C
by Tom McCarthy
This is another book club read that I wouldn’t have picked up otherwise and I’m a little annoyed that in the end I missed the book club meeting about it due to illness, as I think I would have got a lot more from the book by discussing it. As it was, I must admit that it fell a little flat for me…
Norwegian Wood
by Haruki Murakami
translated by Jay Rubin
This is the book that turned Murakami from successful author to superstar and sent him running into hiding in the US. It’s certainly a more “straightforward”, accessible narrative than he is generally known for, but it is still undeniably, brilliantly him…
One Hundred Years of Solitude
by Gabriel García Márquez
translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa
This is one crazy book. I both loved and hated it. I took my time over it, reading just a few pages at a time, but I was never bored. Confused, surprised, shocked, maybe…
Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name
by Vendela Vida
I picked this book up due to a combination of hearing that Vida was one of the new generation of young “now” writers I should pay attention to (according to GQ or some magazine like that) and thinking the title was brilliant. Now that I’ve read it I stand by both statements…
Midnight’s Children
by Salman Rushdie
Wow. I have struggled for three weeks with this book and there were times I hated it, times I wondered why I was punishing myself, but now that I am finished I find myself captivated by it, stunned by the world it created and almost, possibly, missing it…
Half of a Yellow Sun
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
This is a book that you know from the start is going to be hard in terms of subject matter, but worth it. It won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2007 and it was completely deserved…
Saturday
by Ian McEwan
I have read a few of McEwan’s books, and have had a pretty variable response to them. This one kept me so thoroughly hooked (staying up until 1 a.m. to finish it) and had such masterful language that it is definitely my favourite so far (oh, except maybe A Child in Time, which was heartbreakingly beautiful)…
Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years
by Sue Townsend
Oh, Sue Townsend, you never let me down. I’ve been struggling to read much lately but as soon as I opened this book I was tearing through the pages, laughing out loud and loving reconnecting with the characters that are so familiar they are like extended family…
Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination
by Helen Fielding
This is a bit of a mishmash of a novel, combining hapless heroine, chicklit, rollicking adventure and post-9/11 paranoia. It doesn’t entirely work…
Hunger
by Knut Hamsun
translated from Norwegian by Sverre Lyngstad
A few months back I went along to a new book group at a local pub. I only found out about it a few days beforehand and didn’t even know which book they were discussing, so that was an odd start to the evening but it was a great night. I met some new people, found out more about my adopted city and talked a lot about books. The chosen book turned out to be Hunger, which was already on my TBR, and the discussion about it inspired me to dig it out and give it a try…