ed_moore's Reviews (345)

‘How To Kill Your Family’ is not your conventional murder mystery, as it has the very interesting aspect of being written from the perspective of the serial character. As a consequence of which, rather than the traditional build up to find out how the murders happened at the end, we see the planning and execution of each. This however also meant that the protagonist was ultimately dislikable, whereas you still were interested in her motives and “rooting” for her success as she made out her victims to be even more dislikable, we all love an unreliable narrator. Whereas, ultimately I found the closure of the book quite disappointing, of which may be a fault of my own as I had built up a much more exciting ending in my head, whereas it was also the ending that most of the story led me to believe, with a couple hints otherwise here and there like any good twist. This twist, it did its job and I still enjoyed the feeling of disbelief as you sit in silence after reading the final page, but overall I feel it wasn’t the best ending for the story and much potential was lost. Contrary to this, the book still gets 4 stars as it was a much needed break for myself, having not pleasure read for a while.

My opinion on this play is impartial, and to be honest I think there is very little to say, despite being written in 1777, it wasn’t a difficult read. However, I feel the story of the play was almost non-existent. Sheridan wrote his play as a mockery of the English upper-class, and by no means does he fail in this objective and portrays each of his characters with a good degree of accuracy, however though possibly an intentional choice, each character seemed to have lacked an arc, and were fundamentally all very similar to one another. This demonstrates the facades that the upper class put on to appear more wealthy, however ultimately it limited the ability for the story and characters to have any such engaging plot line, other than complimenting one another and then criticising behind one another’s back. Therefore I’m final verdict I didn’t dislike the play, however there was very little that happened and therefore very little to say.

I’m going to put it out there and say I think this was the worst book I have ever read. This may be as a result of the time pressure I had in reading this book, having only two days before I have a lecture on it, however the style and content of Defoe’s story, or “history” as he claimed it to be did not make the time pressure any easier. Written in 1724, it has no chapters, random capitalisations and punctuation marks, and refuses to name any male character throughout the story, of which makes it really difficult to follow as the whole book is about the title character having affairs with various men and then having zero care for her children. Not to mention the book has no chapters and hardly any paragraphs, therefore is a lump of 330 pages of straight text. Though some of these formatting elements are interesting in analysis, it made reading it a huge burden, and both the plot and character development within the book are highly lacking. I would highly recommend you to never burden yourself in reading this book.

In Memoriam is a collection of 130 poems written following the early death of Tennyson's friend Arthur Henry Hallam. The poems explore mainly grief, but also nature and an interesting debate between science and religion of which was flourishing at the time Tennyson was writing. 

Each individual poem I have few complaints with, however I found that reading 130 of them in succession soon became a droll and at heart they are all Tennyson mourning therefore I often zoned out while reading I'd best recommend reading them individually, or in small groups, even if they do order into somewhat of a narrative. I just had to read them all for the purpose of my degree!

Comparing Anoulith's take on 'Antigone' to Sophodes original play I by far preferred this new modern version. Anoulith wrote this during 1942 in Nazi occupied France, and I believe it subtly represents the perspective of the French Resistance. Not only did this immediately make it a more interesting version in my eyes, but also it was written in a style that broke the fourth wall and the characters almost knew they had a role in the story that they must conform to, wether they desired to or not. This is especially the case with Creon and Antigone. As a result of these differences from the original it was a lot more engaging and overall an enjoyable short read.

A short play following reading the Odyssey was a nice relief, and therefore I have a positive opinion on this one. It's a classic Greek tragedy, set following the story of Oepidus, and exploring the fate of his children, a fate in which they are all doomed to meet such worse than he. Whereas, the plot is largely basic. I'd knock it down for this but as I was appreciative of a basic plot in these last 2 days I instead cut stars due to characters. These of whom entirely lack dimension and therefore you struggle to root for them. Despite this, I'm reluctant to bash it too much as for the 70 pages of length it is, not much more can be done.

The Odyssey is the first book I have had to read for my university course. It can be commended as it's one of the baselines in the history of literature, and the classic Greek tale of adventure has been built upon and explored by so many writers. The plot is alright, it's just the means in which the epic is written that I did not enjoy. I acknowledge that The Odyssey has been translated many a time throughout history, whereas now it reads like a list of events just stated to you. There is no tension as the hero Odysseus has no character flaws and he has the 'Gods on his side' and as a result cannot fail Further, the amount of times it is mentioned a character is 'son of ____" the father meaning absolutely nothing to the reader and playing no role in the story is painful, there was no character development and as a result, though highly significant, I found the book ultimately dull.

(Future Ed as I am going and updating missing reviews on storygraph that I had written on an old Bookstagram: now that I have learnt an appreciation of Greek mythology and have a greater understanding of it, my rating of 'The Odyssey' would likely be much higher, though I won't amend this until I reread one day for the sake of posterity. I still preferred both the Iliad and Aeneid to 'The Odyssey' though, these being the two other principle classical epics I have read at time of writing)

The Beekeeper Of Aleppo is a heart wrenching insight into the Syrian refugee crisis, and explores the social issues whilst not hiding from the brutality and upmost tragedy of it. I can also commend it for its wide focus, whilst the protagonists are Syrian the novel explores cases of those across the Middle East and Africa who too are suffering. However, though brilliant at revealing the tragedies to the reader, I believe the story is severely lacking, hence my rating. In regards to a plot perspective, I felt the obstacles in place of the protagonists were very easily overcome, and therefore removes reader satisfaction. Though despite this, the message of the novel is crucial and therefore still worth a read.

This book was unlike any murder mystery I have ever read. From the fist page I knew the authorial style was distinctly unique, almost very blunt about everything, and it is written from the perspective of not the detective, but a crime reporter who had relation to one of the victims. I won't go into it loads, but the twist was also unlike any other, in that it did not conform to the format of a traditional crime novel twist, and was ultimately a twist in how little of a twist it was. The mystery itself was build up so well wheres I found the motives in the end a little flat, therefore affecting the overall rating. I'd lastly mention that this is not one for the faint hearted, with numerous TW's.

If you know me, then you know Ed's go to isnit Fantasy. Despite this, I decided to dive into this behemoth book as firstly it has been compared to LOTR, my favourite trilogy of all time, and I made a reference to it in my WIP so had to read it for research. Despite fantasy not conforming to my taste as much anymore, I can understand the books popularity. The story, worldbuilding and character development were all strong and Shannon's use of imagery is brilliant. Despite this, in my eyes it has only earned 3 stars as though enjoyable, it was very long. Further, I feel the ending us somewhat rushed in proportion to the length of the book and many useless side quests took place during it. If fantasy is your thing, definitely give this one a try, whereas if your more alike to myself then the time it takes to read isn't quite worth it