I Know You Judge a Book By Its Cover.

    

   

     Ever since I was a small child it has been drilled into me that you must never judge anything on appearance alone; places, people and most importantly of all – books. No matter what picture happens to be on the front or what title is written down the spine – you must never judge a book by its cover.

   

         However, as much as this phrase had been force fed to me over the years, I still haven’t quite absorbed it. As I walk through Waterstones on a lazy Sunday afternoon my eyes fly restlessly around the room, searching for a place to land. I skim over the dull looking books sporting grey or black dust jackets, barely giving them a second glance before I move on. I finally settle on a bright red book decorated with white sparrows that stands in a crowd of navy and dark purple – ‘Ketchup Clouds’ by Annabel Pitcher. I read the blurb with a smile; it is exactly the kind of book I want to buy. I am guilty, but I enjoy it immensely.

   

         This is almost always my tactic when book shopping and it has not failed me yet. Unless a friend has particularly recommended something, I will not pick up a book that doesn’t catch my eye. I have betrayed the golden rule of reading. But I am not sorry. When you think about it, there is no other way to shop for books. When in a bookshop you are faced with the mammoth task of deciding which book you will buy out of the hundreds in the room. Yes, you could pick each book up and read them one by one until you find the few that you like, but that could take hours for only one section of the shop.

     

       You can’t pick up everything, so how do you decide what to focus your attention on without looking at the cover of the book? You don’t. The most efficient way to find something you like is to search for the colours you like. We pick up the bright ones because they are the ones with the most obvious advertising. And as much as you may not want to hear it – the system works.  

  

          I have found, during my many Waterstones adventures, that the authors of the kind of books I fall in love with are also the authors who print books with bright, eye-catching covers. Now, this may just as easily be because the books I tend to buy are the ones with colourful covers. All I know is that my favourite bookshelf is a violently beautiful mess of reds and oranges and blues.

           However, despite my tendency towards book cover racism, I still remain open to just about everything. Though when buying books I’m more likely to pick up the books with a spine of neon yellow, this is because they are the most obvious. I still remain opinion-less about all books until I have read them – I just get a little bit more excited for the pretty ones. I firmly believe that the colour of the cover does not affect the quality of the content inside.

     

       I don’t think there is anything wrong with being charmed by illustration or vibrancy. We as humans are practically programmed to enjoy pretty things from the get-go. That does not exclude books. So what if I would prefer to buy the bright blue copy of ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ as opposed to the movie edition?! That doesn’t mean that my enjoyment of the story differs between the two styles. All it means is that I might just quite enjoy the colour blue. Is that really so bad?

  

          I know this is not a popular opinion. I understand why we must never use this theory on people, but why not judge books by their covers?  We all have preferences and interests. Even the most self-righteous readers are prone to ‘accidentally’ forgetting to consider the beige book in the top corner of the shelf. We all do it without even thinking. Really, we’re all a little bit book-cover-racist.  And I say that that is okay.

            

Rainbow List of Must-Reads: Pink - Anna and the French Kiss

This is the Rainbow List of Must-Reads: Where I review a different one of my favourite books each week! last on our list we have a pink book with a pink cover:

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

            It was one in the morning on a school night and I was lying restless on my bed with a throbbing ache in my heart. ‘Anna and the French Kiss’ lay open on the pillow beside me, spine still stiff from the bookshop that day. As I lay sighing at the ceiling, there was only one thing occupying my mind.

           Étienne St. Clair.

           I was in love. Really in love. I was in love with someone who I had only ever seen in my imagination; who only actually existed on paper. I longed to pull Etienne out from the pages of ‘Anna and the French Kiss’ and into my own comparably boring world. This just wasn’t fair! Why are the hot boys always fictitious?!

            ‘Anna and the French Kiss’ had truly slayed me. Never before had I felt such an ache of yearning when reading a romance novel (and trust me – I’ve read a lot of them). But what was it that made this book so perfect? Let’s analyse shall we?

           The Setup: The story follows Anna Oliphant as she is unwillingly pulled from her happy life in Atlanta to go and attend her final year at a prestigious boarding school in Paris. First off – Paris: The city of love. We’ve not even started the book yet and already our heart is melting a little bit. Romantic things just seem to happen in Paris. Maybe it’s the language? You could describe a particularly bad case of athlete’s foot in French and I’d still want you to kiss me under the twinkling lights of the Eiffel Tower. Whatever it is, as soon as Perkins so much as mentioned Paris, I was drawn like a moth to a flame.

