Wicked Appetite by Janet Evanovich

Release date (Australia): 14 September 2010
Rating: 8/10

Seven Stones of Power...

No one knows when they were created or by whom, each said to represent one of the Seven Deadly Sins. For centuries, treasure hunters have been eager to possess the Stones, undeterred by their corrupting nature. The list is long – Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, to name a few. Now the Stones have found their way to Salem, Massachusetts, and so has Gerwulf Grimoire, adding himself to this rogue’s gallery of power seekers. He’s an uncommonly dangerous man with a hunger for the forbidden and a set of abilities that is way beyond ordinary. Abilities that he feels entitle him to possess anything he might desire.

That would include Elizabeth Tucker, the woman he needs to find the Stones. She’s freshly transplanted from New York City to Boston’s North Shore. With a new job as a Pastry Chef at Dazzle’s Bakery and an old house inherited from her Aunt Ophelia, her life is pretty much on track … until it’s suddenly derailed by a man named Diesel, a rude monkey and a ninja cat. Lizzy can handle the monkey and the cat. She’s not sure about Diesel. The Seven Deadly Sins are pride, greed, lust, envy, wrath, sloth and gluttony. That pretty much covers everything that is wicked. Diesel thinks it also pretty much covers everything that’s fun. And Lizzy thinks Diesel and the Seven Deadly Sins cover everything her mother warned her about.

I love Janet. I hate that so many people have this impression of her as being a chick lit author (as a condescending thing). I’ve never associated Janet Evanovich with that type of writing, especially because the Stephanie Plum novels are crime stories. They’re ridiculously funny and awesome and brilliant, but they (especially the earlier ones) can be quite violent and, at times, a bit scary. But the best part of her writing has always been her humour, to me. There are numerous authors I love because of their humour, but unfortunately it is very male dominated. I love that Janet writes such kick-ass, hilarious stories while still being girly and violent and brilliant all at the same time.

Being a huge fan of hers already, I was thrilled to read about Wicked Appetite before it was released. I am a nerd for supernatural elements in real life situations within stories, so this book sounded perfect. However, I am yet to read any of the between-the-numbers books in the Plum series (due to other books taking importance more than anything else), so I hadn’t been introduced to Diesel through them. I think I preferred it that way, because this series felt like an entirely new series unconnected to Stephanie Plum et al at all.

The pacing of the books are very similar to what Janet Evanovich fans would be used to, with stumbling into amusing situations in the middle of a greater storyline. The parallels between the Plum series are undeniable and mentioned extensively in a lot of other reviews, but I felt the characters stood alone enough to be likeable, funny, entertaining, and not carbon copies of Janet Evanovich’s most famous series.

It was the perfect book for me the last couple of weeks, because I haven’t had any time to read with university assignments due and the off chance I did get to read (aka, on my lunch breaks at work and prac) it was a great, funny, crazy book to get into. It made me smile a lot and, really, what more could you want for a book when you have a lot of other more stressful things to read for study? Lizzy Tucker is my new hero.

(I also spent most of the book wanting to eat cupcakes.)

"You've got to stop with the eye rolling. You're going to strain something."

Favourite Author Focus: Audrey Niffenegger

It’s might be odd to do a favourite author focus on someone who has only written two books, I suppose, but I adore both The Time Traveler’s Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry beyond almost any other books.

Don't you think it's better to be extremely happy for a short while, even if you lose it, than to be just okay for your whole life?

I first read The Time Traveler’s Wife on recommendation from my cousin with whom I was staying with in London for a month in mid-2005. I couldn’t put it down. I read it obsessively on the tube, at night before bed, and in the mornings while eating breakfast after my cousin and her two flatmates had gone to work. It was one of a few books I’ve ever read that I finished and quite honestly could’ve started from the beginning again straight away. I completely fell in love. I have a weird fascination with the idea of time travel; I blame reading Emily Rodda’s Finders Keepers and The Timekeeper at a very young age. (Oh, how I loved everything Emily Rodda when I was in primary school. I love that she still writes and is still being read by kids today, even if they’re different books to the ones I read.) The Time Traveler’s Wife is a love story like no other and still one of the most original stories I have ever read. A lot of people feel it’s overrated because it's so popular, but I don’t care if something’s popular or not – it’s either good or it’s not. And The Time Traveler’s Wife is amazing. (How could I not love something that even references a John Locke theory?)

