In the past month I have read two really good books, can’t put down page-turners, both very different in approach and story. I highly recommend them both and in the next two blogs, hopefully with out spoiling the story line too much, I shall tell you why.

Book 1 – The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult

The thing that makes this book different from others is the comic novel which it is combined with. The main character in this book is a father who is a comic novel artist and he is doing a comic about family life and the nine/ten circles of hell. The novel relates to his life in the book and so at the end of ever chapter is a chapter of the comic novel. The anther got a real comic novel artist to produce this part of the book and so the draws are amazing and so detailed, and fit so well with the books content and dantees circles of hell.

The author deals with so many issues in the book. All which relate to the main theme of dantees 9 circles of hell. (This book has given me a keen interest in dantees circles of hell, so much that I really would love to read his theory book, however its in Italian and apparently the translated version is very hard to read, which is a shame). Such as adultery, rape, suicide, murder, self harm and anger all which are dealt with around this one family. The author does amazingly well with describing teenage life, issues and pain, as well as the emotional straights that parents feel when they children grow up, or are harmed and the lengths parents will go to, to protect there children. It’s a very deep, sad and at times depressing book, but with a happyish ending.

Another thing, which makes this book, so individual other then the novel its self is that with in the comic novel the artist has hidden letters which you are meant to find and with spell out a famous quote and its author. The quote is meant to sum up the book as a whole. However the letters are very hard to find, you are told that there is 86 letters in all, however I have only managed to find 74. So I still do not knew this quote, so it anyone has read the book and found out please let me knew its killing me. The reason that the letters and this idea of finding them are in the comic is because in the story its how the parents met. The dad draw a cartoon of the mother on the street as they do in some places in American and he had hid a time and place for them to meet with the drawing, a romantic hidden gesture. Its clever and nice how the author decided to continue this hidden idea with in her own book.

One thing I didn’t like about this book however was the cover, yes the book does half take place in a cold snowy area of American so it represents that, whoever it is a very family issue based book, so I feel it should have had at least 3 people on the cover not just 2, especially as this family was 3. But that is a very minor thing and me just being extremely picky, however I do usually choice a book from its cover naively and I was initially attracted to this book because of its cover.

September 4th 2009 - 

I have literally just had my lunch brake from work and seen this book as a film on channel five, I was shocked and quite happy at first to see that this good book had been make into a film and only last year. But as I sat down to watch it, I was disappointed, the thing which makes this book is its comic book, and in the film there is no comic book, we are not even told what the dads job is, which was very disappointing for me, as that is why I liked the book so much, other then that though, I have to give the film some credit as it sticks to the story and pretty much uses the same words which are in the book for its script. It is one of the only book films that  I have watch which sticks so closely to the books story line.