Book 8: The Sound of one hand clapping by Richard Flannagan.
This is probably one of the most heart-wrencing books I have ever read. It begins in Tasmania in the 1950’s with a young girl whose mother committs suicide, and her immigrant, alcoholic father who is trying to desperately to escape his brutal past. He then bashes and beats his daughter til she finally leaves. 20 years later she returns to see him and the story resumes again. As you can imagine very depressing but it is beautifully written with redemption at the end. Transformation and redemption are key themse for me at the moment so it hit home in some ways and so I actually quite enjoyed reading it. Here is a quote I really liked:
“There was something about Bojan Buloh that strange evening something that approached the most curious innocence. As if innocence, thought Sinja, were not something one had before it was lost, a natural state into which one was born before life sullied it forever, but rather something that could only be arrived at after one had journeyed through all the evil life could manifest. He was lost and condemned to loss, he was damned and lived with the damned, but somehow, somehow because of what he had lived through he had acquired an innocence.”

Movie 4: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.
I liked it although I was glad I had read the books. It missed so much which didn’t overly trouble me as I was able to fill in the rest for myself but Martin asked me a few questions after which made me realise that it would have lacked much without having read them. Like others have said I thought the first kiss was fairly poor but I can’t complain about anything else. I thought the child Voldermort was the freakist child and Snape and the other “baddies” as usual outshon the “goodies” but they didn’t do too badly either really.