Biblioblanket and Book Reviews Part I

The Biblioblanket is an ongoing project from my new crafting Instagram page. The books read so far will be uploaded here in parts and then weekly once I’m all caught up!

52 books. 1 year. 1 giant blanket.

Part I will make up the first column of eight squares:

📕 BOOK 1 - The Last Family In England by Matt Haig

📖 Matt Haig has been my all-time favourite author ever since The Midnight Library, so I took the start of this challenge as a way to continue working my way through his back catalogue. Unfortunately, this means I often go into his early work with too high expectations, and this book particularly struggles to meet them.

This is the first time I can remember reading a book from an animal’s perspective and, quite frankly, I don’t think it’s a gimmick I particularly vibe with. On top of that, I didn’t clock on to the full extent of the Shakespearean links until embarrassingly far into the story. Combined, I think this meant a lot of the fun and whimsy to the story was lost on me.

Still, it’s a captivating  narrative told from a unique viewpoint which maintains, even if in its infant stage, Matt Haig’s signature brand of wit and openness, with moments of surprising clarity about the human condition.

3 stars. ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

📕 BOOK 2 - Eruption by Michael Crichton and James Patterson

📖 Man vs volcano vs global bio-disaster vs meddling billionaires in an action-heavy, filler-lite narrative. What can I say? I had fun reading this, and I don’t think reading for enjoyment has to be any more complicated than that. Like reading a Michael Bay movie, I’ll let your own tastes decide if that’s a positive or a negative. Aggressively American.

3 stars. ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

📕 BOOK 3 - This Way Up by The Map Men (Map men, map map map men…), Mark Cooper Jones and Jay Foreman

📖 Time for some non-fiction! I have to be careful what I say about the Map Men, because one of their wives is an old ‘boss’ and friend of mine and she’s always scared me slightly (Hi, Jade!)*

Luckily, I don’t have a bad word to say about this. I love a good map, and I love a bad one even more, and this book is by and for the surprisingly big community of people who are in the same boat. Tapped right into my deep-rooted nerd that did geography and history up to A Level even though I did shockingly bad in the exams.*

* Invoking fear among actors is considered a compliment for members of stage management.

** I’d sneak in song lyrics just to meet the word count. Leonidas truly was so loyal to the Spartans that he was never gonna give them up, never gonna let them down…***

*** It wouldn’t be a proper review of this book if it didn’t include a few off-topic footnotes.

5 Stars. (Mismatched, because I’m trying out a new pattern) ⭐️ 🌟 ⭐️ 🌟 ⭐️

📕 BOOK 4 - Intercepts by TJ Payne (on Kindle Unlimited)

📖 A fun read but ultimately a little disappointing. While I was hooked by a wonderful writing style, this was often undermined by some serious issues with pacing, relying so heavily on reaching and hitting the ‘twists’ that the storyline suffers as a result. This involved awkwardly trying to pull off an elusive ‘double-twist’ in the space of two pages which, unsurprisingly, just ends up falling flat. Overall, it felt like a great idea that didn’t seem to know what to do with itself.

2 Stars ⭐️ ⭐️

📕 Book 5 - Mythos by Stephen Fry

📖 This is a quick and easy one to review. If you hear the phrase “Stephen Fry retells the Greek myths”, you probably already have an idea in your mind as to what to expect. This book is as good as you expect and more.

5 Stars. (Still mismatched, because I haven’t had time to make new ones) ⭐️ 🌟 ⭐️ 🌟 ⭐️

📕 BOOK 6 - How To Sell A Haunted House by Grady Hendrix

📖  Well, I never expected a book with the line “..the first thing I did was join a radical puppet collective” could turn out so unironically creepy and absorbing. Haunted dolls meet generational trauma wrapped up in quality horror writing that keeps the pages turning and the bumps goosing.

4 stars. ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

📕 BOOK 7 - Woke Is Dead by Piers Morgan

📖 Eurgh.

The most insightful line in this book was a Chris Rock quote.

1 star. ⭐️

📕 BOOK 8 - Guilty by Definition by Susie Dent

📖Look, I love a bit of linguistics, but a novel that promises to be largely etymology trivia doesn’t exactly fill you with confidence that there’ll also be a captivating narrative. Thankfully, how wrong I was. All things considered, it shouldn’t be too surprising that Susie Dent clearly has a creative grasp of language that extends beyond the theoretical. I’m looking forward to the sequel!

4 stars. ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

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Click here for part two or head straight to the Instagram page!