Meeting Mungo Thunk – Keith A. Pearson – 01.06.23

Like when I read Waiting In The Sky, by Keith Pearson (which I ultimately really liked) it took me a while to warm to this book, but like the characters, I as a reader went on a journey with the story, and at the end I thought it was a great book.

Adam was a normal enough child, until he read a strange old book one night and had terrible nightmares. Somehow after that he didn’t seem quite the same boy as he was before.

We meet him as an adult who makes poor choices and therefore his relationship breaks up and his life is pretty bad, until he meets Mungo Thunk.

Mungo Thunk moves in as Adam’s lodger and offers his services as a personal therapist. That’s when the characters’ redemption journeys begin and what a journey they go on – there is pain and self sacrifice and learning and some nice comeuppance for the bad guy. As I said, by the end of the book the writer had won me over and I will probably read more of his books.

Titanium Noir – Nick Harkaway (AUDIOBOOK) – 29.05.23

Angelmaker, and The Gone Away World, by Nick Harkaway, are among my favourite books ever, so I’m always excited by a new novel of his.

As I’ve mentioned in a few of my recent reviews, I travelled to Japan in May to visit my son, Danny who lives in Tokyo. To get from Ireland to Japan is a lot of travelling (between cars, flights, trains and time in airports, it took about 27 hours each way). I listened to this book while travelling, and therefore some of it at least hit my mind as a sort of lucid dream in my sleep deprived madness, and some bits I probably full on slept through since (in the first half of the book at least) I had several ‘hang on, what’s going on here? Who’s he again?’ kind of moments! So with that proviso, here’s my review:

Titanium Noir is both nostalgic and futuristic and manages to carry the two seamlessly together (as implied by the title!). It’s a murder mystery, and the investigator is invested (as is often the case) by more than just professional interest.

Set in a future where people who can afford it can be genetically enhanced – a procedure which can cure injury and some disease and also make the patient stronger and as a side effect bigger – producing giant titans, and also carrying some other side effects.

There is lust for love and lust for power, there are mobsters and beautiful people, twists and turns and layers of reveals which mostly made sense to me in the end. Not my favourite Nick Harkaway book, but that could at least partly be due to my not having my full wits about me while listening!

Burned: An Alex Verus Novel – Benedict Jacka- 24.05.23

I realised that the review I had written about the previous book in this series (Veiled) was actually reviewing this one (doh!) so I cut it and will paste it below, and I’ve written something else about the other book.

I think this is my favourite book in the Alex Verus Series so far! Our hero has a death sentence on his head, as well as on the heads of his little circle of friends, merely by virtue of being his dependents and only seven days to find a way to ensure their safety and hopefully also his own. I was nervously thinking ‘how on earth is he going to get out of this!?’ as I read. I thought the book was very exciting, and it has interesting politics. I liked how the relationship between Alex and his friends is getting back on track. I thought the ending was excruciating (in a good way), like something that you peek at between your fingers because it’s terrible but also fascinating- and again I’m left thinking ‘how is he going to get out of this?’ although now it’s not so much his life as his moral compass that is hanging in the balance – oooh!

The Midas Rain – Adam Roberts – 22.05.23

So, I love some of Adam Roberts books, and I like sci-fi, and this was cheap, so I gave it a go. It’s really a dystopian future, crime heist, sci-fi, thriller, and crime heist thriller type books (or movies) are not really my thing. Saying that, there were lots of things about this novella that I did enjoy, and I ended up repeatedly telling my (longsuffering) hubby wee snippets out of it because they made me thing interesting thoughts (in my mind they were interesting anyway!).

I don’t want to spoil it by saying how it ended, but I actually loved the ending, and thought it more than made up for having to sit through all the heist stuff.

The Weather Woman – Sally Gardner – 21.05.23

I think I might have bought this book by accident, thinking it was by Salley Vickers, whose books I have read and enjoyed (maybe my mind mixed it up with Salley Vickers book The Gardener!) but anyway, I’m glad I did because I really loved this book!

Set in 18th Century London, it follows Neva, who as a small child travelled with the circus where her mother (a talented chess player) hid inside a stuffed bear with clockwork parts who challenged punters to games of chess and invariably beat them!

