Book Review- All the Good Things

Title- All the Good Things
Author- Clare Fisher
Published-  June 1st 2017
Genre- Contemporary, literary fiction
Length- 240 pages
Rating- 4/5
Synopsis (Goodreads)- Twenty-one year old Beth is in prison. The thing she did is so bad she doesn’t deserve to ever feel good again.

But her counsellor, Erika, won’t give up on her. She asks Beth to make a list of all the good things in her life. So Beth starts to write down her story, from sharing silences with Foster Dad No. 1, to flirting in the Odeon on Orange Wednesdays, to the very first time she sniffed her baby’s head.

But at the end of her story, Beth must confront the bad thing. What is the truth hiding behind her crime? And does anyone-even a 100% bad person-deserve a chance to be good?

Review- I received an ARC of this from the publisher so thank you to them.

This story is told from Beth’s perspective, mostly as if she is talking to her child. The majority of it is told in the past tense but that is interspersed with present day therapy sessions and time in prison. It is well done and easy to follow.

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Book Review- Emma

Title- Emma
Author- Jane Austen
Published-  1816
Genre- Classic
Length- 392 pages
Rating- 3.75/5
Synopsis (Goodreads)- Beautiful, clever, rich – and single – Emma Woodhouse is perfectly content with her life and sees no need for either love or marriage. Nothing, however, delights her more than interfering in the romantic lives of others. But when she ignores the warnings of her good friend Mr. Knightley and attempts to arrange a suitable match for her protegee Harriet Smith, her carefully laid plans soon unravel and have consequences that she never expected. With its imperfect but charming heroine and its witty and subtle exploration of relationships, Emma is often seen as Jane Austen’s most flawless work.

Review- I think with classics like this there isn’t really a lot to say. Overall I liked it. I thought it was better than Sense and Sensibility, but not as good as Pride and Prejudice. The movie Clueless is apparently based on this book. Knowing that going in I did see the similarities, but if I hadn’t been told beforehand I don’t think I would have picked up on it.

What do you look for in a book cover?

So, I recently did a post about judging books by their covers, because lets face it, a lot of us do it. What is it though that you are looking for when you do that?

Another recent post was about different editions where I said that I basically pick the edition that is prettiest, but what makes a book “pretty” or not to you, what matters? Big words? An unusual font? Bright colours? Realistic pictures? More cartoon like pictures? Is it more just the general overall look rather than a specific thing you look for?

I think for me it’s more the overall look that makes me like a cover. I guess I wouldn’t be very helpful in a publishing focus group! If I compare the books I have with covers I love they are all actually really different. Most of them are all quite colourful but the colours really vary, as does the general artistry. There is one thing they have in common though….none of them have photos of people on the covers. The only ones that have people in any sense are the Penguin deluxe editions of the classics and some of the Harry Potter books.

Different editions…

So, when you see a book you like how do you decide which edition to buy? Obviously sometimes there isn’t a choice, at least in actual bookstores other than maybe hardcover or paperback, but when there is a choice what makes you pick one edition over another?

Take Harry Potter for example, there are so many editions! I actually don’t have a matching set of all seven books, I have a boxset of the first four and then bought the rest as they came out. I want a matching set of hardcovers and I have just picked the ones I find the prettiest, well the two sets actually and in each set I like all the covers. Two sets I suppose isn’t crazy but what if you like say five or six sets, what do you do? Buy them all? Just buy one set? How do you pick that one set? What if you love some of the covers in one edition, but don’t like others in the same edition? Do you buy some books in one edition and others in another?

Why am I thinking about this? Well, I have started getting a few classics. Classics, like Harry Potter come in a huge number of editions. Some are just boring and I would only buy them if I just wanted a really cheap one to see if I like the story, but there are a lot of really nice editions too.

Book Review- Everything I Never Told You

Title- Everything I Never Told You
Author- Celeste Ng
Published-  2014
Genre- Contemporary, literary fiction
Length- 305 pages
Rating- 5/5
Synopsis (Goodreads)- Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet . . . So begins this debut novel about a mixed-race family living in 1970s Ohio and the tragedy that will either be their undoing or their salvation. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee; their middle daughter, a girl who inherited her mother’s bright blue eyes and her father’s jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue—in Marilyn’s case that her daughter become a doctor rather than a homemaker, in James’s case that Lydia be popular at school, a girl with a busy social life and the center of every party.

When Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together tumbles into chaos, forcing them to confront the long-kept secrets that have been slowly pulling them apart.

Review- It is difficult to know what to say about this book. When a book is this good it’s hard to find any faults with it, meaning that other than gushing praise, there isn’t much to say.