what I’ve read 2008

Taking a leaf out of healingmagichand’s book (well, blog page actually) on books she read in 2007, I thought I’d try the same thing here for 2008. And I’ll be using the same five star system she’s used.

One star means don’t bother, five stars means don’t miss it.

I’ll also write a blurb about the story (or more likely swipe a bit off the one on the book cover) to tell you what it’s about and sometimes also add my opinion below it.

The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt

• Based on the remarkable true story of the strange and ultimately tragic relationship between an esteemed British mathematician (G.H. Hardy) and an unkown - and unschooled - mathematical genius (Srinivasa Ramanujan). The book is populated with such luminaries as D.H. Lawrence, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Indian Clerk fashions from this fascinating period an exquisitely nuanced and utterly compelling story about the fragility of human relationships and our need to find order in the world.
• I really enjoy historical novels, or those based on true stories. Sure, you can’t be sure of a good story getting in the way of the truth, but I always feel like I’ve learned something (in this case about mathematics and mathematicians) as well as having been entertained. I like Leavitt’s style, though I wonder what G.H. Hardy would have thought of some of the obvious liberties taken. I wish I’d learned more about Ramanujan, but as this was a story told through Hardy’s eyes, I suppose we only get to know him as well as he did.

One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson

• It is summer, it is the Edinburgh Festival. People queuing for a lunchtime show witness a road-rage incident - a near-homocidal attack which changes the lives of everyone involved: the wife of an unscrupulous property dealer, a crime writer, a washed-up comedian. Jackson Brodie, ex-army, ex-police, ex-private detective, is also an innocent bystander - until he becomes a murder suspect.
• I have yet to read a Kate Atkinson novel that I didn’t love. And I also like books that weave together lots of different stories (like a Robert Altman film) so that you see how one incident can affect so many different lives. One question about this one - were we meant to like Gloria?

El Sid by Chris Haslam

• A classic case of the biter bit, as small-time criminal Lenny Knowles, stupid but convinced that his intellect is the equal of anyone’s, meets Spanish Civil War verteran Sidney Starman, aka El Sid, who claims he knows the wherabouts of a stash of hidden Republican gold. Lenny, Sid and Lenny’s ex-cell mate Nick Crick set off to liberate the treasure and live happily ever after. No chance. The story cuts back and forth between the present and the past as Sid relates stories of the war and the trio rage around Spain getting deeper into trouble every day, until a terrific climax where Lenny discovers he’s not half as smart as the old soldier.
• Not a bad read, and it did help to pass the time riding the dreaded exercise bike at the gym, but really the best thing about this book is the title.

Making Money by Terry Pratchett

• It’s an offer you can’t refuse. Who would not wish to be the man in charge of Ankh-Morpork’s Royal Mind and the bank next door? It’s a job for life. But, as former conman Moist von Lipwig is learning, life is not necessarily for long. The Chief Cashier is almost certainly a vampire. There’s something nameless in the cellar (and the cellar itself is prestty nameless), and it turns out that the Royal Mint runs at a loss. A three-hundred-year-old wizard is after his girlfriend, he’s about to be exposed as a fraud, but the Assassins’ Guild might get him first. In fact, a lot of people want him dead. Oh. And every day he has to take the Chairman for walkies.
• A delight from start to finish, though I think it helps to have read Going Postal as the story sort of continues in this book. You would have a better feel for the main characters, especially Moist. And it was very enjoyable to see Vetinari appear as a more ’rounded’ character. It was also a poignant read, wondering if this will end up being Pratchett’s last book, though in the BBC article linked to here he is quoted as saying there was “time for at least a few more books yet”.

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson

• Cambridge is sweltering, during an unusually hot summer. To Jackson Brodie, former police inspector turned private investigator, the world consists of one accounting sheet - Lost on the left, Found on the right - and the two never seem to balance. His days are full of people clamouring for answers and explanations. A jealous husband suspects his wife. Two spinster sisters make a shocking find. A solicitor investigates an old murder. A nurse has lost her niece; a widow, her cats.
• I reread this book after finishing One Good turn. And happily memory loss is always not a bad thing as there were still a few forgotten surprises within the various stories, or case histories. On the whole, I think the characters in this book are much ‘plumper’ than in One Good Turn … they get into your heart and you feel like you know them, or at least parts of them, because they also exist inside of you. Occasionally sentimental, but just enough. And with the case history endings not always turning out the way you might have expected.

