365 plays...and books #2

I recently just finished reading American Psycho - which I'll review at a later date when I've figured out what I think of it - and started scouring my bookshelves for another read when I came across a much dusty well loved book called Birdsong.

Some of you might know Birdsong from the BBC production of it starring the absolutely drop dead boyishly beautiful Eddie Redmayne. I studied this book for A Level, a long time ago now, and it was the first book I had ever read which made me shed a bucket load of tears.

It's split in to three parts and follows a man named Stephen Wraysford through the First World War and the time he spent before hand in France. Sebastian Faulks creates some really wonderful characters who you get to love. It's also a really interesting book, in that I never knew there was almost a whole second war going on underneath the ground. Soldiers from both sides would tunnel underneath no mans land and try to bomb each others tunnels, and they would take a caged bird down with them so they could be warned if the tunnel was filling with gas, the bird would die and they would have enough time to scarper before explosions hit/the gas killed them. Pretty clever right?

Sebastian Faulks has written a few other books too, one of which I will definitely put on my summer reading list.

You can buy Birdsong from Amazon for £5.59 here, or you can pop it on your Kindle for slightly cheaper.

365 plays...

...and books. So this is going to be a slightly educational post. I am from a family of not particularly avid readers – although my mother can work her way through a book speedily when she sets her mind to it – but ever since I was a young one I loved books, and stories, and when I couldn't sleep I used to listen to the 'Animal Ark' stories on tape. This has kind of stayed with me as I grew up, I don't really have enough time to read for long periods these days, unless I'm on holiday, but I always have a number of books on the go, and part of my degree involves a lot of reading.

I think reading is a dying art, or not art so much, but a dying hobby. When I was in Sixth Form, years ago now, my form tutor who was a Sociology teacher told us the most interesting fact which has stayed with me since;

“The average number of books a household in the UK has is 4”

I'm sorry? Four? FOUR!? Think how many households have to have only a few, or no books at all, to bring that average down to four.

Madness.

So, I am going to read, and review for you 365 different books and plays, I'm not going to do one every day because no one has time for that. But whenever I finish a new book or play, I'll pop it on here, give a summary and my opinion and try and make you all feel guilty about not reading.

Day 1 – The Magician's Guild by Trudi Canavan

This is numero uno of 'The Black Magician Trilogy'. Miss Canavan has written loads of other book too, which I haven't yet had a chance to source from my local Oxfam bookstore – yesir, I'm doing my good deed.

Now I read this when I was out and about in Germany a couple of years ago, and have read it about four times since. I bought the first one on a recommendation from a friend, thinking it wouldn't really be my cup of tea, but I demolished this one and straight away bought the next one on Kindle because I couldn't get a bookshop quick enough.

It's a slight fantasy I'd say, a bit Harry Potter-esq, but less fantastical and more believable. A young girl named Sonea who lives in the outside of a city of magician's discovers she has magical powers, but doesn't want to join the magician's inside the city gates, as she believes they will harm her, and so ensues a cat and mouse chase to find her – don't worry this won't ruin the story!

Canavan has put a lot of thought in to this trilogy, creating a whole new slang language that members of the 'slums' use in day to day life, and we are even provided with a glossary at the back of the book, bless her. The whole story has been well thought through, there is love and loss and most importantly, a good old battle between good and evil, and who doesn't love that?

It retails at £7.99 and you can pick it up from Waterstones in the fantasy section, or you'll probably be able to find it on Amazon for cheaper. The second and third books are also available in paperback, and if they're on offer, snap them up because I promise you, you'll want to read them.

Visit the authors website here.