Book 11: The Rosie Project, Graeme Simsion

 

"I decided to read 52 books this year so that I could find & read books like The Rosie Project- books that would make me laugh, sigh and remind me why I love reading"

'The Rosie Project' by Graeme Simsion is a story about the search for love and its rather surprising results. It has been an absolute pleasure to read and review The Rosie Project as All Booked Up's 11th book of 2014. The Rosie Project is a sweet, endearing novel with many laugh out loud moments. And I mean serious, do-not-read-in-public-otherwise-you-will-look-like-a-lunatic, laugh out loud moments. None of this smirking at the page business. Simsion's writing never feels contrived, the characters are lifelike and genuine, and just like I did, you will fall in love with the main character, Don, well before the last page.
Everyone who I have mentioned that I was reading this book to has had the same response, that The Rosie Project is a great novel.  It has been one of the few books this year I have loved from the very beginning and knew right away it would definitely deserve a 5 star rating.

Two different covers of The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

The Rosie Project begins with Professor Don Tillman searching for a solution to his 'Wife Problem'. That he doesn't have one. Don is a brilliant genetic researcher, bicycling enthusiast, an excellent and extremely efficient cook, and very, very single. Don also has Asperger's Syndrome, a fact of which he remains unaware despite the subtle efforts of his few friends. Don develops the 'Wife Project, setting up a survey as a way of culling potential candidates and to allow for maximum time efficiency, wasting no time on dates with unsuitable ladies. However Don's project doesn't go to plan when the spontaneous, stubborn and unique Rosie crosses his path.

I decided to read The Rosie Project because I heard that it had a main character with a disability and as I work with people with disability who are on the autism spectrum, it tweaked my interest. But make no mistake, this novel is not a book about 'disability'. The Rosie Project is a novel about love, friendship, surprises and compromise. 

The fact that Don has Asperger's does lead to many hilarious moments with Don's understanding of social situations being slightly off kilter from the 'norm'. Don acknowledges he has difficulties with reading social cues and developing friendships, and the novel has quite a few funny moments where Don puts his foot in it.

"You seem very interested in babies" (Natalie said)
"I'm interested in their behaviour. Without the corrupting influence of a parent present."
She Looked at me strangely. "Do you do any stuff with kids? I mean Scouts, Church Groups..."
"No," I Said. "It's unlikely I'd be suitable".

In writing the novel in first person, Simsion allows readers to see the world from Don's unique point of view, and laugh along at times when Don is blissfully unaware the effect his words have on others. More powerfully, in writing the novel from Don's perspective, Simsion allows readers to see that the fact Don has Asperger's Syndrome does not prevent him from leading a very interesting life. The Rosie Project reminds readers that someone's 'disability' is not necessarily their defining factor, and can even be more of an 'ability' (Don's ability to remember facts and optimise his time for maximum efficiency come in handy a few times).


The Good Bits

Throughout the novel, Don believes that all ice-cream tastes the same and plans to only date women who believe this.

Didn't want to miss a chance to fit in a Ron Swanson GIF

What is quite a humorous part of the novel actually serves as a reminder that we all get stuck in our ways and beliefs, often limiting ourselves and our ability to have different experiences and the potential to make new friends. When Don chills out a bit (get it, ice-cream, chilled, haha?) he ends up having a lot more fun.


And the best bit of all is that there will be a sequel! The Rosie Effect is coming out later this year.

The Not So Good Bits

ummm... that it wasn't longer?

But in all seriousness, there was nothing about this novel that I did not like. Simsion has created a truly excellent novel which is humorous and quirky but without being silly or disingenuous. I am thoroughly looking forward to reading the sequel. Ultimately, I decided to read 52 books this year so I could find books like The Rosie Project, books that would make me laugh, sigh and remind me why I love reading. Thank you Mr Simsion.

Rating

5 out of 5 tasty ice-creams

Want more?

Novels similar to The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion are

Getting the Girl, Markus Zusak, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, Mark Haddon, The Fault in Our Stars, John Green


 Bonus section!

If you think the cover of The Rosie Project is as cool as I do, check out this interesting look into the different covers of The Rosie Project around the world! 

