Book 3 - Bloody Liggie (Ken Catran)

"Liggie Taner, with an axe,

gave her step-mum forty whacks.

When she saw what she had done,

she gave her father forty-one"

Danny Bourne, 16, main character. The school in the next town burns down, that's how he meets Sigourney, that was her school, so they're bused into other towns to go to school Danny attends. She's in Dannys class, but Danny has his suspicions about her, could she be Liggie Tanner? See the thing is, Liggie Tanner escaped an asylum. Shes not been caught. And Danny sits next to her every day at school. 

After an investigation that goes down at school, 'Sigourney' and Danny try to flee, because Danny is in love with Sigourney, not Liggie. Liggie was a different person. Misunderstood. Not like Sigourney.

Personally, I enjoyed this book quite a lot. It's a very easy read at 120 pages. Some of the sentences didn't quite make sense and sometimes I had to backtrack to work out what was going on. But I didn't really mind, because I really fell in love with the story line. Ken's style of writing is very straight to the point, no unnecessary adjectives here. Sometimes this is a good thing, because you want to know what happens, and other times it wasn't so great. The ending leaves a bit to be desired, but I think it was very victorious, and you genuinely felt happy for the characters. It was a real pleasure to read and I wouldn't mind seeing a sequel to this, but I don't think that's going to happen.

Time Spent Reading: 2.1 hours.
Enjoyment Rating: 10/10
Overall Rating: 7/10
Genre: Romance

Book 2 - A Tiny Bit Marvellous (Dawn French)

'My mother is, like, a totally confirmed A-list bloody cocking minging arsehole cretin cockhead of the highest order. Fact.' With an opening line like that, it's hard not to love. 'A Tiny Bit Marvellous' is Dawn French's first work of fiction, and hopefully not her last.(333 pages)

Retails for $32.95 AU

The book follows the lives of a family known as The Battles. The line on the back of the book sums it up pretty well: 'Everyone hates the perfect family, so you'll love the Battles'. It's written in the form of diary entries, but without dates, from the perspective of Mo, a child psychologist who doesn't understand her own children, Dora, who's about to hit 18 and is blissfully unaware of everything good in her life, and Peter/Oscar who can only be described as. Different. And there's also dad, but he's just there. 


A highly hilarious book, that had me in stitches most of the time I spent reading it. Over the course of the book there's many family relationships that are patched up, from people seeing their own mistakes. Mo is on the brink of turning 50, and almost falls into the trap of having an affair. Dora, is a highly ignorant teenager, almost 18, and all she really wants is some TLC. Peter/Oscar is a highly sophisticated young man, in the middle of his teen years. 


I'm not sure what I thought the book was going to be like, I knew it was going to be funny, but not this good. I really love this book, my favourite characters to read the accounts of were Dora and Mo, but Oscar was highly entertaining too. It features many references to today's pop-culture, talking about Twilight, Facebook and Bear Grylls, and for now, it makes sense, maybe not so much in 60 years when today's 'pop-culture' is a thing of the past. I really love this book, and really do hope it's adapted to a movie sometime in the near future! 

Time Spent Reading: 6.2 Hours.
Enjoyment Rating: 10/10
Overall Rating: 10/10
Genre: Comedy

'Oh, and there's a dog called Poo'

Alyssa.x

Book 1 - Let The Right One In (John Ajvide Lindqvist)

Let The Right One In, written in 2004 originally in Swedish, has been translated into Danish, German, Dutch, Russian, English, Chinese and Finnish. After much success, there has been two films made based on the book, one in Swedish and one in English. 

Time Spent Reading: 11.1 Hours.
Enjoyment Rating: 10/10
Overall Rating: 4/5
Genre: Horror
The book is set in the early 1980's in Sweden. The main character, who goes by the name of Oskar, is a 12 year old boy, who is bullied daily at school, and comes home to an empty house before his single mum gets home from work. Oskar becomes acquainted with a child his age, or what appears to be a child, named Eli. Eli has horrible hygiene, and Oskar doesn't quite know what to think of her. Turns out, Eli is in fact a vampire. She moves into the apartments next to Oskars, along with Hakan, who everyone thinks is Eli's dad. Hakan isn't Eli's father, Hakan is in love with Eli. He collects human blood for Eli, in return for her love. Hakan later in the book becomes the feared and hunted 'ritual killer'.


J.A.Lindqvist has done an exceptional job with this novel, making the characters and setting somewhat bleak, and yet the story so compelling you just cannot put it down. As the reader, you'll ask a lot of questions, some of these never do get answered, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Quite a few times whilst reading this book, I found myself squealing, and a bit uncomfortable at times too. Mainly, the part about being uncomfortable comes from the torment that Oskars receives from his bullies, every single day. I did thoroughly enjoy this book, and if you do read it, I suggest that after you finish, go back to the start and read the first couple of pages. It'll make you go 'OH'. That's what that meant. 


One thing I was disappointed with was the ending. I think I'm a bit annoyed because I have so many questions. On the other hand, I wouldn't want him to write a sequel. I think from an authors point of view it's a good ending, but I was left a bit ticked off. Not to say this isn't an amazing book! I'd say it's up there in my favourites! 


I really suggest you read this, NOW!


Alyssa. x

20 books for 2011

First of all, happy 2011! How did you celebrate? Personally, I stayed home and watched movies, but that's because I'm cool. xD New years resolutions? I don't really make them, and when I do I never follow them. I go for the weekly resolutions approach. It's much simpler than saying 'I'm going to lose 50 kg this year!!!!' and then thinking, heck, how am I going to manage that?? Whereas if you make 'weekly resolutions' like I do, and say you did want to loose 50 kg in a year, you could have a resolution for a week that is 'instead of drinking soda this week, I'll go for water'. and so on regarding your whole goal, throughout the year. Small goals help you achieve your overall goal.

So, do I have a new years resolution this year? Yes.
What is it? Well, actually it's more of a challenge I'm setting myself rather than a resolution.
Then my dear, what is this challenge you speak of? I'm going to try and read 20 books this year. That works out at 1.6 books a month. I found this challenge somewhere on the internet and it was originally for 50 books, but I'm not going to try and read that many, I don't want to disappoint myself. 20 is something I think I can reach, and if I read more than that I'll be pretty darn happy (:
What does it have to do with the blog? Well, I'm planning on reviewing every book I read here. Mainly as a sort of, archive for myself. But also for the few readers I have (:

I would like to introduce you to an awesome app; ReadMore
View webpage here 
It's currently on the iTunes app store for $2.49 (AU)
Basically, what it does, is tracks what you read. You enter the book title, author and how many pages it has, and then every time you read that book you press 'Begin Reading'. It then starts a timer, and you can pause that timer if you need to. When you've finished reading you press the stop button, and then input what page you finished on. What's awesome about this is, it can calculate how long it thinks you'll take to finish the book, and on what date. Now I don't take much notice of that date, but I do take notice of the hours it thinks you'll take to finish. It takes what you have read, works out an average of what you read, so if you've read 50 pages over 2 days, on average you've read 25 pages a day. Then it'll work out how long, yada yada yada, you get the idea. But, I have to say, it's my favourite app, and the one I was most happy to spend a little money on. The price has been put up since I purchased it, but I still think at $2.49 it's a steal. So this is what I'll be using to help me make sure that I get through the 20 books!

I'd love for anyone to join me in this challenge!

Takes care, and have a joyful 2011.
Alyssa.x