The Hundred Secret Senses - Amy Tan I love Amy Tan - I have read The Bone Setter's Daughter, Saving Fish From Drowning, The Joy Luck Club and most recently this one, The Hundred Secret Senses. Amy Tan's books give a facinating glimse of Chinese history and Chinese American history on a personal level. I love her characters and I love the mystical magical realism element that often interweaves with the 'real' stories. I'm keeping a lookout in my charity shop sweeps for her other novels. 05/07/09
The Raw Shark Texts - Steven Hall
I just finished reading The Raw Shark Texts this morning, and I searched for it with google (to get a picture) and read two reviews absolutely slating it for being pretentious and overwritten and cliched but I have to say that whether or not those things are true, I loved it! It was just deep and mysterious enough to intrigue me, and exciting enough to grip me, and sad enough to move me, and now that I've finished it I'm missing it. Okay, so it doesn't necessarily make sense in the cold hard light of day - so what? I loved the characters (including the cat) I loved the mystery and treasure hunt nature of the journey and the strange peril from the conceptual shark and I enjoyed the exciting and interesting use of language - why shouldn't a writer play around with words? To the reviewers who said it was overwritten, I says 'so's your face' (I'm always ready with a clever come-back.) 05/07/09
Inkdeath - Cornelia Funke
I'm on about my third attempt to read Cornelia Funke's Inkdeath. I read the first book (Inkheart) ages ago (because The Chicken House, who publish the series in this country, were showing an interest in one of my manuscripts so I though I should read some of their books. Another Chicken House book, Kisssing The Rain by Kevin Brooks was BRILLIANT, but Inkdeath was just okay.) I wanted to love it, because the premise is really good - characters from books who become real in our world, and people from our world entering the real world of books - great idea, but the books themselves are a little tedious, especially this third in the series. It's very serious with very little humour which I think is its downfall - at least for me. I'm taking it as a personal challenge to finish it. I'm on page two hundred and something out of about fifty million (actually, I've just checked and it has about seven hundred pages). I can't face the next five hundred pages without a break - in fact, I think I'll leave it here for a while and read something else. I promise I'll finish it eventually though. Honest. 07/07/09
Chasing Windmills - Catherine Ryan Hyde
My older son is not really into reading, but I thought he might enjoy an old book by Ben Elton called Dead Famous, which is a comedy/drama based around a Big Brother like reality TV show. When I was looking through my shelves of read books trying to find it, I found Chasing Windmills, and didn't remember having read it (I must have put it there by mistake). I picked it up and scanned the first page, and then carried it with me for the rest of the day and finished it at two thirty this morning. I love Cathering Ryan Hyde - I really enjoyed Love in the Present Tense, and quite liked Pay it Forward, and I really loved Chasing Windmills. Two very different people from difficult backgrounds both ride the subway in New York in the middle or the night as a way of escaping from their home life. Their eyes meet and it's instant love - but they're star-crossed lovers, and things don't go smoothly for them. It's a beautifully written book that I found very compelling reading. I see from the front of the book that Catherine Ryan Hyde has written eight books - so if anyone wants to buy me a present, I wouldn't mind reading some of those (hint hint). 12/07/09
The Child's Book of True Crime - Chloe Hooper I found this book when browsing in the Oxfam second hand bookshop in Belfast, and the title grabbed me first - The Child's Book of True Crime, by Chloe Hooper. It was shortlisted for the Orange prize as well, so I thought it must be good, but when I first started reading it I have to say I hated it. It read like strange Australian Chick lit. (It's not the Australian bit I didn't like, it was the Chick-lit bit - I am the Messenger, by Markus Zusak is one of my favourite books ever and it's Australian.) It did grow on me a bit - I loved all the bits where the kids were quoted (in the ackowledgements the author thanks 'the brilliant fourth grade students who shared their philosphical insights', so I guess at least some of them where genuine quotes - cool). I was slightly annoyed by the way the narrator told storied about the other characters that she couldn't possibly know - I guess the stories where just her suppositions and were supposed to tell us more about the narrator than about the people she was discussing, but still, it annoyed me. I thought the ending was a bit flat too - one of the quotes from the children was that they thought a good story should have a twist at the end, and I thought great - there's going to be a twist to at least make the ending good, but then there wasn't. I just sort of ended. Ah well. 14/07/09
The Believers - Zoe Heller
