mother's day book list

It's mother's day this Sunday, and although my family don't celebrate it (not that we don't appreciate our mum) I thought I'd put together a list of books that put parent/child relationships at their core.

So, if you want to gently steer your mum away from Maeve Binchy or Joanna Trollope have a look under the jump for my suggestions:-

reading

"If you only read the book that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking"

- Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood 

5 graphic novels I'd like to read

Graphic novels are not a genre I've ever really explored, I've only read one, Persepolis but after reading various reviews on Amazon and Good Reads, I think I might be missing out.

Here's a list of 5 graphic novels I have my eye on:

1. The Walking Dead Compendium Volume 1, Robert Kirkman 

I'm a huge fan of the tv show, so would love to see how the original story deviates. If you're not familiar, basically The Walking Dead is about a zombie apocalypse and the destruction of society. Originally released as comics, this compendium includes numbers 1-48 and is a whopping 1088 pages! It is pricey though at over £30, and there is another compendium after this one. I can see how an interest in comic/graphic novels will be expensive.

2. The Nao of Brown, Glyn Dillon       

This novel is about OCD, and as I have an interest in mental illness I'd like to give it a try.

3. Black Hole, Charles Burns 

This sounds right up my street, a story about a plague effecting teenagers in the suburbs of Seattle.

4. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel 

I first heard of  Alison Bechdel test through watching a youtube vid by Anita Sarkeesian (link), basically the Bechdel analysis the gender equality in a film, to pass the film must have have at least two named women who talk to each other about something other than a man. Most films can't even reach this small requirement, and the figures are even lower when the test is applied to POC. 

Anyway, so my point is Alison Bechdel seems like an awesome woman fighting the patriarchy so I'm really interested in reading Fun Home, her memoir about growing up in her dysfunctional family.   

5. Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea, Guy Delisle 

I used to live in South Korea, and have peered into the North when I visited the DMZ, so this graphic novel travelogue is very appealing.  Guy Delisle has also written other graphic novels about Jerusalem and Shenzen, both of which I've been fortunate enough to travel to, and quite fancy reading as well, though Pyongyang is first on my list 

Hel, daughter of Loki

'Her form was uncompromising, straight-spined, with long legs, strong, capable hands firm feet [...] Half of her was black, and half blue. Half of her, those who saw her also reported, was living flesh, and half was dead. Sometimes the line between black an blue split her cleanly [...] but sometimes the black and blue floated on and in each other. They were beautiful, like the last blue of the sky meeting the dark of the coming night. They were hideous, the colour of bruises on battered or moribund flesh'

-A.S Byatt, Ragnarok, The End of the Gods 

beauty

"Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it"

-Donna Tartt, The Secret History 

Jo Baker, Longbourn

Whenever I visit a National Trust or an English Heritage property I'm always interested to see the kitchens and servants quarters, probably because in another life that would be my job, working as a maid in the big house (just like my Nana), so I was very intrigued by Longbourn - which retells Pride and Prejudice from the servants perceptive.

Pride and Prejudice has been rewritten a couple of times before (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Death Comes to Pemberley) but Jo Baker's novel really brings a fresh perspective to the story, and I think even enhances the original.

The Plot:  As vivacious and forthright as Elizabeth Bennett, but lacking the same opportunities and status, Sarah is a housemaid at Longbourn. With sore hands Sarah toils to make the Bennett family comfortable, but the daily grind is interrupted by two new footmen, both of whom have secrets and an interest in Sarah.

To avoid spoilers my opinion is under the jump:-

the old

"To me, the old were a separate species, like sparrows or foxes [...] The body's largest organ bears the brunt- the old no longer fit their skin. It hangs of them, off us, like a room-for-growth school blazer. Or pyjamas"

- Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth 

a whole paragraph in one visual gulp

"I could take in a block of text or a whole paragraph in one visual gulp. It was a matter of letting my eyes and thoughts go soft, like wax, to take the impression fresh of the page. To the irritation of those around me, I'd turn a page every few seconds with an impatient snap of the wrists [...] I wanted characters I could believe in, and I wanted to be made curious about what happened to them"

- Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth 

Ian McEwan, Sweet Tooth

I've only ever read one Ian McEwan novel before, Atonement, which I thought was absolutely beautiful, so when I spied  Sweet Tooth on the library shelf I snapped it up.

Now I've finished it, my feelings towards Sweet Tooth are ambivalent. Although McEwan is undoubtedly talented, I don't think this book is half as clever as he thinks it is.

The Plot: Groomed for MI5 by her Cambridge professor/lover, Serena Frome enters the service at the tail-end of the Cold War.  After a period of tedium and dogsbody duties, she is sent on a secret mission, to recruit promising writer Tom Haley to Operation Sweet Tooth- an assignment  that aims to undermine communist ideology through popular literature.

 As I don't want to give away too many spoilers my review is under the jump:-

unpicked

"Those clear grey eyes of hers; you could see she was always thinking. She peered at him like he was a slipped stitch: unforeseen, infuriating, just asking to be unpicked." 

- Jo Baker, Longbourn