For years, I had seen Twilight mocked and parodied as being a really bad book, but I don’t like to get my literary perspectives from the general consensus. I’m quite a fan of vampire fiction, after all, so I thought maybe I’d actually love it.

When I finally read it, I went in with an open mind. I didn’t hate it, but I can kind of see why others do. Let’s start with what I did like about it though: first of all, there’s the town of Forks (where the novel is set), which comes across really well as a setting. The surrounding forests, the gloomy, grey weather – it all felt very clear in my mind and helped make the novel feel more immersive.

Then there’s Bella Swan – yes, she can be annoying, but I actually kind of liked her. She’s a teenage girl, and she feels like a very realistic teenager. She thinks she knows everything, she’s really pretentious and looks down on everyone, and for these reasons she’s kind of funny and endearing. I cared about her, because she was realistic. I particularly find it funny how she’s so constantly looking down on everyone, but also really intimidated by everything too – it does rather encapsulate the teenage perspective.

On the other hand, I didn’t really like Edward Cullen. He’s a very creepy man who I didn’t think ever did anything to earn Bella’s affection, which I suppose is purely physical. He’s over a hundred years old (though physically a teenager) and spent all the time in school, which no doubt did very strange things to his mind, and paints him as a man with some strange issues.

Even if we accept that he is still a teenager because becoming a vampire preserved him as one forever, he’s still controlling of Bella (rarely considering how his actions affect her, always thinking he knows best) and completely contradictory in his attitudes. For example, he always tells Bella to stay away from him because he’s a monster who might kill her at any moment, but then he also invites her to meet him in secluded locations in the middle of the woods. He’s also attracted to her because of the smell of her blood, which you’d think would be a turn-off for Bella, but it’s not.

Ultimately, Edward isn’t as bad as, say, Christian Grey, (and he does help protect her from greater evils) but he still comes across as a weird, lecherous creature – which isn’t just because he’s a vampire either, because other vampires seem much more normal. Speaking of which, I really liked the character Carlisle Cullen, who is Edward’s father figure. He doesn’t get a huge amount of time in the spotlight, but one chapter explores his history and gives a fascinating tale that spans several centuries. I loved it. In fact, I wish the whole book was about Carlisle.

If you read between the lines, you can kind of read it as a pro-celibacy novel, which is probably the worst thing about it. I see nothing wrong with someone deciding to be celibate of their own accord, but I don’t think it’s something you can push someone to, and I think Stephenie Meyer was trying to do that with this book. But if you can look past that, it’s a relatively enjoyable book that accurately captures teenage angst – which can be a bit monotonous at times, but with a nice dose of vampirism in the mix, my overall experience with the book was a positive one.

Rating: 7.2/10

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What if America had become a fascist state in the 1930s? That’s the question that Sinclair Lewis answers with his book, It Can’t Happen Here. It is not only a thought provoking novel, but one that’s written in a very unique style.

At some points, the book feels as if it’s a history book from another universe. The way that political events are written about is very much as if they were real, and I thought that this was a really effective method for helping make the book feel more believable. But it’s not all like that: at the heart of the book is a man called Doremus Jessup and his family.

Doremus and his family live a kind of idyllic life at the start of the book, but that soon begins to deteriorate once Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip becomes president. This gives everything a much-needed human aspect, because going for the purely ‘alternative historic’ style might have made it all feel too academic, but seeing the consequences of fascism manifesting in the lives of characters for whom you feel some level of fondness makes it all much more distressing.

And it is a very distressing book, at times. Admittedly, I think that Lewis was trying to be very darkly comic with some parts, but certain events which take place are so enormously harrowing that they’ll stay with you a long time – not least because many similar atrocities have actually happened in reality in other dictatorships.

Of course, that’s really what the book is all about: the horrors of fascism. The story is fictional, but it draws on some very real horrors. It’s awfully clever in a lot of ways, because as much as Doremus is opposed to the new regime and does what he can to challenge it, the book also shows how he was complicit in Buzz’s rise to power as well, and how certain attitudes and behaviour feed into a dictator being democratically elected.

It also does a good job of illustrating that with fascism, nobody wins – not even the fascists themselves. The book could often be quite depressing, in part, because of the sad fates which befall even those who are loyal to the oppressive government – though I do think it ended on a fairly optimistic note.