Restless by William Boyd

• It is 1939. Eva Delectorskaya is a beautiful 28-year-old Russian émigrée living in Paris. As war breaks out she is recruited for the British Secret Service by Lucas Romer, a mysterious Englishman, and under his tutelage she learns to become the perfect spy, to mask her emotions and trust no one, including those she loves most. Since the war, Eva has carefully rebuilt her life as a typically English wife and mother. But once a spy, always a spy. Now she must complete one final assignment, and this time Eva can’t do it alone: she needs her daughter’s help.

The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett

• Maurice, a streetwise tomecat, has the perfect money-making scam. Everyone knows the stories about rats and pipers, and Maurice has a stupid-looking kid with a pip, and his very own plague of rats - strangely educated rats… But in Bad Blintz, the little con suddenly goes down the drain. For someone there is playing a different tune and now the rats must learn a new word. EVIL. It’s not a game any more. It’s a rat-eat-rat world. And that might only be the start …
• Pure joy. A Discworld novel written for young readers, but just as entertaining and satisfying for supposed grown-ups such as myself. There is so much there for both young and old to learn from whilst enjoying a very well-told story. All about ethics and good vs evil and what makes us behave the way we do. Brilliant characters, including several intelligent rats, a street-smart talking cat and a ’stupid-looking’ boy who turns out to only look stupid. And a wonderful moment when Maurice meets DEATH … that one had me both laughing and in tears. Oh, nobody does it quite like Mr Pratchett.

The Cornish Trilogy by Robertson Davies

• The Rebel Angels
• What’s Bred In The Bone
• The Lyre of Orpheus

• Woven around the pursuits of the energetic spirits and erudite scholars of the University of St John and the Holy Ghost, this dazzling trilogy of novels lures the reader into a world of mysticism, historical allusion and gothic fantasy. Fusing themes of religion, love, art and music in a glorious celebration of humanism, The Cornish Trilogy affirms Robertson Davies’s place at the forefront of contemporary writers.

Flashman On The March by George MacDonald Fraser (not finished)

• It’s 1868 and Sir Harry Flasman, V.C., arch-cad, amorist, cold-headed soldier, and reluctant hero, is back! Fleeing a chain of vengeful pursuers that includes Mexican bandits, the French Foreign Legion, and the relatives of an infatuated Austrian beauty, Flashy is desperate for somewhere to take cover. So desperate, in fact, that he embarks on a perilous secret intelligene gathering mission to help free a group of Britons being held captive by a tyrannical Abyssinian king. Along the way, of course, are nightmare castles, brigands, massacres, rebellions, orgies, and the loveliest and most lethal women in Africa, all of which will test the limits of the great bounder’s talents for knavery, amorous intrigue, and survival.

No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy (not finished)

• A good old boy named Llewellyn Moss finds a pickup truck surrounded by dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back. When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law can contain.

Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier

• London 1792. The Kellaways move from rural Dorset to the tumult of a cramped, unforgiving city. Against the backdrop of a city jittery over the increasingly bloody French Revolution, a suprising bond forms between Jem, the youngest Kellaway boy, and streetwise Londoner Maggie Butterfield. Their friendship takes a dramatic turn when they become entangled in the life of their neighbour, the printer, poet and radical, William Blake. He is a guiding spirit as Jem and Maggie navigate the unpredictable, exhilarating passage from innocence to experience. Their journey influences one of Blakes’s most entrancing works.
• Meh…

Stardust by Neil Gaiman (not finished)

• Yound Tristran Thorn will do anything to win the cold heart of beautiful Victoria - even fetch her the star they watch fall from the night sky. But to do so, he must enter the unexplored lands on the other side of the ancient wall that gives their tiny village its name. But beyond that old stone barrier, Tristran learns, lies Faerie - where strange things can happen to a determined lad chasing his heart’s desire . . . and where nothing, not even a fallen star, is what he imagined.