Neva had her own talents, she could read the weather – she knew instinctively what weather was coming anywhere in the world and could predict all kinds of weather with pinpoint accuracy quite far into the future. When her parents are killed in an accident she is adopted by the clockmaker who made parts for the mechanical bear.

Her adopted father encourages her agile and intelligent mind, and also her gift and because she is an exceptionally clever woman in Regency England, she must disguise herself as a man to be able to attend lectures and join in with ‘manly’ discussions.

The book is a magical realism, feminist, historical, love story (yes there is some very sweet romance) and I very much enjoyed it.

A Town Called Solace – Mary Lawson – (BOOKGROUP) – 15.05.23

This was my book group read for May.

I found this book very readable – the style is deceptively simple and yet the themes and character development are deep and thoughtful. Told from the perspectives of a seven year old girl, Clara, whose teenaged sister has run away and now nobody can find her, and the strange man who has moved into the house across the road . Clara had been feeding the cat for the old lady who lived in the house, and can’t understand who the man is and why he’s there.

There are mysteries that slowly unfold and keep the narrative moving along nicely as well as interesting studies of how we humans cope with sadness, and loss, and loneliness. That makes is sound like a depressing read, but that’s not true, if anything I found the book uplifting and satisfying.

Veiled: An Alex Verus Novel – Benedict Jacka – 10.05.23

As usual, I’m quite far behind in writing up my book review, and as I work my way through the list of books I’ve read recently, and not reviewed, I saw the next book in this series (Burned) and realised that the review that I had posted for this book, Veiled, was actually a review of Burned, Doh! So I’ve cut that review, and I’ll paste it into the review of the actual book it should be, and then try to write something about this one.

The truth is, I can’t remember much about this book. I think that Alex started working for the Keepers, which is like the magical white mage’s secret police, and he did some undercover work with them, and the themes were about him trying to prove that he isn’t at heart a dark mage even though he (kind of unwittingly) had begun an apprenticeship with a dark mage but that he has turned his back on all that and really is a good guy. It shone a light on some of the factions and political infighting within the white mage community as well.

Waiting in the Sky – Keith A. Pearson – 08.05.23

My daughter, Becca recommended this book to me, and it was cheap on kindle so I gave it a go. Amazon says it’s like Matt Haig’s The Humans, and since Matt Haig can do no wrong in my eyes, this was something of a pedestal to put the book on, and early in my reading I was a bit annoyed (this is no Matt Haig! I thought) and I guess that’s why they say comparisons are odious, because it’s not Matt Haig, and to expect it to be is just wrong. I found it a little hard to get into, and I thought, just another book about someone on the autism spectrum… but the story and characters did start to grow on me, and I did get more and more interested and emotionally invested until I actually found that I did really like the book in the end, and even straight away bought another book by the author!

Before The Coffee Gets Cold – Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Geoffrey Trousselot – 25.04.23

This was the last of my ‘Japanese books to read before our trip to Japan’. Before the coffee gets cold is set in a café/coffee shop tucked away in a side street in Tokyo with a magical realism element in that if you sit in a certain seat in the café, and follow a certain set of rules, you can travel back to a previous time during the life of the café and talk to and interact with the people who were there on that day. When you finish your coffee you will return to the present, and you must drink it before it gets cold.

Like most of the Japanese literature I’ve read, the book is slow moving and contemplative, and looks quietly but meaningfully at normal human relationships – regret, loss and misunderstanding and offers the protagonists a chance at some (often heartbreaking) redemption or just a chance to say what they wished they had said before.

I had a great trip by the way!

Hidden: An Alex Verus Novel – Benedict Jacka – 24.04.23

In the previous book, Alex was in fear for his life as well as the lives of his friends, and was pushed into a ‘kill or be killed’ situation. He did what he had to do to survive, but his ‘friends’ judged him harshly and have somewhat turned against him. When one of his estranged friends (Anna) goes missing, he goes all out to try and find her and rescue her and also to try to heal the rift forming between them.

I am still enjoying this series and I like that it delves into difficult and thought provoking issues.