This book was recommended by one of my book group buddies and I bought it a while back and it's been sitting around in my pile of books to be read for a few weeks, but I finally got around to reading it. I didn't instantly love it, it was a little harder work to get into than some of the books I've read recently, but I think the effort was worth it because I did get very drawn into the characters. It's a book more about characters than plot - an English-American-Jewish family living in New York and for most of the book the husband/father is in a coma following a massive stroke. The characters were very real and familiar, especially one of the daughters who was apologetic and had low self esteem and was overweight - yes, she was me. The mother was so out-spoken and tactless that she was about as far from me as it's possible to be and yet I got a real vicarious pleasure out of imagining having the chutzpah to talk to people the way she did - what would I say and who would I say it to? (Imagining it is making me shudder with a mixture of naughty pleasure and horror at the consequenses.) The son suffered from various addictions and the other daughter is wondering whether to become an orthodox jew. The book was funny and fascinating and touching and I would recommend it. 17/07/09
Elsewher This is another book that languished on my 'to be read' pile for quite a long time. I am extremely grateful to Gabrielle Zevin for writing teen novels and having a last name that is beyond mine in the alphabet. Thanks to Gabrielle Zevin, I'm not quite at the very end of alphabetical lists, or at the very bottom of alphabeticalised shelves in book shops, so the least I could do was read one of her books. I liked Elsewhere (on the whole) it's very readable, and has some very funny lines. I like the premise - a strange look at the afterlife being a place much like earth but where people age backwards until they are babies, when they return to be born again. It reminded me quite a lot of another book called 'The Brief History of The Dead' by Kevin Brockmeier (which I preferred, although it is an adult book rather than a teen book.) It also reminded me of Benjamin Button with the whole aging backwards thing. Things that I loved about it were, the clever premise, the humour, the believability of it all and the real and interesting reaction by the main character to what was happening to her. Things I didn't like about it were, its American-ness (I know, when a book is written by an American, it should be American, and why should that annoy me? Am I a terrible anti-American prejudiced person? Maybe. I will try to mend my ways) the anthropomorphising of animals (the whole talking dog thing - I could buy into the boat journey to the afterlife, and aging backwards - that's seemed feasible enough and was approached maturely and believably, but pet dogs that chat away like humans - no. Animals are not little furry humans, if dogs would talk they would talk about food and sex and walkies and not much more. And mermaids - then the book just got into the realms of throwing in everything the writer wished was true because she was the writer, so why shouldn't she have talking dogs and mermaids?). Overall though, I found the book moving and interesting and enjoyable. 20/07/09
e - Gabrielle Zevin
Inkdeath - Cornelia Funke
Another stab at Inkdeath - I've got about 160 odd pages further through it. I actually enjoyed getting back to it - like seeing an old friend for a cuppa, but unfortunately this old friend seems to be chronically depressed and while I do love them, I can only take the death and despair in small doses, so it's back on the shelf for Inkdeath for another while. 25/07/09
Small Ceremonies - Carol Shields
I was introduced to Carol Shields when we read her last novel, 'Unless' in book group. I found I identified with the book's narrator on a very deep level, and really enjoyed it. I've since read Larry's Party and The Stone Diaries, and this book, Small Ceremonies is the first novel Carol Shields wrote way back in 1976. It is a bit dated, but the familiar voice of the woman who feels like a kindred spirit to me is still there. The book is about a biography writer who wants to write fiction, so she takes a course run by her old friend and succesful writer. She's completely stumped about coming up with an idea for what to write for her coursework, and ends up plagiarising a plot from a manuscript she came across when staying in the home of an unpublished writer. Years later, her friend brings out a new book that revitalises his flagging career, but to her horror, when he finally gets around to reading it, he's stolen her plot that she in turn stole from someone else! 27/07/09
The Colour Purple - Alice Walker
My next book group read is Beloved by Toni Morrison, a book about slavery in America (I think - I haven't read it yet). Thinking about this book made me realise that I'd never read The Color Purple, and that I should. I saw the film, ages ago, although it is a film that I found stuck in my mind, and that maybe should have warned me off reading the book - not because I didn't like the film, because I did, just because as a general rule if I've already seen the film, a book is kind of spoiled for me - I don't get the usual free range of imagination giving faces to the characters, plus I know how it ends. I usually don't like it other way round either - watching a film based on a book I've read - I get upset at the changes they make, or if the characters are way different from the way I imagined them (with the exception of the Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter movies which I loved.) Saying that, I still enjoyed reading the book. I loved the structure - the entire book was a series of letters, initially from the main character, Celie to God, and then to her sister Nettie, and some from Nettie to Celie. Celie uses such everyday excepting language to describe the terrible abuse she suffers which gives it, I think all the more impact, while making the book (on some levels at least) very easy to read. I'm taking a break from serious books now though, and re-reading one of my all time favourite feel-good books, Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (both of whom are my absolute heroes.) 29/07/09
