The Fault in Our Stars - John Green

"My thoughts are stars I can't fathom into constellations"

It's been a while since I've found a book that I devoured in a matter of hours purely for the pleasure of reading. I could not put The Fault in Our Stars down, and would recommend it to anybody looking for a novel that is raw, insightful, funny and memorable. (Warning: Tears may ensue)

The Fault in Our Stars reminds me of Picoult's My Sister's Keeper - Isaac, Hazel Grace, and Augustus (Gus) Waters meet at cancer support group. Each one of them suffer from cancer in a different way, but the novel isn't a sob story about dying of cancer, rather, its a story of love and friendship - of teenagers who refuse to be defined by their disease. From playing Gus's video games, to venturing to Amsterdam (under adult supervision) to meet Hazel's favourite author, the two share an undeniable bond that creates mesmerising reading . Through the simple, unembellished yet profound prose, through the quick, witty, smart dialogue, and through the hard-hitting honesty with which the characters express themselves, this novel captures the very best of living.

In 300 poignant, romantic, heart-breaking pages, what Hazel and Augustus give each other is something beyond their human lives - an infinity.

People sometimes criticise novels of such themes as being perverse - where fictional stories fall into the trap of romanticising serious, tragic issues. In my mind, The Fault in Our Stars certainly deserves the top spot it's held in various bestseller charts since its publication in 2012. If anything, Green writes with respect. The prose self-consciously questions the very notion of why having cancerous cells should make one any different. He even draws attention to the fictional nature of the work in his author's note. And what is he to do, as a writer, other than tell you a story and make you feel something for it?

Making it Big - Lyndsay Russell

I may be a bit late to the party when it comes to this novel, which was published in 2011 by Oldcastle Books. A huge holiday success, the rights for a Hollywood film production of Lyndsay Russell's Making It Big have already been sold - its popularity unsurprising considering its plot and style:

Making it Big is a wonderful, funny, smart satire of the very topical social issue of body consciousness; haunted by the notion of "size zero", young girls and grown women alike are comparing themselves to the unreasonable body expectations perpetuated by the fashion, modelling and media industries.

In Making It Big, Russell gives her 21 year old, size 16, body-conscious protagonist, Sharon, the chance to 'change her life' with Dr Marvel's magic pill. Without wanting to give too much of the plot away, this pill literally turns Sharon's world upside down/inside out/back to front. In an ulterior universe, Russell wittily captures the falsity of mass-media celebrity culture where worth is determined by looks rather than personality - an outward trend that has been internalised into body-anxiety and self-loathing by Sharon.

Hilarious, frivolous and girly, Making it Big asks serious questions in a light-hearted way about the retouched, elongated, image-obsessed world we're living in. Three years post-publication, it feels like it could've been written yesterday!

A Day at the Office - Matt Dunn

When someone offers you the combination of a bar of smooth, luxurious chocolate, and a new e-book, just how can you say no?

Galaxy chocolate are offering exactly that - a marketing strategy that is right up my street.

So, as I indulged in my Galaxy Smooth and downloaded A Day at the Office by Matt Dunn, I really was in heaven (I'll leave you to guess which one took me longer to get through!)

It's been a while since I've been able to read some really cheeky commercial fiction. A Day at the Office, telling the tale of the love lives of colleagues in one office, on one day - Valentine's day - did not let me down. A typical romantic comedy, Dunn's novel was fun and witty, with just the right amount of predictability - a perfect bedtime read, especially after the intensity of Wave!

Dunn taps into the all-too-common Valentine's Day hysteria which, for the happily in love, means all things sweet and sexy, whereas for the single, means a huge slap-in-the-face reminder of being just that. Office flirtations, gifts and secret romances create a muddled web of anxious feelings, as you as a reader find yourself hoping for the characters to succeed in their various V-Day quests.

To find out more, I suppose you'll have to read it!

P.S The ease with which Amazon were able to catch my attention and offer me something to read instantly shows why they are posing such a huge threat to traditional booksellers and publishers - watch out for a post soon with my thoughts on this!

Wave - Sonali Deraniyagala

As a student of literature, I've been trained to analyse and critique everything I come across - an occupational hazard that can be difficult to turn off. So when I came to read Wave, a memoir by Sonali Deraniyagala about the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, I was thrown from the outset.

Knowing from the blurb that this memoir was written by a woman who lost all of her family when the wave hit the coast of Sri Lanka, and having been told in my previous seminar that I would be "crying by page 17", I opened the book cautiously, actively making an attempt to do away with the analytic tendencies I've become so accustomed to.

The intensity of the memoir begins from the outset, as the wave surges over the land, a moment which is brutal in its telling. Yet the rawest, most poignant passages in the memoir are in the chapters that follow, spanning numerous years, as Deraniyagala describes haunting memories of her boys playing in the playroom in their London flat, or her husband's cooking, or visits to her family home in Colombo...memories of what was once her ordinary life.

Wave was certainly one of the most powerful books I've ever read - for the very reason that when I got carried away with what was actually incredibly beautifully written prose, I had to stop myself to realise that this a real-life account, this isn't someone's imagination anymore. The narrative is unfathomable, and where fiction would offer some distance, this memoir does not.

Last Tuesday, I sat in a class where we discussed the portrayal of ghosts, post-apocalypse and survival in Wave. It's what we're there for, and we have our reasons, but a certain respect for the situation meant no one was really prepared to talk about language or syntax or imagery. How can you, when the author lays bare her grief in such a raw, uncloaked way?

