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book Read Every Day reading reviews

RED book 9: Bet you can’t… Find Me – Linda Prather

Bet you can’t… Find Me is one of the February books on my Goodreads Kindle UK group. I chose it because of that and because I liked the sound of it, which is to say it sounded like a good crime thriller with a supernatural twist.

The story concerns Catherine Mans a professional psychic who helps the police solve murder cases. However she herself becomes the focus of an investigation when a series of murders with a connection to her past occur. She’s the prime suspect but the real killer, a much more powerful and dangerous psychic, starts taunting her and threatening those she loves. So it becomes a race against time to find the killer, face her past and protect her friends.

Bet you can’t… Find Me is my first completed “indie” ebook and it’s fair to say they have a somewhat dubious reputation. It is now easy for anyone to effectively self-publish through Amazon or iTunes or Smashwords and I’ve heard horror stories of novels which are full of typos and bad formatting and worse grammar. However I honestly approached this as just another book that I’d hopefully enjoy. It has a great looking cover, the reviews and ratings are positive and its premise is one I find intriguing so I started reading with no reason to think it wouldn’t be great.

Unfortunately… well it wasn’t great. And I don’t just mean it wasn’t my cup of tea. I really think it just wasn’t very well written. It would be very easy to slip into more of a writing critique than a review but I really don’t want to do that. Too much.

I think the biggest things for me were:

– Some fairly big plausibility problems. The police and federal agents act in a way I found hard to believe. Also, whilst it’s no problem for a novel to be set in a world where psychic powers really exist there was remarkably little scepticism about them so I wondered whether this was supposed to be a world where everyone knows they’re real – like vampires in the Anita Blake books for e.g. – but towards the end of the book characters do start expressing doubts. However by that stage we’d had a whole swathe of plot points essentially around the fact that the authority treat rogue psychics as a very real threat.

– And the plot itself whilst not really that complicated per se felt convoluted because of the way that it’s told. I definitely lost my place in some of the back story and its relevance to what was happening in the present.

– I thought the characterisation was ok at first, a bit stock but in a plot driven book that’s not too big a problem. However whenever love or attraction raised its head it felt like a lurch into a very different and much more sentimental place. Formerly fierce and feisty women and hard-bitten all-about-the-job cops suddenly become a bit gooey. There was a lot of blushing and fighting back of tears (when the object of affection was in danger). In fact even an attempt at a buddy-cop camaraderie fell into this problem.

I could go on listing problems but I don’t have the heart. I did finish the book but more because the spirit of RED is to finish pretty much every book. Plus it was a bit of a slog. I do think there’s potential here, lots of ideas but it needs work on the execution.

3/10 – a decent blurb and a great cover in search of a better book.




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book reading

181 Books to Read

I’ve just spent a ridiculous amount of time getting my Goodreads book shelves in order. I did this in order (really) to answer one simple question:

how many unread books do I have?

I’ll come to why this is important in a second, first let me explain something about Goodreads shelves. Shelves are a way of organizing your books and when you open a Goodreads account it comes with 3 already set up: Read, Currently Reading and To-Read. These are exclusive – a book can’t be both Read and Currently Reading at the same time. You can set up other shelves which aren’t necessarily exclusive in which case they act like tags.

Anyway if you search for a book, or someone links to it (like this say) then you can click the “add to my books” button and it will give you the choice to add to one of these special shelves. Now my list in Goodreads is quite complete in that it contains all the books I own, read or unread and a lot that I’ve read but no longer own (but not all by any means). It also contains a few that I intend to read but haven’t purchased or obtained yet (they may be out-of-copyright books).

So this brings me to why I want to know that number. I have a feeling of always adding to the metaphorical mountain of books waiting to be read when I already have more than enough to keep me busy for years to come. What I now intend to do is track my “TBR” (To Be Read) number and only acquire new books when I have reduced it by reading some, hopefully I’ll read more than I acquire and that way some sense of sanity will prevail.

The problem is that when I come across a book I’m interested in or may read at some point I can only really add it to my To Read shelf, so my To Read shelf is a list of unread books I possess and ones I may get at some point.

So I have created a “My TBR” shelf and a “Wishlist” shelf. I have spent the last couple of hours sorting my To Read shelf into those two categories. I also cross-referenced with my list of actual ebooks in Calibre and physical books – which meant some physical sorting and added in any that weren’t already there.

