Going Solo, Roald Dahl

Going Solo is a memoir and picks up from where 'Boy' left off. It follows Dahl's time in Africa as an employee of Shell and then, when WWII broke out, as a fighter pilot.

The book is full of Dahl's hallmarks, the stories are all true, but still strange, absurd and dark. He writes with absolute clarity, wry humour and adds occasional reflective interludes. He paints a very bright and fascinating image of an improbable early adulthood. 

The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan

The Joy Luck Club sits somewhere between a series of short stories and a novel. The book explores the lives of four Chinese women and their Chinese-American daughters. Each chapter is told from the point of view of one of the women and is a more-or-less self contained narrative.

The stories are powerful; each one showing flip sides and reasons for behaviours that we can never see in real life. They are complicated, difficult and painful love stories between each of the women and their daughters. Tan manages to create beautiful narratives which are poignant and moving without being overly sentimental or nostalgic. Whilst not culturally relatable for me; the love, frustrations and anxieties are universal. The book is a cry for us all to be better, more understanding daughters and maybe less fearful mothers.

Ready Player One, Ernest Cline

I read this book in a weekend and loved it - it's a proper adventure story, set in a vividly described world which feels just about plausible.

It's about a virtual reality world called OASIS and it's creator, 80's pop-culture obsessed James Halliday. OASIS is a phenomenon in which most people spend almost all their lives, going to school, gaming and socialising in this world. Halliday dies with no heir and hides his fortune as an easter egg in OASIS. The novel follows our protagonist who is trying to find the fortune.

A quote on the cover says Ready Player One is a cross between The Matrix and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory - the format also reminded me of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It's gripping, funny and just a brilliant idea, the competition is a great format to explore the idea of VR and how it could become intrinsic to our lives.

The protagonist is the usual kids/teen fiction hero; no family, poor and unattractive which is vaguely annoying, but he is well drawn and you absolutely want him to succeed. The novel touches on loads of themes which are relevant to how we live now and the way humanity might be heading. Cline makes you think, but without beating you over the head with ideas. The 80's thing wasn't so exciting for me as I didn't get alot of the references; but Cline engaged me all the same. It's a hugely satisfying story, and very fun.

The Inheritors, William Golding

I was surprised by this novel, it's one my Dad gave me. I didn't make it to the end of The Lord of the Flies, so didn't start this one with high hopes. It turns out to be a really interesting and strangely gripping book.

The Inheritors deals with some of the same themes as Lord of the Flies. For the most part the novel is told from the point of view of Lok, we aren't sure what Lok is; but he seems to be a creature very similar to a neanderthal. We follow Lok as he moves with his family or tribe to their summer home. After a while it becomes apparent that there are some other, hitherto unknown creatures living nearby.

In some places it's quite hard to understand exactly what's going on as the book is told from Lok's perspective and his language and thought process hasn't evolved fully. It's a little like watching a film through fog, you can't be sure of what you're seeing. In spite of that I liked the way it was written, it's an interesting exploration of what early people might have thought and how they lived. It also gives you some room to think about what is happening and the consequences of that, it slows you down.

One thing I found really annoying wasn't Golding's fault, but the publishers. The copy I was reading is my Dad's - so published in 1977. For some bizarre reason in the 70's it was ok to write a review on the back which completely gives away the ending of the book...?

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs

Miss Peregrine.. is told from the perspective of Jacob, a sixteen year old boy. His grandfather used to tell amazing stories of a childhood evading monsters and filled with children with incredible powers; the ability to levitate, invisibility and super strength. Jacob grows up idolising his grandfather and believing the stories, until he starts questioning the photographs given as evidence and the possibility of such things. After a family tragedy however he is pushed to investigate his grandfather's stories for himself.

Much of the plot is centered around photographs like the one on the cover. They are photographs Jacob's grandfather shows him to prove his stories, or that Jacob comes across in the process of finding out the truth.  Riggs uses real vintage photos he has collected, and includes them with little or no re-touching. The images are all eerie in some way, and apart from a couple which seem shoe-horned in, complement the story by setting a tone and augmenting the text.

It's a very gripping book; we are drip-fed the truth and encouraged to figure the story out before Jacob does. It's a proper teen-fiction nail-biter and is a good read. It's very cinematic and the descriptions of people and place are vivid and raw. Well worth a read.

The Martian, Andy Weir

I started reading this after my boyfriend raced through it on holiday this summer. The Martian of the title is Mark Watney, who has been left behind on Mars (his crewmates think they saw him die). His challenge is to survive (possibly until the next mission comes to Mars, in around 4 years time) and try to get back to Earth.

It's compelling, Watney is an entertainer and it's his well written sense of humour which makes you keep reading. The novel also moves quickly, essentially only giving us updates when something changes, rather than an in-depth, blow by blow account (though saying that, things change pretty often). The science is in-depth however, you get the lovely impression that Weir set the novel as a puzzle for himself, he relishes fixing unfixable problems and explaining how they were fixed, and why the solution works. This got too in-depth for me at times, a couple of passages went right over my head but I was quite happy to accept what I was being told.

In all it's a brilliant read, my only criticism is that you don't get a sense of the time. Without spoiling anything Mark is on Mars, on his own, for a pretty long time. There isn't really any sense of that time passing, or of the psychological affects or moments of madness that might happen to someone in that time and under that much stress. Watney is written as an american hero, but it might have been a little more interesting if the circumstances had cracked his shell just a little.

I have just started another adventure; Eric Newby's A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush

Wanderlust, Rebecca Solnit

Wanderlust is a history of walking, it is hugely varied, covering pilgrimages, poets and writers, protesters, ordinary hikers, urban wandering, treadmills, walking as art and the theories as to why we stood on two legs in the first place.

I was worried this might be a little heavy going, and at times it felt a little slow; but Solnit has a knack of tying in the everyday and incidental to relate the themes back to the present. There are enough stories to balance out the explanations & theories It is a brilliant book, it explained to me the things I felt about walking but couldn't quite put my finger on, or put into words. Reasons why we walk; for recreation, to see, to think or to travel. What walking does to us, shapes the way we think and the rhythms we think in. As well as the spaces we walk in and how they came about. The book was very centred on an American and British history of walking, it would have been good to open up the conversation to other cultures. Though I'm not sure you could fit the whole world's experience of walking into 300 pages.

There were a couple of chapters I didn't necessarily agree with and I felt she was generalising in some places. In one chapter Solnit was talking of the 'Landed gentry' blocking access to footpaths and rights of way and the poor trying to get access, and I would argue things aren't as clear cut as that. Certainly in my experience it is some ordinary farmers (who certainly aren't rich or 'gentry', though they may be landed) who restrict, block or verbally assault those walking on footpaths. Later there is a whole chapter on the death of walking, centred around the suburbia of America. It seems insane that anyone would suggest people will stop walking, in British suburbia there's usually a pub, corner shop & chippy, people walk to these and walk their dogs, they move to suburbia to be nearer the country and the outside spaces and footpaths it offers; not to be locked up in their houses, as Solnit seems to suggest the Americans do. 

However I concede that both these 'flaws' are down to the differences in my and Solnit's personal experiences, and perhaps in a book charting the history of walking you have to consider the future of it. A brilliantly written and explained chapter on walking as art redeemed the book for me. The ideas behind and reasons for the artworks were beautifully explained and that chapter should be given to anyone who has ever scorned a piece of contemporary art. 

Wanderlust is certainly worth the read, Solnit both informs & provokes conversation, the best sort of a history book.