HUGE Charity Shop Book Haul

Hello my lovely human beings! Today I went shopping with my nan, more specifically a charity shop. For those who don’t know I am a charity shop junkie! I would say 90% of my clothes are second hand, be that from charity shops, vintage fairs or even just hand-me-downs from my nan and auntie. I rarely shop in the high street however when I do, the only shop I usually buy clothes from is Primark.

Another advantage of charity shopping is buying cheap books! I think charity shops are amazing for this because you often find books you never even knew existed and the content is the same as if you were buying it from a high street book store! Today I picked up NINE new books for the bargain price of £1. Yes, that’s right, £1!! So I thought that because this is such a large amount, which vary in genre, I would share them with you here.

1) Intimate Kisses edited by Wendy Maltz

Wendy Maltz is a sex therapist who has compiled a collection of poems about different forms of sexual pleasure, ranging from the feelings of anticipation and desire to the afterglow and everything in between. From having a peek at a few of the shorter poems I can sense how some are more metaphorical whilst others are very exact and erotic. The reason I purchased this collection is because I think that sexual emotions are one of the hardest things to write, most sex scenes I’ve read in novels are either overly cheesy or incredibly awkward to read, so I was interested to see if this book differs from the norm.

2) You Had Me At Hello by Mhairi McFarlane

I’ve seen this book everywhere over the past year and I’ve read the synopsis multiple times however, for some reason, never picked it up. Until today! This seems like a very feminine, beach read all about boy meets girl! It’s something I will enjoy reading without having to work my brain too much and I can have a bit of a giggle whilst doing so. This is the kind of book is get through quickly so maybe you’ll see a review on my blog shortly!

3) The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford

I picked up this book solely because I am attempting to read more classics and the Wordsworth Classics collection usually has some great classic novels which are really fun to read. This also doesn’t look too long so is definitely a great way to read a nice, easy classic. It’s also set before the First World War which is a era I really enjoy learning and reading about!

4) The Woman Who Went To Bed For A Year by Sue Townsend

Again, this is another novel I have been meaning to get for quite some time, but never got around to. This also appears to be a funny, girly book. The title also intrigues me, you have to admit that a women refusing to get out of bed for an entire year is amusing! Sounds like my dream! I’ve heard amazing things about Sue Townsend as well so I will now be able to judge for myself.

5) To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

This is a book that I already own, and have read! It’s one of my favourite classic novels and I am definitely due for a re-read, however when I was purchasing my initial copy I was stuck between two covers, which were both beautiful. I opted for the other one however have always loved this cover too, so when I saw it so cheap and in such good condition, I couldn’t resist! I definitely recommend To Kill A Mockingbird to anybody! Such a good book!

6) Mary Poppins Comes Back by P.L. Travers

Most people will know that I am a Disney fanatic and Mary Poppins is one of my all time favourite films (Julie Andrews is just the queen of musicals!) so when Saving Mr Banks came out last year I went to see it immediately and it’s just phenomenal. However watching the film did make me more interested in P.L. Travers herself and I did a lot of reading up about her and watched some documentaries which were really interesting! I have wanted to read her Mary Poppins books ever since so when I saw this in the shop I had to grab it. I am aware that it is the sequel and I will have to buy the original book first but still a great purchase!

7) On Beauty by Zadie Smith

I barely know anything about this book, I have seen it in a few YouTube book hauls and have always thought that the cover was really pretty and well designed. I know you should never judge a book by it’s cover but I have to admit that I did with this book! Even if I don’t like the story, which I’m sure I will, it will look great on my bookshelf!

8) Winnie-The-Pooh by A.A. Milne

Again, I love Winnie-The-Pooh but have only ever seen the Disney movies so I would love to read some of the original stories. I am also starting to read a lot more children’s books that I missed out on when I was a child myself because I find that many of them are very suitable for adults as well and really don’t take very long to read! They take you back to a time when you were innocent and your imagination was limitless so I get a lot of pleasure from reading them.

