story is told entirely through pictures and is set just outside New York in 1927. It follows Rose, a deaf girl, who isn’t allowed to do things by herself but really wants to explore the city just outside her doorstep. Throughout the book their stories merge and become one big story.

Ben is only young but so much has happened to him already. You can’t help but want to be his friend so he has someone to talk to and hang out with. When something life altering, like suddenly not being able to hear anything, happens to you it’s going to take a while to adjust. At first Ben tries to ignore it, but he finds that just isn’t possible. He needs to be able to communicate. Ben is both brave and cowardly. He decides to run away and look for his dad instead of dealing with problems at home but he isn’t scared to go around New York by himself. Rose is not the happiest child although she enjoys spending time with her brother, who seems to understand her best. She’s very creative and has lots of potential if only her parents could see past her being deaf.

The book is approximately one third written novel and two thirds graphic novel / picture book. Ben’s story is told through words, Rose’s through pictures. The two mediums are blended together seamlessly; allowing you to have cliff-hangers in the two stories when the author switches between the two. The written part has just the right amount of description and inner thought. The pictures convey inner thoughts through facial expressions but it’s the detail of the city that captures your imagination. Selznick is an incredible artist. You don’t need any words to know what’s going on and how the characters feel.

I really enjoyed this book, and although it’s over six-hundred pages it doesn’t take long to read. I really felt connected to both main characters and the ending just ties it all up nicely. It’s not the happiest of books as both have struggles to overcome, so the end makes it all the more touching. This would have been an excellent story had it been just words but the pictures just bring it to life so, at least for Rose, you don’t need to picture what she looks like. Selznick did a lot of research in to this book and I’d like to think that if I ever went to the American Museum of Natural History, I’d be able to picture Ben and Rose being there too. I think adults and children can enjoy Selznick’s work and would urge everyone to try one of his novels.

Overall rating 5 out of 5.

Reading Wrap Up July 2013

These are the books I read in July

The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky  --  3 / 5

Rumo by Walter Moers  --  5 / 5

The Silver Linings Play Book by Matthew Quick  --  4 / 5

Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion  --  4 / 5

The Cutting Room by Jilliane Hoffman  --  4 / 5

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch  --  4 / 5

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde  --  4 / 5