Read: The Wakes by Dianne Yarwood ★★★★ 📚
Reading this between two funerals here. A comic novel set over several funerals in Australia. Covering catering, food, death break ups and new relationships. Good fun.
Category Archives: Book
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.
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.
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.
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.
Read: Sandwich by Catherine Newman ★★★ 📚
3 Generation family holiday week on Cape Cod. A mix of comedy & more serious matters. Some LOL. Most of the serious was around termination & miscarriage. A bit of holocaust history added it seemed, to me, too much for the book to carry.
Read: Hagstone by Sinéad Gleeson ★★★ 📚
Last summer there was a rogue patch of phosphorescence at Cloughkeel beach, a psychedelic wreath. Tonight, in the dark swell there is only the sound of a lone whale, and Danu above. How lonely to be always reaching out for someone who isn’t there.
An artist living on the island she was born on. Lots of intriguing ideas: the descriptions of her art work; a weird sound that not everyone hears; a colony of women who have left the world; a local lover; a dead whale & a visiting film star. Not all quite tied up.
Read: The Dog Stars by Peter Heller ★★★ 📚
This little bend of smooth stones, the leaning cliffs. The smell of spruce. The small cutthroat making quiet rings in the black water of a pool. This little bend of smooth stones, the leaning cliffs. The smell of spruce. The small cutthroat making quiet rings in the black water of a pool.
Post apocalyptic, few survivors left, mostly killing each other. The main character loves fishing & the outdoors, handy skills to have except all the trout died too. The descriptions of what is left & what has been lost are poetic. Mixed with adventure, murderous action & brutality in a fractured storyline without much punctuation, not in a bad way.
Read: Waging Heavy Peace by Neil Young ★★★★ 📚
I do enjoy writing, and I hope someone gets something interesting out of this book. I already have. Now, If I ever have to write a book that is not about me, I may be totally stumped and have writer's block. We will see. Writing is very convenient, has a low expense and is a great way to pass the time. I highly recommend it to any old rocker who is out of cash and doesn't know what to do next.
Reads almost as it has been run right out with any editing. Jumps from topic to topic & across times, with occasional words to the reader. Follows a wide range of the author's experiences obsessions in a somehow really engaging way.
Read: One day, everyone will have always been against this by Omar El Akkad ★★★★★ 📚
Clearly, logically & beautifully written. I started collecting some of the most powerful quotes, but there is little that could be skipped. The focus on children, the author's own & those in Gaza, is so important.