Last Chance to See, Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine

Here Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine, along with some BBC sound recorders and photographers, went looking for some of the most endangered species for a BBC TV and radio show. The book recounts their expeditions, five in total I think, in typical Adams fahion; informative, intelligent and very funny. It is a lovely read and walks the line between depressing and hopeful. 

Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

 I am not sure what I expected from this novel, maybe a type of friendship/love story in a big old house. While it is of course about a big old house, it's not what I expected. The story is split into three main parts; the protagonist, Charles, meeting a friend at Oxford and falling in love with the idea of him and his family; the breakdown of this relationship (and the friend); Charles re-finding of the family in the form of an affair with the sister. 

There is alot of talk of religion, baseless charm and the shirking of responsibilities and bad decisions. The protagonist, Charles seems to go through the whole book having things happen to him, and feeling helpless, he mostly manages to avoid being annoying though, and I enjoyed the book. 

Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 (Book Two)

The same calm, clear and trustworthy writing continues in book two of 1Q84, and the story gets much darker and more fantastical. We learn of the whole lives of the protagonists, Tengo and Aomame their childhoods and their inner thoughts. Book two is uncomfortable reading in places and builds tension. 

March, Geraldine Brooks

I really liked this, it's an easy read and is compelling, though maybe not the most original of stories, maybe because of all the stories that have come out of the American civil car. 

The protagonist is Mr March, the father of the March sisters from Little Women and the story tells of what happens to him as a chaplain in the army on the same timeline as Little Women, with flashbacks to his past as a young man, his meeting of Mrs March and the way they lost their fortune.

It is well written and researched, the most imporbable part of it, that Mr March knew Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson turns out to be true of Louise May Alcott's own father. Mr March is a saintlike figure in Little Women but while the book is maybe a little soft, it portrays him as a flawed and therefore interesting and if not relatable then human, character.

 

The Book of Form and Emptiness, Ruth Ozeki

Super interesting, about books and libraries, objects, mental health and culture vs philisophies, how our environment affects us, how people see us and how we see other people, finding our way, medicine and authority and how they hinder and maybe help. Nice push and pull between what is 'crazy'. Both in how Benny, the protagonist, sees other people and how the reader sees him.

Really good, lots in it, unexpected and lovely, deeply thought through. Not sure how it's that long though, felt like it could have been shorter, but not at all boring or slow. 

Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 (Book One)

I ended up cutting this book into books one and two because it was too heavy to carry aound in my bag. It has two parallel stories which at the end of book one are just starting to touch. One is of a young fitness instructor who seems to be an assasin, and the other of a quiet Maths teacher and writer who agrees to ghost write, or rework, a story written by a teenage girl for a literary competition. 

The book seems to get more complicated and more confusing as it goes on, but I was really happy to sit back and let it tell me things. The way Murakami writes is calm, precise and detailed and it somehow provokes a trust, that the things he is telling you are relevant and worth knowing. Complex and beautifully written and intriguing. 

Convenience Store Woman, Sayaka Murata

I devoured this, it is so readable and odd and lovely. Our protagomist is odd which serves to highlight just how odd a lot of society is. She ends up being very relatable and we root for her and her simple life. Funny and strange.

 

Art, Simon Schama

I thoroughly enjoyed this, the intro looks at art in general but the rest focuses on the life of Caravaggio. Schama is incredibly engaging and Caravaggio's life played out like a Greek tragedy. Schama entwines the story with detailed descriptions of a few of his works and gives us insight, context and drama. Gorgeous.

 

The Eye of Childhood, Short Stories

These were great stories and I loved them, I was expecting some of them to be a little dark, but I was genuinely shocked at how horrible a couple of them were. 

Beautiful World, Where are You, Sally Rooney

There were some things I liked about this, in terms of the characters and their relationships with themselves and each other it was great, nuanced and realistic and intriguing. 

However the story is interspersed with emails between the two main characters, and these I found forced and self absorbed. They seemed like thinly veiled opinions of the author, unconvincing and should have been a series of essays, published apart and made more well rounded. I think they did little to augment the characters, or at least didn't tell us anything that couldn't have been shown, and I found them clunky and distracting. 

Speckled throughout the novel are also vignettes of the landscape, maybe a little on the nose regarding the title, and gave the impression that Rooney was writing with TV in mind.