 

The Next Book

Tell The Wolves I'm Home, a novel about a young girl who looses her beloved uncle to AIDS in the 1980's.

Book 10 Review: Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier

My 10th book this year was the timeless gothic romantic novel 'Rebecca', by Daphne Du Maurier. First published in 1938 the novel follows a young woman who marries the older Max DeWinter, whose glamorous and beautiful first wife, Rebecca, recently died.  The novel is full of eerie suspense and a sense of disquiet as the narrator recounts her tale of Manderlay, their house haunted by the memory of the late Rebecca DeWinter. 'Rebecca' is a captivating novel and not a challenging read. It would be a great read for those who don't often read the Classic novels and for those who fall asleep at the very mention of Dickens or Austen.

The book cover of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier from the 70's edition I read.
 

The narrator, a young and naïve woman, remains unnamed throughout the book, a clever literary technique designed to emphasise the lingering presence of the former Mrs DeWinter, however I just thought I had missed reading the narrator's name for the first few chapters and kept trying to look back for her name. Duh.

My first impression of the novel was that it was not as dark as I thought it would be. I imagined attacks in the night, hauntings, disembodied heads floating down long corridors (okay I didn't really imagine that)....

It is a common mistake for modern readers to hear the words gothic novel and expect the literary equivalent of Paranormal Activity. However, Gothic novels like Frankenstein, Northanger Abbey and Wuthering Heights rely on suspense, on a subtle yet all pervasive feeling of unease to bring a chill to reader's spines. This is a skill that has been lost in the modern age where filmmakers and authors require increasingly shocking and dramatic situations in order to make their audiences to feel frightened.
Daphne du Maurier masters the art of subtle unease and anticipatory dread in Rebecca. With each page turn you almost cringe (in my case it was mostly because my old copy was falling apart), not knowing when the state of uneasy calm will break.



One part of 'Rebecca' I found hilarious was when the characters in 'Rebecca' spoke about the weather being over 80 degrees Fahrenheit (about 26 degrees Celsius).

Well everyone could sure cope well with the weather in 1930's Britain...

For someone who lives in a rather temperate part of Australia, where the summer-time minimum temperatures sometimes do not dip below 26 degrees I had a good laugh at these wimps.
 

The Good bits

'Rebecca' was easy to read. The novel has all the conventions of a 19th century Gothic novel, but has been written in the 1930's and is full of familiar and not overly complex language. Old stodgy language normally turns off readers from attempting the classics (it stopped me for many years), so Rebecca is a good introduction before delving straight into Wuthering Heights or Frankenstein.

The Not So Good Bits

One character in the novel which really rankled me was a man, Ben, the 'local idiot'. This is the narrator speaking about Ben after meeting him on the beach.

This passage is meant to hold some irony, with Ben potentially knowing some crucial information later in the novel. However at the key moment, when du Maurier could have had Ben become much more than the local 'simpleton', he fails to do so, afraid of being mistreated, thus relegating Ben to the ranks of a truly useless character. It made me sad to read these descriptions of Ben, reminding me how many people with disabilities were (and still are) passed off as idiots and fools. The narrator in the passage above even supposing what Ben must be like without the slightest effort made to get to know or understand him. I am more than aware that times have thankfully changed since the 1930's, but too often in society, people with disabilities are brushed off just like Ben, not recognised for their own strengths, personalities and capacity.
Okay. Rant over.

Rating

3.5 out of 5 sweaty Englishmen

Want More?

Some other novels similar to Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier are;

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte. Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn.

The Next Book:

My next novel is The Rosie Project, by Graeme Simsion.

 

Book 9 Review & Interview: The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price Purveyor of Superior Funerals, Wendy Jones

My 9th Book this year was the lovely novel 'The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price Purveyor of Superior Funerals' by British author Wendy Jones. It was a book I thoroughly enjoyed and only took me a day to read. In exciting news, Wendy Jones, the author of  'The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price Purveyor of Superior Funerals'  kindly agreed to be interviewed for All Booked Up 2014. This is All Booked Up's first exclusive interview dear readers, and you are in for a treat!



