Is it ethical to have a child so that they can serve as a donor for another child? This is the question that this book explores. Kate is a little girl who is dying from Leukaemia and her parents have another child, Anna, so that she can be a bone marrow donor for her sister. Throughout her life, she undergoes a number of very painful procedures in order to help prolong Kate’s life, but then at thirteen, she decides that she will no longer go through with all of this, after her mother tells her that she will need to donate a kidney to her sister.

This is such a fascinating concept to me and what helps to make this an absolutely incredible novel is the fact that each and every character is really well developed. At times you may think that Anna’s mother, Sara, seems cold and uncaring towards Anna, but then when you get to see all that she’s been through with Kate’s health deterioration and it’s difficult to stay mad at her, because you see where she’s coming from even if, like me, you are completely on Anna’s side.

Eventually, this turns into a court case, with Anna seeking medical emancipation from her parents so that she can gain autonomy on all medical matters. Through this, you meet Campbell Alexander, Anna’s lawyer, a character who has an interesting history of his own which adds a lot to the novel. I cared very much for every character, because as a reader, I’d been through so much with everyone of them. When conflict arises, you can sympathise with everyone and it all feels so real.

Ultimately, what Jodi Picoult has done is take an interesting question of moral philosophy and then created a cast of three-dimensional characters with a huge amount of depth in order to humanise every perspective. No character really exists just to serve a purpose in the plot, rather, each person feels as though they are the main character of their own story – just as they should.

The book has a huge twist which I didn’t see coming and which left me absolutely stunned. As usual, I won’t spoil anything about it, but I will say that this is one of the moving novels I’ve read in a long time. The emotional impact was so big, that I felt it a long time after I’d finished book and so I can only give it my highest recommendation. Do try it!

Rating: 9.8/10

Buy it here.

I read through the fourth book in A Song of Ice and Fire with a kind of strange perspective. Of the first three, there had certainly been things that I’d liked, but there’d also been a lot of things that I didn’t like. By this point in time, I go in not really expecting to enjoy myself, but just wanting to find out what happens. To some extent, having zero expectations means that I was able to enjoy it more. I suppose the best way of putting it is to say that it when you’re in a room with a bad smell, you eventually get used to that bad smell and I do find myself slowly getting used to the smell of A Song of Ice and Fire.

So, spoiler alert for the previous book, one thing that quite disappointed me was that the cliff-hanger of the last book (Catelyn’s unexpected return) isn’t revisited until right at the end and even then, not much is done with it. Plus, knowing that this book is contemporaneous with the next one, I have a feeling that this plot development won’t really be explored in the next book either, which is a shame considering how crazy this revelation is.

That’s another thing about this book: half the characters aren’t in it. Because Martin wanted to have this book set at the same time as the next one, with each book showing the experiences of half the characters, you don’t get to see what Daenerys or Tyrion are doing in this one, which is a shame since their storylines are some of the more interesting ones. Still, you do get to see Brienne, Samwell, Jamie and Arya and I generally enjoyed their storylines. In fact, with Jamie in particular, I started to grow quite fond of him, even though he hadn’t done much for me before. He has a nice character arc.

One thing I’d like to mention her is that I’ve always thought that Martin was quite bad at writing female characters and generally quite leery in the way that he did so. In this book, I feel like he started to get just a little bit better at that, though the leeriness reared its head again from time to time. Obviously, he already had Brienne and Arya, who I think he writes well, but there was also a new character called Asha who was really good and I think she reflects this change.

Although, while Asha was a nice addition, this book adds six new point of view characters and there’s just so many characters at this point, many of whom only have a few chapters to themselves, and I just didn’t care about a lot of them. In the earlier books, I’d recognise the names of all the point of view characters and know what to expect with each new chapter. This time, I’d often find that the next chapter was from the POV of a character I’ve never heard of and I’d just groan inwardly at having to get to know another random person. Besides Asha, none of them really enticed me that much.

To some extent, it feels as though the story could and should have been wrapped up in the third book, but that loads of extra plot-elements have just been added to keep things going. Everything here feels quite removed from the first three novels and, to some extent, this feels weird – but you do also get the impression that the world has changed a lot as a consequence of all that’s happened and I did like that.

