Dor Does Books

As we have probably have all heard by now, we have been outed in a couple of major publications. They didn't refer to us by name, but a couple of authors managed to persuade The Guardian and New Republic to run articles about how we're deliberately destroying their books and careers. I know we'd all hoped to keep our existence a secret until after the release of Prince Lestat - don't forget, if you're having problems with snarky gifs for your reviews drop a line to Brian and he'll hook you up - so I thought I'd get the newsletter out early to reassure everyone.

First things first: nobody is to blame for this and it is not a big deal. You guys in the Vine program were doing your jobs perfectly. That can't be emphasised enough. I can see you all worked together to put good variety in your phrasing - Margo Howard is going to have a really hard time convincing people her book doesn't have issues with her being an entitled, privileged, poor-little-rich-girl. Seriously guys, I beginning to suspect she's a member of another chapter. Have you seen her comments on the piece?

The Kathleen Hale thing is concerning, especially with its mention of Athena Parker and STGRB. They've been dormant for a while so we haven't been able to take any of their posts and make it sound like they're twisted stalkers, but we've still been able to go through the internet and continue removing all mentions of Parker from before STGRB started so it looks as though she's not a real person. Those fake screen-shots we created of them doxxing book reviewers still show up on the first page of results. Anybody going to the STGRB webpage is still going to come away thinking they're seriously unhealthy individuals.

Hale's next book doesn't appear to have a release date yet but I want everybody to start brainstorming now. I want to start goading her the day after that sucker appears on NetGalley. I don't want her average review score above 2 stars. We've got some good details on the Guardian piece about how to push her buttons. I want those of you with publishing contracts to reach out to her in your author guises. You'll be the first people she turns to when it all kicks off next time, so you can reassure her she isn't being a maniac. You'll also be in a good place to feed her information like phone numbers if we've made it too difficult for her to get the info herself. Worst comes to the worst, you can tackle the reviewers "on her behalf". Friends diving in makes authors look bad too!

Now, holiday season is coming up and as a reminder to everybody, now is the time to start planting doubt. Books are still a popular gift and as well known bookish people, you're going to be asked for your opinions. You've got your lists of who we're targeting this year.

To liven things up, we're going to have a leader board. It's going to work as an honour system, but there'll be a small prize for the winner! As well as persuading people not to buy, you can earn points for distributing copies to charity shops. It will make the books look bad AND it will keep the authors from earning money if they're bought. If you need some more hard copies, get in touch with me and I'll have them sent out - special well done to all the people who got the digital ARCs we were able to copy and redistribute!

One final thing: NaNo is coming up, so make sure you pull back on your reviews a bit during the month. All failed novelists do NaNo, so that includes us. We've got a new page on the website with suggestions of "writerly" things you can tweet for added authenticity.

Unhappy reading everybody!

[This book was provided to me for zero pennies by the publisher, Picador, their button-pressing approval made possible by NetGalley. Wren and I thank them profusely.]

The Guest Cat is an odd little book. It is a fairly simple novella about a Tokyo couple who gradually become a second family to a neighbour's cat they call Chibi. Rather unfortunately, it feels as though something large has been lost in translation with this one. 

I'm loath to point the finger at the translator - not least because the last time I did that person wrote an Amazon review explaining how I'd read the book wrong - but this does read as though it's quite a literal translation. 

Another one of Chibi's characteristics was that she changed the direction of her cautious attention frequently.

 

It's not constant by any means, and it doesn't render the book as unreadable as that isolated sentence suggests, but it's certainly a problem. Translating literary books demands rare skills anyway; translating from Japanese (which has so much particular vocabulary and a culture completely different from the West) ... well, I can't imagine it's easy. It also raises the question of what a translator should do - should they be extensively rewriting or merely reporting what is written? Who should decide if that sentence should be "Chibi found many things to be cautious about" or "Chibi rarely relaxed"?

There is a difference between a poetic statement and one which is overwritten. I didn't feel the translation always got that right. When it's good it's delicate, stepping lightly through the simplicity of the tale, but when it's not it's that quote, or it's contradicting itself, or it's starting threads which are never returned to and generally leaving me slightly confused.

There are some notes/footnotes from the translator which are illuminating enough for me to wish either they, or an expert in Japanese Literature, had written an introduction. I would feel the benefit of having this explained to me a bit.

