I'd rather be reading

lemon_sherbert

So, following the general trend, I'm starting a new log for the new year. I was off to a slow start for the year but for the last three days I've been snowed in, and got some proper reading done.

1. The Ladies of Grace Adieu and other stories by Susanna Clarke

This is a collection of companion stories to Clarke's earlier novel Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrell. It's written in a sort of faux Austen/Dickens style, with footnotes and a historical preface. It was a delightfully cheerful, funny book - if you're a fan of the earlier novel, I'd recommend you pick it up. There was a particularly funny footnote on the case of a faerie lord imprisoning a pistol.

4/5

2. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

People have been telling me about this book for years, as a consequence, I pretty much knew the entire plot. Anyway, with the film coming out, I was loaned the book to read before going to see it in the cinema. It's difficult to say whether I liked it or not. It's certainly very emotive, and made me cry a lot. The novel opens with the brutal murder and rape of a young girl, but the heart of the novel is about her family's reaction and attempts to cope. I thought the family's experience was very well portrayed, poignant and scarily believable. On the other hand, the whole Paradise/watching over earth aspects didn't really resonate with me.

3/5

lemon_sherbert

Oryx and Crane by Margaret Atwood

I'm a big fan of Atwood's novels, and this certainly didn't disappoint. It's set in a dystopian future which strikes ominously close to home. Seemingly the sole human survivor of the human race of an unrevealed disaster, Snowman is charged with the care of a new race of semi-humans. As the story progresses, Snowman is plagued with the memories of how he came to live in this broken world, remembering the people he loved, charting the road to human annihilation. It was a really excellent read, one of the most chilling novels I've read in a long time, probably due to its sheer plausibility.

5/5

lemon_sherbert

The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson

Book two of the Mistborn trilogy, really excellent fantasy book. The plot is gripping and unpredictable, the characters interesting and affecting. Highly recommended if you enjoy books in the fantasy genre.

4.5/5

lemon_sherbert

The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson

The final installment of the Mistborn trilogy. I can't really say anything about it, or I'd give away the endings to books one and two - anyway, I'll just say it's brilliant.

4.5/5 Only because I'm sad that the series is ended.

lemon_sherbert

Saplings by Noel Streatfield

I really enjoyed Streatfield's books as a child and didn't realise any of her adult books were still in print until I came across this one. It follows the Wiltshire family, who have two daughters and sons. We meet them on an idyllic holiday in Eastbourne. But the war is coming, and the family will never be the same. What is really successful in these books is the way the author tells the story predominantly from the perspective of the children. To see the horrific effect of the blitz and the war on these innocent creatures is truly tragic.

A very good novel, Streatfield really understands children.
4/5

lemon_sherbert

The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Hodgson Burnett

This author is famous for writing The Secret Garden, which was among my favourite books as a child. However, in her own time she was better known as a writer for adults. This story follows Emily Fox-Seton, a well-born woman in her early thirties who was orphaned young and has worked as a governess, companion and generally helped her wealthier peers to survive. She has a lot of charm to her, not intelligent but unrelentingly kind, even to those who don't deserve it. This was a strange book in terms of the narrative, it seemed to be half romance, half mystery, but for anyone who is a fan of Austen or Wilkie Collins I'd recommend this, it's gripping and I came to really like the protagonist. Though there was some racism in the book, which takes away from the novel a bit.

4/5

lemon_sherbert

Mariana by Monica Dickens

This novel opens on a bleak scene. Mary waits, the phone-lines down, for news of her husband, away at war, waiting to hear if he lives or dies. Then we move back and hear the story of Mary's life. Raised by a single mother, having lost her father in the First World War. It is remarkably full of domestic details and the effect is to create a full, vivid world. Though the story is not singularly unique, the characters are flawed enough to make them believable and it is terribly romantic at times. It is semi-autobiographical, and as such an interesting insight into the author, great grand-daughter of Charles Dickens, who wrote the novel at only 24.

3.5/5

lemon_sherbert

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

The protagonist of this book is a former porn star who nearly dies when he crashes his car on a drug binge and suffers 3rd and 4th degree burns to most of his body. For months he hovers between life and death, suffering agonising surgeries and treatments. But Marianne, a mysterious woman who claims to know him and to be over 700 years old.

The initial phase of the book is truly horrifying as the author describes the protagonist's pain and disfigurement. But the book is compulsive and constantly surprising. It pulls together love stories from different times and societies, religious metaphors and borrows liberally from Dante. It made me want to tackle Inferno, I have to say. I really enjoyed this, a story about the redemptive power of love and faith.

