Stuart, A Life Backwards

Stuart, A Life Backwards (amazon link)
Just like the book before this (Boy A) its also been subject to a TV programme and it also has to doom ridden small font. The saving grace tho, is the layout. Its rich with paragraphs, good margins, varying font sizes for featured sections and even the odd drawing thrown in to break things up. With a decent font size this could have been waaaay up in the 4 or even 5 stars, but as it stands its only getting a 3 from me. Stuart is a pretty unique book, covering a life in reverse from nutter to lovable child. Hope plenty of people check this one out. I’ve not read it yet, and I’ve only half seen the TV programme, but I’m looking forward to settling down to it.

Review:
I am reading ‘Stuart: a life backwards’. Its about a documented life of a homeless person told in reverse to the point whereby he went from a innocent lad to a twisted psycho, nick named ‘Knife man Dan’. Recommended reading if you care about people caught up in a world and fighting for a way out. This is a funny, yet informative read, which forces you to care about someone you would normally keep well away from.

Boy A

Boy A
This isn’t a well formatted book. Infact the only reason I bought it, is because its going to be aired on TV shortly and is loosely based on the story surrounding a famous case in the UK involving a couple of child killers. Boy A has shortish chapters and about 250 pages, but that’s all… everything else is standard. Loads of descriptive text with blocky paragraphs throughout… plus my ultimate pet hate, a small font. With a small font everything else is useless, the kerning and linespacing is irrelavant. For me this is a hard read and I know I’ll probably get distracted by something more spaciously laid out… however its saving grace is the tv series, ‘if’ I get to catch it…. I’m sure i’ll continue reading the book, just to keep up with it, otherwise, this book is probably doomed. Keep an eye out for the TV series, if you like it, buy the book.

Born On A Blue Day

Born On A Blue Day
Ok this was probably the quickest book i’ve ever read. For a couple of reasons, firstly its a true story. Not autobiographical, but more like a travel write for a recent journey, ever since Daniel Tammet recalled publically Pi to about 22,000 digits. I do like faction, so that helped. Also the formating is good and with it being a hardback you know theres going to be plenty of margin & line spacing. Basically the subject matter meant I couldn’t stop reading this. I’m researching aspergers for a book I’m writing so this was spot on. Oh also I recently watched the accompanying TV programme featured about Daniel. This is definitely a niché audience read, but I’m still giving it 4 stars… it gripped me all the way through.  Click through to amazon to learn what its about.

No Plot? No Problem!

No Plot? No Problem!

I have the feeling that most readers, secretly (or publically) want to be writers… and if you agree, then you like me, could do with the right read to write right. Enter this title. I dug through an entire shelf before settling, as i really liked the different approach it took. NP?NP! takes on the angle of ‘finishing’. The hardest challenge any writer will face. And it does it beautifully. So if you’re thinking ‘I could do this’ but have never gotten round to actually commiting yourself, then be sure to check out this book first. Its the perfect kickstarter… trust me!

The formating is really good, its a small sized book, not quite pocket sized, but that’s okay, the paper is really good quality, nice and flickable /thumbable, great font, loads of excellent formating… and at around 175pages its no struggle to get through. If only all novels were written with this degree of formating! 5stars.