The beautiful book cover of The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price Purveyor of Superior Funerals by Wendy Jones

Due to the fact that Australia is ahead of everywhere else in the world (in time and number of animals per square kilometre that want to kill you), the interview was conducted via email.



Basically this interview is better than interviewing J.K. Rowling.

Amejoys: There is nothing better than having an author describe a novel in her own words. So this is the perfect time to ask if you could you please describe your novel, ‘The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price Purveyor of Superior Funerals’, to my blog readers? 

Wendy Jones: The novel is about an undertaker, Wilfred Price, in 1924 west Wales. He inadvertently proposes to a woman he likes but soon realises his mistake, especially when he meets Flora. The novel is about Wilfred's work and romantic life and the constraints and gentleness of the time. 

 

I have never been to the UK, let alone to Wales, yet I found myself so easily transported to the small Welsh town of Narberth in which the novel was set. Your descriptions of the physical environment almost made the town seem like a character, was that your intention?  

 I very much wanted Narberth to be a character and to give the novel a very specific sense of place, to have it rooted. 

I Imagined 1920's Narberth looked just like this

 

For a novel that is so often described as ‘charming’, the novel does touch on some serious issues (which I won’t spoil here for those who haven’t read it yet). When writing your novel did you aim to balance the good with the bad, as life often does? 

Mostly I wanted the novel to be comforting; there is dark subject matter and it was important that there was a range for me, of what is light and easy, and what is hard to accept. 

 

If ‘The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price Purveyor of Superior Funerals’ was made into a movie, who would be your ideal actors to portray Wilfred, Grace, Flora and Dr Reece? 

If the novel becomes a movie, I have no idea who would play the parts! Perhaps Antony Hopkins as Dr Reece! I see the characters in my mind's eye so clearly, I can't imagine them as anyone other than they are.

 

Exclusive! You heard it here first! Sir Anthony Hopkins to play Dr Reece in the movie adaption of The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price Purveyor of Superior Funerals. Haha.  

 

Cover art does have a large part in how readers choose books in bookstores. The old adage tells us not to judge a book by its cover, but the edition I read, with the blue and gold cover, was beautiful.  Are you happy with the look of the book? Who did the cover art?
I like the cover very much; it is clear and distinctive. I had no say in it but am very pleased with it. 

 

When I first finished ‘The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price..' I was almost disappointed in the choices of both Grace and Flora. I felt they both made choices that these days would make a feminist cringe. But on reflection, I realised that Grace (And to some extent, Flora) did not have the opportunities that women do today, and that their decisions were not choices, but rather the outcome of events which they coped rather well with. Did you deliberately create storylines for Grace and Flora that would in some way highlight the challenges that women faced in the 1920s?
I thought of Grace and Flora as women of their time, as we all are, and their lives were circumscribed by their time, as ours are. I am not sure how free any of us are, especially women, although Flora and Grace both think of themselves as freer than their mother's and grandmother's generations. 

 

Did you find it difficult to transition from writing non-fiction with your Biography of Grayson Perry, to writing a novel? Do you prefer writing non-fiction, or fiction?

I didn't find the transition from non-fiction to novel writing difficult - they are both the same in that they both demand narrative, and follow strict rules of what a writer has to do to engage a reader. I like writing both; they both fascinate me. 

 

The book cover of The World is A Wedding, the sequel to The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price Purveyor of Superior Funerals  by Wendy Jones 

 

I am very excited to have discovered that you have written a sequel to ‘The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price..', called 'The World Is A Wedding'. Where does this novel pick up, and does it still focus on Wilfred?

The sequel The World is a Wedding starts almost immediately after The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price ends and it is about Wilfred, but also Grace and Flora, as the lives of all three are interwoven more than they realise or perhaps had wanted. They are connected and need resolution and peace with each other and Wilfred, too, feels guilty about how he has treated Grace and the guilt is bothering him.

 

A huge THANK YOU to Wendy Jones for answering my questions.
And a bigger thank you for bringing us such a lovely novel!
Pop into your local bookstore and buy a copy of  'The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price Purveyor of Superior Funerals' or the sequel 'The World is a Wedding', you won't be disappointed!

