The Kaiju Preservation Society – John Scalzi (AUDIOBOOK) (Narrator – Wil Wheaton) – 29.11.23

I’m currently ploughing my way through Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain on my kindle (81% through – woo!) and although I’m enjoying it, it’s pretty heavy going so I wanted something light for my audiobook listening. I had previously listened to, and enjoyed Agent to the Stars, by John Scalzi, so I though this book would be just the ticket.

It’s a sci-fi story set during covid lockdown times. The hero is randomly fired from his job and ends up working as a food delivery guy when he meets an old friend who offers him an interesting job opportunity.

SLIGHT SPOILERS: The job is in an alternate universe inhabited by Godzilla like creatures and a whole ecosystem based on violent creatures struggling to survive in a world with giant predators whose metabolism is based on nuclear reactions! Sometimes these nuclear reactions cause a weakness in the boundary between the two worlds allowing the giant creatures to pass through (and have movies made about them).

I enjoyed the book – it was lightweight and it did make me laugh out loud once or twice as well as having moments of pathos and a satisfyingly evil baddy.

I also liked the afterword by the author explaining how he had been writing a serious tome but that covid and American politics had him in a funk, and he had to clear his palate by writing something fun, instead.

The Death of Sir Martin Malprelate (AUDIOBOOK) – Adam Roberts (Author) George Weightman (Narrator) – 23.11.23

I have read and enjoyed several Adam Roberts books (Bete is one of my all time favourites) and I didn’t realise that he is a Professor of 19th Century Literature at Royal Holloway, London University and a leading authority on the works of Charles Dickens. Most of his novels are kind of dystopian sci-fi or horror, and this one is more of a Gothic Mystery.

The world in which it is set is like the love child of Dickens and Conan Doyle and others and many of the characters are lifted from the pages of their novels: Ebenezer Scrooge, Vavasour Holmes (father of Mycroft and Sherlock), the Invisible Man, Charles Dickens’ Inspector Bucket, Macbeth and the parade of kings, Hamlet, the Middlemarch Serpent and more. (I copied that list from a Goodreads reviewer). It was fun spotting the characters, some of which I knew and other I just wondered about!

A series of ‘impossible’ murders happen and the main characters have to figure out whodunnit and how. I mostly really enjoyed it, although I did get a little bit bored at times. It reminded me a bit of the The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep by H. G. Parry that I listened to early last year, although in that book characters from Dickens and other classic novels appear in contemporary Australia (where the book is set).

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry (Audiobook) – Gabrielle Zevin (Author), Scott Brick (Narrator) – 20.11.23

I read this book because I really enjoyed Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by the same author.

There is a lot to like about the book. Set in a bookshop and centred around people who love to read, it is definitely going to resonate with bibliophiles, and the characters’ journeys certainly tugged at my heartstrings, and yet…

I did enjoy it, in the same way that I enjoy watching Virgin River or Gilmore Girls – it’s almost like a guilty pleasure, because it is a bit smulchy and certainly predictable, but in a comfortable and nice way.

I don’t know if I would go out of my way to read more from this author though…

Starling House – Alix E. Harrow (AUDIOBOOK) (Narrator – Natalie Naudus) – 16.11.23

I absolutely loved Alix E. Harrow’s first novel – The Ten Thousand Doors of January, so I was excited to read this as the hype around it promised a return to form.

I did enjoy it, very much in fact, but… I guess I just wasn’t completely blown away like I hoped I would be. It’s not a retelling of beauty and the beast, but has nods to it, and I like that the male character was not super handsome, I can’t be doing with books (or TV shows for that matter) where all the characters are drop dead gorgeous – apart perhaps from some nerd or villain, who actually really is gorgeous, they just wear weird glasses.

Anyway – Opal was left to raise her little brother after the death of their mother, and she would and does do anything for him, including work several demeaning jobs. She is drawn to the creepy old house in the woods with a reputation for being haunted or cursed or both, and ends up getting a job as a cleaner there and that’s when her life gets seriously weird.

There’s clearly something spooky going on, and she seems to be somehow connected to the eerie mystery. Also some very bad people are putting pressure on her to spy for them in the house and she is torn between protecting herself and her brother from them and the sense of loyalty she feels for the house and the man who lives there.

It really is a fun book to read, and I think maybe I judged it harshly because I have hyped up in my mind just how good The Ten Thousand Doors of January was.

One thing I did really like in the book was the shift in the dynamic in the relationship between Opal and her brother as he grows up – she is so focussed on having to take care of him that she doesn’t see that he can take care of himself, and even her. As a parent of grown children, I remember well that feeling which is a strange mixture of pride and loss when you realise that your children don’t need you in the same way that they once did.

The Island of Missing Trees – Elif Shafak (AUDIOBOOK) – 14.11.23

This book is told from two points of view in alternating chapters – Ada, a teenage girl who is mortified when she has a loud breakdown/outburst at school on the first anniversary of her mother’s death (at first I thought, oh no, another annoying young adult protagonist, but I got past that when I got to know the characters better) and a fig tree.

