Seeing this on the shelf, you’d probably assume it was a sci-fi novel, but Communion is actually an account of strange experiences that the author, Whitley Strieber, believes to be true. He himself says that he cannot explain what happened to him and doesn’t want to assign any specific interpretation to the events that he describes… but it’s all very much in line with the classic UFO abduction scenario that many of us will already be familiar with.

I have to admit, I went in not expecting very much. Sure, I was curious, but online and in documentaries and so forth, I’ve come across accounts from people who claim to have encountered aliens and they typically all seem kind of ridiculous – not to mentioned laced with delusions of grandeur. What I found disturbing about Strieber’s own accounts, especially those earlier in the book, is that they feel hauntingly realistic. To be fair, he is an author of horror novels, so he just might be particularly good at that, but I certainly get the impression that he’s writing about something that he believes happened. He himself even acknowledges that these could all be hallucinations, but that he believes they happened.

Included between accounts of his experiences are transcripts of hypnosis sessions he has had. In general, I found that these were much less interesting than his written accounts, but I guess he was including the for an increase sense of authenticity. Little bits of them felt kind of creepy too, but ultimately these parts were significantly less interesting to me.

Indeed, by the end, there have been quite a lot of summaries of weird experiences in his life, and while they were all genuinely interesting to read – by the time you’ve read about four or five of them, the creepiness aspect completely wares off. Having said that, he does start to go down a little bit of a philosophical rabbit hole, talking about how we don’t really know anything about anything, and I found that pretty interesting and agreeable.

This book didn’t do anything to change my perspective on whether or not alien abductions are real – it’s still a subject I am enormously sceptical of. Nonetheless, not only is this an interesting and unsettling read, but it also offers pretty fascinating insights into the kind of experiences that people believe themselves to have had, and the impact it can have on they themselves and the people in their life. If that’s the kind of thing that you’re interested in, then it’ll be well worth giving this a read.

Rating: 8/10

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While I thought that Volume 15 was fantastic for the level of backstory that it provided, Volume 16 somehow managed to outdo it, to the extent that it has easily been my favourite volume of Assassination Classroom so far. It’s also very different than any that came before, as it is almost exclusively focused on telling us Koro-sensei’s backstory.

Koro-sensei is one of my favourite fictional characters ever and the story in this volume is a big part of the reason why. Something I really enjoy is when a kind of silly, over-the-top character is given a really dark backstory and though I am not going to spoil exactly what is revealed about Koro-sensei’s past in this review, I will say that it fits into that mould perfectly.

It’s a story of someone who has experienced really horrible things and then, rather than allowing it to take them down a dark path, has instead decided to choose the path of kindness. Not only do I think that that’s incredibly beautiful, but it resonates with because many of the people I love the most have had experiences that mirror it. It’s all about choosing to end a cycle of abuse and violence, rather than allowing it to continue.

This volume also properly introduces Yukimura, Koro-sensei’s predecessor as the teacher of Class-E and Kayano’s sister. While she’d been mentioned and even briefly appeared in a number of previous volumes, this is the first time that she’s really had any focus. As it turns out, she’s an incredibly important character to the narrative as a whole. She’s a very endearing character and someone I became very fond of in just this volume alone – and her friendship with Koro-sensei is something that is both beautiful and sad.

Before you read this volume, aspects of the Assassination Classroom narrative might feel rather random or disjointed. This ties everything together in a really clever and moving way. Meanwhile, if you felt any apprehension about the students’ deadline to assassination Koro-sensei, you’re likely to feel very differently after reading this volume, as it completely changes everything. It’s a fantastic piece of writing and something I’ll give a rare perfect score.

Rating: 10/10

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This was the first novel Charlotte Brontë ever submitted to be published – and it was rejected. Jane Eyre was her second attempt and then after her death The Professor was re-assessed and published. Although I did quite enjoy it, I did think that it rather lacked the depth of all the other Brontë novels I’ve read and so can understand why it might have been rejected at first (even though I’m happy that it ultimately saw the light of day).