The Good Bits:

For a novel that does deal with some complicated and emotional subjects, it is, as Wendy Jones herself described, a comforting book. It is a charming and enjoyable novel, and will make you want to snuggle up with a pot of tea and buttered welsh cakes and read for a whole day!

The Not So Good Bits:

As I mentioned to Wendy, the ending did leave my feminist senses twitching, but as Wendy explained, the lives of the female characters realistically and truthfully reflected the lives of many women of the 1920s.

Rating:

4 1/2 of 5 bicycling gentlemen.

Want more?

If you liked 'The Thoughts and Happenings of Wilfred Price Purveyor of Superior Funerals'  by Wendy Jones you might like:




Notwithstanding, Louis de Bernieres, The Rosie Project, Graeme Simsion, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce

 

The Next book:

I have read Rebecca, by Daphne Du Maurier, a very interesting novel, which also happened to be set (and written) in the early 1900's.

 

 

 

 

I have entered All Booked Up 2014 into The Best Australian Blogs Competition. If you like what I write and enjoy my gratuitous use of GIFs please click on the picture below and send a vote my way! Tick the box in the survey next to "All Booked Up 2014".

  

Book 7 Review: Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn

"I was so twitchy with suspense at one point in the novel I Googled 'Who Killed Amy, Gone Girl'. Those who have read the novel feel free to laugh at me now."

My 7^th book this year was the Novel ‘Gone Girl’ by Gillian Flynn. This is a novel full of suspense, a mix of who-done-it and fantastically flawed characters. I try and make all my reviews spoiler-free, and this novel is extremely hard to review without giving away the major plot twists and turns. But I promise this will be as spoiler free as possible. 

I enjoyed reading the book, but I discovered while reading this that I have a zero ability to cope with suspense, and this book is certainly full of it. As a reader you have no idea of how the story will resolve itself, or indeed if the complicated lives of its characters can ever be resolved happily.

 

Gone Girl book cover

 

The novel follows lovely married couple Nick and Amy as they celebrate their  5^th wedding anniversary. Nick leaves for work and by the end of the day Amy is missing and as a reader you are strapped in for a ride that doesn’t stop until about 2 days after you have finished reading and mentally processing this novel. The novel alternates between the perspectives of Nick and Amy as right from the get-go you start to realise that their relationship is not all roses and sunshine. We follow Nick as he struggles to piece together his wife’s disappearance, and as the evidence slowly begins to stack up against him.

I am certainly feeling the pressure to make this a good review because Gone Girl is definitely the book of the moment. It is a huge bestseller and is soon to be made into a movie with Ben Affleck. It has been the first time that I have been tempted to read other reviews before writing my own, simply to find a way to review this book without giving it all away.

 

 

As a reader, I was shocked when I found that both Nick and Amy were not reliable narrators. I was used to a nice, straightforward relationship between a reader and a main character. As a reader of a novel written in first person I always go in with the naïve assumption that the narrator and I have an open relationship. It is apparently not the case in this novel and I was a little bit shocked. I suppose it wouldn’t be a very good suspense novel without some suspense and plot twists and turns (fancy that!) and sure enough Flynn delivers on both fronts. If you are feeling a little outraged that I gave this away, don't worry, it is one of the smallest plot twists, a mere wrinkle in the  fabric of the novel.

 

My scribbles as I tried to figure out how to review Gone Girl

 

 

The Good Bits

Flynn's writing is sharp, darkly humorous and she gets the voices of Nick and Amy spot-on. Nick constantly struggles to portray himself as a grieving husband, when the reality of his relationship with his missing wife is far from straightforward. You literally groan as Nick smiles automatically to a mob of media cameras instead of breaking down in tears as one would expect a worried husband to do. You feel just as tied up as Nick and Amy are in their complicated lives, so convincing is Flynn's writing. This makes it even more shocking when you realise that they are not the most reliable narrators.

