March 2, 2023 · 2:40 pm

The Unfolding – AM Holmes

The Unfolding – AM Holmes

I really enjoyed May we be Forgiven and so when I saw this at my local book store I was keen to read it and added it to my christmas list.

Here’s the blurb …

From a writer who is always “razor sharp and furiously good” (Zadie Smith), a darkly comic political parable braided with a Bildungsroman that takes us inside the heart of a divided country.

The Big Guy loves his family, money and country. Undone by the results of the 2008 presidential election, he taps a group of like-minded men to reclaim their version of the American Dream. As they build a scheme to disturb and disrupt, the Big Guy also faces turbulence within his family. His wife, Charlotte, grieves a life not lived, while his 18-year-old daughter, Meghan, begins to realize that her favorite subject–history–is not exactly what her father taught her.

In a story that is as much about the dynamics within a family as it is about the desire for those in power to remain in power, Homes presciently unpacks a dangerous rift in American identity, prompting a reconsideration of the definition of truth, freedom and democracy–and exploring the explosive consequences of what happens when the same words mean such different things to people living together under one roof.

In her first novel since the Women’s Prize award-winning May We Be Forgiven, A.M. Homes delivers us back to ourselves in this stunning alternative history that is both terrifyingly prescient, deeply tender and devastatingly funny.

I am not overly interested in politics (I had to research the 2008 election to find out the candidates!). The concept is terrifying because it seems so real, all of the things they plan ‘to make America great again’ are happening; plague (Covid), terrible weather events, police shootings, the riot on January 6th. When the conspirators (group of unhappy men?) meet they talk in such an obscure way I really had no idea what they were planning – a military coup? destroying the economy?

I can appreciate how clever this novel is, but it is not my cup of tea. You might need to be American to really appreciate this one.

A review

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February 28, 2023 · 2:44 pm

You Think It, I Will Say It – Curtis Sittenfeld

You Think It, I Will Say It – Curtis Sittenfeld

I have had this book on my Kindle for a long time (I wonder if I can look back and see when I bought it?). I like to have a kindle book on the go as well as a paper book, so I was looking through my library and found this one. I find it’s best just to pick the first that appeals, otherwise I can waste a lot of time looking at all of the unread books on my Kindle.

Here’s the blurb …

A suburban mother of two fantasizes about the downfall of an old friend whose wholesome lifestyle empire may or may not be built on a lie. A high-powered lawyer honeymooning with her husband is caught off guard by the appearance of the girl who tormented her in high school. A shy Ivy League student learns the truth about a classmate’s seemingly enviable life.

It’s short stories, and often I wanted the story to continue so I could know more. They’re very good, mostly character driven rather than plot driven. Some of the characters are quite unsympathetic, for example the woman from the titular story.

A review

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February 27, 2023 · 7:22 am

Dodger – Terry Pratchett

Dodger – Terry Pratchett

I listened to this book while driving to and from Albany and then finishing it off at home.

Here’s the blurb …

A storm. Rain-lashed city streets. A flash of lightning. A scruffy lad sees a girl leap desperately from a horse-drawn carriage in a vain attempt to escape her captors. Can the lad stand by and let her be caught again? Of course not, because he’s…Dodger.

Seventeen-year-old Dodger may be a street urchin, but he gleans a living from London’s sewers, and he knows a jewel when he sees one. He’s not about to let anything happen to the unknown girl–not even if her fate impacts some of the most powerful people in England.

From Dodger’s encounter with the mad barber Sweeney Todd to his meetings with the great writer Charles Dickens and the calculating politician Benjamin Disraeli, history and fantasy intertwine in a breathtaking account of adventure and mystery.

Beloved and bestselling author Sir Terry Pratchett combines high comedy with deep wisdom in this tale of an unexpected coming-of-age and one remarkable boy’s rise in a complex and fascinating world.

This was fabulous and the narrator, Steven Briggs was great too. It’s witty and compelling, but touches some serious (and dark) topics as well. Also, I feel like I have learnt some history as well; about London’s drains, philanthropy, poverty and community.

A review

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February 23, 2023 · 3:03 pm

Essentialism – Greg McKeown

Essentialism – Greg McKeown

I had this on my Kindle for a long time, but I only got to it after reading Four Thousand Weeks. It is like the next step on that journey – maybe a bit more business related rather than life related.

Here’s the blurb …

Have you ever found yourself stretched too thin?
Do you simultaneously feel overworked and underutilized?
Are you often busy but not productive?
 Do you feel like your time is constantly being hijacked by other people’s agendas?