Good Omens - Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
I really love this book. I'll have to buy a new copy soon because mine is falling apart due to over-reading. It's funny and sweet and a little bit irreverant and one of my favourite feel-good books of all time. Also it was the book that introduced me to the work of Neil Gaiman and I've enjoyed everything I've read by him since. (I've always pronounced his name guy-man, but I've recently been told it should be gay-man - really? Hmmm. I think I'll stick to guy-man for the time being.) I've always been a fan of Terry Pratchett (which is why I bought this book in the first place.) 05/08/09
From Where I Stand - Tabitha Sasuma
I met Tabitha Sasuma at the Lancashire Children's book of the year award (and her mum - they are both really lovely people) so I was inspired to read one of her books, and I chose this one, From Where I stand. I read it during our family trip to Alton Towers, when I could gratefully sit on a rock or a bench while the rest of the family went off to get hurtled around. It's a book that is very easy to get into and very compelling, so I was continually suggesting the boys went to ride something terrifying because I really didn't mind waiting for them with my book! I was reduced to tears at one point (the scene where Raven and his foster mum build flat-pack furniture) so I had to pretend I had hayfever! I can see why Tabitha's books are very popular with teenagers. 06/08/09
Human Croquet - Kate Atkinson
I love Kate Atkinson, especially her more recent whodunnit type books, but I picked this one up in the Oxfam shop in Haywoods Heath, where we are staying with my sister and her family at the moment (I bought seven books and one Catatonia CD for less than £15 - you couldn't be bad to that!). It's one of her older books and more of a family saga than a whodunnit, but I still really enjoyed it. I like the narrator very much - a girl just turning sixteen who lives with an odd assortment of relatives in a family still reeling from the mysterious loss of the girl's mother several years before. As always, Kate Atkinson's prose is gorgeous and the plot is odd and surreal which always appeals to me. 09/08/09
The Quantity Theory of Insanity - Will Self
This was another of the seven Oxfam books, and I'm glad at least that the money I spent on it went to charity so it wasn't a complete waste. First off, I didn't realise it was a book of short stories and not a novel until I'd read two really long and totally unconnected chapters. I don't really like short stories at the best of times, and this certainly wasn't the best of anything. I thought the writing was heavy and laboured and the subject matter confusing and incoherant. In short I really hated this book, and after reading the first two stories I gladly gave up. Maybe I'll give it back to Oxfam and they can sell it again. 10/08/09
The Kitchen God's Wife - Amy Tan
I'm having a senior moment (I can have them now that I'm in my forties!). I remember writing about The Kitchen God's Wife already, and yet when I looked at my page it's not here (and the cover photo wasn't in my picture library either, so it's not just that I didn't save the review. Hmmm) Maybe I reviewed it somewhere else and can't remember where? Anyway, this was another of the books I bought in Oxfam in Haywards Heath (I really like Haywards Heath by the way) and this one was a real joy. I'm a big Amy Tan fan, even if most of her books could be summed up with the same synopsis - Chinese American woman has strained relasionship with mother (or other older relative) but gains understanding when the mother's (or other older relative's) traumatic backstory of abuse and struggle growing up in China comes out. Still, if it ain't broke don't fix it, and if Amy Tan wrote twenty more the same I'd happily read them all. (One of my favourite Amy Tan books, Saving Fish From Drowning differs somewhat from the mother daughter relationship pattern, and is very good as well.) Another thing I remember writing in the mystical other review that is possibly out there somewhere is that before I read the book I was convinced it was about someone married to a TV chef! (It's not - the kitchen God in the title refers to an actual god with a shrine not a man who's a great cook.) 12/08/09
Chrono Trigger - Ds This is not a book, I know, but I'm having a wee break from reading while I'll playing this DS game. I love my DS and I'm quite enjoying this game. I'm a big fan of the Final Fantasy series for the DS (I don't play them on the things that plug into the telly anymore, partly because I don't get a look in with three teenaged kids, and partly because I don't have the time to play for hours between save points, at least with the DS you can always close the lid and pause it anytime.) Chrono Trigger is not quite up the the FF standard, I'm finding the fights just a bit too easy, although my son, who's ahead of me in the game says the final boss is really hard. It passes the time though, and I'm having fun with it. 18/08/09
