The Pilo Family Circus

Right, be prepared for swearing.

Fuck me, this is a really fucked up mess of a book. In an extremely good way. I loved it!

So, this one is from the Aurealis Award for best horror list of the genre busting challenge. Not something I would normally choose to be honest, mainly because it is not in my zone, but I have loved it and may well investigate some more of them!

Example from the first page:

What immediately disturbed Jamie was the look in the clown’s eyes, a bewildered galze which suggested the clown was completely new to the world, that Jamie’s car was the very first it had ever seen. It was as though it had just hatched out of a giant egg and wandered straight onto the road to stand as still as store mannequin, its flower shirt tucked in at the wasit, barely holding in a sagging belly, arms locked stiff at its sides, hands bunhced into rat round fists stuffed into white gloves. Sweat patches spread out under both armpits. It started at him through the windshield with ungodly boggling eyes, then it lost interest and turned away from the vehicle that had nearly killed it.

I know, clowns, right!

This story grabbed me by the throat and dragged me through from the very start – Jamie basically gets shang-heid into joining a really screwed up circus, which exists in a parallell world. Violence (really, very violent violence) is involved and a dark, macabre story follows. So. Fucked. Up.

This is a début novel from this author and I cannot wait to see what else he will do. I will also investigate other books from this award.

The Pilo Family Circus – Will Elliott

The Travelling Vampire Show

At first I was horrified when I saw the size of the book, and I quickly decided that it was definitely one to be read at home and not on my commute into town! When I picked up the book to start reading I was quite relieved to see that it was two complete book in one!

This one is from the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel. Rather appropriately!

The summer I was sixteen, the Travelling Vampire Show came to town. I heard about it first from my two best friends, Rusty and Slim. Rusty’s real name was Russell, which he pretty much hated. Slim’s real name was Frances. She had to put up with it from her parents and teachers, but not from other kids. She’d tell them, ‘Frances is a talking mule’. Asked what she wanted to be called, her answer pretty much depended on what book she happened to be be reading.

Huuuuge book!

I liked this book. I was pulled through the story, which grew and twisted along the way, completely not to my predictions at all. I really liked the characters, it was nice to have some strong women in here, especially as this is a book with a first person narrative from a teenage boy. Although at that point I would like to say ‘eeww, gross. Are all teenage boys this sex obsessed?’. But apart from a few ugh points it was ok. Although, one guy beats up his sister quite badly and then rapes an unconscious woman, not an ugh point, but a nasty one, although he gets his comeuppance in no uncertain terms.

It is set in the sixties in America and as a result there are some things that are lost on me, but I know that they have some significance, even if I don’t quite get them. There is a lot of emphasis placed on swearing (as in, how bad it is) and how they are not allowed in the same house alone with a member of the opposite sex and they are not allowed upstairs at another persons house. I am not sure if this is a sixties thing or an American thing. Although having said that I used to get told off for saying ‘bloke’ or ‘gross’ when I was at home.

All in all, I really enjoyed this one!

The Travelling Vampire Show – Richard Laymon.

A dark adapted eye

When I first started on this Genre Busting reading challenge I thought that I never read crime novels and never really have done. Except that is a total lie, when I started to think about it I realised that I loved reading Agatha Christie when I was younger, instigated by my mum, who gave me all of her novels to read. And my absolute guilty pleasure (shhh, don’t tell anyone) is watching Miss Marple or Poriot on a Sunday afternoon, while I am doing some crafting stuff.

Then I started to think about it some more and I realised that I did used to read a range of crime novels, although the authors escape me right now. So, this really has made me reassess my reading habits and next time I go to the library I might well head onto the crime section as well.

Anyway – onto the book. The first award that I looked at was the Mystery Writers of America and Ruth Rendell was the 1997 winner. Now these awards are a bit different in that it is not given for a specific book, but a writer. I searched at the library and realised that Barbara Vine was a pen name for her as well, so I decided to get one of hers as I wanted one which interested me. So I chose ‘A Dark Adapted Eye’.

Quote from the first page:

In these circumstances alone one knows when someone is going to die. All other deaths can be predicted, conjectured, even anticipated with some certainty, but not to eh hour, the minute, with no room for hope. Vera would die at eight o’clock and that was that. I began to feel sick.

Hmm, interesting – no?

Now, I have to say that this was hard going at first, mainly because of all the names and who married who and who was related to whom, not helped by the fact that lots of people changed their names, over and above getting married. It made it rather confusing.

However as I went on I started to get more engrossed in the plot and the book, I started to care about the characters and wanted to know more.

The plot twists were brilliant – you are never quite told what is going on until later when you realise and it all makes perfect sense, or not as the case maybe.

I am pleased that I read this book and I will certainly investigate more of her books (under both names).

Reading challenges

hello! Feeling a little overwhelmed with all of the book challenges here? I am!

So, rather than flooding out this blog with book stuff, what I have decided to do is to continue doing the reviews for books which are part of the genre busting challenge (mainly because I have written most of them!) and keep the page summarising the 2012 End of the world challenge up to date, but post all of the reviews over at my new Good Reads account that I have set up. That can be reached at my Darkpurplemoon page over there.

I will be posting quite a few reviews, mainly because I am reading a hell of a lot for my Masters. And I am lucky in that the vast majority of them are books that you can sit down and read. Although, if I am being completely honest I have been known to sit down and read text books covers to cover, diligently taking notes. That is the reason I am a geek, and why I could, if I had the money and the time, be working on a PHD and/or several degrees and Masters at once.

