A Book That Makes Me Happy // 30-Day Book Challenge - Day 5

Today is the fifth day of the 30-day book challenge, in which I will be writing about a different book or book series every day for 30 days, with each book chosen according to the daily prompt. Today's prompt is: "a book that makes you happy".

Here's a little story about me. When I was a teenager, I recommended a book called A Tale for the Time Being to my best friend. Although she liked the book, she was concerned about some of the apparently depressing subject matter in it (bullying, suicide, kamikaze pilots, all sorts of things). She must have mentioned this to her mother, because the next thing I knew, her mum was staging a minor intervention with the sole purpose of telling me that I needed to start reading happier books.

Clearly, I don't have a reputation for reading terribly cheerful works of literature. I often struggle to recommend books to my mum, who prefers to avoid books with very heavy subjects or dark themes, because her rather simple request basically rules out all of the books I've ever read or owned. In my defence, I feel that we all look for different things in the media we consume. I wouldn't say that I specifically seek out books that are particularly grim, but I do like media that tackles difficult subjects and makes me think about things differently.

That is, I enjoy those books most of the time. We all have periods when we're not necessarily in the mood to read a 1000-page novel that examines the heart of human existential dread. Sometimes, we just want to read something happy or fun - which, by the way, is no less respectable than reading the so-called "heavy" stuff.

In that sort of situation, I have a few "comfort books" I like to return to. One of them is I Capture the Castle, which I mentioned in a previous post. But the book that stands out to me most as a book that makes me happy, as per the prompt of this post, is Diana Wynne Jones' Howl's Moving Castle.

No doubt some of you reading this are chiefly familiar with Howl's Moving Castle through the Studio Ghibli adaptation of it. If that is the case, I have three things to say: I haven't seen the film, I'm sure it's very good, and I have no wish to discuss it further. Now let's move on.

I've been doing this challenge for a few days now, and I'm starting to realise that maybe I don't have the time to write a summary for every single book I mention in addition to my thoughts on said book. So, here's a plot overview of Howl's Moving Castle, courtesy of Goodreads:

In the land of Ingary, where seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, Sophie Hatter attracts the unwelcome attention of the Witch of the Waste, who puts a curse on her. Determined to make the best of things, Sophie travels to the one place where she might get help - the moving castle which hovers on the nearby hills.

But the castle belongs to the dreaded Wizard Howl whose appetite, they say, is satisfied only by the hearts of young girls..

I appreciate how un-spoilery this summary is, so I'm not going to ruin it by giving any more plot details. Instead, what I will do is run through the many reasons why I love this book and particularly why it makes me so purely happy. How do I love Howl's Moving Castle? Let me count the ways...

First of all, it's a fantasy book. I don't often read fantasy novels, but when I do I always end up enjoying the escapism they provide. Howl's Moving Castle is especially enjoyable to me because it explicitly recognises and plays with fairy tale tropes. For example, the trope that the eldest child of three will never be successful. The protagonist, Sophie Hatter, is just one such eldest child. Being aware of the assumed fate of people of her birth order, she has more or less resigned herself to not amounting to anything much in life, besides running her family's hat shop. Little does she know, her life might not turn out quite the way she expects. This brings me to another thing I love about this book... Sophie herself.

Sophie is one of my favourite book protagonists ever. Although I think the book is actually aimed at children younger than her, I read the book when I was around the same age as Sophie: about 18 years old. As I mentioned in my post about Gathering Blue, I have a soft spot for kind, quietly strong heros. Sophie definitely fits this description, even though she starts the book rather reserved and lacking in self-esteem. What's more, one of the things I love most about the book is watching as Sophie becomes increasingly confident, caring less and less what people think of her and truly coming into herself as she does so. 

The rest of the characters are another part of the book which brings me great joy. We have Howl, the charming but rather dramatic wizard; Calcifer, the snarky fireplace demon; Michael, the endearingly helpless servant boy... it's hard not to love them all (and there's no reason why you shouldn't). 

