My books of 2014

What? It’s a little too late to be talking about the books I read last year? Just because the month is almost over?

Meeeeeh.

I know my updates are somehow like eclipses or comets, but I’m trying to change that this year. I already failed by not updating until the end of January? Maaaaaybe. But I swear it’s usually for reasons I can’t control.

So, here’s the list month by month, with the stars rating I gave them on Goodreads.

JANUARY

Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman – 5 stars

(I really LOVED Neverwhere and I’m a fan of Neil ever since. I’m planning on reading everything)

FEBRUARY

Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok, vol. 1, by Sakura Kinoshita (manga) – 5 stars

Ghostgirl, by Tonya Hurley – 4 stars

Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, by JK Rowling – 4 stars

(Loki was a rereading, but I truly enjoyed it again. Ghostgirl would have been more relevant when I was at a certain age I guess, but I laughed a lot and the cultural references were awesome. Fanstastic Beasts was…weird, but entertaining.)

MARCH

Marmalade Boy Little 1, by Wataru Yoshizumi – no rating

Yamato Nadeshiko Sichihenge/The Wallflower, vols. 25 to 31, by Tomoko Hayakawa – 5 stars (all)

(I guess it was the manga month. I remember I barely had the time or the disposition to read anything else. Marmalade Boy is a hit of my preteen years, so when I knew Wataru was writing a ‘sequel’ I had to take a look. It’s not bad. The Wallflower has become one of my favourite manga ever. It’s hilarious and far from typical.)

APRIL

Donde los árboles cantan, by Laura Gallego – 3 stars

Yamato Nadeshiko Sichihenge/The Wallflower vol 32 – 4 stars

Isolation by Bex-chan (fanfiction) – 4 stars

(I don’t know if Laura’s book is translated to English, so there. Isolation is a Dramione (Draco/Hermione, from Harry Potter) fanfiction that is so well written I’m actually a little jealous.)

JUNE

Over The Tracks (The Heart Rate Of A Mouse #1), by Anna Green – 4 stars

A Dance With Dragons (A Song Of Ice And Fire #5) by George RR Martin – 3 stars

El joven Lennon, by Jordi Sierra i Fabra – 5 stars

Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse #1), by Charlaine Harris – 2 stars

Shingeki no Kyojin/Attack on Titan, vol 13, by Hajime Isayama – 3 stars

City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments #1), by Cassandra Clare – 3 stars

(THROAM is a piece of fanfiction too, but you can read it as a whole new thing apart from that. I’d recommend it to anyone who is not afraid of a little gay porn. Dance was a little disappointing and a LOT boring. But it has some pretty good parts too. I hate Sookie and Bill . SnK/AoT started to get boring too. City of Bones was good enough to keep me hooked so I read the whole series in a few days.)

JULY

City of Ashes (The Mortal Instruments #2), by Cassandra Clare – 3 stars

City of Glass (The Mortal Instruments #3), by Cassandra Clare – 3 stars

City of Fallen Angels (The Mortal Instruments #4), by Cassandra Clare – 4 stars

City of Lost Souls (The Mortal Instruments #5), by Cassandra Clare – 4 stars

City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments #6), by Cassandra Clare – 5 stars

The Fault In Our Stars, by John Green – 2 stars

The Man In The Iron Mask, by Alexandre Dumas – 2 stars

Homecoming (Ghostgirl #2), by Tonya Hurley – 2 stars

(Apart from the TMI series, July was a pretty bad month, as you can see)

AUGUST

Divergent (Divergent #1) & Insurgent (Divergent #2), by Veronica Roth – 3 stars

Wolves vs Hearts (The Heart Rate Of A Mouse #2) & A Kingdom By The Sea (The Heart Rate Of A Mouse #3), by Anna Green – 5 stars (both)

(Divergent is a series which I think has a pretty good general basis & imaginary distopian world but with a main character I don’t really like and several flaws in its development. I still want to read Allegiant though –just to see how it all ends. WvH & AKbtS were magnificent though, I was heartbroken because it ended.)