And the number is 181. I have 181 unread books, most of them ebooks. I’m going to make a rule that whatever my TBR is at the beginning of a calendar month it must be the same or less at the beginning of the next. Which means I can only get new books after reading existing ones. Otherwise they go on the Wishlist – which currently stands at a wimpy 14. (I might at some point add a rule about what proportion of new books can be completely new as opposed to off the Wishlist – but I might not, some things are too anal even for me)

UPDATE: I have discovered, whilst making this post, that most of my effort today was UTTERLY POINTLESS!

*takes deep breath*

OK, it turns out you can make any shelf exclusive like the original three. Not only that but once you do it’s one of the options on the “add to my books” button. So all I really needed to do was this:

  • Create a new shelf called Wishlist (which I did anyway)
  • Go through my existing To Read books and add any to Wishlist which I don’t actually own.
  • Make Wishlist exclusive. At this point it removes these books from To Read.
  • From now on put new books in To Read or Wishlist as appropriate.

OK. Actually that would have still taken a while as I would still have had to compare calibre/physical books against my To Read list to identify the Wishlist items. But it wouldn’t have taken so long to co-ordinate three shelves on Goodreads – especially trying to make the numbers add up (because To Read should = Wishlist + my TBR)

Oh well. It was sort of relaxing to do even if some of it was wasted effort. Now I’m off to delete “my TBR” and after that there may be alcohol and chocolate in my near future!

 

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book Read Every Day reading reviews

RED book 5: Protector – Larry Niven

Having re-read Ringworld I thought my next Niven re-read would be Ringworld Engineers so I could go on to read Ringworld Throne. However I was reminded of Protector – partly because it takes place in the same universe as the Ringworld stories and partly through thinking about the books I read during the same era that I read Ringworld. So I decided to go with what I felt like reading, also knowing it was relatively short.

Protector concerns an alien species known as the Pak. They have three distinct phases to their life-cycle: child, breeder and protector. The change to the later stage is triggered by age and the consumption of a yam-like root known as tree-of-life. The changes are dramatic and the protector becomes vastly more intelligent, significantly stronger and extremely protective of its offspring – hence the name. On the Pak homeworld this trait gives rise to constant war with the effect that many protectors are left with no living descendants and they soon find themselves lacking the will to live, unless they can find a purpose.

One such childless protector is Phssthpok. He does manage to find a purpose and that requires him to travel 32,000 light-years to our solar system in search of a lost expedition of Pak millions of years previously. The first part of the book concerns what happens when Phssthpok encounters humanity in the form of an asteroid belt miner. The second part of the book is set two centuries later when the effects of that meeting and Phssthpok’s original mission are still playing out.

It’s becoming a cliche of mine to say I like Niven for his big ideas so I’ll try to avoid just saying that here. Let me expand on it by saying that there’s a particular type of idea, or execution that he does well in Protector. He takes an existing set of known facts about humanity, evolution and aging, and some make-believe about a possible alien race and weaves a connection between the two that is plausible enough to tell a good story around. It’s a bit like a SciFi equivalent of what Richard Matheson does in I Am Legend. There he takes an existing fantastical monster and creates a scientific ‘explanation’ for how that might actually work. Here there’s no existing monster but there is that same sense of slotting together the known science with the speculative and made-up. It has the same pleasing sense of “this could actually be true“.

I’m still not wowed by his characterization but it’s definitely better here. Although the ease with which two characters part forever for the sake of humanity is notable by the speed with which it’s dealt with.

There’s a rather extended space battle sequence near the end which takes a look at what a ‘dogfight in space’ might look like over vast distances and at significant fractions of lightspeed – ironically the answer is: slow. Not being overly interested in astrophysics for its own sake I found that section dragged a little. However I had genuinely misremembered the ending and so had the pleasure of realising it was not what I’d thought, figuring out what it might be and having that confirmed.

7/10 – another good old-fashioned romp through space and time with Niven.

(P.S. for those keeping score, another paper read.)




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book Read Every Day reading reviews

RED book 4: Amsterdam – Ian McEwan

Amsterdam is the second of four books I bought at a second-hand bookshop in the autumn (the first being The Necropolis Railway) so another paper read which has become a bit of a pleasant novelty. It also made it to the top of my list because it was short and so I could squeeze it in between the other books I plan to read this month, and because I have confidence in McEwan to deliver a good read.

