Month: July 2021

JULY 2021 READING ROUND-UP

~ alison41 ~ 4 Comments

JULY HITS

    I roared through many books in July, including one DNF (did not finish). I promised myself that at this late stage of my life – very close to my 80th birthday – I could no longer waste valuable eyesight and reading time on books that did not entertain, en,lighten or charm me. Take it or leave it.

    FICTION

    Jeeves and the King of Clubs – Ben Schott.  A sparkling combo  of  Bertie Wooster blundering along affably, being quietly rescued by the inimitable Jeeves at every turn. A winter tonic for me. See my review posted on  11 July.   Not to be missed.

    The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot – Marianne Cronin. An unusual story of friendship between terminally ill patients. Margot 83 and Lenni 17. Tender, funny, poignant, a lifetime of stories. Despite a tinge of dissatisfaction right at the end ( Margot’s relationship with Maia) it was a wonderful read.

    Olive Again – Elizabeth Strout. The quotidian made luminous; a tender account of life in a small Maine town. Literary – and beautiful. Definitely on my 2021 Best Books of the Year list.

    The Broken Earth Trilogy – N K Jemisin. Magnificent Fantasy saga, written by an outstanding female Fantasy writer. See my  review published 20 July.  A must for Fantasy fans. Highly recommended.

    Smoke and Ashes – Abir Mukherjee. Capt Sam Wyndham  lands up in the Indian Imperial Police Force, Calcutta, in 1921. He’s battling his opium addiction whilst  trying to solve three murders. The thriller plays out against the colourful background of teeming, chaotic Calcutta where  Ghandi’s Congress Party is staging massive anti-Brit demonstrations, and Crown Prince Edward is due in town for a ceremonial State Visit. The story builds to a dramatic finale, that had me reading breathlessly to the end. Recommended.

    Exit – Belinda Bauer. Can a crime novel be funny and charming? In this case: yes. Well-meaning geriatrics are involved in a seemingly humane charity, which turns out to be part of an intricate loan  shark scheme. An ingenious plot, completely unpredictable. Recommended.

    The Vanishing Half – Brit Bennet. Stella and Desiree are identical twins growing up together in a small Southern black community. At 16 years old  their lives split when they run away to the city.  One twin passes herself off as white, whilst the other eventually returns home. Each twin has a daughter, and the strands of their lives twist and twine for decades. Enjoyable and engrossing.

    The Seal Cove Theoretical Society – SW Clemens. (ebook)  Finally,  a well written  e-book.  A slice of life in a small coastal town unfolds, mixed with some philosophical musings, inhabited by a motley cast of people, and their amiable dogs.   A pleasant light  read.

    DNF

    The Two Lives of Louis and Louise –  Julie Cohen. I found the basic premise of the story to be contrived, and the narrative slow. The book didn’t work for me. You can’t win them all!

    JULY DIPPER

    Ali Smith’s Supersonic 70s – the Pocket Penguin 30 series.  The book was a gift to me, back in 2008; hiding amongst bigger books. It’s a slim volume so no wonder I overlooked it. I’m enjoying the short stories at intervals. Ali S packs so much into one story, they need a bit of time to settle.

    NON-FICTION

    Word Freak – Stefan Fatsis.  A fascinating survey of the top Scrabble  players in the USA during the late 90s and early 2’s. The book was published in 2002, and Scrabble remains as popular as ever. If you enjoy words,  Scrabble and an insider’s account of the geeks and freaks who inhabit the subculture, then you’ll enjoy the book. I certainly did. Another book that will feature on my 2021 Books of the Year.

    Recommended. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Scrabble_Championship

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    THE BROKEN EARTH TRILOGY – N K JEMISIN

    ~ alison41 ~ Leave a comment

    I’d read so many reviews about Nk Jemisin’s Fantasy/SF that my curiosity got the better of me, and I splurged on a Trilogy. In my defence, it was a reduced price, bargain offer. I’m happy to report it was money well spent.

      NKJ  has won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Her Trilogy  is intricate and extraordinary, displaying  originality both in the world building and the characterisation.

      What I enjoyed about the trilogy was  that women were front and centre stage, including a brave girl-child, Nassun who in Book 3 faces off against her powerful mother Essun in a battle to either save or destroy  the earth.  The female characters are shown as being strong, resourceful and  courageous. All necessary qualities if they are acting against an epic backdrop. Make no mistake, NKJ has written an Epic Saga, and carried it off in style.