4/5

lemon_sherbert

The Girl at the Lion D'Or by Sebastian Faulks

I was a little disappointed with this, I have to say, having enjoyed Birdsong and Charlotte Gray so much. Anne Louvet arrives as the new waitress at a provincial french hotel and Charles Hartmann, a married lawyer, catches her eye. Mainly, I couldn't relate to the central characters. Some of the minor characters had interesting stories, and I would have liked to see more of them. Not a bad book, just not particularly engrossing.

2.5/5

lemon_sherbert

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

This is Atwood's most recent work, a sequel to Oryx and Crane, which I read earlier in the year. Unbelievably, I think this was probably better. Highly recommended.

5/5

lemon_sherbert

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

I'd heard great things about this novel before I read it, and I think it may have suffered a little in the reading due to my high expectations. Pi, or Piscine Motilier Patel as named by his swimming-pool enthusiast father, a 15 year old subscriber to Hinduism, Islam and Christianity, finds himself marooned on a lifeboat with only the company of a menagerie of wild animals.

It's a sad book, oddly structured narrative. I found my interest waning in the middle of it. There were some excellent sections, I particularly enjoyed the sections on his childhood in India, and the ending was particularly powerful. A middling book really, in terms of my enjoyment of it.

3/5

bealfeirste5

lemon_sherbert wrote: »

So, following the general trend, I'm starting a new log for the new year. I was off to a slow start for the year but for the last three days I've been snowed in, and got some proper reading done.

1. The Ladies of Grace Adieu and other stories by Susanna Clarke

This is a collection of companion stories to Clarke's earlier novel Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrell. It's written in a sort of faux Austen/Dickens style, with footnotes and a historical preface. It was a delightfully cheerful, funny book - if you're a fan of the earlier novel, I'd recommend you pick it up. There was a particularly funny footnote on the case of a faerie lord imprisoning a pistol.

4/5

2. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

People have been telling me about this book for years, as a consequence, I pretty much knew the entire plot. Anyway, with the film coming out, I was loaned the book to read before going to see it in the cinema. It's difficult to say whether I liked it or not. It's certainly very emotive, and made me cry a lot. The novel opens with the brutal murder and rape of a young girl, but the heart of the novel is about her family's reaction and attempts to cope. I thought the family's experience was very well portrayed, poignant and scarily believable. On the other hand, the whole Paradise/watching over earth aspects didn't really resonate with me.

3/5

I read the lovely bones a few years ago and was very impressed. I'ts a very
touching story.

lemon_sherbert

bealfeirste5 wrote: »

I read the lovely bones a few years ago and was very impressed. I'ts a very touching story.

Yes, I'd agree it's poignant, I think I had too high expectations of it however.

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

This was a very compulsive reading, I ended up reading it late into the night, desperate to know what was next. Margaret Lea, who works in her father's bookshop, is written and asked to write the biography of the most famous author of her time. The stories that unravel are unpredictable and very compelling. I particularly enjoyed the style of the author, maybe a little old-fashioned and tending to the overblown, but it simply worked in context. A great book for people who love books!

4.5/5

lemon_sherbert

Race of a Lifetime: How Obama Won the White House by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann

This was a great read, particularly recommended if you have an interest in politics. It follows the last presidential campaign in the US. It's written like a novelisation, but it's all based on interview, and the authors are explicit about explaining what is direct quote and what is paraphrased. What I really enjoyed about it was the insight into the marriages in question, Barrack and Michelle Obama, John and Elizabeth Edwards, the Clintons. It gave me a whole different outlook on the process, the scheming and posturing at play.

4/5

lemon_sherbert

I've been in rather a reading rut at the moment; I keep picking up books and leaving them down again, that said, I have finished two books recently.

15. Fidelity by Susan Glaspell

Eh, merely okay. The story was flat, and suburban/small-town America is better dealt with elsewhere, Richard Yates for example.

2/5

The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

This was a fantastic fantasy debut novel. I stayed up finishing it, and then went online only to be disappointed to find out that he has not written the rest of the trilogy yet. This was the origin part of the hero's tale, laying the groundwork for magic and battles, romance and adventure. I cannot wait for the next book.

5/5

lemon_sherbert

I'm on a fantasy kick at the moment, latest two I've finished:

17. Spirit Gate by Kate Elliott

This is the first of Elliott's new series, I picked it up after having really enjoyed her Crown of Stars series. This is a promising start to a new series. Not spectacularly original, dead gods, unobserved villains who slaughter entire towns, an exiled prince. But the world-building is very interesting, Elliott has drawn a lot from Eastern cultures, and she really creates an inner morality for the characters. One to keep an eye on.

3.5/5

18. The Painted Man by Peter V. Brett

This on the other hand was strikingly original. At nightfall demons emerge from the earth and kill any people found outside warded havens. The human race are on the brink of dying out, people defeated and afraid. The book follows three main characters from childhood into adulthood as they traverse this dangerous world. The book is very brutal, particularly as sexuality is portrayed. Interestingly, Brett has a very realistic view of a medieval-inspired world, it is not idealised, women are subjugated, people die of simple diseases. To be recommended for fans of the genre.

