Anna and the French Kiss, Stephanie Perkins

"For the two of us, home isn't a place. It is a person. And we are finally home." - Anna and the French Kiss, Stephanie Perkins 

'Anna and the French Kiss' had all the essential ingredients to entice a reader. A beautifully penned plot, immersible characters and a sea bed of charged emotion. Stephanie Perkins succeeded in tackling the worldly theme of love in this YA novel and what's more, in creating the character of Étienne St. Clair she made me fall hook, line and sinker into the book  - and with no anchor to stop myself from falling, I was well and truly trapped.

Anna Oliphant has been sent to Paris to study for her senior year. What she believes will categorically ruin her last year of school, turns out to define and re-shape not just her future, but her personal afflictions and the lens through which she views the world. And whilst this change is indebted mostly to the people she forges bonds with in Paris, it also owes a lot to experience and embarking with white sneakers on the foreign land of independence.

Moving a thousand miles away from home, as daunting as it is for Anna, gives her the chance to be educated not just academically, but in all the pitfalls and beauty that life can offer. Paris may have served its stereotype as being the city of love for Anna, but it also turned out to be the city of identification. At the end of the book Anna was no longer the lost soul stuck in a timeless city. In her own words she had discovered that "home isn't a place. It's a person." and that, for me, was Anna's moment of enlightenment.

The argent of this identification depicted itself in the form of Étienne St. Clair. A human magnetic field - everybody was attracted to him whether they wanted to be his friend or not. Étienne St. Clair was the epitome of Paris in a person: architecturally good looking but with depth to accompany it. There's nothing worse than a fictional male lead who's portrayed as brilliantly good looking but with, as Hermione Granger would say, the emotional range of a teaspoon. Although there were a couple of times many a time when I found myself internally screaming at Étienne to face up to his true feelings, the frustration and agony was worth it.

Chapter 46, page 392. " 'Neuruda. I starred the passage. God,' he moans. ' Why didn't you open it?' "

Enough said.

I loved this book so much that I am seriously considering never returning it back to the library and incurring the fee attached to that dismissal of the library codes of decency. Honestly. But that's the wonderful thing about books. It's not the paperback, strewn surface that matters, it's the story inside and what we retain from that story in our minds that makes reading a beauteous pastime. So whether I return the book to its rightful home or not (I will, I'm not that rebellious) I know that Stephanie Perkins story will stay with me for a long while yet.

Bonne nuit!

The Kite Runner, Khaled Housseini

"For you, a thousand times over." - The Kite Runner, Khaled Housseini 

Powerful, perspective-altering and above all thought provoking. The Kite Runner by Khaled Housseini was a stunning read. After months and weeks of grumbling about having no books to read that don't follow the whole boy-meets-girl storyline, I was beyond happy when my friend recommended I read this book. So one library order later, the book was clasped firmly between my hands and there it remained.

The story follows the life of a young boy named Amir and his ties with both his homeland of Afghanistan and his past that he can never quite seem to overcome. But ultimately, for me, the story was one were the overarching theme of the book was friendship and the idea that you never really can forget your past. It will always be there to tap you on the shoulder when you least expect it, or flood your mind with memories when you'd rather just forget. What Amir eventually comes to learn is that, contrary to popular belief, your past does define your future. After all, the past is a force to be reckoned with when its plagued with the savageness that is guilt and shame.

I've read reviews where people have said that 'The Kite Runner' is the first book of its kind to epitomise what life is like in Afghanistan, specifically for a western audience. Whether this is true or not, it shows perhaps why Houesseini decided to tailor this story for western ears. We can see images and news reports on the TV, we can read article after article in our morning newspapers and we can even pick up a a history book. But there's something about a story that blends breathtaking detail of life in Afghanistan as well as common themes about friends and alliances, love and loyalty. Themes that we're familiar with reading about here in the western world, but themes that are not specifically western  - they're universal.

Housseini is almost able to hide the fact that he is providing us with a brief history of Afghanistan, because he is telling us a tale of two friends. One rich, one poor. One accepted in society, the other discarded in society. Already we're reeled in to the story. But by combining features that perhaps we view as being predominantly western, he is able to show us that although war-torn Afghanistan may seem a thousand miles away from us, what they're experiencing in terms of loss and heartbreak is closer to home than we realise. I think in the midst of all the media coverage of this topic we forget that these people are just human and if it takes Housseini a fictional tale of friendship and loyalty to show us that, then perhaps it says something much deeper about us as humans.

When I was fashioning together a small synopsis of the story to give to my friend, the first thing I said was It's like 'The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas'. And of course, it's not. First of all, that book was about Nazi Germany, enough said. But what I meant was that there was only really one book I had read before 'The Kite Runner' that had left me in a daze for days just thinking. Thinking about the story, thinking about how the story related to real life events and thinking about the horrors that exist in this world. 'The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas' is the type of story that stays with you for life. Until I read 'The Kite Runner' I truly believed I would never read a book like it again that affected me that much. I was wrong.