As dystopian fiction goes, I think It Can’t Happen Here is one of the best. Even though it was written before Nineteen Eighty-Four, I believe it does a much better job of challenging fascism than that book does, by showing exactly how a dictator could rise to power. Although, I have to admit, that some aspects of it felt a little bit ‘fast’ in terms of the steps Buzz takes to cement his power.

Though I am a bit biased because I find the 1930s a very interesting time period (it’s also filled with literary references that I enjoyed), I genuinely think that this is a fantastic book and one that I definitely recommend. Now more than ever, people need to be aware of the risk posed by fascism…

Rating: 9/10

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Published in 1963, The Feminine Mystique was one of the most influential feminists books of its time. It raises many societal problems which were particularly relevant at the time, and many of which still pervade society even to this day (although to a lesser extent now than then). Sadly, though it was a progressive piece for its time, it has aged quite poorly in other regards, but that doesn’t mean that its valuable points should be disregarded.

The biggest point that Friedan tries to make with this book is that a woman cannot gain total fulfilment in life by dedicating her existence to housekeeping and raising children. Her argument is that because children inevitably grow up, build their own lives, and then move out, the women’s fulfilment is built upon something that is very temporary – once a child no longer ‘needs’ their mother for everything, she may well feel depressed because she has lost the ‘purpose’ she has imposed on herself and no longer has an independent existence of her own.

At the time, this was caused by a prevalent cultural belief that women’s natural role was in the home and she also illustrates that women’s issues actually worsened in the 50s and 60s, after improving somewhat in the 30s and 40s, as a part of the push to get men back into workplaces after women had taken a lot of jobs during the Second World War. I tend to think of social issues as a steady line of improvement, but it’s interesting to consider that there are ups and downs along the way.

She argues that it is important for women to maintain careers while being mothers, because that can help them to keep a sense of independent existence, and also give them something to get back to, once their children aren’t so dependent on them. Obviously, everyone’s needs are different, but as a general rule, I think that’s pretty sensible.

But here’s where she really dates herself: she goes so far as to argue that promiscuity, homosexuality, and autism all may be caused by children growing up without a strong female role model, because their mother lacks their own independent existences. It’s kind of insulting to quite a lot of people really, with a fundamental misunderstanding of how these things work, and then there’s also the fact that she says the lives of housewives are comparable to those of people held in Nazi concentration camps, which is a very poorly conceived comparison which falls apart really easily (in her defence, the introduction explains that she grew to regret this decision).

So, all in all, while there are many points that remain important to this day and have a progressive ethos to them, it’s also clear that this is a book of its time and several of the more unpleasant attitudes of the 1960s do rear their heads (although at least she is sympathetic to the civil rights movement), and it can generally be a very dry read sometimes. Still, it’s an interesting piece of history and her notion of the ‘feminine mystique’ itself (the idea that women should be able to find fulfilment in keeping a happy home) and the harm that it causes, will always be relevant.

Rating: 6.6/10

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With human beings causing immeasurable damage to the world, when it comes to reducing that harm every possible measure must be taken. For example, the biodiversity of the ocean is infinitely important, because it leads to the creation of oxygen in much the same way as a forest would do. In this paper, a new method of cultivating that biodiversity, or ecological value is put forward.

As it explains, with climate crisis-related flooding becoming more and more of a problem, there are consequently more structures created within coastal waters in order reduce the risk of floods. But, then, surely unnatural structures in the ocean are going to reduce the ecological value of those areas and then only further contribute to the overall problem?

Well, that’s where the keen perspective of this paper comes in. When created in a certain way, with more complex structures that more closely resemble natural surfaces, these structures can actually become homes to different forms of aquatic life, rather than just taking up space in a place where different life forms should be able to live. This is rigorously demonstrated through tests on various different surfaces over a period of time.

It’s a really important bit of research and something that I’d never have considered myself. Should the creators of those hard coastal structures heed the discoveries of this paper, that could contribute quite a lot of ecological value to coastal regions. We can only hope that, for once, people listen to the scientists.

Reading-wise, it surprisingly digestible for a scientific academic paper, so if you’re into that kind of thing, do give it a look. This will, I hope, be the first of many academic papers to appear in my liberally named ‘book review’ section.