On the whole I enjoyed the story, but not one of the best.

La Ciudad de las Bestias, Isabel Allende

I read this as a kid and I remember being blown away by the magic of it. It seems so realistic and possible, and then melts into a fantasical world. It was lovely to read it again through the light fog of a second language. The images and impressions I remembered were still there, and it is a gorgeous novel. 

The Summer Book, Tove Jansson

A gorgeous wander though days or episodes of a summer (or multiple summers?) on a remote island off the coast of Finland. A grandmother, her grandaughter and a silent son/father. It is gorgeous, human and funny and deep with unreasonable emotions from both sides. Beautiful. 

 

White Teeth, Zadie Smith

I really like Zadie Smith and have read a lot of articles about and by her, and watched her speak on various topics, but this is the first novel of hers I've read. I thought it was excellent. The way it weaves stories through the different parts and knits them together at the end is very skillful. The novel follows two men, their wives and their children (and meanwhile weaves in the stories of their ancestors) as they navigate Britain. It is a satisfying novel in terms of story but also Smith has so much to say about 'multicultural Britain' and about people in general in terms of experience, fear, beliefs, character, relationships. It is huge.

The Captain and the Enemy, Graham Greene

I alaways forn Graham Greene a bit hit and miss, some of his books I have loved and others I really haven't liked. This one was good, but I thought it lacked something. The narrator is plucked out of boarding school by 'The Captain' and goes to live with The Captain's sort-of partner, to keep her company. As a young man the narrator is re-living his experience from then on and eventually goes to find the Captain. There is some intrigue, but nothing is ever very clear, this is definitely intentional on the part for Greene, but I think some engagement is lost because of it. 

 

A Little History of the World, E.H Gombrich

I'd been wanting to read this for a while and it didn't disappoint. A lovely chatty run-through of the history of the world. Also a bit dated, and Euro-centric, but lovely and informative nevertheless. 

 

I Dreamed of Africa, Kuki Gallman

I devoured this in a few days. It is addictive and beautifully written. There is a shadow over the whole book, you know right from the off that some thing awful will happen, but that only serves to make everything deeper and more poignant. It is dated, there is a sort of colonial undertone to everything, and I was always wondering where they and their friends got their money from. However that doesn't ruin it. The book really is a love letter to Kenya but it also says something very powerful about the author's realtionships, with her family, but also with friends and aquaintances.

The Midnight Library, Matt Haig

I thoroughly enjoyed this. At midnight one night Haig's protagonist finds herself in a huge library, where she can step into any of the lives she might have lived if she had made different choices (stayed in the band, said yes to the coffee date etc) Predictably, through all this, she finds that in each life, there she herself is, she can't ever escape that, but she comes to realise what she does actually want out of life.

 There are a few details I'd change about the book and I think there could have been less time on the big, obvious regrets and more on the little ones, or more on the fall-out of having to leave these other lives when she wasn't totally happy there. However in the end it was a great book, compellingly written and with a nice ending

 

My Life, Marc Chagall

 

I loved this, I knew nothing in about Chagall, neither his art or his life, but found this in a bookshop. What intrigued me, along with the illustrational sketches, was that he had written it as he was about to leave his home of Russia and move to Paris in 1922.

It is written in a melancholic, nostalgic, dream-like tone. Snatches of impressions of incidents, people and old habits are interspersed with more traditionally told memories as Chagall tells the story of his youth and early adulthood. 

The Travelling Cat Chronicles, Hiro Arikawa

This lovely book was a gift from a friend. The protagonist is a cat, once a stray who tells us the story of his meeting and deciding to live with a seemingly fairly lonely, caring young man. One day they set off on a journey visiting the man's old friends. Through these meetings and the ca's commentary we discover the story of the man't life and why he is suddenly trying to re-home his best friend. It is a bit too sweet, but is nicely told and was a good, chilled read. 

A Stranger in Spain, H V Morton

It took me a while to get through his one. It is heavy going, but actually not as heavy as you'd expect from a travel/history book written and first published in the 1950s. Morton takes us around Spain explaining, from a very British point of view, it's history, advantages and flaws. It's funny in places (not necessarily intentionally) vivid and curious.