A Hopeless Romantic - Harriet Evans - final update!

OMG!!!! I have finally finished!!! This is the best day of my life!!! Trying to read this has been a great chore. At first I abhorred the book and the author for making her main character, Laura Foster, so selfish and unlikeable, especially during her affair with Dan. Her life then goes bad, but it is a bit too much to expect the reader to feel sympathy for her. Later she goes on holiday to Norfolk with her family, which felt like it dragged too long, before she met Nick. Initially I like the way these two characters fell for each other, and the fairytale storyline, but after Nick’s secret was revealed, the book started to lag again. Nick become a dithering, weedy character and Laura became selfish, whiny and self-obsessed again. After that, the story just falls flat. Nothing in the rest of the narrative stands out, and none of the characters present themselves as likeable. At the end, I didn’t really care what happened to Laura, and the events that followed in the final parts of the story where predictable, and I think that Evans hasn’t achieved in telling the romantic story she wanted to. I’ve given it a chance – with other books, I would have stopped reading, but I thought that perhaps it might get better, but overall, A Hopeless Romantic has been a great disappointment. Reading the blurb of this book, I thought it was a nice idea, but I just never took to the character of Laura, and never interested in her story. 1 star.

Andrew Collings - That's Me in the Corner review

As a big fan of the Collings and Herrin podcast (which has ended – sobsob), I decided to try reading Andrew Collins’ book, That’s Me in the Corner. I’ve already read Richard Herring’s How Not To Grow Up (I’ve reviewed it on this blog) and was really surprised. I really enjoyed it, so I really wanted to like this book.

TMITC recounts Collins’ various jobs as he reaches the age of 40. Some of it is good, I enjoyed the early bit about his job at Sainsbury’s and his take on the supermarket hierarchy there, both for the most part, it was not interesting enough, and perhaps slightly self-indulgent. I felt Collins namedrops a lot which can be a bit frustrating, and I think due to my age, I haven’t connected with the book as I don’t understand the rock/indie musical or 80s/early 90s references. Overall, the writing style just isn’t strong enough – it mostly reads like a list of anecdotes, factual for the most part, with the odd celebrity name dropped in and there is little to gain from reading this. HNTGU was captivating as Herring had a set theme – reaching the age of 40 and whether he should be more adultlike – and incorporated several events from his life. You don’t need to have prior knowledge to read it, it is pretty accessible for any reader, whereas I felt like I was missing something when reading TMITC. Another thing that was successful about HNTGU was Herring’s writing content – it is witty and interesting, and it also probes deeper into his feelings about career, life, health, history and his love life. Collins doesn’t do anything of the sort, and it seems quite pointless and shallow on some level. I frequently found myself skim-reading or skipping large chunks whereas with HNTGU I was hooked on every page and could not put it down.

That being said, I do enjoy Collin’s wry throwaway observations which are casually thrown in and I enjoyed the chapter about writing for Eastenders but taken as a whole, it isn’t my cup of tea. Perhaps I am being too harsh, Collins isn’t a comedian like Herring so I can’t expect it to be a hilarious read and maybe it is unfair to compare TMITC to HNTGU, but I do expect to enjoy and get something out of reading the book, but sadly, with Collins’ book, I don’t get anything at all. 2 stars.

*It was announced that Richard Herring is to get married yesterday – perhaps he had finally grown up after all!

Richard Herring - How Not To Grow Up

I’ve become a big fan of Herring through his many podcasts – Collings and Herrin, AIOTM to name but a few – so I decided to take a chance on this book having hearing it publicised so many times in the Collings and Herrin podcast. I was pleasantly surprised – it still retains some of Herring’s humour that I have become used to over listening to his podcasts, but it is a well written, candid look at his feelings of turning 40, and realising what he wants out of life. It takes a deeper look at what it means to “grow up”. What is interesting is the way he introduces events from his past into his writing, such as his childhood events. The book also includes some of Herring’s deeper feelings and emotions, such as meeting Catherine, which was interesting as it is something that doesn’t really come across when you listen to his podcasts.There are a few issues, such as the editing – in one chapter, a woman switches name in the next paragraph from Julia to Yasmin, only to return back to Julia in the following section. If you are easily offended, there is a lot of strong language and adult humour so be warned before you start reading this book. If however, you don’t mind that sort of stuff, I would recommend this book for you.

Are books dead?

Not literally dead. That would be some achievement seeing as the book was never living in the first place (unless you count that the paper the book was printed on was once a tree, a living tree, killed to make paper - then yeah, I guess that would count, but I digress...). I am talking about whether there is still place in today's world for the common paper/hard back piece of literature or text. With the increase onslaught of e-books, e-reader, audiobooks and downloads - moving towards a new digital format does so at the expense of the book.

Audiobooks and downloads are a good way of listening to stories and books, one which I favour as it gives me more freedom to listen to a book and is much lighter and easier than carrying around a book or two with you, plus I like the way the story is being told to you, like bedtime stories ha. However, the reading of the book can sometimes hamper your enjoyment and imagination of the book. For example, a recent audiobook I was listening to saw the reader attempt to mimic an Irish man's accent - this was embarrassing to say the least. It was a heavy Irish accent, too Irish to be Irish if that makes any sense, and another audiobook, the female reader's male voice was her normal voice but whinier (I don't know whether that is to suggest anything). Whilst if the story is good, one can usually work past this, but when you are given the text as it is, you are able to form your own impressions about the plot and its characters, and its voices.

E-books and e-readers are becoming more and more popular in this day and age. E-books can be easily downloaded onto your computer for free or for a cheap price and then transported to your E-reader, the Kindle being one of the more popular ones. This format has many advantages - easy to transport rather than carrying many books around with you, easy, and it suits the technological age that we live in. However, I still think that it is an over-reliance on technology - there is something soulless about reading a book of a slab, rather than seeing the book in its full glory. And the fact that the E-readers run on rechargeable batteries suggests that you can't read as much as you like. Say you were on holiday with your e-reader, which ran out of power and you had no recharger cable - then you couldn't read any more books. The book as it is stands for a popular object that can be used for entertainment at all times.

The digital format is still not without its advantages, don't get me wrong, but I think it is wrong to stifle the book as it is. People still love a good old book, and I'm talking about a real book, not an e-book.