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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.
It was mostly about how the monotony of prison life ( and the terrible food, there's quite a bit on that! ) got to him, and how claustrophobic it is being locked up in a small cell for so much of the time and forced to listen to rap music. And he does talk about the stories from the other prisoners quite a bit, they knew that he was writing a book so most of them had plenty to share with him. Some of the stories of their crimes are very gruesome to read about, one of them was really devastatingly sad :(
He could have condensed it down a little bit though! Fair enough that he had the time to write up how he spend every single minute, but I'm not sure that it warranted three separate volumes. This volume only covers a three week period in the first high-class security prison that he went too, and there's so much on just the food that he was eating each day or what woke up him that morning, it could easily have been combined with the second volume 'Purgatory' and cut some of those details out. And honestly he seemed really naive and upper-class about prison, there was nothing there that warranted the title 'Hell' to me. Like I said the other prisoners were a lot nicer then I was expecting them to be, he got some good-natured teasing about whether the food was up to standard for his Lordship, and that was about it mostly. Even the prison officers were really nice to him, some of them kept calling him Sir by mistake and had to quickly correct themselves lol, there was a lot of complaining to him about the conditions because everyone seemed to be eager for him to use his books to let the world know what's really going on in prisons
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.Maybe I was just looking for more closure, I kept waiting for Jacob to be confronted at some point by his parents and hear his confession, but instead it was left quite vague and open-ended (although I do think the conclusion we're meant to draw is that Jacob definitely did it and that even his father had to accept that in the end). Although even then he was deluding himself with an imagined story about Jacob's final thought being of how much his father loves him, something that really didn't fit with the detached kid in the rest of the book 'with the heart two sizes too small'.
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*
'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.
It was mostly about how the monotony of prison life ( and the terrible food, there's quite a bit on that! ) got to him, and how claustrophobic it is being locked up in a small cell for so much of the time and forced to listen to rap music. And he does talk about the stories from the other prisoners quite a bit, they knew that he was writing a book so most of them had plenty to share with him. Some of the stories of their crimes are very gruesome to read about, one of them was really devastatingly sad :(
He could have condensed it down a little bit though! Fair enough that he had the time to write up how he spend every single minute, but I'm not sure that it warranted three separate volumes. This volume only covers a three week period in the first high-class security prison that he went too, and there's so much on just the food that he was eating each day or what woke up him that morning, it could easily have been combined with the second volume 'Purgatory' and cut some of those details out. And honestly he seemed really naive and upper-class about prison, there was nothing there that warranted the title 'Hell' to me. Like I said the other prisoners were a lot nicer then I was expecting them to be, he got some good-natured teasing about whether the food was up to standard for his Lordship, and that was about it mostly. Even the prison officers were really nice to him, some of them kept calling him Sir by mistake and had to quickly correct themselves lol, there was a lot of complaining to him about the conditions because everyone seemed to be eager for him to use his books to let the world know what's really going on in prisons
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.Maybe I was just looking for more closure, I kept waiting for Jacob to be confronted at some point by his parents and hear his confession, but instead it was left quite vague and open-ended (although I do think the conclusion we're meant to draw is that Jacob definitely did it and that even his father had to accept that in the end). Although even then he was deluding himself with an imagined story about Jacob's final thought being of how much his father loves him, something that really didn't fit with the detached kid in the rest of the book 'with the heart two sizes too small'.
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*
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Date: 2014-02-01 07:05 pm (UTC)My goal is also to read 50 books but I think I've already fallen behind, lol. I didn't read much of this post, though, because I still want to read some of those books!
How are you feeling about Bitten? I didn't read the books but I'm trying to watch the show. I've fallen behind, though, hopefully I'll have a chance to catch up soon!
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Date: 2014-02-01 08:25 pm (UTC)And I really liked the book Bitten because I'm into that genre, I must start following more of these fantasy series that people keep talking about actually as I love that kind of thing, it just seems so daunting these days to pick up a series when I keep adding more individual books to my reading list every week...The tv series had a slow start and I'm still not convinced with some of the casting choices (Clayton is not at all how I pictured him from the books for starters!), but it does seem to be picking up lately
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Date: 2014-02-04 06:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2014-02-04 11:22 am (UTC)