My attempt at the 2009 100+ Reading Challenge starts here.
Fate has brought you to this sketchbook - a slice of life behind the eyes of a seventeen-year-old Filipina residing in sunny England.
Title: Spies and Lies (from the Girl Writer series)
Author: Ros Asquith
Rating: 3/5
Book 10 of 100: (The 100+ Reading Challenge)
Cordelia Arbuthnott desperately wants to be a successful writer. She’s hard at work on her latest novel, The Girl with the Golden Pun - a spy story about Jane Bond. As always, Cordelia’s life is a source of inspiration for her novel. A new boy in her class, Vladimir Vyshinsky, or Vlad the Lad as he becomes known, has all the girls swooning. But this mysterious Russian raises Cordelia’s suspicions with his strange behaviour.
After reading The Time Traveler’s Wife, I opted for a lighter and shorter read. What better place to look than the children’s section? :] Spies and Lies is a fun and easy book to follow, not only because it’s for children ages ten and such, but also because I could really relate to it. When I was little, I had this thing about writing (which I think I have lost recently. The world is cruel about following your dreams, don’t you think?). I don’t even compare now to the writer I was years ago. =/
This book is filled with tips for the budding writer. Along with the story on Cordelia’s daily adventures comes her novel, The Girl with the Golden Pun which lays parallel to it. The things that happen in her life eventually get tailored into her writing, which I think is nice. Every writer, to start with, has to write about what he or she knows, am I correct?
The friendship she forms with Vlad was a good turning point. And what was she thinking when she assumed Vlad was a terrorist? :]
I do think this book is read-worthy although predictable (for my age, anyway). I have not read any books of the Girl Writer series before but I didn’t feel I needed to read the first two in order to understand what goes on in Spies and Lies, the third book.
Title: The Time Traveler’s Wife
Author: Audrey Niffenegger
Rating: 5/5
Book 9 of 100: (The 100+ Reading Challenge)
This is the extraordinary love story of Clare and Henry who met when Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was twenty-two and Henry thirty. Impossible but true, because Henry suffers from a rare condition where his genetic clock periodically resets and he finds himself pulled suddenly into his past or future. In the face of this force they can neither prevent nor control, Henry and Clare’s struggle to lead normal lives is both intensely moving and entirely unforgettable.
If the rating I’ve typed in above isn’t obvious enough, I’d say it again - The Time Traveler’s Wife is definitely one of the most wonderful books I’ve read in my lifetime. It’s very absorbing in the sense that the reader, not only Henry, a chronologically-displaced person, is pulled into this chaos called time.
It was pretty hard for me to juggle Chemistry homework and getting lost in this book. But I’d ditch anything for Niffenegger’s creativity, hands down. ^_^
This is the kind of read which convinces you in an instant - no matter how much you see fiction in it, you should still feel a tinge of reality. Time traveling may be hard to believe and harder to understand but, then again, what isn’t?
The way in which the story flows is not linear. The dates and Clare and Henry’s ages written just before each time frame comes in handy, though. In a nutshell, this is a story of two people whose past is another’s future. When they finally meet in the present, two and two still do not get put together as there are some things unknown and cannot be changed.
I was amused by the fact (uh, fact?) that whenever Henry time travels, he unintentionally leaves everything behind - his clothes and even his dental fillings. It must be horrible ending up somewhere public without any clothes on - horrible still when prison awaits you due to the previous statement. Clare’s wait must be the longest one I’ve heard of. She truly deserves her title, Wife, because she waits patiently for him to return without even knowing when or if he really will.
Quoting Clare:
With Henry, I can see everything laid out, like a map, past and future, everything at once, like an angel… I can reach into him and touch time…
The ending did not leave me hanging. It was just as beautiful. Henry’s death made me weep while reading about it, however, I couldn’t help but smile on the part when Clare was already old and Henry still got to visit her, despite death. Despite time.
I’m looking forward to the film adaptation to be released this year. I’m hoping it’s just as good :]
