Friday, January 21, 2011

Read these...

While waiting for Geets to arrive from Miri (yay~!!!), to kill the time I'm going to do book reviews. Just realised that all these books are by female authors (whereas the previous book review entry was all by male authors...hmm..) and no, these are not all from the chick lit genre.



1. The Book of Tomorrow (by Cecelia Ahern)
Rate: 3.5/ 5.0
To me, Cecelia Ahern books always have interesting angles...either it's a woman recovering from death of her husband (cried like crazy readin this), or a place where lost things go, or even imaginary friends (my fave~). This book is not my fave Ahern, but it's still good. I'm not a fan of the main character since she's obviously so spoiled. But the story has a good suspense and twist to it.

2.Room (by Emma Donoghue)
Rate: 4.75 / 5.0
Haha...I might as well rate the book a full 5. Trust me, you must read this. When I picked up the book from MPH bookstore, I had no idea it was ranked third on top 10 fiction bestsellers for the week. What attracted me to it was it's brief summary at the back, it's simple cover and "Man Booker Prize Finalist" written on the front.

The book is about a young woman being kidnapped and prisoned for seven years in a Room, and her son was born and brought up not knowing the Outside world really exist. The book is writen from the perspective of the 5-year old Jack and you can really see his innocence. I don't want to give spoilers away, but here's the brief summary at the back of the book that drew me to it:

'To five-year old Jack, Room is the world. It's where he was born, it's where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. At night, Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where Jack is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.'

3. Eat Pray Love (by Elizabeth Gilbert)
Rate: 2.0 /5.0
I'm sorry to those who love this book, but I don't. First, to those who do not already know it, this book is somewhat an autobiography (so it's non-fiction) of the author's life finding her happiness. It's been turned into a movie with Julia Roberts playing the main character. Anyway... why I don't enjoy it? Maybe cause she goes on and on about her problems... about not being able to concentrate while meditating, about not being able to open up to love, etc etc etc. I guess to me, reading is my way of escapism from daily stress, so reading about people talking about their problems is just no fun.

4. The Memory Keeper's Daugther
Rate: 4.0 / 5.0
To be honest, this book is thick and the plot is really slow. Took me a while to finish it, but I'm glad I did. It's about a doctor who delivered his own twins, but found out one of them was born with Down syndrome. Thinking the girl might not be able live long (it was 1964 after all) and wanting to spare his wife of the sadness in the near future, he decided to give the baby away and lied to his wife saying one of the twins died during childbirth.

5. Twenties Girl (by Sophie Kinsella)
Rate: 4.5/5.0
Chick lit~! Huhu. Bought this book at a really good discount, cost me only 5 Aussie Dollar (that's only RM15!... wait, don't be fooled...books there are generally more expensive, they cost about $18-25 per novel. I got this at a really really good sale at QBD Bookshop). Anyway, this book has a nice story to it. Yea, it's chick lit, so you don't need to think much and just enjoy the story and the happy ending.

P.S.: My dear got me a really nice stamp with my name in calligraphy (this is khat kufi). It's made by Yayasan Restu in Shah Alam and I've been stamping all my books with it. Thank you =D See...

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