Book Diary – February to April 2015

‘Excursion to Tindari’ by Andrea Camilleri

Sunday 1st February – Friday 6th February

‘The Scent of the Night’ by Andrea Camilleri

Friday 6th February – Monday 9th February

‘Rounding the Mark’ by Andrea Camilleri

Tuesday 10th February – Friday 20th February

‘The Paper Moon’ by Andrea Camilleri

Friday 27th February – Sunday 1st March

‘The Wings of the Sphinx’ by Andrea Camilleri

Sunday 1st March – Tuesday 3rd March

As you can see, a string of Montalbano novels occupied all of February and the beginning of March. There isn’t a great deal more for me to say about them that I haven’t already said, hence me running this post into the next month’s too.

‘A Place of Greater Safety’ by Hilary Mantel

Tuesday 3rd March – Monday 20th April

It’s difficult to know where to begin when writing about a book of this magnitude. By the time I reached the end I could barely remember how it began. A lot of the detail was lost to me, but nevertheless I felt like I had learned a great deal simply by reading this book.

That’s not to say that its only value lay in its ability to educate me about a period of history with which I am not well acquainted. As with all Hilary Mantel’s novels, the story is compelling and the characters utterly believable. Of course, the fact that they existed aids this impression but in some ways it must be even harder to make the development of the novel match the events of history rather than simply following the inclinations of the writer’s imagination. What was most impressive was the way in which I found my sympathies shifting (and, I suspect, being shifted) as the book progressed.

‘Carte Blanche’ by Carlo Lucarelli

Tuesday 21st April

This is possibly the shortest novel I’ve read for a long time, if not the shortest ever. It clocked in at less than a hundred pages and that’s one of the main reasons it was read in less than a day.

The book matches the TV episode very closely and that was probably its greatest criticism. Not that the episode is bad, but it felt as though the novel was lacking a lot of flesh on its bones and that there was nothing new to discover. Had I encountered them in the opposite order, I’m sure the TV episode would have enhanced my enjoyment due to it being so close to the book rather than slightly undermining it.

‘Vincent Van Gogh’ by Inigo F. Walther

Wednesday 22nd April  – Monday 27th April

Following last year’s trip to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, I had a heightened degree of respect for VVG. I invested in this biography more for the pictures than the text but both were very satisfying.

The scope of the book only extends as far as his artisitic career, with less than a page dedicated to the first twenty-something years of his life. Instead, there was a nice entry-level analysis of how his style changed throughout his life and why.

Book Diary – December 2014

‘The Potter’s Field’ by Andrea Camilleri

Wednesday 3rd December – Wednesday 10th December

I won’t go into too much detail here as I think I have already written everything there is for me to say about Andrea Camilleri’s novels. Even then, I am probably repeating myself.

What I enjoy most is not so much the story as the opportunity to spend time with the characters. Even though I’m not sure I’d like them as much if they were real people, I enjoy reading the books a great deal and it’s always because of the characters rather than the pretty grim stories.

‘Art as Therapy’ by Alain de Botton and John Armstrong

Wednesday 10th December – Friday 19th December

This was a bit of treat with the rest of my leaving-present voucher. It had first caught my eye in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam back in the spring.

In this book, de Botton and Armstrong argue that art is consumed in the wrong ways currently. That we are often left unimpressed because we are told that a painting is impressive without a proper explanation as to why. They contend that we need different art for different purposes and that carefully selected pieces can make us more rounded, balanced individuals.

This is the kind of argument that at first reading can sound like the ramblings of delusional intellectuals or the insight of someone who is capable of looking from a different angle and declaring that in fact the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes. Their arguments are certainly persuasive, not least because at times they managed to articulate something which had nagged at the back of my mind when visiting galleries – that a piece of world-famous art isn’t actually all that engaging.

‘The Outsider – A History of the Goalkeeper’ by Jonathan Wilson

Friday 19th December – Thursday 1st January 2015

I don’t think I’m stumbling across anything new when I say that certain writers write a certain way. I don’t think George Pelecanos is capable of writing anything other than a crime novel that ends in a violent shoot-out (and the bad guy inevitably dies), and I don’t think Jonathan Wilson is capable of writing in a different style from this. It suffers from the same flaws as ‘Nobody Ever Says Thank You’ but has the same redeeming qualities too. As ever, the level of research that has gone into this book makes me wonder if Wilson ever sleeps (knowing as I do that he combines his time between South America, Africa, the UK, editing the Blizzard magazine and writing for any sports website/publication that will pay him) and there is lots of interesting information conveyed to the reader throughout.

As mentioned above, it does have flaws: the slightly dry style, a common theme with ‘Nobody Ever Says Thank You’ and the inclusion of some rather dated and seemingly pointless anecdotes which led me to believe that the text was being padded somewhat. As a result, I would question who decides that this book needs to be written as a book, Wilson himself or his publisher. In the end the book goes from a history of the role of goalkeepers in general to a succession of detailed pen-pictures of significant keepers over the last century or so, loosely grouped according to the theme of the chapter. I guess this is where the book comes from – it’s too long to make a readable article on a website (and probably requiring too much research to make such a prospect profitable for JW), but probably lacking enough material for the full-length book to be an outright success.

Perhaps I’m casting JW in the role he identifies the goalkeeper here and picking up on a few mistakes rather than highlighting the many successes of this book. It is successful in analysing the origins of the role and identifying why it is regarded with such wariness by most people, and charting the subsequent evolution of the role, influenced by the changes in rules and tactics over time. In all, it should be applauded for covering all the angles and not remembered for straying from its line occasionally.

