Nic Dempsey

This is one day early however, I’m unlikely to finish anything between now and tomorrow without being up way into the night and I’m staying at Ma’s tonight so it’s very unlikely as I’ll have to be up at ‘Oh my God it’s early’ o’clock tomorrow morning. The 7.27am train to Waterloo the train of nightmares.

Reading this month has been on and off.  At the beginning of the month, I was all about the reading. That eased off when I realised that I needed to do stuff that didn’t involve lying down and make some effort to interact with other humans. I also borrowed S1 of Friday Night Lights and started watching last weekend, so that’s at least an hour a day I can’t read anything because I’m watching it. At this point I also need to say something about the strangeness of my obsession with a TV series about a sport that I don’t really understand (I understand actual football and can even explain the offside rule!) It’s seems to be mucked about with rugby with players who wear extra padding (which seems sensible!) but I can’t recognise it as football.  They should call it something else because that’s not football.

Anyway, reading in May looked like this…

Angelmaker – Nick Harkaway

I started reading this last month and finished it while I was on holiday. I loved it, it was complicated, silly and very funny. You need to be able to stick with it through all it’s complications and it pays off. Whether you will enjoy it depends on whether enjoy silliness or not. I was sold when the lead character was described as ‘standing as if he’d just been given the Spanish Archer’.

Goodnight Steve McQueen – Louise Wener

I picked this up at Barter Books as a quick non thinking read. Which is exactly what it was. It fine while I was reading it but I don’t think that I’ll read it again.

World War Z – Max Brooks

Another book I’ve been meaning to get around to and even though I probably won’t go and see the film, it did prompt me to get my act together and read the book. I loved it. I liked the structure of it, the reader ends up putting the story together and there are a lot of gaps. I also like that we are viewing the ‘war’ as over and that like a lot of things, change has happened good and bad. The structure of the book also makes it easy to read, short stories that link. Was perfect for reading during the commute.

How to Talk to a Widower – Jonathan Tropper

This is another Barter Books purchase and was apparently a Richard and Judy book club pick, which completed passed me by. Doug is 29 and was married to an older woman, Hailey, until she died in a plane crash. Leaving him grief stricken. A year later he’s still grief stricken and mired in self pity, drinking a lot and doing little else. He really needs to get to grips with his life as well as contenting with an angry stepson, a father with dementia, a pregnant twin sister who’s marriage is breaking up and a sister about to marry the guy she met while he was sitting shiva for his wife. It’s not slapstick although I found some of it really funny. Doug just needs to grow up. The bit I found hardest about the book was believing that someone as capable and in control as his wife was supposed to be, really would have married him. Generally the message is ‘shit happens, deal with it’.

Rebel Heart – Moira Young

I loved Blood Red Road and can’t think why it took me so long to get around to it’s sequel. I love Saba’s voice, I love that everything wasn’t perfect. I’m interested in the world that Young has built but glad that it’s not all explained, there’s room for you to put it all together. I want to know if there will be another one and when!

The 5th Wave – Rick Yancey

This was Luc’s pick for Bank Holiday reading. It’s really readable and interesting, picking up on Stephen Hawkins observation that aliens are more likely to be hostile than friendly. I read it in 2 days, Luc took three days and objected to the ‘kissy stuff’, well he is 12 and I think that he’ll also need to re-read it a few years time.

Partials – Dan Wells