            The Boy: Of course it wouldn’t be Paris if there weren’t a few good-looking chaps floating about, now would it? You simply cannot have one without the other. Our boy takes form as Étienne St. Clair. I’m not sure how she did it, but Perkins somehow manages not only to wedge a French boy into an American boarding school, but give said boy a gorgeous British accent as well. Étienne was the perfect mix of cheek, chivalry and charm, (not to mention, fantastic hair) but somehow didn’t come across as over-the-top or arrogant. Despite being otherwise engaged with long-running girlfriend, Ellie, St. Clair was a love interest you could really lust over, making the rest of the book a tantalizingly tasty read.

            The girl: I am a massive fan of teen romance fiction, but usually when I pick up these sorts of books I find the female narrative a little… irritating. Seemingly as some kind of rule the girls who star in these books are self-involved, shallow and little bit too obsessive – I expected a similar situation with ‘Anna and the French Kiss’. However, I was pleasantly surprised. Not only did Anna give a likable and interesting narrative to the book, but she also managed to break every single one of the rule I just stated. Anna cared about her friends and her family back home; she was ready to put them before anything else in her life. As much as she lusted after Étienne St Clair, she also showed an interest in other boys and kept a constant and thriving film blog too.

Sure, maybe Anna fell for Étienne unrealistically fast and a few other details are slightly off, but this is romance fiction, people! It’s what we’re here for! We read this stuff because sometimes real life just isn’t exciting enough. If we start picking apart every detail in a romance novel that’s the slightest bit unrealistic then you might as well chuck the entirety of Waterstones’ teen romance section into a massive bonfire and go and buy a big fat history textbook instead.

The bottom line is if you don’t like romance novels; don’t read ‘Anna and the French Kiss’. It just won’t be for you. It is the most brilliantly, satisfyingly romantic novel I have ever had the pleasure of reading, and it isn’t pretending to be anything else. I regard ‘Anna and the French Kiss’ so highly that there were really no other contenders for the pink spot on this list. The book pushed me into a deep cavern of love and longing that I don’t think I’ll ever really climb out of. Not that I’d even want to try.

Find out more about Stephanie Perkins here!

You can read the other reviews in the Rainbow List of Must-Reads here: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple

Rainbow List of Must-Reads: Purple - Will Grayson, Will Grayson

This is the Rainbow List of Must-Reads: Where I review a different one of my favourite books each week! Sixth on our list we have a purple book with a purple cover:

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan

            As I lifted ‘Will Grayson, Will Grayson’ from the shelves of my local Waterstones, a strange sadness washed over me. Having just finished ‘An Abundance of Katherines’ (My favourite of his works) I had rushed to the shops to complete my Green collection – Now, I wished I had waited just a little bit longer. This was the last one of John Green’s books that I hadn’t read. This book would be the last time for a while that I would get the excited rush of reading something of his for the first time.          

For those of you who don’t know, ‘Will Grayson, Will Grayson ‘ is shared by two authors; with John Green writing the odd numbered chapters and David Levithan the even. It follows the story of two teenage boys; both named Will Grayson, living in different parts of Illinois. The issues that the two boys are faced with in their day-to-day lives cause their stories to intertwine one faithful night in Chicago outside a dirty looking sex shop.

    

        I slipped into the story of ‘Will Grayson, Will Grayson’ in the same way one would slip into a hot bath. I sighed with a mixture of bliss and relief as I sailed through the first chapter. I had gone to the bookshop in search of some sweet John Green familiarity and I was not disappointed.

Though in ‘Will Grayson, Will Grayson’ Green’s characters are somewhat different to what we have seen before (The book features the exuberant, extravagant and fantastically gay character of Tiny Cooper) the writing style is still easy, warm, satisfying and distinctly John Green.  It was exactly what  I came for, I was not disappointed. However, when I bought the book there was one rather large aspect of it that I had forgotten – co-writer, David Levithan.

After John Green’s smooth opening chapter, the switch in writers was a bit of a shock. Not only because Levithan has refused to any capital letters in his chapters whatsoever (something which took quite a bit of getting used to), but also because the two writer’s main characters have a strong and obvious contrast. While Green’s Will Grayson seems your typical awkward, ordinary teenage boy, hopelessly trying to fly under the radar of high school life, Levithan’s Will Grayson is an angry, angsty teenager with a severe case of depression, desperately clinging to his online relationship with another boy.

Levithan’s Will Grayson definitely wasn’t what I was expecting from a book with John Green’s name on it. But as I worked my way through the book I found myself savouring Levithan’s chapters a little more than Green’s. As much as I enjoyed Green’s Grayson’s side of the story, Levithan’s came as a refreshing change of pace, giving the book whole new dimensions.

