Sunday 1 March 2015

what I've read this month (February)

The shortest month of the year caught me by surprise and I forgot to post my monthly round up on the last day of February, so here it is:



1. Margaret Atwood, Stone Mattress
2. Bernadette Barton, Stripped
3. Sarah Waters, Tipping the Velvet (re-read)
4. Vikas Swarup, Q&A
5. C. J Sansom, Lamentation 
6. Jennifer McVeigh, The Fever Tree
7. Jacqueline Susann, The Valley of the Dolls
8. Xiaolu Guo, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers  

I still want to review a couple of these books, but I've been so disorganised recently. Still, I did manage to get reviews up of both the best and the worst of this month reads. The Fever Tree was my favourite, for it's cinematic and engaging love story. Stripped was the poorest as it need to be more academical rigorous and less repetitive.


Another highlight of the month was The Valley of the Dolls a cult-classic about the entertainment industry this book is the good type of trash. Published in 1966 is has surprisingly stood the test of time, and could criticism of Hollywood could easily be applicable for today.

Though not the worst book, perhaps the most disappointing was Q&A, as I had high expectations because I love the film adaptation (Slumdog Millionaire). The novel didn't have the same emotional pull on me as the film, and there were parts that were so poorly written they became dull.

Stone Mattress is written by my hands down favourite author, and though I enjoyed aspects of this short story collection, my dislike towards the medium stopped this from being crowned this months winner.

Tipping the Velvet was a re-read. I've mentioned my love for Sarah Waters before, her novels are so vivid, she really manages to capture a sense of time and place in her historic novels. If you've not read any of her books you really should give her a try, Fingersmith is my personal top pick.

I read a fair bit of historical fiction this month, Tipping the Velvet, Lamentation and The Fever Tree - it's one of my favourite genres so it was really lovely to have a bit of a binge on it.

No comments:

Post a Comment