The story is about a man called William Crimsworth and it’s all told by him in the first person. After growing frustrated with family dramas, he ends up moving to Belgium to become an English teacher – hence the title “The Professor”. After dealing with a couple of workplace dramas, he ends up embarking on a relatively straight-forward romance with one of the other teachers there and that’s that. There aren’t a lot of layers to it, but it’s a decent ride nonetheless.

Back when she was first trying to get published Charlotte Brontë was using a male pen name (Currer Bell) and something that she does especially well in The Professor is write like a man. In fact, if I were given the text with no context and asked what I thought the author’s gender was, I’d have said male. Though this is a positive reflection of her skills, unfortunately the main way that it comes across is in the way that William talks about women – specifically that he is really obsessed with their appearance and always describes them as angels and things like that. It’s pretty creepy when the women he’s talking about are teenage girls in his class too. The way he describes the main love interest, Frances, is also pretty creepy, because he has a very strong focus on how young she is.

Speaking of Frances, I did think that she was one of the better things about the novel. She, perhaps, would have been the clue that the novel was actually written by a woman. At this point in history, male authors often didn’t give their female characters much depth, or made then kind of ridiculous. This is not the case at all for Frances, who is very kind and independent, but not without her weaknesses – largely linked to low self-esteem and overly high levels of modesty. I thought she was quite compelling, and it’s impressive that she came off as such when only ever seen through the lens of William’s point of view.

Another side character who I found to be an absolute delight was Mr Hunsden… except if he were real, he’d be anything but a delight. He’s a loud contrarian who is often very rude, but in the most comical of ways. Generally speaking, he is a supportive figure in William’s life, but he also endlessly berates and criticises him. He seems to generally want to disagree with anything anyone ever says, and while that means he is usually in the wrong, he also makes the occasional good point, even critiquing societal expectations of the time. Any chapter he showed up in was one that I had a good time with.

Ironically, William himself is one of the least likeable people in the book – not just because of his weird and creepy way of talking about women, but also because of a vague sense of English superiority that he seems to carry within himself in Europe. It’s not super overt, especially not enough to stop him taking a romantic interest in non-English women, but it comes up every now and then and adds to my overall sense of not liking him that much. He’s another reason I don’t rate it as highly as other Brontë novels, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t an enjoyable book.

I recommend reading it if you enjoy classic novels or the Brontës in particular. Despite it’s flaws, I still enjoyed the journey and thought that it was a good book overall, even if others are better.

Rating: 7.4/10

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This is the second book in the Thrawn trilogy novels, all of which continue the story of Star Wars after the end of the original movie trilogy, but take the plot in a completely different direction to what Disney would later do with the sequel trilogy. Having read two of the three of these now, I can say that they are typically much more slower paced than the more action packed movies, but that they offer a little more depth and character development, which I appreciate quite a lot.

This novel is really all about an old fleet of ships that was lost after an accident years ago, but which were all extremely powerful. Talon Karrde, the smuggler who got caught up in the events of the first book (along with Mara Jade) knows where to find this abandoned armada, and of course both the New Republic and the Imperial remnants are keen to get their hands on these ships, because they could help tip the balance of power.

While the hunt for that fleet lies as the central point of tension at the heart of the novel, there were two other aspects that I found to be more interesting. The first of these dealt with Princess Leia agreeing to meet with a person named Khabarakh of the Noghri species (who are loyal to the emperor). This species is portrayed very sympathetically and this sub-plot does a brilliant job of showing why ordinary people would have followed the Empire, which of course helps the whole Star Wars universe to feel more nuanced.

