It's NZ Book Month!

“Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!”

― Dr. Seuss

 

Guess what! Not only is March the beginning of my favourite season - autumn! But, it's also New Zealand Book Month - a whole month dedicated to books! Yes it's a tad nerdy to be excited about book month, but hell, I am a nerd when it comes to books, you learn to love it.

So I hope Dr Seuss, my favourite childhood author (I still have a very battered copy of The Lorax on my book shelf) has provided you with some inspiration, and you can look forward to some more in the coming weeks as I share with you more quotes from my favourite authors.

And here is my Top Five list of books I think you should read this month because they're really quite good.

Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon

A warning before you start reading this one: Put aside a couple of years because this is a seven-book series and once you get halfway through Cross Stitch, Jamie and Claire Fraser will rule your life.

The year is 1945. Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon--when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient stone circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach - an "outlander" - in a Scotland torn by war and raiding Highland clans in 1743.
Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire is catapulted into intrigues and dangers that may threaten her life and shatter her heart. For here she meets James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, and becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire, and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives. Link

Water For Elephants, by Sara Gruen

Even if you have seen the movie, I still highly recommend you read Water for Elephants. The movie does the book very proud, but misses out a bit of detail - even some of the characters. It's one of the best books I have ever read.

As a young man, Jacob Jankowski is tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. It is the early part of the great Depression, and for Jacob, now ninety, the circus world he remembers was both his salvation and a living hell. A veterinary student just shy of a degree, he is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie.

It is there that he meets Marlena, the beautiful equestrian star married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. And Rosie, an untrainable elephant who is the great gray hope for this third-rate traveling show. The bond that grows among this unlikely trio is one of love and trust, and, ultimately, their only hope for survival. Link

Goodbye Sarajevo, by Atka Reid and Hana Schofield

It is very hard to wrap your head around the fact that this is a true story, every word. But it's brilliant, and a poignant reminder that no matter how hard things get here in New Zealand with natural disasters and the up-and-down economy, we are one of the luckiest countries in the world to have been spared from war.

May, 1992. Hana is twelve years old when she is put on one of the last UN evacuation buses fleeing the besieged city of Sarajevo. Her twenty-one-year-old sister, Atka staying behind to look after their five younger siblings, is there to say goodbye. Thinking that they will be apart for only a few weeks, they make a promise to each other to be brave.

But as the Bosnian war escalates and months go by without contact; their promise to each other becomes deeply significant. Hana is forced to cope as a refugee in Croatia, far away from home and family, while Atka battles for survival in a city where snipers, mortar attacks and desperate food shortages are a part of everyday life. Their mother, working for a humanitarian organization, is unable to reach them and their father retreats inside himself, desperately shocked by what is happening to his city.

But when Atka finds work as a translator in an old smoky radio station, and then with Andrew, a photojournalist from New Zealand, life takes an unexpected turn, and the remarkable events that follow change her life, and those of her family forever. Link

One Day, by David Nicholls

Although it didn't blow my mind at first like I thought it would, being a bestseller and all, it grew on me. The thing I loved about it was how it focussed on the unique friendship between a guy and a girl more than a tear-jerking love story. Having male friends myself who I love to pieces I had many "that's totally us" moments while reading One Day.

15th July 1988. Emma Morley and Dexter Mayhew meet for the first time on the night of their graduation. Tomorrow they must go their separate ways.

So where will they be on this one day next year? And the year after that? And every year which follows?

One Day is a funny/sad love story spanning twenty years, a book about growing up – how we change, how we stay the same. Link

The Bronze Horseman, by Paullina Simons

It's the beginning of another series, but rest assured this one is only three books long - three long books you will struggle to put down. It is an incredible story of human courage, survival and finding love is the midst of World War II when the world felt like it was coming to an end in Leningrad, Russia.

Leningrad 1941: Two sisters, Tatiana and Dasha, share the same bed, living in one room with their brother and parents. It is a hard, impoverished life, yet the Metanovs know many who are not as fortunate as they.