Rating: 8.5/10

Read it here.

In this 1929 book, Virginia Woolf writes about the misogyny and gender inequality of her time and unlike some other historic feminist texts which seem somewhat outdated when you look back on them in the modern day, A Room of One’s Own has aged wonderfully. It’s something that modern feminists should definitely try (and everyone else too).

Throughout the book, she not only looks at present (for her time) and historic injustices against women, but she also gives her perspectives on the history of literature written by women – an angle which I, as an avid reader, found particularly interesting.

She addresses the fact that women’s perspectives are much rarer when looking at historic pieces of literature, because the majority of women throughout history were not given the opportunity to learn how to read or write. Meanwhile, those who did may have had such a sheltered life, that they wouldn’t have known as much about anything to be able to write a book.

She gives the hypothetical example of Judith Shakespeare, a sister to William Shakespeare born with all of the same literary capabilities as the historic Shakespeare. In some detail, she describes that tragic life that this woman might have lived – involving physical abuse, pressure to be married, nobody taking her writing seriously, and ultimately a miserable death by her own hand. It’s bleak, but very thought-provoking.

The ultimate point of the book is to highlight that a woman needs “a room of one’s own” in order to be able to succeed as a writer, because if a woman does have her own safe space, not only does it mean that she can write confidently and comfortably without fear of her writing being censored or belittled by the men in her life, but also because it suggests some level of financial security – because living in poverty would significantly reduce the likelihood that anybody would be able to produce a novel.

I also particularly enjoyed the portion of the novel in which she writes about the difficulty gay women faced in being able to write about their experiences – primarily because of the laws surrounding so-called ‘obscenity’ in writing at the time. It’s refreshingly progressive to read a perspective like this in something from the 1920s.

All in all, it was a fascinating and enjoyable read. Not only did I feel like I learned quite a bit from this book, but it was also really interesting to get Woolf’s perspectives on the subject and she often articulates her point in comedic or creative ways. If you’ve enjoyed other books by Virginia Woolf, or you’re interested in literary history, or feminism in general, you should definitely read this book.

Rating: 9.3/10

Buy it here.

What instantly drew me to this comic collection was the striking image on the front cover of Batman and Sherlock Holmes working out a mystery together. I love both of them, so how could I resist? And, as it happens, one of the stories in this collection actually includes a Batman/Sherlock Holmes crossover too, which was a real treat for me.

In addition to Batman and Sherlock Holmes, this collection brings together a selection of stories from several different DC characters. Truthfully, I hadn’t even heard of quite a lot of them, but even without knowing who the majority of them were, the stories still felt accessible enough.

I decided not to rate the stories individually, because I enjoy them all in very different ways. The very first story, Skyscraper Death, is an old 1930s that I found interesting as a historic curiosity, even though the story was a bit silly, while another story (from about fifty years later) which had Lois Lane investigating child murders and disappearances was genuinely really good even by modern standards. There’s a huge deal of variety.

Here are my overviews of each one:

Skyscraper Death by Jerom Siegel and Joe Shuster
Starring a ‘hard boiled’ dick, Slam Bradley, this comic is very much a thing of its time. Imagine a very cheesy detective story from the 1930s – this story fits the mould perfectly. Slam is both big and strong, but also smart. He and his comically proportioned companion, Shorty (who looks kind of like the Monopoly man without the fancy clothes and moustache, even though everyone else has realistic proportions) investigate a murder for which Slam has been framed. An evil racketeering union leader was behind it all, but how can Slam clear his name? I enjoyed it, but, gosh, it was quite hard to take seriously.

The Van Leew Emeralds by Gardner Fox and Creig Flessel
By day, a rich playboy, by night a vigilante… how similar to Batman. The Sandman is quite a cool hero who seems to mostly go after big crime families and in this story he’s investigating the stolen Van Leew Emeralds. He has his girlfriend Diane as his only accomplice (which I kind of liked) and the two of them set out to find out where the emeralds have gotten to. It’s nice to see Sandman treated as a villian by the police and, while the story isn’t the most unique thing ever, I felt it was a step up from the Slam Bradley story in that I was able to take it more seriously and I thought it had a pretty good atmosphere.