Overall though, while there are certainly positives, this book was a slog to get through. It’s so long and so many parts felt superfluous to me. It could probably have been half the length and not lost its positives. So many scenes and even whole chapters that just went on and on and seemed to contribute nothing to the overall story. If you’ve read this far into the series, you know what to expect, but this one was especially guilty of it. It’s not a bad book, but it’s far from being a good one.

Rating: 5.1/10

Buy it here.

Today’s book review is something of an anomaly. This is the first time I’ve ever reviewed a ‘book’ I haven’t read all of and the first one I never intend to finish. I’m sure that a lot of people might not even consider it as a ‘book’ or something that fits alongside book reviews in general. But over the years, I have to say, I’ve spent an awfully large amount of time reading Wikipedia.

I wanted to write about it, not only because I have found it to be useful, valuable and fascinating at many times throughout my life, but because I love what it stands for. This was written by the people, for the people and is an enormous repository of information that’s available for free and which hasn’t (yet) been polluted with endless adverts, unlike many other longstanding websites.

As a teenager, I was practically addicted to Wikipedia. Where else could I learn so much about popular culture, religion, history, literature, science, mysteries and a thousand other things? I know that Wikipedia has a reputation for having unreliable information because it can be edited by anybody and while this may be a fair point, there are so many vigorous editors on Wikipedia and the rules of the site do require sources to be cited. I know mistakes slip through the cracks, but this is true of every repository of knowledge and when Wikipedia has been tested against more traditional encyclopaedias, it’s been found that Wikipedia is not significantly less accurate.

One of the most enjoyable ways to spend some free time is to read up on something you’re passionate about on Wikipedia, click on some links to other pages and then go on a journey. It’s easy to forget how much information Wikipedia gives us access to, so I do recommend that you make time to have a look around the Wiki realms. I’m confident that you’ll learn something new and fascinating. In fact, I recommend starting on the page about Wikipedia itself – its fascinating.

I hope we never lose Wikipedia.

Rating: 10/10

Access it here.

With this post, the Wiccan Rede becomes the first religious text for me to write a book review of – but I am using the word ‘book’ very liberally here. In actuality, the Wiccan Rede, the text which summarises the moral code at the heart of the Wiccan religion is a twenty-six line poem, which is certainly a lot shorter than the central texts of many other religions, but this is by no means a bad thing.

With religion being a very personal matter to many people, it makes a lot of sense to have an important text be so short and accessible. To take the Holy Bible of Christianity as a contrast, that’s an absolutely enormous book that most Christians aren’t ever going to have time to read all of and with so many different texts written at different points in history, it’s moral lessons aren’t consistent throughout, leading to confusion and conflict.

Meanwhile, the Wiccan Rede succinctly summarises the ethos of the religion in a quick and easy to digest way. Nicely, it’s a poem that rhymes, making it fun to read and its meaning is fairly straight forward. The second line starts with “live and let live” and that kind of gives you all you need to know. The ultimate message is that you should live life however you want, while making sure that you aren’t harming others in the process – and by ‘others’ it includes the environment around you.

As you might imagine, it also gives information on when to celebrate the different Wiccan holidays throughout the year. I’m neither here nor there on this addition, but including this in a nice rhyming poem is a rather good one of making note of it. There are also parts about casting circles to keep evil spirits away and other supernatural elements – I don’t believe in evil spirits or supernatural things, so these don’t have much meaning to me, but I do find it interesting to read about the rites that other people believe in.

Of course, it could be argued that the moral system here is too basic and that’s a fair point. Having said that, I feel like its basic principle is a useful enough guiding point and that no text, no matter how big, could ever possibly give guidance for every single scenario, so brevity isn’t too much of a problem in my opinion.

All in all, I’d say it’s something that’s worth giving a read: it’s a good introduction to Wicca and helps provide a quick introduction to the guiding moral principles of Wiccans. As such a short piece of writing, I’d recommend it simply so that you can understand Wiccan people more. As somebody who likes to consider themselves as liberal and progressive, I certainly appreciated the all-accepting tone of it because it aligns closely with my own beliefs.

Rating: 8.5/10

Read it here.

Earlier in the year, I decided to start reading self-published fanfiction in order to broaden my literary horizons. After all, I thought to myself, how many amazing pieces of writing may be hidden away in the archives of fanfiction.net? Naturally, I started with a fan written Waltons novel. At the time, I thought The Waltons was a good choice because there wasn’t going to be any more of it, but now we’re getting a new movie, so what do I know? Either way, I still think I chose a good place to start.