4.5/5

lemon_sherbert

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

I've had little time for reading with college, and I keep picking up books and leaving them down again, but stuck with this one. It's a slow burner, and when I started it I wasn't sure if I was going to enjoy it. Once it got going, however, I really loved it. It's not run of the mill fantasy, the characters are great and fairly original, though the world building at times seems a little lazy.

It seems he just based it on Italy, though maybe the subtleties are lost on me.

Very exciting to the last page, brutal and shocking at times, but definitely a good read.

4/5

lemon_sherbert

Fermat's Last Theorem by Simon Singh

Purporting to be the story of how Andrew Wiles solved Fermat's famous last conjecture, this book actually told a much wider story. Singh skilfully charts the history of those mathematical methods Wiles employed. It reveals a world of mathematical wonder that would otherwise be inconceivable to many I suspect. Not having studied any maths in three years, I found the book very accessible, yet the concepts stretched my mind in most interesting ways. A story of pure human triumph, highly recommended.

4.5/5

lemon_sherbert

If on a winter's night a traveler - Italo Calvino

It's hard to describe what this book is... it's an experiment in narrative I suppose. There are stories within stories, but not much in the way of plot. It's mostly written in the 2nd person or sections of alternating stories. Mostly, it's about the nature of the reading experience.

I was gripped to this book at the beginning, hooked by the sheer inventiveness. I had picked it up in the bookshop and started reading it there and then. I had read some of Calvino's short stories a few years back - this is very different, different to anything I'd read before.

Hard to review, but a 3.5/5 I suppose - definitely worth reading, don't know if it's worth re-reading

lemon_sherbert

The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng

To be honest, I only really bought this book because it was set on an island in Malaysia where I've been on holidays. That said, I did enjoy it. It's set predominantly in the 1930s and 40s, as we meet Phillip Hutton, half Chinese, half English, isolated from his family and cultures. The arrival of a mysterious Japanese man, Endo-san, is a catalyst for change. As the timing will tell you, war is not far behind.

It's a lot of things at once, a book about fate and friendship, loss, forbidden love.

That said, I didn't see the gay relationship coming until there it was!

It's an interesting insight into the convergence of cultures and the difficulties and rewards that come with it.

4/5

lemon_sherbert

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathon Safran Foer

Half of the time I loved this book, half the time I hated it. And when I loved it it was generally making me cry. It's split narration, between 9 year old Oskar, whose father died in the trade centre in 9/11. He finds a key in his father's closet and sets out to solve the mystery.

It's very sad, as you would guess from the premise. Very effective in portraying the grief of the situation. But I didn't like the narrator. I understand as a little boy suffering such a loss he was intended to have emotional difficulties, but I couldn't warm to him.

Considering I liked it half the time, it's 2.5/5

lemon_sherbert

One Day by David Nicholls

This is the story of Emma and Dexter, who meet on the day they graduated from university. It's told in one year intervals, looking at one day in their lives over 20 years. It reads like an epic love story, but it's firmly grounded in the culture of the 1980s - 2000s. It's very moving and funny, and ultimately seemed to reinforce the notion that timing can be the biggest influence in our lives.

Have to say though, the ending was heartbreakingly, gutwrenchingly sad. Not for emotional saps like me...

4/5

lemon_sherbert

I know why the caged bird sings by Maya Angelou

This is the first volume of Angelou's autobiography, charting her childhood and teen years in the 1930s and 1940s in California and Arkansas. It a story of extreme hardship, racism, poverty. It's all the more shocking knowing that it is true.

4/5

lemon_sherbert

Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees

This was a lovely little fantasy novel from the 1920s, written by a contemporary and friend of Virginia Woolf and Bertrand Russell. I picked it up because of the recommending quote by Neil Gaiman on the cover. It's the story of a town on the border with Fairyland, with an unlikely hero in Nathanial Chanticleer, the middle aged town mayor.

I really enjoyed this book. The style is delightful, old-fashioned and whimsical. Any mention of fairies is taboo in Lud, which gives rise to a number of funny little curses. The only thing that made me dislike the book a little was the pacing, which was a little uneven. The ending was also a little less than I was hoping, but not enough to spoil the book.

The whole notion of the Fairy delusion being overcome through the man-made Law was really innovative. I found it especially appealing as a law student.

4/5

lemon_sherbert

The Gift by Alison Croggan

Standard fantasy fare really, but enjoyable. A slave is rescued by a Bard, a powerful mage, who discovers she has a powerful gift. Cut to a long journey across the land, quest-style.

It's certainly entertaining; the story's compelling and the world building is fairly good. It leaves a little to be desired though, the faux scholarly introduction and appendices irritated me, there was a lot of explanations by the campfire and the characters could have done with more development.

