Read The Unwilding by Mariana Kemp ★★★★★📚
An excellent artist as monster, but looking at the fallout for other characters more than the monster himself. Two main narrators, the possibility of some unreliability, time & location change make for a captivating read.
Category Archives: Book
Read: Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout ★★★★☆ 📚
Back reading Elizabeth Strout after a couple of years break. She brings together lots of characters from different books. Olive is still my favourite. The first half of this was a bit too diffuse & simple, but somehow pulled it together so that the second half felt very much in the Olive vein.
Read: In Ascension by Martin MacInnes ★★★★★ 📚
My goodness what an interesting book, from biology to spaceflight with climate change & corporate greed hanging over everything. Plenty of mystery, some from my own lack of knowledge some written in (or out).
Turtles:
Lifting the bulk from below, tipping forward, using the momentum of the minor collapse as a motive force, a means of going on.
Read: The Lying Room by Nicki French ★★★☆☆
As readably as usual, but I didn’t really get engaged with the characters at all.
Read: The Divorcees by Rowan Beaird ★★★★★
The fifties in a “divorce ranch” in Reno. I did not expect to love this, but I did. Felt a bit like a B&W movie. A feeling of things going awry builds. Great characters, interesting ‘history’ & some surprises.
Read Midnight & Blue by Ian Rankin ★★★★☆ 📚
Given the unlikely idea of old Rebus in jail. I was surprised that this recent one kept me interested & engaged.
Read: Lone Wolf by Adam Weymouth ★★★★★ 📚
In 2023 there were sixteen fatal dog attacks in the UK alone, not to mention the approximately 15,000 sheep killed by dogs off the leash each year.
In 2022 The author follows the 2012, 1200 mile journey of a radio collared wolf from Slovenia to Italy. The book covers a lot of ground too, climate change, human migration, politics & the natural history, conservation & controversy of wolves in Europe.
Read Highway Thirteen by Fiona Mcfarlane ★★★★★ 📚
A series of stories surrounding a serial killer’s crime that is never fully described. Instead the tangential echos and sources of the crime are explored.
Read Show Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld ★★★★☆📚
Midlife stories from mostly well educated, well off American (USA) women. Often looking back as well as moving forward. Despite being set in such a different world, I was both absorbed & entertained.
I might have enjoyed it even more if I had staked time between the stories.
Read: Has anyone seen Charlotte Salter? By Nicki French ★★★★☆ 📚
30 years cold case, investigative podcast, police procedural and a twisting plot in which I never got near to guessing.