Puzzle of the Purple Pony by Gardner Fox and Carmine Infantino
This was the first of the comics in this collection which actually contained a mystery I was keen to see solved. In it, Elongated Man (a hero I’d honestly never heard of before) is driving through a prairie on his way to a rodeo with his wife Sue. Sue spots a man painting a horse purple and is really curious to find out what’s going on, so persuades Elongated Man to look into it. It was a fun little mystery overall and a nice step up from the first two, though I did think the man’s ultimate reason for painting the horse purple was just a bit of anticlimax.

When it Rains, God is Crying by Mindy Newell
This story really stands apart from the three which preceded it, because it is much more adult. In it, Lois Lane begins to investigate a wave of child disappearances and murders in the area, becoming almost single-minded in her desire to raise awareness for the problem and shed some light onto what’s actually going on. It’s a very gritty comic and the art by Gray Morrow does a lot to bring that to emphasise that feeling. Lois is really interestingly written here and it does an interesting job of highlighting that as much as Superman can stop the big super villains, he’s pretty powerless against issues like this.

The Doomsday Book by Mike W. Barr
This was a Detective Comics anniversary comic which told a story that included Batman, Robin, Slam Bradley, the Elongated Man and even Sherlock Holmes. Slam is now a much more interesting character who’s become disillusioned with things after Shorty’s death, which made me like the character more than in the earlier story. I was also pretty pleased with the portrayal of Sherlock Holmes, who I felt was very true to his source material. The story starts in Gotham with Slam Bradley, but the action switches to London and we get flash backs from one hundred years ago. It’s a great example of comics doing what they do best, and I loved it. There’s a particularly appealing surprise at the end of the story too. My favourite in the collection.

Mikado by Dennis O’Neil
Another of the very dark and gritty stories, this one features The Question (a mysterious, faceless man) investigating a string of unusual murders. I’d never have seen the ending coming and I actually thought that the killer and their motives were very interesting. The Question himself is a great character too and though this is my first exposure to him, I certainly finished reading it feeling hungry for more.

The Origins of Detective Chimp
Curiously, nobody is credited with having written this story, so I don’t have any names to put down. Anyway, I’d heard about Detective Chimp long ago and always been very amused by the concept. This is my first time reading a story about him and it’s easily the silliest thing in this collection, but I have to say that I found it quite enjoyable, even if it was a little on the short side.

Parallel Lines
Another story that doesn’t credit the author. It features a young boy who comes to Wayne manor and already seems to know all about Bruce Wayne being Batman and Dick Grayson being the original Robin. Dick and Alfred question him, fearing trouble, but ultimately, things work out in quite a touching sort of way.

All in all, I’m really glad I decided to buy this anthology. It’s a nice look at various different threads within the DC multiverse and I liked reading every one of them. If you’re a fan of DC, I strong recommend giving this a try.

Rating: 8.3/10

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Throughout her career, Agatha Christie wrote an enormous number of novels and today her name is synonymous with detective fiction. Strangely, even though I have a fondness for detective fiction and for classics in general, I somehow never got around to reading anything by her. Recently, I decided to change that and read her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, with a view to reading all of them in order.

So what can I say about this, other than that it’s great? In addition to being Agatha Christie’s first novel, it’s also the first appearance of Hercule Poirot, an eccentric former police officer who is a refugee from Belgium. The story is told from the perspective of Arthur Hastings, who seeks out Poirot to help him with an investigation into the death of a woman named Emily Inglethorpe who died under mysterious circumstance.

It really has all the staples of the genre. A stately home with several people in it, multiple suspects with their own motivations and a trail of clues for you to follow at your own rate. Poirot works to piece it together, witholding many of his suspicions from Hastings, but following different lines of investigations and dropping cryptic clues as to his suspicions. In the context of all that came later, this novel was a real trend setter.

Though I didn’t do it myself (I was more than happy to just come along for the ride), I think the way the story is told means that a reader could figure out what happened if they really tried to. As for the ultimate reveal of the murderer, I was quite surprised, but I loved how everything fit together in the explanation at the end.

The most appealing aspect of the novel is Poirot himself. I suppose I’m always drawn to charming eccentrics, but I particularly like the way that he’s so personable and jolly all the time. He’s quite a contrast to my other favourite detective, Sherlock Holmes – who nicely enough, gets mentioned near the start, with someone comparing Poirot to him. I enjoyed this reference quite a lot, particularly as it reminded me how Holmes being compared to C. Auguste Dupin (an even earlier detective) in A Study in Scarlet. It’s also refreshing to have a heroic protagonist who’s a refugee as well.

