Well, I’m not loving this one. I’ve been enjoying revisiting this childhood favourite series but the last two books have flip-flopped like ducks with wet feet, this one particularly so. The plot seems to have sail-failed past unlikelihood into the bad soap-opera realms of the ludicrous. I can only assume FP woke up one morning and decided to turn a couple of trusted characters into traitors in an ill-advised attempt at plot-twistery. It doesn’t work – she inevitably contradicts a lot of earlier events in the series, or gives unsatisfactory explanations in an attempt to mollify her devoted readers. Maybe she’s assuming that by book 27 some of us have forgotten the earlier storyline? I was disappointed. Nevertheless, based on the strength of the first 25 I will persevere, bring on no. 28! Fingers crossed for a redeeming read.

I have loved Stephen, for QI, for his cameo in St. Trinian’s and not least for his narration of the Harry Potter audiobooks, so I’ll admit my expectations for this book were high. However, while there are a few funny turns of phrase and some witty rejoinders, on the whole, it seems as if he hasn’t put much effort into the quality of the writing. I tend to suspect that after his previous success he took for granted that another autobiography with *His* name on the cover would sell well and that he didn’t need to bother being creative or original. Large sections of the book are devoted to lists of people or events and he devotes endless chapters to raving and apologising about how he is so privileged, unworthy, YADA YADA YADA. Get over it Stephen! No one really cares, or gives it that much thought, or at least they wouldn’t if they didn’t have to hear you constantly whinging on about it!

I’m afraid I took particular affront to a part where he compares people who lament their lack of knowledge (about, say, the Hundred Years’ War or string theory or what have you) to beggars in a city with gold lined pavements. Supposedly, anyone who is curious simply has to trawl through wikipedia or the library or watch documentaries to their heart’s content to know everything they could wish to. Because, of course, we all have countless spare hours to devote to such whims…

In fact, I was surprised at his stance on a few issues, because I would have thought his mental health issues might have provided him a bit more insight and empathy. I can only assume he has never experienced such struggles alongside other constraints such as unavoidable obligation, physical health problems, trauma, disaster or plain old LACK OF FUNDS.

Okay rant over.

I’m disappointed, as this has knocked Mr. Fry down in my estimations. However, I have heard that his earlier book, (‘Moab something Washpot’?!) is much more palatable and I’m not averse to the idea of giving him a second chance if I see it at the library.

I’m afraid I took particular affront to a part where he compares people who lament their lack of knowledge (about, say, the Hundred Years’ War or string theory or what have you) to beggars in a city with gold lined pavements. Supposedly, anyone who is curious simply has to trawl through wikipedia or the library or watch documentaries to their heart’s content to know everything they could wish to. Because of course we all have countless spare hours to devote to such whims…

I was surprised at his stance on this and other related issues, because I would have thought his mental health issues might have provided him a bit more insight and empathy. I can only assume he has never experienced such struggles alongside other constraints such as unavoidable obligation, physical health problems, trauma, disaster or plain old LACK OF FUNDS.

Okay rant over.

I’m disappointed, as this has knocked Mr. Fry down in my estimations. However, I have heard that his earlier book, (‘Moab something Washpot’?!) is much more palatable and I’m not averse to the idea of giving him a second chance if I see it at the library.

I love this quote I just came across in Stephen King’s It, it snips nicely through the pretentious, academic bullshit of all the so-called literary experts. I get the not altogether subtle impression that what we have here is an author surrogate!

“I don’t understand this at all. I don’t understand any of this. Why does a story have to be socio-anything? Politics… culture… history… aren’t those natural ingredients in any story, if it’s told well? I mean…’ He looks around, sees hostile eyes, and realizes dimly that they see this as some sort of attack. Maybe it even is. They are thinking, he realizes, that maybe there is a sexist death merchant in their midst. ‘I mean… can’t you guys just let a story be a story?”

4.5 stars but I’m giving it 5 on goodreads because <3.

Okay, it’s a childrens’ book. Okay, some of the child-talk was cringe inducing. But overall this was brilliant. I cried so much during the second half, particularly the early scenes in hospital with Katy and her dad. When I was 13 I spent six weeks in hospital with my dad visiting every day like this – totally different circumstances but I still waaay overidentified!

I loved Jacqueline Wilson growing up (who didn’t?) and this just brings back all the reasons why. She really gets kids and her characters are truly lifelike. It was idealistic (I can’t imagine many 11 year olds coping as well as Katy did in the circumstances), but then again, what do I know? Some kids can be amazingly resilient, and a lot more reflective and sensitive than some adults!