9) The Fry Chronicles by Stephen Fry

Stephen Fry is somebody who I have limited knowledge of however when I have seen him in interviews and debates and so on, he appears to be thoroughly amusing and I agree with a lot of what he stands for so I decided that purchasing this book would give my an insight into his life because I would really like to learn more about such an amazing British icon.

So there we have it! All nine of the books I bought today! Please leave a comment letting me know if you’ve read any of them and what you thought of it (but no spoilers please!) and I will get back to you!

Thanks for reading,
Toodles!

30 Day Blog Challenge | Post #12

Post #12: Bullet point your day

Okay so technically this post should have been up yesterday but I got drunk and stayed at a friends house (which will be explained in greater detail in the bullet points) so this is actually a list of what I did yesterday. Let the bullet points commence!

• Woke up and went downstairs
• Had a conversation with family about university
• Showed dad an epic YouTube video
• Got a glass of orange juice
• Went back to bed
• Watched Bewitched in bed
• Got back up
• Had a bath
• Dad cooked me burgers for lunch
• Went upstairs and got dressed
• Did make-up
• Got in car to go to the lake to walk dog
• Arrived at lake
• Threw bread at some un-hungry ducks
• Talked to a man painting the ducks
• Went to the lakeside cafe
• Sat outside and ate cake
• Walked the dog around the lake
• Helped a little girl who had injured her toe
• Got back in car to go home
• Arrived home
• Dog escaped so looked after Daniel while mum looked for her
• Mum returned with dog
• Sat on the sofa and read for 2 hours (Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell)
• Got in car to go see Spring Awakening the musical
• Got McDonalds on the way
• Got stuck in traffic
• Arrived at theatre 5 minutes late
• Watched Spring Awakening (very good!)
• Decided to go to the pub with friends
• Walked to the pub
• Ordered reasonably priced cocktail pitcher (Purple Rain)
• Bartender gave me a glass, I said I would just drink it from the jug
• Sat outside with friends and chatted
• Decided to stay out all night
• Walked to my friend’s friend’s house because my friend needed something she left there
• Had a wee in this persons toilet (yes it was weird)
• Walked back into town
• Withdrew money
• Went to a club
• Sat outside drinking and playing “never have I ever”
• Walked to McDonalds
• Bought a burger for a homeless man
• Got a taxi back to friends house (we failed staying out all night)
• Arrived at friends house
• Watched Scrubs
• Set alarm
• Went to sleep

So this was my day yesterday, however I must stress that it was not an average day. Any person looking at this would think “wow she does a lot with her life!” This is not true, an average day for me would be watching TV pretty much all day. Yesterday was just a rare glimmer of light!

I also don’t tend to have 2 McDonalds per day but… well I was drunk! I made unhealthy choices! Shoot me!

Anyway I hope this was somewhat interesting to read and I will see you guys tomorrow!
Toodles!

The Help | Book/Movie Review & Comparison

The Help by Kathryn Stockett has been on my “to-read” list since I purchased it last year. Similarly I have been dying to watch the film but I wouldn’t do this until I had read the book and with my compulsory college reading (and a million other books on my list), I simply haven’t got around to it. Until now!

I did my final exam last week so now I am free to enjoy my summer! A few summer projects I have going on at the moment are learning French, attempting to write a novel, and of course, maintaining my blog for you guys! But alongside all of these projects I have been trying to keep up with my 50 books challenge (www.goodreads.com) and my most recent book in this challenge was The Help. This book took me about five days to read and as soon as I finished I lent the DVD of the film adaptation from a friend so that I could do a review and comparison whilst the book was still fresh in my memory. Now the way I’m going to do this is the way I find easiest for myself and also the way I think you guys will find easiest which is to review the book first on it’s own and then do the movie review and comparison after. (If you don’t like this way then leave a comment and I will bear this in mind the next time I do a comparison post). So, without further ado, here is my The Help book/movie review and comparison…