Clay - David Almond
This is another charity shop book and I started reading it because I was taking Roxie to the groomers, and I was embarrassed about bringing my DS to play while I waited. At first I found the book easy to read, although it felt like the sort of thing I used to be made to read at school - a bit old fashioned, and definately a boy book. I was already a third of the way through the book by the time Roxie was looking lovely and ready to go home, and for some reason I didn't want to stop reading. There is something weirdly compelling about Clay - the characters are totally believable, from good hearted but easily led Davie to strangely sinister Stephen. When things started getting even weirder - clay figures coming to life, visitations by angels, and the ever creepier hold Stephen had over those around him I was completely hooked. It's rare and wonderful for a book to draw me in so much that I forget to analyse the writers diferent devices and choices in style and instead just get immersed in the plot and the characters' reactions but that's what happened with Clay. All I can say is Wow - what a good book. 20/08/09
What Was Lost - Catherine O'Flynn
The first section of What Was Lost is set in the nineteen eighties (the era when I was a teenager) and follows a little girl called Kate who sees herself as a private detective. I loved this bit of the book - I could identify with Kate so much and yet see much more of the world through her eyes than she takes in. There are some very funny observations but cloaked in sweet innocence. The main bulk of the book is set twenty years later and while still very clever with some cracklinly funny comments on people generally and consumerism in particular, I missed Kate's sweet voice. (If you are watching this year's big brother, it reminded me of Marcus - who is foul mouthed and cynical but spot on and hilarious in some of his witty observatiosn.) The ending was sad yet satisfying and I would certainly recommend this book to anyone (as long as they're not offended by strong language.) 25/08/09
Natural Flights of the Human Mind - Clare Morrall
I kno
w I'm prone to gushing about how good books are, and I think that's because I genuinely do love most of the books I read. Maybe because I'm in love with stories and the clever use of language, and also because I think I'm pretty good at picking out books that I know I'll enjoy. It'll be no surprise then when I say I LOVED Natural Flights of the Human Mind! It's about a man who lives as a silent recluse in a lighthouse while he tries to come to terms with an accident he caused twenty five years ago that killed 78 people. He's shaken up (in a good way) by the arrival of the wonderfully angry and forthright Doody and we gradually learn their back stories and get to know them as they get to know each other. I found the book mesmerising and I couldn't wait to get back to it whenever real life got in the way and I had to stop reading. It's my first book by Clare Morrall and I will certainly be looking out for more. 30/08/09
Apollo Justice Ace Attorney - DS
I had another break from reading to play a DS game - Apollo Justice Ace Attorney. I've played the Pheonix Wright one before, and this is a follow on (there may be more in between, I'm not sure.) I had a lot of fun with this game. It was just hard enought to make me think without me getting totally stuck - I could usually work out what to do either through my powers of deduction (!) or trial and error (although I did consult the walkthrough once or twice). The stories were fun and everything came together nicely at the end. There was plenty of game play and the anime style over-the-top facial expresions didn't annoy me too much. (I played most of it with the sound turned off, though as a lot of the sound effects were annoying.) 13/09/09
The Mermaid
Chair - Sue Monk Kidd
I read Sue Monk Kidd's Mermaid Chair at the same time that I was playing the DS game so it didn't get the same avid attention I usually give to the books I'm reading and for that reason I think it felt a little disjointed to me. I loved The Secret Life of Bees by the same authour, and the Mermaid Chair is also a very good book. It's quite slow and character driven rather than plot driven, but then that's what I like in a book. The writing is beautifully poetic and I did get drawn in to the world of Jessie, a woman in a long happy marriage with a grown up daughter who felt the need to escape from her life and when she had to return to the island where she grew up because of a crisis with her mother she didn't want her husband to come with her and ended up having an affair with a monk. It's about feeling restless and like there must be something more for me. I was feeling quite weepy on the day that I finished reading it (my lack of a publisher was really getting to me) and the last few chapters really got me wailing. I'm glad it ended the way it did though - when I read it it was almost as though I was dipping my toes in the notion of running away from my life the way Jessie did, but then it was a relief when she decided to come back. That's the beauty of reading - you can experience all the highs and lows of an extreme situation without actually having to go through it. 11/09/09
