Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

This is a great dystopian novel, as you would expect from its reputation. It is an idea which I think will always be current, the idea that people are becoming lazier and less interested in reading, critical thinking and 'intellectual' pursuits. It is not a dystopia that comes from the top down, rather it is the government who exploit a 'weakness' in the population. 

I like the way Bradbury writes, it is to the point and the narrative is concise. I did have a problem with the women in the novel though. There is a 17 year old girl who is the catalyst for the 'awakening' of our main character. She is a trope, bright, engaging 'pleasing' in every way to the hero and makes him feel special whilst making him think, she's a bit like a puppy, waiting for him as he goes to and from work and softening his heart. The other women (it is even worse that one of them is his wife) are held in complete contempt by our hero. They are symptoms of the system, in that they fall for all the new, vapid entertainment and have no free thought. The men are all complicit or in control or activists. The women have no agency and the reader is asked to hate them for it. In reality they are victims of a system which, if all the other roles in the novel are to be believed, was built and is maintained by men.  

Love in the time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez

I am not sure what I was expecting from this book, but it wasn't what I got. I found it completely distasteful and claustrophobic at times. I am sure the claustrophobia was intentional, and came from the skill of the author in describing the oppressive atmosphere of the city where the characters live as well as the social and personal binds they create or find themselves in. 

In terms of the distaste, I am not sure how we are supposed to view Florentino Ariza. I imagine there are two parallel readings, one where he is an admirable, poetic and heroic figure, and my reading, which was that he is completely insufferable, self delusional and vampiric, feeding off the idea of an idea of a woman his whole life. Having said that I was charmed by the ending of the novel and fully appreciate what García Márquez says about different forms of love and relationships. 

Some of the themes are similar to The Return of the Native; someone falls in love with the idea of a person and the disconnect between idea and reality has a ripple effect. He also talks about marriage and what makes a good one, the role of women and loss of self-hood in marriage, which for the time must have been perceptive. And then there are both long term and short lived affairs, and the idea of loving and being with multiple people at once. There is a particularly disgusting and predatory relationship between the old Florentino Ariza and a teenager, which I think is there to show disillusionment and degradation of old age, but which is awful and marring.

The whole novel is written in such a way that it all, except the first and last chapters, feels like background information, the author seems to be skimming over events whilst giving us details, everything seems to be taking place in fast forward somehow and I am not sure exactly where that feeling comes from. I found it engaging, but could completely understand someone who stopped reading part-way through.

Postcard Stories, Jan Carson

This is a gorgeous collection of very short stories, first written on postcards and sent to Carson's friends. The stories are vignettes, observations and ideas, most both everyday and profound. They are completely delightful. 

It is from fab independent publisher's The Emma Press who publish beautiful, original stories and poetry pamphlets, well worth looking up. 

Education, Tara Westover

This is a difficult read in places. Westover talks about her upbringing in a survivalist, mormon family, headed by her father. She and her siblings were brought up off grid in rural USA. The father has a complete and shocking disregard for the safety of his children, putting them in harm's way as a matter of course. That's to say nothing of his religious and conspiracy theories. Westover conveys the fact that she did not see anything wrong with how she was brought up at the time - it was normal for her - but she felt scared when her father asked her to do clearly dangerous tasks. Her brother was also very abusive, and it was this that made her leave for good. 

It is amazing that she managed to leave the family and receive an education. It is also eye opening in that there must be so many children who are experiencing the same thing. Children who are unregistered and cut off completely from society. 

A Spool of Blue Thread, Anne Tyler

This is my first Anne Tyler novel and I can't account for why. It's a family drama which follows three generations of the Whitshank family, revolving around the large house they live in. It is a very american novel, the family have a really strong sense of identity which is based on only one generation, nothing is known of the generations before, and there is a pervading sense of the american dream, failed or otherwise. 

Tyler slowly and carefully reveals each member of the family, at first through other's eyes and finally through their own words or at least their own story. There is something uncannily skillful in the way she can fully draw a family and describe all the underlying frustrations, resentments, longings and sadnesses without it feeling forced or overly dramatic. The nuance of their relationships are laid out for us, and explanations are quietly revealed. 

The Wise Man's Fear, Patrick Rothfuss

This is the second in a series, I read the first book, The Name of the Wind, as a teenager and was completely hooked.

That was the story of a young boy whose family was killed and had to survive on the streets before trying to get into The University if he had any chance of getting revenge on his parents' killers. This second book picks up during Kvothe's university years. It is told by Kvoth himself as he looks back over his life while hiding by posing as an innkeeper.

The story is a huge, wide ranging fantasy novel, with stories of adventre, love and heroics mixed together. It is gripping and readable, you don't need to concentrate a lot which made it perfect escapism for days in quarantine. For the most part I like the characterisation of the male characters, the women tend to seem a bit idealised or reductive, all (all) the good ones are described as beautiful. It has some great ideas of social structures and languages which we learn when Kvothe goes travelling. These are really thoroughly thought through and are fascinating, one of which is a culture which uses hand gestures instead of facial expressions. In all thoroughly enjoyable. 

A Walk in the Woods, Lee Blessing

I liked this much more than I thought, for some reason I thought it'd be dry, but it's witty and engaging. It's a play; two diplomats meet in a woodland clearing, away from their official business discussing some sort of arms limitations deal. One is Russian and a seasoned negotiator, the other is an American, serious and new to the job.