Yummy…

My sister gave me this out of the blue and because I’d had no previous interest in Japan or geisha I thought I wouldn’t like it. But by George I was wrong.

I’d intended only to have a flick through and see what it was like. Three sentences in. Three paragraphs in. Three pages in… I didn’t stop reading until 3 days later and I’d finished it. I had actually had plans that day I’m sure, but they were stalled. The moment I opened that book, I sat down on the seat by the window and didn’t move for the rest of the day.

Brilliant book and the movie is also brilliant.

It’s a bit weird, but quite unique and interesting – give it a go.

A bit cheesy, but all good fun… better then the last few years have been.

Find the yellow secret about the person who accidentally poisoned their dog and apologised. I can only imagine the pain and guilt they must feel and it makes me very tearful all the time.

I love this book, just looking through it and realising that you know, whatever ‘issues’ I have are nothing compared to some.

I felt this kinda ruined the series for me. The Bronze Horseman was good, emotive – powerful. Tatiana and Alexander turned a desperately sad ending into a happy ending, which I didn’t mind.

This – this book contained nothing. All that happens is that they have sex, they argue a lot, they bring up their child and they move about etc. Maybe something happens, but 200-300 pages in I never found it!

This book was the first in the series I read and despite this it did actually stand pretty well on its own, though I recommend reading the others first of course.

My second DWJ book, equally obsessed. Read it a hundred times and one of my favourites.

This was my first Diana Wynne Jones book and I’ve been obsessed ever since, even though I didn’t actually start reading the rest until I was much older.

I first found this book when I was about 9 in the school library and I don’t know how many times I’ve read it since. I found it in my secondary school library too and read it and read it and read it and read it.

Since joining Amazon, I bought a lot of her books because they didn’t really seem to appear in the local bookshop most annoyingly and Amazon is a great way of finding out what books are like rather then ordering them in via bookshops.

I’ve been a fan of hers for so long. I love Dogsbody still and count it among my favourite ever books. I don’t know why, it’s a good book, very good book and perhaps she has written better. But it captured my imagination as a kid and despite having read it a hundred times, it still captures it now.

The characters I found wooden, and looking through another book of his his style of writing is very much the same – he writes as if he has a pole stuck up his rear end to put it bluntly.

The ‘mystery’ I found was pathetic. I do not know how it received an award for fantasy/sci-fi because it barely featured! The end wasn’t clever, it was a cop out and completely predictable. Not interesting at all.

Maybe it will make a better movie, I have yet to see it. The book however, was not as clever as people make it out to be. It is just a little story about two wooden magicians who hate each other and then as the story starts to drag the author injects some fantasy into it, as if he’s run out of real ideas.

Beautiful language, beautiful writing, but not much of a story – a bit fluffy I thought.