Tom's treasures of fiction, poetry, literature and more...

Hello to all the hes, shes theys and zies. I wanted to do an opinion piece on how and why I think Atwood's work can be useful to us in society. Take her 1985 classic  The Handmaid's Tale , when Donald Trump was elected as the 45th president, the novel rose in the bestseller charts as the handmaids were seen as figures of resistance against Trump's regimes targeting women. This tells us something about her work. Notice how Trump became president in 2017 until 2021, and his presidency caused a rise of interest in Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale . Then two years later The Testaments  (2019) was published, winning the Booker prize. There must have been a clear interest in a sequel all of a sudden because The Handmaid's Tale  was published in 1985. It took thirty-four years until we arrived at the sequel. Though her book also rose in prominence again, I think because of the book banning in the United States of America. Some people saw her book as "bad" or ...

It's me again... Your favourite book reviewer back with another Margaret Atwood book to review. This time I thought I would tuck into Atwood's 1988 novel Cat's Eye . This novel is gripped with spectral memories of the narrator's past, it is a bildungsroman. A bildungsroman is just a novel that goes through a character's life, from being a child, to growing up as a young person to becoming an adult. Great Expectations  (1861) by Charles Dickens is another example. Anyway, the narrator, Elaine is haunted by Cordelia who I will not give too much about her away. This novel threw me, many times. We had Elaine and her various friends. First we were introduced to Carol, then Grace and finally Cordelia. But it is Cordelia, who's presence is felt throughout the novel. The thing is, I cannot understand why. Without giving too much away, Cordelia was hardly being nice to Elaine and I just expected that as Elaine grew up that she would move on; that she would not have Corde...

 I am back again people firstly to apologise for not posting yesterday. I became unsure on what I was going to post. Originally I wanted to review The Handmaid's Tale  tv series, series 1. But I was unable to find somewhere I could watch it. I know it used to be on channel 4 although it is currently not available on there. The only place I found in the UK where it could be watched is Amazon and that will never happen. Their support for Israel and the thought of an extremely rich man, getting even richer (while workers suffer on such low wage) sickens me. I would not waste my money on that service. Anyway, I shall have a post up on Wednesday coming, with another one on Friday too. I want to post these and do already know what they are. There will be my end of the week post on what I have read this week, coming on Sunday of course alongside the other two. I hope you look forward to my future posts to come. In the mean time feel free to read or whatever else you do in life. You c...

  What I have read this week... I have decided to do a weekly post on Sundays, only a short one, just to inform you all what I have been reading that current week. When I do these little posts I will try to include everything I have read, even if it does not seem relevant to the general themes of my blog posts from within that week. This week has seen me read a little bit, though not much in the way of variety. 1: French! Yes I am still doing my French daily. I have done over a year without losing my record of days. 2: The Testaments (2019) by Margaret Atwood. I finished this awesome novel off at the beginning of the week. As you can see from my review, I thoroughly loved it. 3: Wonderbook  (2018) by Jeff Vandermeer. I got this book while in my final year at university and lately it has been insightful to me. I love reading bits and pieces of it at times. For me this is instrumental to anyone wanting to write anything considered within the realms of speculative fiction - fant...

Hi everyone, I hope you are all well. I am back once again to deliver my thoughts on yet another Margaret Atwood novel. This time I decided to dive into Margaret Atwood's The Testaments  (2019). After having re-read and reviewed The Handmaid's Tale  (1985), I thought it was only right to read the sequel book and review it. First of all I wanted to say how nervous I was at what was going to happen in this novel. The ending of The Handmaid's Tale  left me with fears over what had happened to the protagonist and I had so many unanswered questions. I thought The Testaments  would give all these answers and in some way they did. But there were finer details which had not been accounted for, stuff that I could not work out. That is not to say, I did not enjoy the book. Far from it! I loved The Testaments  and there are multiple reasons why. The most important is this gender divide and how things changed in Atwood's dystopia here. In the first book, the men had all the...

