If Cats Disappeared from the World – 25.03.23

This book has lots of very positive reviews, and it’s supposed to be very deep and philosophical, but I’m afraid I thought it was a load of old rubbish!

I have been reading some books written by Japanese artists, or set in Japan prior to my Trip in May to visit my son in Tokyo, so that is what drew me to this book.

The premise is that a man is told that he has an inoperable brain tumour and only days to live. Reeling from this news, he meets a person who looks exactly like himself, but is in fact The Devil, who offers him one extra day of life for every (meaningful) thing he agrees to have removed from the whole world from that point on.

So, he starts with mobile phones, and as you can imagine, the world is on the whole (at least on a superficial level) better off without them since everyone starts noticing things and people around them again. He moves on to music, films and clocks, and then is offered the choice of dying or removing cats from the world.

To me, the book felt like it was written by a twelve year old. The ‘philosophy’ was just really obvious observations that have been made many times before (probably by twelve year olds), and the premise was dumb. One extra day in return for removing important things from the world seems stupid, and incredibly selfish – why should the whole of humanity sacrifice stuff for one man to have one more day?

Well, it’s possible that there is depth that I’m too set in my ways to see, but I’m inclined to think that it’s an ’emperor’s new clothes’ situation and actually the book is not more worthy of praise than a naked man who thinks he is dressed to the nines.

The Little Friend – Donna Tartt – (AUDIOBOOK) – 23.03.23

I enjoy listening to this novel as an audiobook – I liked the Southern American accent of the narrator. It’s a coming of age/murder mystery/family drama set  in a small Mississippi town, in the 1960s and 70s.

Harriet is obsessed with finding who murdered her brother a decade ago and with wreaking revenge on them.

It’s a study of the misunderstanding and misconceptions rife in the mind of a child raised in a setting of prejudice both racist and classist and in a family broken by sudden and horrific loss.

Girl, Woman, Other – Bernardine Evaristo (BOOKGROUP) – 21.03.23

This was my book group read for March, and funnily enough, like the previous book group book (Exactly What You Mean by Ben Hinshaw), it is a novel which is really a series of connected short stories. Whereas I hated the previous book, and used the fact that it was really short stories as the basis of my rant about it, I actually really enjoyed reading this book.

I have looked at other people’s reviews of this book on Goodreads, and it’s quite divided, with many people not liking how the book follows 12 characters, sequentially, most of them Black British women with various ‘issues’ and, they feel only skims the surface of each character before moving on. I can see where they are coming from, and usually this would bother me too, but, I don’t know, I just found the reading of this book to be a thoroughly enjoyable immersive experience.

The style of writing is also divisive, without much punctuation or capitalisation which some people hated and others (me included) found it gave the storytelling a presence and truth and verisimilitude (I had to look that word up because I was reaching for something that meant what it means!!) like someone is telling you the story from their life with passion without having to pause to conform to grammatical rules.

I can’t explain why I was so captivated by this book – I’m not a black British woman (I’m a white Irish woman (or almost Irish)) but I felt kinship and empathy with the characters.

The other girls in the book group all enjoyed it too.

Sixteen Souls – Rosie Talbot – 10.02.23

The beautiful walled city of York, with it’s towering Gothic cathedral, York Minster is the perfect setting for this coming of age/coming out, young adult ghost story urban fantasy. I have read quite a lot of books in the urban fantasy genre, and this was a very enjoyable one, up there with my favourites such as Rivers of London and the Crow Investigations series.

Charlie died of meningitis and was revived, when he got better, he had lost both his legs, but gained an ability so see and interact with dead people. We meet him a few years later when he has adjusted to what’s happened and is best friends with some of the ghosts. But when ghosts start disappearing, and a new seer is in town Charlie must get over his distrust and work with him to solve the mystery.

Big thumbs up, I loved it!

Convenience Store Woman – Sayaka Murata – 30.02.23

I really enjoyed this short novel set in Japan (I’m reading some Japanese fiction because I’m visiting my son in Tokyo in May).

Keiko, the main character is 36 and has worked in a convenience store since she was a student. She is clearly quite firmly on the autism spectrum and her whole life she has been pressured by her family and peers to change herself to fit in with their idea of what ‘normal’ should be. In Japanese culture (and perhaps everywhere, to a degree) to not fit in with the ideals of either progressing in a prestigious career, or becoming a wife and mother is seen as failure, and is shameful and embarrassing for everyone.

Keiko tries to conform to what others want from her, but the truth is she really loves working in the convenience store, and she is really diligent and good at it.

I felt for her, and I felt cross at her family for not just supporting her for who and what she is.

