All I Know Now - Carrie Hope Fletcher

07:13 Unknown 0 Comments

"Everyone is feeling exactly the same about themselves. Not you. They all think they’re standing alone on a stage in the spotlight and everyone else is in the crowd, scrutinising their every move, when really we’re ALL standing on the stage but the lights are off and there’s no one left in the audience to watch you. The only pressure to make a good impression and be memorable is coming from yourself, so take the heat off a little bit. Also it’s it’s any comfort, your first day at school probably won’t be as difficult as my first day at school..."

As of writing this post, Carrie Hope Fletcher has 567,784 subscribers to her youtube channel; ItsWayPastMyBedTime. I was a little skeptical, I have to put my hands up and admit it, when I heard that Carrie would be writing a book. I've been a subscriber of hers for quite a while and I find her videos to be enlightening and entertaining. I was worried that this would be “just another youtuber book”. I actually made this observation to a friend of mine who was reading it, and she told me to give it a chance. In all honesty, I guilt tripped myself into buying this book at 11:45pm last night.

And on starting it all of my opinions changed. I was expecting vague advice and what I was given were anecdotes of a girl who, despite all of the acting professionally, had gone through of lot of similar experiences to me. It was a breath of fresh air to hear all of the things I had told myself affirmed by someone slightly older and wiser. For anyone picking this up in the hopes that Carrie’s book will provide you with tips on getting into show business, good luck but there aren’t any. For those looking for words of wisdom from the honorary big sister of the internet generation, it is the closest thing to perfect.

What I thought when reading this was that for someone starting secondary school this is a wonderful book to own. Unlike books handed down from parents or from the library, or even parents sitting down to talk to their children, it is full of advice for the current generations talking about the internet and various things to do with social media (including a chapter on internettique which I want to make a thing immediately). It also comes from someone who is proving that, however tough life is, there is always a silver lining, and life is what you make of it. However Carrie doesn’t recommend doing everything via the internet, and specifies that some things are better done face to face.

I was worried that I was going to jump into this book and find stories that no one could relate to about having a famous brother and working in show business. Instead what was given to me made me smile and filled me with confidence about life for my future. I don’t think that my age was really the target for this book (19) but reading it forced me to answer some questions; Am I happy with the choices I'm making? Could I have made a better decision? But ultimately it made me look at myself different.

I can safely say that coming away from this book I have grown to love myself a little more. I know now that none of the bad things that have happened in my life were ever because the world is against me, and I know now that it’s okay to be single and date myself for a while ( a phrase which I have grown to love).

Total pages - 288

Total read time - 5 hours

Rating /10 - 7.5-8

Recommend - Yes (for those looking to reminisce or for those growing up in the modern world)

(Oh and Carrie, if you read this, I kinda hope in the future you’ll write another All I Know Now; maybe if/when you’re married and have children, just to help us out as we grow up with you.)

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The Children Act - Ian McEwan

08:28 Unknown 0 Comments

Back in the 1980s a judge could still have made the teenager a ward of court and seen him in chambers or hospital or at home. Back then, a nobel ideal had somehow survived into the modern era, dented and rusty like a suit of armour. Judges had stood in for the monarch and had been for centuries the guardians of the nation’s children. Nowadays the social workers from Cafcass did the job and reported back. The old system, slow and inefficient, preserved the human touch. Now, fewer delays, more boxes to tick, more to be taken on trust. The lives of the children were held in compute memory, accurately, but rather less kindly. (Pages 35-36)

I have never really found myself too intrigued with the law. It’s always had a connotation of big heavy text books and long words and phrases I don’t understand. So picking up The Children Act I knew was going to be something out of my comfort zone. However on the Sunday Time’s recommendation that this is “a powerful, humane novel”, I decided it would be worth a shot.

And I have to say that I agree with the Sunday Times. I found myself thinking throughout reading this novel about choice. It is very easy to see how the outcomes could’ve been so very different for Fiona, the protagonist, had she made a different choice. McEwan approaches topics such as relationships and religion with regard to choice and how, especially religion, affects children and whether in fact it should.

The novel centres around Fiona, a high court judge, passing judgements on a number of cases but most poignantly that of Adam Henry. Adam, referred to as A in the law documents, is suffering from Leukaemia and refusing treatment due to his religious beliefs. Fiona is given the choice to overrule the seventeen year old’s wishes and allow the hospital to continue to treat him, or to revoke the hospital’s treatment plan on account of the very literate and talented young man.

I did find this a challenging read. I don’t know whether that was because I wasn’t feeling great when I started it, but it definitely picked up pace towards the final chapter, which was greatly appreciated. McEwan is a very lyrical writer. The paragraphs can seem longwinded and some explanations can be pages long, but when looking back at the novel as a whole, without those I don’t see it being the same. It’s an incredibly heartbreaking story (within which are several heartbreaking law cases) which has to be explained fully for it’s effect.

