Friday, 18 November 2011

Friday Recommends #9

So it's Friday again, and that means another exciting Friday Recommends!
I have decided, due to feedback in the positive, to make Friday Recommends a book blog hop/meme. I will host this meme every Friday, and participating blogs can come over to Pen to Paper to sign their posts up.

The rules for Friday Recommends are:
  • Follow Pen to Paper as host of the meme.
  • Please consider adding the blog hop button to your blog somewhere, so others can find it easily and join in too! Help spread the word! The code will be at the bottom of the post under the linky.
  • Pick a book that you've read, and have enjoyed enough to recommend to other readers. It can be a book you've read recently, or a book you read years ago - it's up to you - but make sure you tell us why you love the book (like a mini review). You make the post as long or as short as you like.
  • Add your blog to the linky at the bottom of this post after posting your blog post.
  • Put a link back to pen to paper (http://vogue-pentopaper.blogspot.com) somewhere in your post.
  • Visit the other blogs and enjoy!


Eleven by Mark Watson
Goodreads synopsis:

This is the story of radio DJ Xavier Ireland, who by night offers words of wisdom to sleepless Londoners and by day keeps himself to himself. That is, until a one-of-a-kind encounter forces him to confront his own biggest regret. Meanwhile, a single moment sparks a chain of events that will affect eleven lives across the city, with unstoppable consequences...Eleven is a tale of love, loss, Scrabble and six degrees of separation, asking whether the choices we don't make affect us just as powerfully as those we do.

I read Eleven earlier this year while on holiday, and it was the perfect book to read while relaxing in the Lanzarote sun. Mark Watson is one of my favourite comedians, so I think I was expecting a lot out of this book. Thankfully it delivered on those expectations! 'The Times' review on the front of the book really does say it all; it's "funny, sharply observed and unexpectedly moving" - this is the perfect description for the book.
It also made me want to listen to Xavier's radio show, so it's disappointing that the radio show (or character) are not real.

It was really interesting to see in novel, how one action (or lack of an action) can effect so many people around you, and you won't even know about it. This is the subject that Eleven tackles, and it does this incredibly well. I almost expected the amount of characters in the book to be difficult to keep up with, but the style of the narrative is so easy and fluent that I had no trouble keeping up with it at all.

I really recommend that readers of my blog read this. Not only is it really interesting, but having being written by a comedian, it can also be very funny in places.

Have any of you read Eleven? Let me know in the comments! And I look forward to seeing your Friday Recommends posts!








1 comments:

Chocolate Chunky Munkie said...

Great to see you've added this as a weekly feature!! I'm up for it :D

I've not heard of this book before, I think I will have to go and investigate.

Jen xx

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