The Story of Three Books

The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde

I read this book for my English project – or the most part anyway – a while back. Just recently however, I decided to pick it back up again, and read the final chapter. I must say, I enjoyed it far more than I thought I would, considering the horrifically slow start. Actually, it was one of the slowest books I have ever read but I just enjoyed the story as much as anything.

The plot, admittedly, was hardly a work of heart if you ask me. I thought it was quite predictable and simple–quite frankly I saw just a guy who drank stuff to become a madman, but I guess I was just drawn in by the way it was framed. It was more of a novella as opposed to a novel, yet the simplicity in my opinion was by far its greatest strength.

The writing style on the other hand, was far from simply. He seems to take a long time to say anything, but I admire his strong word choices. What I love is that he has very little – if any – suspense and it just goes to show you need not have a cliffhanger every page for a winner! Sure, Stevenson isn’t the best writer ever but for me I felt it was a great piece of classical, British literature!

The Book Thief

A few days ago I finished The Book Thief. I was just sitting there in bed when I finished it, just saying to myself wow, wow, wow, wow, wow… when I finished. So ye, I thought it was pretty good. As soon as I finished, I decided that Tolkien was now my second favourite author (I thought I would never say that), since Markus Zusak as snatched first place.

It was an incredible story, and the fact that it portrayed so many moods–from shock, fear and hate to love, warmth, compassion and humour. I never, never cry at books or films, but at the end I felt a tear well in my eye. I won’t ruin the plot, but people you had begun to get to know through the entire book, died in a single sentence. But still, it was written so brilliantly–the style was far beyond unique.

The tale sees a young German girl, Liesel Meminger, in WWII, Nazi Germany. The plot is incredibly complicated, so I won’t ruin it, but this is a real recommendation. I stayed up three hours in bed reading it. I was absorbed. And I mean it, I use the italics sparingly.

Never have I called an author perfect – nor do I intend to – but I tell you know, that Zusak has some talent in him. At the start, when I saw it was narrated by Death, I thought stick with, stick with it. And I did.

I am Legend

Alright, so I finished this last night. Having watched the film and having an urge to read this, I bought it and set about chapter one. I wasn’t especially impressed, it was a sort of mediocre book. There were a lot of info-dumps and the range emotion was pretty much limited–something I would have would be crucial when a man is the last person on the planet.

‘Twas very dark, but I felt as the reader, I just couldn’t love the characters. The ending, undeniably, was great and very powerful but the weak plot devices led to a very long middle, and a random ending. Matheson did an alright job considering the short length of the novel/novella but since I can’t bothered to say anything else, I just thought I’d say it was alright. Of course, this was not meant to be a number one best-seller, but I thought the fact that he was alone was just not brought to the surface, a lacking novel but a believable one too.