If you answered yes to any of these, the way out is the Way of the EssentialistThe Way of the Essentialist isn’t about getting more done in less time. It’s about getting only the right things done.  It is not  a time management strategy, or a productivity technique. It is a systematic discipline for discerning what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that is not, so we can make the highest possible contribution towards the things that really matter. 

By forcing us to apply a more selective criteria for what is Essential, the disciplined pursuit of less empowers us to reclaim control of our own choices about where to spend our precious time and energy – instead of giving others the implicit permission to choose for us.

Essentialism is not one more thing – it’s a whole new way of doing everything. A must-read for any leader, manager, or individual who wants to learn who to do less, but better, in every area of their lives, Essentialism  is a movement whose time has come.

I have started saying no to more things. It is the type of book that you need to read again and then try to implement things slowly.

Another review

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February 20, 2023 · 3:15 pm

The Nonesuch – Georgette Heyer

The Nonesuch – Georgette Heyer

I do like a good regency romance and no one does it better than Georgette Heyer. A friend mentioned that had recently read this one, and I thought I must re-read it.

Here’s the blurb …

At the age of five-and-thirty, Sir Waldo Hawkridge, wealthy, handsome, eligible, illustrious, and known as the nonesuch for his athletic prowess, and when he comes north to inspect his unusual inheritance at Broom hall in the West Riding, his arrival leads to the most entertaining of ramifications. When they learned that Sir Waldo was coming, the village gentry were thrown into a flurry. The famed sportsman himself! Heir to an uncounted fortune, and a leader of London society! The local youths idolized “the Nonesuch”; the fathers disapproved; and the mothers and daughters saw him as the most eligible–and elusive–man in the kingdom.

While there, he meets Tiffany Wield, a positively dazzling young heiress who is entirely selfish and possessed of a frightful temper, as well as her far more elegant companion-governess. Twenty-eight year old Ancilla Trent had put away any and all thoughts of romance when she became a governess, and at first she could only be amused at the fuss over Sir Waldo. Can Sir Waldo convince the practical Miss Trent that it is not above her station as a governess to fall in love with him?

This is one of her novels where the heroine is a bit older (26 as opposed to 18) and sensible, which I prefer to the young flighty heroines. It has all the things that makes a Heyer novel so good; regency slang, beautiful heiresses, worried mothers, and beautiful manners.

A review

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February 7, 2023 · 1:35 pm

I am, I am, I am – Maggie O’Farrell

I am, I am, I am – Maggie O’Farrell

I do like books by Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet was one of my favourite books of 2020. This was a christmas present and I was very keen to read it.

Here’s he blurb …

I Am, I Am, I Am is Maggie O’Farrell’s astonishing memoir of the near-death experiences that have punctuated and defined her life. The childhood illness that left her bedridden for a year, which she was not expected to survive. A teenage yearning to escape that nearly ended in disaster. An encounter with a disturbed man on a remote path. And, most terrifying of all, an ongoing, daily struggle to protect her daughter–for whom this book was written–from a condition that leaves her unimaginably vulnerable to life’s myriad dangers.

Seventeen discrete encounters with Maggie at different ages, in different locations, reveal a whole life in a series of tense, visceral snapshots. In taut prose that vibrates with electricity and restrained emotion, O’Farrell captures the perils running just beneath the surface, and illuminates the preciousness, beauty, and mysteries of life itself.

This was a very interesting way to write a memoir. She had so many brushes with death and not just through accident or illness, she met people who meant her harm. The majority of the chapters (but not all) are about her brushes with death; illness as a child, near drownings, weird men on paths while hiking, child birth, etc. She writes extremely movingly about miscarriage and her daughter’s severe allergies.

It’s very easy to read and you don’t need to read it all at once, you could just do a chapter every now and then.

A review

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February 6, 2023 · 3:07 pm

A Wreath for the Enemy – Pamela Frankau

A Wreath for the Enemy – Pamela Frankau

I am not sure where I first heard of this novel, Back listed podcast maybe? Anyway, I only took one paper book and my Kindle on holiday with me. So once I had finished the paper book I had to find something on my Kindle and this seemed appealing.

Here’s the blurb …

In my youth…I had an overwhelming passion to be like other people. Other people were a whole romantic race, miles beyond my reach. Not now. I don’t really thnk that they exist, except in the eye of the beholder.’ When Penelope Wells, precocious daughter of a poet, meets the well-behaved middle-class Bradley children, it is love at first sight. But their parents are horrified by the Wells’ establishment- a distinctly bohemian hotel on the French Riviera- and the friendship ends in tears. Out of these childhood betrayals grow Penelope, in love with an elusive ideal of order and calm, and Don Bradley, in rebellion against the phillistine values of his parents. Compellingly told in a series of first-person narratives, their stories involve them with the Duchess, painted and outre; the crippled genius Crusoe; Crusoe’s brother Livesey, and the eccentric Cara, whose brittle and chaotic life collides explosively with Penelope’s.

It was really good. It’s like I Capture the Castle and Tender is the Night, quite the revelation I don’t know why I didn’t read it earlier (and it’s ridiculously cheap on Kindle).

A review

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February 2, 2023 · 2:20 pm

The No Show – Beth O’Leary

The No Show – Beth O’Leary

This was a Christmas present and I read while on holiday.

Here’s the blurb …

Siobhan is a quick-tempered life coach with way too much on her plate. Miranda is a tree surgeon used to being treated as just one of the guys on the job. Jane is a soft-spoken volunteer for the local charity shop with zero sense of self-worth.

These three women are strangers who have only one thing in common: They’ve all been stood up on the same day, the very worst day to be stood up–Valentine’s Day. And, unbeknownst to them, they’ve all been stood up by the same man.

Once they’ve each forgiven him for standing them up, they let him back into their lives and are in serious danger of falling in love with a man who seems to have not just one or two but three women on the go….

Is there more to him than meets the eye? And will they each untangle the truth before they all get their hearts broken?

This is a romance novel (there is a happy ending), but not your ordinary romance novel. It has a very interesting structure, which I won’t describe here because I don’t want to spoil it for anyone. If you like clever, witty romance novels, then you will appreciate this novel.

A review

https://www.npr.org/2022/05/01/1095799689/the-no-show-is-an-adventure-in-romantic-storytelling

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January 23, 2023 · 2:45 pm

The Netanyahus – Joshua Cohen

The Netanyahus – Joshua Cohen

A dear friend gave me this book for chirstmas. I didn’t know anything about it all, and I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I loved it.

Corbin College, not-quite-upstate New York, winter 1959-1960: Ruben Blum, a Jewish historian – but not an historian of the Jews – is co-opted onto a hiring committee to review the application of an exiled Israeli scholar specializing in the Spanish Inquisition. When Benzion Netanyahu shows up for an interview, family unexpectedly in tow, Blum plays the reluctant host, to guests who proceed to lay waste to his American complacencies. Mixing fiction with non-fiction, the campus novel with the lecture, THE NETANYAHUS is a wildly inventive, genre-bending comedy of blending, identity, and politics – ‘An Account of A Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Incident in the History of a Very Famous Family’ that finds Joshua Cohen at the height of his powers.

It’s first person narration (which I always like) and the language is rich, I had to stop and look words up all the time. Also, I was intrigued by jewish history; was the Spanish Inquisition lead by the monarchy and not the church to reduce the power of the nobles? I even looked on Wikipedia to find out how Israel was formed after World War Two.

A review

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January 16, 2023 · 4:50 pm

Love Marriage – Monica Ali

Love Marriage – Monica Ali

At first, for some reason, I wasn’t that keen on reading this one and then a friend, whose taste aligns with mine, suggested it. And I am glad because I really enjoyed it.

Here’s the blurb …

In present-day London, Yasmin Ghorami is twenty-six, in training to be a doctor (like her Indian-born father), and engaged to the charismatic, upper-class Joe Sangster, whose formidable mother, Harriet, is a famous feminist. The gulf between families is vast. So, too, is the gulf in sexual experience between Yasmin and Joe.

As the wedding day draws near, misunderstandings, infidelities, and long-held secrets upend both Yasmin’s relationship and that of her parents, a “love marriage,” according to the family lore that Yasmin has believed all her life.

A gloriously acute observer of class, sexual mores, and the mysteries of the human heart, Monica Ali has written a “riveting” (BookPage, starred review) social comedy and a moving, revelatory story of two cultures, two families, and two people trying to understand one another that’s “sure to please Ali’s fans and win some new ones” (Publishers Weekly).

It’s about human connection and relationships in all their different forms; mothers and sons, fathers and daughters, mothers and daughters, siblings, friends, lovers, colleagues and along the way there is casual racism and overview of the failures of the NHS, Islamophobia and psychotherapy.

It’s beautifully written, very easy to read. The characters are nuanced; troubled, selfish, kind, generous, unhappy and happy.

A review

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