3/5

lemon_sherbert

The Priory by Dorothy Whipple

This is the story of the Maywood family, living in Saunby Priory, a mansion in an unknown English location. There are a number of plots that run through the novel. A newly arrived step-mother whose happiness is wrapped up in the success of a new family. Two teenaged daughters who still live as children in the nursery, forced to confront their adult lives as they are moved out of the nursery by their step-mother. An absent father who obsesses with cricket. The downstairs staff and an illicit affair.

It's a very interesting insight into a changing period in history, set in the 1930s, the changing landscape for the independently wealthy as rents fall and the idle lifestyle becomes unsustainable. The tone of the story runs progressively more tragic until the final chapters where it is suddenly wrapped up in a happy bow. Nonetheless, the spectre of approaching war looms and though the characters believe the war has been averted as the book ends, the reader's knowledge of true events cannot be ignored.

3.5/5

lemon_sherbert

Miss Pettigrew Lives for the Day by Winifred Watson

This is one of the rare occasions when I saw the film before I saw the book, which spoiled the book a little, as I found it hard to picture the characters other than as the actors who portrayed them. Nevertheless, this was a very enjoyable read. Silly and very much of its time, but funny and entertaining.

3.5/5

lemon_sherbert

The Children who Lived in a Barn by Eleanor Graham

This is really a children's novel, but offers a lot to the adult reader. It tells the story of two sisters and three brothers who have to fend for themselves after their parents disappear in an air disaster. There are some really charming aspects to the book; the dynamic between brothers and sisters is well described, the line-drawing illustrations, the sense of village life and family life that seems forgotten today. At the same time, from modern eyes, the situation the children find themselves is truly horrifying. The eldest sister, Sue, is only 14 and is left to wrestle with the care of the children and the home. The only support, in the form of the District Visitor, is cruel and judgmental. The villager come together to help them providing food, but see no problem with the children living alone in a barn.

It's the sort of book I would have loved as a child, for the adventure the children seem to be having, catching fish and growing vegetables. But reading as an adult, one cannot help but notice the stilted nature of the plot at times.

Overall, a 3/5

lemon_sherbert

31. The Curse of the Mistwraith by Janny Wurts

Fairly pedestrian fantasy fare. Didn't enjoy it, it was a chore to finish.

0/5

32. The Crimson Rooms by Katharine McMahon

A delightful piece of historical fiction. It's light, but rattles along, and I really enjoyed it. It's the tale of Evelyn Gifford, a trailblazing female solicitor in the 1920s in England. A spectre of sadness hangs over the family, Evelyn's younger brother;s death in the first world war. The novel opens when a woman arrives claiming she bore his child, but brings with her the secrets of Edmund's final days which threaten to destabilise the family. The characters are well-drawn, though mostly a book of female characters.

Recommended for a holiday read 4/5

lemon_sherbert

33. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

The adventures of the three inseparable musketeers, Porthos, Aramis and Athos, are made more interesting when they are joined by young D'Artagnan, new to Paris, who seems to have a talent for finding trouble. This story is a series of adventures, there is little connection between each quest. There is an overall political intrigue running throughout the novel however, which is probably the best part of the book.

I enjoyed this quite a bit, but the characters suffer a little from a modern perspective, as they fleece married women for money, treat their servants despicably and seem to spend most of their time gambling and drinking. Nevertheless, a good read.

3.5/5

34. Liars and Saints by Maile Meloy

I read this in an insomniac spell, in about three hours. It charts the lives and sorrows of a Catholic family over fifty years, from the second world war to the end of the twentieth century. It rattles along nicely, a very easy read. That said, it's very tragic, and had me in tears. It's not a brilliant book, but I enjoyed it a lot - a light, holiday read really.

3/5

lemon_sherbert

The Bone People by Keri Hulme

The most striking aspect of this book initially was the form of its writing, almost closer to poetry than prose at times, it's beautiful language really gives you an ear for the cadences of the character's voices. The book follows three main characters; Kerewin, a weathly loner who appears European, but identifies with her distant Maori ancestor, Joe (Hohepa) a Maori man with troubling secrets, and Simon (Haimona), his adopted son, mute and emotionally challenged, whose mysterious origins might answer questions about him. At times funny, often tragic, this book is a difficult read emotionally, yet very rewarding, in offering insights into a very different way of life and portraying singular characters.

4/5

Dragon Haven by Robin Hobb

Hobb's latest book, the second in her Rain Wilds Trilogy, doesn't disappoint. The dragons, who I never liked in the earlier books, take on interesting personalities, and the dynamic between keeper and dragon was my favourite part of this book. The strong, varied characters are challenged by the hazards of a great river journey, an exceptionally well thought out environment.

4.5/5