On a personal level, I found this a very interesting book. There are protracted descriptions of the house which I found fascinating but which others may well find tedious. The narrator's engagement with Chibi is the typical monologue of the cat enthusiast; the reader's mileage will vary according to their meatworld keeness for this. 

Although I'm giving this three stars I can't honestly say I'd recommend it. I'm in that weird situation where I'm reading other, more positive reviews, agreeing with them totally, but not actually making that connection myself. I do very much feel that it's me who hasn't got it, rather than there being nothing to get. There are certainly shades of something, but even with the benefit of a few days rumination, I couldn't actually tell you what. 

3 stars.

I'm trying to do my motor tax renewal online only I can't because their cheap ass website requires you to select your insurer from a drop down menu and mine isn't listed.

I mean, I'm only with one of the main Irish companies, so why the @*!* *would* they be listed? That would only make sense. That would only streamline people's ability to pay their motor tax online. Why would the DoT want THAT to happen?

GAH!

*deep breath*

This is why I don't do my paperwork. It is NOT my fault.

I only have the very vaguest idea who Mindy Kaling is. I do know this was a few books away from Hyperbole and a Half when I went to the library, and that I picked it up because I've seen it before somewhere. It was probably when Sloane Crosley's I Was Told There'd Be Cake was the Kindle Daily Deal. I didn't buy Sloane Crosley's book, mainly because I don't know who she is either. 

Kaling, it turns out, is a comedy writer of high repute. She writes and acts in the US version of The Office. She writes and stars in The Mindy Project. Production/Direction/Generally Telling People What To Do is also involved. I use the present tense here but I've seen neither show so may be embarrassed to find she left in season 1 and is now fronting a campaign to give every child in America an oboe. Because she's a comedy writer of high repute she is therefore in need of a book deal, a sentence which tells you everything you need to know about this book. 

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) is a collection of what other people call essays and, as far as this sort of thing goes, is actually okay. It doesn't start strongly: a chapter about Kaling's weight and how her hobby is dieting has the same lazy idiocy as the hashtag nomakeup selfie thing, particularly to me who is a UK 16 (US12) and only knows what Kaling looks like because there's a picture of her on the cover. After that though it gets better. Kaling has some fun - if privileged - childhood stories. 

My overall impression of Kaling is of a person who is quite blinkered - she comes across as somebody who lacks empathy for other people; not in a bad way, just in a surprising way given that she's a comic. She doesn't seem ignorant enough for this to be a deliberate shtick. The adult perspective on childhood stories is missing, especially in one about a weekend friend who became a school time friend. Elements which seem obvious about the situation are missed in the way of somebody unaware of what it is to be somebody who isn't them.

There is the odd extremely problematic lines: "You should know I disagree with a lot of traditional advice. For instance, they say the best revenge is living well. I say it’s acid in the face—who will love them now?" Yeah, well, Katie Piper seems to be managing okay. See what I mean about the blinkered privilege?

Much of the book is enjoyable enough, even for somebody who has only the vaguest idea of the significance of Saturday Night Live, or who Kristen Wiig and Amy Poehler are. However, it does read - especially in the final couple of sections - as though Kaling is casting around for ideas to make her word count. She does it well enough but it smacks of being phoned-in, a product which exists purely to trade on Kaling's name. And while it would be fair enough to go 'Well, duh! What did you expect?', the answer is, 'I expected that somebody who writes for a living would do better than this diverting but not terribly funny and ultimately rather self-indulgent book.' 3 stars.

[This ARC was provided to me for the cost of zero of your monies by the publisher. NetGalley was involved. Aren't they always?]

I wasn't the greatest fan of Grameme Simsion's first novel, The Rosie Project. It took too long to get going and - particularly in the early sections - bore the scars of its original iteration as a script, but not in a good way. However, it did get better and I did enjoy it so I was very pleased to be granted a review copy of its sequel. I was even more pleased once I'd read it.

The Rosie Effect picks up the story some months after end of the previous book - while it's probably better to read that one first so you know the characters, this is perfectly understandable if you don't. Don and Rosie are now married and living in America where Don works at Columbia and Rosie is attempting to balance finishing her PhD with her medical studies. Oh, and becoming a mother. Which was slightly less planned than Don is easily able to cope with.

Although The Rosie Effect is a comedy, and a chucklesome one, I found much of it absolutely heart-wrenching. Initially it trades on the well-worn path of the first book, Don's (probable) Aspergers providing the comedy and the tension and while unfortunately veering extremely close to uncomfortable territory in the early sections. Don is given an unnecessarily Pooterish aspect which sits staggeringly poorly against the rest of the book, especially when both books attitude to Don's (possible) Aspergers is taken into account. He has not been given that diagnosis and this has always read like a deliberate (and positive) choice by the author.