It’s a relatively short novel and it makes for pleasant, easy reading. I quite enjoyed Christie’s writing style and, frankly, I’m excited to see what happens in the rest of her books. If you enjoy a mystery, I think you’ll enjoy this.

Rating: 8.5/10

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Thanks in part, to Disney, everybody has heard of Pinocchio. The character is such a huge part of our culture that his name is regularly used to describe somebody who lies a lot. Considering the book has had such a long-lasting impact, I couldn’t resist giving it a try. Not that I don’t enjoy classical children’s literature anyway.

So, anyway, a wood carver called Geppetto somehow gets his hands on some living, intelligent wood and so, when he carves it into a marionette of a boy, the boy comes to life and is capable of talking and moving around. I do enjoy things that are generally quite absurd, so for me, this was a solid start.

Once he’s been created though, Pinocchio really is a nasty little creature. He soon causes Geppetto to be wrongly imprisoned for child abuse, then before long, he murders an intelligent, sentient being mid-conversation with him. Throughout the book, Pinocchio is a brat, treating people awfully and generally misbehaving, then consequently crying out for his father when things turn against him.

I don’t know if we’re supposed view Pinocchio as a evil menace, or as an ignorant being who doesn’t yet understand how one is supposed to behave within society, but having him murder somebody so early on does make it rather hard to warm to him. Having said that, the person Pinocchio murders comes back as a ghost a little later, then later still, is just alive again with no explanation, so that does negate the seriousness of his actions somewhat.

As I’m sure you can tell from what I’ve said already, it’s quite a weird book. It’s intentionally written in the style of a fairy tale, but as somebody who has read quite a lot of fairy tales, I feel like they’re generally a little more structured, or at least have more logic behind them than this bizarre sequence of events does. I have to admit, I did rather enjoy this aspect of it.

Although, what I didn’t enjoy was it’s very clumsy attempt at moralising. Now, I love me some morals in my stories, but only when it’s done well (and even if it’s not done well, sometimes, if I think the message is important enough, I still like), but the morals in Pinocchio are so badly done and often no at all agreeable (but, hey, it was the nineteenth century).

On it surface, the book is telling children to behave themselves, tell the truth and listen to their parents. Okay, That’s reasonable – a good take-away for kids. But on the flip side of that, it kind of has the message of “people who are bad deserve to have a terrible fate”. There’s a particularly silly bit towards the end where Geppetto tells Pinocchio “Remember to always show kindness to everybody you meet, no matter what” then they meet a couple of people who had tricked Pinocchio earlier on and who are now on the brink of death and in need of help – Pinocchio coldly looks the other way and refuses to help and Geppetto doesn’t have anything to say about it. The implication is that they got what they deserved and it wouldn’t even have so much of a problem with that on its own, but coming straight after “always show kindness to others” makes the whole thing a bit ridiculous. Was it intentional? Maybe, I don’t know. It gave me a good laugh, either way.

I think the two aspects that surprised me the most were its silliness and its darkness. I mentioned above that it has a message about bad people getting what they deserve, well, that extends to include children. There’s one trouble-making boy (who’s no worse than Pinocchio) and he ends up dying in slavery. Poor boy. Pinocchio himself faces death on a number of occasions too, but that sneaky little weasel always manages to get out of it in the end.

All in all, I did enjoy this book, but I do see that it has a lot of flaws, worst of all is the fact that the writing style seems quite bland a lot of the time. It could have generated a lot of humour around its absurdity, but it never really does. It’s a very base-level writing style that never really does more than tell you what’s happening or what you’re supposed to think. I guess this is a side effect of it having been written for children originally and me reading it as an adult, but it did leave me feeling unengaged a lot of the time, even if I did enjoy the overall journey. (Worth noting is that some of these problems may be limited to the translation that I read, but unfortunately, my version does not credit the translator, so I am not able to specify which version I read).

Rating: 5.9/10

Buy it here.

This is a book that should need no introduction, but for the very few who don’t know: Anne Frank was a young Jewish girl living in Amsterdam during the Second World War. She and her family had to go into hiding in a secret annex and Anne kept a diary about her life there. Very sadly, Anne would go on to become a victim of the Holocaust, along with the majority of her family.

