When Breath Becomes Air – Paul Kalanithi – 30.08.25

The young man who wrote this book was a neurosurgeon who tragically died aged just 36 of lung cancer. (Like my dear friend and book group buddy, Arlene who recently passed away of lung cancer despite never having been a smoker or lived around smokers.) The first half of the book follows his early life and career path, torn between studying literature and medicine, with plans to practice medicine before turning to writing later in life. His illness curtailed these plans and in the second part he wrote about his own journey with illness and moving towards death until the book is finally finished by his bereaved wife after he ultimately succumbed.

He believed in doctors doing the right thing for each individual patient, which sometimes involves stepping back and not intervening just because they can, which I applaud.

It is certainly an interesting, moving and thoughtful book.

The Space Between Worlds – Micaiah Johnson – 28.08.25

This book has an interesting premise – a dystopian future has a two class society and they discover how to jump between parallel dimensions. In order to survive the jump, your counterpart in the new world must not exist (ie to already be dead). Since the people from the poor lower class are much more likely to have died in other similar worlds, they are the most useful to train as jumpers.

I have read other books with similar set ups – The Long Earth series by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter, and the wonderful Pandominion books by M.R. Carey, both of which I loved, this one, somehow never really grabbed me. It was alright, but I don’t think I’ll bother reading any more in the series.

Tales from the Stranger Times, Volume 1 – C.K. McDonnell (Audiobook) Narrated by: Brendan McDonald – 27.08.25

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After being a bit bored by the long Stephen King book I had just listened to, this was such a welcome change! I’m not usually a fan of short stories, but I am a huge fan of C.K. McDonnell’s Stranger Times books and I LOVED this collection. My personal favourites were ‘The Raven’ in which Eddy Poe accidentally/on purpose kills a robin (called Neville Moore!!) and talking birds plague him to seek recompense, and the one about the Troll (can’t remember what it was called). As always Brendan McDonald’s narration was great. I heartily recommend this book.

Dreamcatcher – Stephen King, (Audiobook) Narrated by: Jeffrey DeMunn – 22.08.25

I’m a big fan of Stephen King, and it pains me to say it, but I didn’t love this one! It is quite long and at times confusing and at times a bit gross with endless talking about farts (even thought they were, I guess, relevant to the plot).

Four men who were fast childhood friends meet up regularly in a hunters cabin in the woods (big horror set-up trope!). They all have complicated things going on in their lives as well as complicated reminiscences from their shared childhood, particularly concerning ‘Dudders’ the child with learning difficulties who they befriended after saving him from bullies one day.

They take in a man they found wandering confusedly in the woods, who’s health deteriorates (including lots of farting) and to cut a (very) long story short, it turns out that aliens are invading who have various life cycle/symbiotic forms that implant eggs/larvae in some people, and use mind control on some people and the government is kind of in on it (or at least they know and are trying to manipulate things to their benefit).

Our friends have to try to save themselves/the world and maybe only now forgotten Dudders can help them.

All the Colours of the Dark – Chris Whitaker – 17.08.25

Oh my goodness! I was so enthralled by and engrossed in this book that I had several very late nights when I kept reading instead of going to sleep!

Patch and Saint are best friends from the poor end of town, and although Saint has feelings for Patch, he has a secret crush on rich girl, Misty.

One day when they are all young teens, something happens that will change all of their lives forever. Patch hears Misty screaming in the woods and goes to help her, fighting with the man who was trying to abduct her. She gets away but Patch is taken instead. Months go by, and the police would have given up the search for Patch if Saint hadn’t doggedly followed all possible leads and eventually discovered the pitch dark underground room where Patch had been held and rescued him.

Patch insists there was a girl with him in the room, a girl called Grace who he spoke with but never saw due to the darkness.

No trace of Grace is found and the police and psychiatrists think she was just something he imagined to help him through the ordeal, but he does not give up the belief that she is real and it becomes his life’s work to find and rescue her.

The ripples of this event spread through many lives, and as we follow Saint, Misty and Patch into adulthood we see how it shapes them.

I thought it was brilliant – the suspense never lets up – was Grace real? Will Patch ever find her? Will he destroy his life (and others) by following the quest so single mindedly?

The characters are well rounded and I felt real emotional ties to many of them, almost hiding behind my hands at the turns their lives were taking and willing things to go better for them.

I loved the ending and the bittersweet feel of the whole book – just great!

Elsewhere – Gabrielle Zevin – 13.08.25

This was a sweet readable book offering a novel suggestion for the afterlife – the recently deceased wake on a type of cruise ship headed for Elsewhere where they might meet friends and relatives who predeceased them. In Elsewhere you arrive the age you were when you died, and then age backward – ie. get younger until at seven days old, you are swaddled in slowly dissolving strips and launched into the river of current which takes a week to get back to earth where you are ‘born again’ as a new person.

15 year old Liz died in a hit and run collision and lives in Elsewhere with the grandmother she never met in life because she died when Liz’s mum was expecting her.

