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Monday Amusements 16

26th August 2013 By Julianne Leave a Comment

Happy Monday! If you’re in the UK chances are you might be enjoying a bank holiday right now, just as I am. I’m going to be playing board games again, yay! If you have a job that requires you to work today, you have my sympathies, as my current job is the first job I’ve had that didn’t count bank holidays as an ordinary day of work. Regardless of whether you’re at work or play, I hope you enjoy my link selection.

First up is the trailer for the upcoming film adaptation of The Book Thief, which I do not like at all.



Maybe it’s just the voiceovers, but it looks so cheesy. Yes, I said voiceovers. The man’s voiceover at the end is bad but Liesel’s introduction at the beginning is pretty corny too. Hopefully it’s just this trailer and the actual film will be better!

Why Keep Books? I keep books for all of the reasons listed by Tasha Brandstatter at Book Riot, and also because I want to share them with friends. I like to lend books I loved to other people, so they can enjoy them too. I also lend books that I had mixed feelings about, because I want to know what the other person will think.

I’d love to visit Hay-on-Wye, but I think it will have to wait until I acquire a lot more bookshelves! If I do go, I want to visit The Bookshop Cafe, as reviewed by Anushka Tay. The food and the books look delicious.

I really enjoyed Raimy’s thoughtful post about being an adult reader of children’s books. I don’t read many children’s books, outside of the teen age category, but I absolutely loved those that I have read in the last few years.

A Guide to YA Novels with LGBTQ Characters (via @Caroni_Clarke) is a graphic guide that will help you find just the book to match your tastes! If you’re looking for a feminist YA novel, Sophie at So Many Books, So Little Time has put together a short list of her favourites. On Twitter (@sophie_waters) she shared this fantastic piece about Sarah Dessen and her recent revelations about her past, which I totally agree with.

Jessi at Auntie Spinelli Reads posted the first review of The Bone Season, by Samantha Shannon, that I’ve seen, and made it sound so intriguing I must get my hands on a copy!

At Winged Reviews, Jack poses the question Do Authors Deserve a Second Chance? Personally, I am open-minded and will pick up a second book by an author if the reasons I didn’t like it were relatively superficial. If I didn’t like the protagonist or the ending then I’m happy to give them another go. But if the book was badly written, or if the author was pushing a point of view that made me feel uncomfortable, it’s very unlikely that I’ll try their work again.

Have you written or read a great post in the last two weeks that I’ve missed? Let me know in the comments, and check out the Monday Amusements archive if you want more to read!

Filed Under: Monday Amusements Tagged With: book chat, books, links, lists, Monday Amusements

Book Review: Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi

22nd August 2013 By Julianne 2 Comments

I’d wanted to read Persepolis for quite some time, even before I saw the film. I had vague intentions of getting it out of the library, but my to-get-from-the-library list is about a mile long and has to compete for attention with all the books I own. Happily, I got given a copy as part of a Secret Santa, so it managed to jump the library queue. Yay!

Persepolis is a (slightly-fictionalised according to various sources) memoir in two parts, which were originally published in French. The edition I have from Vintage Books collects both parts in a trade paperback, but it is also available from Pantheon Books in a larger format. The first part, ‘The Story of a Childhood’, follows the author’s childhood in Iran, following the Islamic Revolution and exploring how her everyday life was altered. She becomes more and more rebellious when she reaches her teens, and her parents decide that she will be safer and happier if she goes away to school in Austria, which is where the second part begins. ‘The Story of a Return’ is about her experiences in Austria, and her decision to return to Iran.

Successful memoirs feel honest, and Persepolis certainly does. Marjane
Satrapi shows herself and the people she loves as flawed human beings,
and therefore I found it easy to trust her impressions of people who
treat her or other people badly. Persepolis balances the serious, unflinching depictions of wars and revolutions with humour and details about her family life – I cried a couple of times but I laughed a lot more.

I loved all the little snippets of Iran’s history. The school curriculum in the UK treats British history as if it’s the history of the whole world, while simultaneously leaving out most of the parts of British history that are actually important to world history, ie. all the unsavoury details about the British Empire. I feel like there is a shamefully huge gap in my knowledge and I actually really enjoy learning about history when it’s not confined to the World Wars. What is great about Persepolis is that the historical details are interwoven with the author’s life – they are things that she learnt about in childhood, or that she explains briefly to the reader so that the surrounding parts of the story make sense. It made me want to find out more.

I started reading Persepolis when I was ill – I was feeling dizzy and wanted something
that would be easy to follow, and that would take my mind off of all the
things that I was incapable of getting on with. It was the perfect
choice, and has left me with a craving for more graphic memoirs. If you have any recommendations, please leave me a comment!

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged With: autobiography, book review, comic, comic book, graphic memoir, graphic novel, life writing, Marjane Satrapi, memoir, review

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