Another thing I really liked about this one was that Luke Skywalker got a chance to meet Joruus C’baoth – the dark Jedi clone ally of Thrawn. Though he’s older and more mature than he is in the movies, Luke is still a young man, and seemingly the last Jedi in existence, so it only makes sense that he’d be drawn to C’baoth and want to see him as a mentor figure. Luke’s naiveté contrasted against C’baoth’s cynical attempts to manipulate him into turning to the Dark Side makes for pretty interesting reading, as Luke spends several chapters on his planet with him.

Of course – one of the biggest appeals of this book (just as with its sequel) is Thrawn himself. It’s no wonder people refer to it as the Thrawn trilogy, because he’s such a fantastically written villain. He really comes across as a man just trying to do his duty, and doing it incredibly well. His conflict with C’baoth ends up making them both feel more believable (and again, gives more nuance to the world) and the fact that he’s almost only ever seen through the eyes of Pellaeon (a member of his crew) helps to give the character a sort of mysterious, unknowable quality.

Meanwhile, although I didn’t think much of her in the previous book, Mara Jade was used more interestingly here. This novel brings her into direct contact with Thrawn, who of course is familiar with her thanks to her previous association with the Empire, but who is also untrusting of her because of their encounter in Heir to the Empire. The two have an interesting, vaguely antagonistic dynamic, and I absolutely loved it.

I think I preferred this one just a smidgen more than the first book and I don’t think anyone who read Heir to the Empire would be disappointed with this book. If you’re hungry for a deeper look at Star Wars’ alternative Legends timeline, then I recommend reading this. Timothy Zahn is a talented writer.

Score: 8.4/10

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Frankenstein is one of my favourite books, and the star attraction of this manga anthology is an adaptation of Mary Shelly’s original novel by the iconic horror manga artist, Junj Ito. The story is adapted pretty darn faithfully and I think that his art offers a fantastic visual interpretation of events. Something that I was particularly impressed with was the design of Frankenstein’s creature himself who looked truly monstrous in a way that is very distinct for any other designs I’ve seen for him.

Although I acknowledge him as a very flawed person, I am very much an apologist for Frankenstein’s creation. Junji Ito, however, gave me the most hateful version of the character I’ve seen so far. It’s interesting, because he doesn’t deviate far from the source material, and yet he still manages to portray the events in such a way that makes the bitterness and hatred his primary driving motivation. I know these emotions are driving him in the novel too, but Ito manages to make him seem much more repugnant than usual, which made it feel quite different to the story as I am familiar with it.

Frankenstein isn’t the only thing in this anthology though – even if it is what has been used to sell copies. It also contains a number of stories about a school boy named Oshikiri. Oshikiri lives alone in a creepy old house while his parents have business that keeps them away from him. These stories were really weird, and typically dealt with evil spirits or dark paralell universe where a murderous version of Oshikiri lived.

While I typically enjoyed the Frankenstein adaptation more, I have to admit that the Oshikiri stories were probably creepier overall. One of them (Neck Spectre) has him killing one of his classmates and then finding the body distorted in terrifying ways, while another, The Bog of Living Spirits, had teenagers drowning in a local bog and dealt with really weird and obsessive behaviour. I think the stories were more unsettling in general because they had the energy of people not really taking teenagers seriously, and then kids losing their lives because of it. It was also somewhat hard to tell how much was real and how much was in Oshikiri’s mind. Something supernatural definitely seemed to be happening, but I thought he was quite an unsettling character.

Towards the end of the anthology, there were some shorter standalone pieces. One about a girl turning into a doll was really kind of unpleasant to read and pretty sad. Meanwhile, there were also some bits about the author’s dog which added some light comic relief to the overall very dark and twisted collection of tales in this anthology… but even that ended on a very sombre note.

If you like the story of Frankenstein, but find it hard to read classic literature, then this manga may be the perfect way for you to experience the story in written form. The additional standalone stories feel like supplementary extras, but I don’t say that to suggest that they are lower quality – only that they are much shorter and don’t have as much time to leave an impact as Frankenstein. Oshikiri stuff is also interesting because it contains every one of the stories about that character, but it feels like a ‘best of’ collection, because you never really truly have the details of his life properly explained… but perhaps that’s just to add to the eerie feeling. If you’re a fan of manga and horror, I recommend checking this out.

