An inner monologue, recently: \u201coh! I have a blog! I should write something. But the most exciting thing that happened this year isn\u2019t really bloggable yet; the second-most exciting thing was the wedding in England of a very dear friend who would not want her wedding photos posted on the internet, and also that seems too long ago to write about now; and most of the other things that happened this year involve grants, and no-one wants to hear about that even though I did set a new department record by submitting six grants in the same week this week.<\/p>\n
I have read quite a lot of books, though. Maybe I\u2019ll blog some book reviews\u201d.<\/p>\n
(Yes, my inner monologues contain semi-colons).<\/p>\n
So, here you go! In no particular order, but now with ratings \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August<\/em>, by Claire North<\/a>. 10\/10<\/strong><\/p>\n This is one of the best books I\u2019ve read in a long time. I started it during my aforementioned trip to England, and could barely put it down. At one point I took it out of my bag to read during lunch in the caf\u00e9 in the British Museum, and an hour and a half later had to remind myself that I was surrounded by some of the most interesting objects in the world and could read the book some other time. It was a tough call though.<\/p>\n The eponymous Harry is born in the North of England between the two world wars, grows up poor, survives WWII, grows old, and dies\u2026 and then is born again. Same body, same time, same place, same life. And then again. And again. In his early lives Harry struggles to understand, seeking out answers in all the countries and religions of the world. In later lives, he learns to exploit the situation and meets some fellow travellers, called Ourobourans.<\/p>\n It\u2019s ever so cleverly done: Groundhog Day<\/em> meets The Time Traveller\u2019s Wife<\/em>, but better than both \u2013 whole lifetimes repeated instead of a single day, and concerning broad swathes of human history instead of one couple\u2019s love story. The meat of the story concerns Harry\u2019s attempts to prevent a fellow Ourobouran from destroying the world, but the real joy of the book lies in how cleverly North has worked out the logistics of how this kind of existence\u00a0would actually work<\/em>. For example, one device is that Ourobourans\u00a0can pass messages forwards and backwards in time. A young child visits a dying elder, giving them a message from the child\u2019s future that the elder can take back to the year of their own rebirth, so that they can find a dying elder during the childhood of their next life and send the message back even further. \u201cAt last, something new to talk about!\u201d, exclaims one such dying elder when he first receives the message of the end of the world.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve just started North\u2019s new book, Touch, <\/em>which I\u2019m really enjoying so far. Again, the logistics of having a rare kind of gift are explored in a delightfully clever way.<\/p>\n The Bone Clocks, <\/em>by David Mitchell<\/a>.<\/strong> 7.5\/10<\/strong><\/p>\n I think I’d have enjoyed this new book by the author of Cloud Atlas <\/em>more if I hadn\u2019t read it immediately after Harry August. <\/em>It contains a similar theme of a small community\u00a0of people who live multiple lives, except that they\u2019re reborn as different people in different places and times with each new life, but just wasn\u2019t as satisfying.<\/p>\n I really enjoyed the first half of the book, with its initial hints that something is not as it seems followed by a gradual unfolding of the nature of the mystery, and I also liked the final section, set in a dystopian post-apocalyptic future. However, the penultimate section spoiled the overall experience for me. There was a very sudden and jarring change of pace, with lots of breathless action interspersed with some long information dumps explaining what was happening. I enjoyed the slower, more gradual revelations\u00a0of the earlier chapters a lot more. It was as if Mitchell suddenly realized \u201ccrap, I\u2019d better explain some of this stuff before I can wrap up the rest of the story\u201d and then just sort of rushed through it. Great characters, good story, and some superb writing \u2013 shame about that one section though.<\/p>\n I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, <\/em>by Maya Angelou.