Monstrous Regiment – Terry Pratchett (Audiobook) – 22.03.24

I had so much fun in my younger days reading my way through the whole cannon of Terry Pratchett’s discworld novels – I own all of them in physical copies, but I’m seriously considering giving away all or most of my physical books, because I really don’t like the faff of actually having to hold a book and turn pages and have enough light to see by etc that comes with actual books, not to mention the fact that almost all the walls in all the rooms in my house are already lined with bookcases/shelves full of books. With this in mind, if any Pratchett discworld books come up in Audible or kindle sales I will snap them up with a view to having them all in digital form. (If I was rich I would just buy them all in a heartbeat!) So, that’s why I bought this on an Audible deal and had great enjoyment listening and reacquainting myself with Sir Terry’s wonderful wit and wisdom. Some slightly dated views but on the whole I think Terry Pratchett was way ahead of his time in terms of supporting all kinds of minority rights and embracing difference. This one covers war, empire, religion, feminism and equal rights for different magical species. Highly recommended.

The List of Suspicious Things – Jennie Godfrey – 18.03.24

This book is quite similar to ‘A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder’ which I recently listened to, in that a child/teen protagonist becomes amateur sleuth to try to solve murders. I liked this one better for a few reasons, firstly, it was narrated by the wonderful Joanne Froggatt and I loved her skilful acting and her lovely Yorkshire accent. Secondly, this book is set in The north of England during the nineteen seventies and centres around the Yorkshire Ripper Killings. I grew up in the north of England, and although I was only young ( I was born in 1969) I remember well the hysteria that the Yorkshire Ripper evoked around that time.

It’s really a coming of age story, with the main character, Miv, becoming obsessed with solving the Yorkshire Ripper case but her investigations only leading to uncovering uncomfortable secrets from friends and family members that contribute to her maturing/loss of innocence.

I enjoyed the character development and the journey down memory lane in this interesting and well told story.

The Book of Doors – Gareth Brown – 18.03.24

What is not to love about a novel full of magical books, a shady underworld of book collectors, some good some middling and some very bad, lots of danger and adventures, some romance, some time travel and causal loops? Answer – there is nothing not to love, which is my convoluted way of saying – I loved it!

This is just my kind of book, like a cosy blanket and a cup of tea. May the world be full of such books.

Lost in Time (Audiobook) – A.G. Riddle, Narrator – John Skelley – 15.03.24

This was fun! A sci-fi thriller murder mystery with time travel! A scientist who was working on a device to transport matter (like star trek beam me up Scotty transporters) accidentally creates a device that sends things (or people) back in time to a prehistoric alternate version of our Earth. It is (somewhat unbelievably) monetised by selling it to governments who use it to banish dangerous criminals and, ironically when the very scientist is accused of murder he is sent back by his own machine.

His daughter then goes on an exciting quest to prove his innocence and work out what really happened involving time travel and nifty causal time loops.

I found it well written and very satisfying to read. I loved the ending and very much hope that more books are planned – I could see how it could become a nice series.

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (Audiobook) –Holly Jackson – 12.03.24

I started to listen to this book a while ago, and got really bored by it so paused it and listened to some other things. After A Thousand Ships, I went back to this and actually enjoyed it a bit more (maybe by comparison, because I didn’t really like A Thousand Ships?).

A teenaged schoolgirl under the pretence of writing a school project becomes obsessed with uncovering the truth about the case of a girl who went missing presumed dead from her school a few years previously.

I found it a little difficult to believe that she would go to such lengths as she did, endangering both her physical self and her straight A school track record to track down the truth of a case that only effected her tangentially.

Hmmm, there were twists and turns I guess, and some nice relationship building. I was a bit annoyed by the posh voice of the narrator (ironically, the character she narrates was at one point complaining about the posh voice of her sat nav!).

I didn’t fully foresee the ending and it did kind of make sense when it was revealed (although at that point I was just glad to have got through to the end so I could stop listening). Not for me, although a lot of other people seemed to really like it.

A Thousand Ships (Audiobook) – Natalie Haynes – 09.03.24 

A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes - Audiobook - Audible.co.uk

A Couple of the girls in my book group raved about how much they loved this book, so when in was an audible deal of the day I snapped it up.

Hmmm, I wouldn’t rave about it myself. Just because it is really like a series of short stories, following different characters related by being women connected to the Trojan wars (and I’m not a fan of short stories).

It is a familiar tale of women being horribly mistreated by men but having their own unique resilience and strength. I did like the recurring chapters narrated by Penelope as an open letter to her husband Odysseus which were basically a (really quite witty) sarcastic rant about him being away for so long and leaving her to raise their son and live alone dealing with all the day to day stuff he left behind when off on his adventures.