Hello everyone, I wanted to give my honest review of the 1984 film that came out funnily in 1984. I thought it was a clever idea to bring out a film of George Orwell's Nineteen  (1949) in 1984. I have seen this film twice. The second time was recently actually and my initial reaction to seeing it was how stark it looked. The setting had no roads or pavements, just dirt to walk across. This for me drew me in to this totalitarian world immediately. Having the scenes where Winston sat down to ate felt like a prison and  it was the clothing that further illustrated this.  The thing with the clothes is that you had these dark blue boiler suits everyone had to wear which to me was depicted as uniform, therefore making everyone all conform. That kept everyone under rule of the party. I also noted how the scenery was often grey or at least in highly muted shades which made this dystopian world of Orwell's a rather dreary one and bleak, with nothing exciting to look forward ...

Hi everyone, I am here to review a novel with a stark vision for the future... George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four  (1949). When I was at college and I studied my A-Levels, one of them was English Literature. We had a module on dystopian literature where our two focal texts were Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale  (1985) and Orwell's infamous novel. This dystopian tale made me quite grim at times but in the good sense; it meant it was doing the purpose of its job. As I read this and I followed round the protagonist, Winston I correlated with him. By this I mean that his confusions for things in the dystopian setting, were matched on my part as a reader.  But as a writer and lover of books, something in the novel got me. That was the removal of words because the idea was that synonyms of words were not needed when instead of multiple words meaning the same thing, there was just the one.  Though as a generic reader, this novel still catches one's eye. Take the dis...

  What I have read this week... I have decided to do a weekly post on Sundays, only a short one, just to inform you all what I have been reading that current week. When I do these little posts I will try to include everything I have read, even if it does not seem relevant to the general themes of my blog posts from within that week. This week has seen me read a little bit, though not much in the way of variety. 1: French! Now first of all, I do daily lessons on my phone with French with an app and some of the tasks get me to read French. Lirez-vous Français anyone? 2: The Testaments  (2019) by Margaret Atwood. This is my latest Atwood text that I have been sinking my teeth into and I am yet to finish this book. I always knew at some point that I would read as of course it followed her 1985 bestseller  The Handmaid's Tale . 3: The National Trust Magazine. As a National Trust member, I love looking through the magazine to see if there is anything interesting. I also attempt...

Hello all, I wanted to post a review of the first ever Atwood text I read: The Handmaid's Tale  (1985). I fell that this novel is very significant at the moment, considering events that are occurring in the USA. This novel challenged ideas namely about sex and the differences between both man and woman. I noticed this the first time I read this at college for my English literature A-Level. That was necessary but I since read it again for pleasure. Considering all that has happened in the past years , especially in the U.S.A, I can understand why they made a T.V series of this book. I have not seen that yet as I am struggling to find it on any service except Amazon. Considering Amazon's support for Israel and the thought of a extremely rich man, getting even richer because of me, I decided I was not that  desperate. But this is not a blog about social politics, you want my authentic and honest book review. It was the vivid descriptions that made this book stand out to me. Right...

Hello all, I wanted to do a post to explain my love of the dystopian genre. When I first started reading dystopian books I grew to love them because to me the dystopian genre offered a form of escapism. It is a sub-genre of the science-fiction genre  ‘ with a heritage reaching back into ancient times, to a pre-scientific world inhabited by peoples whose myths, legends and superstitions became a way of thinking about and explaining the wonders of the universe. ’ ¹ This is according to Marshall B. Tymn in the American Studies Journal. He also states  ‘Science fiction has its beginnings as least as early as the 2nd century with a Greek named Lucian who satirized his own society through the device of an imaginary moon voyage. ’ ² While this highlights the possibility of a new literary genre it was not until 1818 with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein  which was published two years after writing it at the infamous Villa Diodati in Switzerland. Villa Diodati was rented by author Lord...

  Hi all, I know I have not been on my blog in a long time but the past several months has seen me focus on a lot of other stuff that was more important to me and mentally I was unable to focus on it. I just think that last year was not my year and I did consider giving up on this blog of mine here. However, the new year has arrived and so has a new me. I decided I wanted to have a new beginning with my blog because I love reviewing books that you can enjoy to read yourselves. That is not all I will be posting on my blog as I hope to share other things with you that are related such as things I consider can relate to various types of books or perhaps something I have written myself, as I do write. The reviewing of books is probably what will interest me most though and I hope to have a theme of the month, for each month. I have decided this will change every two months because one month just is not long enough. For January and February, I am going to be reviewing texts that are wit...