Amsterdam begins at the funeral of Molly Lane who was only in her mid 40s. Attending the funeral are three of her ex-lovers as well as the husband who survived her. The story mainly follows Vernon Halliday, the editor of a somewhat stuffy newspaper, and Clive Linley a composer of enough consequence to be composing a symphony for the millenium (the book came out in 1998). They are old friends and near the beginning, inspired perhaps by the fact that Molly died of a degenerative, Alzheimer’s-like disease, they make a pact to ‘help each other out’ if they were ever to be in similar circumstances. Molly’s death also brings to light some compromising photos of the other ex-, Julian Garmony, who happens to be the Foreign Secretary and the issue of whether or not to publish raises its head for Halliday, whilst Linley has a moral dilemma of his own to deal with.

I said when I reviewed Solar that I probably ought not to have had the sympathy for the main character that I somehow did – he was a slightly pompous, self-important man, blind or indifferent to his own moral failings. Well it seems that McEwan specialises in such types as here we have not one but two characters from a similar mould. Setting them against each other, having each be able to spot in the other the flaws he’s unable to acknowledge in himself is clever and amusing. I can see how some might find the ending silly or unrealistic but I took it in a spirit of wry satire and as such it made me smile.

7/10 – a deceptively slight read with a pleasingly gentle sense of humour.




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6000 pages book reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, Wild Abandon – Joe Dunthorne (pages 9216-9519)

With less than two weeks of 2011 left I’m uncomfortably aware that I’m behind on reviews. Which isn’t a problem in some ways (more time to read) but it will delay when I can set out the conditions for the 2012 challenge etc. Anyhow…

I chose Wild Abandon to read by a slightly circuitous route. I’d enjoyed the film Submarine which was from Joe Dunthorne’s earlier novel. Rather than read it – though I was tempted – I thought it might be more fun to read something where I didn’t know the story.

Wild Abandon is the story of a commune and the family that forms the core of it. Both the commune and the family seem to be falling apart. Don and Freya’s marriage is showing signs of strain whilst their daughter Kate just wants to be normal and pass her exams. Albert, the son is pretty well adjusted – apart from his conviction that the world is going to end.

Wild Abandon was an easy and enjoyable read. It’s funny without being laugh-out-loud hilarious – though there were moments when a joke landed particularly well. It’s more the subtle character humour of well-observed small interactions between characters. Particularly the way Don reacts to those around him. He’s somehow turned from an idealistic purposeful leader to a bit of a pompous prat. His relationship with the older commune member Patrick who he patronises mercilessly was very much in this vein.

If I have a criticism it’s that the plot was a little more complicated than it needed to be. There was perhaps one too many coming or going in the comings and goings of people who’d decided to leave, then stay or vice-versa with the commune.

It does have a very effective and noticeably cinematic final scene which I enjoyed.

7/10 – more a gentle freeing than a wild abandonment.

(Now I’m only one book behind on reviews but hopefully by the time I go to bed tonight I’ll be back up to two!)

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6000 pages book reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, Expecting Someone Taller – Tom Holt (pages 6366- 6589)

I was ill this week, had a cold, which involved spending the best part of two days in bed. As such I didn’t do much other than sleep, eat and read. Also I wanted to re-read something I knew I’d enjoy.

So, Expecting Someone Taller, is comfort food reading for me.

I first read it when it came out which was whilst I was a student. I’ve re-read it a few times since, once in the last few years (but before the blogging of every book modern obsession). I have to say that the first time I loved it, at mostly because of the ending. Subsequent reads I enjoyed it but certain flaws jumped out at me. It’s thoroughly in the category of guilty pleasure.

Expecting Someone Taller is the story of Malcolm Fisher who hits a badger with his car one evening. As he watches it die he discovers that it’s not just a badge but a shape-shifting giant. The giant gives Malcolm a helmet that allows him to become any person he wishes and a very special Ring. This sets off a series of events where a catalog of mythical characters, apparently real, are after Malcolm and more especially the Ring.

This is very much a comic fantasy in the Terry Pratchett mould. It does for Wagner’s Ring Cycle what Discworld does for fantasy in general.

It’s basically a rom-com with the fantasy elements thrown in. Malcolm, a nobody who’s just been dumped by his girlfriend, is suddenly in possession of the most powerful magical item of all. How will he cope and will it help or hinder his (theoretical) love-life?

