April/May Bookpile

This was almost accidentally an all blue pile until I watched Hemlock Grove and was left questioning everything (life, the universe, my own sanity/tastes) so had to read the book to find answers (the answer was there are no answers but it does have a very good cover.). If anyone else has watched the show all the way through (I've only found 2 other people who have made it to the end) or read the book and wants to start some kind of Hemlock Grove support group please let me know. If you haven't, maybe don't. I still can't decide if I enjoyed it or not. I did not enjoy the book. The show at least has a Skarsgard.

Last King of Scotland however I did  enjoy and was much better than the film. Bitterblue is good, almost too good because I didn't want it to end and now I feel like pestering Kristen Cashore every day asking her to write more books in this series because my life is empty without them. I read Mr Vertigo as part of the book club we started at work (after a whole bunch of us read The Hunger Games and went to the pub to discuss it afterwards) but somehow we didn't ever get around to meeting up to discuss Mr Vertigo so I guess it was just a one off Hunger Games club? I quite liked Mr Vertigo but the ending felt a bit like Auster ran out of steam and couldn't be bothered finishing the story properly, which was a shame because the rest of the book was great.

Still Life is a pretty good book about taxidermy if you are interested in that kind of thing, which I am. I enjoyed the chapters about the Museum taxidermy industry but not so much the American commercial side of things. I also got really annoyed by the author being grossed out by blood/dead animals which made me wonder why she wrote the book in the first place really? Bit like writing a book about BBQ but finding raw meat upsetting. Or something. Full of interesting information though and I enjoyed that I have been to/seen most of the places and pieces she talks about in the book.

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