Murde at the vicarage - Agatha Christie

The first Miss Marple story, she's already an old spinster of the village. Colonel Protheroe is murdered and it turns out just about everyone had a motive! Realised towards the end that I've seen this on tv...

The Assassination of Robert Maxwell

Haven't bothered with the authors' names. Lent to me by Rob Fox. Expected it to be poor but in fact it was a good read - if you enjoy conspiracy theory books by newpaper reporters. Was it all conspiracy theory or good investigation leading to the truth (which is fantastic and larger than life - as Maxwell himself was)? Dunno.

6/10

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Have been meaning to read this for ages ever since I read another book (can't remember which) based on the story. Virginia Woolf writes in a very strange way so I didn't find it easy to read...probably the sort of book you study for A level or something.....long sentences describing people's thoughts. The "story" is about one day when Mrs Dalloway is preparing to have a society party. Other people enter into the story as she shops in London, including a boyfriend from when she was young. However if you're looking for lots of action, give it a miss!
6/10

Till we meet again by Lesley Pearse

This was this month's book club book....believe me there is no other reason why I would have read it! The Daily Mail and Hello recommend it so I don't need to say more. It's about two childhood friends who meet in adult life...one is a lawyer; the other has just murdered two people. It didn't have a dramatic effect on my life.
4/10

The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis

My second consecutive book about teenage angst and sex (lots of sex!) in the 1960s. And my second Martin Amis book. A good and pretty quick read, very evocative of teenage angst (including sex) in any era. But the storyteller in this and my previous Amis has been upper class, moving in a wide ranging circle of people. Can M Amis not write from any other perspective? I'll try Time's Arrow (on Sarah's recommendation).

9/10

The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan

I had to check on Blogger that I hadn't read this book before...it seemed very familiar....but it doesn't look as if I've read any of hers...I think the style is just comfortable. It's about a Chinese mother and grown up daughter living in America. Over the course of the book the mother shares secrets about her life in China and the daughter confesses a secret that she has kept from her mother.
9/10

Portnoy's complaint by Philip Roth

My first Philip Roth. Won't be my last (have you noticed how media-popular he is at the moment? I think it was funny and a typically radical, shocking 1960s book. I don't know whether it was 'from the heart' or cynically designed to shock. But it could easily offend the sensitive! A monolog of a man's discussion with his psychiatrist (just the man talking, no comments from the psychiatrist - get it? VERY american jewish indeed, which made it very funny for me. But boy is it crude. His obsessions about his hyper-controlling mum, sex, sex, sex . . . goy (that's non-jewish) girls, sex, sex, sex, and just sheer jewishness are superbly written. But this book could offend from a variety of different angles!

9/10

A Most Wanted Man by John Le Carre

Excellent. A John Le Carre book that you can follow without drawing organisation diagrams, a page-turning fast read, and a bang up to date context.

Set in modern Germany, involving all of the modern anti-terrorist and political organisations from Germany, America and England, some Islamic people who may be Turkish or Chechen and who may or may not be legal immigrants and who may or may not be militant. And an Englishman running a private bank in Hamburg in its dying years but which holds massive questionable deposits from the cloudy past.

Are you keeping up?

10/10

Landfall by Nevil Shute

Got this book as a book swap. It's set in the 2nd World war and is about a pilot who is accused of bombing an English submarine. A bit of a love story in with it too. Quite dated in its style and no where near as good as "On the Beach".
6/10

Indignation - Philip Roth

I love philip roth. Bought this in salzburg airport, it's a relatively new novel by him and it's pretty short. It's about a Jewish boy going to University in the States in 1951. The politics and environment are very saddening. What's interesting is Roth manages to make a sympathetic story about a rather disagreeable main character (similar in a strange way to his book everyman). I found it incredibly readable (finished in a day) and it left me feeling rather bleak but moved.


8.5/10

another world - Pat Barker

Thought this was brilliant, although I was a bit scared. The family relationships are really well done and the feeling of a plot or life on the edge of disaster was compelling. Thought the character Geordie was great. I think I still liked the trilogy more, but this was a great development.

8/10

Cat among the pigeons - Agatha Christie

Set at a girls' school, but with an international politics plot and priceless jewels too. Hercule Poirot comes along and saves the day but he's not in it for the first half and he's not as funny as in Styles. Interesting to read a book from this era that centres almost entirely on women.


7/10

The secret of chimneys - Agatha Christie

This one comes before The Seven Dials and is about the same characters - jolly good fun all round!



7/10

The Secret Speech by Tom Rob Smith

His second book (see earlier review of Child 44). Another big, longish action book about a family in the post Stalin era in Russia, this time about Gulags, Khrushcev and the Hungarian revolt. Good to read if you have read his first book. But I hope he writes a very different book next!

7/10

Facing the Light by Adele Geras

I got this as a swap on read it swap it and didn't know anything about it. It's a very easy read and a bit mindless. It's about a woman's 75 birthday party and of course family secrets unfold as the family prepare for it. An easy read that isn't a life changer!
5/10

The Reluctant Fundamentailist -Mohsin Hamid

Very good read...quite a quick book. The story is told by one side of a conversation and explains why a man gave up his financially successful life in USA to return to his homeland. Found the end rather strange...I'm still not sure what happened but maybe that was the clever part and it left you thinking!
9/10

Morven Callar by Alan Warner

Strange book written with a strong Scottish accent or vernacular, set around the time of rave clubs - 1980? You know that someone (in our family) said that you read Ian McEwen books waiting for the explosive incident. In this book it happens in the first sentence. Seven words. and yet the book has lots of tension and twists in it, and even in the slow passages keeps you occupied and turning pages. Wierd but a very good read. SPEAK NOW if you want to read it - mum is about to put it on readitswapit.

9/10

Pompeii by Robert Harris

A good novel if you like them based on excellent historical research. A fast read because it is a good, tense story line with believable characters. It's about a young (30s?) engineer who is sent from Rome to fix the massive aquaduct which supplies water to the whole bay of Naples. . . . whilst Vesuvious seems, to anyone who can read the symptoms, to be behaving strangely! A good story with a page-turning end.

9/10

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

On loan from Sarah. A monologue covering 200 pages. Surprisingly it never flags - keeps you reading as quickly as you can. Very unusual style and equally unusual ending.

8/10

The Brain Dead Megaphone by George Saunders

A gift from Patti, our snowbird. A series of essays by a critic/reveiwer/TV personality/author. He is the opposite of US TV ranters like Nancy Griffiths and Glenn Beck. Insightful and entertaining essays on life, people, politics in the US and the wider world.

6/10