The fig tree was brought as a cutting from Cyprus by Ada’s father after he returned to the island of his birth as an adult on a scientific visit. The fig tree narrated the back story of Ada’s parents who fell in love as teenagers against the backdrop of growing civil unrest between Greek Cypriot Christians and Turkish Cypriot Islamists. of course they were on different sides of the divide, and hence their love was forbidden.

The story is told very beautifully, and is heartbreakingly sad, as is any story where former neighbours and friends become bitter enemies due to some minor difference in ethnicity or religion.

I liked the perspective of the tree, uprooted and moved to a new environment, but finding connections in the way trees do with the network of fungus rhizomes that connect the trees roots and form a self supporting community, as well as the symbiosis between plants and insects and wondering why people couldn’t support each other in the same way.

It’s a nice book, I enjoyed it.

Everything I Never Told You – Celeste Ng (AUDIOBOOK) – 06.11.23

Wow! I love Celeste Ng’s writing – so beautiful.

While this book is very much written from the perspective of experiencing bigotry as a Chinese American and/or a mixed race couple (ethnic Chinese and white American) in the 1970s there is so much about the family dynamics in the book which would resonate, I think with all families.

The title is the key – Everything I Never Told You is about miscommunication and misunderstanding and the tragic and heart-breaking consequences.

Both the parents, James and Marilyn Lee, are reeling from clashes with their own parents and vow to give their children a different experience, but in so doing they push too far the other way and end up mirroring the parental pressures they were trying to avoid.

Even their relationship with each other is constantly based on untold feelings and misread cues that drives a wedge between them.

The book begins with the disappearance of Lydia, the teenaged daughter of the Lee family and the discovery of her body. Flashbacks fill in the events that led to the tragedy as well as following the aftermath. We get chapters from the perspectives of all the five family members – the parents, Lydia’s older brother, Nate and younger sister, Hannah, each with a rich inner life that they keep to themselves. Even the discovery by Marilyn of the diaries she gave Lydia every Christmas all completely blank illustrate how difficult the family members found it to bare their souls even to themselves.

I can understand as a dyed-in-the-wool introvert how hard it is to be open, but I am trying to be more communicative, because people need to understand each other better and how can they if you don’t let them in? I wanted to shout at the characters to just tell each other how you really feel, while also acknowledging my hypocrisy when I do the same thing.

The narrator, Cassandra Campbell, was excellent as well – really brought the beautiful lyrical language to life while giving each character a distinct and realistic voice. I loved this book.

Salem’s Lot – Stephen King (AUDIOBOOK) – 02.11.23

I have read/listened to a lot of Stephen King books recently, and I’ve very much enjoyed the experience. Mostly I’ve listened to his more recent works, and many reviewers claim the older stuff is better, so I checked out Salem’s Lot, written, I think in 1970. Stephen King himself gave an introduction to the audiobook, and said that it was somewhat dated now, which it was, although nothing too terrible!

Hmmm, I did enjoy the book – classic vampire fair, but I have to say that I prefer the more recent King books I’ve read.

The Girl Who Broke the Sea – A. Connors – 31.10.23

Near the beginning of this book I was starting to regret reading yet another YA book about a fraught teenage girl acting out, but… very quickly I became gripped by the story and actually by the end of the book I loved it.

Lily is a teenage girl who comes with her mother to a deep sea mining rig. They are both escaping from past trauma, which we get teased out in flashbacks from Lily’s memory. The rig has political tensions between the mining manager, who just wants to maximise profits, and the science team who want to minimise damage to the environment, and also study the unique and fascinating ecosystem that exists in the deepest parts of the ocean.

Lily, like her father who she lovingly remembers in her flashbacks, are both obviously neurodivergent, and one bugbear I had was that Lily was constantly punished for acting out while being given no support or tactics for dealing with her inappropriate impulses. As someone who works in the education system, I found it hard to believe that she wasn’t looked after better.

Lily finds it very hard to fit in with the overachieving children of the rig staff but she does make a friend and together they discover an intelligent species of hive mind micro-organisms that threaten to destroy the rig and kill everyone if they can’t learn to communicate and co-exist.

The book references the novel and movie ‘Contact’ but I actually was reminded more of the fabulous movie ‘Arrival’ by the totally alien nature of the new creature and the difficulties of finding common ground and working together.

I thought it was a very good book and will look for more work by this author.

Red Dwarf: Better Than Life (Audiobook) – Grant Naylor (Author), Chris Barrie (Narrator) – 26.10.23

I had really enjoyed listening to the first Red Dwarf audiobook, so when this one also came up as the audible daily deal I bought it. It was fine, quite fun to listen to, but not as good, in my opinion, as the first one. Chris Barrie’s narration was once again excellent though.

A Song of Comfortable Chairs (No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Book 23) – Alexander McCall Smith – 27.10.23

There was a time when I was excited by a new No 1 Ladies Detective agency book, but I think I’m just getting a little tired of the same old same old nature of these stories. In this novel very little happened and it felt like a rehashing of the old sentiments of the series – Mma Ramotswe loves Botswana, Mma Makutsi is vain but good hearted, Violet Sepotho is bad, Charlie is funny but growing into a very nice young man etc.

It was fine. Nice even, but nothing special.