Dead Ever After by Charlaine Harris

Dead Ever After by Charlaine Harris (ISBN 9780575096622, 352pp, May 2013)

It’s all over. OVER! After years of dedicated reading, I’ve just finished the final Sookie Stackhouse book. Thirteen books and it’s finally done. Without wanting to spoil it for others, I know the ending I wanted and it is not the ending I got. But it was the ending that I knew was coming. It’s the ending that makes the most sense, but the ending that seems to have sent people on goodreads into the depths of despair.

I loved this series but only loyalty had me reading the last few books. The story seemed to lose its way in its quest to stretch out to thirteen installments. Still, I will remember all the great writing that had me eagerly anticipating each installment. Who would have thought that a waitress called Sookie Stackhouse with telepathic powers and a love of tanning could make such fantastic reading? Add in vampires, werewolves, fairies, maenads, witches, shapeshifters, werepanthers, weretigers, demons and zealots and it was a recipe for a whole lot of fun.

Thank goodness I still have the TrueBlood HBO series to watch or else I would be distraught about saying good-bye to Sookie.

 

Warm Bodies: A Review

Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion (kindle edition, 258 pages, pub April 2011)

Ah, romances between paranormal creatures and young women. There have sure been a lot of books falling into this genre over the years. Vampire romances, witch romances, werewolf romances, alien romances … and now zombie romances. I read Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion because I wanted to go and see the movie (which I still haven’t seen yet) and because I was curious about how a zombie (a rotting, brain-eating, moaning corpse) could be made to be desirable. I’m not sure too many people would fantasise about this particular creature.

I was expecting some sort of angst-ridden, Twilight-style romance but instead got something that had a bit more substance. Warm Bodies tells the tale of a zombie called ‘R’. Like all zombies, he has no memory of who he was when he was alive or what his name was. All he recalls is the letter ‘R’. R is more articulate than most zombies in that he can string together a few words at a time. Most of his kind just stand around moaning at each other. He lives in an abandoned airport on the edge of a post-apocalyptic city. The airport houses a big nest of zombies and R calls a 747 his home. On the outside he likes hunting for humans and eating their brains, but on the inside he is capable of deep thought about his situation.

One day R goes on a raid in the city and eats the brain of a young man. In doing so, he finds himself seeing the young man’s memories and hearing his thoughts. Then he does something extraordinary – he saves a young woman from being eaten by the other raiding zombies. The woman, Julie, is the ex-girlfriend of the man whose brain he just ate. He takes her back to the airport and an unlikely relationship develops between them.

Julie is a tough cookie and hates zombies but she can see that R is different. As they begin an unlikely friendship, the world around them begins to alter. For if R is capable of suppressing his zombie-like tendencies, is it possible that other zombies will follow? And can they convince the humans barricaded behind the walls of the stadium that there is still hope for the world?

Warm Bodies is imaginative, funny and touching in equal parts. I can’t say I’ve ever had an interest in zombies as a subject matter, but I really liked this book. Now I have to see the movie.

20 Signs You’re Getting Old

I’ve always thought of myself as being young at heart. In my head I am still 17 years old, but on paper I am in my early 30s. Lately though I’ve been noticing a few signs that in isolation are not so bad, but as a whole seem to indicate that I may be getting old.

You know you’re getting old when:

1. You used to love being in the front row at music festivals and now you can’t bear being in crowds
2. Nineties fashion comes back into vogue and is considered ‘retro’
3. You feel the need to buy copious amounts of sheets and towels – just because …
4. Your ideal Friday night involves falling asleep on the couch in front of the TV
5. You own multiple pairs of bed socks in multiple colours
6. You find yourself buying puzzle books to take away on holiday and getting excited over the prospect of winning a steak knife set
7. You have school friends with teenage kids
8. Most of your friends are either married, getting married, or going through divorce
9. You tut-tut disapprovingly about the length of young girls’ skirts/dresses/shorts
10. You forget what you were saying in the middle of a sentence
11. Your hearing isn’t what it used to be so you watch movies with the subtitles on
12. Wine goes down like water
13. You like doing things like “brunch” and “book clubs”
14. Young people in public places start to annoy you. Why, back in my day, we had respect for our elders …
15. You start dressing like a soccer mum – even though you don’t have kids
16. Shopping for a bargain in the supermarket becomes a way of life
17. You own a cardigan in every colour of the rainbow
18. When you can no longer sleep in and wake when the sun comes up
19. Loud noises put your teeth on edge
20. Your chiropractor is listed in the favourites section on your phone

Maybe I am getting older in my habits. But the best thing about getting older is no longer caring what anyone thinks of you.

What comes first for you? The book or the movie?

What comes first for you – the book or the movie?

Does a book get on your reading radar when a new movie based on it is coming out? Do you then rush out to read it before seeing the movie? Or do you go and see a movie based on having read the book? For me, probably like most of you, it is a mixture of both. I read all The Hunger Games books before going to see the first movie. Likewise, I went to see the film version of Life of Pi because I loved the book so much (the movie was fantastic too!).

“The book is so much better than the movie”

Do you find yourself saying that? I do. Even though I love movies almost as much as I love books, I inevitably always think the book is better. I guess it’s because they can squeeze so much into the novel that they can’t into the movie. Plus, I’m a purist. I’m one of those annoying people who will drive you crazy during a movie by saying, “that didn’t happen in the book!” There are only two exceptions that I can think of: The Lord of the Rings movies were much more entertaining than the book and I loved Gone With The Wind both in book and film version.

Right now I seem to be going through a film tie-in reading phase

I just read:

Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion

I can’t wait to see the movie!

I’m now reading:

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

I was going to get the DVD and then bought the book at a sale. So I have to read the book first!

See the film. Read the book?

What I don’t usually do is see a movie and then go and read the book. I saw the film Silver Linings Playbook but see no need to read the book. I loved The Hobbit movie but probably won’t ever get around to reading the book. I confess to seeing more than a few Nicholas Sparks movies but have never picked up the corresponding book. And while I loved the film The Help, I never did read the book version – even when it was given to me by my mum. I just don’t go from the film to the book.

 

Is anyone else like this? How do films influence your reading habits?