      NKJ has impressive World Building talent and doesn’t put a foot wrong. She succeeds in creating true aliens, the Stone Eaters,  who were utterly foreign to me, in concept.  However, she uses sufficient  current earth flora and fauna details to make the setting and background events recognizable and plausible.  There’s nothing wo-woo about the Broken Earth Trilogy. It is no exaggeration to say she expands the range of what Fantasy can achieve in the hands of an excellent writer.

      What made the trilogy stand out were  the earth sciences which are crucial to the story: volcanology, geology, plate tectonics plus climate related  natural phenomena. The trilogy is not in the  sword and sorcery genre, nor in the supernatural genre, which came as a happy relief. With this Trilogy NKJ has moved the genre into an altogether different place. The results are seismic (insider quip).

      A  significant recurrent theme  is  personal sacrifice, and to a lesser extent: vengeance. The main characters encounter tests, trials and tribulations some of which were horrific, but the ending comes to a satisfying and credible conclusion.

      I can’t wait to read more of N K Jemisin’s work. 

      JEEVES AND THE KING OF CLUBS – Ben Schott

      ~ alison41 ~ 2 Comments

      The sub title is:  An homage to P G Wodehouse.

      It most certainly is an homage to the wonderful P G Wodehouse, probably the best comic novelist in the modern  canon of English fiction. What fun to read! I laughed out loud, chuckled , giggled, grinned and was hugely entertained from first page to last, and was very sorry indeed to reach the end of this glorious romp.

      Imagine if you will, the feather-brained, man about town, Bertie Wooster being recruited by M15.  No! I hear you cry in alarm: Bertram Wooster a government spy? I mean: dash it all! But fear not, because his manservant Jeeves, is also enlisted in the caper, so obviously Jeeves’ mighty brain will ensure that all ends well. It later transpires  that Jeeves harbours  deep, devious  secrets beneath his impeccable shirtfront, but heaven forbid I release a spoiler.

      Familiar beloved characters roam through the pages: Aunt Dahlia, trying to  usurp Lea & Perrins sauce from their prime place on the nation’s dinner plates; Anatole, the  volatile Brinkley Court French  chef  is duped and doped; Lady Florence has penned yet another 3 hour stinkeroo of a  play; Madeline Bassett is determined to snaffle a title by marrying an unpleasant Lord; the Drones Club is the usual  melee of inebriated  good cheer. 

      We are introduced to  Lord MacAuslan, the smoothly devious head spy, camouflaged behind a blaze of tartan and Scottish pride. We learn there’s dirty work afoot: Britain’s Enemies need to be routed.

      Read on!  I promise you a sparkling  read and the excellent news is that the estimable Ben Schott has written another homage, namely Jeeves and the Leap of Faith. I can only surmise that Ben Schott’s mother read him PG Wodehouse books from   babyhood,  which he absorbed at a cellular level whilst in the cradle.  Either that, or Ben Schott is channeling dear old Plum from beyond the grave.  Regardless of  the source of Schott’s talent, do yourself a favour, and re-acquaint yourself with the delightful world of P G Wodehouse.  

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._G._Wodehouse

       http://www.benschott.com/about.html

      MY JULY PROJECT

      ~ alison41 ~ 3 Comments

      Dizzy with my TBR success with Prof Harari’s Homo Deus, I plan on using the same technique on another long languishing tome:

      Periodically I purge my bookshelves, and time after time, I pick up the hefty chunk, saying THIS HAS TO GO! xxx? years have passed – I never stuck a book label showing the purchase date on the flyleaf, (did I never really take ownership of the book from Day One? ) and I still haven’t read it! And then I page through the book and am instantly intrigued by a paragraph, a factoid, a word – for instance, how about the word Gamboge? Irresistible. I learn it means a shade of yellow. Huh. Who knew?

      So I will apply the tried and tested Twenty-Pages a Day method to the book. It worked like a charm on Homo Deus. Furthermore, I have hunted down my favourite bookmark to mark my progress. I don’t know why, but the ridiculous combo of a cat wearing a fisherman’s hat and an earnest expression, is somehow very endearing. Hopefully the July Reading Roundup will contain more on my progress. Yellow is an optimistic colour, so fingers crossed for finality by the end of July.