Interestingly however, there is something both these books have in common. They both translate real-life historical events into fiction and it's these types of stories, I believe, that are the real 'horror-genres' of literature. For although what we're reading in these books is fiction, it could just as easily be reality. It's twisted, it's mind-numbing and it's petrifying. For me that's more scary than any Stephen King book I could pick up.

'The Kite Runner' had bombshell after bombshell of climaxes. Just when you thought you'd reached the root of the story, Housseini picked up his spade, unrooted you and flung you in the opposite direction. What left me gaping after I finished the book was that this was Housseini's first published novel. His first. I was amazed and I was in awe of him. To write as though you are painting with brush strokes in the reader's mind is exactly why I love reading so much.

I'm not a fan of book ratings - I prefer to talk about a book than slam a star-rating on one. I feel like ratings are a bit of a kick in the teeth for an author who's spent a portion of their life creating a story and a world for us to divulge ourselves in, only to receive a number of stars on a computer screen or scrap of paper. So I won't star rate this book, but what I will do is say that 'The Kite Runner' has to be read to be understood and for that reason you have to read and you have to understand. Housseini, I can't wait to read more of your stories - 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' here I come.

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Chic Cafes' and Cappuccinos'

"And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer. " - The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

With the sun shining and my daisy adorned sun hat firmly rooted to my head, my best friend Ems and I decided to go and visit a new cafe just a short ride away from our home. A love of all things coffee and lovely chic decor led to us checking out this place and in no way did it disappoint.

Named 'The Tea Rooms' or 'Kiva' (take your pick!) this cafe was indeed a hidden sanctuary of peace and calm - a gem really, nestled in the middle of the hustle and bustle of the high street. With cushion strewn couches and a line of armchairs, I fell in love with the place instantly. The chalk board menu, amazing cappuccino's and lovely service explained exactly why there were customers of all ages. From little old ladies chatting in the corner to mums dropping in for a coffee and a chit chat to us students, the cafe really was a beauty.

Is it just me, or does this look like the type of place you'd go to just kick back, relax and read your favourite novel? 

I think it's fair to say me and Ems will most definitely be becoming regulars at this place!

Ta Ra! :)

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Mollie's Musings - An Introduction

With staccato fingers dancing away on the keyboard and a plate of apple and blackberry pie to my side, I’m pretty sure this is the best way I could start my first blog post. My name is Mollie Josephine Berry and my musings are tremors on the verge of an earthquake.

I’ve always found solace in words. Whether they come from a book I’m reading, an article I’m gazing through or uttered through parted lips; words are wonderful. We can string them together and fashion them with the odd comma or full stop to make sentences, which stationed one after the other like jenga bricks make paragraphs which turn into chapters which combine together to make a story. And stories are what our civilisation is found upon. We tell stories to pass on history, we tell stories to entertain and we can even tell stories to moralise our audience.

A good story, I believe, starts with a purpose. It doesn’t matter what that purpose is but I figure that people start telling stories for a reason. Something triggered the itch to get up, grab a pen and scribble down a plot. Stories can be bad and stories can be perspective altering – in other words magical. But a story isn’t defined by how good it is. Just because I couldn’t get through the first few pages of a novel doesn’t mean that someone else, somewhere isn’t grappling through the very same pages in a sudden, desperate urge to get to the end.

The way we respond to stories is almost entirely subjective. I like to read fantasy and stories about worlds that don’t exist. Reading for me, is an escape route into a world of imagination where the rules that society place so heavily on us in the real world don’t apply. Heroes can be heroes and not just for one day like that old David Bowie song says.

Stories can also define a generation. Stories can even define an age. We have the dawn of the Romantics in literature and then we have the rise of the Postmodernists. And then, in less critical terms, we have stories that map out stages of our life. Harry Potter defined the growth of so many from child to adolescent to man. Millions grew up with the books that their childhood can simply be defined as, Harry Potter.

So as you can see words are indeed, as the old mantra goes, more powerful than you think. The art behind words is to use them to bring beauty into the world, not decadence. I’ve never been one to vocalise much and speaking about your thoughts and general musings is a lot harder, I feel, than writing them down. Emma Watson recently revealed that she has 30 journals filled out with memories that she’s had since she was a child. A gift from her grandmother I believe she said, that spawned an age. I don’t have 30 journals to fill out but I do have a blog and in this pixelated world I plan to write and write and write.

I aim to write about books I’ve read, articles I find engaging, music/films/things in general I’m loving right now and your bog-standard lifestyle. What I get up to, the places I’ve been and where I plan to go. As Peter Pan would say, had he been living in the web world of the 21^st century – to blog would be an awfully big adventure; and I’m embarking on it.

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