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Book Reviews

The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker

Theodore's Bookish Thoughts

Tagline: ‘Even the chapters where nothing of much importance happens are so wonderfully written, that you will still find yourself hooked’

Hello again, and welcome to another book review! Which, this time, is only a few months late… But I am still trying to keep the reviews coming. It just might not be as often as first intended.

Today’s review is of a book which I have wanted to read for a while, but haven’t felt in the right mood to read (I pick what to read depending on how I feel at the time). In the end, I had put off reading this book for too long, and decided to take the plunge! 

Background

The story begins in the dorm of a few college students in the small town of Santa Lora in California. The town, we are told, has a lot of strange history – a lot of residents even believe that the town itself is cursed. 

On the day in question, a college student falls asleep – after all, who didn’t spend a large part of University life sleeping? But, when the other college students try to wake her up, it becomes obvious that this is more serious than a quick nap.  The college students, no matter how hard they try, cannot wake her. But, she is still breathing, and her heart is still (obviously) beating.

She is taken away to the hospital where she enters into a state of relaxation so extreme that her heart slows down, so much so that her heart eventually comes to a stop. A student killed in her sleep, by her sleep.

The other students don’t get much time to mourn the death of their friend, as other students start to suffer from the same illness – falling asleep, incapable of being woken. But, different students suffer different symptoms – not all of them enter a state of extreme relaxation (as the first student did). Instead, they sleepwalk, suffer nightmares, and more (some of these symptoms being lethal).

We then see how easily a disease like this can spread. The medical staff who treated the first student begin to develop symptoms, and so the staff, and anyone they have been with, are quarantined (the students are also quarantined in their dorm). But, this is not enough, and soon we will see the impact the disease will have on this whole town. 

As the disease spreads, we see the best and the worst of humanity. People helping others, despite the increased risks of catching the disease themselves, and people acting out of fear, doing anything to not catch the disease. 

Review – 4.5 out of 5 stars ✯✯✯✯(+1/2)

Admittedly, this book is not what I was expecting. I was expecting a light-hearted book that would make you feel ‘warm’ inside. Instead, it was a dark story which will keep you on the edge of your seat to find out what happens to the characters. And I loved it. 

Quite often, it takes some time before a book gets interesting, as the characters, location, situation etc are being introduced. This is not one of those books. This book was interesting right from the start and only got more and more interesting. First, you are keen to know what is causing this disease, who is going to get infected, and how it is going to affect each person. Later, you wonder what will happen to those who have been affected, and how the remaining ‘survivors’ will act.

Even the chapters where nothing of much importance happens are so wonderfully written, that you will still find yourself hooked – the writing is almost soothing on the mind, in spite of the darkness of the book. This includes the characters, as we see how they develop through the story, some of them acting in ways they never would have done before the disease (for better and for worse). You also find yourself willing the characters to avoid the disease – to survive. 

I hope you enjoyed my review of The Dreamers – if you have read it and would like to share your thoughts, or would like to suggest my next read, then feel free comment down below. If you wish to see more of my reviews in future, please do follow/like/other – my social media pages are available on the ‘Contact & Social Media’ tab at the top of the page.

TBT

Book Reviews

Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell

Theodore's Bookish Thoughts

Tagline: ‘If you enjoy sarcastic humour, you will be highly entertained. And with the strange questions asked by customers, there is plenty of opportunity for dry and sarcastic humour’.

Welcome back! This is probably the most consistent posting schedule I have had since I started this blog. Had this post been just a few days earlier (on Wednesday) it would have been near perfect. Which does give me some hope that I will be able to post more regularly than I previously have done – but apologies if at any point I do go a few weeks (hopefully not months) without any blog posts.

Anyway, let’s go into the actual review! This time I will be reviewing Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell, which is the second book of this series. For those of you that didn’t read the first book, The Diary of a Bookseller (just as a sidenote, you should definitely read it), Shaun Bythell is the owner of ‘The Bookshop’, the largest second-hand bookstore in Scotland, which is based in Scotland’s National Book Town – Wigtown.

The store itself also gained some publicity from its social media pages on which you will see posts similar to what you will read in the diaries (customers doing rather extraordinary things – and now in a good way), postcards which customers from across the world send in, and the occasional photo/video which involves the destruction of a Kindle. There are even a few music videos they have put together, with the two most viewed being ‘Reader’s Delight’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2caiU5Bu-k) and ‘The Bookshop, Wigtown’ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC-oA4zKZlI).

