Category Archives: Book

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Read: Sanshirō by Natsume Sōseki ★★★★ 📚

Why? Well, look at it this way. Your head is alive, but if you seal it up inside dead classes, you're lost. Take it outside and get the wind into it. Riding the streetcar is not the only way to get satisfaction, of course, but it's the first step, and the easiest.

At the turn into the 20th century country boy Sanshirō goes to university in Tokyo. Mixes with crowd interested in the west, literature, art & science. Very much out of his depth as he drifts through lectures & relationships.

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Read: Lean Stand Fall by Jon McGregor ★★★★★ 📚

‘ You want, Robert said, ‘you want, wok?’ He was leaning towards Wiktor and Rachel, his voice loud and clear. Wok, wok, you want to work again?” Wiktor and the dancers all looked at him and shrugged once more, and Robert shrugged in return. He looked very pleased with himself.

Peter straightened his tie, and started speaking.

‘Will you wade with me in the water now Wiktor, will you wade in to your waist and wait while the waves rise higher and all around and we will lift we will wash and water the water is all around and up upon your shoulders now?’

They shrugged, and they laughed, and they came to a standstill.

Starts with a gripping description of an Antarctic disaster. Ends with an equally gripping depiction of a series of sessions of aphasia self help group. Beautiful book. Communication, language & its loss, unexpected changes in life & relationships.

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Read: The Perfect Golden Circle by Benjamin Myers ★★★★ 📚

The Battle was the Battle of the Beanfield in 1985, at which Redbone was a more than willing partici-pant, and a subject that Calvert has frequently indulged his friend in over the intervening years but which he has little desire to hear repeated now, or indeed ever again, for the account is well worn and the telling of it is like retreading a desire path through the vegetation of Redbone’s semi-fictionalised personal history.
Calvert has long suspected that his friend somehow equates that June afternoon with some of the blood-and mud-flecked battles that he himself was a part of in South Georgia, when of course they are incomparable.

1989 over a summer 2 very different misfits spend 10 nights creating crop circles while lost in their own thoughts about society, the natural world, war & much more. A boys book perhaps, but an enjoyable one.

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Read: The Cut Up by Louise Welsh ★★★★ 📚

Cat slipped off her jacket. Her arms were decorated with tattoos not yet dense enough to be considered sleeves but numerous enough to declare commitment. She saw me clocking them and gave me a want-to-make-something-of-it stare.

Another crime novel about Rilke, an auctioneer, Glaswegian & nice take on the compromised but conscience driven hero in the criminal borderlands. The novel chases along at a great rate. Especially enjoyed the Glasgow setting. Lots of places I know.

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Read: The Spy and The Traitor by Ben Macintyre ★★★★ 📚

On the morning of 4 July, a dishevelled couple in tattered clothes could be seen lounging aimlessly at the end of Victoria Road, Coulsdon, in the South London suburbs. One was Simon Brown, of P5, MI6's head of Soviet bloc operations; the other was Veronica Price, the architect of Gordievsky's escape plan. A Home Counties creature from her pearls to her twinset, Price was not suited to this sort of subterfuge. 'I've borrowed the char's hat,' she announced, as they climbed into their disguises.

I've not read much spy fiction but this true story of a KGB man who betrayed Russia & helped cool Cold War tensions only to be first caught & then escape from the USSR to Britain was quite a trip.

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Read: The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng ★★★★★ 📚

Somerset Maugham is collecting material in Malaysia, visiting an old friend & his wife. Layers: a murder, affairs & Sun Yat Sen gathering funds for revolution. Details & the unfolding of all sorts of complexity of characters, relationships & situations involved me completely.

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Read: Watershead by Percival Everett ★★★ 📚

Geologist, Robert, becomes involved with fictional Native Americans exposing pollution plot. Mixed in with quotes about geology & legal treaties. Details of Robert childhood & his families involvement with the Black Panthers fits well with the Plata tribe fight for water rights. His awful relationship with a 'mad' girlfriend less so.

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Read: Spring by Ali Smith ★★★★★ 📚

It is, she says. You’re right. We are a fairy story. We’re a folk tale. I don’t mean to sound in the least fey. Those stories are deeply serious, all about transformation. How we’re changed by things. Or made to change. Or have to learn to change. And that’s what we’re working on, change. We’re serious, too. She pours him another whisky…

Rilke & Katherine Mansfield appear along the artist Tacita Dean. The declines of television & our treatment of refugees. A cast of characters include a magical 12 year old refugee, an old TV director with an imaginary daughter & a worker at an immigration centre. Rabbit holes galore. Finally a we bit of springlike hope.

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Read: Trespasses by Louise Kennedy ★★★★ 📚

Northern Ireland 1975 Cushla young RC teacher starts an affair with a Married Protestant Lawyer & gets mixed up with a mixed family of a pupil. Spent the whole book tensed against the expected end.

While in Dublin:

They walked up Grafton Street. Buskers were playing guitars, huddles of youths standing about watching them.
Something was wrong. She looked up and down the street and didn’t know what it was until she was in the doorway of Switzers, sliding her handbag off her shoulder and holding it open. Michael laughed. You’re not in Kansas any more, he said.

I remember in the 70s my aunt on a visit to Glasgow going up to the security guard in M&S & opening her handbag.