I’m mad about August’s reading “achievements”. I had the idea that I would storm my way through a number of books but for some strange reason, my brain thought it would be more fun to dance around to Eminem for a month straight. I did get through 2 books but I used to read 2 books in a weekend. My adult self is weak in comparison to my child self (funnily enough, I probably am weaker physically now than I was as a kid).
Regardless of my self-loathing and Eminem’s excellent back catalogue, I’m happy I finally finished the first book I’m about to tell you about. I’ve owned this book for 5 years and have attempted to read it countless times but it just never quite worked out. I blame Leonardo DiCaprio; if his damn baby face wasn’t so cute maybe I would’ve read the book instead of watching the movie.
Why am I building up some hype before dramatically unveiling this mysterious book to you when there’s a frigging picture of it to accompany this post? You already know I’m talking about Alex Garland’s The Beach - unless the device you’re reading this post on didn’t quite load the picture obviously. What the hell was I talking about again?
Oh yeah, The Beach. I used to only ever get to page 30 before putting this book down for a good 6 months at a time and that almost happened again in August. The Beach isn’t exactly a slow moving book but if you’ve seen the movie (which by the way, is so beyond different from the book I’m not even sure it should be called ‘The Beach’) you just want them to hurry their asses up and go to this delightful secluded beach. It’s a nice read, though. It’s one of those books that have extremely short chapters which makes devouring it in one go – once you’re past page 30 – significantly easier.
The plot of The Beach starts with Richard, the main character, being handed a map to this wonderful beach by a man called Daffy. Richard buddies up with some French travellers and off they swim to an island tourists are not supposed to be on. Once there, they find some people who live their lives on this random little island, they smoke a great deal of weed and have a good time. Things happen, a shark appears, they all get the trots and then Leonardo DiCaprio erm, I mean Richard and his French buddies are like “nah this is a bit weird” and go home. Ok, that is a very vague description of what actually happens but you get the gist.
Once I actually got further into The Beach, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It actually saddens me to know it took me 5 years to finally finish the book as it is fantastic and infinitely better than the movie. If I ever find myself trapped in the bathroom or a lift, I wouldn’t mind if I had to read The Beach to pass the time.
The other book I finished in August was Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss. I actually remember buying this book back in 2004 as a Christmas present for my dad. My dad is very pedantic when it comes to a lot of things, grammar included, so this was the perfect present for him at the time. Plus the title amused me so even if he didn’t want it, he would have still have gotten it.
I’m not going to lie to you because we’re friends or some equal cliché bullcrap, I really did not enjoy Eats, Shoots and Leaves. It’s 206 pages long so I figured I could finish it in a day, maybe a day and a half at a push but nope, it took me 15 days. 15 day I could’ve dedicated to buttering toast or milking Ben Stiller. I wanted to finish it because it’s such a short book and by finishing it, it makes me look intellectual or something but I just couldn’t get into it.
Maybe it was because I didn’t understand all of the grammar references or maybe it’s because I’m a pretentious tit who likes to act like I have a brain (my IQ level is above average so it’s not a pretence but I know a lot of irrelevant things) but this just wasn’t for me. It also left me really confused about grammar too. I should’ve just read The Cat in the Hat.
August was just a major fail reading wise. The Beach was my biggest achievement which is probably quite sad and I now just really want to watch the movie version of it again. Bloody Leonardo DiCaprio and that baby face. September will be better although the only reading I’ve done so far is over indulge in comments on various Facebook posts.
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