Things settle down though, Don becoming his character rather than an emotional-slapstick caricature. His introspection and lack of empathy suit the first person narration perfectly. Even when you can see the set pieces coming they're massively enjoyable, forwarding the plot in ways which manage to be both ludicrous and worrying realistic.

So, why the "heart-wrenching" then? Because underneath everything else, The Rosie Effect does what David Nicholls' Us was trying to do but better. Don may be very different from your usual character but his is the universal experience. He is going to be a parent and he is scared. His efforts to cope with the situation and to do the best and right things are normal, and it's Simsion's plotting skill which takes them and pushes them further without become stupid. Yes, you can see where Don is going to go wrong as soon as he has certain ideas, but you can't always see where he's going to go right. He doesn't know what he's doing but he's trying; he wants to do well and it tugs on my heart.

The Rosie Effect is a great book. It's an unshowy, solid read with wide commercial appeal but non of the dumbing down that phrase usually indicates. It's left me wanting to go back and re-read the first, and I'm feeling pretty sure it'll be one of those books I enjoy more the second time around. For this one though: 4 stars.

[This book was provided to me free of charge by the American publisher, facilitated in this act by the always-confusing-to-navigate Edelweiss]

Although I've read (and quite liked) a couple of David Nicholls' other books - Starter For Ten and the ubiquitous One Day - I wasn't terribly interested in this new one until it cropped up on the Man Booker Longlist. Nicholls is a perfectly decent writer who has seen tremendous commercial success while largely avoiding the prose-critical backlash writers like Stephanie Meyer have endured. That said, for him to place on the Booker Longlist, particularly in its first year of international competition - well, I freely express surprise he would be even be entered.

One night, 56-year-old Douglas Petersen is woken by his wife, Connie, to be told she's leaving him. Or rather, she will be, once Albie, their 17-year-old son is safely ensconced at University. Before that, the family have a trip planned - a Grand Tour of Europe - during which Douglas intends to win back the affection of his wife and the respect of his son via the mediums of having a strict timetable and regurgitating the Wikipedia entry of everywhere they go. 

Although not a deliberate comedy, Us should find a natural fan base amongst readers of The Rosie Project, itself widely compared to One Day. By the time this review is posted, I will be about to compare The Rosie Effect to Us triggering a comparative title vortex and trapping us all in a literary feedback-loop of inept middle-aged white guys. Superficially, Nicholls' Douglas feels a touch derivative of Graeme Simsion's hero Don - he is a scientist, he has a free-spirited love interest, having things organised is important to him - but unlike Simsion, Nicholls does not attempt to place his protagonist on the autistic spectrum, even though at times it feels as though he was thinking about it.

Where One Day was an interesting idea adequately executed, Us is a uniteresting idea near perfectly executed. It's a good read, but the shelves are heaving with this type of thing, often done in a more interesting and engaging way. This is closer to Tony Parsons than Nick Hornby and its inclusion on on the Booker longlist is perhaps more indicative of what we're traditionally told "literature" is (straight, white and male) than any literary quality Us possesses. 

Although I liked it overall, I found the characters problematic. Us is the story of this broken marriage and of Douglas' attempts to unbreak it; of how it began and how it came to crack. I struggled slightly - as I did in One Day - to see why these characters cared about each other in the first place. The elements are there but the follow-through isn't. Douglas almost fetishises Connie's artistic bent (which is a pet hate for me anyway), but there's also a degree of contempt for it in the way he doesn't want Albie to pursue a career in the arts, and in the absent head-patting encouragement for her to paint - he doesn't engage with her feelings on the matter of what it is to paint, only the fact he likes her drawings. The internal conflict of this is absent, as a missed opportunity rather than an active gap.

I did not like Connie. She is cruel, yet she is subject to the female-worship other SWMs like Parsons are so guilty of, her actions merely evidence of her free-spirit. Douglas loves her, but it is not a good thing.

The third element, Albie, is a brat who desperately needs to check his privilege. The kind of teen who tells his father he hates him before demanding the necessary cash to extricate himself from his father's company. The kind of brat who insists on having his guitar on a train journey of Europe, and who has the kind of father who brings it.

