The Book Whisperer

jottings, musings and recommendations of an incurable bookaholic

Disney to make “Fallen” movie December 28, 2009

Filed under: Paranormal,Young Adult — The Book Whisperer @ 11:27 pm
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It has been announced that Disney are to make a movie of Kate Lauren’s new book Fallen and also its sequels. I have this on my TBR pile courtesy of Amazon Vine so now I want to get to it even sooner to see what the fuss is about.

Here is a synopsis from Amazon:

“What if the person you were meant to be with could never be yours? 17-year-old Lucinda falls in love with a gorgeous, intelligent boy, Daniel, at her new school, the grim, foreboding Sword & Cross …only to find out that Daniel is a fallen angel, and that they have spent lifetimes finding and losing one another as good & evil forces plot to keep them apart. Some angels are destined to fall…”

Is this going to be the new Twilight?

 

My Secret Santa Gift December 28, 2009

Filed under: Larry McMurty,The Victorians — The Book Whisperer @ 10:55 pm

I am so excited to read this book. I belong to a little group of 15 on Goodreads and each year we do a Secret Santa where our names get put in a hat and we are secretly informed who we are to send a book to. My Secret Santa this year was the lovley Jesse from New Mexico and he got me Larry McMurty’s Lonesome Dove. A wonderful pressie from a wonderful person! I can’t wait to read it.

 

 

 

 

Book Reviews: Sophie Kinsella – standalone books December 28, 2009

Filed under: Chick Lit,Comfort Reading,Laugh Out Loud,Sophie Kinsella — The Book Whisperer @ 7:38 pm

Sophie Kinesella is one of my favourite authors. Her books are funny and pure escapism. Here are the reviews for her standalone books (I will review the Shopaholic series separately).

 

Sophie Kinsella’s latest standalone book, Twenties Girl, is her best in my opinion. What an absolute treat this was to read. I took this on my holiday with me as I do like a good dose of chick-lit while relaxing in my sunlounger and Sophie Kinsella never lets me down.

This book was a delight from start to finish. It is narrated by Lara, newly dumped and struggling to run a business on her own. All she needs is to be pestered by the ghost of her Great Auntie Sadie whom she never even met but is here, larger than life, as a 23 year old dancing, drinking, fun-loving girl that only Lara can see and whom she insists help her find her necklace before she is buried without it.

The character of Sadie was just fabulous! One of the most endearing I have come across in a long time; she was such good fun. This book is my new favourite out of all the independents (i.e. not the shopaholic series). I love, love, loved it!

In Remember Me Lexi wakes up in hospital thinking that it is still 2004 and she is going out with Loser Dave, has wonky teeth, loads of friends and works in a low paid job in a carpet company. In fact it is 2007 and she is married to a gorgeous multi-millionaire, has perfect teeth, lives in a huge penthouse overlooing the Thames and has a high-flying job as a Director (oh, and she is the bitch-boss-from-hell), only Lexi can’t remember a thing about it. The story follows Lexi as she tries to fit in with her new life and fill in the gaps as to how she ended up where she did (and how she managed to alienate all her friends in the process).

All the ususal magic is here – young girl, a love interest (or two), nice clothes and shoes (v. important!)

While I agree that nothing can beat the Shopaholic series (who could replace Becky?), this is still a great book to get lost in. Thumbs up for Ms Kinsella once again.

 

 Can you Keep a Secret is such a funny book. I decided to work from home one day I ended up doing nothing other than curling up on the sofa and giggling my way through endless cups of tea until I had finnished the whole thing in a day – I know, I know, shhhhhh but I just couldn’t put the thing down!!!

A great idea for a story and a great heroine make this big-hearted book a real joy to read.  This was the first of all Kinsellas books that I read and it was the start of a love affair with all her books.

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I picked up Undomestic Godess  after having just read all the Shopaholic series back to back and loving them I just had to devour more of her books.