As she writes, Deraniyagala seems to comprehend, if not necessarily come to terms with, what has happened to her family, as she moves through stages of grief - her anger and sorrow palpable. Indeed, this narrative seems like it was one that needed to be written, more than it needed to be read.

February Wish List

It's that time again, my monthly wish list! Here's a short collection of the books that I want to read this month:

1. The Shock of the Fall - Nathan Filer (The Borough Press)
2. Life After Life - Kate Atkinson (Black Swan) *this weeks #1 Bestseller
3. The Fault in Our Stars - John Green (Penguin)
4. *Reread* The Book Thief - Markus Zusak (Black Swan) - a necessary pre-cinema trip re-read!
5. The One Plus One - Jojo Moyes (Penguin) - promises to be a beautiful love story!

Meanwhile, I am really looking forward to reading my next course text: Wave - A memoir of life after the Tsunami by Sonali Deraniyagala (Virago Press). Deraniyagala writes about her experience of the 2004 tsunami on the southern coast of Sri Lanka. I doubt it will be an 'enjoyable' read, but it certainly promises to be powerful.

I'll let you know what I think!

Publishing Career Speed Dating with the SYP

Last night, Ella - my university friend - and I made our way to the swanky Phoenix Artist Club in London for the Society of Young Publishers' Career Speed Dating event.

We were intrigued (and a little anxious, it has to be said) to find out exactly what the night would entail - not knowing how true to the "speed dating" concept it would be. In fact, the organisation was excellent; each individual was given a colour group on entry, and then asked to move from table to table with that group. The tables were separated according to the various publishing departments - editorial, publicity, marketing, sales, and digital - and this is where we met the professionals who were so full of advice and easy to talk to; it really was a fabulous experience.

As someone who wants to work in editorial, it was actually really insightful to be able to speak to professionals across the fields in the industry. There were not only reps from within publishing houses, but also from within the book industry as a whole, including a rep from the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction social media team, as well as the careers sector rep from The Bookseller magazine. All of the professionals were so equally passionate about the value of their role in the publishing process - they all made their own departments seem like the place to be!

The popularity of the night amongst aspiring publishers meant that the event could have done with a bigger venue to allow people to move about more easily. That said, whether standing, sitting or thigh-toning(ly) squatting, it didn't detract from the excitement that seemed to permeate the room.

Until recently, I've always seen networking events as a kind of daunting experience. There's so much pressure to get contacts and ask the right questions, it sometimes seems easier to want to stand in a corner and hide! What was great about last night, was that the atmosphere was so convivial and relaxed and the publishing reps seemed so happy to tell us about their experiences - I felt like I got a real understanding of why they love their job, as much as what they do.

In fact, every time I meet someone in the profession, whether they are a writer, agent, or publisher, I feel more and more assured that this is the industry in which I want to work. The enthusiasm that the professionals have for their jobs was palpable and I hope I demonstrated the same kind of excitement for wanting to break into the industry.

The one piece of advice that was reiterated across all the sectors was to persevere. Not many had an easy entrance into the sector, and it may have taken them several years (and a stroke of luck) to get to the point where they are today. Yet they proved that as long as you're flexible, dedicated and willing, it is possible. I certainly feel like I'm those things, so persevere I will!

Arts vs. Science: the age-old battle

The Arts vs. Science debate seems to be cropping up everywhere around me these days. Of course, this is understandable; at a university which is leading the field in many areas of scientific research, its hardly surprising that there's constant "banter" between arts and science students anywhere you look.

From the Lit.Soc debate at which my friend made a very valid point about art, in a certain way, actually being science (or visa versa), to my seminar tutor today who contextualised Margaret Atwood's representation of the debate in Oryx and Crake (2003) by asking: what is the function of art? Or indeed, what is the functionality of a student of the arts?

Before university, I was told that a languages and literature degree would open up doors to countless opportunities, for the very fact that it encourages a creative, open-minded, yet analytic approach to almost everything. Certainly at Warwick, this has held true; the English faculty in particular has made studying literature feel so relevant to society.

Sure, we've read the classics from Zola to Austen, Camus to Nabakov which all have their role to play in our understanding of history - literary, cultural, and social. In my opinion, they give an unparalleled insight into the way of living of past centuries. But it's the more modern literature that cements my love for my course. Ranging from Cities of Salt - Elias Khoury's novel about loss of identity in the Lebanese civil war, to The Baghdad Blog - a collection of posts by an anonymous blogger of the Iraq war. From Mahasweta Devi's Chotti Munda & His Arrow, written in almost-tribal song, to science fiction - the likes of Atwood and Kim Stanley Robinson - what I love most about my course (or at least about the modules that I've chosen), is that the literature is unsettling.

The kind of literature we are reading has made it in to the academic canon because it intentionally defies you as a reader, subverting your expectations and forcing you to question your preconceived ideas. I'm currently reading disaster literature - novels which are forcing me to think about our social order, our manner of living and the violent impact it is (often invisibly) having on the planet.

What makes studying a humanities subject just as relevant and indispensable as the studies of science is how it encourages new modes of thinking, probing, inquiring, and of discerning what things actually mean. Fiction offers the imaginative scope through which we are forced to re-consider our reality. In the arts, there is an innate concern with morality that demands the reader to doubt and question on a human level, in contrast to a statistic which, though telling you the answer, doesn't always ask why.

That's one defence of a humanities degree at least...Oh and, no, we don't all want to be teachers!