In Elsewhere there are things like the viewers they used to have at the seaside where you put in a coin and look at the distance which allow the dead to watch the living. Liz becomes obsessed partly with watching her family and partly with finding out who killed her. She has to go through a kind of grieving process for the life she left behind, and the fact that she will never be older than 15 (in fact she will get younger, so will always be a child) and the book takes us through her stages (anger, denial, acceptance etc) in quite a nice and thoughtful way.

I don’t really get the point of reincarnation as a belief if the person has no knowledge of having lived before – isn’t that just the same as one person ending and a new person beginning? Some people might disagree with me, I know – just my opinion.

A Cast of Falcons – Sarah Yarwood-Lovett – 10.08.25

I liked the first book in this series, about Dr Nell Ward, the expert in bats who stumbled across a crime scene and was implicated in a murder, because it was quirky and I enjoyed the bat ecology facts. This second book is more like murder at Downton Abbey, as Nell (who also happens to be a member of the landed gentry) is hosting a society wedding in her stately home. Too many posh people. Also, the love triangle between Nell, the policeman who arrested and then fell in love with her, and her colleague, Rav, who is also in love with her but feels inadequate to her poshness, gets quite annoying.

Plus there was hardly any ecology, with nesting owls and an aggressive falcon getting barely a mention in spite of the title. I think I have bought at least one more book in the series which was on a 99p kindle deal, otherwise I don’t think I would bother reading any more after this one.

Like a Bullet: The Paperback Sleuths, Book 3 – Andrew Cartmel (Audiobook) Narrated by: Olivia Dowd – 07.08.25

After not really liking the first book in the paperback sleuth series, I find for me at least that it has found its feet a bit and books two and three are pretty fun. I still prefer the vinyl detective series, but I quite like how Eric Make Loud and Tinkler appeared in this book.

I appears that the world of rare paperback trading is just as murderous and dangerous as that of rare vinyl record trading and our heroine must fight for her life with the help of her friendly mild mannered serial (vigilante) killer landlord.

The Forty Rules of Love – Elif Shafak – 06.08.25

I found this book interesting and strangely compelling. It follows dual stories – modern day American, Ella, who has been a relatively happy homemaker, wife and mother, even knowing that her husband regularly cheats on her with other women, until her children are grown and her daughter announces her engagement and she strongly advises her against marriage. At the same time, she takes a job outside of the home (well, actually working from home, I just mean outside of homemaking) as a reader for a publishing agency and the first book she is tasked with reading is Sweet Blasphemy, a retelling of the life of  Shams of Tabriz, a thirteenth century traveling dervish (a kind of mystical sect within Islam) and his relationship with the famous Turkish poet Rami, and we read this book along with her.

She is drawn to the religious teachings about love in this book and begins an email conversation with its author, Aziz Zahara, a man with a difficult past who found peace after converting to Sufism. Ella and Aziz form a deep connection and I did find myself itching to get back to their story even though all the deep philosophical stuff was in the Sweet Blasphemy chapters.

I had not really known much about Islamic sects prior to reading this book, and I was struck by similarities to Christian teachings and different groups’ or individuals’ interpretations of them.

I’m not sure I really liked Shams of Tabriz, he seemed a bit full of his own wisdom, especially when he agreed to an arranged marriage and refused to have any relations with his young wife (because he was above all that kind of thing) which left her horribly hurt and feeling useless in a society where wives produce children and not much else.

He was, however, less judgey of outcast groups in society as other religious types of his era (and probably every era!) which was nice.

The Pull of the Stars – Emma Donoghue (Audiobook) Narrated by: Emma Lowe – 03.08.25

From the writer of Room this is a very different (although, now that I think about it, similarly claustrophobic) novel. It’s historical fiction set in Dublin during WWI when a deadly flu epidemic ravages the city and people die within hours of contracting it.

The novel takes place over just two days and mostly in a hastily set up ward in the hospital for pregnant mothers who have the flu, from the point of view of Nurse Julia Power, who due to staff shortages is left in charge of the ward with just an untrained volunteer, Bridie, to help her.

The flu is very serious in pregnant women causing premature labour and often death of either or both of mother and child and Julia feels overwhelmed trying to help these women through terrible ordeals.

The minute by minute detailing of all that goes on in the ward from making beds and changing bed pans to graphic descriptions of labour and medical emergencies feels like one of those single shot shows about nights in emergency hospitals or other traumatic events.

Also Julia lives with her brother who came back from the war shell shocked and unable to talk.

Over the couple of days Julia formed a deep bond with Bridie, the young volunteer and learns about her own sad backstory from being born in an unmarried mothers home and kept by the nuns as basically slave labour.

The book was pretty gripping and certainly emotional and an interesting look at that period of Irish history.

(The title refers to the fact that the word Influenza comes from an Italian phrase meaning the influence (or pull) of the stars because ancient doctors believed flu was cause by astral effects.)