The Point of Rescue - Sophie Hannah
I read Little Face by Sophie Hannah a while ago, and enjoyed it, so I picked The Point of Rescue up when I saw it in a charity shop. When I first started to read it I really didn't like it - all the characters seemed to be so angry and cynical - like in the grim gritty style of British drama where they try to be 'realistic' by making everyone angry or depressed. I don't think people in real life are that angry all the time. I think people are mostly pretty content (maybe I'm naive?) . Saying that, the book grew on me, and as I got to know the characters I became much more sympathetic to them. Also the mystery drew me in, so that I kept reading more and more avidly. I wouldn't be my favourite style of book, but worth a read, and if I see Sophie Hannah's other book (Hurting Distance) going cheep anywhere I'll probably pick it up. (Talking of angry people, last night I watched Revolutionary Road - not really a feel good movie, although it did have one or two laugh out loud moments.) 16/09/09
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
At first I didn't like this book. Two things about it annoyed me - the very 'posh' English voice (although ironically I love Jeeves and Wooster and The Lord Peter Whimsey mysteries and they don't come much posher than that - maybe it's because, as I discoverd when I'd finished reading, it was writen by an American, so the English accent was 'put on'). The other thing that annoyed me was that the main character was a writer who enjoyed seemingly easy succes and was fawned on by everyone in the publishing world - although I acknowledge that that was just pure green jealousy. I very quickly got over my petty problems though, and became too distracted by the characters and the story to notice. It's a lovely book, reminiscent, I think, of Joanna Harris's Coastliners. The funny aspects of community life were hillarious and the touching ones were very touching. I also found it interesting learning about the German occupation of Guernsey - something I've never given a moments thought to before. The book is writen as a series of letters (there's a word for that isn't there? Epistle-ary or something along those lines) and I think that format works very well. Sadly the main author, an elderly lady in her seventies, died during the editing process, so the second author (her neice) took over. 24/09/09
Lucas - Kevin Brooks
Wow! I just finished reading Lucas and I'm still reeling from the emotional impact of it. It is certainly a hard-hitting book. It reminds me of another book called The Raging Quiet by Sherryl Jordan (which I loved) they are both about a small community turning on a young man who is in some way different to them, and in both cases a young woman sees past the prejudice and sees a good person but pays dearly for standing by him. It was a bit of a grower for me - I didn't instantly love it, perhaps because (and this is true almost always when I read a book intended for teens) I was looking at it analitically and comparing it to my books, to begin with at least. Once the plot grabbed me though it was elevated to the status of a book that I carry about with me and read at every available oportunity (standing in queues, waiting for the kids outside school etc). I loved the really good relationship between the heroine and her father, especially near the end when they were bonded by their mutual pain. The ending made me cry, which I consider to be a good thing in a book! 29/09/09
Beloved - Toni Morrison
This was my book group read for this month, so scoot on over to the 'my book group reads' page to see what we thought of it. 02/10/09
The Angel's Game - Carlos Ruiz Zafron
I read Carlos Ruiz Zafron's first book The Shadow of The Wind, and I remember really loving it, so I was looking forward to this one. I'm sorry to say I really didn't love it. There were lots of things about The Angel's Game that I did like - I could empathise with a lot of the experiences of the main character as a writer, and I loved the atmospheric descriptions of Barcelona - I tried to read with a Spanish accent in my mind! The writing was often beautiful and I found myself re-reading sentences just to appreciate their loveliness. But - I thought the plot was kind of dopey, and I hated the series of chases and fights at the end - too much like a 'boy's own adventure' comic book for my tastes. Ah well. 15/10/09
Unseen Academicals - Terry Pratchett
Anyone who's heard me talk about being a writer will know that I HATE football (and LOVE Terry Pratchett) so when I realised that the new Discworld novel was based around football I was tossed on the horns of a dilema. Of course the Love of Terry won, and I'm glad it did because I LOVED Unseen Academicals. There is so much more to it than The Game - the main characters were fabulous and I found I was able to identify and sypathise with all of them in spite of them being so diverse. The book made my laugh out loud, as well as nod thoughtfully and even brush away the odd tear. I hope this is not the last Discworld book. 20/10/09
This Book will Save Your Life - A.M. Homes
