To everyone who knows me well, I'm addicted to reading books, I love the different worlds that authors take me to, the way they describe them in everlasting detail. Also, it's not only fiction I read, I have on my reading list the 100 best business/ management books of all time + close to a hundred of biographies and autobiographies of cricketers (given the opportunity I can speak about cricket for the entire day).
Reading for me is a way of 1) continually firing my imagination that there's something new, a new idea, a new way of life, a new way to do something 2) a "relatively" inexpensive way of having a new experience daily, and it's for these reasons I enjoy reading so much since I was very young. (4 or five years old)
I have close to two thousand books on my Amazon Kindle Fire HD, I've read probably a couple hundred of these. I get through somewhere in the region of 30 to 40 books a year. Since the advent of the Kindle, this has literally saved me thousands of dollars as the kindle edition of a book is generally 30% - 50% less than the hard copy (physical version) of the same book. Not to mention it has saved me on space (where on earth do I fit 2000 books in my house? I'll need a mansion to fit them all), saved me on books dry-rotting, getting bookworms etc etc. Doing some quick and general maths 2000 books divided by 40 books a year, I have enough books for 50 years. 50 years? that's ridiculous right? At 400 pages per book, that's 800,000 pages! Clearly I'll not be starved of entertainment in the near future and I'll be 80 by the time I finish them all.
It must be said though that while my purchases of books (the physical version) has gone down by 90% in the last five years, I still buy the occasional book because of 1) I can't get the Kindle version as it is an old book, or it hasn't come out as yet on Kindle and I just have to have it to read (desperation times) 2) it's that good of a book in my opinion that I have to have it 3) I buy it to have a book to read just in case my Kindle decides to commit suicide on me and I'll be a few weeks without one.
Initially this Blog post was supposed to be about a book review by Catherine Fisher, but as you can see, with four paragraphs just talking about reading, clearly I'm extremely passionate about it.
Onward to the book review!
Spoiler Free!
As the front cover of the book says "A wonderful, unputdownable book" Sunday Times.
Unputdownable, flagged as a spelling error by the blog, so enthralled the reviewer was by the book that they made up a word. Positive signs to start with right?
At 119 pages, it will be one of the shortest books Fantasy Fiction or otherwise that one can ever hope to read. Having 16 chapters as well, makes this into a book one can literally blow away in an hour. Not a positive sign, but the book was worth every second, literally in all the good ways utterly captivating.
What first attracted me to the book was the following extract inside the front cover
" 'Now,' Morgant said, 'are you ready?'
Jamie nodded, but the question was not for him. Unraveling itself across the page like a black thread, the answer wrote itself swiftly:
I am ready.
Now a book like this in 2016 would be lost in the crowd due to the age of the Internet and creativity knows no bounds with anyone. But when you carefully consider this was written in 1991, makes it even more special as the book as years ahead of its time.
I first read it when I was probably 10 (can't remember these things too well) I was not in the habit of noting down these occasions, which you don't realize until years after how special it was. It all starts off with Jamie (the protagonist of the story - yay I used a big word) being in a library looking for a book to read that he didn't read already and being vaguely pissed off/ upset that the library didn't get new and exciting and different books for him to read. The action starts on the very first page as we get the first look at the other players in the book (Fisher does not waste time). Cleverly written, and every nuance so very well described, the book has no pictures other than the front cover, the reader feels like they're actually there experiencing the things that Jamie experiences.
Stepping back a second when you consider it, a book that has it's own feelings, a book that you can ask any question of and be answered instantaneously? Who wouldn't want a book like that?
Short, sweet and to the point a brilliant work of fiction which I will recommend to any avid fantasy reader. The scope of the story is huge yet simple in execution.
I would love to see a movie of this made and further stories from this particular world.
The blurbs on the back of the book are
"Vivid, unusual... establishes Fisher as a children's writer of rare talent" Sunday Times
"Classic fantasy fiction... inventive and well-written" Sunday Telegraph
I agree with these sentiments wholeheartedly.
As the Author herself mentions on her website about the book which gives a potential reader on the intriguing ride they're in for.
"Fintan’s Tower was my second novel, again from the Bodley Head in 1991. I remember not liking the original cover art at all! But I enjoyed writing the novel, and found I’d learned a lot from the first one. Fintan’s Tower is a building that lies somewhere in the Otherworld, and holds an age-old prisoner and a magic cauldron. Jamie and Jennie find a magical book that shows them the way, but then are kidnapped by a pair of strangers who know far more about the dangers of the Tower than they do.
As I mention in the Author’s Note, the idea for this book came from an ancient poem called The Spoils of Annwn, so old and broken that it’s hard to read, but it seems to tell the story of a raid, made by Arthur on a tower in the Otherworld. I love the Arthurian myths, especially the Welsh versions, and from them I took a lot of elements of this story- Cai, the Oldest Animals, and the Cauldron itself."
http://www.catherine-fisher.com/pages/books/the_glass_tower/inspiration.asp
Till next time!
Be safe.
Remember to subscribe for future posts and send me an email at usayd5@gmail.com for any questions or comments. :-)
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