I haven't covered everything I love about the book here, as that would take me much longer than one post. What it is about Howl's Moving Castle that makes me happy is more than just a list of qualities, anyway. It's the overall magic of the book, the joy and comfort it brings me when I return to it no matter how long it's been since my last re-read. Howl's Moving Castle charms me, excites me, and makes me feel hopeful. Put simply, it makes me happy.

My Favourite Book from My Favourite Series // 30-Day Book Challenge - Day 4

It's now the fourth day of the 30-Day Book Challenge, and it's just starting to dawn on me that I should come up with a proper way to introduce these posts. But... that's clearly not going to happen today, so let's move on. 

Anyway, the prompt for today's post is "Favourite book of your favourite series". As those of you who read my previous post will know, the series I have chosen as my favourite for the sake of this challenge is The Giver Quartet by Lois Lowry. If you'd like to know more about that series as a whole, I'd recommend reading that post. However, in this post I am going to be writing specifically about the second book in the series, my personal favourite of the four: Gathering Blue.

Like The Giver before it, Gathering Blue focuses on a young person growing up in a dystopian society that they gradually come to realise is worse than they initially believed. Whereas The Giver's protagonist was Jonas, Gathering Blue stars Kira, a girl with a disability who is viewed as a burden in her harsh, self-serving village. The only thing keeping her from being completely rejected from her community - and being literally left to die in a field - is her gift for embroidery, which catches the attention of the powerful village Council. While at first this seems like a blessing, Kira comes to realise it could be more of a curse.

I can't say much about Gathering Blue's connection to The Giver without giving away too much of either's plot, but I will say that the former is set in the same universe and chronologically comes after the events of The Giver. That said, you could theoretically read either book as a standalone novel without missing any important plot points. The ideal approach would still be to read them in order, though, as thematically they accompany each other well.

While, as I mentioned before, I like all the books of The Giver Quartet, Gathering Blue stands out as my favourite for a number of reasons. For one, I really like the character of Kira. She's compassionate, thoughtful, and quietly strong - all qualities I love to see in a protagonist, especially in children's or young adult novels. It carries on some of the major themes from The Giver, such as defiance of authority and the power of history, but it also strongly features themes which are not present in its predecessor - or at least not presented so prominently. For example, one of the key themes of Gathering Blue is the idea of social Darwinism and how we determine which people are of value in our society. Kira is initially seen as worthless by those around her, to the point of deserving to die, because of her disability, and it is only because she displays a talent seen as valuable to the community that she is deemed worthy of life within it.

To me, this element of the story felt particularly relevant to modern societies, especially those which have been impacted by the ideology of neo-liberalism. Perhaps this is purely my personal interpretation, though - you'd have to read the book yourself to see if I'm justified in this being my takeaway from the story.

In short, although I love every book in this series, Gathering Blue is my favourite for the strength of its characters (particularly Kira) and the relevance of its themes to society today. If you can only read one of The Giver Quartet's books, this is the one I would recommend.

My Favourite Series // 30-Day Book Challenge - Day 3

Hello and welcome to the third day of the 30-Day Book Challenge, in which I write about a different book or book series every day for 30 days, according to each daily prompt. The prompt for today's post is "Your favourite series", so I've chosen to write about a series that - while not my absolute favourite, as I'm not sure I truly have a favourite book series - I feel is excellent and severely underrated. 

Before I go any further, I would like to mention that, at the time of writing, it's currently 11:24pm here in France. This means I have approximately 36 minutes (now it's 35) to write this post and get it up on the blog in order to fulfil the criteria of this daily challenge. Therefore what you are about to witness is a blog post sprint with little to no editing or proofreading before publication. 

Brace yourselves.

In case you couldn't tell from the image above, the series I've chosen for today is The Giver Quartet by Lois Lowry. You may have heard of The Giver, if not the whole quartet, as it's achieved some fame as a piece of assigned reading for middle school students in North American schools. This is how I initially found out about The Giver, since my sister followed the US curriculum in middle school and was thus assigned this classic, Newbery Award-winning novel for English.

