Swann's Way
Book
Marcel Proust's seven-volume masterpiece, In Search of Lost Time (A la recherche du temps perdu),...
An Argument for Same-sex Marriage: Religious Freedom, Sexual Freedom, and Public Expressions of Civic Equality
Book
The relationship between religious belief and sexuality as personal attributes exhibits some...
Rachel King (13 KP) rated Ash in Books
Feb 11, 2019
Hazel (1853 KP) rated Love Hurts in Books
Dec 17, 2018
Love Hurts is a young adult book containing several stories compiled together by the well-known Malorie Blackman. There are a few new short stories however most are extracts from pre-existing novels. The short stories are written by a variety of different authors such as Susie Day, Lauren Dockrill, Lauren Kate, Catherine Johnson and James Dawson. Many readers will be familiar with these authors as well as some of the books that the extracts are from, for example: More Than This, If I Stay, I Am The Messenger and Northern Lights.
The aim of this anthology is to explore what love means. Love is not a simple, straightforward concept. There is love lost and love found, bitter love and sweet love. Each story focuses on a different perspective. Some are about teenagers, some are about adults. Some are about homosexuality and others are not.
Love Hurts is an interesting concept and it is interesting to see different authors' understanding on the term "love". The biggest problem with this book however is due to most of the entries being snippets of other stories as it is often difficult to understand what was going on and who the characters were.
Another issue for me was I found some of the stories uninteresting and difficult to get into; and as they were short there was not a lot of time to appreciate the different concepts and styles of writing.
Although it would have been a challenge, it would have been better for all the stories to be brand new and unique. On he other hand, Malorie Blackman has done an excellent job at sourcing all the content.
Siegfried Sassoon: A Biography
Book
The life of Siegfried Sassoon has been recorded and interpreted in literature and film for over half...
The Night Ocean
Book
From the award-winning author and New Yorker contributor, a riveting novel about secrets and...
mystery thriller
Putting It On: The West End Theatre of Michael Codron
Michael Codron and Alan Strachan
Book
Michael Codron is undoubtedly the leading producer of postwar British theatre. Still active after an...
Truman Capote: A Literary Life at the Movies
Book
Truman Capote once remarked, "My primary thing is that I'm a prose writer. I don't think film is the...
Coming Around Again
Book
What happens when you meet the right woman at the wrong time? Against all reason, Karma and Jane are...
Lesbian Romance
Hazel (1853 KP) rated The Switch in Books
Aug 16, 2017
“Harmony welcomes it model citizens.” The Switch by Justina Robson takes place on a … planet? … space station? … named Harmony. Only perfect people are allowed to be part of society, which is bad news for orphans Nico and Twostar. No defects are allowed, including homosexuality, which puts the main characters in a dangerous situation. So, when they are offered a chance to escape, they leap at the chance without stopping to think about the consequences.
In order to be truly free, Nico has to have some form of artificial intelligence inserted into him. What he does not realise is that this will make him more trapped than he was before. Someone wishes to control him in order to find out information. Only when that task is fulfilled will he and his friend Two be free. Until then, Nico has to survive being sentenced to death for a murder he has no recollection of committing.
The Switch is a very complicated and confusing story. To be completely honest, I have no idea what happened in it. I got the vague gist of the story, which I have just summarised, but the rest of it went straight over my head. It all seems to be about artificial intelligence versus some weird religion … I think. Genetic engineering appears to be some kind of theme, too, although I may be wrong. One thing that definitely features in the story is violence; too much violence.
Hand in hand with the violence is filthy language. There is far too much swearing that it becomes meaningless and comes across as a lack of vocabulary on the author’s part.
It is hard to review a book that you do not understand. Either it is written really badly or my brain is not wired in the right way to understand all the sci-fi language and ideas.