The End of Mr.Y - Scarlett Thomas reviewed by Ayane

The End of Mr Y was a book I impulsively purchased from a charity shop in Leamington Spa a while ago.
The cover is maroon red with and black fonts, and I was mostly attracted to the black edging (the pages were edged with black ink).
From the back cover, I knew that it will be about a girl who finds a rare book called "The End of Mr Y" and the mystery uncovers.

Here is a NON spoiler version of the summery by me;
The story is based in England. Ariel Manto, an English Literature PhD student who finds an extremely rare book "The End of Mr Y" written by her PhD subject Lumas in a second hand book shop near university. The only known copy of this book is to exist in a bolt of a bank in Germany, and it is known to be cursed.
Knowing this, Ariel start reading the book, and finds the way to travel outside the physical world staring to uncover the truth about the physical world. However, this is a start of her dangerous adventure....

Well, I thought the book was well written - especially the subject becomes extremely complex, scientific and philosophical from half way through. 
It is not only about traveling outside the physical world, but question about our existence in a more realistic sense (rather than fantasy sense).
I could relate to the character very well as I am also a PhD student in the UK. There were some locations and scenes I can picture it as my local university town.
The story is also narrative by Ariel, the main character - and let me tell you, she swears a lot! It sort of made the narrative realistic, but maybe a little over-done.

The story moved in a good pace (though it seemed to drag a little near the end when the tension was meant to be building up) and like I said earlier, it is very philosophical and made me think about the world a lot. The ending was suggestive and not conclusive - which I usually like, but I wasn't sure about this case. I mean, I think it would have been extremely difficult for it to be conclusive (you will know what I mean when you read it!) but it was a shame that it almost ended like a fantasy love story (which I must say, was the downside to other book I recently read; Night Circus by Erin Morgenstein).

So, I think I would give 7.5 out of 10 stars - very interesting concept and well written, but as a story, the ending wasn't as strong as I wanted it to be.

Newton Faulkner Human Love Tour - Lemington Assembly 17th November

The first review is a slightly special one written by Ayane....

We (especially I) were super excited to see Newton Faulkner together for the second time on 17th November. The gig was SO special that I have to say a few (or many) words about it.

It was our second Newton gig after seeing him in March last year for the Studio Zoo tour at the O2 Birmingham.
Admittedly, I was a relatively new fan of Newton then, and Thomas was even less familiar with his songs. Even without knowing all the songs he sung, the gig was amazing and after then, I downloaded his songs/watched his YouTube almost religiously (probably less intense for Thomas, but he still downloaded few...)

So there was no question when deciding to buy tickets when Newton announced the new album and subsequent tour on Facebook.

Leamington Assembly is a pretty local venue for us, and I knew that I could (and I was desperate to) to get a good position in the stall. So ignoring Thomas' suggestion of getting to the venue at 7pm when the door opened, I made an executive decision to to get there at 6.15pm. Yes, we had to stand in the cold. Yes, we got stared by every cars went past. Yes, we nearly got mugged by a homeless person. But it was all so worth it. When we finally, got in we are second row literally in front of the centre microphone.

The support Victoria came on at 8pm for 45mins set - They are 5 piece band who we concluded as "cross between McFly and Inbetweeners soundtrack". Actually, we thought they were pretty good. Very catchy tunes which takes you back to almost millennium boy/rock band era. They weren't exactly like Newton (obviously), but they had a quite funky effect going on with the synth and drums, and the songs were enjoyable.

After a re-jiggle of the stage and a sound tech man fiddling around with the guitar, the lights finally went down to welcome Newton Faulkner on the stage at 9.15pm on the dot.

The first song was "Clouds" encouraging audience participation immediately. The 3 part chorus by the audience worked pretty well - not surprising though, Newton fans seem to know the tune and words pretty much back to front.

As the album was released actually 3 days after this gig (today!), no-one knew the songs apart from Human Love and Get Free which were per-released. I have to say, watching the music video of Get Free (the one Newton cuts his trademark dreadlocks... the upsets!), I wasn't sure about it. I wasn't sure if it was the song that should have been released as a single. And then I had a concern that the new album is not going to be as good as I hoped it would be.
So when Newton played Up Up and Away, Stay and Take, Far to Fall from the new album (as well as Human Love and Get Free), I was so excited for the new album! The songs are incredible! They are slightly different to the previous "Newton style" as he himself said - his words were "this new album, I changed the style slightly from any other ones I've done... and I hope you are ok with that" (with a laugh!)
The songs have more bass (as well as him actually playing bass guitar) and some have slightly reggae feel about them. Having Toby (Newton's brother) on few instruments and the other guy (who I've forgotten the name of... but apparently he is Newton's long last friend) on the drums, I think Newton can explore a lot more sound effects than being one-man as he used to do.
He only did one cover which is his staple - Teardrops originally by Massive Attack. In the Studio Zoo tour, he was testing his new cover Sexy Back by Justin Timberlake. As his covers are so amazing, I was slightly disappointed that he only did one, but hey ho, he has his own great stuff!

Newton has a lovely laid back approach for the performance and his chats with audience between the songs makes the gig so much more friendly.

The gig finished with the encore Write It on Your Skin.

And the miracle happened. Newton actually came out from the backstage to do a signing in the bar booth after the gig! After a not-so-long in the queue to wait (though pushed and squished like being in a mosh pit), I actually got my ticket signed, and selfie taken with Newton (credit also goes to Thomas who just got pushed around while trying to take a pic)!!! He was rushing around the bar worktop to sign absolutely everyone and even had quick chats with people - what a guy! This made my day (and few more days).

Newton Faulkner's new album can be purchased from here



 
 

WebBook of books

So here it is, a blog by Thomas and Ayane who are a pair of bookworms/film buffs.

Keeping a catalog of books we read and films we watch - from Shakespeare to Star Wars, Murakami to Mulan... anything and everything.

Happy reading - cheers!