I did enjoy this. The second half is better than the first benefiting from a move away from the slightly dull realism of the beginning into the kind of book-acceptable plot Nicholls worked so well in Starter For Ten. Even so, I couldn't engage with it. For any justifiable superlative you want to offer, there are dozens of books already out there doing exactly this. Storytelling in all its forms is already dominated by male narratives and this one, while perfectly good, does nothing new. 

I'm going to settle on 3.5 stars, of the kind which gets rounded up rather than down. As I keep saying, it's a good book - although I do wonder if those who loved One Day because they identified with Emma will find this as appealing - despite its wider unoriginality. What it does it does perfectly well and there's no reason not to give it a whirl.

1) My father, bless his little cotton socks, was sorting out his various drugs into his pill box. Because he has stubby man-fingers, he finds it easier to pop the pills out of the blister pack onto the table then drop them into the different sections of the pill box. Because he was refiling the whole box, he'd emptied that days tablets onto a pile on the table.

He became aware, at some point during the process, that his cup of tea was almost finished and realised it would be wise to take his tablets before it was.

12 Venlafaxine later I learned that if you have a possible medical crises, it's better not to do so within five minutes either side of 9am because the out-of-hours services closes early, and the GP opens late.

He's fine, but because he has a heart condition I had to spend most of the day taking him for ECGs and generally not doing any of the things I intended to do.

2) My Great-Auntie, bless her little cotton socks, died. This was a relief. She was old and she'd been going downhill in the non-specific way of the very old for a long time - although there are words to be had with her GP who was called out to see her and declared her fine; 24 hours later the hospital said she had liver cancer and would be unlikely to survive the weekend. 

She lived in the UK, so my parents had to go over to organise the paperwork, sort out her belongings etc which means that instead of spending my free time book blogging etc I spent my free time doing the research regarding funerals, probate, etc, which they can't do because they have limited internet access. It turns out funerals are ridiculously expensive, but you are legally allowed to dig the hole in the graveyard yourself. Don't say I never teach you anything.

So, that's where I've been. Hope everybody's lives are marvellous.

Robin Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice, David Nicholl's Starter for Ten, and Harlan Coban's The Woods are all FREE today on Amazon (both UK and US and possibly elsewhere).

As I believe I've mentioned, I have an ARC of Marian Keyes' new book, The Woman Who Stole My Life, but because it's not out until Novemeber, other ARCs are getting read first. In preparation, I decided to reaquaint myself with whatever the Library had of Keyes' older novels: Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married is Keyes' second book, first published in 1995.

Lucy Sullivan is what would later become the typical Chick Lit heroine - 20 something, office job, boyfriend woes; likes drinking, fashion and shoes; her friends (and frenemies) play a large part in the book. It's worth remembering this was published the year before Bridget Jones' Diary and three years before Sex And The City first broadcast. 

When Lucy and her colleagues visit a fortune teller, Mrs Nolan, Lucy is told she'll be married within the year. After the others' fortunes appear to come true - Meredia coming into the princely sum of £7.50, and Meghan suffering a massive split ... to her lip - Lucy is ready to believe it, especially when she meets charming, handsome, unreliable Gus.

Everything which came later in the genre would have you believe this is your typical cheesy romance, that Lucy muddles her way through trying to find Mr Right until she finally finds him in an unexpected place, but this is Marian Keyes, and Marian Keyes - like myself - always has one eye on the realm of mental illness and its associated issues. When Lucy sees Mrs Nolan, Mrs Nolan sees somebody with a great darkness in them, and this is a large part of why Lucy - sufferer of Depression since her teens - is convinced Mrs Nolan is the real deal.

Initially, the book is slow. Lucy spends an inordinate amount of time cringing, feeling embarrassed, apologising, feeling worthless, and generally being fairly annoying. She is, in many respects, a doormat. She's also immature: her relationship with her Mammy (which I initially disliked, I will freely admit, because it reminded me so much of Strider's relationship with our Mammy) left me wanting to tell her to grow up and stop being so petulant.

But, at 2/3rds in things take a change and every annoying, petulant utterance Lucy has made in the preceding pages slots neatly into place. She's no longer somebody you wish would grow a backbone and stop putting up with so much crap from so many different quarters - well, she *is* - but somebody who has behaved the way that particular person would behave. Marian Keyes knows her stuff. There may be jokes, and ridiculous characters, but there are still punches and more fidelity than the fluffy pink cover would have you expect.