Samantha is a high flying, stressed out workaholic lawyer for a huge London firm and spends her every waking moment either working or thinking about work and that promotion to Partner she so desperately wants. On the day she is about to find out if she has made Partner or not, she discovers a document she has overlooked that will cost her client £50 million. In a daze, Samantha runs out of the office and ends up on a train without knowing where she’s going and ends up, quite by accident, ono the doorstep of a huge mansion. The owners then mistake Samantha for the Housekeeper they’ve been trying to hire and offer her the job on the spot.

To say that Samantha has no domestic skills whatsoever is an understatement but somehow she manages to muddle her way through (mainly by ordering sandwiches through a catering company and sending the laundry away to be ironed). Of course, there is a sexy gardner to liven up the plot too (which always helps).

I really enjoyed this book, I just love Sophie Kinsella. Her books are so readable, funny and once you pick them up you can’t put them down.

 

 

 

Book Review: Sworn to Silence by Linda Castello December 28, 2009

Filed under: Crime/Mystery/Thriller,Linda Castillo — The Book Whisperer @ 6:44 pm

Sworn to Silence is a great book! I LOVED this! I’ve been just in the mood for thriller / whodunnit type books recently and some of them have been a bit samey. Not so with this book: set in the Amish town of Painters Mill, Ohio, girls start turning up dead in a frighteningly similar way to 4 murders that shocked the town of population 5000 sixteen years ago. Cheif of Police, Kate Burkholder (who grew up Amish and left as a teenager) worries no less than most for a very good reason – she thought she had shot dead the killer when he raped her aged 14.

What I liked about this book was the characters and setting; they’re small town cops in a (once) peaceful town shared between the Amish and the “English”. Snow rather than grimey streets, silence rather than wailing sirens and noisy cities; it made a refreshing change. That said, the pace never once slackened or drifted.

A huge thumbs up for this book and I can’t wait to read the rest of the series when they are out.

 

Book Review: Books, Bedbugs and Baguettes by Jeremy Mercer December 28, 2009

Filed under: Globe Trotting,Jeremy Mercer,Non-Fiction — The Book Whisperer @ 6:41 pm

I was glad to have finished this book; it was really beginning to irritate me! I wanted to like it, I really did – Books, Paris, what’s not to love? What a shame then that what started off as a very promising look into Paris’s most famous of bookstores quickly descended into one of the most self-indulgent memoirs I have ever read.

Jeremy Mercer is a Canadain journalist who after printing the name of someone he promised he wouldn’t name, did a runner one Christmas to Paris and ended up spending the next 9 months of his life living in the famous Shakespeare & Company bookshop. What did interest me was the fact that the shops owner, 86 year old George Whitman (an American) let anyone (usually with the claim of being a struggling writer) sleep in one of the many beds dotted around the shop, indefinitely. The backstory of how George came to be in Paris and how he came to set up the shop in the first place was intruiging (for about 50 pages). What confused me too was the fact that Mercer kept saying what a wonderful person George was, yet the way he portrayed him was as a rude, grumpy old man who perved after young girls 65 years younger than him! He also repeatedly talked about Georges wish for communism and how the world had it all wrong, yet he also seemed proud of the fact that the two of them would go to church sales to buy books for a few pence and then sell them on for a massive profit in his store. Infact, when one of the priests cottoned on to what they were doing, George had a physical fight with the priest over a book. Nice!

I am left feeling deflated and somewhat irritated by this book. Given the subject, I expected to fall in love with Paris over again through the book. While there were frequent references to getting drunk and telling stories by the river Seine, there was never a point where I felt that this was a magical city. The narrative was flat, it didn’t make me feel like I was there (which is always a sign of a well written book, in my opinion), in fact I didn’t even feel like Paris was somewhere I would want to revisit on the back of this book.

A self-indulgent, poorly executed excuse for a mediocre writer to cash in on his time spent living in a famous bookshop.

 

 
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