Film Vs Book: Paper Towns and Me, Earl and the Dying Girl

I wanted to do this post because these two films based upon two great young adult books came out this summer. I owned both of these books but the films coming out gave me the impetus to read the books. I absolutely flew through both of them and enjoyed them both very much (as you'll have seen from my review of both!). I wanted to post about the films and the books because I enjoyed both elements of the way the story is told. This post does contain some spoilers so if you have no idea what either of these books is about, I suggest you pick them both up now, read them and then check back at this post. 

Paper towns. I loved the book because it was a bit of a mystery and was very fast paced. The movie has this same fast-paced element to it but the mystery element seems hyped up a little more, it is more, 'this is scary looking for Margo' than 'I wonder why Margo has us doing all of this stuff?'. One of the things I was most looking forward to seeing in the film, aside from the bit with the peeing in the car, was when Q and Margo break into Seaworld. There are two things missing from Margo's list in the film though and that was one of them (the book has 11 items, the film 9 items). I was a bit disappointed by this, as was my cinema companion and fellow John Green fan. I did love seeing the road trip brought to life in the film though and Margo looked exactly as she appeared in my head-yey!

Me Earl and the Dying Girl. I loved the film of this book as well but I have to say, the film didn't make me laugh as much as the book-surprising! There were certainly some laugh-out-loud moments in the film as there was in the book but I think possibly the images i conjured up in my head were just a little sillier and way out there. I really liked the way the scripted scenes that were in the book were done in the film. The books is part prose and part script and to get this effect over in the film, part of it is live action and some bits are animated with clay models or just general stop motions animation. The thing I also really liked about the film  was that you got to see snippets of the films that Earl and Greg made-they were fabulous. I like the fact that the books is mainly written in the second person and the film also achieves that by talking directly to us, the audience.

So as you can see, I liked both books and both films, not a very controversial post really, however I wanted to make clear that there are definitely difference between both films and their respective books. If you read and watched both of these this summer, I'm sure you'll agree with me that a great time was to be had by all!

Review: Resistance is Futile by Jenny T Colgan

Connie thinks she's never met anyone quite like Luke Beith before.

She has no idea how right she is.

As a high-ranking mathematician in a male-dominated field - with bright red hair - Connie's used to being considered a little unusual.

But she's nowhere near as peculiar as Luke, who is recruited to work alongside her on a top-secret code breaking project.

Just what is this bizarre sequence they're studying? It isn't a solution to the global energy crisis. It isn't a new wavelength to sell microwave ovens. The numbers are trying to tell them something . . . and it seems only Luke knows what.

The truth is out there. Will Connie dare to find it?

Review: This book was completely different from everything I expected. I am a massive Jenny Colgan fan and so of course I was going to pick this book up. I knew it would be a kind of crossover between her rom com stuff and her sci fi stuff but I wasn't expecting the combination to be quite this stark. If you like Jenny Colgan's rom com stuff, this has it in, if you like a bit of sci fi, this is also included in this book. Rather than being a mixture of both, this book just has both aspects to it!

This book was interesting but wasn't really my cup of tea because it was just too much sci fi for my liking so if you're not ready to suspend your disbelief, then you won't enjoy this book, but if you fancy something that covers both aspects, I am sure you will have a great time with this novel! I really liked the characters in this novel, there were a lot of them but they were all so well-developed, it was easy to tell one scientist from another. I listened to the audiobook version of this and so it should've been easier to determine by their accents but unfortunately the accents were pretty bad so it was a little trickier, thankfully I has this novel on kindle too!

I liked both Connie and Luke as characters and as the book went on, I found myself warming to Luke more and more, his history and his back-story make him very endearing and I was willing this tale to be a happy ending for him. I enjoyed reading about Connie as well but I did find as the book went on, I found myself liking her less, which was interesting, I just felt that she lost herself a bit  as her storyline progressed because of her involvement with the storyline itself (sorry no spoilers!)

As I say, this book wasn't really for me but I did like the characters, the settings and I thought the idea behind it was a good one, just a little too far fetched for me to suspend my knowledge of real life! I really liked the fact that this book deals with scientists and features a girl who is good at maths, not something that is usually covered-great stuff. I you're a Jenny Cold fan and like a little sci fi with your romance then you will love this book.

