Bridget Jones, Maze Runner (4 book reviews) in Book Challenge 2016 (52 books to be read in 52 weeks)

I’ve read four books since my last entry. I’ve obviously got far too much time on my hands! That’s four in eleven days.

The first is Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding (310 pages). Bridget is living the single life in the 1990s, being generally unsuccessful in love and her work life. The book was okay (I saw the movie a while back, pretty much a rubbish adaptation I thought. Maybe it might have been better if portrayed in a Peep Show style, where the audience sees things through the main character’s point of view/eyes). A quick read, and good if one doesn’t really want to think.

The next is Manga Shakespeare: Macbeth at 208 pages (including a bit on Shakespeare himself, the editorial team and a summary of the story). I love the manga Shakespeare series, unfortunately I got rid of a heap before we moved just over a year ago. All I’ve got left is the Othello interpretation and now this. The Scottish references to thanes, etc. alongside the Japanese setting is interesting! Managed to get this for $5, and it’s an ex library edition. The only book out of the four included in this review that I’ll be keeping.

That Fry Boy by James Fry (217 pages) is a memoir. The author was bullied mercilessly as a child, and the result was that he spiralled into drugs and alcohol. It’s a short and quick read, although I’d have preferred something a bit more “in depth”. Slight problem with the edition I have - the grammatical/spelling errors could have been checked before printing (they were a bit distracting from the text).

The Maze Runner by James Dashner (371 pages) is about Thomas and a group of boys (and one girl who arrives after he does) who call themselves “Gladers”. They live in a Glade at the centre of a difficult maze. The group spend every day trying to escape from the maze, and every day they fail. This was infuriating, the characters seemed flat and one dimensional. The writing didn’t really engage me, and the ending could have been better if it had stopped a chapter or two earlier. (The last chapter or two could have become the first couple of chapters of the second book in the series…that might have tempted me to pick up the next book in the series). Other young adult books are better in my opinion.

Books Read This Year: 50/52. Total Pages Read So Far This Year: 12879