More October Reading

 A few gems...

I am on a Barnes roll with another of his lined up. This one is good but it's hard work, so it won't be for everyone. I really liked the ideas about what we know about people (and what we don't) and how everyone knows the same person 'differently'. Also about how a person is remembered. What truth is there in that? I found the jokes quite clever - especially the symmetry of the uncompleted paper.

However, there's a huge sort of essay in the middle with parallels but I'm not sure that's for everyone - it's very interesting but it is different to the narrative. 

Anyway, I enjoyed it - but one for the fans, not one to start with.

I've read book one but I will admit it's been almost 10 days and I've yet to pick it up again. I did finally push myself to read the second book but that was only to talk about it here. I'll give it one more try and then leave it if it doesn't grab me. If it wasn't for the movie, I don't think I'd try to continue but I'll persist a bit more....so if you love it, tell me why! (as that may give me things to look for that perhaps I'm missing). 

John Banville is extraordinarily talented, and I've only read Snow so beginning to work my way through his works. Having just been in Venice, I loved this. That said, it's not nice - the narrator is full of foibles and despicable at times...but it is so wonderfully written. Sheer poetry at times. "Did I have even the most distant inkling that already I was lost? No; we blunder blindly, eager as infants, into our worst miscalculations, our most calamitous errors". He is a superb writer, and this is a fun book (fun in the sense of a wicked narrator and wicked people abound). Loved it.

(Reviews for Banville's The Sea here and Snow here)

The last in my library's collection of the Herome K. Jerome Bloche comics. I think this one was probably the best of the 3. I really enjoyed it. Will try to track down more, or buy some if they aren't too expensive. You can read it on Hoopla (on an ipad would be better as I often had to make the frames bigger to take it in). 

Reviews for the others in the series: The Recluse and Post-Mortem)

I loved Brian Wood's DMZ series - this is a dystopian future (or lets face it, the climate disaster that is soon upon us). Celebrity chef style. It's dark and broody in a world where there are rich trying to maintain the life they had and everyone else is just doing what they can....so far the hero seems very much an antihero, though that perception is beginning to shift as more and more unlikeable characters seem to be set against him succeeding....Enjoying this comic a lot. You can borrow on Hoopla. Though again the frames are often too small on my phone so maybe read on the Ipad so you aren't constantly messing about to make the frames bigger to take it all in.

Back to Christie, as a little palate cleanse, so to speak. It's 12 stories set in London on audible, read by different actors (Suchet reads the Poirot story and Christopher Lee reads A Witness for the Prosecution - long time followers might know I adore his voice and went through a phase of listening to any audio book he read. He does a lot of the Tommy and Tuppence stories if you want to track those down). Great way to dip in and out of Agatha Christie, without a big commitment. One of the tales has Mrs Oliver having close resemblance to Agatha Christie when explaining her craft. That was fun as I don't recall having come across her before. Great taster of all her different detectives and mystery styles.

(Other Christie Reviews:  The Body in the Library, Passenger to Frankfurt,  Death Comes As the End, Destination Unknown, The Adventures of the Christmas Pudding, The Actress & Taken at the Flood)

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