Top Ten Tuesday: top ten books I read this summer 15/9/15

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This feature was created because they are particularly fond of lists over there at The Broke and the Bookish. I'd love to share my lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

So it looks like summer is pretty much over, it's getting darker, it's dark when I leave for work and getting dark when I get home (which is fairly depressing!) but I wanted to look back on the books that I read this summer so a top ten seemed like the best way! 

1. Paper Towns by John Green

2. The year of Reading Dangerously by Andy Miller (I promise to review this soon!)

3. The Piano Man Project by Kat French

4. Meet me in Manhattan by Claudia Carroll

5. In The Unlikely Event by Judy Blume

6. A Night in With Audrey Hepburn by Lucy Holliday

7. Me Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews (loved the film of this by the way!)

8. Mile High by Rebecca Chance

9. The Island Escape by Kerry Fisher

10. the Curvy Girls Baby Club by Michele Gorman 

Review: Shingaling by RJ Palacio

Almost 2 million people have read the New York Times bestseller Wonder and fallen in love with Auggie Pullman. Readers have also been given a special look at another side of his story with The Julian Chapter and a peek at his life before Beecher Prep in Pluto. In this third Wonder Story, they’ll get to see his first year of school and what follows in the beginning of the next year through the perspective of reader-favorite Charlotte. 

Review: I've kind of got mixed feelings about this book. This is the third in the series of Wonder spin-off stories and I was really looking forward to hearing the story from Charlotte's perspective but I don't feel like her story added anything to the Wonder story like the other two spin offs did. We didn't really get any more insight into Auggie and the way his classmates perceived him, but we did get to find out a little more about Charlotte and the girls that attend Beecher Prep, who we don't get to hear about as much in the main Wonder novel. 

The wonderful thing about tall of these spin offs is that the strong values of Choose Kind and being true to yourself and your friends is very strong, even though these are just side stories, it is nice to have the theme recurring throughout! It was really good to catch up with Charlotte and see how her and her friends perceived Auggie, the Plaugue and the Boy War throughout the school year and see her reaction to the Beecher Medal awarded at the end of the year. 

This is definitely a short story so don't be expecting a full novel, you definitively need to have read Wonder first but I really don't think that the three spin off stories need to be read in any particular order as they all are separate stories featuring wonder characters. This was a nice quick read and it was interesting to find out a little more about Charlotte, although I would have liked it to feature Auggie a little more. 

These spin offs are now all in one bind up...

Letterbox Love #12

Welcome to Letterbox Love, this is a UK meme, hosted by the lovely Lynsey at Narratively Speaking and inspired by The Story Siren's In My Mailbox. This post is a means by which to highlight the books we get in the post and beyond, and especially to bring attention to those books which may be sat on our shelves for a little while yet that we love all the same.

I've been really lucky to receive some fabulous book post over the last few days so I wanted to share some of them with you here! 

Now the first one is a little bit late, sorry about that, I was supposed to post about this one on Thursday at 1pm but unfortunately work just wouldn't allow that and so I am just catching up with myself now! I received 2 copies of Little Girl Gone by Alexandra Burt. Now this book sounds fab and very thriller! I received two copies, one for me and one for a freind and I am going to give my copy to my lovely blogger freind Zarina because I need an excuse to see her! This comes out on 24th September and I can't wait to read it! #didshedoit

More exciting book post, this time in the form of This is One Moment by Mila Grey. I have heard nothing about this book but I love the look of the cover and the blurb sounds interesting and right up my street. This is out on 10th October.

Then I received Two books from O'Brien Publishers, they sounds very different from what I usually go for... They are A Hollow in The Hills by Ruth Francess Long and....

The Midnight Carnival by Erika McGann.

Then, you'll have seen my write-up of the Jackie Collins event I went to. I got this fab hardback edition of her new novel The Santangelos which came out this week...

And she signed it...

And if you love the jacket, look how lush and red the actual book is! Now if you he been keeping up with my posts, you'll know that I have a giveaway of another signed copy of this on the blog which is up for the next week so definitely go and comment or tweet me and you could have a signed copy of this fab book too! 

Thanks to all the publishers who sent me books this week, I'm going to be busy reading for a long time and they all look fab! Don't forget to enter my giveaway for the signed copy of The Santangelos! 

