Top Ten Tuesday: Green and Gold

 

Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week the theme is Book Covers In the Colors of My Country’s Flag (It’s the 4th of July in the USA today, so tell us what country you live in and share book covers that match the colors of your country’s flag!)

Now technically the colours of our flag are red, white and blue but generally the Australian colours are green and gold. So today I bring you green and gold books!

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth

The Princess Bride by William Goldman

Evergreen Falls by Kimberly Freeman

The Goldminer's Sister by Alison Stuart

The Green Mill Murder by Kerry Greenwood

The Golden Oldie's Bookclub by Judie Leigh

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan

Poseidon's Gold by Lindsey Davis

Six Degrees of Separation: The End of the Affair to Bitter Greens

Welcome to this month's edition of Six Degrees of Separation, which is a monthly meme hosted by Kate from Books Are My Favourite and Best.  The idea is to start with a specific book and make a series of links from one book to the next using whatever link you can find and see where you end up after six links.  I am also linking this post up with The Sunday Salon, hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz. 

The starting point this month is The End of the Affair by Graham Greene. I vaguely remember reading Graham Green in high school but I am pretty sure it was The Power and the Glory.

This month I have taken a very simple approach and I am focussing on the word green, whether it be spelt with or without an E.

My first choice is Summer of my German Soldier by Betty Greene which is another book I read in high school. I reread it back in 2006 (review here)

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green - By losing the E off the name Green I have read a number of books by YA author John Green but not for  a long time now.

The Green Mill Murder by Kerry Greenwood - I started reading Australian author Kerry Greenwood back in 2006, but I have chosen this book because of the green both in her name and in the title. This is the fifth book in the Phryne Fisher series.

Anne of Green Gables by L M Montgomery -  I feel as thought I can't choose books with Green in the title without mentioning this book.

Evergreen Falls by Kimberly Freeman - What's more green than just green. Why, evergreen of course.

Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth - My final choice is one of my favourite books by Aussie author Kate Forsyth.

Next month, the starting point is Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield.

Six Degrees of Separation: Normal People to The Ship of Brides

Welcome to this month's edition of Six Degrees of Separation, which is a monthly meme hosted by Kate from Books Are My Favourite and Best.  The idea is to start with a specific book and make a series of links from one book to the next using whatever link you can find and see where you end up after six links.  I am also linking this post up with The Sunday Salon, hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.

I haven't always read the books that we start off with but I did just finish listen to Normal People this week which is the starting book for this month's edition of Six Degrees of Separation. I think I got it either as a freebie or cheap daily deal from Audible a while ago. When I finished my last audiobook I looked at the books I had available in my account. There was one that was more than 32 hours, and a couple of others that were more than 25 hours, and I just wasn't ready to commit to an audiobook that long. At just under 8 hours, Normal People was an ideal choice. and the narration by Aiofe McMahon was really good.

The reason I specifically mentioned Aiofe McMahon as the narrator is that she was also the narrator for The Good Turn by Dervla McTiernan, which was the audiobook that I finished before Normal People. The Good Turn is a very different book to Normal People so it was a bit of a shock to hear the same narrator but you get used to it pretty quickly. I have had that happen to me before too! The Good Turn was an excellent entry in the Cormac Reilly series, and I can't wait to read more.

Another Irish really good crime series is Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad.  I read the early books in this series years ago (before it was even really considered a series. I do have a couple of books left to read at some point too. The first book of this series is In the Woods.

Woods play an important role in many books, and particularly in fairy tales and fantasy. For my next book I have chosen Stardust by Neil Gaiman. I love this book but it is one of the few examples where the movie is better than the book - marginally - mainly thanks to Robert De Niro as Captain Shakespeare!

I can't really remember if the movie of The Fault in Our Stars by John Green was better than the book but it was enjoyable. Good job then that isn't the link that I am using. Rather it is the word star that is the link. I did a conversational review about this book and the first question I asked was Did you cry?  to which my answer was yet.

However, it wasn't ugly, sobbing crying which is what I have felt all three times I have read Me Before You by Jojo Moyes which is my next choice. This book ripped my heart out, stomped on it a couple of times and then stuffed it back in upside down. There are two other books in this series which are good but didn't get me in the same way. As an aside, if you are a fan of the Lou Clark trilogy which this is the first book for, check out the COVID-10/Isolation short story which you can read here.

I have loved several of Jojo Moyes' books so I thought that I would make the last choice for this month the first book I read by her, The Ship of Brides. The book is about four Australian war brides who board a ship to England to meet up with their husbands heading into a life full of unknowns. I can't believe I read this book more than 13 years ago (way before the current historical fiction fascination for WWII kicked in) and I still think about it some times. Our four brides were normal people who uprooted their whole lives in the name of love.

