Thursday, February 16, 2012

Fates and Stars.

Occasionally, I read a book that drains me.
I can't quite describe the multiple levels it drains me on. Certainly emotional, but there's something else. A sense of awe at the words that have caused whatever my reaction is, and I need to shut myself off because they're too beautiful.
After all, you can only ever read a book for the first time once, so you might as well savour it madly.

I have just read a book, and I suppose I'm writing about it now because I've not read a book in quite some time that drained me. The Fault in Our Stars.
I started this book, and I finished it falsely to begin with. I flicked. I was stressed at the time when I received it, so I didn't want to read and fall into someone else's pain, be overwhelmed with sympathy only they deserved. Selfishly, I wanted to hold onto my own mind's worries, the ones that don't matter. The ones you know don't matter.

Today, I read it fully.
I cried.
I have cried during one other novel, and that was during a time when I cried over the Lion King and Fantastic Four.

I don't know how to describe fully what I'm feeling after reading it, but I feel less sure of things. Less sure of what matters.
I want to curl up in my bed and sleep for days, in the hopes that I'll understand whatever it is this book has caused me to feel.
I'm silently tossing up making deals with God to let me never go through what Hazel and Augustus and Isaac did, be it as a daughter or sister or girlfriend or wife or mother or grandmother or aunt or friend, and dismissing it as a futile activity.

And John Green has taken my breath away again with a book, and if I write like that one day - if I drain just one person the way his words have drained me - then my words will be a success.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Book Review: A Vision of Lucy by Margaret Brownley





Feisty photographer Lucy dreams of becoming working for the local newspaper - but of course, the editor doesn't quite share her goal (in a time where women were mothers and wives, he wouldn't have been the only one). But Lucy is determined to prove his assumptions about females wrong, and sets out to take a photo of the reclusive David Wolf, the man that's had the town abuzz for months.
Lucy doesn't count on falling for this man, and he certainly didn't see himself falling either. When events collide - changing Lucy's life entirely - how will she deal with this, and how will David adjust to his new love for Lucy?

So, honestly?

I kind of liked this book.
I certainly wouldn't say I wholeheartedly loved it - it is, like most of its historical romance genre, predictable. But it drew me in, and I found that I did trot along with the storyline. It's a book that can be put down, and while the romance was beautiful, I didn't develop enough of an attachment to the characters to, say, stick out the entire novel and not skip to the end to see if my hunches were correct.
Which they were. Like I said, predictable, but not in a bad way.
If you're looking for something new, inspired and gripping - you won't find it in this book. You'll probably have a good time, as I did, but it blends in amongst a group of writers whose work is much of a muchness.

This is another BookSneeze post, where the book (ebook in this case) was provided to me for free on the proviso I blog honestly.