Reviewing April reads

April has been a bumper month for reading, I’ve read plenty more than normal, and the only books I haven’t read are the ones I was supposed to read. Apparently I still haven’t got over that feeling of not wanting to read something because I have to. So, my book club book Life after Life by Kate Atkinson still remains unread, but I have got through all of these:

The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion

 A sequel to The Rosie Project, Rosie and Don have moved to New York and have to deal with a surprise interruption to their plans. If you’re familiar with the first book then you can imagine that Don does not handle surprise very well, and decides to tackle this, and a number of other events in his usual style, that is to say not that well at all. Entertaining, funny and moving at times, if I’m honest the characters of Rosie and Don irritate the proverbial out of me. Having said that it’s a good read, and well worth it.

Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith

Loaned to me by a friend at work, this book is very very strange. I really would not know how to describe it to you, so I won’t. I very much enjoyed it at first, and then it got darker, and darker, and darker still. Quite gruesome at times, it was an unsettling read, and I’m not sure I would read any more of this author, except that the writing is excellent, and the authors’ imagination is impressive. I have another couple of his books stashed in my desk drawer, but it might take me a while to work up to reading those!

The Storied Life of AJ Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

After Only Forward I needed something a little more light-hearted. Following some links in blogs I eventually reached a review of this book and it sounded wonderful. A book for book lovers about books and a bookshop featuring a family of book lovers. What’s not to like? The story revolves around AJ, a bookstore owner on a Cape Cod island. AJ is a widower who is so devastated by the loss of his wife that he retreats into himself and his bookshop. The only thing in his life is a copy of a rare first edition Poe, which he hates but thinks of as his way out of the bookshop he ran with his late wife. When that is stolen one day and he figures he has nothing. Until that is a toddler is left in his shop with a note that AJ should raise her, and the mother washes up on the coast the next day, having committed suicide. AJ’s new daughter and a publishers representative help him over his grief and build up the bookshop until it becomes the heart of the community (as every book lover knows a bookshop should be).

It was an absolutely lovely read, very heartwarming and left me feeling wonderful. It has some very sad moments, but is ultimately uplifting. Each chapter begins as a letter to AJ’s daughter recommending a book she should read and explaining why. I’ve added most of those to my wishlist!

The Girl with all the Gifts by MR Carey

This book is like the car you just bought. I swear I read a review on Fennell Books and then started seeing this everywhere! It’s set in England, in the not too distant future where a group of children are taught in an underground bunker. They’re strapped into wheelchairs, fed bugs once a week and though Melanie swears that she wouldn’t bite, you get the impression that she’s incredibly dangerous. Melanie loves one of her teachers in particular, and when she is escorted out of the bunker one day (other children who’ve left never come back) all hell breaks loose and Melanie and a handful of survivors try to make their way to safety.

Intriguing, clever and the science possibly a little too plausible for comfort, I devoured this read in hardly any time at all. It has an uncomfortable ending, which is absolutely right for the story. Highly recommended.

Lost Journey by AL Barker

 From Galley Beggar Press edition this tiny short story is about a woman nearly 500 years old who has been trying to die, but never quite manages it. She has determined that she will only be able to die if she dies alongside another unwitting soul. Creepy stuff.

Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut

I’ve been meaning to read this for ages, but finally got around to it. Very strange story about Billy Pilgrim, a WW2 veteran who survived the Dresden firebombing (which Vonnegut experienced first-hand). Billy has the ability to travel through time within his own lifetime, and has been visited and abducted by aliens called Tralfamadorians who see time as non-linear in nature, and therefore they see death as something completely different. There is no end of life, because you are always alive at every moment of your life. This appears to give Billy, and the book, an air of resigned acceptance to war and death, but I found this casual treatment of death and war served actually to highlight the horror and wastage of life. Not a book I think I will forget any time soon.
The Mirror World of Melody Black by Gavin Extence

Fantastic look at Manic Depression, I reviewed it a few days ago here.

The Liar by Nora Roberts

After the emotional battery I endured reading The Mirror World of Melody Black I wanted something easier to read, that I didn’t have to think about, or invest any emotion in. Romance does that for me, and there’s not many that much better than Roberts. In the last two or three years I’ve found her standalone novels to be rather disappointing, and although this was a little predictable in the ending, despite several red herrings attempting to put you off the scent, it was definitely worth the time and expense. A vast improvement on recent releases. Yes, the heroine was annoyingly good at everything, but she had some flaws. The hero was the perfect fantasy hero, the drama and tension started well and built nicely and since the hero doesn’t make an appearance until about a third of the way through the book we really get to know our heroine very well.

The Mirror World of Melody Black by Gavin Extence

This is probably one of the hardest reviews I’ve ever written.