I’m not sure I ever found this laugh-out-loud funny but it’s definitely amusing and light and warm-hearted. The main character is likeable, most of the time. As a younger man I enjoyed the rom- part of it and the associated happy ending. I guess I still do though with a slightly more cynical eye – except when I’m ill in bed and wanting a comforting view of the world.

8/10 – mythical nonsense and jolly good fun.

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6000 pages book reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, The Magicians – Lev Grossman (pages 5965-6365)

Lev Grossman’s The Magicians is a tricky book to review, at least in as much as it’s hard to know how much to reveal. One of the things that I have most to say on is something that is based on a turn of events about 2/3rds of the way through. On the other hand it’s mentioned (briefly) on the back cover.

OK so if you consider back cover blurb spoiler then don’t continue reading this review. Otherwise…

The Magicians has been called a grown-up Harry Potter and you can see why – the first section of the book concerns the hero, Quentin Coldwater, being selected for and training at a magical school, Brakebills. However he’s college age not pre-pubescent and the book doesn’t shy away from descriptions of sex, and drug-taking which you wouldn’t find in even the later HP books. Also, whilst graduating from Brakebills takes 5 years (a little less for Quentin as he gets put forward a year) we’re taken through it all in this book rather than the book-per-year of the Potter novels.

Having said that it being a magical school with exams, practical lessons and even a magical sport (Welters) it’s hard not to compare with HP. This is done knowingly and when one of the characters drunkenly refers to Welters as Quidditch and talks about Owl mail you know Grossman’s not unaware of the parallels.

So I think the HP comparisons are superficial and come almost automatically from having the very idea of a school for magic. Magic in this book by the way is another difference from the Potterverse. Performing a spell is a matter of mastering complicated and precise hand movements coupled with particular incantations (in one of several languages) and possibly strange ingredients. It’s also something where the exact manner of casting depends on the conditions – pointing your wand and shouting ‘Expelliamus’ might work in New York on a still day on a Tuesday in June but not on a windy Friday in London in December for example. So whilst it’s not a science, it’s a very finicky art-form that requires lots of practice, hard work and memorising of exceptions.

But the main difference is that because the characters are already more mature it deals with a more psychologically realistic view of the world. What it might feel like to be in this scenario. Not as an exciting schoolboy adventure but as something you’re doing because you can’t really find meaning in normal life. Well that’s true for Quentin any how. The other characters have different motivations and aspirations and distractions.

One of the ways in which Quentin’s inner life is demonstrated is through the Fillory books. These are the series of magical stories that he read as a child about a land called Fillory that a family of English children go to and have various adventures in. Whilst in the world of The Magicians nearly everyone reads the Fillory novels as children, Quentin never grew out of them and will re-read them as a kind of comfort food equivalent.

And it turns out Fillory is real and Quentin and his friends go there.

And it’s this section of the book that gave me most pause for thought. Because Fillory is quite obviously and deliberately a parallel to Narnia and so the time spent there can be read as either a parody, or a fairly scathing critique of those books. I guess it was wondering whether Grossman wanted me to take some kind of a message away about this that gave me some trouble.

In the end what I decided was that he was just taking a kind of Narnia-like world seriously and how that would play out with his characters and his rules about magic and the story he wanted to tell. So I stopped worrying about whether the books I loved as a child were being made fun of[*] and enjoyed the book.

There’s a couple of other sections to the book and an interesting ending that I won’t go into. What I will say is that again I went back and forth between two opinions – that the book was uneven in tone and that was a weakness or that yes it was but because different tones were appropriate to the different sections.

I’ve read other reviews which found Quentin himself too downbeat or melancholic a character. Personally I empathised with his struggles, with life, magic and relationships and it was him (and the other characters) that kept me interested through some of the ups and downs.

Finally all I will say because it’s probably not clear is that I did enjoy this book and will read the sequel (eventually).

8/10 – It’s Magic Harry but not as we know it!

[*]which is not to say I have a rosy-eyed view of those books now. I have a number of problems with them from varying degrees of subtle racism to “The Problem of Susan”. However I still, on balance, enjoy them.