I'm not sure what to say about this book. I was quickly gripped by it - the opening scene describes a man who thinks he's having a heart attack, and his experience of calling 911 and being taken to hospital are pretty compelling. There follows a series of bizarre happening, that are quite surreal and so far out of my realm of experience as to be almost laughable (the main character is mega rich and throws money around like nobody's business.) I think I liked it, though. On the whole - my interest wained a bit in the middle, and the book didn't end with a bang, it just sort of fizzled out. I found the present tense narrative a bit annoying too. I don't regret reading it, although I don't see how reading it will save my life (perhaps if I carry it around in a pocked one day it will serendipitously stops a bullet?). I did like the cover (in a kind of love/hate way - I have to acknowledge that it grabs your attention.) 22/10/09
Being - Kevin Brooks
This is the third Kevin Brooks novel I've read now, the other two being Kissing The Rain and Lucas (both very good). This one was recommended to me by my fifteen year old daughter, although she didn't like the ending - she said 'it was like someone had a really good idea for a book but then didn't know how to end it.' I agree with her on the 'really good idea for a book' bit. It starts with sixteen year old Robert having minor surgery but waking up during it in a room with armed men discussing the strange things they've found inside him. His internal organs seem to be mechanical - making him either a cyborg or some kind of alien. The rest of the book is a chase with Robert running away from the scary men who are chasing him, and trying to come to terms with what he is - he had no prior knowledge that there was anything strange about himself other than he was an abandoned baby. I thought the book was very compelling and while we were never really told what Robert was of where he came from, we still empathised with his plight (or at least I did). I personally quite like books that leave you guessing at the end, but I can also see how that is unsatisfying for many people. I very much admire Kevin Brooks as a writer though. I hope I get to meet him someday. 28/10/09
The Secret Scripture - Sebastian Barry
This was one of my two book group reads for November and since I'd already read it, but it was quite a while ago, I re-read it this last week. I remembered that I liked it first time round, but I think I liked it even better second time. It weaves together the life story of Roseanne McNulty, a very old lady in an Irish mental hospital, and her psychiatrist, Dr Grene. They both have sad tales to tell, and while in the first reading, I was taken up with the suspense of the plot, the second time around I was entranced by the beauty of the writing, and how clevery it takes us to the ending. It's a clever exploration of an unreliable narrator, or just how memory and perspective changes history. Some people have complained that the ending is too contrived, but I thought it was believably enough - especially after my second read, and I thought the ending was lovely. 23/11/09
Nowhere Else On Earth - Josephine Humphreys
I got this book from a charity shop, becaues I liked the look of it and the blurb, and I tried really hard to read it, but I'm afraid I gave up after 54 pages. I don't know why but it just isn't grabbing me. It's set in the US at the time of the civil war and it follows a mixed race community (half Scots half Native American). That should be an interesting read, and the writing is accomplished, I just found reading it a chore. I haven't completely given up, I may try again some time, but for now, life's too short to force myself to read something I'm not enjoying. 30/11/09
Salmon Fishing in The Yemen - Paul Torday
This was supposed to be a book group read, but my Amazon order was delayed and it didn't arrive until after book group! I had read it before - ages ago - a copy from the library, and remembered enjoying it. I wanted to re-read it to refresh my memory, so when it finally came I read it again. Unlike the other book I re-read for book group (The Secret Scripture) I didn't get that much more out of a re-read. It's a funny read though, and I really liked the main character, and that in spite of everything that went wrong in the Yemen Salmon fishing project, things kind of turned out okay for him. I would recommend this book. 1/12/09
The Other Half Lives - Sophie Hannah
This is the third Sophie Hannah book I've read (after Little Face and The Point of Rescue) unfortunately for me it's the fourth book in the series and I've missed out one (Hurting distance). Each of her books has a whole new mystery thriller plot, but the same police officers investigating, so it was their relationships and baggage that left me a bit confussed. I found the book pretty gripping nonetheless, and although I found the constant repitition of the mystery a little annoying, I still enjoyed the read and was genuinely shocked by some of the reveals. 8/12/09
The Dice Man - Luke Rhinehart
This is another charity shop buy for me - I was intruiged by the concept of the book - a man who decides that his every decision should be decided by the roll of the dice. Unfortunately, since he gave the dice options to chose from, and they usually involved sex and or drugs the book ends up reading like bad porn. I guess it was written and first published in the 1960s so it is very much a child of it's time. I really didn't like the main character who seems totally devoid of morals of feelings for other people - for instance when the dice told him to first cheat on and then leave his wife and children he did, when the dice told him to murder he did. Remembering that he was the one who gave the dice the options, it was really just his excuse for behaving badly. I kept reading in the hopes that there would be some redemption or at least nice resolution, and wishing it would hurry up and end so I could get on with my real life, and mercifully it did end, but sadly didn't leave me in any way satisfied. My advice is give it a miss (if you really wanted you could roll a die to decide whether to buy it and burn it, or just not buy it). I guess I'll give it back to the charity shop, except then some other poor sap will buy it. Ah well, somebody might like it - it sells better on Amazon than either of my books even though its older than I am. Huh. 23/12/2009