What drew me to A Walton Story (other than it being a whole new novel-length Waltons story for me to consume) was the fact that it follows John-Boy after Season 6 of The Waltons. At this point in the series, he leaves to travel around the world as a war reporter… but he is broken hearted as his relationship with Daisy has come to an end. When the novel started with John-Boy alone and miserable in his New York apartment, I was kind of confused, because I thought “He shouldn’t be in his apartment, he should be travelling the world right now!” and then I realised that this story was taking a different path to the series – a “what if”.

Here, John-Boy and Daisy do break up, but they afterwards decide to try to give their relationship a second try. I always thought that John-Boy and Daisy were a good couple, so I was happy to see a story where the two of them get a second chance together… but things don’t work out. On the show, of course, Daisy doesn’t tell John-Boy that she’d had a child before they were together and the author seems to take this as a defining feature for Daisy’s character. She consistently hides things from John-Boy throughout the story and is genuinely not very good at communicating with him, which is sad to see.

But it’s not all one-sided. I was disappointed with John-Boy in this story. As much as I always admire him, I felt that he was very quick to anger and unsympathetic towards Daisy. At times it was uncomfortable, because it was very much like a real relationship that had turned toxic – on the one hand, this was really well written, on the other, I did think it was a bit unfair to both characters, who came off worse than they ever did in the show… but then I do appreciate different creators reinterpreting existing characters in new ways.

On the other hand, John and Olivia were both written perfectly. I think there voices were captured really well and I thought that they acted exactly as they would if they’d encountered this situations in an episode. The same is true for most of the other characters, really, and throughout the story there are plenty of fun little references to other Waltons episodes which, as a fan, I thoroughly enjoyed. You can tell that the author is very familiar with the show. An unexpected character shows up towards the end, which was a nice treat, but I won’t say who, because I don’t want to spoil any of the later developments.

I should also mention the character Millie. Millie was never on The Waltons and is completely unique, but I thought she brought a lot to the story. She’s a neighbour of John-Boy’s and she is a very kind, caring and likeable person. I could easily have seen her fitting into the show as a recurring character and it’s nice to see the author introducing some characters of her own.

Overall, I do prefer the version of events that actually transpired on The Waltons from Season 7 onward, but it was interesting to see another fan’s vision for how things could have gone. I know that some people don’t enjoy the final three seasons of the show, so maybe they’ll like this as an alternative – John-Boy certainly plays a bigger role here than he did in Seasons 7, 8 and 9. I think, for me, the biggest drawback was that the author interprets John-Boy and Daisy very differently to me, which didn’t quite sit right, but, all in all, I’m certainly glad I read it and it’s good to have this extra Waltons story out there.

Rating: 6.5/10

Read it here.

Though she’s better known for writing fiction, Jane Austen did also write the occasional piece of non-fiction, particularly when she was a teenager. The History of England is one of these, but it’s not what you think. Rather than a serious summary on the history of England, it’s a very satirical piece which gives a summary of each monarch from Henry IV through to Charles I. In her own words, it was written by “a Partial, Prejudiced and Ignorant” historian.

It’s genuinely quite a funny piece of writing, with her making very sarcastic remarks about pretty much all of them. It’s always funny when one of them is suspected of having had somebody killed, for example, and she’ll make it very obvious that she believes that they did, without saying it outright. Although, I have to admit that the archaic language use does occasionally dampen the humour (on the other hand, other times it strengthens it!).

The History of England is very short and can easily be read in one sitting. In my edition, it was published alongside Lesley Castle – an unfinished novel that Austen wrote as a teenager. From what there is of it, it’s hard to make out what the overall story would have been, but it’s made up of various characters writing letters between one another – they’re all very flawed and superficial characters, but that’s the point of it. Though it does feel a little aimless (just talking about upcoming weddings or social gatherings), the back and forth between them is amusing and entertaining. You may not read it in a single sitting, but it is also very short and you’ll get through it quite quickly.

Overall, I enjoyed both of these short pieces of writing. It’s nice to get a glimpse at the short little bits and pieces Jane Austen wrote when she was young and I think most fans of classic literature would enjoy reading this, though it certainly isn’t as substantial as a full novel (or even most short stories).

