This was just a little present to myself to listen to an old favourite – like a comforting warm cardigan or a nice cup of tea. Great narration by Martin Freeman.
This is of course the sequel to The Hitchhiker’s guide to the Universe, where Arthur, Ford, Zaphod and Trillian have more adventures including meeting their meat – an animal bred to want to become food, and almost being captured by angry Vorgons because their ship’s computer is too busy trying to make Arthur the ‘perfect cup of tea’ to be able to escape. Lol.
This is like a modern day Agatha Christie crossed with a bog standard cabin in the woods horror where an extended family meet together in the matriarch’s secluded house that is cut off from the mainland at high tide and start to be murdered one by one.
I didn’t love it. I found it hard to like any of the characters and I was a bit annoyed by the repetition of the creepy poem outlining everyone’s faults in the order that they are turning up dead.
Still, it had one or two twists that I didn’t see coming and it wasn’t terrible.
It took me three attempts to finish this book! I bought it because I was going on my first ever cruise, a week in the med with my husband’s three siblings and their partners and I thought it would be fun. Also I was reading my way through Cixin’s Three Body Problem Trilogy and wanted something lighter. Well, lighter it definitely was.
I sometimes like to dip my toes into ‘cosy mystery’ type books, and I sometimes really enjoy them. Not so much this time. There is a lot of over explaining.
The first half of the book I could only take in small doses, but to be fair, I did kind of get into it and the second half sort of held my interest. There’s not a lot of allegory or hidden meaning and more time describing people’s hair and make up than their inner monologue or motivations. Ah well, it wasn’t very expensive. (Unlike my cruise!)
Me and the Wray extended family enjoying formal night on our cruise!
Hmm, this book has thousands of glowing reviews on Amazon, but for me it was just a bit bleah. At best a three out of five (and I’m a very generous marker!). I’ve read many similar books, most of them better.
It’s a timeslip novel following women in one family from the 16 hundreds to the modern day. The thread between them was supposed to be a witchy nature – ie connection to animals and plants and skill with herb lore etc as well as powers to control nature to a degree. I like a bit of magical realism, and would have liked more of that (I’m thinking of the, in my mind, much better book The Change by Kirsten Miller, in which women come into their witchy powers after going through the menopause and use their powers to help other women (and deserving men).
All the men in this book were awful – I know, sadly, that men abusing women has been a theme all through history but all the men in this book were either bullies or ineffectual.
The writing was okay but not fabulous – I’m not sure why the book has been so well received. Ah well. I was glad when I got to the end of it and could move on with my life.
I read this immediately after Cixin Lui’s Three Body Problem Trilogy, and in my review of it I compared it to fine dining – to stretch the analogy, this book is like an ice-cream sundae – fun, enjoyable but not quite as satisfying. That doesn’t mean I didn’t like it – I liked it a lot, but The Three Body Problem was a hard sci-fi act to follow.
In Recursion, a scientist studying how the brain stores memories with a view to helping Alzheimer’s patients, stumbles across a world changing scientific discovery.
SPOILERS
A patient suffered a fatal heart attack while recalling a vivid memory in the sensory depravation chamber set up she used in her studies. Apparently, immediately after death, and before the brain completely shuts down, there’s a surge in the chemical that makes you see vivid images in your mind, like memories or dreams. Then the book gets a bit woolly about multi dimensions and time being a plane rather then a straight line and this super strong memory in the machine caused a warp in space time etc which basically sent the person’s awareness back in time to re-inhabit themselves from the past but with the memories of their whole as yet unlived life.
So lots of applications like saving loved ones from fatal accidents, or stopping wars or getting rich on the stock market etc, but things got weird with people getting ‘false’ memories, or double memories and then when all the world’s superpowers learned how to make their own time machines, the book’s hero had to find a way to prevent the whole world blowing itself up!
It was a fun sci-fi thriller with some nice love story elements and moral dilemmas and so forth. I enjoyed it.
Reading the Three-Body Problem trilogy was kind of like climbing a mountain for me – hard work, and I wondered if I’d make it to the top, but so rewarding when I did (plus I get bragging rights!). I even paused it because I went on a cruise with my husband’s three siblings and their partners and thought it would be fun to read something light and set on a cruise (I went for A Cruise to Murder by Dawn Brookes, and it was like pausing in the middle of a Michelin starred taster menu to have a bite of a big mac – don’t get me wrong, big macs can be yummy, but A Cruise to Murder was totally outclassed by Death’s End, and I dropped the burger and returned to the gastronomy).
The whole series is quite bleak and sweeps across eons (hibernation and the difference in relative time when travelling vast differences meant one of the main characters at least made it right to the end).