Holy Fools - Joanne Harris
I'm a big Joanne Harris fan, and Holy Fools is typical of her books. It's an historical drama set mostly in a convent in 17th Century France. Like all her books it's beautifully written and there is reference to cantrips and 'magic' although in this book it's more on the level of superstition without any real 'magical realism' being part of the plot, which I found unfortunate since I like a bit of magical realism. I enjoyed reading it, although it wouldn't be my favourite of Harris's books (Chocolat and Lollipop shoes are my favourites). 9/01/10
Deaf Sentence - David Lodge
This is the first of the two book group reads I have for January, and I really enjoyed it. The main character, Desmond is four years into early retirement from being a linguistics professor and suffers from high frequency deafness. I have the same condition, so I could identify hugely with his difficulties (although he seems to be afflicted more severely than me). I found the opening chapter laugh out loud funny, as Desmond missheard things comically. The tension in the plot comes from Desmonds interactions with a young pretty American linguistics student who wants him to help her with her PhD thesis, but turns out to be dangerously sociopathic. There is also lots of pathos surrounding Desmonds father's declining health, as well as his trip to Poland and visit to Auschwitz. I also liked the little titbits of trivia that sprinkle the book, from linguistic stuff to the random facts he had to 'talk' about in his lip reading classes (I wonder if I should look for lip-reading classes?) Deaf Sentence gets a big thumbs up from me. (I wonder what the rest of the book group thought about it? I'll write it up after we next meet.) 12/01/10
The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Muriel Barbery
This was my second book group read for January, and when I first started reading it I hated it! The two main characters, Renee a fifty something concierge in an upmarket apartment building in Paris, and Paloma, one of its twelve year old wealthy inhabitants both seemed grumpy and arrogant and unlikeable, and the language was, I thought, overly pretentious and ponderous. BUT, I persevered and the more I read the more I warmed to the book, until I got to the point where I could barely put it down. As I grew to understand Renee and Paloma better, I started to genuinely love them and when a Japanese gentleman moved into the building the plot really took off. I found myself actually yelling at the book out loud to make things turn out the way I wanted, and I cried more than once towards the end. I once read a book called 'Splashes of Joy in the cesspool if Life' and I think that title sums up the theme of this book, of beauty in the midst of tragedy. I'm really glad I stuck with the book, and now that I've finished it I'm missing it, and trying to hold on to the feelings it evoked in me for as long as possible. 18/01/10
Hurting Distance - Sophie Hannah
My enjoyment of this book suffered for two reasons. Firstly, I read it immediately after the much weightier and brilliant 'The Elegance of The Hedgehog', which is definately a hard act to follow. Secondly, as I said when I reviewed 'The Other Half Lives' I accidentaly read the series out of order, so I knew one of the major reveals ahead of time. I don't know if that knowledge sent my mind in the right direction, but for the first time when reading a Sophie Hannah book I was way ahead of the police in seeing significant clues and wanted to shout at them to look at what was staring them in the face, even clues that weren't directly connected with what I knew from reading the books out of order. I also found the book quite seedy, with a lot of reference to rape and sexuality, which was necessary to the plot, but is it really what I want to be reading about? Having said all that, I was still fairly gripped and I was quite satisfied with the ending. 20/01/10
Under The Dome - Stephen King
When I mentioned to my book group buddies that I was reading a Stephen King novel, they looked a bit horrified. I think this is the first book by him I've read, although I've seen movies based on his books (Shawshank Redemtion, The Green Mile and The Mist) all of which were obviously well written, and the premise for this book intrigued me. A small town in America is suddenly and without warning encased in an invisible and inpenetrable dome, cutting it off from electricity and water and the rest of the world. It's a huge book - almost 900 pages and it has quite a cast of characters. I really enjoyed it. I even carried it about with me althought it was too big to fit in my handbag and I had to ram the end in sideways and have at least half of it sticking out, because I wanted to snatch every available opportunity of reading time. There were some quite brutal killings, but on the whole it's certainly not a horror book. It's more of a mystery thriller and also a drama about human nature, both good and bad. For a lot of the book the cause of the dome was unknown, but the immediate danger was not from who or whatever put it there, rather from the other people inside the dome. When I finished it, in spite of its size I wished it was longer so I could keep reading. I think I'll look for other similar books by Stephen King - maybe The Strand. 30/01/10