 

Gone Girl also delves into some interesting commentary on how the Media reports on missing women. Families, Husbands, Friends and Neighbours are all expected to conform to their roles, to grieve publically and properly, to swear to find their missing loved one, to cry and sob for the flashing bulbs and watching lenses. The power of public opinion and the media mob once someone does not play their role properly is made fully apparent in this Novel, and will make anyone question their own perceptions when reading about or watching real life cases of disappearances or murders. The current media commentary on the Oscar Pistorius trial is tinged with the exact same themes raised by Flynn in Gone Girl. Listening to daytime TV hosts talk about how he definitely did/didn't murder his girlfriend makes you realise that Flynn's observations on the media coverage of missing/murdered women are spot on.

 

The Not So Good Bits

I was uneasy, tense and on edge when reading this book. Which I imagine is precisely how Flynn wants her readers to feel, but something I am not used to as I have not read a triller in a long time. This year is about reading outside my comfort zone and this book certainly booted me out. I was so twitchy with suspense at one point  early on in the novel I Googled 'Who Killed Amy, Gone Girl'. Those who have read the novel feel free to laugh at me now.

 

The Rating

4 out of 5 missing wives

 

The Next Book

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri, a novel about two brothers growing up in India in the 1970's, a time a great political turbulence for India.

 

 

 

 

If anyone wants to read a much more intelligent review of Gone Girl that delves deeper into the concepts of identity, gender roles and reality read the Piratess's Tumblr post about Gone Girl. Piratess is 'the cool girl' without even trying.

 

Book 1 Review: The Husband's Secret- Liane Moriarty

"Not just a bunch of middle aged women talking
about their husbands"

My first book of my 52 books in 52 weeks challenge is The Husband's Secret By Liane Moriarty. The novel tracks the impact of one tragic instant through the lives of three families irrevocably tied together from that moment on. In the novel, the protagonist Celia Fitzpatrick’s understanding of her comfortable and structured world is thrown into turmoil when she discovers a letter written from her husband to be opened upon his death. The letter unearths a horrible secret from his past which not only affects Celia’s family, but two other families from their small Sydney Catholic school community. It has been an easy novel to start my book reviews with and was overall an enjoyable, but not overly challenging read.

At the beginning of this novel I wasn’t glued to every word and wasn't desperate to read on. However Moriarty’s storytelling has a way of drawing you in. I was unimpressed and skeptical even after the big reveal of the letter (I called it a holiday read in my last post)
yet by the end I was easily caught up as the pace of the novel sped towards a much anticipated climax.

At the beginning, the novel mostly felt like a bunch of middle aged women sitting around talking about their husbands and children.

(Yep, this is what I imagined)

However I soon realised this novel is about much more. It raises serious questions of whether justice for past crimes can ever be achieved. The novel makes you question if one person’s life can be equal to that of another and whether a lifetime of good deeds ever absolve one from the crimes of the past. It shows how hard it is to truly know those you are closest to and how easily the sense of stability and normality in our lives can disintegrate. 

On a less serious note, this novel was set in Sydney’s North, my hometown. It is quite a refreshing change to read about a character rushing down a street that I drive down daily.

(This one to be precise)

Great novels can transport you anywhere in the world with a few carefully selected adjectives. It is a different experience entirely being transported by Moriarty, only ten minutes up the road.

This made me think. I realised that novels don’t have to be placed in historically significant times or exotic locations to make an impact. In fact I would contend it is harder to impress an audience when your novel is centered on the everyday and the mundane; the picking up and dropping off of children, the amount of butter left in your fridge, the Easter Hat Parade at the local school. Moriarty does an excellent job of showing how emotional turmoil and life changing revelations occur in everyday life, in the least glamorous of places and that people have to cope with these changes all while trying to maintain a semblance of normality.  

Good bits

It was a good reminder that I should read more Australian literature. I’ll be making sure to include more Australian books in my reading list this year.

The plot is interesting and unexpected. As it progresses Moriarty builds a palpable sense of foreboding as the plot progresses as you feel that sooner or later past crimes must be paid for.

It had an epilogue! Not many serious novels have epilogues, perhaps because its not cool among writer folk. It was nice to have a more solid sense of conclusion that is often missing from novels what leave you guessing at the end.

