A mishmash of topics in this post, which is why it took forever to make up a title for it!
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books: reading challenge
Reading Challenge 2015: Persepolis
Been a while since I’ve done the Reading Challenge! I reckon I’ll be failing on this. *sigh* Anyway.
| Reading Challenge Items: ✓ 26. A memoir ✓ 40. A graphic novel |
Persepolis is an autobiographical graphic novel, published in 2000, and was created by Marjane Sartrapi detailing her life from childhood to young adulthood during and after the Islamic Revolution. It starts off in her homeland Iran, the circumstances leading to her being sent abroad, and then back to Iran (although it does not end there of course). The novel begins with Marjane at ten years old, who I found was quite a politically informed girl at her age. Through her maternal grandfather, she is a descendant of the royal family, so I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising she was exposed to politics quite early, and her views were influenced by her parents (as all/most children do at that age).
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Reading Challenge 2015: The Girl on the Train
The Girl on the Train is the first book by Paula Hawkins, a journalist for fifteen years before hopping into published fiction. Born in Zimbabwe, she has, however, been a Londoner since 1989. The main character, Rachel, opens the book and spends a lot of time on the train to commute from her town Ashbury to London, looking at random things — rags on the train track, suburban architecture, fellow passengers. As the train runs down the track through a blur of Victorian houses, Rachel gets a regular glimpse of the life of a young couple whenever the train does its regular stop at a signal just before a station. She ‘sees’ them so often that she feels she knows them closely and has attributed names to them. The ball starts rolling when Rachel sees something ‘shocking’ one day, and volunteering this information gets her deeply involved in the lives of select members of that neighborhood.
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Reading Challenge 2015: Vampire Academy
Vampire Academy is the first book in a series of six, first published in 2007, written by Richelle Mead. It is primarily a paranormal romance fantasy book that is intended for young adults, or YA as it is commonly known/called.
As the title obviously tells us, this book involves vampires in a school setting. It centres on seventeen-year-olds Rose and Lissa, a dhampir (a half-human half-vampire hybrid) and Moroi (a vampire). Rose and Lissa have a special bond, which is useful, as Rose is training to become a bodyguard for Lissa, who is a member of one of the royal Moroi families. Lissa has a special skill which is the core of this first book, and along with the (mis)adventures of high school — friends, enemies, cliques, school parties, and secret parties — is what encompasses this book. It is set in the United States despite the prevalence of Eastern/Southeastern European terms where the vampire legends are thought to have originated.
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Reading Challenge 2015: A Study in Scarlet
A Study in Scarlet is a detective mystery novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, published in 1887 in Beeton’s Christmas Annual. Now famous all over the world, Sherlock Holmes and John Watson were first introduced in this narrative. The mystery involves a dead man found in an abandoned house in Brixton, south London. The obvious clues are a woman’s wedding ring, two letters addressed to two different names, and a word scrawled in the wall with blood. I say obvious because they were the easiest to find. This is Sherlock Holmes we are talking about after all.
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