The Cellist of Sarajevo - Steven Galloway
It was interesting reading this book immiately after the Stephen King Dome book, to compare and contrast the two. The Cellist of Sarajevo felt really short to me, although it was long enough at 230 odd pages. Like Stephen King's Under the Dome, it's set in a city/town under siege, although unlike in Under The Dome, the enemy is not at all secret and hidden in Sarajevo. Like the citizens caught under the dome, those in Sarajevo also had to contend with corruption from their fellow besieged countrymen, and the best and worst of human nature is brough to the fore. I felt the book was perhaps a little lacking in depth, so it was difficult to bond totally with the characters, although I did feel I knew them fairly well by the end of the it. It felt almost more like a long short story - like a slice of live - than a full novel. I do feel more informed about the war in Sarajevo now though, and reminded of the real human suffering that war causes. 4/02/10
Killing God - Kevin Brooks
This is (I think) the fourth Kevin Brooks book I've read. I thought the writing was stunningly good (curse him!). The book was very gripping and interestingly writen and I liked the main character, Dawn. I don't think it's my favourite Kevin Brooks book though, (that would be Lucas). I though the plot was just a little too bleak and depressing for my liking. Rebecca, who's about to turn sixteen really liked it though. It's about a girl who is a loner and a missfit (lots of books are about loners and missfits - is that because they're easier to write about, or because writers are loners themselves and identify with there characters if they are too?) whose dad was an alcoholic and a drug dealer and has been missing for two years, and whose mum who fell apart when dad left and is now a depressed alcoholic herself. That's how it starts, and things just get worse for poor Dawn. You couldn't blame her for wanting to kill God with a life like that! 11/02/2010
The Stand - Stephen King
I enjoyed The Dome so much, that I wanted to read another similar Stephen King, and the blurb at the back of The Dome suggested this one. It's another huge book - 1300 pages! At first I really didn't like it. Lots of characters were introduced, and I didn't really care for any of them. However, the plot was exciting, and while all of the characters were pretty flawed at the begining, some joined the 'bad guys' camp, and others went on redemptive personal journeys and became the 'good guys'. There were lots of things that I loved about the book, although I didn't love it all - I found it a bit over long at times (needs a bit more editing!) I don't regret reading it though - I think I would give it four out of five. 01/03/10
Home - Marilynne Robinson
This is my book group read for March. I remember reading Housework by Marilynne Robinson when I was seventeen or eighteen and trying to explain to my friends why I loved it so much, when not that much happened in it. This is another book where not that much happens. It is a very atmospheric book, although the atmosphere is quite claustrophobic - full of nervous politeness and regret - it's really not a feel-good kind of a book! It is very beautifully written however, and I can recognise a lot of myself and my family in the characters. 06/03/10
The Road - Cormac McCarthy
I bought this book in a charity shop before I saw the movie, but then I watched the movie before I read the book. I don't normally like to read a book of a movie I've seen, but in this case I think it was good. Partly because the movie is very true to the book, both in content and in feel, so that didn't annoy me, and also, I think having seen the film, and knowing what was going to happen, I could appreciate the language all the more. The language is stark yet profound. Sometimes I couldn't really understand it, but that didn't detract from the book too much! Some of the passages would benefit from being picked over in an English Lit classroom, I think, like Shakespear or the war poets. But even if I didn't get all the words or all the similies, I still really felt moved by the book, and liked the film even more in hind sight because of reading it. 08/03/10
Paradise News - David Lodge
I really liked this book. I picked it up in a charity shop, because I enjoyed Deaf Sentence by David Lodge so much, and if anything I enjoyed this one even better. For one thing it was funny without being silly - a gently micky taking of the British traveller abroad. And the main character, Bernard Walsh really struck a cord with me - I felt a kinship with him. David Lodge is very good at giving his stories emotional depth without clogging them down with it, and this story tugged at the heartstrings as well as making me laugh out loud and cringe with sympathetic embarassments. I now want to read everything David Lodge has ever written. 09/03/10