The character development in ‘Will Grayson, Will Grayson’ is simply beautiful. Though initially I found both Will Graysons annoying and horrifically self-involved, as the book progressed I began to understand them and relate to them in ways I don’t usually with other books.

One of the reasons ‘Will Grayson, Will Grayson’ made such an impact on me was because the characters were imperfect - and that was okay. Often, teen fiction can undermine the emotions of young characters as instances of teenage angst rather than issues that should actually be recognised and dealt with. In ‘Will Grayson, Will Grayson’ the problems of the two main characters were indulged by the writers in a most satisfying way. The reader is taught that the dilemmas you are faced with as a teenager are equally as important as the ones you will face in your adulthood and can in fact affect you for the rest of your life.

          

   I loved ‘Will Grayson, Will Grayson’ because it is a book written by adults that finally manages to acknowledge that being a teenager is difficult, without seeming condescending in any way. And that it why I believe it deserves the purple spot on this list. 

You can find out more about John Green here!

You can find out more about David Levithan here!

You can read the other reviews in the Rainbow List of Must-Reads here: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue

Rainbow List of Must-Reads: Green - How To Be a Woman

This is the Rainbow List of Must-Reads: Where I review a different one of my favourite books each week! Fourth on our list we have a green book with a green cover:

How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran

    

        I’ve finally worked out what I want to be when I get older. When I grow up I want to be Caitlin Moran. She is my idol; the woman is wonderfully witty with a wicked sense of humour; she’s met countless of my favourite musicians and celebrities; she had this brilliant outlook on life; and she is the author of my current favourite book – ‘How to Be a Woman’

   

         Having read everything Waterstones’ Teen Fiction section had to offer, I was wandering round the shop in search of something to fill my empty holiday hours with. I’m generally reluctant to pick up fiction from the main adult section as in previous experiences the books I have picked up have been heavy, complicated or rife with sex scenes, but after a good twenty minutes of dragging my family around every section in the shop I realise that if I don’t pick something soon they would physically remove me from the building with no book with whatsoever.

  

         Taking Caitlin Moran’s ‘How to be a Woman’ off of the shelves I was a little bit apprehensive. I don’t usually read non-fiction, it’s never been something I really enjoyed, but as I rushed for time I remembered all the people who had recommended the book to me and decided that it was going to have to do.

  

          I opened the book as soon as I got home and within the first few chapters had fallen head-over-heels in love with it. I’ll admit menstruation and pubic hair aren’t usually the kind of topics that float my boat, but when Caitlin Moran spoke of her own experiences with them I found myself actually laughing out loud at the wonderful honesty.  She somehow manages to speak about them without making the reader feel uncomfortable. Moran is rude – but she isn’t disgusting.

  

          The theme of the book is feminism and woman’s issues. Usually a heavy topic tackled by the more fierce women and in a slightly aggressive tone, Moran manages to use light-hearted chat and humour to teach us women that really we should all call ourselves feminists – whether we like it or not. Moran teaches us that feminism isn’t really anything to do with man-hating or aggression – as is the stereotype – but more just basic common sense. In fact, Moran was so persuasive in her argument that I suddenly found myself standing on a chair yelling ‘I AM A FEMINIST!’ at my poor mum as if in a Moran-induced trance.

           Her charming way of taking the piss out of everything managed to change my mind on quite a few things actually. I will admit that I used to be slightly wary of Lady Gaga and her extravagant outfits, but after reading about Moran’s time in a sex club with the lady in question, I was playing ‘Bad Romance’ on repeat and googling pictures of the infamous meat dress.

I have even drawn a picture of the woman in question

The book is brilliant; I loved every bit of it. I honestly cannot fault it. There’s something quite relatable about Caitlin Moran. She’s impossibly cool and she’s led this amazing life talking to amazing people, but when reading the book you kind of feel like she’s just down the road and you could pop round for a cup of tea. She just seems so genuine.

The book uncovered this womanly pride in me that I never really knew was there. After reading ‘How to Be a Woman’ a woman seemed the very best thing that one could possibly be. Feminism no longer seemed like the angry, un-attractive thing that its stereotype once presented it as. With Caitlin Moran, if you’re a feminist, you pretty damn kickass!

Caitlin Moran is the kind of author I want to be my best friend for life and her book, ‘How to Be a Woman’ gave me this new kind of self-confidence I never really knew I was missing. There were really no other comparable candidates for this spot on the list.

You can find out more about Caitlin Moran here!