Although the bones of the story stand up pretty well for its age, the are some major aspects which don't. Lucy's situation, for instance - her flat on her job is a pipe dream these days, as is the ability to sit doing nothing all day without being fired. It suffers what I shall christen 70's Sitcom Syndrome: there are some lines which make for uncomfortable reading in this modern and enlightened age - a male character calls a woman a dyke because she hasn't succumbed to his charms, for instance. Some of the banter between the characters, male and female, is vicious rather than amusing - Lucy's relationship with her flatmates is a great example. Lucy and Gus's interactions - again, Lucy is a doormat and the reason for it is there, but I think the current generation of 20-somethings will have less in common with this character than her contemporaries did, and perhaps have a more difficult time grasping the (unmentioned) fact that Mental Health was talked about even less in those days. 

The most damning matter for me was Gus. He is a knobhead. From the second Lucy meets him, he is a knobhead, and because Lucy is such a doormat I would forgive anybody who flung this across the room in irritation and went and found a book about somebody with an ounce of self-respect.

In the end, I did like it, but for a fairly large portion of the book I didn't. The payoff was worth it to me, but if you're under 30 and you don't have an interest in books which deal with Depression and its associated Jazz, there's not a great deal here. Even if you do fulfil those requirements, it remains something of a curio best left for Keyes' fans. Three star books do what I expected them too which this didn't, but in the end did. 

[This book was provided to me gratis by the publisher, the lovely Bookouture, facilitated in this act of goodness by NetGalley. Thanks guys!]

Renita D'Silva is a name I know although not one which has been attached to the front of any of the books I've read. Her previous two novels, Monsoon Memories and The Forgotten Daughter, have both appeared on my Amazon recommended lists and if I had slightly less to read I would likely have tried one or the other by now. Instead, I was pleasingly approved for the ARC of her new novel, The Stolen Girl, which you will be able to part with your money for from the 12th September. 

Despite the cover, The Stolen Girl of the story is 13-year-old Diya who one day has an argument with her mum, strops out, goes back for her coat and finds her mum being taken away by The Rozzers. According to the police, Diya isn't Diya, she's Rupa; and Vani isn't her mother, Vani is the woman who stole her as a baby. Diya's real mother, Aarti, is at a hotel nearby, waiting to take her daughter back to India.

The book follows these three characters, Diya, struggling to adjust to this new truth, Vani, writing letters to her daughter from prison, and Aarti, desperate to finally meet the child she's been searching for all its life. It also attends to Vani and Aarti's pasts, to their childhoods and to the truth about Vani's actions. 

The trouble is, despite an introduction in which the author thanks various people for aiding her with research and which I'm confident she has done, it doesn't read like it. Although I'm a pedant, I don't mind minor changes to fact, especially when they improve the flow of the book - things like (as mentioned in the introduction as being incorrect) the number of visitors a prisoner can receive in a day: absolutely fine. However, The Stolen Girl is dependent on things happening in a way other than they would and that's a problem. A big one.

As this is an ARC I don't want to go anywhere near possible spoilers (although I'm happy to provide both mild spoiler and total spoiler explanations via PM/comments) so ...

You know that song by Natasha Beddingfield, These Words? You know the way you can't quite believe that nobody, at any point between the initial rehearsal right the way through to signing off the finished track said, 'Actually Natasha, it's pronounced Hy-per-bo-lee"?

That.

That is the level of error here - the kind of basic thing you'd imagine somebody, at some point between the author writing it and the file being sent to the printer, would have picked up on. Consider the incident in Ireland last October where the Garda removed two children from their Roma families because - thanks to some racial profiling - they believed they'd been abducted; or the case in Greece also at that time which had a different outcome. 

Because of this, even when things are correct, I was painfully aware that there is "technically correct" and there is "realistically likely to happen". The Stolen Girl came down far too heavily on the side of the former without reference to the things I'm thinking of.

I also have some minor complaints about the book's own continuity - tiny details like Diya commenting she's already lost weight and her clothes are looser on her after only a few days, maybe a week. 

It's frustrating because I did really like a lot of this book. I'm not the biggest reader of women's fiction but I really engaged with this one - my mark of a four star read is that I'm eager to get back to reading it to find out what happens and this, despite those errors, did that. Vani and Aarti's story in particular, while veering a little close to soap-opera plotting for my taste - I liked. It's difficult to write characters who act as these do while keeping them believable, but D'Silva does a good job with the emotional side of the story.

