Rosie’s #BookReview Team #RBRT #Humour GRAFFITI HACK by @ElenGhulam #fridayreads

Today’s team review is from Chris she blogs at http://cphilippou123.wordpress.com

Chris has been reading Graffiti Hack By Elen Ghulam

Interesting and fun, this is a book about assumptions and … design.

Nelly arrives in the US from a culture obsessed with decorations and inanimate beauty. Working as a graphic designer, she attempts to inspire her colleagues with fairy tales, and strikes up a friendship with an elevator. She then turns her hand to hacking websites to beautify them…

The storytelling method was an embellished one and, although giving the feeling of being over-written at the start, begins to work on the reader. The story of loneliness is strong, but unfortunately gets lost in the narration and slow pace. But the quirkiness was interesting and, if you’re up for a ‘different’ read, this may be for you.

*I received a review copy of this book from the author via Rosie Amber’s Review Team

Book Description

Nelly Nasah grew up in a culture obsessed with decoration. In her native country, straight lines are anathema. Letters are hand-written into anthropomorphic shapes. Even heart monitoring machines are covered with colourful mosaics. So when Nelly arrives in Washington, D.C. she has a mission—to make the Internet beautiful. She lands a job as a graphic designer in Georgetown, and gets to work trying to inspire her colleagues —aloof boss Jack, talkative middle-aged Ashley and Don Juan-wannabe Ralf — to greater heights of embellishment with her unique brand of storytelling. Her modern fairy tales are misinterpreted by the three, with hilarious results. Despite all her efforts, Nelly’s only friend in this new country is a rickety old elevator, who communicates with her through the language of his gentle sways and flickering lights.

After a failed presentation at the office, Nelly turns to the dark world of hacking. When lavish designs begin to appear on unsuspecting high-profile websites, the Internet starts to pay attention. Nelly’s latest “hits” go viral as the multitudes read political and social messages into her digital decorations. Is Nelly headed for deep trouble?

Graffiti Hack is a wild ride into a collision of art, internet, obsession, culture, fairy tales and loneliness. Buckle up! 

Find a copy here from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com also available free from Kindle Unlimited

Rosie’s Book Review Team #RBRT Noelle reviews Stranded In The Seychelles by Bev Spicer @BevSpicer

Today we have a review from Noelle, she blogs at https://saylingaway.wordpress.com/

Noelle chose to read and review Stranded In The Seychelles by Bev Spicer.

Stranded in the Seychelles is a fun, frothy memoir of two young women looking for adventure before they have to make a life decision about settling down. It is written by Bev Spicer, who has written several humorous memoirs of her life, including Bunny on a Bike, telling of the time she was a Playboy croupier in London.

Bev and Carol, her bosom buddy, have come to a fork in the road. Carol has just returned from teaching English to monks in Tibet, while Bev has held a series of uninspiring jobs, including typing out legal contracts and folding and labelling bin bags to send off with a quote to possible customers (that one really impressed me!). She finally gets a postgraduate teaching certificate from Cambridge and, at the time of this story, has been teaching English to uninterested secondary school students for a year. When Bev comes across an ad for qualified English teachers for the National Youth Service of the Seychelles, they both bite. I had to look up the Seychelles: the Seychelles Islands are an archipelago in the Indian Ocean off the eat coast of Africa, in the same general region as Zanzibar, Madagascar and Mauritius. The two friends fly out to their new island home, picturing a luxury villa on a beach, tropical fruit and air-conditioned class rooms. They should have been alarmed by the lack of information or even a syllabus for the classes they were to teach. By this time the reader is thinking too good to be true, don’t do it!

They step off their plane into the climate of a convection oven, peopled by native and mixed raced individuals who speak mainly Creole, with strange customs and even stranger food. Eventually they are given their own house, with a steady breeze from the ocean and electricity. Also lizards and a wondrous variety of spiders, which spin webs like nets overnight.

Their school is on another island, which they reach by landing craft each morning, together with other recruited teachers. The voyage is spent gagging on the acrid black smoke from the engine. Their classrooms are outside under tin roofs, which heat the air beneath to baking levels by the end of each day, and have poisonous centipedes dropping in from time to time. Teachers at the school come from various European countries as well as Sri Lanka and Mauritius, making a colourful, multilingual lot. The students, by contrast, are perpetually sleepy and unengaged in learning, despite Bev and Carol’s best efforts.

