What's Up Wednesday

What's Up Wednesday is a super-awesome-cool-fun blog hop created by Jaime and Erin to help writers keep in touch with each other. If you want to take part, head over to either of their pages to check it out!

What I'm Reading
I'm currently reading While We Run which I'm LOVING! It's the sequel to When We Wake which was also excellent. I really love the Karen Healey's writing style and the story is so real and so possible... it just reels me in.

What I'm Writing
As I mentioned on my post on Monday I'm taking a bit of time away from my WIP now that I've finished my first revision while I wait for feedback. It's a little nerve wracking! In the meantime I'm playing with a few tentative ideas for my next book which is quite exciting but that's very much in the early early stages!

What Inspires Me Right Now
To be honest I'm not particularly inspired right now. I want to say exactly what I said last week, as what is inspiring me at the very minimum would be the summer weather and getting out of London City. The thing is, I read the news and everyday it's like a punch in the gut. The Malaysian Air disaster, the Palestine troubles, the problems in Gaza... what is the state of the world?! Where has humanity gone? How can a human look in the eyes of an innocent child and put a bullet into his head? How can a human detonate a bomb on a beach where there are children playing, or shoot down a plane without knowing for sure that it's the intended target? It breaks my heart to see this and in the last week in particular I've really been struggling. My Facebook newsfeed is likes doomsday. All the fighting, all the hatred... and then I get sad about the animal cruelty that's alive and well around the world. My newsfeed is filled with awful pictures of poor elephants, leopards, lions, rhinos.... beautiful creatures shot and killed by poachers who want to make money at the expense of a life. Baby animals left orphaned and ill when their parents are so heartlessly taken from them. Circus animals being whipped and chained.... the last remaining captive polar bear in Argentina who is sick and struggling in the completely inappropriate conditions. I'm finding it really hard to find inspiration around me when we're just dragging the world and all inhabitants down with us. It breaks my heart the amount of pain and suffering that's going on at the moment... *rant*. So that's uninspiring, although the people who are stepping up and doing something about it are really inspiring so I guess that's something!


What Else Have I Been Up To?
I've been going to so many job interviews. And they're no easy. One of them was three and a half hours long, another involved a presentation, another felt like I was being interrogated! It's soul destroying but something will come of it. Then I get really rude recruiters who find my CV online and call me about jobs .... they could at least be a little bit nice when they call!

Aside from that Jesse and I have been taking a few day trips. We went out to Brighton on a very hot sunny day which was really lovely. I got sunburnt, we ate fish and chips by the beach and listened to the waves crash on the shore. It's a pebble beach which is crappy but I didn't care enough... it was just so nice to be by the ocean again. I should move to Brighton. I really loved it out there. I really don't think I'm a big city girl. That fact is starting to really sink in! I should've forged a career around something that allows me to live in a sleepy town within easy reach of a bigger city. Maybe if my dreams come true and I get a book deal I might be able to do that....! We also went to the Museum of London which is really interesting, lots of information there about the development of the city, and we went to the Old Spitafields Market which was nice.

Yesterday we checked out Highgate Cemetery which was creepy and beautiful at the same time and had a lovely lunch at Kenwood House - the house from the film Belle if you've seen that (great movie!) and we walked around Hampstead Heath which was nice! It's nice getting out of our tiny little studio room for a while! You can go a bit stir crazy in here!!

We also went to see The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. I didn't particularly enjoy the stage version to be honest.... it felt very.... slow and uninteresting, but others love it I'm sure! This week we're heading to see Skylight which has Bill Nighy and Carrie Mulligan! Very excited about that! How's your weeks going? :)

Review: The Book Thief

The Book Thief
Written By: Markus Zusak
Published By: Picador (Australia), Knopf (USA)

Published On: March 14, 2006

Pages: 576

It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. . . .

Set during World War II in Germany, Markus Zusak’s groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau.

This is an unforgettable story about the ability of books to feed the soul.

It's been a couple of months since I read The Book Thief, and I've mentioned before how much I enjoyed it, so I thought I might as well write a review on it. 

There are many different covers out and about for this particular book but the image I've chosen here is the cover on the book that I own. I feel that it really represents the story. Death, the narrator, standing alone in a frozen almost dead forest. Then of course the splatter of blood. The mark of war. It's a very thought provoking image if you really look into it, and I'm sure English classes all over the world have a field day pulling it to pieces. (I used to hate that part of english.)

I had been recommended this book to read by so many people for the last two years. I had been roaring through my books at such a fast pace and I thought this would be the same. Not so. 

Firstly, the writing style is very different to everything else I'd been reading. It's narrated by death, so of course it's a different reading experience. You're not hearing about the story from someone who is actually in the action, you're hearing about it from someone who is on the outside, looking in. 

Secondly... you read the plot synopsis. You know it's set in WWII, and you know at some point during the book she'll be a part of hiding a Jewish man in her basement. The content of this book is heavy. There are no restrictions on who may die and who may live. Who may be sent to the war front and who may be beaten to a pulp in front of all the other characters. 

There are of course funny moments, charming moment and sweet moments. But it's a difficult book to read. That being said, it's very rewarding. It's a great story, very powerful and very serious. I love the occasional book like this but you really have to be in the right mind frame to read it. I should issue some form of warning. By the end of the book your heart may be broken.

Otherwise, it's a very thought provoking and well written novel. I would certainly recommend it, but you probably have to be into the darker, heavier books.

I give The Book Thief 5 stars.