August 2026 Round Up

 Six of the books I have read this month have been library books. I am disproportionately proud of that statistic as I believe passionately in our need for libraries and if we don't use them we will lose them. It also has to do with my resolution to not buy books. I have faltered slightly there though. More on that later. 

First up this month was Erik Axl Sund's The Crow Girl. And yes, I did read it because of the TV adaptation! I am a sucker for that. I watch something on the television, find that it's been adapted from a novel and seek the novel out. This is fascinating because apparently it was originally three novels and it's written by two people. Not unexpectedly the book has far more depth than the TV show and I thoroughly enjoyed it. If you didn't see the TV show, it's a crime thriller investigated by Detective Jeanette Kihlberg. The themes are dark and quite disturbing - child abuse, psychological trauma, serial killing and murder - but it is gripping.

Second up was Rebecca Perry's May We Feed the King. Wow. Winner of the Waterstones debut fiction prize and long listed for the Booker. I can see why. It's literature as opposed to 'just' a story. It looks at our perception. of history, interpretations and disseminations, yet within the story it considers the nature of leadership and power. Perry is a poet and the prose is as expansive and as lyrical as you might expect from a versifier. I was mightily impressed. I loved the characters, the curator and the king too. 

But how do you follow that kind of read!? Well, you do so with a book called Careless People by Sarah Wynn Williams. It's non-fiction and is a memoir about her time working for Facebook, as it was then before it became Meta. And if you have a Facebook account and you read this book I'm pretty sure you'll want to delete it and have no more to do with them. I don't use Facebook. In many ways there was nothing here that surprised me. I've never had any respect for Mark Zuckerberg, he puts profits and engagement before people and his morals are questionable. What is kind of sad here is that the author joined the company full of ideals and positivity. She was let go. She had started to question the basic morals of the company's actions regarding posts that may or may not have got president Trump elected and may or may not have contributed to the Myanmar genocide and the atrocities that took place there.This was a library book which I had to return and because I felt it was important, I actually bought myself a copy.

Emma Donoghue is one of those writers whose books I'll always read. Ever since I read Room she's interested me. And this was sitting in the Library. I hadn't read it. I was returning another book – Careless People as it happens – so I borrowed this one. It's an historical novel based on the 1895 train disaster at Montparnasse Station in Paris. It didn't disappoint. I loved the way the narrative gathered momentum as if it was a train on its journey heading for its destination. With a diverse cast of characters all with their own issues and motivations it was entertaining yet created the tension of the impending disaster.

Another library book I just plucked from the shelf. Often I reserve books. It's absolutely great. But when I go to return one, I can't help but look on the new bookshelf and I generally find something that I want to read. I was actually mortified when I saw this next book because I regard this  lady as one of my favourite writers ( I've even interviewed her in the past!) and I didn't even know she'd written this book. It's Elizabeth Fremantle's Sinners. What I love about her books is that she usually takes some lesser known female character from history with a story to tell and brings them to life through the pages of a novel. In this particular case it's the story of Beatrice Cenci. Raped by her own father she ultimately killed him and was tried for murder and beheaded. She was only 22. And the story poses the question. Was she a saint or a sinner?

I bought the next book. I bought it at my local independent bookshop which we've had in the town now for two and a half years. But, alas,  the dream is over. And it's closing down on the 12th of September. I'm actually quite distraught. It's been a haven for me. But rising rents and having to compete with the likes of Amazon and Waterstones just hasn't made ends meet for the owners. They're selling some books out half price. And this was one of them. And I was intrigued to buy it because the author won the Nobel Price for literature in 2021 and ....he happened to be in my year at college! Theft by Abdulrazek Gurnah. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Set in Tanzania it explores the lives of three friends living in today's East Africa. Their lives are intertwined. They are all from different backgrounds and circumstances. The novel explores ideas of identity and relationships. The narrative allows us to experience the story thought the different perspectives of the three characters. 

Another library book which I've had to wait weeks, possibly months for. And I completely understand why. Everyone wants to read it because it is by the absolutely wonderful Elizabeth Strout - The Things We Never Say. She's one of my favourite writers and this didn't disappoint. Telling the story of history teacher Artie Dam, the novel explores relationships, familial and professional, feelings of loneliness and isolation and the secrets that are never told that can be carried with us for a lifetime. I love the almost conversational style of her writing that is deceptively simple but it delves so deeply into the human condition. It's so easy to engage with her characters and although I'm always a little bit disappointed when Lucy Barton doesn't put in an appearance I very quickly warmed to Artie.

Finally, another book that I bought and I read because I watched the series on TV. The TV series is called The Dark but the book by G R Halliday is called From the Shadow and is the first of the D.I.Monica Kennedy stories. I'm actually sent for a secondhand copy of the next in the series to see if the TV adaptation fused them all together. If it doesn't then I think it's a bit cheeky. Because it's almost as if the creators of the TV script save themselves a bit of creative trouble by using the bulk of somebody else's idea and then put bits of their own in. I'm not happy about that. But I'll reserve judgement until I read the next in the series in case that's what they're combining the two, which is fair enough. 

I thought I wasn't going to be able to post any photos for this month because Google is playing silly buggers with me. But I've managed to sort it on my laptop at least. I wonder if it's to do with them and their silly AI. I wonder if they're stealing all my photos to train their AI? It wouldn't surprise me, they seem to see no barrier to taking other people's creativity and regurgitating it artificially. And I don't think it's just Google. They're all at it.