I can't personally recommend this one, but I will emphasise that if you don't care about things being realistic, and/or you have no idea happens when you commit a crime, you probably shouldn't let this review put you off. Read the Kindle sample and if you don't spot any problems you'll likely be fine. There is a lot to like.

However, for me, the problems matter. I'm struggling to decide if this book is actively terrible or just not very good. I want to mark this higher because I did enjoy reading it, but I have to show fidelity to my other reviews. With regret, 1.5 stars.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pup-A-Razzi-Hound-Costume-Extra-Small/dp/B00CBMX2X2/ref=sr_1_10?s=pet-supplies&ie=UTF8&qid=1409902751&sr=1-10

It almost makes me wish I had a dog.

You know when you pick up the phone and there's a Paul O'Grady impersonator on the other end and the only word you can make out is "Jesus". And because you've literally *just* put down the phone trying to ring your sister, you wonder if it's her calling you back and being stupid because stupidity is the main way you communicate with each other.

So you go, 'What?' and Paul O'Grady repeats whatever they said the first time but it still doesn't make any sense but you're pretty sure it isn't Strider, so you ask who they want to speak to in the hope that will straighten the whole thing out, which it does, but then they trap you in conversation for three minutes and you agree madly with everything they say because you're not entirely clear what it is but you do eventually realise their name is Theresa?

That.

This has cropped in my review feed a couple of times recently which reminded me that I've been eager to read it for some time now; I *love* Allie Brosh's blog. Luckily, my local library's magical online catalogue revealed they had a copy so off to town I went. I actually ended up wandering around my library for about fifteen minutes feeling confused because I couldn't find the 800's - they turned out to be on the mysterious third floor up to which I'd never been but will again. There were some people having a croissant party. You don't get things like that on the second floor. The second floor was full of children singing "The Wheels On The Bus".

Brosh is rather like David Sedaris if Sedaris chose to illustrate his books with all the tools MS Paint has to offer. Like Sedaris, her likeability for me turns out to be dependent on the medium through which she is filtered. Unfortunately, its not high with this book.

As others have commented, the transfer from blog post to book does not serve Brosh well. The fact that so much of this is recycled material - I'd forgive a third, just about, but this is closer to half - only highlights the problems: when the images are shrunk down they lose their impact significantly and this is especially noticeable in stories such as Depression - I've read it dozens of times and will probably read it dozens more, but in physical form it's nothing.

It's also disappointing that the strongest stories are the old ones - like The God of Cake and Depression parts one and two etc. I did really like a couple of the new ones, especially Lost In The Woods, but I actually ended up skimming the last few stories.

I got this from the library but had I parted with money I would certainly consider it a waste of. It's fun, but I don't really see the advantage of Hyperbole in book form - there's not enough new stuff and old stuff becomes significantly less entertaining. 2 stars.

Well, I failed utterly with August, but for anybody who's interested September's list comes from We Love This Book (also on Twitter) and looks like this: 

1^st: Favourite book about books and/or bookshops

2^nd: Favourite book set in a school (Back to School)

3^rd: Best Home Front novel (declaration of WW2)

4^th: The book you bought for the cover

5^th: The book you bought despite the cover

6^th: Favourite book of short stories

7^th: Favourite fictional monarch (Elizabeth 1^st birthday)

8^th: Favourite literary dinner party

9^th: Literary crush

10^th: A book that gave you hope

11^th: Best book recommended by a librarian

12^th: Favourite Austen character (Austen Festival)

13^th: Favourite Roald Dahl character (Roald Dahl Day)

14^th: Character most like you

15^th: Favourite Agatha Christie story (Christie’s birthday)

16^th: Favourite picture book

17^th: Favourite literary detective/policeperson

18^th: Favourite coming-of-age book

19^th: Favourite seafaring novel (Talk Like a Pirate Day)

20^th: Favourite literary friendship

21^st: A book to turn someone into a reader (International Literacy Day)

22^nd: Best book recommended by a bookseller (Bookseller's Association conference)

23^rd: Favourite prize-winning book

24^th: Something to do with Gatsby/Fitzgerald/20s (F. Scott Fitzgerald’s birthday)

25^th: A book recommended by your parents

26^th: Favourite poetry collection (TS Eliot’s birthday)

27^th: Book set in your favourite country to visit (World Tourism Day)

28^th: Favourite literary troublemaker

29^th: The book that made you question everything

30^th: The best book you read this month.