I said to one of my friends at book group that maybe I didn’t like it so much also because the narrator wasn’t very good – not parsing sentences correctly (in my opinion) and often sounding quite bored by it all, not realising at the time that the book is actually narrated by the author!

A similar book, which I enjoyed more is Circe by Madeline Miller.

The Quantum Curators and the Great Deceiver – Eva St. John – 07.03.24

I really liked the first book in this series, where a nice academic historian (Julius) is confronted with crazy shenanigans when he gets mixed up with people from another parallel version of Earth who are hopping about taking artifacts to store in their museum.

The next books in the series see him now living in this parallel world and having adventures, but for me they lacked the ordinary person coming to terms with things not being the way he always believed them to be excitement. This book, the fifth in the series see’s Julius sent back to his own world and being given a mind wipe to forget it all, then getting caught up again, so in many ways it was a refreshing reset of the series and I enjoyed it.

The Bee Sting – (Audiobook) – Paul Murray – 06.03.24

At first I struggled to get into this audiobook – perhaps because I listened to it after Prophet Song and I was still reeling from the edge of your seat tension at the end of that book. Also, the first couple of chapters are told from the perspective of the teenaged daughter of the family at the heart of the novel, and I found her a bit whiny and annoying.

It felt like a book that you needed to invest time and attention to, much like making friendships in the real world (like I know anything about that, being a totally introverted bookworm!) because as the book went on, and as we got insights from the chapters centered around several different family members, I felt more and more invested and sympathetic towards all of them (even the whiny teenaged girl!).

Also the pace picks up as each family member has their own tensions and secrets and bad choices that sees them all at first straying and then hurtling towards disaster. The final quarter of the book is actually very gripping and I was on the edge of my seat as all the strands come together in a potentially catastrophic way and I’m almost covering my ears while at the same time desperate to know how it will all end…

SPOILER ALERT*****

DON’T READ ON UNLESS YOU HAVE ALREADY READ THE BOOK, OR YOU WANT TO HAVE THE ENDING SPOILED FOR YOU!!

Then you are left hanging at the end – did the daddy shoot someone? – who did he shoot? AAARGH!

I had to instantly go online and read other people’s interpretations of the books ending, which seems to be somewhat split between the foreshadowing of disaster leaving the only interpretations being that daddy shot and killed his own two children accidentally, to the more hopeful conclusion that he missed and killed no-one, or that he killed the bad guy who was trying to blackmail him. We will never know.

Remarkably Bright Creatures – Shelby Van Pelt (BOOKGROUP) – 28.02.24

This was my book group read for March 2024. The book has many thousands of positive reviews, but I feel that it is overhyped. I didn’t hate it, in fact it was a nice sweet easy read. An older woman, recently widowed and still grieving the loss of her teenage son many years ago works as a cleaner in the local aquarium and befriends the octopus who lives there. The octopus narrates some of the chapters, and while that is quite fun, and does move the plot along in certain key ways, I found the voice of the octopus to be too human. I am quite fascinated by what little I know about octopuses being very intelligent, the octopus’s voice just sounded like a human who lived in a tank – I wanted it to be more ‘other’ – I’m not sure how, but hmm, that’s what I thought.

There were some nice small town American characters – it could have been an episode of Virgin River!

Prophet Song – (Audiobook) – Paul Lynch – 26.02.24

Wow! I listened to Prophet Song over two days and was completely gripped and now I am reeling with the impact of the story.

The book is set in Ireland in an alternate present where some kind of secret police are set up to work against trade unionists fighting for workers rights. We are told the story from the point of view of Eilish, a scientist, wife and mother of four children ranging in ages from sixteen down to a babe in arms. Eilish’s husband is a teacher and trade union leader and he is taken by the secret police early in the book with no contact from him or information about his whereabouts being made available.

Eilish is shunned by many people in her community and shopkeepers refuse to serve her, she even loses her job. Tensions ramp up as more people are disappeared, and young people are drafted into the security forces. Eilish’s sister in Canada urges her to leave the country, but she is unable to get passports for her infant son or a renewal of passport for her eldest. Also she is caring for her father who is suffering from dementia and she wants to believe that her husband will be released and she wants to be there for him.

I don’t want to give away all the plot, but things go from bad to worse and from initially holding onto the belief that ‘we live in a civilised county and have rights’ to realising that the government has all the power and can get away with all kinds of terrible things Eilish and her family’s experience becomes horrifying.

Apparently the writer took most or all of the things that happened from real people’s experiences in Syria and other war torn nations but by putting it in Ireland, a prosperous western nation it feels closer to home and more real to us as readers. I certainly felt very invested in all the characters and one scene in particular really left me emotionally wrenched (I want to believe that something like that couldn’t really happen, but I fear that it could and maybe somewhere has. If you have read the book then you probably know the scene I’m talking about.).

The narrator was great too!