Bristol Bookworm

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The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue - V. E. Schwab

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue – V. E. Schwab

This is a heartbreaking book, about a woman who in desperation trades being known for freedom to live as she chooses. Addie refuses to accept the limits of life in rural France in the 18th century, and instead begs for freedom. There are so many times I could feel Addie’s desperation, to love, for connection, and to experience everything. “I saw an elephant in Paris” This is a very cleverly…

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The Golden Notebook - Doris Lessing

The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing

Set amongst Communists in 1950s London, The Golden Notebook is a feminist novel, exploring how Anna navigates her life, lovers, motherhood, party loyalties and career. I did wish she had more friends, rather than being so dependent on Molly and her lovers though.

The structure is interesting, with different notebooks for each of her themes. Despite the book broadly being a set of diaries, Lessing…

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Folk - Zoe Gilbert

Folk – Zoe Gilbert

The videdness of the cover drew me to this book. The blood red contrasting starkly with the yellow and black, and the tangle of thorns behind the birds and roses.

There is a loose overarching plot through the life of the village folk, but the book is not driven by plot. Instead we twist between different characters as their mythical beliefs take form.

It is a bloody story. Myths are not safe…

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Bones of the Moon - Jonathan Carroll

Bones of the Moon – Jonathan Carroll

Stumbling across a Twitter thread in which several writers were enthusing about Carroll, I requested Bones of the Moon from the library.

It is a difficult book to describe. A grieving woman creates a dream world that she can escape to, but then that world starts bleeding into ours. To try and resolve her grief, she and her son have to go on a quest together, and all the while little details from…

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Mountains of the Mind - Robert MacFarlane

Exploration of why mountains are loved by @RobGMacfarlen

The strangest part of reading this book was my seven-year-old coming home from school and telling me that they had read a poem in class by Robert MacFarlane when this was laid on the top of my tbr pile. Between that and that it is a library book so needed reading quite quickly, I picked it up that afternoon.

MacFarlane took me on a journey up mountains I have climbed before, and mountains that…

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Booker Prize 2019 - The Verdict

Booker Prize 2019 – The Verdict

Having read (nearly) all the Booker Prize shortlist for this year, a quick writeup of what I think overall.

The only unfinished book for me was Ducks, Newburyport. It reads like a panic attack. I had 3 tries at getting into it and gave up on page 65. Maybe its brilliant, but to me it is just unreadable.

My favourite of the books was The Testaments, but as a second book in a “series” benefiting…

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Quichotte - Salman Rushdie

Quichotte – Salman Rushdie

This was the hardest read of the Booker Prize list that I managed to finish. Dealing with male entitlement, but this time with a heavy dose of surrealism. I appreciate that it is a critical look at challenging issues, both the male entitlement and the opiate epidemic, but it is still a look from the point of view of a predator, and the ending is not one I liked.

It is well-written, and Rushdie…

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10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World - Elif Shafak

10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World – Elif Shafak

I stepped back form this at first, expecting it to be far more focused on death than it is. Instead it is primarily a long flashback of Leila’s life, from her babyhood through to her murder (not a spoiler – it first happens on page 1. We see how her childhood formed her, her hopes and dreams, through to how she is murdered.

But this is primarily a celebration of friendship. Of friends who make…

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An Orchestra of Minorities - Chigozie Ovioma

An Orchestra of Minorities – Chigozie Ovioma

Spoilers ahead…

I found this a hard read. Throughout I kept going for Chinonso to redeem himself, but every red flag was sadly correctly raised by his ending behaviour. Yes, the world was bent on harming him, but I read fiction for optimism, not for the world endlessly dragging someone down until they are only capable of evil.

His narrative is one of someone doing things for love, but even early…

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Girl, Woman, Other - Bernardine Evaristo

Girl, Woman, Other – Bernardine Evaristo

This piece is a study on friendship and family relationships between women. From closer mother-daughter and best friends, though to abusive partners and estranged family members.

The concept of the book didn’t excite me, but as the individual stories wove together to build a sense of community and intergenerational tires, it drew me in. I loved the depth of relationships and seeing the characters…

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The Testaments - Margaret Atwood

The Testaments – Margaret Atwood

Keep steady, I told myself. Don’t share too much about yourself, it will be used against you. Listen carefully. Save all clues. Don’t show fear.

Knowing The Testaments was in the past, I reread The Handmaid’s Tale this week. I’m glad I did, because in the decade since I read it, I had forgotten a lot of the subtly of the story. And for that matter, even that it was a “historical record”

The…

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The Little Paris Bookshop - Nina George

The Little Paris Bookshop – Nina George

The Little Paris Bookshop is one of those lovely things, a light gentle love story in the setting of a bookshop. Perdu has been lingering with a broken heart for decades, but change is in the air and he finally starts to face his past. The bookshop itself is on a barge, and we set off on a journey in that, with the chance for friends to be met and changes to happen.

But really the joy of this…

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The Testament of Loki - Joanne M. Harris

The Testament of Loki – Joanne M. Harris

Following the fall of Asgard in The Gospel of Loki, this brings Loki into a present-day world, where computer games consume much time and energy, but the old forces are still locked in battle. Our narrator remains the dynamic but unreliable Loki, as the trickster who is struggling with Odin.

Loki is forced by circumstances to sympathise more with humans, which improves his likability a great…

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Thinking in Numbers - Daniel Tammet

Thinking in Numbers – Daniel Tammet

Thinking in Numbers is a collection of standalone essays, each considering a different element of mathematics, and how it intersects with everyday life, or the arts. Each is interesting, although the lack of a strong thread makes this very much the sort of book that is designed to be picked up and put down at intervals.

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The Blue Salt Road - Joanne Harris

The Blue Salt Road – Joanne Harris

This is a beautiful book, with an embossed silver cover and stunning illustrations throughout. If definitely evokes the emotion of sea myth even before the reading starts.

Then we head into the world of the selkie. A sea being who longs to learn about the world of man. Then learns passion and love, and how they lead to betrayal. Stolen from his people, he is forced to try and learn to earn his…

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The Stars Now Unclaimed - Drew Williams

The Stars Now Unclaimed – Drew Williams

Our narrator is travelling the galaxy, trying to atone for her responsibility for the Pulse, a devastating galaxy-wide event. Her view however is very narrowly focused, as a strong believer in the Justified sect. This is a much more battle-based book than I expected, with our narrator pinging from one battle to another leaving a trail of devastation.

Although this book is a powerful page-turner,…

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The Order of Time - Carlo Rovelli

A beautiful little book of physics and what it is to be human by @carlorovelli

I was expecting The Order of Time to be mostly about physics, and how general relativity and spacetime work. It is that, but it is also a book about philosophy, our sense of self and briefly, LSD.

It is a short book, well-written and fascinating to read. Different ideas swim to the surface, such as a mention of the development of time zones around the world, which had also been discussed in Blood…

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