ARC February

Welcome to the second month of ARC, the Artful Reading Club.

last month we had 42 people take part, how awesome is that, I had so much fun reading all the reviews. I ended up adding 13 books to my wish list...I can see that growing into a monster list by the end of the year. All the artwork was wonderful, I know a few people worried about it, but there was no need.

So to this month. I had such a struggle, i pretty much hated my book early on, then I got really busy, and in just the last week I have had to force myself to read and get the artwork done.. So here is my review..

Book of the Dead..by Patricia Cornwell

Charity shop £1.80

This is basically a murder/detective book.

I have read many Patricia Cornwell books, and have enjoyed every single one, except that is for the endings, they are always a bit rushed and don't seem as well thought out as the rest of the book. However, overall I do love her books, so I expected to love this book.

The intro does not disappoint, it immediately draws me in. It is deviant and dark. But from then on I rapidly lost interest. The familiar characters are tense and awkward with each other, there are to some extent the same in previous books, but somehow this is different, and uncomfortable.

The new characters, and there are many, are complicated, the chapters jump backwards and forwards from scene to scene. This gets annoying really quickly.

There is a lot of psycho-babble, it feels like being trapped in a mental patients brain. Everything is jumbled and disjointed. Nothing much makes sense, half sentences, half asked questions, implied thoughts..maybe this is all entirely deliberate on the part of the author. The killer has severe PTSD.

I had to force myself to read a few chapters each day just to get through it, and did not enjoy it at all. The worst being that it left me with no inspiration for my journal page at all.

Here is the journal page that I made.

The war in Iraq is important in this book, so I started with sand coloured dunes, around which I wrote out a poem called 'My wounds are not for you to see' by Frank Ochberg.

I then added ochre, red and grey paint. these are the colours used in Roman wall art, and the book is partly set in Rome. The main character, loves flowers, so I added those, stamped on book pages and coloured with Aquamarkers...

The number 1,2,3,4 are in the book, so I stencilled them on and outlined them. Then I added fingerprints. 

I printed out and glued on a Roman Arcade, again to symbolize the setting. I pushed wall filler thru flower stencils, and added a small envelope for my review. The title on the envelope is a quote from the book.

I coloured all the flowers with Aquamarkers..

For the left side I wanted to add a Bassett Hound, the very talented Jay drew one for me as I was running so short on time. I printed that puppy outline and then coloured it with markers.

Here is the finished journal page..

It's kind of a happy page which I am glad about, cos the book was depressing and annoying. The page doesn't tell you much about the book really, I just picked out some of the nicer elements. It does feel a bit jumbled, and way too busy, but the book felt that way too, so maybe it is a fitting representation. 

The next review will be due on FRIDAY 29TH MARCH...

Here is where you link up, please only link if you are taking part in the ARC challenge. 

please add your name and the link to the specific blog post where your review and artwork can be found. then check back later as the list grows and go visit people.