Total pages - 213

Total read time - 6 hours

Rating /10 - 7.5-8

Recommend - Yes

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The Farm by Tom Rob Smith

11:31 Unknown 0 Comments

Villains are real. They walk among us. You can find them any street, in any community, in any home - on any farm.

What is a villain? They’re people who will stop at nothing in the pursuit of their desires. I know of no other word for the man I have in mind.

In this satchel is some evidence I’ve collected over the summer. There was more but this was all I could smuggle out of Sweden in such a rush. It makes sense to address each article of evidence in chronological order, starting with this -

Tom Rob Smith’s ‘The Farm’ was a book I came across in Waterstones without having heard about it before. The cover intrigued me as did the beautiful red edging to each page. And then I read the blurb which lead me know that this book was my kind of thing.

The plot is centred around the character, Daniel, who’s parents recently retired to Sweden, his mother’s homeland. On one seemingly ordinary day, Daniel gets a phone call from his father to be told that his mother isn’t very well and “she’s been imagining things - terrible terrible things”. We soon learn that his father admitted his mother to a mental institution and Daniel packs his things to visit her.

At the airport however, Daniel receives a further call. This one from his mother. She claims that “everything that man has told you is a lie,” and that she is also on her way from Sweden to London to explain everything.

I would like to agree with the sentiment lay down by Mark Billingham, on the cover, that ‘You will not read a better thriller this year”- although I’m not entirely sure considering it’s still early in 2015 by all standards. However the story is incredibly exciting. It’s fast paced and everything I read kept me wanting to read ahead. I genuinely considered staying up all night to finish reading this book.

In addition to this I found that the pace was maintained through the lack of actual chapters. I kept reading and found I couldn’t actually find a good place to put the book down and go and do things; and when I did I found my mind wandering back to characters and what I thought about the plot.

‘The Farm’ is an incredibly thought provoking novel. It can be read in three different ways, and I’m sure there are others I haven’t thought about. You can read it from Daniel’s preferred stance of neutrality. Reading it this way, until you get to the end, you can’t make a judgement on his mother’s sanity. Or you can read it from the view of his father that it is all in his mother’s head or from his mother’s point of view, that everything that is being said is hard fact. It does bring into question how much we rely on evidence and seeing things for ourselves. It also blurs these delicate lines between what we know to be fact and fiction as some of Tilde’s recollections seem almost so out of this world that they couldn’t possibly be made up.

This novel took me around 7 hours to read over two days. I found that once I had picked it up, it was incredibly difficult to put down. The story is gripping from the get go and the pace does not let go of you, running, until you’ve turned that very last page.

Total pages - 351

Total read time - 7 hours

Rating /10 - 8.5

Recommend - Definite yes

Keep Reading,

Kelly x

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My Bright Book List

07:30 Unknown 0 Comments

I have always loved reading. I have always had shelves full of books and a few books to read on the go at once. I think Harry Potter was the first book that I found myself reading all the time. But now I’m growing up I suppose. Harry Potter and all my childhood books will be revisited. I’ll definitely make sure to do a blog post on those when I can. But now I’m here to show you all my book list.

The books on this list are books that I have seen and thought looked interesting, classic books I know I should have read by now, or books I once started and haven’t finished. So far there are 24 books;

Station Eleven - Emily St John Mandel
~~The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry - Gabrielle Zevin~~
~~The Children Act - Ian McEwan~~
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
~~Elizabeth is Missing - Emma Healey~~
~~The Miniaturist - Jessie Burton~~
We are All Completely Beside Ourselves - Karen Joy Fowler
Suite Francaise - Irene Nemirovsky
Far From the Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
Animal Farm - George Orwell
~~The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald~~
~~Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen~~
Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
The Man Who Bought London - Edgar Wallace
Dracula - Bram Stoker
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
A Selection of Works by William Shakespeare
The Gambler - Fyodor Dostoevesky
The Picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde
~~The Beautifull Cassandra - Jane Austen~~
Jason and Medea - Apollonius of Rhodes
~~A Pair of Silk Stockings - Kate Chopin~~
~~The Farm - Tom Rob Smith~~

Hopefully if all goes to plan I will have read most, if not all, of these before I go to university in September. Each of these books, and any additional ones, will have a corresponding blog post to accompany it with my personal opinions.

Having taken a trip to Waterstones yesterday and discovered their buy one get one half price books, I have decided to begin with The Farm by Tom Rob Smith, followed by The Children Act by Ian McEwan.