The family routine is shattered on 22 June 1941 when Hitler invades Russia. On that fateful day, Tatiana meets a brash young officer named Alexander.

Tatiana and her family suffer as Hitler’s army advances on Leningrad, and the Russian winter closes in. With bombs falling and the city under siege, Tatiana and Alexander are drawn to each other in an impossible love. It is a love that could tear Tatiana’s family apart, a love that carries a secret that could mean death for anyone who hears it.

Confronted on the one hand by Hitler’s unstoppable war machine, and on the other by a Soviet system determined to crush the human spirit, Tatiana and Alexander are pitted against the very tide of history, at a turning point in the century that made the modern world. Link

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One Day review

Never thought I would say this about a book, but I CAN'T WAIT UNTIL I CAN SEE THE MOVIE!

I like to think that most books are meant to be books. They are meant to be appreciated in their original form because that's what the author intended. But some books are butchered by Hollywood as well all know.

However, this one is a little different because the author, David Nicholls, wrote the screenplay for the movie, so that's promising. Also the trailer looks AWESOME, just as I pictured it in my head, although it's hard to tell whether I pictured Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess while reading the book because I knew they were going to be starring in the movie or whether Nicholls had just described them that well.

Anywho, this is a book review, so best get back to the book - the movie vs. book review shall come later once I get to see it at the end of the month when it comes out on DVD.

I have to be honest and say that, in the beginning, maybe even for the first third of the book, it wasn't blowing my mind. I was even a bit bored. I'm guilty of being one of those people who read a book just because it has a "bestseller" sticker on it, so I was a little disappointed at first. But, I have no idea why, after that first third I couldn't put it down.

Nicholls could be compared to Nicholas Sparks in the way that he weaves a romantic story full of raw emotion and a heart-breaking ending. I admit, I am a Nicholas Sparks fan, but they're the kind of books (except maybe The Notebook which is a classic) that you read when you want a bit of a brain break, something light and something that reminds you of what it's like to be in love. But, although One Day turned into a romance as you would expect, it was a breath of fresh air to have a writer just about as romantic as Sparks but who explores the often neglected subject of friendship.

And the characters are real. They’re not drop-dead stunningly super model gorgeous, they’re just the kind of people you could see youself hanging out with over a few pints at your local. She’s pretty, but a bit dorky. He’s handsome, but not very fit and drinks and smokes too much. But they see beauty in each other, and that’s what it’s all about. I believe that no matter who you are, there will always be someone out there who finds you beautiful.

Male friends are the best, and if you have male friends, I promise you will have many "that's totally us" moments while reading this book.

It is a very poingant look at both sides of a relationship because after all, most people, if they're not stupid, marry their best friend.

Also what was interesting was following these two people in their 20s in the 90s. I was coming into teenage hood in the 90s, so it was different for me. While I was grooving to the Spice Girls in front of the mirror singing into my Impulse can, they were listening to garage bands and starting out life in the adult world without cell phones and Facebook, things people in their 20s today take for granted.


Bring on February 29th! Movie time!

One Day soon I will read this beautiful book

As if the movie version cover wasn't enough to make you want to read this book and watch the movie straight after, the story itself just screams romance and Nicholas Sparks. But this time it's not a Nicholas Sparks book - it's a David Nicholls book, an author I had never heard of until I spotted One Day on my regular visit to the bookstore and saw it was a bestseller that had been made into a movie.
Bestseller?! How did I not know about this?!
So I'm thinking I might finish up The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society quick-smart and ditch the pile of books I have to read so I can sink my teeth into this one and then watch the movie - which happens to star two of my favourite actors, Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess!

Synopsis from Good Reads:

Emma and Dexter meet for the first time on the night of their graduation. Tomorrow they must go their separate ways. So where will they be on this one day next year? And the year after that? And every year that follows? Twenty years, two people, ONE DAY. From the author of the massive bestseller STARTER FOR TEN.