The Giver is a very good book in its own right, and in fact I'm not sure that it was ever intended to be part of a series, so well does it stand on its own. The plot follows Jonas, a boy who lives in a dystopian community where only one person at a time is selected to bear the memories of the entire society. This person, essentially a human history book, is known as the Receiver of Memory. Jonas is selected to become the new Receiver of Memory, leading him to become an apprentice to the current Receiver and gradually acquire knowledge of history - and the dark truths about his community that come with it.

I can't explain too much about the plot of the sequels without giving away the ending of The Giver, so I will stick to saying that the following books are all set in the same universe and also deal with dystopian societies, although the extent to which these are connected to Jonas's world varies from instalment to instalment. They deal with many similar themes, too, such as problems of individuality vs. community, struggling against authority, the way we place value on human life, and even the nature of evil. 

Perhaps the heaviness of its content is why The Giver Quartet has not enjoyed the sort of commercial success as other dystopian book series for young adults: The Hunger Games, Divergent, and the like. The series as a whole is also substantially less well-known than its first book. If you look on Goodreads, you'll see that The Giver has a little over 1.5 million ratings. Gathering Blue, the second book in the quartet, has less than 150,000. The figure drops lower with each successive book, until the final novel in the series - Son - has just under 76,000. 

This lack of popularity is why I've picked The Giver Quartet as my favourite series, for the sake of this challenge. While I could easily choose something like Harry Potter or the Song of Ice and Fire series, books that probably equal my love for the Giver Quartet, I doubt writing about either of those would be presenting anything new. The Giver Quartet, on the other hand, is comparatively unknown, even by those who enjoy dystopian books or young adult book series. I hope that, by writing this, I might have introduced these wonderful books to at least one person who might not otherwise have heard of them.

On one final note, not to spoil tomorrow's post, but I will say that it will involve more talking about The Giver Quartet in greater detail. So if you enjoyed this post and want to know more about this series, keep an eye out for that one.

A Book I've Read More Than 3 Times // 30-Day Book Challenge - Day 2

Today is the second day of the 30-Day Book Challenge I'm currently attempting. Today's prompt is: a book you've read more than 3 times. Before I say which book I've chosen for this category though, I have a confession to make: I don't re-read books very often. It's not that I don't think that re-reading books is worth doing; on the contrary, I wish I did it more. It's just frequently the case that I am lured away from my old favourites, sitting on the shelf and waiting to be re-read, and drawn towards shiny new books with new ideas and new stories to tell. At the moment, I have an additional excuse: since moving to France, most of my books have been put into storage, making re-reading a challenge of practicality as well as willpower.

Having said all of that, there are certain books which I have re-read several times, and I believe that the fact I don't often do that sort of thing is proof of the special place these stories hold in my heart. Out of that small selection of books I had to choose from for today's challenge, the one I ultimately decided on was I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith.

If you are not familiar with this particular novel, you may know Smith for another famous work; she is the author of The Hundred and One Dalmatians, the classic children's novel that was adapted into an even more famous film by Disney in 1961. I Capture the Castle is pretty well-known in its own right, though. It was made into a film in 2003 and was apparently voted one of the UK's best-loved novels in a 2004 poll. You can even buy tote bags with the first lines of the novel hand-lettered on them.

I actually knew very little about either Smith or her work before I encountered ICTC in my teens, which I believe happened after I saw it talked about on various book blogs. I eventually bought a copy on holiday with my family, read it, and instantly fell in love. It might have helped that I read the book at what I would say was the perfect time in life to read it, when I was roughly the same age as the protagonist. However, each successive re-read of the book has proven that you absolutely don't need to be a teenage girl to enjoy the adventures of Cassandra Mortmain and her family.