Book Diary – November 2014

‘Gentlemen & Players’ by Joanne Harris Wednesday 5th November – Saturday 15th November This came highly recommended by Emma and she was right on the money. It very rapidly had me hooked to the point that I think I read it in about five large chunks rather than steadily over the course of the ten days. The story is not what I would usually read in some ways, but that meant it was a refreshing change rather than a strange, foreign experience. I would definitely recommend it to virtually anyone as a very good thriller.

‘The Age of Doubt’ by Andrea Camilleri

Saturday 15th November – Sunday 16th November

‘The Dance of the Seagull’ by Andrea Camilleri

Monday 17th November – Tuesday 18th November

[Insert standard Andrea Camilleri Montalbano novel review here/]

‘The Village Against the World’ by Dan Hancox

Tuesday 18th November -Wednesday 3rd December

An interesting book which I bought with my Dalebrook leaving-present gift voucher. It concerns a small town in southern Spain which has spent the last thirty years developing into a communist utopia to improve the lives of its residents.

While an interesting history of the village and profile of its major figures, I felt the book was lacking something. Maybe it would benefit from re-reading in the not-too-distant future for me to appreciate some of the finer points. It raises many questions but doesn’t answer them – I’m not sure it even tries to be honest. As a result it feels truncated and a little unfulfilling, despite also being interesting and well-written.

Book Diary – September and October 2014

‘Intrusion’ by Ken MacLeod

Saturday 6th September – Thursday 11th September

This was a leaving present from Lili, and came highly recommended. In the end, I think I read it in about five large chunks rather than steadily and consistently. While I don’t think Ken MacLeod is a brilliant writer, he had some great ideas and managed to make the book very readable. The future society he created was very convincing and there were some original ideas in there too, for example the idea that trees had been genetically modified to process more greenhouse gases and so were causing the climate to change just as dramatically as it is in reality, but instead it was making the planet colder, not warmer. If this book had a weakness it would be the ending. It was hard to predict where the book was going, but when the ending came it came suddenly and seemed a little contrived and vaguely explained. However, I was reading late at night, so it could be the case that the last couple of chapters would be better served by a second reading. That shouldn’t detract totally from what was otherwise an entertaining and diverting novel.

‘The Treasure Hunt’ by Andrea Camilleri

Saturday 4th October – Friday 10th October

Taking a break from ‘Perfidia’ I decided the best plan was to whizz through a Montalbano novel as these provide a refreshingly light read whenever called upon.

This was no different, and though it took me a whole six days to read, this was more down to the lack of opportunity to read at work than the readability of the book itself.

‘A Season with Verona’ by Tim Parks

Saturday 11th October – Friday 17th October

Having enjoyed the break from Perfidia, I decided to read another. I picked this out from the pile of unread books as it pandered to my interest in both Italy and Italian football. Clearly, I got through it very quickly – 450-odd pages in less than a week. However, that shouldn’t disguise the fact that it was a disappointment.

I think the author was aiming to write a travel book about football, and in both cases he falls short. In all honesty, the book is neither fish nor fowl. It’s not a fly-on-the-wall account of the Hellas Verona season, nor is it an undercover-reporter style account of Tim Parks’ travels with the hardcore Hellas supporters. Nor for that matter is it an examination of the regional peculiarities of Italy seen through the lens of football.

After a while, I came to the conclusion that this was a diary, even though it isn’t presented as that. What frustrated me even more was that while the author attends every match, there are a handful of games where the performance is so bad that he simply mentions that he doesn’t want to dwell upon them and so they aren’t discussed. Overall, a book for which I had high hopes and was disappointed. I’m not sure I’d bother reading it again.

Book Diary – July 2014

‘August Heat’ by Andrea Camilleri

Thursday 10th July  

Finished inside a day! And a work day at that.

As this is the fifth or sixth Montalbano book I’ve read, there isn’t a great deal more I can add to what I’ve already written. Suffice to say, the books are an absolute pleasure to read despite their often sleazy subject matter. It’s no surprise that I’ll be following this with another straight away (although this is influenced by the impending library deadline to a certain extent).

‘The Track of Sand’ by Andrea Camilleri

Friday 11th July

Two days, two books. I’m on a roll! It’s unlikely that I will continue at this rate though.

 

‘The Architecture of Happiness’ by Alain de Botton

Sunday 13th July – Sunday 20th July

I probably profess to like a great number of things, greater than I can possibly devote enough time to in order to sustain a decent level of interest. However, despite this I will now claim to like architecture. One of the best bits of a trip to London is looking at the new, modern blocks of apartments rising from the ground as the train passes through Stratford and the like. I have also been known to watch repeats of Grand Designs, so what more evidence would I possibly need to provide that I Like Architecture?!

It’s this interest which prompted me to borrow this book from the library and I was richly rewarded. It’s not a long book, and many of its 267 pages are occupied with photos literally illustrating the point Alain De Botton is making. Despite that, there are a lot of interesting points raised and thoughts provoked.

He has some very interesting theories regarding attractiveness, the meaning of the home, fashion and our duty to replace the natural beauty of the countryside with something more attractive rather than endless mass-produced identikit homes. As somebody who has occasionally entertained the idea of building his own home, this book gave me a lot to think about.

‘The Apple’ by Michael Faber

Sunday 20th July

Following on from ‘The Crimson Petal and the White’ comes this collection of short stories.

Now, I’m not normally a fan of short stories. I often feel that if the idea were good enough it would be written into a full-length novel and as such many books of short stories are little more than collections of half-formed ideas and unfinished work – closer to a sketchbook than the finished canvas of the novel.

However, this book is somehow different. Each story really is a story and despite being a little different from what I am accustomed to reading, I really enjoyed it. In fact, in a bout of insomnia, I finished the book in one evening. I would definitely recommend this to anyone, but especially those who have read ‘The Crimson Petal and the White’ as I think the background knowledge does add something to the enjoyment of the shorter stories.