"The Lacuna" by Barbara Kingsolver

Although this book took me nearly 3 months to finish reading it, I really did enjoy it. It was quite a thick book and didn't often fit into my work bag, and as most of the reading I've been getting time for is on the bus to and from work lately this meant it took a lot longer than it should have to read this book.

It is an historical novel (my favourite genre), set mostly in Mexico (and partly in USA) during the 1930s-1950s. Although the main character, Harrison Shepherd, is completely fictional, there are plenty of other interesting real life characters woven into the story - for example the famous artist Frida Kahlo and the exiled Bolshevik leader Trotsky. The story is mostly in the form of a series of diary notebooks written by Harrison depicting his life and his interpretation of life and politics surrounding him, from childhood to the 1950s. Harrison writes well, really capturing what is going on around him, and I was fascinated especially by the sections of the book set in Mexico. I didn't know a lot of Trotsky and his exile in Mexico, but I was a little bit familiar with some of Frida Kahlo's self portraits, and Mexico is definitely on my travel bucket list. I was less interested in a section in the second half of the story that dealt with the era of Communist hunting in USA, and the series of reviews and fan mail letters associated with the novels that Harrison writes while living in the USA. I really did enjoy the book overall though, and it did capture some interesting people, places and events in history that I didnt know a lot about. If I had been reading this on my kindle I'm sure I would have finished reading this book in less than a month. 

Started reading: 5th June 2015
Finished: 30th August 2015
My score: 8/10

"The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying" by Marie Kondo

I decided to read this book as I seem to have a lot of clutter in my little flat that has accumulated after moving house multiple times in the last 10 years. As my current place doesn't have a lot of cupboard space I've decided the time is right to finally sort through things properly and have a clean out, and really set my place up in a way I'm happy with. Which might include some more space for bookshelves rather than boxes of stuff I haven't opened in years or cabinets full of papers. The idea of de-cluttering has been a bit overwhelming for a while (which is why I haven't done it yet) and it will involve taking a hard look at what I need and want to keep, and being fairly ruthless in getting rid of/donating/trading things I do not actually need or want but have been keeping for whatever reason.

I thought that maybe reading this book would give me some inspiration/motivation to actually start the de-cluttering process rather than just thinking about it. It has succeeded in that aspect, and I have started sorting through and discarding items, so that is great. However I have mixed feelings about the book itself. Some parts of the book really made sense to me and gave me new approaches on how to tackle my de-cluttering, e.g. sorting by category of items rather than by room, but as the book progressed I started to realise that the author and me would not see eye to eye on many things. Her attitude to books...basically, if you've read it, you wont need to read it again so throw it out, if you bought it but didn't read it and have bought other books since then you missed your chance to read it and should throw it out, if you half read a book, throw it out...there's no point to a book being on your bookshelf unless it sparks joy when you hold it...(this is my paraphrasing of the chapter called "Unread books - sometimes means never"). The summary was 'the moment you first encounter a particular book is the right time to read it. To avoid missing that moment, I recommend that you keep your collection small". Not going to happen in my flat, most of my books "spark joy" whether unread or read. I enjoy reading them, re-reading many of them and just looking at and remembering them. Part of my desire to de-clutter was to make more space for bookshelves haha.
Then there was the anthropomorphising of inanimate objects. E.g. socks:
“Never, ever ball your socks. I pointed to the balled up socks. ‘Look at them carefully. This should be a time for them to rest. Do you really think they can get any rest like this?’ That’s right. The socks stored in your drawer are essentially on holiday. They take a brutal beating in their daily work, trapped between your foot and your shoe…The time they spend in your drawer is their only chance to rest…”
Hmm alrighty then. At first I wasn’t sure if this was due to the translation from Japanese to English, but as the book went on it really seemed to be something the author was seriously concerned with. She also on numerous occasions has conversations with inanimate objects…e.g “I return to my bedroom, put my empty handbag in a bag and put it on the top shelf of the wardrobe, saying ‘You did well. Have a good rest.’…”
While the author’s style and attitude do not match with mine, I did learn a few useful new tips for ways to approach a big de-cluttering of my flat. But it was either entertaining or ridiculous in many ways in my opinion.


Started: 20th May 2015
Finished: 31st May 2015
My Score: 5/10

"Three Dog Night" by Peter Goldsworthy

I read this book as part of the Aussie Author Challenge. I have now read 4 books by Peter Goldsworthy. While I loved "Honk if you are Jesus" and "Wish", I was not particularly blown away with "Everything I know", and I really did not connect with any of the characters in "Three Dog Night". It was one of those books that I just painfully struggled through, not enjoying it, but not wanting to give up on a book half way, particularly when I have really enjoyed other books by the same author.