Having enjoyed the first book, I immediately felt that I had to get this book, and weirdly managed to buy it a day before the supposed release date in Foyles (I considered: 1. Whether I had mixed up what day it was, in which case I would be in a lot of trouble with work for not turning up; or 2. Whether I had stepped into a portal which took me one day into the future. In which case I would again be in trouble with work for not turning up. Neither were true, the Foyles bookstore I went in had just been selling the book early). So, I was looking forward to seeing if this book was as good as the first.

Background
As suggested above, this is a continuation of Shaun Bythell’s previous book ‘The Diary of a Bookseller’, which is exactly what both books are – a diary of his days working at The Bookshop (with the occasional diary entry being when he is away from the store). The diary entries provide an intriguing insight into the customers he encounters – from those who chat too long, to those who are just outright rude – the people he has worked with, and his family and close friends.

I am sure a lot of us have wondered what it would be like to own your own bookstore – working in a place where you will be surrounded by books (what’s not to love!). Well, this book lets you get a glimpse into what it would be like, without having to actually deal with the difficult customers, the admin side of things, and the financial side of things. And the book does not seem to omit any details (the book is, a lot of the time, brutally honest), so you do get a full insight.


Review – 3 and a half stars ✯✯✯(+1/2)
As above, you do get a very thorough insight into what it is like to work in a second-hand bookstore. However, you do also get an insight into the people working at the bookstore, what they are like, and Shaun Bythell’s own thoughts both about work and about life generally. I felt that this allowed you to ‘connect’ with the people who work there, rather than seeing it as just a bookstore with faceless people, and I found that this added a lot of charm to the book.

But, the main thing about this book is its humour. Unfortunately, if you do not enjoy ‘dry’ and often sarcastic humour, you may not find this book as entertaining. But if, like me, you enjoy sarcastic humour, you will be highly entertained. And with the strange questions asked by customers, there is plenty of opportunity for dry and sarcastic humour.

While I admittedly preferred the first book (and in all fairness, given that a lot of days will be quite largely the same, I imagine it must have been difficult to keep finding new things to write about day to day – but he has done a good job of it), I still found this book to be very entertaining on its own merit.

I hope you enjoyed my review of Confessions of a Bookseller – if you have read it and would like to share your thoughts, or would like to suggest my next read, then feel free comment down below. If you wish to see more of my reviews in future, please do follow/like/other – my social media pages are available on the ‘Contact & Social Media’ tab at the top of the page.

TBT

Book Reviews

The Book of Hidden Things by Francesco Dimitri

Theodore's Bookish Thoughts

Tagline: ‘The tension between friends, combined with the suspense of what will happen next, will keep you entertained through the whole book. You will find yourself desperate to find out what happens next’.

Hello there, and welcome to another book review. I said I would try not to leave it so long between blog posts this time, and here we are – two blog posts in two weeks! Sadly, I cannot promise that there will be a blog post every week (as much as I would love to be able to), but I want to try to get as quick a turnaround as possible. Anyway, that is quite enough babbling – now onto the actual blog post.

Today, I will be reviewing The Book of Hidden Things by Francesco Dimitri (again, hopefully you already know this from the title, and actually know what you are here for). This book has been on my very long list of ‘to be read’ books (who doesn’t have an ever increasing to be read list?) for a while, but it is finally one I can put onto my read list (one book down, only an infinite number of books left to go). So, was it worth it? Let’s find out.

Background
The book starts with ‘the pact’ made between four friends (Art, Mauro, Tony, and Fabio) from Casalfranco, a small town in Southern Italy. The four friends were once very close, however, they all went their separate ways and left Casalfranco (with the exception of Art, who returned). To keep the friendship going, however, they made a pact in which they all agreed to meet at American Pizza, a restaurant is Casalfranco, once a year (because who doesn’t love a good pizza place). Apart from last year (when Fabio decided not to go), they have kept the pact going all these years.

This year, however, Art has not turned up. To people outside their friend group, this might not sound too strange – friendships grow apart all the time and, afterall, Fabio chose not to come last year. Inside this friendship group, however, they knew that there was something amiss. Art was the one who came up with the idea of the pact, and was never one to miss an appointment. Worse still, this is not the first time that Art has gone missing.

It was ten years earlier that Art first went missing for 7 days. There was no trace of him, and the other friends quickly became prime suspects for the kidnapping (and possible murder) of Art. Until Art suddenly came back, claiming that he just needed to find out if he could escape Casalfranco and was pleased when he found out he could. His friends, however, know that this is a nonsense excuse, but Art refused to tell them the real reason for his disappearance. They suspect that something horrible must have happened to Art, something which he cannot even voice, something which changed Art for the rest of his life.

