The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, a review?

Yes the question mark is there on purpose. This is my first review of a book I’ve DNFd. That right there tells you a fair bit about this book. I tried it and ended up decided I wasn’t going to read anymore of it. (DNF = did not finish)

This was my second work by King, the first being The Outsiders (see my review here), and my first collection of short stories from him. I was trying to read these around Hallowe’en cause I heard they could be spooky.

The concepts for the stories I did read were so interesting. But unfortunately the execution was just lacking. None of the stories gripped me, even for their short page spans, and I found myself putting off reading even one story a day.

Originally I had planned my DNF to only be temporary and that I would try to go back to this collection again later. But in playing my Balancing the Books game for my tbr in February I had to unhaul some books. This was one that got the chop.

Sadly this book was just a disappointment and it’s left me not all that excited to read 11.22.63 (which I still have on my shelves). Let’s just hope I enjoy that more

11 Doctors, 11 Stories

 

My last book for the buzzwordathon! I technically finishing this the day after the readathon ended but shhh!

This book consists of 11 short stories by a variety of well known authors, one for each Doctor (excluding the war doctor and also ones which have appeared after this book was published, Peter Capaldi and Jodie Whittaker). Sadly I’ve only watched nuWho so far, and a bit of the 1st Doctor (I’m working on it!) but those respective authors really managed to embody the way in which each Doctor was portrayed and I really felt like I was watching the show.

Overall I gave the book a rounded up 4*s on Goodreads, as the average of my reviews was around 3.7*s. Now lets break these down into their individual stories.

The First Doctor: A Big Hand for the Doctor by Eoin Colfer – 4*

I really enjoyed this Victorian romp around, with Colfer really mixing the Doctor’s personality around to work for a more modern reader. Hartnel played the Doctor as quite stiff and although that does remain in this story he is a bit more relaxed as would fit a modern audience and I think Colfer blended the two really well.

 

The Second Doctor: The Nameless City by Michael Scott – 2*

This was my lowest rated story within this book at 2*s. I honestly felt bored reading it and struggled to get through it. The concept was fine but the characters fell flat for me. It would have been a 1* if not for the Flower of Scotland at the end!!! (I’m half Scottish) I’ve never read from this author before and I’m likely to not do so given my unenjoyment of their writing style here.

 

The Third Doctor: The Spear of Destiny by Maarcus Sedgwick – 3.5*

A fun viking based story which I was immediately engrossed in and really enjoyed, I gave this 3.5* as it lacked a little extra spark to push it any higher. I enjoyed the little details added in but I feel like it could have done with being a little longer, or a standalone book by itself as there were so many small details added which didn’t get to be explored.

 

The Fourth Doctor: The Roots of Evil by Philip Reeve – 4*

This was a great story, Reeve wrote just the right amount for a novella and the concept of a living tree which had been genetically altered for an evil use is such a great plot. Definitely a fun one!

 

The Fifth Doctor: Tip of the Tongue by Patrick Ness – 4.5*

I loved this story! Little truth machines which tell people exactly what you think of them, which is usually quite harsh or unwanted information. The Doctor and Nyssa don’t feature heavily in this story, with the focus being on the children involved, which I definitely think was the right decision by Ness as it brings the reader into their world very directly.

 

The Sixth Doctor: Something Borrowed by Richelle Mead – 4*

A world which based itself around Las Vegas, with the focus being on a shotgun wedding! This was another fun story, as is the theme of this short story collection, and I enjoyed reading about characters which I’ve heard of but not watched myself so far.

 

The Seventh Doctor: The Ripple Effect by Malorie Blackman – 5*

My favourite story of the whole collection! If you’re familiar with Doctor Who you’ll be familiar with the Daleks, but not like this! Blackman takes the story exactly where you would expect for her favoured writing topics and it works brilliantly with the Doctor and the Daleks. This novella is written brilliantly and I highly recommend it.

 

The Eighth Doctor: Spore by Alex Scarrow – 4*

A really interesting take on an alien virus and a great stepping stone from the original Doctors to the new series. There is a virus which is melting people down into goo and conglomerating it to make a form for itself. The Doctor goes in on behalf of UNIT and deals with the virus himself.

 

The Ninth Doctor: The Beast of Babylon by Charlie Higson – 3*

I probably would’ve given this story 2.5*, but I boosted it up a little because I loved that Higson chose to fill up the gap from when the Doctor left Rose after they first met and then appeared back, mere seconds later, to re-offer her the opportunity of a lifetime. This was actually a large gap in time for the Doctor, and this story takes place within that. Sadly the actual story wasn’t my favourite, the concept was good but it just wasn’t for me.

 

The Tenth Doctor: The Mystery of the Haunted Cottage by Derek Landy – 3.75*

In this story we follow Martha and the Doctor inside of a Famous Five story knock-off which has come from Martha’s own brain. This is very much Landy’s ballpark and you can feel him having fun with the story. Again, similar to previous novella’s in this book, I think this needed more pages in order to be a fully developed and enjoyable story.

