Quote of the Day

"The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible"

Vladimir Nabokov

Sorry i've not been blogging lately but i've been crazy busy and will be till the end of the weekend. But don't worry...you'll hear all about it very soon! Watch out for up and coming blogs as well as the next book review: Nation by Terry Pratchett. Have a good weekend!

Quote of the Day

"Writing is about culture and should be about everything. That's what makes it what it is."

Irvine Welsh

Quote of the Day

"An original idea. That can't be too hard. The library must be full of them."

Stephen Fry 

How life in a book shop should be (one of my fave shows ever)

Quote of the Day

"I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works." 

Oscar Wilde

           

My First Book Review!

Ok so here we start, the first book review! I just finished reading the novel On Green Dolphin Street by Sebastian Faulks. I had previously read his novel Birdsong, which I highly recommend by the way, a fantastic World War One novel. I loved it so thought I'd try something else of his. Unfortunately, this book was nowhere near as interesting and riveting as that was.

It is the story of a married English couple that live in Washington DC at the end of the 1950's, at the time of JFK's campaign for presidency. The story follows their marriage, world politics, adultery and family life amidst a world of jazz, alcohol and Diplomat parties.

Now from this, the novel sounds somewhat interesting, a potential tasty read, which is why I chose to read it. However in actuality, the story is quite slow, veers off onto various political stories from different characters' pasts and doesn't really have much of a storyline. It is more of a book that contemplates the general situation of 1959, both politically and domestically. For a lot of the book, I found my mind wandering and wishing I'd reached the end already.

Faulks is a talented writer and certainly does his research to create a realistic portrayal of the time period but unfortunately, I did find it rather mundane. Interestingly, the last couple of chapters really intrigued me and I found myself really enjoying following the story as the pace picked up and you invest in the characters, it's just a shame I didn't feel that until the end of the story.
Some of the political situations Faulks considers is really interesting and I enjoyed, such as racism of the southern states and the unfairness of the legal system for black people. This only dominated a few pages of the book however, and it was primarily focused on the race between Nixon and Kennedy and how that time was for the people 'behind the scenes' of the campaign. Overall, I wouldn't particularly recommend this book but I wouldn't write it off completely either, it just didn't flow particularly well for me and left me a bit disinterested.

Personal Rating: 5/10

It's A Book - By Lane Smith