Do you have a Good Reads account? I would love to find out if you do!

The End of the world reading challenge

Because the one reading challenge isn’t quite enough, I am going to also be taking part in the Insatiable Bookslut’s the 2012 End of the World Reading Challenge. You can read all about it here.

But basically it is keep a tally of the (official) page count of all the books that you read cover to cover this year and do a small review on it.  I will keep my page counts officially here and I will put a link to it under the image on the side bar. The reviews will pop up throughout the year. I will only include my studying books if I actually read the entire thing, cover to cover. I think that is allowed.

Page counts are from Wikipedia, unless otherwise stated.

So, here we go:

3 January: The Travelling Vampire Show. Richard Laymon. Page count 543

Reading Challenge update

Well, I am loving this reading challenge from the Insatiable Booksluts, although I am sure that I am spending too much time doing it and not enough time studying!

If you are not sure what I am talking about then click here for the first post, then you can click on the reading challenge category for all posts.

So here, is the update of The Genre buster challenge:

Hugo Award (sci-fi/fantasy); Goblin Reservation, Clifford D Simak. Got half way through when I was ill, now I have no idea what has happened, or where I am up to, so I will have to start again. Sigh.

Nebula Award for Novels (sci-fi/fantasy); so far I don’t seem to have chosen one!

World Fantasy Award;  not this one! Maybe when I have finished the two that I have done.

Bram Stoker Best Novel Award (horror); The Travelling Vampire Show, Richard Layman. Read, and finished today, so I will do the review soon.

Aurealis award for best horror novel; The Pilo Family Circus, Will Elliot. Read, review written, but not posted

Crime Writers’ Association’s Gold Dagger (crime fiction); The Broken Shore, Peter Temple. Not started yet.

Mystery Writers of America; Dark Adapted Eye, Barbara Vine/Ruth Rendell. Read, review written, but not posted

RITA awards Kiss of a Demon King, Kresley Cole. Read and review posted

Blimey, I really do have a lot of posts stacked up in the drafts queue. I didn’t want to flood you with them!

Lessons learnt? Don’t order all of the books at once, it creates unnecessary pressure on top of the other reading that I do. My library is super efficient.

Kiss of a demon king

So, when I saw romance on the list of this challenge, I groaned. I don’t really ‘do’ romance at all. My OH moans that he is the romantic one and I am not.

I wasn’t overly amused to realise that I had to read a book. None the less, I sucked it up, as it is part of the genre busting challenge.

The award in question was the RITA awards. Now I have to say that I plumped for the ‘paranormal’ section becuase it was closest to my comfort zone. I know, I know, the point is to get out of my comfort zone. So I looked to see if the library had any of the other catagories (including historical, inspirational, regency historical) on their list. And they didn’t, so I was let off of the hook – paranormal it is!

Sorry about the glare, it has a library protective jacket on it

Sample from the first page: (In fact the very first paragraph)

“Whenever you have a sorcerer betweizt your thights, your powers tned to disappear”, Sabine told her sister as she sacanned the faces of the frenzied, caged humans. “It’s merely a fact of life.”

Right….it kind of goes on from there really. Let me tell you, this is not a book to be reading on the commute to London, phewey, it is really rather, extremely erotic. Hardly a page went by without some sex scene happening. Not too badly written sex scenes it has to be said, but none the less, nearly every page.

It got a bit too much to be honest. The plot was pretty much there to lurch from one kinky sex scene to the next. Now, I quite like ‘bit-lit’ it is my go to mind fluff reading, and some of them are really rather saucy (best English accent), but none the less this book was too much for me – I like the sex to accentuate the story, not be the whole story.

So, there you go, I think I will be staying away from the recommendations from this list!

Kiss of a demon king, Kresley COle

Reading challenge update

As you may remember I got really excited when I heard about the reading challenge and I quickly chose the books (often based by what the library had) and reserved them straight away.

I should have known better, my library is very efficient and I quickly ended up with a huge stack of books. Oops, a little overwhelming, especially with my stack of uni books too. Nevermind, I will just renew them and plod on through.  I do already have 80p of fines from this challenge already, I really need to put the library books into my Remember the Milk system.

look at the size of the Laymon one!

I should explain that my reports on the books will not necessarily be proper book reports, such as you would turn into school, I don’t really know what they will be at this point in time, but they won’t be that.

Have any of you signed up to the reading challenge?

Book challenge.

I love reading – it has always been a vital part of my life. I am sure the reason why I have bad eyesight is that I read by torchlight under my covers after I had been told to go to bed.

I read at high speed and then often go back again if I feel it is worth it, I have a collection of books which have been read over 20 times at least. They are my go-to books when I am feeling in need of being comforted. These mainly consist of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, but there are others on the list as well.

Aside from books that  I have had to read as a former English teacher, or for studying purposes I do tend to go for Sci-fi/fantasy. It is quite hard to break outside of a genre once you are firmly embedded!

Thanks to Armatius I found out about a book challenge. I do firmly love a challenge! Check out here for details. 

So, despite doing my masters and having a crazy reading list I am going to do the genre-buster challenge to start with and see how I get on, I might then go on to Toe-Dippin’.  Ooh, new books, excitement! And I had just cleared my waiting list at the library too!