Not so good bits
I felt like I would have enjoyed this more if I was a mother, or perhaps a Catholic. Some of the biggest themes in the novel centre on children and the concept of ‘sin’. Having neither children nor ever sinned I couldn’t possibly relate.

Thanks Clueless

Joking aside it did feel like the book was tailored to a specific audience that I wasn't a part of and although this feeling abated as the novel progressed, it never quite went away.

The novel was not life changing for me. It didn’t force me to open my eyes to anything new or unexpected. I did end up liking the novel more than I expected to but overall it felt a bit ‘soft’ for me.
 

It had an epilogue. Yeah I did say it was one of the good bits but it did again leave me feeling the ending was a bit ‘soft’, as if the author wanted to give us all a happy ending rather than a kick in the guts to finish. Perhaps a kick in the guts is what all the cool writers are doing these days.

Quotes that made me think

"What can you say or do to make up for a horrible incident? The words ‘I’m sorry’ felt like an insult. You said ‘I’m sorry’ when you bumped against someone’s supermarket trolley. There needed to be bigger words."

Rating

Three and a Half out of Five well-buttered hot cross buns 

The next book
Book number two will be 'Room' by Emma Donoghue as suggested by Cat. It has been sitting ignored halfway down the list of books on my Kindle for about a year now so time to get reading! 

Like the sound of the book? Buy it here on Amazon or at your local bookstore. 

Please let me know what you thought of my review below please. Its my first time doing this since a year five book report so I am feeling rusty!  Agree with me? Think I'm spouting a load of rubbish? Let me know :)

All booked up 2014- reading and reviewing 52 Books in 52 Weeks

“Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.” 
Diane Duane, author of 'So You Want to be a Wizard'

 

  

I belong to the special club that makes bookstore owners weep and true bibliophiles scorn- I own a Kindle.

 (Pic belongs to Adrian Tomine)

And I really like it. I can select from thousands of books whenever I want. I can read huge books without doing weird head tilts every second page. Books no longer cost upwards of $30 from overpriced bookstores. I can go traveling and not have to carry the three or four books I've half finished with me. I no longer have to trawl through my local council library to try and find a book I haven't previously read or one that isn't called ‘The Pirate’s Mistress’ or ‘Legacy of lust’ with a cover that features a woman trying to fuse to a man with either luscious flowing locks or a waxed chest. 

(Well gosh)

With my Kindle I can now read basically any eBook that exists thanks to the interwebs.

But despite having access to all these books on my Kindle, I hardly read at all. As a child my bedside table would be perpetually be overflowing with books. I loved losing myself, and any chances of schoolyard popularity, in a novel and wouldn't emerge until the novel and all its sequels were finished. I even tried reading with a flashlight under the covers of my bed until I discovered it was super uncomfortable and that the children who tried it in the movies obviously never read for more than three minutes at a time. (Being a child actor is not really synonymous with being a bookworm). But now, It's time to get back to what I loved most as I grew up.

So, this year, I have set myself a challenge of reading 

52 books in 52 weeks.
These are my guidelines:

1. I will read as varied as possible a selection and step outside of my comfort zone of just reading award winning novels.
2. I won’t read anything I’ve read before.
3. I will read books I can’t find reviews for online.
4. I will read books in hard copy and not just on my Kindle.
5. I will read books in genres I haven’t before.
6. I will read one book in French or German (my two half fluent backup languages)
7. I will read a book by an author I dislike or in a genre I hate.
8. I will take suggestions of books and read them.
9. Buy books from second hand bookstores and support someone other than Amazon for a change.
10. I will document it all by reviewing each book here after I’ve read them.

So being the first week of January, the week where New Year’s Resolutions are normally fiercely forgotten, I have begun my challenge.

What have I started with?

 

The Husband’s secret- by Liane Moriarty

Funny considering it sounds exactly like the type of Mills and Boon novel I have been trying to avoid. However, there is a reason I chose a book described as a ‘holiday read’. Here's the Goodreads reviews page. Recently I have found myself struggling to stick to reading one book and not drift back to sitting in front of the TV. So this is my easy start to a year of reading.

One more day to finish it, with just over half completed. Time to go read.