Literati with Jackie Collins

This week signaled another fabulous Literatti event at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London. These events are always amazing and this one was no exception. I mean any event where you're there to talk about a book and are greeted with champagne and canapes is going to be a winner, but these events really are something else!

I was mega-excited about this one though because it featured the iconic author Jackie Collins. Now I can't say that I have read much of what Jackie has written but I do remember picking a couple of them up when I was in my late teens and devouring them in my summer holidays! This event was to celebrate her new book The Santangelos and if you would like to win yourself a signed copy, yes a signed copy, make sure you checkout the giveaway at the bottom of this post!

Jackie was being interviewed by the wonderful Hannah Beckerman and gave away secrets about all sorts of Hollywood goings on and glamorous parties. All the things she was talking about really made me want to read her entire back catalogue because the scandals all sound amazing, without using any names of course! She also reveled that she is currently working on two projects, a sequel to her most recent book-The Power Trip- and her auto biography, which I now can't wait for after listening to the stories that she has to tell!

There are strong themes of female empowerment running through her novels and she was really championing strong women and women taking what they deserve. She says she is one of the original feminists (without the bra burning)! She went on to answer questions from some of the fans in the audience, including author Nigel May, and then we were able to get our books signed and meet her. This was fabulous, like meeting a true celebrity and she even complimented my jacket! Thanks to Simon and Schuster and Rosie at The Grosvenor for organising such a fabulous event!

So you want to win yourself a signed copy of Jackie's latest hardback? Leave me a comment below, or tweet me telling me about your favourite strong female. I'll leave the competition open for a week and will choose the winner in the ususal way! As this is a hardback, its going to be UK only this time-sorry!

Review: Oh Yeah Audrey! By Tucker Shaw

It’s 5:00 a.m. on Fifth Avenue, and 16-year-old Gemma Beasley is standing in front of Tiffany & Co. wearing the perfect black dress with her coffee in hand—just like Holly Golightly. As the cofounder of a successful Tumblr blog—Oh Yeah Audrey!—devoted to all things Audrey Hepburn, Gemma has traveled to New York in order to meet up with her fellow bloggers for the first time. She has meticulously planned out a 24-hour adventure in homage to Breakfast at Tiffany’s; however, her plans are derailed when a glamorous boy sweeps in and offers her the New York experience she’s always dreamed of. Gemma soon learns who her true friends are and that, sometimes, no matter where you go, you just end up finding yourself.Filled with hip and sparkling prose, 

Oh Yeah, Audrey! is as much a story of friendship as it is a love letter to New York, Audrey Hepburn, and the character she made famous: Holly Golightly.

The second book in my Audrey Readathon! 

Review: I absolutely flew through this book, the short chapters and diary-like form making it an easy read. I picked this book up on a whim, not really knowing what it was about but loving the front cover. I think I'd seeing a few people haul this on booktube and loved the look of it so I grabbed it in a B&N whilst in Texas over Xmas. 

I really loved the premise behind this book, it is definitely a story from modern times, a group of people coming together because of a Tumblr page and meeting in a location that none of them lives in for the appreciation aof Audrey Hepburn. This could only happen in this age of technology and I think it is something that many readers will be able to relate to and deals with the issue of people online friend IRL (in real life!).

Of course, Gemma isn't the only character in the novel aside from Audrey Hepburn as well! We have the friends she met online, fabulous, gay, right Bryan, Holly Golightly wannabe Trina, Telly who is actually the most genuine out of the group and then there's a boy, there's always a boy, who kind of puts the whole Audrey marathon in jeopardy! I liked reading about all the characters. If anything, they could have been a little more developed, I would have liked to have seen the evening from Bryan or Trina's point of view, but then the book would t have been as quick a read as it was so I'm not complaining too much. 

The storyline itself was simple, I think further development would have made the book longer and the. It may not have appealed as well to a young adult audience but at the same time, I really would have liked a little more depth. The setting of New York City was, of course, fabulous and I loved the fact that a lot of this novel took place late at night or early in the morning and so you didn't have the business of the city or the wail of sirens the whole book long, the sunset, the sunrise and the dark nights are beautifully described and fitting for the overall subject of the novel. This is a novel about self discovery and freind ship and I really hope there is a sequel soon becaus I really did enjoy reading it and want to hear more from theses characters!