what I've read this month

I've decided to keep a list of all the book I read (but not necessarily bloged about/reviewed)  this coming year. Partly because I think it will be a nice thing to reflect on at the end of the year, and secondly because it will help me stick to the reading resolutions I've made.

So here's a round up of my first month (click the link to read my reviews):

1. Flappers, Judith Mackrell
2. The Cuckoo's Calling, Robert Gailbraith (J.K Rowling)
3. The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt
4. Boudica: Dreaming the Eagle, Manda Scott
5. Empire: The Gates of Rome, Conn Iggulden
6. Holy Warrior, Angus Donald
7. Moon over Soho, Ben Aaronovitch
8. The Little Coffee Shop of  Kabul,  Deborah Rodriguez
9. Dark Places, Gillian Flynn (by the same author as Gone Girl)
10. The Twelve, Justin Cronin (sequel to The Passage)  
11. Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel

The worst book of the bunch was undoubtedly The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul, my favourite The Goldfinch with Boudica: Dreaming the Eagle a close second.  

Deborah Rodriguez, The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul

Urgh, this was a regrettable reading decision, The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul is truly dreadful book. Predicable, poorly written and vaguely racist.

Also, according to Wikipedia (yeah, I know it's not the more reliable source) the author, Deborah Rodriguez, sounds like a shady character. Her first book, Kabul Beauty School,  allegedly endangered the lives of some of the women that worked at the school and was filled with inaccuracies.

The Plot: Sunny, an American woman living in Kabul must find a way to make her coffee shop more profitable. Among her clientèle are Isabel, a British journalist in search of a story and a way to overcome past trauma, and Candace a wealthy American, who has come to Kabul to be with her Afghan lover. Working in the coffee house alongside Sunny, are Yasmin, a vulnerable pregnant woman, and Halajan who is both motherly and rebellious.  Trigger warning: violence, rape, substance abuse, racism.

So basically, the book is meant to be all about sisterhood, five very different women coming together in dangerous circumstances. The Afghan women are incredibly poorly written, particularity Yasmin, she is mainly used as a prop by Sunny, a plot device to show what a compassionate woman Sunny is, rather than a character in her own right. Both Halajan and Yasmin are comprised of clichés and are two dimensional.

I wonder how many Afghan friends Rodriguez actually had, because for someone who spent an extended period of time in Afghanistan, she seems to rely heavily on stereotypes and worn out tropes. Pretty much all the Afghan men in this book are warlords/drug barons/ financiers of terrorist training schools.

Plus, I'm not sure if Rodriquez has ever met a British person either, as Isabel is also hashed together out of stereotypes and misinformation. Apparently she speaks with a 'thick British accent' wtf is this? Britain is made up of England, Scotland, Wales, each with very unique accents, that can be further identified by region or county, there is not one homogeneous 'thick British accent'. Rodriquez is also labouring under the false impression that we attend segregated schools in Britain (erm, NO) and she even uses a racial slur (p***), which is offensive, and inaccurate- the majority of Brits do not use that word.

For a book about women, the female characters (foreign and Afghan)  are largely defined by their relationship to men, it really isn't about sisters doing it for themselves. Sunny's love triangle is massively dull, and I can see why Candace's boyfriend gets tired of her as she is spoilt and vapid. Yazmin's blossoming romance, is very lazy, of course she gets paired up with the only Afghan male that is close in age, and how brave! how noble! He can overlook that she has had a baby with another man.

(more angry ranting after the jump)

Thomas Cromwell

"But my sins are my strength, he thinks; the sins I have done, that others have not even found the opportunity of committing. I hug them close; they are mine. Besides when I come to judgement I mean to come with a memorandum in my hand: I shall say to my Maker, I have fifty items here, possibly more."  

- Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

Li Hongbo, art made from paper

Just seen a small feature on the telly about Li Hongbo, an artist who makes incredible structures out of concertinaed paper. The sculptures are moveable.

picture source

picture source 

The Goldfinch and The Cuckoo's Calling

Aside from both having birds in the title, Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch and Robert Gailbraith's The Cuckoo's Calling have other similarities, so I've therefore decided to lump my review of them together.