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6000 pages book reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, Anya’s Ghost – Vera Brosgol (pages 5910-5964)

If you recall I’m not really supposed to go on to a new book when I haven’t written up the previous two. Well I’ve completed three since the last 6000 pages update, and NaNoWriMo’s going ot be taking a lot of my time, so in order not to get too far behind I’m catching up:

Anya’s Ghost is another graphic novel, this time an actual graphic novel i.e. written and conceived as a single story rather than issues of a comic book. It’s relatively short (though remember I use the metric 4 comic pages = 1 regular page). I bought this book because it popped up in my Amazon recommendations, the ‘see inside’ preview looked interesting and it has a Neil Gaiman quote on the cover.

I say all this only to justify myself and mitigate my review because I’m not really the target audience for this.

Anya is a high school girl in an American private school. She comes from a Russian immigrant family and is painfully aware of her differences and wants to fit in. She also has the usual teenage hopes and dreams such as whether the cute boy in her class likes her.

Then one day she meets a ghost, a girl of a similar age who died nearly 90 years ago. She befriends the ghost and together they navigate some of the trials of high school. Only maybe her new best friend is not quite all she seems…

As I said above, I am really not the target for this book. So when I say that whilst I thought it was well-drawn and competently told the story was a little too straightforward and predictable, and the issues it dealt with (self-acceptance, peer pressure etc) a little cliche, then I am aware that I’m being unfair. On its own terms and for the market it’s aimed at it works well. For me it was enjoyable but just ok.

6/10 A fun halloween read for a younger person than I.

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6000 pages book reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, Y: The Last Man – Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra (pages 5535-5909)


Y: The Last Man is a comic book series. Note it’s not a graphic novel IMHO because although you can buy it in different collected forms it was written as a series of 60 comics over about 6 years and it definitely follows a episodic serial narrative.

It’s probably worth mentioning something about the comic book form here. It’s something I only really came to as an adult – yes I read the Beano and 2000AD but not beyond about 13-14 and both of those were weekly comics. I never had the experience of buying monthly comics under what I think of as the US model. Which are aimed more at adolescents and which come out less frequently. They feature on-going stories but also have ‘arcs’ that typically last 4-6 issues. So the “full” story of Y: The Last Man takes 60 issues and 6 years to play out but is comprised of maybe 10-12 story arcs within that. This feels like an odd, slow way to consume a story to me but I guess real comic book fans have several series on the go at once.

There’s another oddity (to me) which is the timing. It takes maybe 5-10mins to read an issue. So if like me you sit down after the fact and read them in long 1-2 hour stretches like you would a novel, then you get a lot of story, a lot of setup-conflict-resolution or whatever in that time. It’s also true that Although it may take 10mins to read there’s often a lot of visual information on the page that’s adding to the story so it sometimes feels like a much more ‘dense’ experience.

I guess for me it’s most similar to watching serialised TV like Buffy – on-going seasonal arc but with shorter episode–length stories. You get the same sense for example of building up to an ‘act break’ which on TV is an ad break and in comics the end of an issue. However the comic book form feels so much more condensed that these occur relatively more frequently.

Anyway, with that in mind, how was Y: The Last Man?

It’s the story of a man, Yorick, who appears to be the last male human left alive on earth after a mysterious plague wiped out all the other men. I’ve explained the premise to people and the usual reaction is “so it’s basically porn, then?”. Well it’s not, but fair comment I suppose. Actually, possibly in reaction to this there’s almost no sex in the first third of the story. This at first is ostensibly because Yorick is on his way to find his girlfriend who was in Australia just before the plague hit. A little later we find out he has “issues” relating to sex which may explain why he’s not taking advantage of his unique position.

In the mean time we get a sort of standard post-apocalyptic survival tale with a twist. Society hasn’t completely broken down but it has significantly changed. Because certain professions have a very high level of men in them (e.g. airline pilots) this has an effect in how the post-plague world operates. Even without a large gender disparity, all the male car drivers suddenly dying (the plague hits quickly and takes effect in minutes) makes a mess of the roads in a way that takes months to sort out.

The book tries to explore what a female only world would look like. What happens in politics, art, commerce, religion, warfare, law enforcement – all these are touched on. It’s quite interesting although at time it borders on preachy/exposition-dumpy to do this. It also tries to have its feminist cake and eat it. Whilst its heart appears to be in the right place it can’t quite avoid the wider comic book traditions of female depiction (ridiculously attractive with gravity-defying boobs). To be fair different artists[1] vary in this respect and the main comic is usually more balanced than the covers.