[The Rose Cord is a direct follow-up to Dreamwalker, so please be aware this review contains spoilers for that book. Also, this is a long book and the beginning was a long time ago and has been wiped from my memory: I appreciate a heads-up on any details I've got wrong]

I reached the end of The Rose Cord earlier than I anticipated due to an extract of the next book being included. I was glad. This is the kind of book which makes me want to shake the author; there is a decent novel in here with some brilliant details and fabulous ideas, but it's been buried in one of the most tedious and repetitive things I've read in ages. You know the second series of Game of Thrones where Rob Stark spent 86 hours looking grumpy in a variety of fields? The Rose Cord is basically that, but without Mike from Casualty.

At the end of Dreamwalker, Benfro, a dragon, watched his mother beheaded by Inquisitor Melyn, head of the warrior priests and all round disliker of things scaly. The Rose Cord picks it up in the next scene: Benfro flees through the woods before returning to the village to find everybody he has ever known slaughtered. On the advice of the memory of his mother, Benfro heads north in search of Corwen, a mage dragon who taught Morgwm, but instead he finds something else: the remains of the great and legendary dragon Magog, and his unreckoned jewel...

Meanwhile, Errol Ramsbottom, Warrior Priest-in-training and (unbeknownst to him) heir to the throne, is trying to learn how to keep Inquisitor Melyn out of his head. As in psychic powers, not trepanning. Melyn, though, has a job Errol is just *perfect* for...

To begin with, The Rose Cord is pretty good despite some minor issues, but unfortunately these are the same issues which will come back to haunt it later: repetition. Rather than having a single scene which achieves all it needs to, Oswald has a habit of having his characters plod through a similar situation multiple times advancing their understanding only a small amount with each.

For instance: Beulah, the young Queen occupying Errol's throne, discovers a plot to kill her, so she deals with it in her own inimitable way: kills her would-be assassin and shouts at everybody for a bit. Naturally, he was not acting alone, so there's another would-be assassin to deal with. And then there's another. 

Although each scene is different, and each moves the story forward in it's own vital way, it's a good example (within the first 13%) of how the scenes should be working harder and doing more. 

Benfro suffers from this problem the most. In Dreamwalker he was entertaining and tremendously likeable, but with the removal of the villagers he's mostly a dragon wandering through a wood. He occupies the bulk of the book but vast swathes of it involve him being on his own not doing a great deal and it's all the more frustrating because there is gold them thar chapters, it's just not worth the trog to get to. Plus, doing so requires reading about Malkin the squirrel, a character I would happily watch taken out at dawn.

The pacing, too, is wrong. From 70% I was reading believing it would get better - the third in the series is already out in ebook with the paperback happening soon; there is going to be a forth. From 88% I was reading with the glazed determination of somebody who's read that much and is jolly well going to finish just so she can write a fair review of the damn thing. The great dramatic end-scene is crippled by the billion pages of Benfro-is-in-a-cave which precedes it. Throughout, so much space was given to things not happening that when something did, it was ... lost. 

Errol has more to do in this book and his is a far stronger story than in the first, but for much of the book - as in Dreamwalker - he is at the mercy of things which happen *to* him, and he's too bland for me to care much. His story is more engaging, but not enough to carry the book.

I liked Dreamwalker a lot - I gave it four stars - but The Rose Cord is weeping for structural edit so hard I do wonder if this is the original self-pubbed text and a new version will get introduced close to its November paperback release date. There are some really great ideas in The Rose Cord, but the last 15% (of this 476 page book) is shear tedium; I won't be continuing with the series: 2 stars.

Lynne Truss is fabulous. This book, however, is not.

Basically, it lacks direction. A collection of essays on the six things society has embraced which will make you want to remain at home with the door barred, it takes its brief a little too intelligently, including quotes from anthropoligical texts such as Kate Fox's Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour alongside Truss's trademark middle-aged cat-lady rants. Coupled with the rather slight chapter headings it makes for an odd mix which doesn't quite work - sure, I get annoyed by stuff too, but there is a point where I stop analysing why it happens, usually because I need to cook the dinner.

Truss is a smart writer and she does hew some interesting aspects from a saturated (even for the original publication date) subject, but I don't see the point of this one. It's not really a funny book (although parts are amusing) and it's not really an educational book (although I learned something) and if it had been longer and I hadn't been taking a bath I would likely have quit.

Two stars, just for making me go and look up some of the texts she's mentioned