Haven't been reading as much just lately, I'm always more of a winter reader but I have really took my foot of the pedal over the last few months

Anyways the here's what I've been reading



I bought this and I was expecting it to be quite an understated story of a haunted house...I was wrong.

Understated is certainly not the way to describe this, yeah its a tired story in that an old rich bloke gets a few people to stay in a 'haunted' house to investigate the chances that there is life after death.

Of course you have the unbending sceptic, the unbending sceptic who refuses to believe in anything other than science, you have the strong hearted head strong spiritualist who's belief is unwavering, the third member of the party is one of the world’s greatest mediums, though he is tired and hasn't practised in years, he visited Hell House before and it damn near killed him, finally you have the sceptics insecure wife who tags along because she can't bear to be on her own whilst her husband is off chasing (or disproving) ghoulies.

As for the actual 'haunting' there is a little of everything and it doesn't take long until things escalate massively, it starts off with rocking chairs moving on their own, bed sheets being thrown over nothing only to unveil the shape of an invisible presence, not too long after that you get all the twisted demonic horrors that you can imagine, it certainly doesn't pull any punches and is a lot more in your face than I expected (I thought I was going to get something more in line with The Haunting of Hill House)

A fantastic read and one that I would highly recommend if you want a good straight up horror story.



We follow Esther Greenwood's personal life from her summer job in New York with Ladies' Day magazine, back through her days at New England's largest school for women, and forward through her attempted suicide, her bad treatment at one asylum and her good treatment at another, to her final re-entry into the world like a used tyre: "patched, retreaded, and approved for the road" ... Esther Greenwood's account of her year in the bell jar is as clear and readable as it is witty and disturbing.
Esther Greenwood is a young girl who seems to have the world at her feet, she is whisked off to New York on an internship and is really living the high life, she aligns herself with two other girls, one called Doreen who is off the wall and always ready to break the rules and the other is Betsy who is a straight up book worm who gets everything done as it needs to be done on time without fail.

The problem is that Esther doesn't feel enthused by the high life, she feels intimidated by it, to say that she disliked it would be wrong, it is quite clear that she just feels completely neutral to it.

I have read some people saying that her descent happens all to quickly but if you read the book you will see that her depression didn't suddenly come on over night, there were little clues all over the place, I really appreciated this, it wasn't too in your face but once you have spotted it you can feel it growing slowly.

Once it really has her in its grips Esther is constantly thinking of suicide, the thing about this section is that it is handled in an almost light hearted way I thought, Esther didn't seem as if she actually wanted to go through with it, this was a fantastic piece of writing because you can feel Esther's confusion at this point.

A really good book, very similar to Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson but this is actually a kind of thinly disguised autobiography by Sylvia Plath



A great book well worth a read.

I don't really tend to go towards the sci-fi genre.

This is an all out sci-fi thrill though, from time space travel, terraforming planets, biologically altering life forms via a virus, war, gods, technology and giant spiders, it really does have it all.

Best thing about it is that all the way through the book you don't know who to route for, the ending was fantastic and really well done.