The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby has long been on my TBR list and at the end of November, I found myself looking for a sub-200 page book to finish off my month - it was time.

This is quite a difficult one for me because if I hadn't seen the film, I probably wouldn't have stuck with it. I watched the film a few years ago having tried to read the book before and failed within the first few pages. I even tried listening to the audio book - again, couldn't quite get into it.

But this time, being on the reading binge thatI have been, I decided to persevere. But that didn't make it any less difficult for me. Thankfully, with a knowledge of the film I could follow the storyline but relying on the words alone, it was difficult.

Dialogue is choppy and incomplete, scenes not fully completed to give the answers that were needed. It probably wasn't until the second half that I really got into it and picked up what was going on but even then, I had to stop and start a bit to reread.

Maybe I'm too used to modern day writing but I don't understand why the book is hailed with such reverence.

Loved the story - HATED the writing.

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Murder on the Orient Express - Agatha Christie

Started: Saturday 2nd July 2022 Finished: Saturday 2nd July 2022 Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ On Saturday I travelled up to London to see Beauty and The Beast at the London Palladium and with a four hours on a train, I wanted something I could really get stuck into. I need a book small enough to fit in my bang, fast paced enough to lose myself in and lighthearted enough not to impact my mood and Murder On The Orient Express was perfect. My second delve into the Agatha Christie catalogue, I’ve already labelled her books as “filler” books - perfect for one sitting and clever enough to keep me guessing without the dreaded Book Hangover. Murder On The Orient Express sees the infamous Monsieur Hercule Poirot have an urgent recall to England, cutting his leisure time short. But oddly, the sleeper train is full, a strange and unexplained circumstance given the time of year. Through his years of connections, a temporary cabin is found to be shared with McQueen - the travel companion for Ratchett; and ...

DNF - The Final Revival of Opal & Nev - Dawnie Walton

I've been looking forward to this book so long but I'm just not in the right headspace for it. If you loved the writing style of Daisy Jones & The Six , you'll love this. In a similar vein, The Final Revival of Opal & Nev visits the history of these two performers in the 70s through interviews and accounts of the people that knew them. Everything about it is fantastic, the imagery, the tone - everything. I'm about 100 pages in and it's just not grabbing me at the moment. Could be something to do with the excessive weather we're having. So for now, I'm going to put it back on my TBR and try again another time.

Velvet Was The Night - Sylvia Moreno-Garcia

Started: Sunday 3rd July 2022 Finished: Monday 4th July 2022 Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I definitely judged this book by it’s cover. The image of this book absolutely drew me in the moment I saw it; I didn’t care what it was about, I had to read it. And I was not disappointed. Velvet Was The Night is set in Mexico in the early 1970s and follows Maite and Elvis whilst they unbeknowingly search for the same girl amongst political unrest and activism. I know very little about the culture that this book centres around but this gave me an insight which has definitely left me wanting to know more. I have Mexican Gothic on my TBR so that is likely to feature soon. It was a fast based book with plenty of tension and a bit of gore thrown in but not so much that I had to put it down at any stage. My only criticism is that if you don't know much about the era and unrest that the books is set around, you won't necessarily know much more by the end of it. I personally like to read historical fi...

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