I read The Mirror World of Melody Black over the weekend, so I could be prepared for the talk with the author Gavin Extence in a couple of weeks time. Friday evening through to Sunday morning to be precise. Consequently I spent most of my weekend crying my eyes out. It’s not really a sad book as such, but it is about a woman who is suffering from depression, as I have done for as long as I can remember. It struck a little close to home at times, and that might have put me off, except that it’s utterly compelling, and I just couldn’t put it down, or stay dry eyed for that matter. My depression I think is not so pronounced as the protagonist Abby’s, but I saw much in her that I see in me. I don’t want to give away any of the plot, as I think I’ve already said too much. I make it sound ever so bleak, and in the middle it certainly felt that way to me, but then things change and this book has made me see that I really do need to seek some help if I want to recover properly.

It’s hard to say what reading this book will do for those who are not going through this experience right now, or who have never gone through it, but I hope that a reader would start to understand something of what it is like to have a mental illness.

Gavin Extence’s book is remarkable, and I encourage everyone to read it. I think it’s a deeply personal book, not just because it deals with an issue close to the author’s heart, but because I think it would be a book that would be a unique reading experience for every reader.

Recently I took part in Fennell Books desert island books type interview, and if I was doing that again my answer to the question ‘The one which changed your view of the world’ would have to change to this one! Most definitely.

The Circle by Dave Eggers

Ever wondered what it would be like to work at a technology supergiant? Welcome to The Circle. They’re a bit of a cross between Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter and Amazon. The Circle is, or wants to be, the single source of information and truth across the globe. They have fingers in a piece of every pie you can imagine, and a few you wouldn’t. And Mae has just got a job in the Customer Experience department.

Everything is rosy the first few days, just an odd blip here or there in her social presence on the Circle campus. Gradually though she is drawn inexorably into the culture of the Circle, and their mysterious goals begin to coalesce the sinister overtones become more pronounced.

The author does a brilliant job of showing you how an intelligent sensible person can be drawn into the most dangerous of situations, and how easy it can be to con someone into thinking everything is their own idea, and isn’t it wonderful?

I keep thinking to myself ‘how can she not see what’s happening?’ but then just before I started composing this post I was trying to log into Twitter (which I almost never use).  Twitter asked me for my phone number, which I gamely provided without hardly thinking about it. And then it clicked, how tied into social media I am, how my online life has become so important. I watch TV online, I surf Facebook, check my emails regularly, monitor my Fitbit activity, log my reading activity in Goodreads and update this blog from time to time too. And no, the irony about recommending this particular book via an online blog is not lost on me!

I am seriously re-assessing my social media strategy and if you read this book I pretty much guarantee you’ll take a second look at yours too. In that respect I think this is a kind of Marmite deal. Love it or hate it, there’s no real middle ground.  I think it’s well written, entertaining and utterly compelling. I consumed this book in less than a handful of days, and I hope it will stay long in my memory.

Right, so I’m signing off now so I can concentrate less on my online life and give more focus to my real life. Be back soon, but not too soon.

The Universe versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence

I don’t know if you ever go through this same feeling…  You have bookshelves full of unread books, and some have been there for simply ages, and for some reason you’ve been putting off reading this one or that one.  You don’t know why, but ever since you bought it a particular book has just not appealed to you. When you do get around to reading it you’re surprised by how brilliant it was, and wish that you’d read it sooner.  Does that seem familiar to you?

I had a very recent moment just like that when I read The Universe versus Alex Woods.  I’d picked it up before but never got past the first few pages before deciding to pick up something else. It wasn’t bad at all, just then wasn’t the right moment.  Well, finally the right moment came. I don’t mean that suddenly I thought ‘now’s the right time’.  It was more like ‘I need to make room on this shelf and those hardbacks are taking up a lot of space.  Just grab one and read it’.  So I picked Alex Woods and off we went.

Alex was 10 years old when he was struck a glancing blow to the head by a rare meteorite that left him with a scar and a condition known as TLE; Temporal Lobe Epilepsy.  Through a series of events that stem from this incident Alex befriends an old man called Mr Peterson, who becomes his best friend. It’s a wonderfully unsentimental story about terribly sentimental stuff.  A long-lasting life changing friendship, and a coming of age story, and a wonderfully heartbreaking and yet uplifting look at death and suicide.  Yes I know that sounds terrible, and as someone who has seriously considered suicide in the past I am DEFINITELY NOT saying suicide is a wonderful thing, but the story portrays it very sensitively and I was deeply moved.

I hate to say too much, because I’d hate to spoil everything, there’s so much to this story, I just loved it, and I hope if you read it you will love it too.

Now all I have to do is read all the books written by Kurt Vonnegut.  You’ll get what I mean if you read this book.

As I write this blog post (26th January 2015) Amazon UK is selling the kindle version for £1.89 and the paperback for £1.99.  If you at all doubt my review, then have a look at the review stats – It has a healthy 4.6 out of 5 stars across 757 reviews, with 700 of those being 4 (151) or 5 (549) stars.  That many people can’t be that wrong, can they?

