When I say it’s been an average month I’m NOT referring to the quality of the books I’ve read! No, I’m referring to the quantity. I average seven or eight books a month. So this month is ……….average! What is not average is the number of blog posts I've written. Counting this one - just two. 😞Clearly, it isn't because I'm not reading books. I just don't seem to be reviewing many. Perhaps my New Years resolution should be to up my game regardless of whether anyone reads them or not. Anyway..... to this months books......
First up is Georgia Spearing’s Soul. I had the pleasure of meeting this exciting young writer at my local bookshop. This was a book that I didn’t feel I read as much as experienced. It’s a very emotional book for a start. It put me in mind of several things.
One it was very much like navigating a dreamworld, there were elements that made me think of my own dreams, that strange netherworld where people meander in and out and topography’s change and you have no say in it.
Secondly, there were some passages that reminded me of some of those guided meditations where you are led into some deeply symbolic and spiritual landscapes. And finally, it took me back to the 80s; before Windows and before MacBooks, when computer games were so much less sophisticated than they are now. I remember loading the game data into the machine (a Sinclair Spectrum, okay so I’m old!) via a cassette player and it took ages! Because the graphics were limited the role-playing games relied on words and there were passages in this book which reminded me of those. And then, if you were playing the game, you’d be given a number of options to choose from which would determine the outcome and the next path that you took. And the main character, Dee, passes through doors which seem to dictate the course of her soul journey, for that is how I saw the story, someone mining the very depths of her soul to find the truths of her life and its outcomes. It’s almost a fictional self-help book!
Soul is the first in the Soulbound Trilogy. And Dee’s journey takes her through a labyrinth of doors and mirrors that reflect her life and open pathways in her heart and mind that help her to understand so much of her previous life AND understand the people closest to her. Luke, her lover and her soul mate is her Holy Grail in this fantasy romance that isn’t afraid to speak the truth and confront life changing issues. It’s a remarkable achievement for a debut novel. And I understand, having met the author recently, that Book Two in the series looks at events from Luke’s perspective. It’s an exciting prospect.
Next was Kate Atkinson’s Normal Rules Don’t Apply. I love Atkinson’s writing. I love her diversity. This book is a collection of short stories. Some with recurring characters and some linked in some way or another to previous stories. It was an absolute delight to read. The stories themselves were quirky and with unpredictable outcomes. They are imaginative and somehow otherworldly. So entertaining.
JP Delaney’s The New Wife was my only library book this month I’m ashamed to say. I have some reserved but I’m waiting on them to come to my local library. I used to be sent proofs and arcs of Delaney’s books back in the day. I loved them. Full of unsettling twists, unreliable narrators and psychological thrills. This one was apparently influenced by Du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel. As always with his books I couldn’t put it down until I found out exactly what happened.
With a proliferation of detective duos in the crime genre it’s refreshing for an author to come up with a slightly different slant. Simon Mason’s is to give his two detectives the same surname but diametrically opposed personalities! A Voice in the Night is the fourth in the series and won’t be published until January so I’m sitting on my review until then. But….. it’s a corker! The two Wilkins have a new boss to answer to and she seems to have their measure.
Raising Hare was shortlisted for the Waterstone Book of the Year and just this week has been announced as the Hay Festival Book of the Year. And just this week too, I met Chloe Dalton when she spoke about the book at my local bookshop. She is a delight and so is the book. It’s not often that you can say a non-fiction book that he is unputdownable, but I really couldn’t stop reading this. It’s beautifully written. It’s an account of how a writer and political advisor found an abandoned leveret during lockdown and hand reared the baby hare. I’m one of those people who has never seen a hare in the wild. I’ve always wanted to, and this book has made me want to all the more. I’ve learned so much about these incredible creatures. What I also loved about the book was how transformative the experience has been for the writer. I’m always happy when people find a way to engage fully with the natural world.
Even though my TBR shelves are heaving and groaning under the weight of their numerous tomes I still browse in the charity shop bookshelves. I found this little book, AJ Pearce’s Dear Mrs. Bird. I’d heard of it but when I started tor mead it I thought I might have confused it with something else because it wasn’t what I was expecting. Nevertheless I read it and was thoroughly entertained by this tale of women and war and problems. It was amusing in places but also heartbreaking as one might expect with a war story.
I bought Miranda Hart’s I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest with You at my local bookshop on National Bookshop Day. It was very much an impulse buy, an ‘of the moment’ purchase. Had I not been caught up in the day I might not have bought it, reserved it at the library possibly. It reads like a self-help book and perhaps that was the intent. There were some comic moments. My favourite was when Miranda admitted that she had thought Dua Lipa was a family car !
Samantha Harvey’s Orbital won the Booker Prize this year and this was another impulse buy at the bookshop and I had actually reserved it at the library! It’s a deceptively slender volume but it exerts a power that befits a work twice its size. A team of six astronauts make a journey around the earth, philosophising, meditating and commenting upon the very essence of life on earth. It is quite beautiful.