Rating: 7.3/10

Little House in the Big Woods was a book that hooked me from start to finish. I read it all in a very short space of time and, of course, it left me eager to read the rest of the Little House series. Farmer Boy is the second book in the series, but it’s a very different experience to the first.

While Little House in the Big Woods was about Laura’s childhood, Farmer Boy was instead about the childhood of her husband, Almanzo. Maybe it’s because these weren’t experiences that she had lived herself, but this book seems to lack the magical sentimental feeling that the first book was able to convey. The first book describes a really beautiful life, whereas the life Almanzo leads feels pretty bleak.

For example, Almanzo does gruelling amounts of hard physical labour around the farm he lives on (even as a child) and this is described in a lot of detail. No doubt, this is a highly accurate look at the difficult lives people led back then and I wouldn’t want to fault it for that, but after the first book, I went in expecting something very different.

The early chapters describe how a teacher was recently murdered by a gang of violent teenagers who didn’t like being told off at school and the fact that teenagers may do this to their teachers is just treated as a fact of life. Nobody even thinks about doing anything about it. The world in which Almanzo grew up was a particularly nasty one.

Nonetheless, there were several bits I really liked. At one point, there’s a really hard winter, with heavy snowfall and it describes everything that they had to do to ensure their lives weren’t too seriously disrupted. It was all so vivid and left such a strong impression that you can almost imagine what it would have been like to live through it.

Overall though, I had one big problem with this book: throughout it, there was a pervading “work is life” message. Yes, it may be true that people living in that time will have had to dedicate so much of their time to working just to survive and that the options for other things to do in very rural areas were limited, but I feel like that can be highlighted as a “look how hard their lives were” kind of way, rather than “it’s right to spend most of your existence working” because it made it all seem even more depressing.

The weird obsession with work seems to come most strongly from Almanzo’s father, who I thought seemed like quite an unlikeable person. Though he wasn’t all bad, he seems to spare no love or affection for his wife and children and instead seems to be more interested in just making sure they learn the hard lessons of life. He’s such a cold man and I honestly just felt sorry for Almanzo having to live with him most of the time.

This book is definitely a curiosity and I am glad I read it, but I enjoyed the experience much less than I did the first book. The first book was a nostalgic account of someone’s childhood in a long gone age, while this book is about the misery of poverty in 1860s America. Fans who loved the first book should brace themselves for quite a change. Also, as it has no real connection to the first one, feel free to read this one if you haven’t read the first yet.

Rating: 6.4/10

Buy it here.

Fan fiction has a bad reputation, which is a shame, because I’ve read some really great pieces of fan fiction before. Of course, it’s not all good and, indeed, some of it is just as bad (if not worse) as the reputation that precedes it. My Immortal is a perfect example of that: it embodies every negative stereotype of bad fanfiction, but is “so bad it’s good” and I have to admit that it had me laughing out loud tonnes of times throughout.

Set in the Harry Potter universe, the story focuses on a new student at Hogwarts called Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way, whose name the author frequently misspells. Ebony is a big fan of everything related to goth culture, but has very strong feelings against anything she deems as ‘preppy’. Ebony is a vampire and she looks down on all the other students. I think she was probably partially inspired by Bella Swan from Twilight, as Ebony is a lot like a highly exaggerated version of Bella.

The story focuses on Ebony’s day-to-day struggles as a teenage girl, with Voldemort’s presence looming in the background… except the way I’m described it makes it sound much less silly than it is. Seemingly written completely seriously (though some believe it may have been a satire) the book contains Harry Potter changing his name to “Vampire”, Tom Riddle being called “Tom Bombadil”, Snape videoing Ebony in the bath so he can blackmail her, a sexual relationship between Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy, a sudden cameo by a gothic Marty McFly and the time travelling DeLorean, Good Charlotte coming to perform at Hogsmead, Dumbledore constantly shouting and swearing, etc. It’s all utterly bizarre, but at the same time strangely alluring. You can’t look away.

Originally, My Immortal was published in instalments via Fanfiction.net and it’s very obvious that there was no overall plan and that the author just made it up as they went along. During its original publication, somebody hacked the account and published their own chapter which ties up the story and the author just left it up along with their actual chapters. Ironically, even though the hacker seems to be a better writer than the main author, I enjoyed this chapter this least. It lacks the off-the-walls insanity that the others provide.