OCTOBER

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by William Shakespeare – 2 stars

Game of Thrones (A Song Of Ice And Fire #1), by George RR Martin (rereading) – 5 stars

Foxfire: Confessions of a girl gang, by Joyce Carol Oates – 5 stars

(I was disappointed by Shakespeare’s comedy, enjoyed a lot Winterfell again, fell in love with Legs and wanted to join the gang)

NOVEMBER

Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles #1), by Marissa Meyer – 4 stars

The Outsiders, by E.S. Hinton – 3 stars

Scarlet (The Lunar Chronicles #2), by Marissa Meyer – 4 stars

A Wise Man’s Fear (The Kingkiller Chronicle), by Patrick Rothfuss – 3 stars

(I loved Cinder & Scarlet although there was something missing for me hence the 4 stars. The Outsiders wasn’t so amazing after reading Foxfire though it’s a great piece. The plot twist was Kvothe’s second book, where I wanted to punch him in the face so many times that I couldn’t love this book as much as the first.)

DECEMBER

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, by Seth-Grahame Smith – 2 stars

Shatter Me (Shatter Me #1), by Tahereh Mafi – 4 stars

(P&P&Z, although pretty laughable sometimes, could have been so much better I had to 2 starred it. Shatter Me has become one of my favourite things, although some details refrained me from giving the 5 stars.)

That was all! Have you read any of those books? If so, what did you think about them? What books did you enjoy past year, and what books did you hate?

Don’t be shy 😉

-E.

Foxfire: Confessions of a girl gang (My Reading #4)

Author: Joyce Carol Oates

Published first on: 1993

Edition I read: 2014

Read in: Translation to Spanish

ISBN: 978-84-663-2852-4

The time is the 1950s. The place is a blue-collar town in upstate New York, where five high school girls are joined in a gang dedicated to pride, power, and vengeance in a world they never made – a world that seems made to denigrate and destroy them.

It is the story of Maddy Monkey, who writes it…of Goldie, whose womanly body masks a fierce, explosive temper…of Lana, with her Marylin Monroe hair and packs of Chesterfields…of timid Rita, whose humiliation leads to the first act of Foxfire revenge. Above all, it is the story of Legs Sadovsky, with her lean, on-the-edge, icy beauty,  whose nerve,  muscle, hate, and hurt make her the spark of Foxfire, its guiding spirit, its burning core. At once brutal and lyrical, this is a careening joyride of a novel – charged with outlaw energy and lit by intense emotion.

(fragment of Goodreads description)

I’ll start by saying that the GR description in English is far better from the one in my Spanish paperback edition. That one leads to a totally different story; however, the one mentioned above feels right to me. I think the only good thing about the book I bought is that its cover is made from a poster of the 2012 film adaptation so it’s all the girls looking at you with fierce yet calm expressions. I found it beautiful and better than the old Spanish one, all ‘girly’ pink instead of wary red – the one Foxfire deserves.

Apart from that, it’s hard to start talking about this book. It’s been a real rollercoaster of emotions that I’m not sure if I’ll be able to express correctly.

I read a review from a blogger that I enjoy a lot reading. Her passion about it left me all intrigued and eager to jump right into it. I added it to my huge ‘to read’ list on Goodreads and there I left it, too focused on what I was reading at that moment.
Until one day I went to the closest thing to a mall we have in my little town (more like a big supermarket) to get a simple soda, but passing by the book section as I always do. There it was. I may have been daydreaming because it shone bright among the other books like a flame of its fire, the Foxfire. Even if it’s a pocket edition, small, simple, and almost buried between some other small simple books that no one pays attention to because they’re not ‘famous’. The title was furious red in the style of typical US theaters and the girls stood there like ready to fight. It made me run to see the price and as I had the money I got it with a somewhat stupid smile on my face.

Despite all that, I was afraid I might have grown too great expectations of it. Luckily, it wasn’t a disappointment. It was everything I expected and then more.

What can I say about Foxfire without spoiling the surprise? The description on the back of my book did it well with that (but seriously, one of the worst I’ve ever encountered): it lead to violent gang like the ones we always see with boys: savage, primitive sometimes, mostly senseless.  «They have guns», the description says, like they were some sort of Al Capone faction. Sigh.

Foxfire, the word that names the book and also this girl gang, describe quite accurately this group of friends that becomes a sisterhood and a refuge. Their cunning spirit represented in the fox, the burning energy represented in the fire. Their relationship is like a normal one of a group in their teens. They only want a group to belong to, a shield to protect them of the bad things that exist in the real world where they’re jumping in, leaving the childhood where everything is possible and you think you’re invincible. I mean, it’s like urban tribes now. I know it was more serious than that, but it was the usual in the time and place the characters live in. It was the time when the traditional family started to be something from the past, and teenagers were left mostly on their own.