'What we need,' Henry says, 'is a fresh start. A blank slate. Let's call her Tabula Rasa.'

I was ridiculously happy when Her Fearful Symmetry was announced as being released. I waited MONTHS for it to arrive in the bookstore I work at. I remember unpacking the boxes and my excitement at opening a box of them made my colleague make fun of me for days about it. Speaking of weird fascinations, I also love twins, particularly identical twins. It’s a crazy thing. But naturally when I heard that Audrey Niffenegger’s new book was going to involve TWO sets of identical twins, I was just a smidge (read: extremely) excited. Some reviews seem to just dislike it compared to The Time Traveler’s Wife. Do people read books by the same author because they want a repetition of their last book? How lame. It’s either too different to their previous books or authors get crap for making them too similar. I thought Her Fearful Symmetry was brilliant and read it in two days. But then, twins + ghosts + paranormal + London + a love story that isn’t typical = awesome to me.

In the dim light of the computer screen he seemed otherworldly; Julia thought him beautiful, though she knew it was the beauty of damage.

I really look forward to anything else Audrey Niffenegger writes in the future; her stories are different, beautiful, poetic, and amazing. They’re literary without being difficult to read for the sake of it, reference awesome music, include supernatural elements, the characterisation is realistic (including swearing, which the absence of often seems unnatural to me), and I find them incredibly difficult to put down. Perfect kind of books, if you ask me.

Of course... some people, me included, believe that punk is just the most recent manifestation of this, this spirit, this feeling, you know, that things aren't right and that in fact things are so wrong that the only thing we can do is to say 'fuck it', over and over again, really loud, until someone stops us.

Sigh.

I wish I had time to read stuff other than about electrophysiological auditory testing and how to set up soundproof booths and how to analyse speech sonograms and background reading on my research project for next year.

:(

PS, To anyone that actually does read my reviews, "Wicked Appetite" by Janet Evanovich is awesome so far. She is so fun. I will post a review if I finish it sometime in the next millenium.

Tomorrow When the War Began movie!

I feel I need to write a blog post about this movie, seeing as the books are by my favourite author of all time and I’ve seen it three times already. Plus, I keep incessantly commenting on everyone else’s updates about it! I read Tomorrow When the War Began in 1994 for the first time, six months or so after it’s release. I was lucky that I read So Much To Tell You in 1993 and found my favourite author so early, otherwise I might have had that dreaded experience of reading Tomorrow When the War Began in English in Year 8 as my first Marsden introduction.

I bought the entire series in hardcover (including Tomorrow because the paperback was yet to be released at that stage) and then, as the paperbacks were released, did the really stupid thing of buying them and getting rid of my hardcovers. I don’t like hardcover books, I find them frustrating to read. If I buy them, I will always replace them with the paperback when it’s released. People think I’m insane for this. I really, really regret getting rid of my hardcovers of this series, though. Not because I would sell them but because they mean so much to me even after all these years. I own the Ellie Chronicles in hardcover and paperback; I think the covers of those are really pretty. I also have the "adult cover" of When the War Began in paperback from 1995 (apparently they didn't think adults needed the "Tomorrow" in the title), which I adore. It helps that my brother went and had this signed by John Marsden for me years ago ("Dear Linda, take risks! John Marsden") when I couldn't go to meet him doing a signing in a bookstore.

I don’t think I have ever been so happy (and relieved) about a movie adaptation in my entire life. I knew John Marsden had said he was happy with it, so I wasn’t TOO concerned going in. Not that your expectations are necessarily the same as the author’s because your imaginations are different, but it was at least reassurring that he was happy with how it turned out. Particularly considering John Marsden has been getting offers for movies/TV shows/mini-series for more than ten years and has apparently turned down something like 130 offers.

