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Midnight Sun (Twilight, #5)
Midnight Sun (Twilight, #5)
Stephenie Meyer | 2020 | Science Fiction/Fantasy, Young Adult (YA)
9
7.2 (6 Ratings)
Book Rating
Maturer writing style (0 more)
Chapter lengths (0 more)
Twiliked it a lot
Four days after beginning this epic journey reliving my very early 20s it came to a close this evening after 759 pages...

Fans of The Twilight Saga will know this story well, but the retelling from the POV of Edward, is actually very eye opening.

Previous works by Meyer were rough around the edges, and not very polished, the language used not conveying the nature of such a largely followed saga... Midnight Sun is very well written, the language and style more mature. However I did find that there were too many pages per chapter, thus making “breaktimes” seem too far off...

I enjoyed the novel humanising the Cullen clan a little more, whilst still showing off their obvious vampiric differences! Not to mention being inside the head of someone who is typically in everyone else’s heads...
  
The Silence of Scheherazade
The Silence of Scheherazade
Defne Suman | 2021 | Contemporary, Fiction & Poetry
10
10.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
What’s it about:
We follow four families as their lives are changed forever when the Ottoman Empire is torn apart, and the city of Smyrna is at the front and centre of the trouble and violence.
This novel covers about 17 years from 1905, and follows four families from very different backgrounds: Levantine, Greek, Turkish and Armenian.

Scheherazade is born in September 1905, and never knows her mother as she is abandoned. An Indian spy (sent from the British) is who will tie them all together.

My thoughts:
I love an epic, sprawling story, and following the lives of four families certainly gives a lot of scope for that.

It was fascinating to learn about the different cultures of the four families, and of course Smyrna was a main character in itself.

It’s a book to be immersed in, with the sights and smells beautifully described.

Just my kind of book!
  
Dunkirk (2017)
Dunkirk (2017)
2017 | Action, History, War
Cinematography (6 more)
Story line/lines (merge)
An excellent cast.
Hans Zimmer's score
Minimalistic dialogue
Spitfires (aerial combat scenes)
Fionn Whitehead, Mark Rylance & Tom Hardy (being cool) .
A minor negative that due to the lack of back story. I believe knowledge of the historical event would be beneficial. (0 more)
Powerful & Immense
This is one hell of a film. It's an epic, all consuming, continually intensifying beast of a movie. The cinematography blew me away with those great big expansive shots. The 3 storyline amalgamation and the timescale structure of this, was superb in my opinion. Each lead in each storyline gave a powerful performance without the overuse of dialogue. Hans Zimmer's score built and built until, at times I felt like I was about to explode. I did feel that I enjoyed the film all the more because I was aware of the situation historically, there is a brief explanation early on but, I would advise anyone who's not aware, to read up a little on the massive scale of this evacuation, the uniqueness of the situation and the dangerous time it was for all involved. Overall, it's a must see at the cinema and to get the best of the sound and those beautiful aerial Spitfire vs Messerschmitt scenes, in Imax if possible.
  
One Hundred Years of Solitude
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel García Márquez, Gregory Rabassa | 2000 | Fiction & Poetry
6
8.5 (11 Ratings)
Book Rating
Weird and a little overrated
I thought this book was more of a historical epic, and although it's based around the history of one family, I hadn't expected the deep fantasy elements throughout the story.

To begin with this book was a revelation - it was weird and wonderful, entertaining and a little bit bonkers. However this for me could only keep me going so far. Around 2/3 of the way through I started to get a little bit bored and getting through the remainder of the book was such a drag. The book has a sort of dreamlike quality to it and the plot and narrative moves and jumps around quite a lot and it did become a little difficult to follow. It wasn't helped by the fact that nearly all characters had different variations of the same 3 names, so it was a massive issue trying to remember which person was being spoken about. The characters themselves were also fairly unlikable and you can only read for so long when you don't like the characters.

It's an interesting story and a very unusual plot and writing style, but I just wish it had been at the very least a little shorter. Not one I'd read again.