Book-a-Day 7: Forgot I owned it

Rabbiting On and other Poems by Kit Wright, illustrated by Posy Simmonds.

I haven't really ever forgotten that I owned this, but I had thought that I had lost it or given it away.  Until I moved house this year and found it at the bottom of a box.

It's a wonderful collection of funny poetry for children, and given that I am not at all interested in poetry it's significant that it's the only book of poetry I've ever read.  Throughout the years I thought this had gone from my life I remembered one poem in particular and I'll post it here so you can get a feel for what the book holds in store...

The Moon's a big white football
The Sun's a pound of butter
The Earth is going round the twist
And I'm a little nutter.

There you are, the only poetry I can quote by heart.

Book-a-Day 6: The one I always give as a gift

Well, to be honest I don't tend to gift books.  None of those I buy for at Birthdays and Christmas are really into reading, so books tend to be unappreciated by people who are not me.

I get excited when I give gifts, especially when it's a book I've loved.  I want to describe it to them, basic plot and all that, but really I just want to tell them how it made me feel.

My non-reading family say they're too busy or don't have the attention span... personally I 'make' time for reading, and if that means a little dust builds up I'm OK with that.  If I don't have the attention span then I just figure I'm reading the wrong book and I switch.  Not having time/not wanting to read/other strange reason not to read just does not compute :-)

When I do try to gift books I give ones I can personally recommend and that I know will be well received by the reader.  To my sister I gave a copy of The Book Thief by Markus Zusak for Christmas 2013.  I have yet to meet anyone who did not LOVE that book.  Sadly my sister has been reading The Hunger Games Trilogy for nearly two years now so she hasn't started The Book Thief yet.   I so want to talk to her about it, I know she's going to love it, and it's killing me she hasn't read it yet.

Book-a-Day 5: Doesn't Belong To Me

I don't like to borrow books as a rule, but I stayed with family a few weeks back and had nothing to read.

'WHAAAAT' I hear you cry?

I know, right?

My cousin's husband lent me Under The Dome by Stephen King.  It's HUGE, and will take some time to get through, but so far it's not too bad.

I'm pretty pleased with myself now that I didn't watch the TV series, so I don't know what's going to happen.

Book-a-Day 4: Least Favourite Book by a Favourite Author

The Witness by Nora Roberts.  Such a pity.

I know that I have mentioned this in one or another of the TTT's I did last year, I thought I had reviewed it too, but apparently though I reviewed it on Goodreads I forgot to post the review here too. Normally this author's books are great, and I thoroughly enjoy reading them, but I felt that there was so much missed potential with this book.  It had a fantastic start, and looked like it might be one of her greatest, but then it just totally fizzled out for me.

The story starts with the heroine as a teenager witnessing a mob hit, and then things get serious.  She has a difficult relationship with her only parent, goes into witness protection, things get nasty, good people die and eventually she escapes and goes into hiding.  And then she settles down into a sweet small town Somewhereville, meets a policeman (Sheriff I think?), um's and ah's for a few pages about starting a relationship with him, and then suddenly everything's nice and normal.  Apart from a couple of townsfolk who want to cause trouble there's nothing that really happens.

There was plenty of potential from those troublesome few who could have dug up some dirt, alerted the mob to her location.  Same with a private detective who appears in the story, is described as really good and thorough (but apparently not good enough), and so on and so forth.  You never really have that feeling that our heroine's secret identity/cover is ever in jeopardy.  I know it's a Nora Roberts romance and the hero and heroine are always going to end up OK, and the baddies will always get what they deserve, but that doesn't mean that you can't put them at risk and make the reader panic for them.

Quite frankly it made me wonder what the Editors were doing.  Are they so convinced that it will do well 'Hey, it's a Nora Roberts book and millions of people will buy them regardless of how good it is, so why should we waste time and effort making sure the story is good?'

Don't get me wrong, I read it and I kind of enjoyed it, but it could have been SO MUCH BETTER!  I'm tempted one day to do some fan fiction on it and re-make it the way I think it should have been done.

Sorry.  Rant over.

Book-a-Day 3: One with a blue cover

Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor

I had a different answer prepared for this day until I finished this book, and then I knew I had to change it.  Dreams of Gods and Monsters is the final instalment of the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy and this book, and the whole series in fact, is excellent.  It’s a great end to the trilogy, and wraps up all the loose ends in ways that I wasn’t expecting. 

When I prep’d this answer Amazon UK were still selling signed first edition hardbacks…