Friday 14 March 2014

A Long Way Down - Nick Hornby (2005)

4 stars

I'm not going to lie, I bought this book because I knew the movie was coming out and Aaron Paul was going to be in it, and I actually really enjoyed it.

This book is told from the four different perspectives of the main characters, which would normally confuse me but they're all so different that somehow it works really well. The whole premise of this book, that four people meet each other when they're all going to commit suicide, seemed like it would be pretty depressing but I found myself laughing a surprising amount throughout this book. I really liked how realistic each of the perspective's were and how realistic the end of the story was, I thought there was going to be a big miracle and wonderful happy ending and I was so happy that that didn't happen. My favourite character in this book was probably Maureen, I liked how soft spoken she was and how she didn't realize how much she could do when she spoke until she actually did speak. I would recommend this book to anyone who doesn't mind frequent mentions of suicide but likes a short novel.


Martin, Maureen, Jess and JJ all run into each other on the roof of Toppers' House, a popular suicide spot, on New Year's Eve. The presence of them all stops them from committing suicide and they spend the night looking for Jess' ex-boyfriend and then decide to form a sort of support group and decide to meet again on Valentine's day to see how they're all feeling. On Valentine's day JJ brings up that ninety days after a suicide attempt they aren't supposed to want to commit suicide anymore, so they have until the end of March til their ninety days are up. By the end of the ninety days they've all made some progress and feel a bit better and decide to see how they're feeling after six months.

Tuesday 11 March 2014

Someday, Someday, Maybe - Lauren Graham (2013)

2.5 stars

I was really excited to read this because I really love Lauren Graham and after hearing multiple interviews with her about this book I knew I was going to read it, I have to admit I knid of expected more though.

I know this is the first book by an actress who hasn't written a book before, but for some reason I just thought this book would have more excitement. It took me weeks to finish this book because I found it predictable so I didn't have any motivation to finish it quickly and I found the main character so annoyingly ignorant at times that I couldn't handle reading more of her stupid choices too soon after I'd just read some. Don't get me wrong, I like flawed characters, just the combination of Franny's character and the predictability of the storyline made this book surprisingly hard to get through. I did like the premise though, a struggling actress who doesn't realise the potential she's got, and there were some really light and funny moments that I started to look forward to while reading it. My favourite character was Penelope Shlotsky, or Penny De Palma as she prefers, because I thought she defied the shallow celebrity stereotype and I genuinely enjoyed her relationship with Franny. I'm really interested to know if Lauren will write another book after this one and if she does I'll definitely read it to see what she does differently. I would recommend this book to people who want a light comedic novel and don't mind some romance thrown in.


Franny Banks moved to New York two and a half years ago to become an actress and she gave herself a deadline that ends in six months to have accomplished something in the business. During the six months she gets a call from two different agents, books a small one line part on a long running sitcom and a couple commercials, and starts dating a guy from her acting class who is in a big name movie oppposite a big name actor. At the end of the six months, the episode she filmed still hasn't aired, the guy she's dating offered to pay for her boob job, and she got fired by the agent that she picked. She then dumps the guy she's dating for her roommate Dan, calls back the other agent whom she actually liked and decides to stay in New York for another six months.