<\/a> 7\/10<\/strong><\/p>\n OK so I\u2019m a bit dim sometimes. This was a book club pick, and I read more than half of it thinking it was a novel rather than an autobiography. I only realized my mistake after I complained to a friend that it was a bit disjointed and didn\u2019t really flow logically! Needless to say, I liked it better after the reason for that became clear (and after I read the part describing the drive back from Mexico, which was hilarious). There were still some unsatisfying parts \u2013 really, you lived in a junkyard with a bunch of feral kids for a few months and barely even mentioned it in passing? \u2013 but I did enjoy it, and I\u2019ve bought the next installment (but haven\u2019t read it yet).<\/p>\n The funniest part was at the book club meeting in Beth<\/a>\u2019s apartment. Each of the \u201cbook club discussion points\u201d that Beth found on the internet could have been a PhD thesis. One of them was something like \u201cto what extent do issues of race, gender, and class intersect in this book, and in that time period in American history in general?\u201d We laughed and laughed as Beth read down the list. We\u2019re not a very serious book club.<\/p>\n Longbourn, <\/em>by Jo Baker<\/a>. 7.5\/10<\/strong><\/p>\n A re-telling of the Pride and Prejudice <\/em>story, but from the point of view of the Bennett family\u2019s servants. The original story is seen in glimpses \u2013 oh, Mr. Collins has arrived! ooh, here comes Mr. Darcy to propose for the first time! \u2013 but the real action takes place downstairs, where the staff are scrubbing Miss Elizabeth\u2019s muddy petticoats and conducting romances of their own. Light and frothy (except for the chapters\u00a0set in the war that Mr. Wickham et al.<\/em> were supposed to be preparing for), and very enjoyable except for the less than kind take on Mr. Bennett (oh, Mr. Bennett, how could you?!).<\/p>\n We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, <\/em>by Karen Joy Fowler<\/a>. 5\/10<\/strong><\/p>\n Weird book. A friend of mine recommended it very enthusiastically when she was about halfway through, but her tone seemed to have changed when she\u2019d finished reading it and asked me if I was enjoying it. I was about halfway through it myself at that point and said that yes I was, very much \u2013 but then it all went wrong.<\/p>\n The first half is lots of fun, with a really interesting structure, but then it just gets sort of messy and frustrating (and preachy. Very preachy). The topic is animal experimentation, and the flip side point of view that \u201cthe lab in question has done great work on Parkinson’s \u2013 these are not easy questions\u201d is barely mentioned in passing. I ended up more annoyed than anything. The friend who recommended it agrees, and we both learned a valuable lesson about being sure to read the whole book before recommending anything to others!<\/p>\n Go Set a Watchman, <\/em>by Harper Lee<\/a>. 3.5\/10<\/strong><\/p>\n I avoided all the media hoopla about this book in an attempt to avoid spoilers. I was aware that there was some controversy over whether the book should have been published, but didn\u2019t know any of the details. I ended up wishing that I\u2019d paid more attention so I could have avoided reading this (and thus spared my book club from reading it, too \u2013 this was my most recent pick. Sorry, ladies). There were some good elements, but the pacing and voice were all over the place. The editor who said, \u201cI\u2019m not going to publish this, but you can obviously write and hey that back story sounds pretty interesting\u201d made the right call.<\/p>\n Us Conductors, <\/em>by Sean Michaels<\/a>. 8\/10<\/strong><\/p>\n I was slightly dubious about this book club pick, wondering how interesting the fictionalized version of the invention of the theremin could really be. But it was actually a very good read! The inventor himself, Lev Termen, didn\u2019t exactly make for the most charismatic and engaging character in literary history, but the book\u2019s very well and smoothly written and the settings and story are very interesting, especially after Termen\u00a0returns to the USSR. Definitely recommended.<\/p>\n How to Build a Girl, <\/em>by Caitlin Moran<\/a>. 8\/10<\/strong><\/p>\n This is a riot! A working class British teenager reinvents herself as hard drinking, hard partying music critic Dolly Wild and goes off on a hilarious crazy sex-fueled adventure \u2013 until it all goes horribly wrong. The only thing that spoiled it was that the author seemed to suddenly try to wring some kind of serious message out of it at the very last possible moment, when it might have worked better as pure frothy fun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An inner monologue, recently: \u201coh! I have a blog! I should write something. But the most exciting thing that happened this year isn\u2019t really bloggable yet; the second-most exciting thing was the wedding in England of a very dear friend … Continue reading