Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This was written in 1915 and is an account of three male explorers discovering a land entirely composed of women. With no plot to speak of, and some dreadful writing, it’s pretty much just an exposition of how lovely an all female world would be. I’d give it a miss if I were you!
Jar City by Arnaldur Indriðason
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’ve been challenging myself to read some new authors this year. I found the idea on a group on Goodreads to read authors with surnames starting with each letter of the alphabet. It sounded like a good idea and so far has produced a few good additions to my reading and a few rubbish ones. About what I expected. I’ll only read the one book by the rubbish ones and will be back for plenty more from the good ones (at least Tracy Chevalier, Robert Edric and Helen Garner so far). I had Arnaldur Indriðason bookmarked for the “I” slot in my challenge and I’m pleased to say that his name is going on the “good, try again” list.
This is a darkish police detective novel set in Reykjavík, Iceland. It’s the first one published in English but not the first of the series. The reader is somewhat thrown into the personal life of the main character, Erlander, without much back story – that’s fine. I find with translated works it takes me a while to forget that I’m reading a translation. I wonder if the author would really have picked that word or phrasing in English all the time. I have no knowledge of how translators work, I’m sure they are perfectly competent, I just somehow don’t trust them at first. After a while though I got absorbed in the story and forgot to look for holes in the language. Which is how it should be.
The plot here is deeper than it seemed at first and not as predictable as I thought it might be. The book is worthy of a wider audience beyond Iceland and I will certainly be reading the next installment.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I liked MJ Hyland’s first two books a lot and am surprised how long it’s taken me to discover this one. It moves at what would be a slow pace if it wasn’t so beautifully written that it feels more like an elegant dance.
The only thing I can fault it for is moving that bit too slowly at first that, having not read the blurb or anything about the book, I put it down shortly before the pivotal moment at the end of part one and didn’t get back to it for a week. Once I got to that point it was practically unputdownable despite the fact that it couldn’t really be said to speed up.
I love the title, makes no sense until you read the story, then it makes perfect sense.
After three great reads Hyland’s next book will be a serious contender for buying in hardback.
The Risk of Darkness by Susan Hill
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Another really good book in an excellent series, this is the third. Definitely a middle of the series book though and not the place to start. It continues a story begun in the previous book and more or less ties it up. It doesn’t answer everything but I’m quite happy with it anyway.
Good, and I will keep reading. Not much more to say really!
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I think I should probably give up on thrillers.
Oooooh, something bad is going to happen. Oh, no. It’s ok, not yet.
Right, something bad is going to happen now! No, that’s alright, nothing bad this time.
This time though something bad really is happening… Oooops no, not actually that bad.
Repeat for forty-odd chapters.
I may be shortchanging the book, and it did have some decent writing and some good characters. I had no trouble in believing in the characters. I just never believed anything was actually going to happen to the central character.
If you don’t see the twist coming then it might be a surprise – I don’t usually mind seeing the twist from a hundred pages away but this time I did as I didn’t think the book had much else to offer.
So yes, it’s probably just that I should give up on thrillers.
The Spare Room by Helen Garner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A tale of one friend caring for another friend who is dying of cancer doesn’t sound like much of a page turning novel, but it is. Nicola travels from Sydney to Melbourne to stay in Helen’s spare room and get treatment from a new clinic. The relationship between them leaps from close to strained and back again as they both deal with the situation. Helen thinks the treatment Nicola is receiving is pure quackery, Nicola doesn’t want to face the fact that she’s going to die. Helen is up all night helping Nicola out, Nicola claims she doesn’t need nursing. It’s a great little book with a good mix of sad and happy parts. Good exploration of friendship and caring.
A couple of things that seemed off to me: I find it a bit creepy when authors use their own name for characters – I don’t mind if fiction is drawn from autobiography and have no idea if that’s the case here or not – I just find it a bit weird. Of all the names out there couldn’t they pick another? It makes me think there is some meaning to using their own name and that I’m missing something. And I found the end of the book a bit rushed; although I could see why the author had finished it as she did I was left wanting some more. Despite that I do appreciate the brevity – it’s the kind of book where you get to realise things for yourself, the author doesn’t feel the need to tell you the same thing over and over again.
I’d recommend it.
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is the 27th Sharon McCone book apparently! I started reading them in about 1995 when they were published by the Women’s Press (who published stacks of underrated female authors and are now defunct as far as I can tell) and the earliest books were getting on for twenty years old then. I’ve read the last seven or eight in hardback and each time I brace myself to be disappointed, because there’s no way Muller can keep up the quality for that long is there?
Once again I’m pleased to report that Muller & McCone are still going strong. Of course there is variation in quality between the books and this isn’t one of the top class ones but it’s not at all bad. McCone is recovering from the debilitating problems she had in the last book. The plot here did feel rather like things that had happened in the series before – I’d quite like there to be a book with a smaller scale mystery again, something that doesn’t involve the US government gone bad – but it didn’t feel like a rehash or like Muller had run out of steam.
I’ve said before that one of the things I like about long series is checking in with all the old friends you’ve made and seeing what they are up to now. This book is good for that because it’s written as an ensemble piece with sections alternating between long term characters like Sharon’s husband Hy, office manager Ted, colleagues Adah & Craig etc. But, unlike some series I could mention, all the little catching up details of the in-book universe don’t overwhelm the main story. And I’m pleased that, again unlike some other authors, Muller hasn’t felt the need to start writing huge blockbuster length books when she’s great at writing tight well plotted mysteries.
If you’re new to this series then this probably isn’t the place you ought to start, but I don’t think a newcomer would feel too much adrift in a sea of past remembrances here, which is good.
I’m looking forward to the 28th book already.
The Hundred and Ninety-Nine Steps by Michel Faber
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I didn’t realise how short this book was when I bought it. (It was only £1 in a Kindle sale though so I don’t feel too shortchanged!) The print copy is only just over 100 pages I think, and I flew through this in a fraction of a lazy afternoon.
I bought it because I know the setting, the steps up to the abbey at Whitby, well and it sounded intriguing. It’s short but perfectly formed and I wouldn’t have minded spending a lot longer with the characters, but this worked nicely. I’ll look out for more by the author.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This was great! I’m really pleased it’s the first part of a trilogy and I get to read the second two installments in the series. I just hope they are as high quality as this.
It’s a PI novel, set in the internet age, in Hull, an industrial city in the north of England with nothing much to recommend it. Leo Rivers gets involved in the case of Nicola Bishop, a fourteen year old, who went missing five years ago at the behest of her father. The man who confessed to her murder was convicted of another murder but nothing was ever proved about Nicola’s death.
The book is both well written and well plotted. I don’t want to give away too much about how the story falls into place other than to say that everything is set up just right. This is well worth a read.
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I wish I liked science fiction! I like science and fiction but the combination of the two rarely works out for me. I do keep trying though. I tried this book because I have, in the past, been an avid reader of Cory Doctorow’s Boing Boing blog, and I like his Guardian columns on digital rights, and I basically agree with most of what he says.
This book has tons of interesting future technology ideas in it. The main story is about creating objects with 3d printers and the story contains lots of other assays into the future of economics, biotechnology, mass media, fitness, all kinds of stuff. However it just didn’t work for me. I just got fed up with it all. There was nothing much wrong with the plot, and I thought the central characters were well written – especially in the later parts of the book after more time had passed and the relationships between them changed. Just overall the book wasn’t my cup of tea.
LibraryThing tells me “LibraryThing thinks you probably won’t like Makers (prediction confidence: high)” and it was about right I’m afraid.
Theme: DePo Square by Derek Powazek, generally messed up by Kirsty Darbyshire.
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