I won’t babble too much about it (because otherwise we’d be here all day), but I thought it was absolutely fantastic. The characters were great, the acting was a lot better than I was expecting, and the action was awesome. It was true to the book without being a direct translation (which in my experience doesn’t tend to work so well). Small things were changed, but nothing major. (I actually find some of the small things they changed kind of odd - like the snake being in Kevin's sleeping bag instead of Homer's, etc.) Wirrawee was perfect, I thought. Hell was different to what I'd imagined, but still so pretty. My favourite character from the start of reading the books was Homer. As we got further into the stories, Fi became my favourite character because of the amount that she changed and became who she did. I thought Homer in the movie was brilliant; definitely my favourite actor. Fi showed promise in the latter half of the movie of becoming the Fi that I love. I also LOVED the all-Australian soundtrack; I’m really pleased they did that.

I really hope they make more movies, at least the first three. I think The Third Day, the Frost would make the most amazing movie with all the action in it. When I was 14 (also the year the Tomorrow series finished), I decided I wanted to get a John Marsden book related tattoo if I still wanted it at 21. (This was my stipulation for all my tattoo ideas as a teenager, haha.) It was actually the first tattoo I thought about. I couldn’t decide between the words, “darkness be my friend” or the words “the other side of dawn”. Darkness Be My Friend is my favourite Tomorrow series book, but I fell in love with the title of The Other Side of Dawn when I first heard about it. I’m not sure why I never really thought about getting So Much To Tell You. Anyway, I think Dawn has won for a few years now but we’ll see what fits where I want it :)

Between the movie and John Marsden commenting on my blog entry a few months ago, this is has been a pretty awesome Marsden year!

Favourite Author Focus: Chuck Palahniuk

Oh, Chuck. Sometimes I love you, sometimes I don’t even like you. But when I love you, I REALLY love you.

It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.

The first book I ever read by Chuck Palahniuk was Choke, which is an... interesting introduction to a somewhat controversial author. Controversial not entirely because of the content of his stories (although there is that, too), but also because a lot of people have issues with his originality. For me, though, his books were different to anything else I had read before. I adore the way he writes in his early work, the way he uses language, and the crazy things that happen in his books. However, there is not many people I know that would like his writing. (But then, I know a lot of people that don’t like things that are a little ‘different’.)

Nothing shows you the straight line from here to death like a list.

Most people would know of him through the fact that he wrote Fight Club, which was later turned into an awesome movie with Brad Pitt and the amazing Edward Norton. I love this movie; I have seen it more than almost any other movie in my life. This is one of the only cases where I love the movie and the book and I saw the movie first. But both are fantastic and entertaining and, dare I say it, original.

On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

Invisible Monsters is my favourite and most likely always will be. There are some things in that book that really get to me on a personal level; if it weren’t for that, I’d say Survivor would be my favourite of his books. Apparently Invisible Monsters was rejected from being published for being ‘too disturbing’ and was only accepted after the success of Fight Club. That is bizarre to me. I was the biggest wuss at 15 and I still loved that book. Notice how I’m not saying any storylines? I don’t want to without spoiling the endings because that’s half the point of Chuck’s stories. Think of Fight Club, if you’ve seen it. If you know the end before you’ve seen it once, the brilliance is kind of lost. If you don’t like reading about violence, sex, drugs, swearing, death, and (particularly) fragmented trains of thought, his books may not be for you.

Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known.

Lullaby was the end of a flawless ride with Chuck. I hated that book and still do. I couldn’t even finish it and there has been maybe ten books in my entire life that I have completely given up on and never returned to. Since then, it’s been a bit up and a down. Diary was a big improvement on Lullaby for me, Haunted was a bit different, Rant was awesome, Snuff was blah, I don’t plan to read Pygmy but I do plan to read Tell-All as I have a reader’s copy. So we’ll see how that goes. But I still consider Chuck to be a favourite author of mine for his pre-Lullaby books and their brilliance.

Who you are, moment to moment, is just a story.