 

The Eleventh Doctor: Nothing O’Clock by Neil Gaiman – 4.5*

Gaiman perfectly encaptures the madness of Matt Smith and Karen Gillian as their respective characters and really sticks with the style of story which was used within their series’ on the show. It was a great end to the book and I really loved it. I’d be happy to read a lot more from Gaiman writing for the 11th Doctor!

 

Overall, some of these stories did need more time and space in order to fully reach their potential, but I definitely recommend having a look at these. They were originally published as individual short stories for eBook so if you only want to pick up the ones from your favourite authors or a few that sound good then you can definitely do that. I’m really glad that I’ve finally read this book and it was a lot of fun being back in the Whoniverse while we wait for the next series with Whittaker to be released. Definitely recommended reading for Whovians!

Finishing the Divergent Series!

 

My third pick for the Buzzwordathon was Four by Veronica Roth, which I bought not too long ago this year. I was so excited to find this cover as it matches the covers I already had for the main series and I honestly loved being back in this world.

I do think that I’m “growing out of” younger YA, this sort of romance heavy literature aimed at younger teenagers, which is a pity because omg they can be so addictive! But I still did love this read as it was nostalgic and I really enjoyed seeing events from Four’s point of view. I had already assumed a lot about his character which turned out to be true, but it was nice to see it written down and to confirm his actions in the first book and what had lead up to them.

If you enjoyed the Divergent series, excluding the ending obviously, then I definitely recommend picking up this little set of short stories and delving back into the beginning of the story of this world and enjoying yourself! I gave Four 4*s!

The First Poirot Short Story Collection!

Book three in the Poirot series, and the first collection of short stories. These tales don’t have any linking between them other than Poirot being the great detective to solve them all!

I love reading Agatha Christie, I speed through the books so fast and struggle to put them down. I really enjoy short story collections as well, and read through those super fast, so this mixture of the two was bound to be a success for me.

The Short Stories:

1. The Adventure of The Western Star
2. The Tragedy at Marsdon Manor
3. The Adventure of The Cheap Flat
4. The Mystery of Hunter’s Lodge
5. The Million Dollar Bond Robbery
6. The Adventure of The Egyptian Tomb
7. The Jewel Robbery at The Grand Metropolitan
8. The Kidnapped Prime Minister
9. The Disappearance of Mr. Davenheim
10. The Adventure of The Italian Nobleman
11. The Case of The Missing Will

I enjoyed all 11 of these and absolutely sped through this book, if you like a traditional mystery then this is an obvious pick up. Although to be fair I don’t need to recommend Christie. I hopefully will be able to read all of her books and complete my collection one day, as I really love her works.

Classic Western Fairy Tales

You’ve probably heard some of these tales before, but likely, they were a little sweeter. The Brother’s Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen are known for their gory, not-for-kids, fairy tales, so when I saw this book compiling the both of them I knew I had to pick it up.

What I didn’t know when I purchased this book is that all of the authors changed the intensity of their stories over time. They started out writing for adults, and then when they received letters from parents complaining about the goriness they realised their stories were being told to children. It’s at this point that they started to tone down their tales. This does impact some of the stories, I was expecting horrific endings and some of the tales lived up to this, but many of them did not. So just be aware when you pick this up that they aren’t as bad as people make them out to be!

I did really enjoy seeing the base stories for many fairy tales and Disney stories which I’ve seen for years, and I also found it interesting that many of them don’t have any sort of moral attached to them. As this is a common feature of fairy tales when aimed at children.

This was a quick read, and one that I think you should go for if you’re even vaguely interested. These are the foundations of so many tales and stories in Western society and I personally think it’s really interesting to see their origin. I’d really like to pick up more origins of tales from a variety of cultures.

Comment down below any fairy tale stories you enjoy and whether you’ve read tales from the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen!

My first re-read of the year

I’ve been intending to participate with Alex Black’s rereadathon for a few months now (it’s a year long thing) but being away at uni means I don’t have access to all my books so I don’t have anything to re-read! But this re-read ended up being a happy accident. A friend bought me The Thirteen Problems from a charity shop as she knows that I want to read all the Agatha Christie books and I didn’t realise that this was one of the books included in the Miss Marple Short Stories collection. There are other short stories within this collation of works, however, this book is the core part of it. But I did read it again and I really enjoyed it of course!

As I said above, this is a Miss Marple book. In contrast to Poirot, Marple is an old lady who has lived her whole life in a small British town and ergo, when she manages to solve mysteries everyone is shocked. It’s a really fun series and the short story format means that you fly through and get lots of information in one small package.

If you’ve never read Miss Marple before, this short story collection is a great place to start because they all link together into one larger book. They are told from the perspective of people at a “party” taking turns to tell the others about a mystery they’ve encountered and then getting the others to guess who did it. Meaning lots of individual mysteries whilst having them all connected.

I’m glad this was my first book of the re-readathon (I’m counting it and no-one can stop me! Okay maybe Alex can but I don’t think she will haha) and I look forward to reading more Marple in the future!