Not very Top 100 Reading

I fell off the wagon a bit and have had a summer of reading anything but big read books. This was partly cos i hated Midnight's Children and partly because i lost it, partly because nothing else in my "to read" box really appealed much and partly because lots of other things did.

Anyway, the sensible thing to do would be to despatch a lot of other excellent books in one big post, deal with Midnight's Children and move on. Further up and further in, and so on and so forth.

Middlesex.

Sarah let me borrow this while i was in Devon and i thoroughly enjoyed it. Written as a biography/reflection on ones life type book, it tells the story of someone who discovers they have a genetic mutation which affects their sex. It was a spellbinding read, i really looked forward to sitting down with it each night. Mixed into it is the story of revolution/wartorn Greece, the story of immigrants arriving in America, coming under the pressures of displaced community, family upheaval and the degradation of production line working conditions.

I must find out who read it, i'd definitely like to read more by him. 10/10.

Star of the Sea.

Another story of displaced persons. This book begins on a ship destined for America, carrying the despairing, starving people of Ireland away from their collapsing homeland. On board are the broken landowners who have failed to save themselves or their tenants from poverty and hunger, reeling from the horror of losing everything themselves. It's a new world, one where status counts for little and the "people" have risen up to show their anger. Only the people are still starving, still degraded, still lying infilth in the hold while the landowners bluff their way across in 1st Class.

Woven into the story, which trips back and forth between past, present, Ireland and England, the lives of a variety of interlinked characters comes together. It's a brutal tale, a beautiful tale and a shocking tale. It's clever, perhaps at the end not quite clever enough to really sustain belief, but overall an excellent and enlightening read.

Lemony Snicket.

I've managed to time reading all 11 books just in time for number 12 to make an appearance. I'd really looked forward to these, they've been so highly spoken of. I've got to say i was a bit disappointed.

if i'd not bought all 10 in one go, i'd have stopped before i got to number 5. I dislike being strung along with disjointed samey plots, even if it is part of the "device". I got the impression each of the first 4 was designed to stand alone in case the published pulled the plug on the series. I found them lacking in "cleverness" and low in any sort of connection with reality.

Book 5 was better, i wanted to carry on as the glimmer of the plot began to show through. By Book 9 i was enjoying them. But my enjoyment in good children's literature is in seeing the workings of a smart mind weaving together clues into a whole and these are just too random to really pull my string. That is what i like about Harry Potter and HDM and i found it lacking here; good books but for my taste, more a collection of clever devices than outstanding storytelling. I'll still read the last two though.

The Da Vinci Code.

Well, this was always going to pull my bell; all my favourites, plot weaving, history, religion stirred into one fantastic pot. Unputdownable. Whatever it's faults, i had a great time reading this and loved the conviction with which part fact, part fiction was interlinked. It made me want to look at and find out about so many different things. Definitely a departure for me too, i'm not one for suspense/thriller books as a rule but i'll be reading more by dan Brown and probably more in the genre too now as well.

Daughters of Spain.

Quick foray into Jean Plaidy, who i had never read. Wish i'd been told to read this before i started A Level History. I daresay the thinking is outdated but it nonetheless brought to life a whole series of characters i know about, in an engaging way. I'll definitely be collection a JP library for Fran and i to enjoy.

Gay Lord Robert.

Another JP one, leading beautifully on to the book below. Tells the story of Robert Dudley, arguably the great love of Elizabeth I. With various tv programmes and other books, it was an excellent other side to the coin, as JP clearly has a soft spot for him too ;)

The Queen's Fool.

Philippa Gregory is one of my favourite authors but she disapoints me on occasion. I'd put this book on the high end of the good scale, below The Other Boleyn Girl but way, way, way above The Wise Woman. She does her thing best when she is delvinig into real history and this is an excellent telling of the story of the intrigue and shifting that took place around Elizabeth and Mary during Mary's reign.

Ittells a great deal more than that too by focusing on the stroy of young Jewish Hannah, a holy fool at court; within the book is the horror of the Inquisition, the Smithsfield burnings, the fall of Calais, the nervy, opressive atmosphere of finding the balance between loyalty and reality.

Living history at very nearly its best.

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