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Is it Just Me? - Miranda Hart
by IzzyInTheHouse
After being brought it for Christmas (though I have never really been a huge fan of the show, I watch it occasionally but that's about it!), a few months later I decided to give it a read and see what it was like. Here's my review on it!
What's the book about?
It's not what you would expect, as though it is an ... autobiography, it isn't a book about her life but just certain situations/topics she has picked out. There's not really much information in the book at all, it's mostly just her laughing at life, society and herself.
Did I enjoy it?
Yes and no. It is very funny at points, I even laughed out load a fair few times, but to get to the funny parts you have to wade through a lot of waffle, if that makes sense. There are a lot of parts that just really aren't needed or are repeated a lot so you find yourself just skimming past that paragraph.
It took me several sittings to make my way through it, because I just got bored trying to read a lot all at once. Not like me at all, as once I start a book you normally have to drag me away from it!
Overall
It's priced at £9 right now on Amazon, which is pretty cheap for a 'celebrity' autobiography. If you enjoy her show, I would say go for it as you will probably quite enjoy it and relate to her more. If not, then give it a miss.
Thanks for reading :)
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World's Weirdest Animals - Matt Roper
by broxi3781
World's Weirdest Animals, is a small book, 6"x 6" square, with 96 pages. My son noticed it when I was browsing on Amazon and requested it due to the title and the picture. The fish on the front cover certainly deserves his place in a collection of animal oddities, the blob fish is one of the strangest creatures I have ever ... seen. So admittedly, we judged this book by it's cover, but my son does really love non-fiction books and often asks for books about "real things". Like most boys - he loves the odd, unusual and even a bit grotesque so he was really looking forward to this book.
This book does have several advantages. First and foremost, this is is just the type of book that would encourage the most reluctant of boys to have a look. Many of the illustrations are very good, and quite interesting. There is a wide variety of animals, and there are bound to be some that most children are not familiar with. The book has a lovely hardcover, making it quite attractive, and less prone to damage than a paperback. A total of 38 animals are featured, each with a few paragraphs on the left hand side and a full colour glossy illustration on the right.
Thankfully, I saved myself embarrassment by reading this book first on my own, before reading it out loud to my children, and once again, very thankfully, it wasn't quite interesting enough that I expect my oldest to want to read this on his own from cover to cover as there is one part which I felt is not suitable for young children. Scattered throughout the book we get a couple of pages on weird animal facts that are not accompanied by illustrations. One of these says that female brown trout fake and orgasm. I really didn't see the point of this, and felt the book would have been much better without this snippet. I really do not care to explain to my 4 and 8 year old sons just what an orgasm is yet. So I read this out loud to the boys carefully skipping this section. I also skipped the section on the Humpback Anglerfish male which I felt was just a wee bit too graphic. My main problem was with the trout though, and since this is in the weird animal facts, which really weren't that good - I doubt my son will notice it. If he reads this on his own, I would expect him to thumb through and only read about the animals that interest him.
There were some pages here that the children really loved. They did enjoy many of the pictures, especially the Texas Horned Lizard - which looks a bit like a dinosaur, the bumblebee bat, a pelican eel, a leafy sea dragon and of course the blob fish. Their favourite by far though was a very frightening South America fish, which they had heard of before but had no idea what it looked like. This is the dreaded Candiru fish. With a maximum length of 3" and no teeth this may not seem like one of the most dreaded creatures in the Amazon but it has a rather nasty habit that makes up for its small size. This fish has a tendency to swim into openings in the body. It is especially attracted by the scent of urine, so you most certainly do not want to pee in the pool when bathing in the jungle, but can also find it's way into other places. Once there it puts out porcupine like quills and stays there, feeding on the victims blood. Surgical removal is meant to be the only way to get rid of them, but many die from pain long before they can reach a hospital. There is one alternative for men, although not a nice one and this is not mentioned in the book. This is certainly creepy enough, and mentioning very rude things to get the interest of wee boys.
While this is very much the type of book children will want to read, I can not recommend it for reluctant readers due to the fact that the print is tiny and printed over another printed design, which quite frankly gives me a sore head - it would be horrible for a child with reading difficulties. Of course there is the issue of subject matter of as well.
I assumed this was a child's book when I saw it pop up on the dooyoo Amazon ads, and nothing on the amazon site led me to think any differently. This is part of series which includes: World's Cutest Animals' and 'World's Deadliest Animals'. I do own the second book and it is suitable for children. However, as I went to write this review, I noticed dooyoo has this listed as humour. While there are a few funny bits though, I really can't see much besides the blob fish picture appealing to adults. Certainly a picture of a Narwhal or Okapi is nothing new to most of us.
If this was meant for adults, I'm surprised they did not include the wee fish with its reproductive organs stuck on it's head. Considering the other content of this book it would not have been nearly so bad. Whether it is intended for adults or children, I do feel that they could have included many much more bizarre creatures. How about the Goblin shark, hagfish or frill necked lizard? Children would have loved animal oddities like two headed snakes, while the Silver Dollar fish mightn't look very exciting, but its practice of schooling with piranha would qualify it as strange - especially considering that the piranha occasionally take lumps out of these fish when food is scarce but rarely kill them. At 1.8 metres the Chinese salamander is a bit odd too, so our purple frogs, even our own favourite - triops. Whether this was written for children or adults, I think I could have come up with a better list of creatures myself.