The storyline - an Australian psychologist Martin falls for his beautiful UK trainee psychologist student, Lucy, they fall in love, marry, and decide after some apparently blissful years to move to Adelaide. In Adelaide, Martin parades Lucy around to his old school buddies as if she's a trophy. Martin's best old buddy, Felix, is a pretty strange bitter kind of character, obviously very intelligent but not easy to get on with as he seems to get pleasure out of making other people uncomfortable. It turns out Felix is dying, and his last wish as it were is to borrow his friend's wife for the last few weeks of his life and try to ruin their marriage. I found it pretty implausible, plus motives and actions were never explained properly for Felix or Lucy and Martin often came off as pretty immature. I found the characters were unlikeable and I did not feel empathy for them, so I really couldnt recommend this book unfortunately.  I thought this Peter Goldsworthy book had been recommended to me, but it turns out that there is another book with the same title but different author - Elsebeth Egholm, and that was the one that was recommended. I will keep looking out for that one. I still have another of Peter Goldsworthy's books on my shelf to read - "Navel Gazing" - so I hope it is more enjoyable than his "Three dog night".

Started reading: 12th May 2015
Finished: 5th June 2015
My score: 3/10
Aussie Author Challenge stats: Male author.

"The Twelve Tribes of Hattie" by Ayana Mathis

Started reading: 16th April 2015 
Finished 11th May 2015
My score: 5/10

"The Red Thread" by Nicholas Jose

I found this book for $1 at the Red Cross Shop, and I'm reading it as part of the Aussie Author Challenge. While the author Nicholas Jose is Australian, the book "The Red Thread" is set in Shanghai, China. As I was reading it I got the impression that the author had either spent a reasonable amount of time living there or studying Chinese history/art/literature as the details in the book just seemed so authentic and as if they were written by someone who was passionate about Chinese art and culture - to me anyway, not that I have visited mainland China myself yet. Now that I've finished reading the book I have just looked up the author's biography and discovered that he did indeed live in China during the 1980s.

The book is a love story, and I don't usually read a lot of books that fall into the 'romance' genre. Basically it's about an ill-fated but besotted young Chinese couple from the 1700s (Shen and Yun) who form a turbulent friendship with another woman, Han. Their story is fairly tragic, but it appears somehow they are linked or re-born in contemporary times, destined to re-live their ill-fated romance and friendship, while trying desperately to avoid coming to the same sad end. The re-born characters are Shen (a young Chinese art historian/valuer for an auction house), Ruth (an Australian artist visiting Shanghai) and Han, a nightclub entertainer. The Shen from the 1700s had recorded his life story in a book of 6 chapters, of which the contemporary Shen comes across the first 4 chapters, and quickly comes to the conclusion that he is re-living the story in that book. As things start going badly for the modern day Shen & Ruth, he desperately tries to track down the final missing chapters to try to find a happy ending. 

While the romance in the book seemed pretty far-fetched and unrealistic to me, I really enjoyed the setting of the novel, the descriptive writing style and the little cultural details about China and Chinese art, which I know very little about. I liked the descriptions of many of the art pieces, they seemed to bring the objects to life in my mind, for example the description of this bowl:

"The bowl had such a presence and authority that it simply was, and at the same time it seemed to centre the whole open-plan office of Shanghai Art Auctions International....A spectacular piece, its oxblood glaze, like liquid garnet, absorbing the strange light of this world, three centuries remote from the time when it was made, as it reflected the faces of the two men who peered into it....it felt glossy, almost viscous." 

Started reading: 8th April 2015
Finished: 15th April 2015
My score: 6.5/10
Aussie Author Challenge stats: Male Author, New to me, genre: romance/love story

"The second prison" by Ronan Bennett

This book kind of reminded me of the films "Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels" and "Veronica Guerin". Pretty dark, no-hope criminal gang members in Northern Ireland caught in cycles of crime and prison sentences and revenge against the English and each other. Unlike "Lock Stock" it was not really humerous, but this book is well written and thought-provoking. It also has themes of love and betrayal throughout it, and questions about life and what is important in it.

Started reading: 23/03/2015
Finished: 07/04/2015
My score: 7/10

"The Boat" by Nam Le

  

I picked this book up second hand from Adelaide's PopUp Bookshop, and am reading it as part of the Aussie Author Challenge. The book has a striking black and white cover design that caught my eye, then from the reviews on the back I thought it sounded like a really well written and powerful collection of short stories that I couldn't walk away from, even though I don't generally like short stories. 

Started reading: 28th February 2015

Finished: 22nd March 2015

My score: 8/10

I'd say the writing in this book is very powerful. The author can really bring to life environments, characters and emotions in a great variety of stories. Most of them were pretty sad/tragic spotlights on the struggles of desperate people, whether they were refugees on boats in horrific conditions, barely hanging on to hope, or teenage Colombians trying to protect their family and friends while being caught in a downward spiral of drugs and murder. The first, second and last stories had the most impact on me, and will be hard to forget. Makes you feel lucky to be born in a country and environment where you aren't faced with the desperate choices these people are faced with, and reinforces how wrong our current policy against asylum seekers is. However, I still don't really like short stories, as just as you start to get into them and feel a connection with a character, that story ends. If I liked short stories I probably would have rated this book even higher, but as I don't like short stories I would rather have had those 3 chapters I most connected with expanded on, rather than reading the other 4 stories.

Aussie Author Challenge stats: Male author, New to me, Genre: short stories