Review: Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel

I read this book back in February and am only getting around to finishing up my review now. Bad, I know. I wanted to like it. I wanted to love it. I read reviews and saw people promoting it everywhere. Thing is, I’m just not a fan of the genre. The book begins with the end of the world. The georgia flu kills 99% of the population and changes everything about the world as we know it. The book swaps between the past and present, Kirsten (present) is touring the wasteland with a group of musicians and actors, bringing entertainment to scattered settlements, and Arthur Leander (past) is playing a part in King Lear on stage in Toronto. Well, he is at least until he has a heart attack and dies on stage.

The book’s main motto is “survival is insufficient” – a tattooed immortalized line from Star Trek. Of course the book has a prophet, there has to be some turmoil besides the survival of mankind. The characters are detailed and driven, and that was the one redeeming fact I found. Despite the fact that it was well written, detailed, colourful and depicted humanism in a very frank and lovely way – I just couldn’t get into this book. No matter how hard I tried, I wasn’t captivated by the story. I do not think this is at all the fault of the author, but some books we find interesting and others we simply don’t.

Longbourn – by Jo Baker

I picked up this book not quite sure what I was expecting. It tells the story of the servant’s point of view of “Pride and Prejudice” and I suppose I was looking for a book that actually emulated Jane Austen’s writing style. On that level, Longbourn failed to deliver. I found the story incredibly dull and boring, the author spends a lot of time going into minute detail about things that just don’t matter (like foliage) and I kept waiting for something to happen or improve or get better – only it never did.

The book is incredibly dark and sad, and the servants assume their lives are an endless misery. To quote someone else’s review, “it starts out bleak, it continues dire, and it crosses the finish line with a vague “so that turned out okay, I guess.“”. The writing itself was well done if you can look past the fact that the narrative is all over the place. It gets confusing but that’s not a deal breaker for me.

It wasn’t the book I was hoping it would be, and that’s a shame. I just didn’t enjoy it.

2/5 stars

The Pirate’s Bed – by Nocola Winstanley

I won a copy of this book from a blog contest that was hosted a few months back, and I’ve been horrible about posting it, I know. After reading the Children’s hockey book I had high hopes that unfortunately fell flat where this story was concerned.

First thing that came to mind is that this book is way too advanced for the age group. I get that it’s important for kids to learn and they should be expanding their vocabulary, but for a picture book bed time story it just went too far over the top. Words like raucous. Unencumbered. Sensible. Words that I don’t even want to read at 34 before I go to bed let alone read to a small child (and then of course have to explain what those words mean to the child). The pictures were alright, and the story was OK but it all felt quite overshadowed by the vocabulary.

The story is about the bed and how it gets separated from the pirate. The bed complains about stinky pirate feet, but by the end all it wants is those smelly feet back. Eventually the bed washes ashore and gets restored and presented to a young pirate loving boy. It is a short sweet tale with a happy ending. The artwork wasn’t really my style but it was bright and colourful which should appeal to a good selection of readers even if it wasn’t for me.

3/5 stars