On that note, I should perhaps provide some details of the plot. I Capture the Castle is a first-person novel written from the perspective of Cassandra, one of the daughters of the Mortmain family, who live together in a run-down castle during the 1930s. Every member of the family has their quirks, be it their persistent struggle against writers' block (Cassandra's father) or their habit of walking around the countryside in nothing but a pair of boots (Topaz, Mr Mortmain's second and incumbent wife). All the details of their characters and their lives are recorded by Cassandra, who constantly writes the journal which forms the narrative of the book. Cassandra herself always has a unique perspective on the world, quotably referred to by another character as seeming "consciously naïve". I will always love her for putting into words feelings that I didn't, until that point, realise anyone else in the world had felt - experiencing this being what I believe to be one of the great pleasures of reading, and equivalent to a Cupid's arrow in the heart of the reader.

I Capture the Castle is one of those novels that grabs you from its iconic opening line - "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink..." - and keeps hold of you until the equally memorable very end. Perhaps the way I say that makes it sound like a thriller or a page-turner, but really it's a rather domestic novel, almost bordering on being a literary rom-com. What kept me hooked on it, rather than plot twists or melodrama, was just how purely charming it is. From the unique setting to the various eccentric members of the Mortmain family, every part of ICTC is memorable and lovable without being trite or saccharine. 

It is because of all these wonderful qualities that I have read I Capture the Castle so many times over the years, and I believe these same qualities will have me returning to it for many years to come. 

The Best Book I Read Last Year // 30-Day Book Challenge - Day 1

Welcome to the first post of the 30-Day Book Challenge, in which I write about a different book or series every day for thirty days. The prompt for Day 1 of the challenge is "Best book you read last year", for which I have chosen Anita Brookner's novel Providence.

This first daily challenge struck me as especially appropriate for this time of year, as 2019 has just finished and prompted us all to look back on our years in review, especially in terms of the media we've consumed (thanks, Spotify, for those yearly wrap ups). 

I was actually asked about my favourite book I read last year over the winter holiday, to which I gave a different answer to the one I'm giving now. The reason for this is that I was struggling to choose between two books I read last year: Look at Me and Providence, both by Anita Brookner. Brookner is hands-down my favourite author I discovered last year, but choosing between the two of her novels I read in 2019 was (appropriately) a challenge. 

Both Providence and Look at Me are beautiful books, featuring what I'm led to believe are classic Brookner tropes: lonely, single, and introspective women living out thoughtful and painfully-solitary lives in the city of London. Neither book is necessarily what one would call a "happy" read, but what stuck with me about Brookner's writing was the range and depth of emotion depicted. There are moments of everyday triumph, hope, and even romance among the many melancholy ones. If her protagonists are generally reserved, this only makes their feelings come across as that much more poignant to the reader.

Providence, Brookner's second novel, follows Kitty Maule, an academic who has been in unrequited love with her coworker Maurice Bishop for some years before the start of the book. Things look promising when she gets an opportunity to travel with Maurice to France on a research trip... but should Kitty risk getting her hopes up?

As I said, I struggled to choose between Providence and Look at Me when picking my favourite book of the year. The reason I eventually went with the former is that, when looking back at the novels, it was Brookner's depiction of Kitty's interior life that stuck with me. 

Kitty is a woman trapped inside herself. She is agonisingly reserved, having a deep desire to be 'totally unreasonable, totally unfair, very demanding, and very beautiful', which she knows she can never achieve. She knows many kinds of pain: of loneliness, of loss, of seeing the person you want with someone else. But her internal restraint prevents her from letting these emotions out, from reaching a point where she might be able to recover from her pain and begin to move forwards.

Providence is not an easy book, for all that Brookner's writing itself is flowing and a pleasure to read. What Providence is is a beautiful depiction of a rich emotional life, the life of a person who constantly aches for more than she is given. It is for that reason that I have chosen it as the best book I read last year.

And So it Begins... // 30-Day Book Challenge

As I mentioned in my last post on this blog, I'm currently trying to steer this blog in the direction of more media-related content, rather than my current theme-less ramblings. I'm also trying to post a bit more consistently on here - that is, more frequently than once a month. Luckily, the other day I came across an idea that could help me achieve both of these things at once: a book challenge.