Book: The Help, written by Kathryn Stockett
Published in 2009

Before I make any in-depth analysis or intelligent comments about this book can I first say, wow.
Wow, wow, wow.
This book was incredible. It’s fairly long (about 470 pages) however I felt that the pace didn’t drag and as there was so much information crammed into this novel I think Stockett did a great job of taking her time and keeping the speed of the book appropriate to the story line and plot. It was the length/speed of this book that made me fear the movie because Stockett pays such attention to detail and I knew that in a film this would be almost impossible to match. The story is told from the perspective of three different women, Aibileen, Minny and Skeeter and is set in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960’s. Aibileen and Minny are both black house-maids to white families and Skeeter is a white woman attempting to become a writer who is also friends with the women Aibileen and Minny work for. The book’s main theme is racial culture and the issue of racism and segregation in parts of America at the time. The book’s chapters alternate between the three women throughout the story and I was always sad to come to the end of one of the women’s chapters however equally thrilled to be re-joining another character at the same time.

My favourite character was, without a doubt, Skeeter who I completely related to on every level, from the love of writing and hate of discrimination to the friction between her and her mother and their love/hate relationship. I got so caught up in the story and the racism that whenever I read one of Skeeter’s chapters it was like a breath of fresh air and my brain could relax for a while.
I loved Aibileen and Minny but in completely contrasting ways. I think I warmed to Aibileen a lot more throughout the book so by the end I felt more emotionally attached to her character whereas Minny I just found hilarious from the start but throughout the story she began to, excuse my language, piss me off a bit at times. Not because she is a dislikeable character but the way she has been treated by white people has clearly left her with trust issues which put strain on her relationship with her boss, Celia Foote, and at times I wanted to scream into the book, “just let her be nice to you!”.
Speaking of Celia, she was probably my other favourite character aside from Skeeter. She is such a naive yet adorable woman who clearly just wants to do right by everybody, Minny, her husband, the other ladies in town. I bonded with Celia’s character almost instantly and I felt sort of protective over her. Minny calls her a “fool” and I completely agree, she is so caught up in her own world that she cannot see how society functions and what her “place” is in it which results in her feeling lonely and not good enough. I felt so sorry for her but at the same time thought she was a really open and charming character with a lot of guts.

My one complaint is that I figured out what the “Terrible Awful” was about halfway through the book and it seemed slightly predictable to me. This doesn’t mean that I didn’t find it hilarious or genius, because I did, I just thought that it was strung out a little too long which meant I figured it out sooner than I should have. If you experienced this too please let me know in the comments as I would like to know if it was a general thing or just me!

Overall I found this book to be well-written, though-provoking and insightful and I am pleased to say I give The Help by Kathryn Stockett a 5/5! Will hopefully re-read this in the future!

Movie: The Help, directed by Tate Taylor
Released in 2011

I mentioned in the book review that I was concerned that this film would not contain all of the information that was in the book and to be frank, it doesn’t. How could it when the book has over 450 pages and all that had to be crammed into a 140 minute movie? That being said, the film was a really faithful adaptation and it got in a lot more of the detail than I thought it would so, well done Tate Taylor! I enjoyed this film so much I didn’t want it to end, (I already have plans to watch it again with my mother tomorrow!), and I actually cried in two separate scenes whereas I didn’t cry reading the book at all!

Firstly though, the casting. I think casting is so important when filming a movie based on a novel because when you read you build up an image of the character in your head and, of course it is impossible to completely match that so you need to make the film character EVEN BETTER.
Now, this is probably completely biased as I have a massive girl crush on Emma Stone but, oh, my, God. Her performance as Skeeter was so amazing, seriously close to how I pictured her when reading and just generally so talented, beautiful, funny… (Did I over fangirl there?). But in all seriousness, I thought she played the part amazingly and the scenes between her and Allison Janney who played her mother were truly funny and actually led to me liking the character of Charlotte Phelan because I really didn’t in the book. Another character who gave me a nice surprise was Constantine, played by Cicely Tyson, who I didn’t really connect with in the book but in the film made me cry like a baby.
A character who disappointed me was Celia, played by Jessica Chastain, who as I have mentioned, was one of my favourite characters in the book. Jessica’s acting was great, I just felt like I was watching a completely different character to the one I had read in the novel. I felt that whilst Celia in the book came across as vulnerable and ditzy, Celia in the film was more brash and overbearing. It doesn’t help that a large section of her story from the book was left out, which is what made me warm to her when I read it.
Another character who wasn’t like I read her in the book was Hilly Holbrook, acted by Bryce Dallas Howard. In the book I read Hilly as quite a sophisticated yet bitchy woman however in the movie she played up the the “teen drama” element and had a touch of “Regina George” about her which I actually think worked really well and I was pleasantly surprised by this.