You can read the other reviews in the Rainbow List of Must-Reads here: Red, Orange, Yellow

Rainbow List of Must-Reads: Yellow - It's Kind of a Funny Story

This is the Rainbow List of Must-Reads: Where I review a different one of my favourite books each week! Third on our list we have a yellow book with a yellow cover:

It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini

           ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’ is a book I picked up in the teen fiction section last year as an interesting summer read. If I’m quite honest with myself one of the main reasons I lifted it off the shelf was because I absolutely loved the quirky cover-art and there was nothing on the blurb that I found entirely unappealing. When I finally got round to opening the book up a week later as I lounged lazily on my deck chair in my garden, I was met with a pleasantly unpleasant surprise.

  

          ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’ is not the kind of book you would usually find amongst the brightly coloured stories of the teen fiction section, to say the least. The book did not give me that bright and happy feeling I would usually get when reading something of such a high standard, but instead would leave me feeling low and foggy when I emerged from between its pages. This is because ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’ is about depression.

           Depression books don’t usually find their way to my shelf. In the general I find them overly-dramatic and clichéd with transparent plotlines. However, when reading this book I found I connected with the main character, Craig Gilner, in a big way. When Craig sits in his friend Aaron’s house, smoking pot, his brain hazing with misery I could feel my own mind cloud over. When he stands on the Brooklyn Bridge, crazed by an erratic sort of desperation, I felt painfully desperate as well.

  

          I won’t lie to you. ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’ is dark. Really dark. You follow Craig as the pressure from his prestigious school becomes unbearable and he spirals into a deep state of extreme self-loathing. The book is a brutally honest depiction of what depression is really like. Not glorified in the way of a dark romantic interest or cool like the troubled rock star, but a pure, raw, awful emotion. ‘It’s Kind of Funny Story’ is a book that finally shows depression as what it is – depressing.

           And how can we trust that Vizzini’s illustration of depression is not some exaggerated, over-the-top, version created for the sake of good fiction? How do we know that when Craig eventually finds himself in the adult ward of a psychiatric hospital that this isn’t just the psych ward of Vizzini’s imagination? We know because the author has experienced all this himself. ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’ is a memoir of Vizzini’s life. He has felt like this; gone through this; been to these places. Through Craig, Vizzini shows us his own experiences with depression. He has shown us how frightening and all-consuming depression really is.

           But he has also shown us that it can get better – and that I believe is the most important thing about ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’. Yes, in the first half of the book we are shown how trapped and lonely depression can make you feel, but in the second half we are shown that you are never truly alone. Only when Craig finally seeks help can he begin to climb back out of the dark pit that is his life. Only upon dealing with his feelings does he realise that every single reason he wanted to kill himself could be quite easily fixed. I believe that ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’ exists not only to acknowledge that there are people with these feelings in the world, but also to help these people break away from their lonely situation.

           Ned Vizzini dealt with a lot in his life. On December 19^th 2013, after an on-going struggle with depression, he committed suicide, leaving behind his wife and two-year-old child. When I read about Vizzini’s death it really hit home. Not only because his book was able to move me to tears, but because it made everything written inside ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’ all the more true. Because of Vizzini I will never undermine the feelings of anyone battling with depression. I will never see depression as anything other than unbearable, isolating and completely serious. Vizzini has more than earned his spot on this list, I only regret that I couldn’t honour him in a bigger way than this blog post.

            I opened ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story’ with a light heart and an empty head, and I close it knowing profoundly more about the world around me than I had before.   


You can find out more about Ned Vizzini here!
You can read the other reviews in the Rainbow List of Must-Reads here: Red, Orange

Rainbow List of Must-Reads: Orange - Selected Poems

 This is the Rainbow List of Must-Reads: Where I review a different one of my favourite books each week! Second on our list we have an orange book with an orange cover:

Selected Poems by Simon Armitage  

  At the beginning of last year I did not really understand poetry. Having only ever been exposed to the poems I was forced to study in English class – the colder, harder works of Carol Ann Duffy – I saw poetry as the indulgence of the thoughts of the more miserable, bitter beings among us. I just couldn’t connect with it. The fact that I was made to write critical essays on such texts probably didn’t help open my mind to the world of poetry. 

   

         On National Poetry Day last year my English teacher decided that before we would continue work on our prose essays that she would read us some poetry from a few of her favourite books. There was a low groan across the class as she opened a dull-looking book with the word ‘Duffy’ distinctly printed across the front. Just as expected, the poem my teacher proceeded to read was as cold and inappropriately self-righteous as all the ones before. I sank a little in my seat.

            When the poem was done my teacher put the book down and pulled a second out of her handbag. This book was bright and inviting and we all sat up a little straighter as she opened it on the middle page and began to read.