The plot in a sentence:
Donna Tarrt, The Goldfinch: On the cusp of adulthood, Theo Decker loses his mother, but gains a painting by  the Dutch master, Carel Fabritius.   
Robert Gailbraith, The Cuckoo's Calling: When famous supermodel Lulu Laundry suddenly dies, private detective and former solider, Cormonron Strike is hired by the model's grieving brother to investigate her death.

Both novels were highly anticipated, The Goldfinch is Tartt's first book in 11 years, and Gailbraith is a pseudonym for J.K Rowling (possibly worst kept secret ever). So the first question is did they live up to hype? In a word, yes.

Although Donna Tartt's bibliography is small, but they are all contemporary classics, and beautifully written. The Goldfinch is no exception, populated by Tartt's usual cast of intellectual eccentrics and charming wastrels.   The Cuckoo's Calling is a more confident and accomplished novel than Rowling's first post-Harry offering, The Casual Vacancy, writing under an alias was obviously liberating.  Crime thrillers are also a genre that suits J.Ks style and ability write tightly plotted narratives. The characters seemed more believable than in The Casual Vacancy, were they occasionally tipped into charactertures.  Cormonran Strike, despite is ludicrous name, is a likeable character, who offers competition to other fictional maverick  detective such as Lee Child's Jack Reacher.   

If you are thinking of buying either of these novels, I'd recommend you purchase the ebook version. As both are long and heavy. Plus I think they are both currently cheaper to buy on amazon kindle, I bought mine for £1.99, though I suspect the price has now gone up. 

If you are trying to chose between the two, I think The Goldfinch is the better and more memorable read. I've read some unfavourable reviews of The Goldfinch on amazon (and some good ones) and feel I should defend the book. Yes, it is long, sometimes slow and Tartt will sometimes use pages and pages of description to arrive at a singular point , but that's what I loved about the book. You can see the care and consideration, the story revolves around the theft of a painting and Donna Tarrt uses words as brush strokes to craft a masterpiece of storytelling. She writes how I wish I could. The Goldfinch is one of those book that's more about the journey than the destination, perfect for curling up and reading at a leisurely pace. A novel that should be read, savoured and enjoyed rather that hurried through on the commute when your mind is elsewhere. If you're after something less challenging and faster paced, give The Cuckoo's Calling a chance instead. 

Carel Fabritius, The Goldfinch (picture source) 

  

Crying Bench

Quote: Charles Bukowski, An Almost Made Up Poem (full poem can be found here)
Photo: taken at Camden lock, by me. 

lovers betray. it didn’ help. you said
you had a crying bench and it was by a bridge and
the bridge was over a river and you sat on the crying
bench every night and wept for the lovers who had
hurt and forgotten you. 

Anne

"They are black eyes, slightly protuberant, shiny like the beads of an abacus; they are shiny and always in motion, as she makes calculations of her own advantage"

-Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

Ben Aaronovitch, Moon over Soho

I picked up Moon over Soho in a recent library haul. Its the second in a series of books called Rivers of London, the first of which I read ages ago, so I've been meaning to read this for a while. I was initially attracted to the series thanks to the intriguing quote on the front cover, "what would happen is Harry Potter grew up and joined the fuzz". 

The Plot: Peter Grant, met officer and trainee wizard, investigates the suspicious deaths of Jazz musicians in Soho. 

My thoughts and views are under the cut (warning may contain spoilers):-

John Craxton

I've already broken a promise I made to myself to blog with a some sort of regular schedule, never mind. Here are some photos that were leftover from the ones I shared last week, when I visited the Fitzwilliam museum in Cambridge.

The museum had an exhibit of the work of neo-Romantic painter John Craxton. I know nothing about art, but I appreciated his use of bright colour and geometric shapes in his portraits. 

Galatas (sorry only painting I remembered to get the name of)

Fitzwilliam museum

Just along from Pembroke College in Cambridge, is the wonderful Fitzwilliam museum. It houses collections from the ancient world, medieval manuscripts and European and Oriental decorative art. The outside of the building is undergoing repair work, but the museum is open as usual.

The Egyptian artefacts are always my favourite, and unlike the chaotically busy British Museum, Fitzwilliam was practically empty so we could get nice and close to the displays.

Part of me does think that we should give all the artefacts back to their country of origin, but I am very grateful that I get to see them.  

 

 more pics after the cut: