nocto

Just the kind of thing I was in the mood for. Well written, plotful, good characters and not too long. Not too long is probably pushing the boundaries of definition actually, it's a really short book. But that makes it better rather than seeming like a half arsed attempt at stretching a short story into novel. Like the author knew just exactly how much to put in to tell the story and didn't add anything else just for the hell of it.

I don't want to mention the plot at all - it didn't go where I was expecting it to go but after finishing it I can't imagine how I ever thought it was going anywhere else.

Oh, and really good, highly recommended. Future classic, quite possibly. And probably the only book I've ever read that mentions websites by name and it doesn't feel like the author's just trying to seem hip and trendy.

"Well," Riley said, "let's say I go way beyond Wikipedia."

Quite.

Purchased on 1st December 2009.

This tale of Andrew Taylor's hasn't yet been reissued like other of his earlier works. I tracked down a secondhand copy to give it a try. I can see why it hasn't made a reissue as it's not as mystery based as his other work. I enjoyed it all the same.

Hugh is a young teenager in London, somewhere before the start of the second world war and he's just been expelled from school. His bullying father is recruited to do some kind of Secret Service mission to Prague and ends up taking Hugh with him. The mission is never going to succeed and Hugh ends up stuck in Prague with a false identity while his awful father goes home happily without him. It's a good start to a story and I thought it was going to be more of a children's book for a while, but it isn't.

The story does go a bit all over the place, it doesn't fit as a mystery, or as a spy story but nor is it not one of those. I wouldn't particularly recommend it to anyone as Taylor's written lots of good books that you should read first, but I did enjoy this one all the same.

Purchased on 1st December 2009.

It seems like a good omen to start a new year, and a new decade, with a book I really enjoyed reading. It took me a while to get into the story as it seemed to ramble around a bit much to start with but I loved it once I had my head around it and am looking forward to reading the later two books in the trilogy.

Purchased on 10th December 2009.

A so-so entry in one of my favourite series over the long term. I didn't like the central premise of the book at all though I'll see what happens after this book to judge that properly. I did like seeing more of the surrounding characters of the series though. Decent really I suppose, there's just been better.

Purchased on 30th November 1999.

Slightly surreal, dark tale about a family of orphaned children. I loved it. Enchanting is a good word to describe it. I didn't realise it was McEwan's first book - I like it better than some of the later stuff and it's very well polished.

Purchased on 1st November 2009.

One of the few chick-lit authors I've ever managed to read. Decent writing and fleshed out central characters make good light entertainment.

Borrowed.

A copy of this book is available on BookMooch.

This is billed as an antidote to self help books and it's basically full of self help type techniques that have actual scientific research to back them up. I've never really read a self help book as I suspect them to be full of a load of made up nonsense and/or to point things out that are basic common sense. This either makes me a bad audience for this book, or maybe a good one, I can't decide. It's possibly aimed at both people who don't read self help books and those who read too much of them; cunning marketing idea anyway.

I didn't find it hugely enlightening but I was pleased to find that some of the techniques I've uncovered on my own over the years actually work, and some of the things I've suspected are baloney - actually are. Interesting and quick read, I don't remember having any big disagreements with the author while reading.

Borrowed.

Nevil Shute was a favourite of mine as a teenager when I found books like Requiem for a Wren & A Town Like Alice lurking on my parents bookshelves. I've been disappointed by reading other Shute books as as adult but had never read this one and it's reissue as a "Vintage Classic" was enough to make me try it.

The setting is post nuclear war Australia with the northern hemisphere wiped out and radiation sickness slowly creeping down to wipe out the southern hemisphere too. As is usual in Shute's books middle class naval types carry on with their everyday lives in strange circumstances.

I'm not sure whether it's really an enduring classic of literature, but it is a good yarn, rather dated but probably better for it. I found it a good read and it made me cry a lot.

Purchased on 1st November 2009.

I like Tim Harford's books much better than his Freakonomics colleagues/competitors. Though I can't remember either book in detail I found this a good in depth read with plenty of detail and explanation. Learnt a lot.

Borrowed.

I loved this. The writing is fabulous - full of sentences that make you sit back and marvel at their ingenuity and the images that they conjure up.

The chapters of the book flip between four different viewpoints. Each is set in a different place and time stays tightly with a single character and each is very individually written with no chance of a reader muddling up the writing - the headings announcing which character was in this chapter were totally superfluous. The distinctive voices were in first, third and even second person. Second person can be really tedious to read but here it was my favourite part of the book as it seemed to be rationed out just nicely. The settings varied from 1960s to the present day and included London, Italy and Cumbria. On the whole the book was well varied but early in the story I found the changes difficult to keep track of - though it wasn't long before I was hooked.

This is definitely a literary novel and not one driven by plot devices and I enjoyed the fact that the links between the four strands of the story weren't pointed out time and time again. I liked coming across small pieces of the jigsaw in the prose and I'm sure that there were plenty of details that I missed.

The book takes in, as you'd expect from the title, death, art and dying artists. Which might make it sound pretty bleak but it's a book full of light, full of interesting snippets of life and well worth a read.

Purchased on 4th October 2009.