The costumes and the set was all excellent, I especially loved the women’s beautiful 1960’s dresses which came in stunning colours and looked beautiful on screen. The hairdo’s (a big part of 60’s fashion culture) were all gorgeous and it all looked fantastic.

Overall I really did love this movie. I thought it was true to the story and was performed brilliantly by all the actors and actresses involved. To be honest, if I had watched this film without reading the book I would have easily given it 5/5 however as this is a comparison I am going to give it a very close 4.5/5 and I recommend this film to anybody who has read the book!

 

Have you read or watched The Help and if so what are your thoughts? Please feel free to leave them in the comments and we’ll have a discussion!

Toodles!

Book Snobs

I have a confession. I, Laura Clarke, used to be a book snob. “What’s a book snob?” I hear you ask. Well, a book snob is somebody who considers books to have more value than television to an extent where they believe they, as book readers, are more intelligent than people who enjoy television over reading.

As much as I love the book Matilda by Roald Dahl (and the 1996 film adaptation starring Mara Wilson) it is a classic example of book snobbery. As an avid reader, Matilda is presented as an intelligent individual, way ahead of her years, whilst her parents who do not read but watch copious amounts of television are portrayed as stupid and ignorant. Another example of Roald Dahl’s work that this appears in is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in which Mike Teavee is criticised for watching the “shocking ghastly junk” and his parents being begged to “go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install, a lovely bookshelf on the wall”.

Now don’t get me wrong and think I’m bashing reading. On the contrary, I believe that reading is a vital part of all children’s lives and being able to understand and appreciate great literature is something we carry with us to adulthood. Reading can improve our vocabulary, expand the mind and generally educate. However television can do this also.

I still consider myself to be more of a reader than a television watcher and as a child there wasn’t a waking moment where my nose wasn’t buried in a book. I also watched TV however I would choose a trip to the local bookshop over sitting in front of the television any day. When I moved on to high school I noticed how the majority of kids my age “couldn’t be bothered” to read and considered it “uncool” however you were barely in the canteen for a second before you heard somebody bring up a TV show. During break times at high school I would quite happily sit on a wall and submerge in a book as opposed to talking to other people and for this I was bullied. The amount of times my books were stolen, tossed around, rubbed in the dirt, shoved down boys pants and even ripped up was atrocious and I think this definitely contributed to my book snobbery. If this was the way “book-haters” behaved then they were obviously stupider than I was, right? I stopped really watching television much and focused on reading as much as I could.

However, in the past year I have discovered television and movies again and the intoxicating effect they have on me. This began when I was introduced to the BBC show Sherlock. Never before had I enjoyed a television show more than reading a book and I was surprised and delighted that I had found a new hobby. Since then watching television has become a big part of my life, however in no way affecting how much I read.

I think that cutting yourself off from either form of entertainment is limiting, and striking the right balance between books and TV can allow you to enjoy two different forms of story telling, one textual and one visual. Imagination will not be killed just because our children are growing up in the age of television and cinema, in fact watching Sherlock has influenced me to start reading the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and similarly after reading a great book I now seek out the movie adaptation to compare them. An example of a situation where I enjoyed the movie more than the novel is “The Perks of Being A Wallflower”. Books and television can work together in a harmonious relationship, provided we readers do not give in to book snobbery and appreciate that television watchers are no less intelligent than yourself.

Enjoy your books. Enjoy your TV.
See you next time.

“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”
– Philip Pullman