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I've signed up for a Goodreads challenge of reading 50 books this year, which will mean around four books a month. So far this month I've read:


'Volume one - Hell' of the former Lord (or is he still a Lord, I'm not sure?) Jeffrey Archer's prison diaries. He goes into EVERY detail of his days there and, while it was interesting finding out more about the prison system, I don't think I'll pick up the final two volumes tbh. I was mostly interested in finding out how his first intro to prison went anyway. It wasn't exactly as I expected as there was no mention of prison rape or the new prisoners coming in for abuse like you always hear about (other than two 'young tearaways' bothering him in the exercise yard before the 'lifers' stepped in to watch his back), maybe I've taken the show Oz too seriously as far as its accuracy on prison life! He actually mentions that the other prisoners hardly ever even used ~vulgar language~ when they were talking to him, even while using the f word every other sentence among themselves.

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Next up I read Defending Jacob by William Landay. That was about how an American family coped with their 14 year old son being accused of killing a classmate, looking at how the parents were relating to their son, whether they should believe in his innocence or guilt, and what is their responsibly as parents if he is guilty. Maybe because I'm not a parent myself, but some of the father's actions I found very frustrating and hard to relate too (I kept waiting for him to confront his son with the evidence that he was coming across, but instead he would immediately destroy the evidence, while at the same time telling himself that his son was most certainly innocent!). Still the author did do a reaaonably good job of helping you understand why the parents would react in that way. It was very well-paced and I ended up reading the whole book in two days, although I'm not sure if I liked the ending or not.( Read more... )

Next was Perfect by Rachel Joyce which I found quite unsettling to read. It was about an English household in the 1970's that seemed perfect on the outside, but it's told through the eyes of the 11 year old son as we watch his mother's mental health slowly deteriorate. At the same time there's the story of Jim from the present-day who is struggling with life outside after spending his life in the mental health system. To be honest I didn't enjoy the present-day sections with Jim as much, I was often just impatient to get back to the story in the 1970's and catch up on what was going to happen next there, but it does all tie together beautifully in the end.

I must say though that I found the character of Beverley so deeply unpleasant that I wanted to read between my fingers in the second half! I kept dreading where it was all heading, Diana was being manipulated so horribly that you almost want to scream at certain points. And side note, but I'm wishing now that I could find some kind of book club online for discussions. I looked at the book reviews on Goodreads, but meh it's not really the same because it's mostly just reviewing the book for other readers and being careful not to mention any of the big spoilers. And that's precisely what I'd be interested in reading other peoples thoughts on...


And finally I'm about halfway through re-reading Men Of The Otherworld by Kelley Armstrong just because the recent tv series inspired me to give it another read. And that's obviously mostly about Clayton's background of becoming a werewolf as a child and being taken in by Jeremy. I might re-read Tales Of The Otherworld as well afterwards for the background of Clay's first meeting with Elena, I have a soft spot for both of those books *g*