I did find some comfort in how the series ended – there was a small glimmer of light in the darkness and for that I’m grateful. Since finishing I’ve read a couple of books (I’m always late getting around to writing up my reviews!) including Blake Crouch’s Recursion, and while it was a much faster paced and easier read, several times I felt that the science wouldn’t stand up to much scrutiny, whereas I never felt that reading Cixin’s books – given my albeit limited understanding of physics and science generally, the plot of The Three Body Problem books always seemed terrifyingly plausible if pessimistic.
My husband and I like to watch all the Oscar nominated films each year, and the adaptation of this book was by far my favourite and since I usually enjoy the book more than the film, of course I wanted to read this.
(I guess this review is kind of SPOILER-Y, so don’t read on if you don’t want SPOILERS!!)
For me, this was one of those rare occasions where I liked the book less than the film. While the story was basically the same, the film had a really lovely magical quality – from the staging and the sets to the slight tweaks in the plot. The film was like a beautiful coming of age fairy tale with really good good guys and really bad bad guys and everyone getting their comeuppance, and while I know that life is not really like that, and in many cases I got annoyed by Hollywood making stories too nice, I loved the film, and then I read the book and it was a bit like bursting my bubble.
I guess if I hadn’t seen the film then I wouldn’t have come to the book with any expectations, but I did, and so I can’t give a objective response. The book was just a bit grubbier, for instance, the Scientist, Godwin Baxter, in the book was creating Bella to be his wife, although to be fair, when she didn’t see him that way he didn’t push it. The good guys were not so altruistic and the ending especially upset me. It was a bit like the ending of Life of Pi, where the magical story, that the whole book led you to believe is explained away in a very prosaic and depressing way and you’re left to make the choice of which one you believe. Waah! Didn’t like that.
I loved binge watching Shetland recently from the beginning, having somehow never watched it before, and some of my book group friends recommended the books on which the series is based so I gave them a go. The setting of Shetland is great – with it’s very northern aspect meaning it has periods of little daylight as well as periods of little darkness and the effects this can have on people who live in the communities. The bleak and unforgiving landscape as well as small communities where everyone knows everyone also add lots of atmosphere and I loved the Viking re-enactment ceremony that took part as well. I will look out for other books in the series coming up in any audible sales.
This is the second book in the Three Body Problem trilogy and has quite a different feel. The first book deals with first contact with aliens in the ‘real world’ as we know it. In this book, set after the first, humanity knows that very advanced aliens bent on their destruction are heading towards Earth and will arrive in about 400 years. The aliens have sent super fast sort of nano particle robot things to both sabotage science experiments to halt human technological development, and to eavesdrop on all conversations so they know what humans are planning. This is quite a bleak situation and different responses are discussed about how humanity could possibly either hide from, escape from or successfully fight off (or even negotiate with) the aliens.
Again this is a very intelligent book and all the scenarios are thought out with sound scientific and philosophical arguments. It’s quite depressing though.
The Dark Forest theory of the title is basically that the universe is like a dark forest full of dangerous creatures and the only way to survive them is by hiding and as soon as the creatures (ie any intelligent life in the universe) knows where you are, you are doomed. Not as jolly as Star Trek’s view of the universe!
I’m a big fan of Stephen King’s writing (especially his more recent works) (much to the bemused horror of my book group friends who all think that Stephen King books are all too scary and graphic for nice ladies like us to enjoy!). I think he is a true master storyteller – characters are real and stories build in complexity and emotional heft to well realised endings. I was very excited to read this book, and a bit gutted that I didn’t instantly warm to it.
Yes, I found the beginning a little slow, but I persevered, and boy and I glad I did! Gradually the book began to get under my skin until I was totally gripped. To begin with, it’s a semi-autobiographical story about a middle to older age very successful horror writer, Scott, and his wife, Lisey. How they met as young people and how their relationship developed over the years – often with the wife having to stand in the background at functions and events where her husband is the star (this reminded me of Anna Kendrick’s role in one of my favourite films: The Last Five Years).
There is darkness – we learn in little pieces about Scott’s abusive childhood and the issues in his family with mental health (or is it supernatural influence?). I liked how the supernatural/horror elements in the novel were all metaphors for real life experiences like grief and trauma – reminded me of another of my favourite movies, the horror film The Babadook where the monster is very much a personification of grief and the resolve is not to destroy grief but to learn to live with it in a controlled way.
In Lisey’s story, after Scott’s death, Lisey has to find her own strength to deal with dangers and family crises drawing on her once hidden memories of what Scott told her about the otherworldly place his visited throughout his whole life which had the potential to both heal and destroy him.
Sarah Wray Writer 