Read: Scabby Queen by Kirstin Innes ★★★★☆ 📚
Multi narrator life story of Clio, Scottish singer & activist. Starts at her end in 2018. Revisiting most of the narrators and scenes revels more & more about all the characters.
Category Archives: Book
The Heartbeat of Trees
Read: The Heartbeat of Trees: Embracing Our Ancient Bond with Forests and Nature
by Peter Wohlleben, Jane Billinghurst(Translator)
★★★★☆ 📚
New science about trees back up with references mixed with personal rumination and experiences. The good trees do for us and the planet and the bad we do to them.
Some really fascinating snippets about tree biology too:
The trick to living another couple of decades or even centuries is to compost yourself. Fungi that enter via a wound in the tree convert the wood into a sort of humus as they eat their way through the tree, creating debris that is soft, crumbly, and moist. Now the tree can grow inner roots into this “soil” and reabsorb nutrients it stored in earlier years in its growth rings.
Read: Luckenbooth by Jenni Fagan ★★★☆☆ 📚
A novel Maddox up of short stories over 100 years linked by a Edinburgh tenement. Gothic, ghosts, queer, beat, crime and more. Some seemed to flow for me better than others. Probably best read in fewer sessions than I did.
Pew by Catherine Lacey
Read: Pew by Catherine Lacey ★★★★☆ 📚
The main character has little memory and their sex, colour, age and origin are all in doubt. They are discovered in church and meet the locals, good folks to their own thinking, without talking Pew revels them to us. We never find out about Pew and the ending is ambiguous.
But we’ve always been fair to people according to what the definition of fair was at the time
The book begins with a quote from The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas – which I’ve not read for a long time.
Burning Your Own
Read: Burning Your Own by Glenn Patterson ★★★★☆ 📚 1969, Mal is 10. I’d have been 11. Mal lives in a estate in Northern Ireland. Great, horrible, atmosphere. Football with his pals and building bonfires with civil rights and politics in the background.
Read: Cunning Women: A feminist tale of forbidden love after the witch trials by Elizabeth Lee ★★★☆☆ 📚 I enjoyed this well enough, unlikely plot, felt a bit like a young adult book.
The Golden Rule by Amanda Craig
Read: The Golden Rule by Amanda Craig ★★★☆☆ 📚 a take on “Strangers on a Train”. This kept me turning the pages but spelled things out a bit too much. I also guessed what was going on even before the big hint.
August by Callan Wink
Read: August by Callan Wink ★★★☆☆ 📚This was a nice change from the daily introspective books I’ve been reading. August, the main character says little and doesn’t seem to think much. The sensitive silent type. I enjoyed reading about his mum more.
Jo Baker Offcomer
Read: Jo Baker Offcomer ★★★☆☆ 📚
a bit to queasy for me, young woman who is in a bad situation cutting herself with a blade and stupid choices.
I Give It to You by Valerie Martin
I Give It to You by Valerie Martin ★★★★☆ 📚
Set in Italy, mix of World War II history and the story of the story. Echos of The Leopard with the decline of the land owning class. More than one level of betrayal.