           What she read next was the most deliciously beautiful combination of words I have ever had the pleasure of listening to. It didn’t rhyme - I didn’t know poems could do that – and it wasn’t as self-aware as everything else I had heard. My teacher had a soft voice that was well-suited to reading aloud but I knew this poem would have sounded graceful on anyone’s tongue.

    

        That night, when I got home, I was unable to remember the title of the poem. I typed a few of the more distinctive lines into google and after a few quick clicks I had found it. ‘You’re Beautiful’ By Simon Armitage. I wrote it down in my notebook and read it again before I fell asleep.

That poem is what kindled my passionate love affair with poetry. For my birthday that year I asked my mum for anything she could find in Waterstones by Simon Armitage. ‘Selected Poems’ is what she bought me. With a bright orange cover, it is a hand-picked collection of a few poems from each of his books. I was elated to find that almost every poem in that book was a gorgeous as ‘You’re Beautiful’ – if not more. ‘To His Lost Lover’ is my favourite.

            Since then I have treated ‘Selected Poems’ as my comfort food of books. When I’m feeling particularly teenage and emotional I open it up and read them quietly to myself. I feel very deep when I do that.

     

       But now, Simon Armitage is not the only poet to take place on my bookshelves. Maya Angelou and Tanya Shirley now sit warmly on either side of him. I love ‘Selected Poems’ not only because it was the most beautiful book I had ever read, but also because it sent me venturing into a thick new jungle of similes and metaphors.

            I still hate to study poetry in class, but only because I think that’s not how poetry should be enjoyed. It was never really meant to be torn apart and scoured for symbolism, but instead read and (please forgive the cliché) felt. I will never like Carol Ann Duffy because I never got to read her on my own – I was forced to.

           Without ‘Selected Poems’ I never would have known all of this. And that is why it deserves the orange spot on my rainbow list of must-reads.

You can find out more about Simon Armitage here!
And you can read the other parts to this series here: Red! Orange! Yellow!

The Rainbow List of Must-Reads: Red

      Hello and welcome to my very first post on my brand new blog! I'm really excited to start this new project and I have a lot of plans for it in the future. If you haven't guessed already this is a book blog - a place where I can rant, rave and celebrate about books! I've decided for my first seven posts to go with a bit of a theme. 

This is the Rainbow List of Must-Reads: a list of a few of my favourite books in rainbow order. Starting off the list we have our red book with a red cover:

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon

Kicking off my Rainbow list of Must-Reads we have ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time’, Mark Haddon’s eloquent yet quirky insight into the mind of Christopher – a peculiar 15 year old boy with a love for the colour red. ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ is as clever and thought-provoking as they come and offers up a reading experience like no other. The book is narrated by Christopher himself as he attempts to uncover the truth behind the tragic death of his neighbour, Mrs Shears’, dog, unravelling a much larger story in the process.

It becomes quickly apparent when reading this book that Christopher is not your usual teenage boy; he has a complicated relationship with emotions and is unable to identify facial expressions other than happy and sad; he calms himself in difficult situations by effortlessly carrying out colossal maths equations in his head; and he absolutely refuses to eat anything yellow or brown under any circumstances. After combining these strange behavioural quirks with Christopher’s peculiar way of recounting events, it quickly becomes clear to the reader that Christopher has some form of autism-like disability.

I first learned about the book from my sister when I was six years old – though did not actually read it until I was ten. When I asked my eldest sister what her book was about she gave me a funny smile and said:

     “It’s about a boy with autism, I think,”

     “What’s autism?”

        My sister thought for a while before answering: “It’s like… If I told you to stay off the grass, you’d just do it. But if I told a boy with autism to stay off the grass, you’d have to tell him when and why and for how long,”

This was a perfectly acceptable answer to my young mind and the explanation has stuck with me for all these years since.  Even before I had absorbed the story first-hand, the book had left a lasting impression on me, leaving me with a better understanding of autism and those affected by it.

Though Mark Haddon never specified Christopher’s condition, ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ was able to explain mental disabilities to my sister in a way that was so simple that she could then go on to teach a six year old child. The reason I loved ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time’ is because I have never before found a book that has allowed me to look so clearly through the eyes of someone with such a difficult mental-disability. It has let me see into a world where things aren’t so clear and simple and shown the mentally disabled in a much more relatable light.

It’s the kind of book I want everyone to read, and one I take great pleasure in lending out. When I first picked the book off the shelf I ate it up within a few days and begged my Sister to let me borrow her copy as well.

For all these reasons, ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ will always have a warm spot in both my library and my heart.

You can find out more about Mark Haddon and his other books by going to this website.