Rating: 8.6/10

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Although Winnie himself first appears in the Milne’s poetry collection When You Were Very Young, this book is really the first outing for Pooh and his friends. I absolutely loved it too. While I find that some children’s literature that tries to be whimsical fails to truly capture my imagination, that was not the case at all for this book – I was completely charmed throughout.

There’s not that much of an overall story to the book, but each chapter gives you an adventure (or misadventure) in the lives of Pooh, Christopher Robin, Piglet, Rabbit, and the rest of the animals in Hundred Acre Wood. Sometimes these are just light-hearted silly things like Pooh getting stuck in a rabbit hole, but other times there are slightly more tense situations, like when the woods are flooded during storm.

Regardless of what’s happening at any point in the book, each time I read any of it, it was like a trip to a world that I liked to exist in. The illustrations by E. H. Shepard which appear throughout the book really reinforced this too, with delightfully charming scenes showing Rabbit’s underground home, or the characters having fun together in a clearing in the woods.

What I admired the most about this book was that I felt it had perfectly captured two aspects of childhood. On the one hand, it’s all completely rooted in childhood imagination (after all, every one of the characters is based on a toy owned by the real Christopher Robin) with the ways that the characters think about the world mirroring the mindsets of the youngest children – but it also captures that carefree feeling that you have when you’re very young. The way they fill their days captures how it felt to have what seemed like an infinite period of time to yourself over the summer holiday,

Although it’s simple in a lot of ways, there’s very little that I could say against this book. It’s one of the best things that I’ve read in a while and is a wonderfully beautiful piece of writing. It even addresses Pooh’s name changing from Edward to Winnie, which I appreciated since it wasn’t necessary but feeds into the authenticity of the book. I definitely recommend reading this if you like any children’s literature.

Rating: 9.1/10

I’m sure most people have a mental image of the assassination of Julius Caesar, and I don’t think that it would be quite as well known as it is without this Shakespeare play. I imagined that that scene would be the grand finale of the play, but as it happens, it actually occurs around the middle, so Julius Caesar himself is actually dead for quite a lot of the play that is named after him.

What I quite enjoyed about this play was that it had political commentary that I found to be quite entertaining in a way that I don’t often feel Shakespearean stuff is. Specifically I’m talking about a scene where, just after Caesar is murdered, Brutus delivers a speech to explain how he and his co-conspirators justified the assassination, which gets all the common people on his side, only for Mark Anthony to give a speech immediately afterwards that explains why he thinks it was awful – which then prompts the general public to then find the assassination abhorrent. It gave me a good laugh.

Also, as much as I did not think that Caesar himself was a sympathetic character, I do find his line of “Et tu, Brutus?” (translated, that means “you too, Brutus?”) which he says just before being killed, when he notices that his friend Brutus is among the assassins, quite moving. It seems there’s a good chance that Shakespeare just took this quote from another source (and I suppose it’s possible that it came from history) but I thought there was something kind of profoundly sad about that and it stuck with me

I have to admit though, that I did start to find the story a little less interesting as it went on. I was invested at the start, and when Caesar is killed, and then when the public are being told how to feel about it – but the political upheaval that follows his death wasn’t quite as engaging for me as the first half of the story. It wasn’t awful by any means, but it did feel like the main thing I was reading the play for had already happened.

All things considered though, this is definitely one of the better Shakespeare plays that I have read and one that I definitely recommend if you’re interested in the Roman Empire, or want to read more of Shakespeare’s historicals.

Rating: 7.8/10

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While all of the previous Little House books (other than Farmer Boy) had quite an innocent element of childhood wonder to them, it’s in this, the fifth book, that reality hits home in a pretty major and sad way. Right at the start, we find that Mary has gone blind since the end of the last book (just as she did in real life) – and there’s one other development that I won’t spoil, but which I found to be pretty heart-breaking.