I know JW wrote it as a take on “What Katy Did”, partly because she disagreed with the message in that book (essentially, that prayer and goodness could lead to recovery from major injury, which I agree is pretty insulting to all the good, kind disabled individuals who never do recover). In that sense I think it does really well, although I will have to read the original (which I intend to do) to make a fair judgement. It certainly makes you think hard about all the little things that are so easily taken for granted and to impress upon you the amazing courage and strength it takes to adapt to having to use a wheelchair. I think this is really important for children to be made to think about and that’s a pretty big reason for my giving a rare 5 star review.

I’m not certain but I think the weirdly quaint old-fashioned middle-class language may have been in homage to the original. I can’t remember noticing it in the JW books I read as a child, but then I also read a lot of Enid Blyton around the same time so I might not have noticed!

I would love to read a sequel, or ‘What Katy did Next’ though I haven’t been able to find anything to suggest that one is forthcoming. Certainly I will check whether there are any more JW books I haven’t read yet. Recommend!

I had really expected and wanted to like this, I read a very similarly themed book (A Boy Made of Blocks) early this year which was excellent, but Shtum was just a little bit all-over-the-place. I’m fine with stories that jump between times and POVs, provided they do so COGENTLY and in a way that assists the telling of the tale. This was just peculiar. Warning – SPOILERS to follow!

We start with the dad’s POV, from the time his wife decides they should live separately as a tactical manoeuvre that will help their son get into a better, more specialist school than the council is offering. We don’t get any real introduction to the couple, it’s just, wham, here they are, here’s their autistic son, Jonah, and all his issues and here the story shall start. The wife then disappears for the vast majority of the book, only to reappear later with a surprise tale of her own that does nothing to aid the plot but just makes you blink and go ‘Huh…okay’.

A lot of page-time is devoted to the father’s alcoholism, which is revealed gradually but in strange uneven chunks. We kept hearing more about it as if it’s a big shocker when, no, we get it, he’s got a drinking problem. So I kept thinking, is there going to be some kind of resolution or development? Answer: No. It never happens. It just keeps getting brought up.

Then there’s the relationship between the dad and his dad (the grandad). I thought the opinionated old guy was a good character, and he had an interesting back story too. But it was a sort of sub-plot that kept being returned to randomly and again, was never discussed or resolved. Then at the end we get this written revelation the old guy had left when he died, again no reactions to it, no discussion, it’s just tacked on to the finale like a spare tyre.

The weirdest part came near the end with the court case, where out of nowhere we began chopping back and forth between the present day proceedings and flashbacks from the past eras of Jonah’s life being discussed. It should have worked, it is a cool idea! But it really, really didn’t. By this point we have got to know Jonah and dad pretty well (or so we think) so a lot of the stuff ‘revealed’ has already been covered. Other times things were revealed that was completely at odds with the previous chapters and characters that had been built there, not in a good, plot-twisty way, just in a nonsensical self contradictory one. At the first jump I had to go back and reread (actually re-listen, I had the audiobook) THREE TIMES to work out what had happened. One minute we’re dad in court, the next we’re dad being escorted by some work colleague (who may or may not have been mentioned by name once or twice somewhere earlier in the plot) and brought to confront a hundred odd empty bottleshe has discovered residing in our car. Now this is seriously confusing because, dad still drinks, and there is no indication that we have gone into a past flashback, so I’m left thinking, was a paragraph/chapter skipped in the audio by mistake? How did we get from court to car? Where did this man materialise from? Then we’re back to court and wondering – ‘wow, was that a glance into the past? The future?’… It only becomes clear as you go on, and even then the clarity isn’t what you’d call crystal.

This is a pretty harsh review I know, so I’d like to end on a positive. Although I didn’t feel that this worked as a novel, you could tell the writer had experience with autism, and the scenes with Jonah were cleverly, humorously and touchingly observed and written. The content is good, I just think it needs a good editor to chop it up and rearrange it in an order that makes more sense.

I learnt a huge amount from this, my only gripe was that Prof. Sean Carroll spoke too fast! I love that he’s enthusiastic about his subject but I had to keep rewinding, which got tiring. I’m actually going to listen to the whole thing again right away because I think having read the more complex later chapters and having the key facts reiterated a lot, I should be able to pick up on things that were a bit confusing on the first read. Highly, highly recommend – but be warned, this is seriously heavy stuff – I did A level physics and have a master’s in maths and I only really grasped maybe 1/3 of the material on the first read. Really fascinating though – I’m seriously considering aiming some of my future PhD research in a more theoretical-physicsy direction because this stuff is SOOO interesting. Thank you Sean Carroll!

So I found this beautiful set of pictures illustrating the perks of living alone – and it’s basically telling the story of my life up until a year or so ago- the girl in the pics even wears a Buffy T-shirt!! (I seriously think the artist must have met and based this work on me and my best friend Ali, might have to message them to find out!).