The House of Sorrowing Stars – Beth Cartwright – 27.02.23

There was a lot that I liked about this magical realism gothic fantasy horror love story (yeah, lots of genres!). It’s a sort of period drama with marzipan, vengeful ghosts and a mystical being (who is sometimes a cat?) that has the ability to help ease the sadness of people by recording their stories on special books, and another person has the ability to make keys the sad people can use to unlock a door to a place they can visit to get closure and comfort. Yeah. I didn’t love it though. I’m not sure what it is that moves a book from like to love in my mind – for instance, The Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Alix E. Harrow, and The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern where both books with a similar feel and yet something about those two books blew me away and I full on love them.

It has lots of good reviews though, so maybe it’s just me that didn’t fully get it?

Pachinko – Min Jin Lee (AUDIOBOOK) – 22.02.23

This is an epic tale of four generations of a Korean family trying to survive in Japan. I wanted to read a book set in Japan, as I’m visiting Tokyo and Kyoto in May to visit my son who now lives and works in Japan, and I was a little disappointed because although this book is set in Japan, it is very much from the point of view of Korean refugees and a lot of the story is driven by the persecution and general mistreatment of Koreans by Japanese.

I know that many nations (if not all…) have shameful histories of their treatment of foreigners, my own included, and yet I was shocked by how hard it was to be Korean in Japan, especially Korean Christians who were further persecuted for not agreeing to bow to and worship statues of the emperor.

For the most part the story of the family was interesting and sad although I did get a bit bored in the middle because it is a very long book!

Scharlette Doesn’t Matter and Goes Time Travelling, Scharlette Kills 99% of Germs – Sam Bowring – 21.02.23

So, I read Scharlette Doesn’t Matter and Goes Time Travelling ages ago, and it turns out my daughter had also read it and we waxed lyrical about how much we both loved it and couldn’t wait for the sequel, and then I forgot all about it. I was thinking about my daughter and our shared love of reading the other day, and I remembered this book and checked Amazon, and sure enough the sequel has been out for a wee while, so I bought it, re-read the first book and then the sequel.

It’s weird, that I remembered loving it so much, because this time around I was a bit underwhelmed – maybe I had bigged it up in my mind too much and the reality couldn’t live up.

So, the story is a quirky tale of a single girl in a dead end job getting mixed up with a crazy time traveller from the far future. She can travel with him through time because her life is so uneventful that she left no ripples in time (hence the Scharlette Doesn’t Matter) . There’s a lot of fun with nanobots and futuristic AI computers and stuff, and humour which verges on the too silly at times, but there is also plausible enough science.

In the sequel, Scharlette has to try to break the loop of two time travelling superpowers (one being humans, the other ‘germs’) who constantly jump back in time to fight the same battles over when one side gets an advantage over the other. It is quite thoughtful in it’s examination of how power corrupts and ethics get hazy when faced with dilemmas about which innocent lives to save and which to sacrifice ‘for the greater good’.

Love Will Tear Us Apart – C. K. McDonnell (AUDIOBOOK) – 15.02.23

This is book three in the Stranger Times series, my favourite of all the Ciamh McDonnell books and I was super excited for this audiobook coming out.

I need to give a huge shout out to the narrator,  Brendan McDonald who is FABULOUS! He does so many accents, and puts so much character and meaning into his reading, adding to what is already a great story.

Grumpy irascible newspaper boss, Vincent Banecroft, is even more grumpy and dishevelled than usual, Hannah has left the newspaper to go back to her awful ex (or has she…?) the secretary (I can’t remember her name off the top of my head) has decided to leave the office for the first time and go out on a case, and they have to deal with sad ghosts, evil cults and powerful magic users – a pretty normal day at the office of the Stranger Times!

The Midnight Mayor: A Matthew Swift Novel – Kate Griffin – 12.02.23

This is the second book in the Matthew Swift series about the man who comes back from a near death (or maybe actual death) experience sharing his consciousness with an electric blue angel. It’s an urban fantasy series set in London and like Ben Aaronovitch’s’ Rivers of London series it very much pays homage to the city and to the Myths and legends surrounding it. Matthew Swift’s magic stems from the very beating heart of the city – he uses power from, for example, the utility cables all around and protects himself with warding spells using things like the rules of the London underground.

I like the series, but don’t yet love it. The things I like are the intelligent and imaginative plots and interesting characters. The thing I struggle with is the structure of the writing which is often (for me anyway) quite confusing, switching between points of view, and not using sentences. There are odd line breaks in the middle of sentences sometimes, and I’m not sure if this is stylistic or if it’s a glitch with my kindle!

I will continue reading the series and see if I grow to love it!