When You Know You're Going To Hate A Book...But Read It Anyway

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well.

For every reader there comes a moment when you come into possession of a book that you know you're going to hate but feel honour bound by a sort of "reader code" (or is it an addiction?) to eventually come round and read it.

Things We Never Said was an ebook novel by Nick Alexander which in another post I chatted about. I won't repeat what I said here except that as you can guess from the title of this post I hated it. Indeed I've also chatted about another book by Mr Alexander, a "Brits in a villa" novel which, surprise, surprise, I hated as well.

Well to come back to Things We Never Said when I bought the book online it actually came with an added bonus (oh lucky me). Three Christmases : A Things We Never Said short story (thankfully). 

And of course when I read the main story I knew I was going to hate the short story. So I decided to bite the bullet and read the thing. And I'll read it in August as well. Suitable for Christmas.

Well.....of course I hated it. The things I hated in the main novel just carried over here. And let's face it any change of mind by me would have required something superhuman to achieve. In any event a boil has been lanced.

So I didn't ask for the book, but I read it. Sometimes you get delivered a book as a gift and you know you're not going to like it but there it is, taunting you, teasing that you might be pleasantly surprised and then laughing at you when you were right all along.

This is the addiction that we readers have. To read everything in our possession. To avoid the feeling we've missed something. To try everything on the menu just to say "I've been there" even though you would have rather had something dull but pleasant with chips on the side. All for that moment when you could honestly recommend the unexpected to others.

Until the next time.

 

Another Brits In A Villa Novel

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Sometimes you read a book thinking you've read variations on a theme a thousand times before even though you couldn't quote one immediately. Such a book is The Half Life Of Hannah by Nick Alexander.

The plot in a nutshell is this. A group of British people spend a summer holiday in a French villa where emotional turmoil is unleashed.

I've read this sort of thing before. I've seen this sort of thing before. I cannot quote an example of this. Why? Because I never liked it. I block it out  Why did I buy this in the first place then? Simple. It was cheap.

What I've realised as I read this novel is that the reason why I don't like Brits In A Villa stories is because of the sort of Brits who appear in them. They are upper middle class who would view austerity, homelessness or foodbanks solely from their television screens. Who really cares if their personal suburban lives are so fragile when others face far tougher times.?

And whilst this book was written in 2011 Brexit makes it worse because when the dark age arrives these are the sort of people who would be able to still afford renting a villa in the South of France. Presumably having Nigel Lawson as a neighbour.

So as I was reading this I was thinking that perhaps it fell into the category of an awful book well written as whilst I didn't care about the characters Mr Alexander did make me want to swipe the page. But the ending even spoiled doing that as whilst I won't go into detail let's say things just slotted into place.

In conclusion will I read another book Mr Alexander in the future? Yes.

I'd just will look more closely at the plot first.

Until the next time.