The so-called gang starts with a ritual that at first seems barely a typical drunk night but it turns into something else when faced with the troubles that a teenage girl has to deal with everyday. Especially problematic when you have no one to help you but yourself and your friends. Foxfire is a secret because secrets mean power, power over Them, the adults, the corrupted society that is blind to the grave issues, and that they decide to fight against with all their will.

If you’re a girl/woman, the unpleasant situations that the girls in Foxfire get involved in will probably look familiar. You might be even surprised by the amount of things socially accepted or at least blindly denied that should be properly punished instead. If you’re a boy/man, you might see the world from a new perspective after reading the book. I’d like to think that everyone that reads this book can finish it somehow renewed, that it could change those toxic behaviours that inflict more damage than people usually think. My optimism seems preposterous, I know. And don’t think even for a second that these kind of things are something from the past just because this book is set on the 50s. It’s happening right now, maybe even under your noses.

It’s a tough book, of course. The trigger warnings I should put are a long list to enumerate. If you’re sensitive you’re going to have it hard. There were parts where I was glad my stomach was empty. It’s not as bloody, violent, etc. as it may look though.

A negative thing about it in my opinion was the narration by Maddy-Monkey. It’s supposed to be done by an adult Maddy but it’s written like a early teenager would: too quick, too messy, too excited. And the repetitions that sometimes makes you think about a possible OCD. I don’t know if it’s due to the translation into Spanish but it’s a little annoying. However, it’s not a big issue when it comes to enjoy the reading.

What did I love apart from the feminist essence which goes all over the book and which leads the Foxfire gang to do anything for the achievement of a peaceful existence far away from the general disgusting sexism?

The romance.

The word romance goes on italics because it’s atypical. It’s that kind of love that gets classified and labelled as something that it’s not, or it’s completely denied as what it really is. Unfortunately, society has a lot of things to learn, and I include myself on that. On Foxfire you are witness of a romantic love away from conventional which, if you don’t pay attention, you’ll probably miss.

Legs is one of the most intriguing characters I’ve found during my journey along works of fiction, and one of the most true and genuine. She is who she is and everything she does seems deep, transcendental. Maybe this is because of Maddy’s narration, who really looks up to her.

I don’t know what else I can say. The ending is perfect. I hate endings, they never leave me satisfied enough, but I don’t think the author could have given Foxfire a better ending. Just the right dose of everything to have in a good closure.

I will watch the 2012 film as soon as I can.

My rating is a 9’5/10 or a 5/5 stars.

Are  you now interested in reading it? Do you have another opinion about it? Don’t be shy and leave a comment! 🙂

-E.

Fifty Shades of Mr Darcy: A Parody (My Reading #3)

Author: William Codpiece Thackery

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good riding crop must be in want of a pair of bare buttocks to thrash.

This book, as its own title gives away, is a parody. Also a mash-up of two successful, best-selling books: the great Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) and the poorly written but still famous Fifty Shades of Gray (E.L. James).

I say ‘poorly written’ referring to Fifty Shades and I don’t just say it but after starting to read the first book of the trilogy and, having gone through as much pages as I could stand, wondering “why is this a best-seller?”. I read it in English, because people who told me the book was embarrassingly bad had mostly read it translated to Spanish, and I know what translations can do to some books. I thought it was best to have an accurate reading in its original version. I was horrified. It was awfully written, and I didn’t want to spend more time in it.

On the other hand, I love Pride and Prejudice. I have read it enough to recognise some parts that are written literally (or almost, with changes for the sake of the parody) in this book. I love Elizabeth’s wit and independent spirit and I sigh because of Mr Darcy like any average girl. I also see its influence in Bridget Jones’ Diary, to the point of reaching plagiarism. There are also references to Bridget Jones in this parody, which I found pretty amusing, and you might get a little lost in some parts if you haven’t read Fielding’s book or watched the film.

Mother to five virgins! It was a torment almost too great to be borne!

In general, this parody means great laughs. It’s embarrassingly funny, even, because the dirty puns and innuendos are EVERYWHERE and some are quite senseless. Elizabeth is as irritating as Anastasia and Darcy is as annoying as Gray. Jane and Bingley are surprisingly similar to the originals. And the characters I hate the most of P&P here are the ones I found the funniest: Ms Bennet (here a loosening-tongue, sex-obsessed mother whose aim is to get her daughters laid), Lydia (very surprising at the end!), and Mr Wickham, known here as Mr Whackem.

