last book bingo review - and I have a blackout! \o/
Woohoo! I did it! I read an entire book last night and have now got a blackout on my book bingo card! *does little happy dance*.
On Friday evening I have to admit I didn't think I would manage a blackout, I still had two and a half squares to fill at that point. But, largely thanks to managing to get my hands on two *very* short books for the final two squares, and two *very* late nights reading in bed, I've done it. And with a day to spare as well!
So, one last book review.
The Woman in Black, by Susan Hill. Fills the 'never judge a book by its movie' square.
A friend from work lent me this book when I was telling her that I was struggling to find books to fill a couple of outstanding squares in my bingo. We actually originally thought it might fit the 'classic' square, but I did a bit of googling and couldn't find a single mention of it being considered a classic (and it's actually not as old as I thought it was), so instead I decided to use it for the movie square.
It's a short book, it only took me about three hours to read, and it is actually rather creepy and tense, although I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say it was scary. There are actually quite a lot of differences to the film with Daniel Radcliffe, they've adapted the story quite a bit, but a lot of the essence is still there even if the details have been changed.
Basically it involves a young solicitor in what appears to be the very early 20th century (although I don't think it ever specifies a date), who travels to a remote house to go through the paperwork of a deceased client in order to sort out their legal affairs. Several people in the local village try to warn him not to stay at the house, but with the confidence of youth he dismisses them as superstitious yokels, and ignores their warnings. Before too long there are ghostly goings-on, and he finds himself right in the middle of an extremely malevolent haunting.
The tension builds right from the moment he arrives in the village, and once he's on his own in the house it really ramps up, and the writing is very atmospheric. I quite enjoyed this book, it definitely worked well as a spooky atmospheric read, and it was sufficiently different to the film version that it still contained some surprises.
So, with that I have achieved a book bingo blackout. Woohoo!
In total in 2018 I have read 33 books, of which 22 were fiction and 11 were non-fiction. There's a link to the full list below if you're interested. I'm pretty sure that beats the year before, which I seem to remember was somewhere in the twenties.
Now I need to take a few days off books, and I think I need to spend a fair bit of January having an epic catch-up on a large backlog of the various magazines that I subscribe to, and which have been somewhat neglected in the last few months while I concentrated on books. But at the same time, I'm already mentally making a list of books that are on my to-read pile that will fill squares on the 2019 bingo card...
Happy new year everyone!
lj book bingo card 2018
2018 reading list 33 books read in 2018