So basically I was pretty apprehensive about moving in with my husband – and aside from the obvious issues I had with eating around him – losing some of the perks described in this article were real worries for me, especially since hubby is not my dog’s no. 1 fan….

Having read through all the posts and looked at the matching pics though, I find that since moving in with my husband I can still get away with doing most of these things (particularly when he’s out and I’m not!) and some we can even have extra fun doing together! There are one or two of them I miss…. mainly the puppy ones… But I thought I’d post one of them every now and then with comments on how to make it work when cohabiting 😀

For starters then…

1. Making a mess! (NOTICE THE BUFFY TEE!!!!)

Ok so there are a bunch of ways of getting away with this… the most effective, although perhaps not the most practical, is to hire a weekly cleaner for a couple of hours and go nut’s the day before they’re due 😉 Maybe make a weekly cleaner a condition of moving in together if it’s a possibility! Option 2: go nuts together, conk out together, clear up (laaaater) together. Finally, failing all the above… you could always negotiate – maybe there could be a day of the week where mess is allowed, provided you clean up another day.

Okay, so I know I already have so many colouring books its as if they got together and bred like bunnies on  my bookshelf (explaining my bookshelf requires a whole nother blog post)… but this is in a league of it’s own! It has quotes and everything,  I’m in love!

Anyone who thinks for a moment that they know of any TV show that could rival the Buffies in its awesomeness or quotability is officially uncountable as a friend of mine. Nothing since has rivalled this show in ANY WAY. The wild folk out there who are spouting ‘Supernatural’ or ‘Game of Thrones’ as contenders makes me nauseous! Alright I admit, ‘The Gilmore Girls’ makes for an acceptably witty-bitty filler, but even that can’t touch the Buffster, Buffy 4eva!!! <3<3<3

Just learned how to ‘whip’ and ‘nae nae’. What a time to be alive!

I wasn’t as crazy about this as a lot of people seem to be, perhaps mostly due to the irritating, lisping narration on the audiobook version I listened to. It’s a nice little story, about a boy (August, or ‘Auggie’) born with abnormalities that mean his face is ‘messed up’ so that he’s ‘ugly’ and even scary to look at. We follow his journey as he learns to fit in and cope with life in school after years of homeschooling, and there are all the challenges of bullying and unkindness that you would expect.

There was nothing surprising or memorable about Wonder, (with the possible exception of the Daisy episode, which felt unnecessary to me as it was horribly sad and added nothing to the plot) it just kept plodding on with inevitable predictability. Despite the whole book supposedly being about the huge change and ‘character development’ in Auggie following a year at school, he seemed more or less the same at the end as the beginning. His circumstances had changed but he was the same relatively upbeat and slightly (if understandably) self indulgent kid. I found the sweetness and understanding demonstrated by the teachers unrealistic and even cloying in places. Given the limited interactions between them and Auggie, I found the award ceremony, people’s emotional responses and the standing ovation a bit surreal. Everyone was so NICE, and the ends tied up so prettily. The whole thing was WAY too Hollywood, (and possibly a bit too Christian to boot).

We didn’t get to know most of the characters very well, and they were all one-dimensional, with lives revolving entirely around Auggie. I would have been interested to know more about other aspects of their lives (relationships, work, aspirations) and how these were impacted/impacted on Auggie’s life. We did get some frustrating glimpses but they weren’t explored any further.
What made the kids’ attitudes towards Auggie change? How did Summer’s dad’s death affect her and why? What was going on with Melanie’s parents – would she ever talk to Via about it? What was the relationship between Via’s grandma and her mother, given that the grandma tells Via that she is her favourite person -how? why?! All these things were unresolved so it was kind of annoying that they were mentioned at all.

I am now halfway through another book, ‘When Mr. Dog bites’ by Brian Conaghan. It has some similar themes, also being centred around a boy who is ‘different’ (this boy is a few years older and has Tourette’s Syndrome), and focussing on the issues surrounding this. However, the writing is vastly superior – it is funny and clever, and although the Tourette’s issue is ever-present in the very language used in the book, it doesn’t hijack all the storylines the way Auggie does in Wonder.

To summarise, Wonder lacks the grit and realism it would need to be really moving. I just felt that a real boy like Auggie would suffer huge angst and emotional torment, especially at this age, and this wasn’t portrayed at all in the happily-ever-after, shiny-rainbow-positivity of this book. I appreciate that my view might be tainted because, as a Brit, it all felt a bit Americanised to me, and that’s something I’m not used to (although I probably should be by now!). To be clear, I didn’t hate it, or regret reading it, and it did lead me to look up some interesting real cases of managing Treacher Collins syndrome, which honestly deserve such admiration. It was just a bit vanilla.

2 stars.