Anne expressed several times throughout the book that she wants to be a writer and that she would like to turn her diary into a published record of her experiences and it’s good to know that her word actually got out and became such a huge success, though of course the circumstances under which it happened were heart-breaking.

I’ve seen some people claim that Anne’s diary is ‘boring’ and that it’s just about teenage angst and the day to day squabbles and tensions of the families who found themselves thrust together. I never found it boring myself, but I think that these people are kind of missing point. I feel that what this book does a superb job of highlighting is that the victims of the Holocaust were regular people just like you or I.

Indeed, even though Anne Frank and I are very different people who have lead enormously different lives, as I was reading, I related to her. She dealt with the same frustrations and reflections that we all do and where she succeeded as a writer was in capturing the very essence of her personality in words. Often I thought she had some very intelligent reflections to make about herself and the world, especially for her age.

Sometimes she writes about the horrible realities of life in hiding, while other times she writes her thoughts about the people she’s living with and highlights things that she likes or dislikes. It just goes to show how the human spirit can preserver and get used to even the most horrible of circumstances.

I was particularly surprised by the chapters where she talks about her sexuality. At one point, she mentions that she finds herself drawn to the naked female body and says that she wishes that she had a girlfriend. I have never seen Anne Frank described as an historic queer figure before and I think that that’s a shame, because I think that’s pretty significant. It highlights that the LGBT community were also victims of the Holocaust and is valuable as an historic account of a queer person’s experiences, which I don’t believe we see enough of.

At times, the book could be difficult to read. From time to time, Anne begins to wonder about what her life will be like once the Nazis have been defeated. Despite moments of despair, she remains quite optimistic throughout and holds on to a vision of her future and it’s upsetting to know that she was never allowed to fulfil her dreams or live her life to its natural end. I think the most difficult part of all was just when it suddenly ends – I found myself unable to stop imagining what must have happened next and what must have been going through her mind. It was horrible – but it’s something everybody should read. It’s a cliché to say, but if history is forgotten, we are doomed to repeat it.

As this book is a diary, and therefore very intimately written, I found myself growing very fond of Anne. It genuinely felt like I knew her and I admired her for her optimism, progressive attitudes and her desire to write. Ultimately, I think of her as a very inspirational figure and her murder at the hands of the Nazis robbed the world of a truly wonderful person and robbed an innocent girl of her bright future.

Before reading this, I had learned in school that some people question the legitimacy of this book, claiming that Anne didn’t really write it, that it was written after the fact etc. I didn’t think it was that likely, but since it was taught in school, I thought I’d so a bit of research before reading. As it happens, the source of these claims are holocaust deniers and in actuality the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation did a forensic investigation into the original documents in 1980 in order to determine whether or not they were legitimate and found that, yes, it was all real. I felt it was important to mention that here, because in comment sections around the internet, I find people even now who think that this was faked and it’s a shame that people with harmful intentions have successfully damaged the impact of this book to some extent.

The only real criticism of the book that I really agree with, is those who claim that it is somewhat exploitive. I think it’s good that the book has been published and Anne does say herself that she hopes for it to be published in future. However, some of it is very obviously private stuff – for example, at one point she explores her genitals and describes her impressions. I’m not so sure that she’d have liked that to have been published. Reading this made me slightly uncomfortable – having said that, I can understand why it was kept it]n. Without the sections like these, the text less successfully captures every aspect of Anne. It does make her feel more ‘whole’ within the writing (if that makes sense), which then helps the book to more successfully achieve its goal, but I’m torn. I’m not saying that this then makes the whole book bad or unethical, but at very least, it is a bit dodgy.

My version of the book was translated by Susan Massotty and of course, every translation will be a little different, but I think it’s important that everybody try to read at least one version of it. We mustn’t forget the evil done to the Jewish people (and others) in the Holocaust. I know I usually like to give books a score out of ten when I review them, but it feels a little tasteless to do so here. This book stands for something that’s too important to be arbitrarily rated against other books – all I’ll say is that it has my highest recommendation. Anne Frank will always be a hero of mine – a symbol of hope and optimism, even in the darkest times.

Buy it here.