On to Travel

I have moved back into non-fiction for one of my last sorties into that area of the library. The mammoth travel section is bursting with guide books, so it's quite hard to find a prose book I can actually read. I selected Racing With Death: Douglas Mawson - Antarctic Explorer by Beau Riffenburgh. It's not a travel book at all, it's a biography of a largely forgotten Antarctic explorer. It's actually quite good, but he was mainly remembered in his lifetime for an especially daring trek across the ice when everyone but him died. I am not sure in any way it was especially notable and he'll always go down as a footnote compared to the likes of Scott and Shakleton, and the rest of his life was really quite ordinary baring the years in the Antarctic. Nevertheless, it's a decent book and gets 8 out of 10.

 

Fall Down Seven Times

Fall Down Seven Times, Get Up Eight is a book by Japanese teenager Naoki Higashida about autism. My daughter is autistic so I could relate to some of it. However, at times it lapsed into the specifics of his family life and was repetitive. 5/10

The library has re-opened so I can get cracking reading again!

Lockdown life

Two more books to report which were read before and during the lockdown. Reading Allowed: True Stories and Curious Incidents from a Provincial Library by Chris Paling was a book about libraries themselves and what it is like to work in them. Well worth a read and quite funny and that same time depressing seeing what is happening to our libraries. So important to keep using them! 7/10

Engel's England by Matthew Engel is a very ambitious book. It's basically Matthew going around every county in England and trying to distil its essence. Of course what he sees others won't. I found the chapter on Lincolnshire quite patronising. Surrey was more accurate. Some of the chapters were interesting. Others were boring. Intrusting in places, but ultimately he didn't succeed for me. 6/10

I have two books left which will maybe last lockdown, but probably won't. So the library reading will stay dormant for a bit.

Into 2020

Two new non-fiction books kick off 2020, both about successful people.

Letter To My Younger Self: The Big Issue Presents... 100 Inspiring People on the Moments That Shaped Their Lives was an interesting book where various famous people told the lessons they had learned in life back to their younger self (roughly teenage) by means of a letter. At the same time, they told a bit of their life story and how they had got to where they did from a position of relative obscurity. It was interesting how generally driven a lot of people were and how they had to work hard to get to where they did, even if they didn't know where they were going when they set out.  7/10


The Face Pressed Against a Window: A Memoir by Tim Waterstone. Tim Waterstone's book is good especially the early years about Waterstones. There was too much about his early life, he's a businessman but a notable person in his own right. It all seemed a bit rushed in the years following the sale to WH Smiths and there was next to nothing about the current day. 8/10

A Ladder to the Sky

After a few of stinkers I finally found a good book: A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne.  It's a brilliant novel about plagiarism, ambition and creativity. Writers often write about the act of writing and publishing as its obviously a world they know well and this is a great book with some fantastic characters. It's told from several points of view but with a continuous narrative and always with the central figure of Maurice Swift. 9/10

Two more shockers!

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite is in the Best Sellers at the moment. I have absolutely no idea why, I found it unutterably tedious. 1/10

The Woman on the Stairs by Bernahrd Schlink was yet another book where I dutifully turned every page and struggled to even follow the plot. I had no interest in the characters or storyline at any stage. I couldn't really tell you what it was about. 1/10

Let's hope things get better!

Everything Under

I dutifully turned every page in Everything Under by Daisy Johnson and tried my hardest to follow it. But I found it difficult to understand the plot, dialogue or characterisation. This was in the best sellers section and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Hats off to anyone who can read it and enjoy it. 1/10