This memoir is filled with eclectic characters, surprising and humorous adventures, lots of local beer, and experiences on and with an ancient Kawasaki 250 cc motorbike they purchase for getting around. Along the way, the reader is nicely schooled in the sometimes harsh realities of life in a poor, politically unstable country. A concatenation of events lead to Sue and Carol’s long and eventually successful attempt to terminate their contract after the first school term: most significantly to them was the ban on traveling anywhere during their breaks except within the Seychelles and Mauritius. Not to mention the lack of eligible men.

This was a fun read, written with a sharp wit and keen sense of humour, with an eye to the ridiculous and candour with the politics. It’s a great memoir. It made me want to be young again, carefree and open to any adventure.

Bev Spicer was born in a small market town in the Midlands of England and educated at Queens’ College, Cambridge. She was a lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University before moving to live in France with her husband and two of her children; there she writes full-time. Along the way, she has been a teacher, blackjack dealer for Playboy, examiner, secretary (various sorts – most boringly ‘legal’) and Sunday checkout girl at Tescos. As well as France, she has lived in Bridgnoth, Cambridge, Rethymnon (Crete), and Mahe (Seychelles). The next place she has said she wants to explore is probably Spain. She reports that her husband is very tolerant.

She loves people, reading, writing, speaking French, astronomy (quantum theory addict), gardening, traveling, and hates housework, cooking, drizzle and honey.

Sounds like my kind of author!

Find a copy here from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

 

 

 

Derek’s In Trouble by Mac Black

Derek’s in Trouble by Mac Black

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Derek’s in Trouble is the second book in the Derek series of witty humorous tales about newspaper reporter Derek Toozlethwaite. Derek is surrounded by a cast of delightful characters who add to the chaos and calamity which is Derek’s life.

The book opens with recently married Derek caught dressing up in his wife’s clothes as part of research for a newspaper article. However wife Sally doesn’t see the funny side of her best pair of shoes being ruined and takes off to stay with her parents while her temper cools down.

Meanwhile there is so much else going on; Derek’s Granny gets a secret slot on the local radio as Granny Wisdom. Poor Hamish Macintosh is forced to sell up his farm. Aunt Thelma wants a motorbike and the lovely Sophie Clerkenwell-Brown wants to sign up the author of The Big Squeak, the mysterious Ivy Bloom. Then there are Arthur and Charlie, gardeners who are training for the Marathon and looking for sponsors and finally what is growing on Hamish’s old farm now being run by Tipsicorus International?

Just how much trouble can one man get himself into? You will have to read it and see, and like me, become a fan of Derek.

Come back and find out more about the Derek series in my April A to Z Challenge. Mac Black’s books will be featured on Friday 4th April.

Find a copy here from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

View all my reviews on Goodreads.

My Reading Wish List

                           

                                     

Today I’ve had fun making up a reading Wish List, and for a bit of comfort I looked out a nice comfy looking Sofa for me to lounge on whilst I read my books!

The Humble Balloon

I have two teenage children in the house, but when a packet of balloons are found to help make a pair of lungs for science homework, the delight of the humble balloon returns. Suddenly we have a balloon being used for football, badminton, volleyball and catch. Another has a smiley face drawn upon it and a third is being stuffed into clothes to make a character who will sit silently in Dad’s favourite chair.

As young children, when they came home from party with a balloon, it was given pride of place and was left for weeks until it finally shrivelled and shrank. We made bean bag balls from balloons and water bombs and they have provided hours of innocent fun. What memories does the humble balloon hold for you?

 

Trouble in Mudbug by Jana Deleon

Trouble in Mudbug by Jana Deleon

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I love a book that makes me laugh, and this one did just that. A great mix of mystery, romance and laughter. Well written, I’d certainly read another one by this author.

View all my reviews

I write Like…

Here’s a fun website for all would be writers, poets and fun seekers. I write like…,paste a piece of writing such as your blog, a piece from your book or an article you’ve written and the web site analyses it and tells you what famous writer your writing style is like.

http://iwl.me/

I tried this and it said I wrote in the style of Chuck Palahniuk! Now at the time I didn’t know who Chuck was, so a little investigation and Voila! However I must admit it’s only my writing style that they claim is similar. Certainly my books are not about the same subjects!