The challenge I found is called the 30-Day Book Challenge, and from what I can tell the idea behind it is that for each day of the 30 days mentioned, you write about a book (or series) that matches the daily description. I discovered this challenge through the image below, which unfortunately I haven't been able to find an original source for (if the image isn't loading, scroll down for a text version).

In summary, every day for the next 30 days I will be posting about a different book or series. I'm hoping this will be a bit of fun and will provide some much-needed levity on a blog that has otherwise been plagued by political musings and hot takes. With these posts, I will also be aiming not to write too much - as those of you who follow my writing know, I have a tendency to "over-write" (AKA ramble on unnecessarily). Hopefully the time-sensitive nature of these posts will help me avoid this and keep things brief.

So, keep your eyes peeled for a new post tomorrow (and the day after, and the day after that, and the day after that...).


30-Day Book Challenge

Day 1 – Best book you read last year

Day 2 – A book that you’ve read more than 3 times

Day 3 – Your favourite series

Day 4 – Favourite book from your favourite series

Day 5 – A book that makes you happy

Day 6 – A book that makes you sad

Day 7 – A book that makes you laugh

Day 8 – Most overrated book

Day 9 – A book you thought you wouldn’t like but ended up loving

Day 10 – A book that reminds you of home

Day 11 – A book you hated

Day 12 – A book you love but hate at the same time

Day 13 – Your favourite writer

Day 14 – Book turned movie and completely descecrated

Day 15 – Favourite male character

Day 16 – Favourite female character

Day 17 – Favourite quote from your favourite book

Day 18 – A book that disappointed you

Day 19 – Favourite book turned into a movie

Day 20 – Favourite romance book

Day 21 – The first novel you remember reading

Day 22 – A book that makes you cry

Day 23 – A book you wanted to read for a long time but still haven’t

Day 24 – A book that you wish more people had read

Day 25 – A character who you can relate to the most

Day 26 – A book that changed your opinion about something

Day 27 – The most surprising plot twist or ending

Day 28 – Favourite title of a book

Day 29 – A book everyone hated but you liked

Day 30 – Your favourite book of all time

New Year, New Beginnings(?): An Update on the Future of this Blog

Hello everyone! (and by everyone, I mean all three of you who actually read my posts)

I'm writing this to say that there are going to be some changes coming here soon. When I started this blog, I wanted to avoid restricting it to any particular subject. That way, I could explore writing about different topics and figure out which ones were the most enjoyable without having to worry about brand consistency or anything like that. Writing this way has mostly been great, but at this point I'd like to do something different.

From now on, I'm going to use this blog specifically to write about topics relating to media. This includes books, films, television, and so on. I feel that this is narrow enough to constitute an official theme (rather than the previous theme of "whatever I feel like writing about"), but still broad enough that I won't risk getting bored. It also has the added effect of encouraging me to read more books and watch more films, two things that I love doing but which often get set aside in favour of other stuff when I get even slightly busy.

This is not to say that I will only write about media from this point onwards. I will also continue to write about other things, just not on this blog. I've been experimenting with Medium as a platform for my writing lately, and I think I'm going to start using that for topics which don't fit into the scope of this blog. What I'm going to do regarding old posts which don't fit the theme is another question. I'm considering just leaving them up for now, but later on I may decide to take them off here and re-upload them somewhere else, or simply keep them on my computer, where their thematic inconsistency can be hidden from prying eyes.

Also, in case it wasn't obvious by now, I am not longer doing the Link About It posts on here. I realised that I wasn't really doing anything with them that I couldn't already easily and more efficiently do on my various social media accounts, so I decided to stop. However, I am open to writing a specifically media-related link round-up in the future, if anyone is interested.

This brings me to my final point: if you read this blog (hi, mum and dad) and have any thoughts on what you might like to see me write about, I'd be keen to hear it. I can't guarantee I'll do what you want me to, but it would be nice to know what sort of things people would be interested in reading.

That's all for now. Keep an eye out for more media-related content here in the near future!