February: a short month with many books

Somehow I’ve read 11 books this month. And while one of them was a re-read, the others were new. Three of them I read on the Kindle app which means I didn’t read them as thoroughly as I would have done on the page. Still quite pleased with it though.

Home Cooking – Laurie Colvin

A friend recommended this as their comfort read and I love cookery books you can read so I got hold of a copy. It is indeed a delight, being a cook book written by a frank talking New York woman, who comments on lifestyle as much as food and recipes. If you like Nora Ephron movies, you’ll like this.

Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

My re-read for the month and my favourite book. It will always be a comfort and a joy to read.

The Spare Room – Helen Garner

Lord. This is an unflinching book, a stark exploration of how a friendship can be tested through the worst of life. Helen’s friend Nicola comes to stay – Nicola has very serious cancer and is seeking treatment at an alternative therapist near Helen’s home. Helen is completely unprepared for the impact this event will have on her and how hard it is to deal with. You like to think you will support your friends in anything they need but we all know there are sometimes limits – and Nicola refusing to countenance any criticism of the quacks who are ‘treating; her s incredibly difficult for Helen and for us, the reader, to manage. A stark, portrait but a very successful treatment of a difficult subject.

The Family Tree – Sairish Hussain

I really enjoyed this. It’s a big absorbing family saga, in the style of Tim Pears or Elizabeth Jane Howard but centred around a British Pakistani family of a dad, two children and their grandmother. Having had their mother die when the girl Zahra was born, the book explores Zahra and her big brother Saahil, and what happens to them – in the form of racism, family ties and drugs. I loved the characters and how they forced themselves through the worst of events to come back together. A big hearted, absorbing novel.

Girl Reading- Katie Ward

A series of short stories, very loosely linked, based around paintings. This would have worked much better had the paintings been reproduced in the book so you could have seen them while you read (I imagine copyright issues are a factor and they are available on the website) It was alright.

Such a Fun Age – Kiley Reid

This was one of those books where you could see what the author was trying to do quite early on and once you got the point then she didn’t stop hammering it home. I couldn’t warm to it, though I tried. I did get the point though.

The Lamplighters – Emma Stonex

This is published next month and there is a lot of buzz about it. I enjoyed it. It’s based (loosely) on a true story of how three lighthousemen went missing from their very isolated lighthouse in the middle of the sea one day at the turn of the twentieth century, with the doors locked from the inside. They were never heard from again. This takes that basic premise and imagines their fate, shifting the story forward to the 1970s and flitting further forward to the wives and girlfriends still looking for the truth thirty years later. It is a strong debut novel, exploring themes of male isolation and mental ill health and deserves to do well.

Father of Lions – Caroline Wallace

Well this looked interesting from the front cover, and parts of it were interesting but they weren’t what was promised on the front so I spent much of the book being very cross. If you expect this to be, as billed, ‘How one man defied Isis and saved Mosul zoo’ you will be disappointed. If you want to read what life was like in occupied Mosul by a bunch of people who lived near a park where some animals were dumped and how many of the animals (spoiler alert) don’t make it, then you will find that here. To be honest, there was a lot of detail that wasn’t needed and the book could easily have been a magazine article – it may have been better if it was.

Bill Bailey’s Remarkable Guide to Happiness

I love Bill. This is a series of chapters about things he has done that inspire happiness, and he hopes might make you think or want to try some out or consider what makes you happy and do more of it. And it’s worth reading for the chapter about the dog alone.

The Lip – Charlie Connelly

This is published in March and is the author’s debut novel, though he has previously written non-fiction. It took me a while to get into it as the narrator and protagonist Melody Janie, is a prickly and odd soul who doesn’t invite you to get close to her. And you do get to find out why. This is an antidote to all those people who bang on about how beautiful Cornwall is (it is) and close their eyes to the huge social and economic problems of the area. Melody’s difficult life, the sudden loss of love and security that she has suffered and the trauma of her later experiences make you love her. This is not the Cornwall the tourist brochures want you to know, it’s the one that gets mentioned in passing : the lack of secure employment, the unaffordable housing for local people, the seasonal poverty and isolation. It’s an unsparing portrait but a skilful one and should serve to make people think.

Together – Julie Cohen

A few months back, I took an online writing workshop with Julie Cohen and enjoyed it so thought I would try her books. This was well written and intriguingly structured but sadly I was so bothered by the denouement that it spoiled the whole thing.

Moments of Pleasure

This month, my moments of pleasure have mainly been food related: Bovril on crumpets late one evening when I’d skipped having dinner; making lime curd and spreading it in between a lime and courgette cake, teamed with thick double cream. Clemency Burton Hill introduced us to the lovely piece ‘Handel on the Strand’ by Percy Grainger and I spent an enjoyable evening indulging in the Hitchcockian glamour of post-war Nice with Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, in To Catch a Thief.

Bedtime reading

E and I finished reading the third in Katherine Woodfine’s Sinclair Mysteries (only one more to go) and have started reading The Dark is Rising, book two of the series of the same name. She likes it but finds it a bit spooky. This month she also (of her own accord) picked Anne Frank’s diary off the shelf and raced through it, finding she had a lot in common with Anne; I think we may have a new role model.