I’m amazed I managed to do any reading at all in May.
Chaos reigned in the house with a constant procession of tradespeople inside and out. You’d have thought we were taking on enough of a challenge by simultaneously re-decorating our dining room and re-purposing a spare bedroom. What on earth possessed us to choose the exact same period to clean and re-grout the patio, clean out the pond and clear all our gutters??? What we hadn’t bargained for was the newly cleaned pond would then spring a leak….
It was a relief to get away from it all with volunteer shifts at a National Trust property which was the only place in Wales to host Luke Jeram’s stunning new installation — Helios. If you haven’t heard of this, it’s a representation of the sun, 7 metres in diameter with a soundscape incorporating recordings from NASA.
When the “real” sun sets, the installation starts to glow…
If you live in the UK, there’s still a chance to see this as it tours different National Trust properties. See here for details.
Enough of the digressions — i bet what you really want to know is what I read in May!
Here’s the list :
Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton. (not yet reviewed) A tale of obsession set in 1939 London
Elephanta Suite by Paul Theroux (not yet reviewed) Three connected stories of travellers to Mumbai
Oh William by Elizabeth Strout (not yet reviewed). Another chapter in the life of Lucy Barton, following on from Anything is Possible. I love this series – my current read is the next title in the sequence, Lucy by the Sea.
A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson. A girl disappears. A newcomer moves into an empty house. Relationships are formed in this tale set in a quiet Canadian town.
Favourite Book of the Month
The stand out book of the month was Elephanta Suite by Paul Theroux, a novel my husband has been trying to get me to read for several years. I’m so glad I succumbed because it was just as enthralling as he’d indicated. The three stories all feature people who travel to India where they believe they experience a form of enlightenment about the country, its people and themselves. But India has a few surprises in store which prove to be life changing though not in the way they anticipate.
The One/s That Got Away
Just one DNF this month.
I bought A Man Called Ove by Frederik Backman earlier this year having enjoyed his later novel, Beartown. What a disappointment A Man Called Ove turned out to be, so much so that I lasted barely twenty pages. It’s a novel about a grumpy widower who, having been forced into retirement fills his days by enforcing the rules of his residential block. The tone annoyed me – it was trying too hard to show the humour of a man out of love with life.
The Newcomers
May is my birthday month so there were some newcomers to the shelves.
— Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche. I’ve seen mixed reviews of this novel about the loves and longings of four women but I’ve enjoyed her work so much in the past that this was always going to be on my wishlist. It’s been ten years since her last book so I hope it proves worth the wait.
— Human Acts by Han Kang. It’s been a while since I read her novella The Vegetarian but it was such an unusual book and such a powerful narrative that it’s stayed with me. Human Acts is about political unrest and the struggle for justice in South Korea.
— Waste Wars by Alexander Clapp. An investigation into what happens to all that waste you carefully recycle and put out for collection. Clapp traces the paths of all those bottles, electronics, textiles and package, revealing that most of it gets shipped, smuggled or dumped on some of the poorest nations of the world.
— Bournville by Jonathan Coe. This is a family saga set in Bournville, a former Quaker village created for workers at the Cadbury’s chocolate factory. I wouldn’t have bought this book myself but there was a pristine hardback copy in a Little Free Library so thought it was worth a punt.
State of the TBR
The current tally stands at 249, ten less than at the end of May. This is what happens when you have to decant everything from two bookcases so the painting and decorating can get underway. In the process I found duplicates of books and others which I had totally forgotten I ever had and can’t imagine what possessed me to buy in the first place.
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