Back to present day, his friends try to find out what happened to Art without getting themselves in so deep that they cannot escape. However, when they find out that Art has been dealing weed, and has been involved with the Sacra Corona Unita (a large local criminal network), they end up in a position that they can either find out what happened to Art, or they can avoid getting themselves in too deep – but they cannot do both. They chose the first option.

The three remaining friends find themselves getting involved with the Sacra Corona Unita, pushing the limits of their own friendships in doing so. In their investigation of Art’s disappearance the friendship group will suffer betrayal, broken hearts, and one of the biggest tests that their friendships have faced. They must risk it all if they are to find out what happened to Art.

Review – 4 and a half stars 4½ Stars ✯✯✯✯(+1/2)
At the start, I asked if this book was worth it… Yes, yes it was worth it.

This book left me hanging off the edge of my seat (usually on the seat of the bus into/from work) for most of the time that I was reading it. The tension between friends, combined with the suspense of what will happen next, will keep you entertained through the whole book. You will find yourself desperate to find out what happens next.

It is difficult for me to provide a full review of what was good about this book without giving any spoilers, but I really enjoyed where they took the story, and how the story ended. And I do not want to give spoilers because I believe that the book is a better read if you don’t know what happened so you can, while reading, come up with your own theories about what you think happened to Art – and this is another thing I enjoyed about the book, as it gave you just enough information to do that.

Another thing is that, while the friends are sufficiently similar to be able to get along (despite their disagreements), they are also largely different, and so I think that different people will like and dislike different members of the friendship group (on a sidenote, that would be a great question for a book club – which friend did you most closely align to, and why). These are the reasons why I give this book four and a half stars.

I hope you enjoyed my review of The Book of Hidden Things– if you have read it and would like to share your thoughts, or would like to suggest my next read, then feel free comment down below. If you wish to see more of my reviews in future, please do follow/like/other – my social media pages are available on the ‘Contact & Social Media’ tab at the top of the page.

TBT

Book Reviews

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

Theodore's Bookish Thoughts

Tagline: ‘This is possibly one of the most quotable books I have read. Maybe not inspiring and motivational quotes, but certainly for quotes which will make you laugh out loud’

Hi all! You were probably thinking you would never see another blog post from me… Well, you were wrong. This blog is still going, I have just been very busy recently. And I will likely stay busy for the foreseeable future, and so I cannot guarantee that there will not be any long delays in future. But, while my enjoyment of reading and blogging continues, so will my blog. And besides, we all need an escape of some sort from the business of everyday life – and mine is reading and blogging.

So, the book I will be reviewing (in case, for whatever reason, you did not read the title and don’t actually know what you are here for) is Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Most of you will probably have heard of Good Omens already (if not, where have you been?), either because of the book, or because of the recently released TV series starring David Tennant and Michael Sheen.

I had, of course, heard a lot about Good Omens – mostly positive. And the negative comments I had heard were mainly about the ‘religious cult themes’ of the book which had angered some people, mainly in the massively religious areas of America. It was, therefore, a book which I was looking forward to reading (because of the positive stuff, not because it angered some very religious people).

Background
The story revolves around the end of the world which will be brought about by a child, to be followed by the biggest war of all time – the war between Heaven and Hell. This is what Heaven and Hell have both been working towards since creation, and they are both ready. Well, almost all of Heaven and Hell.

Aziraphale the angel who strives for good, and Crowley who strives to make peoples’ lives… Hell (sorry but also not sorry about the pun) have both been together since the beginning. Which seems like a strange pairing given their differences, but the two have a pact which allows them both to carry out their minor deeds of good and bad, pleasing their respective command (Heaven and Hell). And they both share their uncertainty for the plan which would spell the end of the world, and the start of the Great War, and try to prevent it happening.

Meanwhile, Anathema, a witch, is trying to make sense of ‘The Nife and Accurate Prophefies of Agnes Nutter’ which predicted what would happen in the build up to what will be the end of the world. Anathema is having to make sense of it because it has been written in an almost entirely nonsensical way. And Newt, who has recently taken on the role of Witchfinder, goes hunting for witches (as you would expect a Witchfinder to do).

Review – 4½ Stars ✯✯✯✯(+1/2)
So, is this book worth the hype? Absolutely, yes.

This is possibly one of the most quotable book I have read. Maybe not inspiring and motivational quotes, but certainly for quotes which will make you laugh out loud (although, the joke about Crowley having created the Welsh Language hurt a bit – Damn you Gaiman! But then again, there are very few people who aren’t joked about, so I will let it slide).

The story and the language used was uncomplicated, making it an easy read (in a good, relaxing way) while also being interesting, and keeping the reader (in this case, me!) engaged – particularly with the level of creativity in both the story and the humour. Had I not had a lot going on, this would have been a book which I would have got through very quickly.