All Hail Duct Tape!

aka The Martian by Andy Weir

I am lucky in my new job (I’ve been here 9 months, can I still call it new?), I sit across from a book lover and we’ve been exchanging book recommendations. I sent him a load of recommendations this morning now that he’s up to date with the Philip Grant series by Ben Aaronovitch. Amongst others, one of the books I recommended that I haven’t yet blogged about is a great Sci-Fi book I read late last year.

I came across it as it was the winner of the Goodreads Readers Choice award in the Sci-Fi category. It won by such a huge margin over a book I’d really enjoyed I thought it had to be worth a punt. Sometimes curiosity pays off! I thought it was a great book, one of those rare books that you can’t put down, and when you absolutely have to, you can’t stop thinking about it anyway.

The protagonist is Mark Watney, a botanist on a mission to Mars. On day 6 of the month long mission a massive storm hits the base camp and Watney has an accident. His team thinks he’s dead and they’re forced to abandon both him and the expedition, and they leave. Only he’s not dead, he is however stranded on an inhospitable planet with too few resources and practically nil chance of any rescue reaching him in time. The book is written in the form of his mission logs where he records his efforts to survive. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, all of this you can find out with hardly any research.

I loved the book, with only one minor gripe – I would have liked a little more at the end. It ended too soon for my liking. I’ve seen some criticism of the humour that Watney exhibits, but I found it gave the book a big old shot of black comedy, turning it into a great adventure, instead of just a good read. I admit to a few untimely snorts and chortles while reading on the bus/in the canteen at work. I got a few funny looks I can tell you.

The mission logs that Watney writes are highly entertaining, he’s a funny guy, and the author explains the science and maths in such a way that it makes sense to me (and I’m not at all scientifically or mathematically minded), and seems perfectly plausible. When I checked after reading to see if there was a verdict on accuracy, I heard that although Weir did his own fact checking, it is more or less entirely accurate. The main issue being the storm at the start of the story. Mars atmosphere is so thin that it’s unlikely that it would have had the impact described in the story. I find that easy to forgive given that the rest of the story is told so convincingly.

I don’t what else to say other than READ IT! Read it before the film comes out (Matt Damon taking Watney’s role I believe). The writing is engaging, Watney is a great character, and you find yourself warming to him and really rooting for him.

Congratulations to Andy Weir, who apparently self-published this. He deserves much praise in my eyes, and I am really looking forward to the film.

Some favourite quotes:

SPOILER sections removed “Here’s the cool part: I will eventually go to Schiaparelli crater and commandeer the Ares 4 lander… After I board Ares 4… I will take control of a craft in international waters without permission. That makes me a pirate! A Space Pirate!”

“Everything went great right up to the explosion.”

“I tested the brackets by hitting them with rocks. This kind of sophistication is what we interplanetary scientists are known for.”

“I started the day with some nothin’ tea. Nothin’ tea is easy to make. First, get some hot water, then add nothin’. I experimented with potato skin tea a few weeks ago. The less said about that the better.”

“As it is, going only south, I’m not nearly as fast. I’m traveling 90 kilometers per day as usual, but I only get 37 kilometers closer to Schiaparelli because Pythagoras is a dick.”

The Girl Who Saved The King Of Sweden – Jonas Jonasson

Though there were mixed reviews for the 100 year old man at my book club I was an unabashed fan, so I had to buy a copy of Jonasson’s new book The Girl Who Saved The King Of Sweden. It sat on my shelf for a few weeks before I picked it randomly. I enjoyed it almost as much as the 100 year old man, only the novelty of the first book wasn’t present for this one that meant that I rate it a smidgen below the first.

Everything I enjoyed about the first book was present in this one, namely a central character (or more accurately a group of central characters) who through a series of seemingly random events find that life takes lots of unexpected turns. A combination of skill, intelligence and sheer luck mean that they narrowly escape several untimely ends. Quite far-fetched at times (surely nobody is as lucky as this bunch of people?) I found myself chuckling at regular intervals.

There are some rather excellent digs at the Apartheid politics of South Africa at the beginning, but other than this, I found it to be a lighthearted read that doesn’t really require a great deal of deep analysis, though you do need to pay attention as apparently unimportant people and events mentioned in passing do later become central to the plot.

Jonasson treats his characters and the events in this book with the same matter-of-fact ‘shit happens’ approach as he did in his first book, to hilarious effect. It really reminded me of a proverb I once saw on a trip to South Africa. Probably a modern proverb, and forgive me any misquote as I haven’t been able to find it online to verify the wording, but it goes like this:

“Fate doesn’t care if you’re a nice person in the same way that a Lion doesn’t care you’re a vegetarian”.

When I think of Jonasson’s writing I feel that he approaches his characters as if they are totally expendable and could die at any given moment if it were convenient to the story, and if they do survive it’s pure luck that saves them in spite of Jonasson, even if they’re not that pleasing a character.

My only concern with future books is that I read them spaced far enough apart to not get too tired of the style. I would laugh when some ridiculous convergence of unrelated events happened to save the life of a character, but you could get bored of that after a while, and I did honestly want to slap Celestine through to next week.