It’s not just the physical characteristics of the women either. I don’t think it’s entirely unproblematic that we get lots of violence in this book. It’s a very violent book and there is a certain section of the population that just enjoys seeing women laying into one another, whether with weapons or hand-to-hand. On the one hand in a world of only women, women are inevitably taking up all the positions of the moral compass, on the other it can feel at times fetishistic. Overall my feeling was: heart in the right place, occasional uneasiness in specific depictions.

That aside I will say that I enjoyed it. The story lines develop in interesting and unexpected ways. The dialogue had a wit and knowingness that reminded me of Buffy. The ending was not quite what I might have hoped for but not entirely unsatisfying. (I think I read that some were very disappointed. I wonder if I’d have felt more strongly about it after following the characters for 6 years.)

8/10 – Y? Y not? (sorry!)

[1]another comic-book-ism – when different directors shoot a particular episode of the TV show they rarely change the complete look of the show. You almost certainly won’t fail to recognise particular characters because of it.

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6000 pages book reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, My Legendary Girlfriend – Mike Gayle (pages 5183-5534)

My Legendary Girlfriend

My Legendary Girlfriend was a choice driven by two criteria. I’d wanted to do another re-read and it was something light. Light because of the books I’ve got in my “queue”[1] many of them right now seem to be crime thrillers or other “darker” material. A re-read because… well sometimes it’s nice to know what you’re going to get, if you know that what you’ll get you’ll like.

Genre-wise My Legendary Girlfriend is something of an oddity. It’s a kind of male chick lit. There’s was a moment – I suppose around the time when I first read this – when I was self-consciously moving away from (only) SciFi and Fantasy and I thought this might be the genre for me. In the end I’m not sure it was, I’m not sure there were ever enough exponents of it. That’s the genre, what about the book?

My Legendary Girlfriend is the story of Will who at 26 is just starting a new job and possibly career as a teacher. This involved a move from Nottingham to London and therefore it is a real chance for a new start. Why does Will need a new start? Well three years ago he was dumped by his then girlfriend Agnes (Aggie) who he had been with for three years, and he’s still hung up on her. Or is he? Can this new start be a break from obsessing over her too?

The novel takes place over the three and a half days of Will’s first weekend in London. We see him in his grotty flat where his entertainment consists of a few pathetic meals (melted ice cream and sugar puffs being a particular low point), listening to a glib irony-free agony aunt on the radio and various phonecalls, many to the girl who lived in the flat before him. Of course interspersed with this we get the back story of his relationship with Aggie, so the conceit of it taking place over a few days in just the one place is not really true.

It’s a fun read and definitely light. I’m not sure how well it’s aged. Although it was actually fascinating to read a story set in the relatively recent past when so many things were different. Will has no mobile phone, there’s no internet, his fantasy aspirational consumer item is a “flat screen TV”. He has a VCR and travel card. The later he loses, much to his consternation because it means he’s lost the money it cost him. These days a quick phonecall or visit to a website would get his credit transferred to a new Oyster card.

But aside from a glimpse back at cultural artifacts that are so soon forgotten, is there pleasure in the story itself? Yes. I think so. Will is a little annoying at times but that’s forgiveable in one so young. There were times when you think Aggie was right to leave him, or at least you understand why she might. The plot reminds me a little of Clueless (Emma) not in any specifics but in that way you are mis-directed successfully from seeing how things will play out and who will end up with who. Of course that only works the first time. Whereas on re-watching Clueless still seems plausible not to see Cher/Josh coming, the final configuration in Girlfriend is obvious once you know it. But that’s no great sin and there is the pleasure of anticipating the final playing out of the plot.

I’d also forgotten some of the slightly darker moments which are a semi-serious reflection on starting out in life and love in your twenties. But it’s more of a light-hearted book that can occasionally do a little depth than a serious book that also does comedy. It’s not, for example, High Fidelity, even though in tone, subject matter and ambition that’s what it most closely resembles.

Not sure I’ll re-read it for another decade, unless I’m really stuck for something to read.

7/10 – a good light read, not legendary, but not forgettable either.

[1]A list which tends to change, re-arrange and always, ultimately get longer. However its mutable nature means it’s never really possible to predict what the next book in the “queue” will be.