I also liked (though I do not know whether this is in all versions of the book) the inclusion of the sections on ‘What it was like to write with Terry Pratchett’ and ‘What it was like to write with Neil Gaiman’ (even these sections made me laugh), and ‘Good Omens, the facts’ which goes into more detail about how the ideas came about, how they wrote the book together, and how they found the experience. This gave the kind of insight which I am sure devoted readers and writers will have loved reading – I certainly did!

And now I feel ready to watch the TV Series (I prefer to read the book first, to then see if the characters and events are as I imagined them)!

I hope you enjoyed my review of Good Omens – if you have read it and would like to share your thoughts, or would like to suggest my next read, then feel free comment down below. If you wish to see more of my reviews in future, please do follow/like/other – my social media pages are available on the ‘Contact & Social Media’ tab at the top of the page.

TBT

Book Reviews

Audiobook Review – In Your Defence by Sarah Langford (Narrated by Catherine Bailey)

Theodore's Bookish Thoughts

4 out of 5 stars ✯✯✯✯

Hello there! This is a very different kind of blog post – firstly, it is my first non-fiction book review. Secondly, it is my first Audiobook review.

With my Legal Practice Course (LPC) starting back, my schedule has become a lot busier and I have a lot less time for my Book Blog as a result. I am also spending a lot more time reading textbooks, rather than novels (and I don’t think any of you want me to review my Property Law and Practice textbook).

But I have loved having my book blog to turn to – an excuse (not that one is needed) to read more and different books, and to share my bookish thoughts with others. So I knew that I wanted to keep it going. To make things a little bit easier, therefore, I have turned to the use of Audiobooks which I can listen to while doing my walks and runs. This will allow me to get through more books, and therefore more reviews, while I slowly try to get through my paper books in between my LPC work.

I am also on my second day of no caffeinated drinks (I am drinking decaf coffee – as I love the taste too much to go without coffee altogether). So, if anything I write makes no sense, blame it on the lack of caffeine and the withdrawal symptoms.

About the book
Somewhat ironically, my first Audiobook review is a legal one (but don’t worry – this is an exciting legal book, not a textbook). This book is written by Barrister, Sarah Langford, who retells the stories of the legal cases she has been involved with, the Clients she has represented, and her own mindset for each case.

These involve cases in the criminal courts, from burglary to the most serious of offences, and in the family courts, where divorced parents fight for custody of the child (sometimes using the child in an attempt to win one over the other parent). Each chapter represents a different story and goes into detail about the offence, the Clients she is representing, the other parties involved, and her own internal thoughts.

So, if you enjoy Crime and Courtroom dramas (however unrealistic they may be), this could be the Audiobook (or book) for you!

My thoughts on the books – 4 out of 5 stars ✯✯✯✯
While this was a non-fiction Audiobook, it was just as easy to review as a fiction book because, just as a fiction book tells a story, this was Sarah Langford retelling her stories. And this is what I enjoy reading books for – great stories which are well-told. And this story was certainly well-told.

Sarah Langford has a marvelous mastery of the English Language that you would expect from a Barrister, with the ability to tell a story which flows well. This, together with her explanations of the law and the legal process, makes it very easy to follow even if you have little or no knowledge about the workings of the Criminal and/or Family Courts. And the stories she tells are very intriguing – interesting stories which raise questions we may not have considered before.

Sarah Langford also seems to have developed a great writer’s instinct of knowing how people are feeling in certain situations, how they are likely to react, but most importantly, why they feel and react in this way. In doing so, she also shows excellent self-awareness by providing us with a glimpse into her own thoughts and feelings, and the prejudices she didn’t even know she had – and she tackles her own thoughts and feelings openly and honestly, even if they risk painting her in a less favourable light.

The narrator, Catherine Bailey, was also a perfect fit for this Audiobook. Her voice – calm, clear, and professional, sounds exactly as you would expect a Barrister to sound. You might not necessarily think of the narrator as being an important part of the story – but I found that the use of Catherine Bailey as the narrator made a big difference, and I found myself able to paint a picture of Sarah Langford standing in court, making her arguments in front of the judge, with the voice of Catherine Bailey.

I hope you enjoyed my review of In Your Defence – if you have read it and would like to share your thoughts, or would like to suggest my next read, then feel free comment down below. If you wish to see more of my reviews in future, please do follow/like/other – my social media pages are available on the ‘Contact & Social Media’ tab at the top of the page.


Thank you very much for joining my for my review – and I hope to have another book review up shortly!

TBT