My final issue with the book is the fact that I feel some of the photographs are not quite up to par. Some are really brilliant, but others don't show the animal very well. They may be too dark, or at a difficult angle. In particular - I feel the platypus picture is poor, the narwhal isn't the best and the angle for the cookie cutter shark is all wrong, but for every poor photo, there are several very good ones.
My sons would give this 4 stars. I am only giving it 3. I feel the issue of print over print is annoying enough to lose a star on it's own, particularly when it is small print. If this is a child's book it really should loose at least 2 stars for inappropriate conduct, and if it is not meant for children , it should clearly say so. If it is not a child's book though, it has to lose another star for not being really novel or interesting enough to be worth the purchase price for adults, though I believe most would enjoy a quick look through the photos. Considering all the negative factors, I consider 3 stars generous, but I do think many children would really enjoy this book. If you don't feel uncomfortable with the sexual reference, then this book might still be worth picking up providing that either your child is a confident reader, with no reading disabilities and good eyesight, or you will be reading this book out loud to them. I have to very strongly recommend against this book for struggling readers due to the print issue.
Update - my son did pick this up and read the whole book to go sleep last night. Thankfully he did not ask any questions this morning, but I've pointed the passage out to my husband in case he does - all questions in that department are his job - as per our agreement that id di all the nappy changes when they were little - he gets the awkward questions. My husband had an interesting thought though - How exactly do they know - and it is someone's job to watch fish.......... well you know.
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The World According to Clarkson - Jeremy Clarkson
by SWSt
Love him or hate him, Jeremy Clarkson is not going to go away. Whether it's on our TV screens presenting Top Gear or musing on modern life in a newspaper column, the presenter can be found making his views known on a wide range of subjects.
The World According to Clarkson is a collection of Clarkson's "wisdom" ... published as part of his Sunday Times columns between 2001 and 2003. In them, the curly-headed one muses on all sorts of things: the frustrations of modern life, the obsession with celebrity and occasionally, even important events that are happening in the world.
Despite his somewhat boorish, anti-intelligent TV persona, it's clear that Clarkson is actually a pretty good journalist and also a genuinely funny person. Whilst I'm not going to suggest for one moment that his columns are works of great literature, they are highly readable. Clarkson has an excellent way with words so that he can make the most mundane topics amusing, whilst also pointing out some of the absurdities and idiosyncrasies of modern life. In some columns he even manages to make you think a little; his offbeat, humorous approach to things actually raising some important issues.
It's certainly true that the entries can be rather variable but when he gets it right, the columns work really well. Just like on Top Gear, his observations on modern life are a mixture of the ridiculous, the offensive and the absurd. He pokes fun at anything and anyone (including himself) that he considers stupid and doesn't pull any punches. Sometimes this can backfire and he comes across as rude and arrogant but when he pulls it off, it's genuinely funny stuff.
The book is also very readable. Since it consists of a collection of old newspaper columns, each "chapter" is very short - typically just a few pages long. This makes it an ideal book to dip in and out of, or to read in longer bursts. Either way, it's a nice, undemanding book. Clarkson has a simple, direct style which works well for a newspaper column and makes "The World According to..." fun to read.
Of course, there is one problem that arises straight away. If you don't like Clarkson and think he is nothing more than a boorish 15 year old boy in the body of a 50 year old man, then you will find nothing here to change your mind. Clarkson is as deliberately offensive as ever, having pops at foreigners, ridiculing what he sees as wishy-washy liberal values and generally being strident and reactionary. If you hate his Top Gear persona, you will not get along with this book.
Even for fans of Clarkson, there is that problem of the variability of entries. For every one that makes you laugh out loud, there are three of four that will not even make you smile. Clarkson also have a slightly meandering style and you occasionally wonder what the point of particular column is. Some entries, for example, start by commenting on a news story, wander away onto something completely different and then return briefly to the original idea. Presumably, in Clarkson's mind, everything is linked, but there were several columns where I was left wondering what point he was trying to make.
A bigger problem is that a lot of the columns are linked to significant events from the period when the columns first appeared. On original publication, you could be reasonably sure readers would know the background to the events. If however, you are reading the columns more than ten after the events in question, it can cause difficulties. Sometimes this is not important, since you'll probably still be able to recall enough information (the war with Afghanistan, the ban on fox hunting); others, though, refer to smaller stories or snippets of news which will have long since been expelled from your memory. There were several entries where I had to stop and try and recall the exact events Clarkson was referring to.
Whilst parts of The World According to Clarkson made me laugh, I'm not sure I'd rush out and read other books by him. The book is also still quite expensive - a new paperback copy will cost around £6, the Kindle edition £5. Thankfully, it's a book which pops up quite regularly in second hand/charity shops, so I'd going down that route.
Funny? Yes. Essential? No.
Basic Information
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The World According to Clarkson
Jeremy Clarkson
Penguin New Edition, 2005
ISBN: 978-0141017891
© Copyright SWSt 2013
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