I think I laughed the most at the appearance of Mr Collins, played here by that famous singer (who I must say I also find almost as creepy as the original Austen’s character) who speaks referencing a lot of his songs making me snort very unladylikely —if you read this book you’ll understand this. I couldn’t stop laughing at the thought of Lady Catherine as a dominatrix, too.

For people who are not used to British English I’d recommend to have a dictionary around as it has a lot of Brit terms and expressions.

The use of metaphors, so bad that they make you cry —out of laughter— is clearly a parody of the poor writing style of E.L. James that I mentioned before. I loved this and I would hug the so-called Mr Codpiece (if that’s the real name, it sounds so weird that I’m thinking of a pseudonym) for it.

Elizabeth was astounded, and immediately coloured.

‘Put down those damn crayons and look at me!’ Darcy commanded.

It’s a great book. A masterpiece? No, but nobody expects that from a parody. It’s aimed to make the reader laugh, and that purpose was highly achieved with me. I had to stop reading several times because I was laughing so hard that I nearly choked.

I give:

Four Patricks. I enjoyed it very much.

Also a 8’5/10. I think the author could do it better at some parts, but even so I think it’s better written than more ‘serious’ works.

-E

Ghostgirl: Homecoming(My Reading #2)

Author: Tonya Hurley
Series: Ghostgirl (Book 2)

It’s been a while. You know, summertime. And above all, work. Work means that I can read when I get home to get distracted, but I usually have not enough mental strength to write about it.

But enough of my boring life. I’m here to talk about Homecoming, the second part in the trilogy Ghostgirl.

I read the first book recommended by a friend —especially because of the quotes and references to Poe, an author we both like. I enjoyed it a lot because not only there were quotes and references to great writers, but also to music I loved. Despite its lack of originality (except for the fact that the main character is a ghost girl, for example), I loved how this book could lead teen girls —since it’s the main audience for this kind of book— to wonderful literature like Edgar Allan Poe’s.

Since I enjoyed the first book and I can’t have a series unfinished (it has to be really bad to keep me from reading every book), I started this one, Homecoming, expecting great moments fangirling because of the quotes and references, which I had, but in general it wasn’t as good as the first. It was kinda funny because in the first book I hated Charlotte’s attitude and loved Scarlet’s, and within this one I hated Scarlet’s and quite liked Charlotte’s. It’s like the author had just reversed the roles, in such an obvious way that it made me dislike it.

This book is also about Petula, the character that everyone hates in the first book —the popular girl, of course. Here Petula is forced to learn a lesson about life and, well —death. We learn some things about her that make us see her through different perspective. At the end I even ended up loving her as a character, because at least she was the most honest about who she truly is, not like Charlotte or Scarlet who seem to change from this to that at every second.

The book continues on its basic hollow essence —everything seems to be about what others think of you in the end—, but it’s ‘saved’ in my point of view by a couple of life lessons and the fantastic quotes and references. However, it’s not a book I’d recommend to adults (I’m still quite connected with my teen self so it’s okay), and it’s definitely not for every teenage girl either. Without some knowledge and a little maturity, its real meaning could be misinterpreted and twisted to the point of being a little dangerous to young girls.

Since I didn’t want to talk much about the plot for those who haven’t read the first book so I didn’t spoil anything, this review can be confusing and look incomplete, but I hope you don’t mind.

I give it:

Two Patricks.

Also a 3’5/10.

One great thing about the book: you can create an awesome playlist and read it with a soundtrack with the chapter titles, which correspond to songs by various artists:

1. Slender Thread of Hope – Steppenwolf
2. Pushing In The Pin – The Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs
3. Bad Connection – Yazoo
4. Epitaph For The Heart – The Magnetic Fields
5. Dead Sound – The Raveonettes
6. Girlfriend In A Coma – The Smiths
7. Imitation Of Life – REM
8. Back In Your Head – Tegan and Sarah
9. Bird On A Wire – Leonard Cohen
10. This Is How I Disappear – My Chemical Romance
11. She Sells Sanctuary – The Cult
12. Die Young, Stay Pretty – Blondie
13. Shadow Of Doubt – Sonic Youth
14. Magic Thought
15. Pretty Vacant – Sex Pistols
16. Bizarre Love Triangle – New Order
17. Tomorrow Never Knows – The Beatles
18. Alone Again Or – Love
19. The Supernatural & The Superficial
20. Divine Comedy
21. We Will Become Silhouettes – The Postal Service
22. Everybody Say I Love You
(Epilogue) This Must Be The Place – Talking Heads

-E