What I enjoyed most about this book was it’s focus on Charles’ time working as a bookkeeper for a railroad company. Not only was the insight into the way work was structured and jobs completed back then all pretty fascinating to me, but what was most interest was reading about the very tense situations that Charles ended up getting into. It was much darker than anything that happens in the previous book and shines a light on the difficulties that someone might face as a bookkeeper – even though you might have assumed that would be a relatively safe job.

As with many of the books in this series, there’s a really beautiful description of one of the family’s Christmases. They’re all a little bit different, but what each of the books’ Christmases have in common is that they perfectly sentimental and festive. I intentionally always read these books at Christmastime because of how great these segments are, and I was not disappointed.

At the end of the book, you get to read about a happier time for the Ingalls family, which is fortunate, as it would probably have been too bleak if it hadn’t – and I appreciate that Laura Ingalls Wilder could only write about what actually happened in her life without deviating from reality too much. On a similar note, I find Caroline increasingly negative, offering comments about practically everything that rarely seems agreeable – but though it is annoying, I guess that’s just what she was like.

While for me, the first book is my favourite and none of the others have ever come close, if you liked all the first four, you’ll most likely enjoy the fifth as well. Meanwhile, it’s advantage over the third book (Little House on the Prairie) is that it doesn’t lean too closely into any uncomfortable attitudes about the indigenous peoples of America. I’m pleased that the feeling of childlike wonder isn’t lost altogether (as it is in Farmer Boy) but it’s a decidedly more sombre read. This isn’t bad, it just captures another aspect of life, but it is a noticeable change. All in all, I was still quite happy with it.

Rating: 8.1/10

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This is one of those novels that everybody has heard of, but I have to be honest and say that before reading it recently, I didn’t really have any idea about what the storyline was. Yes, I knew it was a story of a trip around the world, but I didn’t know the context of that trip – as it turns out, it’s essentially just that an eccentric rich man decides to make a bet with some of his rich friends that he’d be able to make such a journey in that timespan. It’s fun and it’s silly, but I really quite enjoyed the journey.

Phileas Fogg himself was probably my favourite thing about the book. He’s kind of ridiculous in a way, but that makes him quite funny and endearing. He’s completely unflappable, and even though he continuously encounters serious hurdles and dangers on his journey, he always manages to find a solution – and usually one that involves spending enormous amounts of money. I reckon some readers might find his arrogance kind of annoying, but I loved him and thought he was great.

Along the way, Phileas Fogg is contrasted against his employee Passepartout who kind of acts as his foil. Though he is somewhat bumbling, he very much seems as though he’s there to be a “normal person” and ensure that readers have someone they can at least partially relate to. Though you’ll probably spend a decent amount of time feeling bad for him, since Phileas is not a good boss, or you’ll be laughing at him for being kind of stupid. Two other characters join them as it goes along too, and I found them both pretty likeable.

Another big appeal is that it really goes into a lot of detail about how somebody could have realistically made the journey it describes at the time that Jules Verne was writing. It also kind of reads a little like a piece of travel writing, with a lot of information about where the characters go. I found this all pretty interesting and I appreciated the fact that Jules Verne was able to insert random information that he knows in a way that was not boring (unlike, for instance, Victor Hugo, with his shoe-horned essays).

In the earlier parts of the novel, I had the impression that it was a little too pro-colonialism – although by the time I get to the end of the novel, I came away thinking that it was actually quite progressive in a number of ways. It all relates to instances that I can’t mention without spoiling some major plot developments, but generally, it did a few things that I’m sure certain readers would criticise as “woke” if they were included in a modern piece of media.

Altogether, this short and enjoyable read. The story was engaging and ranged from being pretty funny at times, to genuinely quite intense. The idea that inspired the story is quite an interesting one, and the cast of characters are all pretty likeable.

Rating: 8.2/10

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