PS, Usually I like to post the book covers of the versions that I read/own but I cannot for the life of me find the covers of Choke or Survivor that I read. Grr.

The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

Release date (Australia): August 2010
Rating: 7.5/10

Gretchen Rubin had an epiphany one rainy afternoon in the unlikeliest of places: a city bus. "The days are long, but the years are short," she realized. "Time is passing, and I'm not focusing enough on the things that really matter." In that moment, she decided to dedicate a year to her happiness project. In this lively and compelling account of that year, Rubin chronicles her adventures during the twelve months she spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific research, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier. Each month she tackled a new set of resolutions: give proofs of love, ask for help, find more fun, keep a gratitude notebook, forget about results.

She immersed herself in principles set forth by all manner of experts, from Epicurus to Thoreau to Oprah to Martin Seligman to the Dalai Lama to see what worked for her—and what didn't. Her conclusions are sometimes surprising - she finds that money can buy happiness, when spent wisely; that novelty and challenge are powerful sources of happiness; that "treating" yourself can make you feel worse; that venting bad feelings doesn't relieve them; that the very smallest of changes can make the biggest difference - and they range from the practical to the profound.

I’m finding it hard to review this book because I really enjoyed it but I’m not quite sure what to write about it. Gretchen Rubin’s writing is conversational and funny, despite the fact that this somewhat biography could also be put into the self-help section in a bookstore. It’s realistic about the average person’s life and their level of ability to include her ideas and suggestions into their busy schedules.

The time to start exercising, stop nagging, and organise our digital photos was when everything was going smoothly. I didn’t want to wait for a crisis to remake my life.

One aspect I loved about this book is that Gretchen has obviously done a significant amount of research into the psychology and history of happiness, which I found interesting. She doesn’t rely on it in her own story of happiness, but manages to incorporate the research into what she did and why. Gretchen is also well-read on subjects such as religion, parenthood, general health and work.

"Nothing,' wrote Tolstoy, 'can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness."

I enjoyed this book because it gave me some small manageable ideas on how to make life happier, which is important in a year that has been quite full of stress and anxiety. I feel that this is what Gretchen Rubin was aiming to do, giving people manageable ideas on how to make their lives happier without having to jet off to Italy for a year or do something drastic like quit their job. And for this, she succeeds.

The Worst Thing She Ever Did by Alice Kuipers

Release date (Australia): 1 May 2010

Rating: 8/10

Sixteen-year-old Sophie is convinced her life is OK now, if only she could just be allowed to move on from what happened last summer. Sure, her mother is crazy and all of her friends treat her as if she’s made of glass, but she’s FINE. She just wishes she could forget about Emily. When her therapist – whom her mum makes her go and see – suggests she keep a diary, Sophie realises that the panic attacks she’s suffering from might, in fact, be a sign that she’s actually not OK, at least not yet. Gradually, though, with the help of the new girl at school, and, eventually, her mother, Sophie finds strength in herself and those around her. And as she allows herself to remember, she also begins to forgive.

I am currently taking forever to read the book I’m currently reading, even though it is brilliant, but I just have been really busy. So I thought I’d do an update on a book I read earlier this year because I thought it was wonderful. (As a side note, this book is called Lost For Words in the United States.)

Written in diary format, which I know is not everyone’s cup of tea, but in this case I think it really suits the story and the character of Sophie. At times a typical teenager, feeling like she has no one to confide in and no one that understands what she is going through, she is also dealing with a tragedy that no human being should have the endure. The details of this are pointedly left hazy with small hints given as the book progresses. I find this technique sometimes frustrating in books, but in The Worst Thing She Ever Did I think it works incredibly well and you get to ‘know’ Sophie before you know exactly what has happened to her and her family.

Love, sisterhood, friendship, family, post-traumatic stress disorder, death, and panic attacks are all dealt with in this story with eloquence and beauty. But it’s not all gloom and doom, with enough light-heartedness of other aspects of the story to prevent it from being depressing. I think it’s an important read and well worth the sometimes heart-wrenching content. Without giving anything away, it’s a book that I found moving and beautiful and touched on an event close to my heart.