The starting point for next month is What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt which I haven't heard of before let alone read. 

The Fault in our Stars by John Green

Despite the tumour-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel's story is about to be completely rewritten.
 
Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning author John Green's most ambitious and heartbreaking yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love.

When Bree from All the Books You Can Read and I realised that we were both about to read this book, it seemed like a good book to have a discussion style review about! I hope you enjoy reading our thoughts.

Bree has the first half of the review at her blog so head on over to see our discussion about our emotional reaction to the book and the characters.

Her thoughts are in blue and mine are in black.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bree: How did you feel about the plot involving the book Hazel is obsessed with?

Marg: I loved the idea of that book (and quoted a section on my blog as a Bookish Quote). I am not, however, sure that I would have liked the book that much given the way that Hazel explained the enigmatic ending!

Heading a little bit into ****SPOILER **** territory now!

I loved that Hazel and Augustus went to Amsterdam (and that Hazel’s mum went with them!). I get a little frustrated with YA books where really young teenagers go tripping all over the place without a parent in sight.

However, I was a bit disappointed with the portrayal of the author, Peter van Houten (was that his name?).

How did you feel about this section of the book?

Bree: I think that was his name, yes. Although I did love that they got to go to Amsterdam, it was a bit of a let down, the interactions with this author, whom Hazel was so desperate to meet. I think it takes a real certain kind of person to treat them the way he did and the attempts made in the end to ‘make the peace’ as such didn’t change anything for me. I do love the idea that Hazel had a book that ‘got her’ and got everything she was going through. I think that sort of connection with a book is important for every reader - not just one in Hazel’s situation! I do like the way in which she spoke about the book, and I liked the ways in which Augustus spoke about the books he was passionate about. Giving each other their favourite novels to read was very cute, especially with the moments and discussions it led to.

I’ve never been overseas so I loved the descriptions of Amsterdam. And like you mentioned, it is nice to see PARENTS playing such a role in a YA novel. Too often there is a grand case of ‘disappearing parents/guardians’ syndrome. To have Hazel’s mother with them on the trip was a lovely, refreshing change from kids going gallivanting all over the place alone!
Marg: I have been to Amsterdam and so it was a nice trip down memory lane for me, although I didn’t go to Anne Frank’s house. Not sure why now but there was a reason at the time.

What did you think of the ending?

Bree: I predicted the ending from very early on (which I think many people will) but that didn’t particularly detract from the emotional impact of it. In a way, like van Houten’s book, there’s a lack of total closure as we’re left unsure of what happened to one of the characters. We can only assume, have a guess, but there’s nothing definitive. And I suppose that was the situation that character found themselves in, so it was sort of fitting. Even though I am the sort of girl who likes a very clear ending!

Did you think the ending was a strength?

Marg: I think so, mainly because whilst it is nice to have all the loose ends tied up, it’s not always necessary to do so. We know what is going to happen with the character you are talking about. It is a question of when, not if, and the reader didn’t necessarily have to be there to sit through that after everything else that we had already read about.

I am definitely looking forward to reading more from John Green now that I have finally read a book by him.

Bree: Same here. I get the hype now!

Grade 4.5/5

Bookish Quotes: On favourite books

Today's Bookish Quote comes from John Green's The Fault in Our Stars which I read over the weekend. Nothing like a good sobfest to start your Sunday morning with!

I struggled with how to pitch myself to Augustus Waters, which enthusiasms to embrace, and in the silence that followed it occurred to me that I wasn't very interesting. "I am pretty unextraordinary."

"I reject that out of hand. Think of something you like. The first thing that comes to mind."

"Um. Reading?"

"What do you read?"

"Everything. From, like, hideous romance to pretentious fiction to poetry. Whatever."

"Do you write poetry, too?"

"No. I don't write."

"There!" Augustus almost shouted. "Hazel Grace, you are the only teenager in America who prefers reading poetry to writing it. This tells me so much. You read a lot of capital-G great books, don't you?"

"I guess."

"What's your favourite?"

"Um," I said.

My favourite book, by a wide margin, was An Imperial Affliction, but I didn't like to tell people about it. Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are books like An Imperial Affliction, which you can't tell people about, books so special and rare and yous that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal.

It wasn't even that the book was so good or anything; it was just that the author Peter Van Houten, seemed to understand me in weird and impossible ways. An Imperial Affliction was my book, in the way my body was my body and my thoughts were my thoughts.

Even so, I told Augustus. "My favourite book is probably An Imperial Affliction," I said.

I have any number of books that I am evangelical about, but I am not sure that I have a book like Hazel has. Do you?