The biggest problem with the book for me was the fact that it was genuinely hard to know what was happening sometimes, because the spelling was just so bad and the plot so incoherent. Sadly, it also remains unfinished, as the author suddenly stopped updating it after a while.

Of all the books I’ve reviewed, this is probably the hardest one to give a ranking out of ten. I loved it as a piece of comedy and enjoyed discussing it with friends… so maybe it deserves a high score? On the other hand, I don’t believe that it was intended to be a comedic piece of writing, so can I give a good score to something that’s failing to do what it sets out? For that reason, a square down the middle 5 out of 10 seems the fairest way to score it.

Read it here.

The Twits was one of the very few books that I actually read as a young child (even if it was with the rest of my class). At the time, I thought it was absolutely hilarious. I came back to it again around the age of fifteen and that time it didn’t really do anything. It felt childish and infantile. Then, recently, I decided to read it again as an adult so that I could write a review of it… turns out my love for it had returned!

It’s a short and simple novel about two people (Mr and Mrs Twit) who are basically just really awful towards each other and all-round disgusting people. Many of the chapters are just about nasty things that they do to one another (for example, Mr Twit goes out of his way with an elaborate prank to make Mrs Twit think that she’s dying of a terminal illness) and it’s just so over the top and so absurdly ridiculous. I laughed out loud many times. The quirky illustrations from Quentin Blake certainly help in that department.

Later, you’re introduced to a character called the Roly-Poly Bird, who has been imprisoned by Mr Twit and this ultimately leads to a storyline about the Twits finally getting their comeuppance. The ending is comically bizarre, but I don’t think I liked it quite as much as the early chapters where the pair of them were just being awful people. It’s a book you’ll get through pretty quickly (easily finished in one or two sittings) and I think it’s likely to be entertaining to most people – particularly younger readers. Then as an adult it kind of has an extra layer of humour because you know that the things they do are actually really, really terrible (and it’s treated so casually). Though I can find Roald Dahl a bit hit and miss, this is definitely a hit.

Rating: 8/10

Buy it here.

This was another of the novels included in the Reclaim Her Name collection. Originally, Indiana was published under the name George Sand (the penname by which Amantine Auror Dupin is better known), but this project sought to republish works by female authors who originally had to use male pseudonyms due to the negative attitudes to women when they were originally writing – and that’s exactly what they did.

Set in France around the time of the revolution, the story follows a woman named Indiana. She’s married to an older man named Delmare and is perpetually unhappy because of her marriage. It was essentially something she was forced into and her life is miserable. However, she tries to find happiness through an affair that she has with a man named Raymon de Ramiere – but he’s a pretty scummy character and she soon finds out that he treats women absolutely awfully, creating even more misery for her.

The novel does a great job of highlighting how difficult the lives of women could be during this period of history (well, upper-class women, at least). Aside from Indiana, the other major female character is her maid, Noun and the two of them both have pretty horrible lives. I felt perpetually sorry for both of them. To make matters worse, the reason for all of their misery comes down to men. Even the one seemingly nice man, Ralph, ultimately turns out to be just as bad. But, hey, “nice guys” usually pretty are quite unpleasant once you scratch under the surface.

It’s a very bleak novel overall, to the extent that it can occasionally veer into melodrama. It is all horrible things happening to people without any real respite, which I imagine could be quite off-putting for some readers, but I found myself reading on, curious to see where it went. I was rooting for Indiana all along as well, hoping that she’d get at least some kind of happy ending.

Speaking of the ending – I have mixed feelings. I won’t spoil it for anybody who’s planning to read the book, but I thought that the ultimate ending was really horrible… but it’s kind of portrayed as if it’s a happy ending. I couldn’t tell if the author was genuinely trying to display this horrible outcome as a good thing or if she was trying to highlight the awful values of the time which would have lead some to consider this awful outcome to be a good thing. At first, I thought it was the former, but imagining it to be the latter does help me to appreciate the book more.

Overall, I definitely enjoyed it and I do respect it for highlighting the historic struggles of women, but its doom and gloom vibes can get to be a bit overwhelming at times. I think I’ll definitely be trying more of her work in future though.

Rating: 8.2/10