The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry ... read this book!

I'm not going  to beat around the bush here ... this is a FIVE STAR read and if you only read one book this year, this should be it! The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, by Rachel Joyce, which I read in audio format is so good, I almost wish I hadn't read it yet so that I could enjoy it afresh for the first time. Despite its wordy title, this seems to be, on the face of it, a simple tale. Harold is retired, 65, and hardly ever leaves the house. His wife Maureen barely speaks to him and life is just an existence. When he receives bad news about an old work colleague, he writes a short letter and sets off to the nearest post box. Then, instead of posting it and coming home, he suddenly decides that he will go to visit the "Queenie" from the letter, and that he will walk there. When he tells Maureen this from a phone box, she is not impressed. He has no map, no walking shoes and 600 miles to go! Simple. However, as he walks, his mind revisits events of his past and with each passing mile we discover more about the man - his childhood, marriage, fatherhood and worklife. The people he meets along the road both inspire him and frighten him, as indeed he starts to inspire others. Why is he walking, will he get there and what will Maureen do to him when he gets home? Longlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize, it gets my vote. This is heart wrenching one minute and heartwarming the next. I loved it - and Jim Broadbent as the narrator ... inspired.

My STAR rating: FIVE

Length: 304 print pages.
Price I paid: £7.99 (Audible monthly membership)
Formats available: print, unabridged audio (CD and download), ebook

An ethereal yet visceral tale of India

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh, which I read in audio, is a hard book to pigeonhole. It starts in India, at a time just before the Opium Wars. A widowed villager escapes from the drudgery of her life as an opium farmer, and is drawn to the river and the sea. Meanwhile, an ex-slave ship, The Ibis, arrives into the scene carrying a motley crew, including an American who suddenly finds that he is the second mate. A local rajah falls on hard times and ends up in prison and is sentenced to be sent overseas. All these and more come together on the Ibis, sailing across the Indian Ocean. We're enveloped in the breakdown of society, scandal, race relations, romance and opium addiction - oh, and with a smattering of politics thrown in for good measure. The text utilises local Indian dialects, that were usually translated. But the language in the boat, which was a complete hotchpotch of languages, was sometimes hard to follow. There are some interesting characters and the setting is different to one I've encountered before, but I wasn't completely transported away by this book. When I first finished the book, I couldn't understand why the ending was so unsatisfactory, with lots left up in the air - but I now realise that this is book one of a trilogy. It does have an other worldly nature to it, but I really don't know if I liked it enough to continue onto book two!

My STAR rating: THREE

Length: 544 pages
Price I paid: £6.50
Formats available: Print, unabridged audio (CD or download), ebook.

Back into and out of the world of Robert Jordan!

I was starting to think I was never going to finish either of the two books I seem to have been reading for an absolute age! However, I have just completed Winter's heart, by Robert Jordan - the 9th book in the Wheel of Time epic. As with previous books in the series, the action moves from place to place with alarming speed, and whilst focusing on the main characters - Rand al'Thor, Egwene, Matt Cauthon, Elayne and Nynaeve - there is a vast, and I really do mean VAST, set of minor characters that are packed in. Having not read one of these for about a year, I found it really difficult to get my head around all these extra characters ... had I met them before, or were they new on the scene? Are they worth paying attention to or are they going to disappear as quickly as they appeared? I find myself torn by this book. I really do want to find out what happens to these people that I have been reading about over the last few years, but it's a massive investment of time and can be frustrating. I feel that Mr Jordan should have had a good editor to help him keep on track with the story and to rein in the continual expansion of characters and places. We keep hearing about the breaking of the world, and the last battle - with Rand being the key to it all. But it seems to take forever and a day to be getting there. This book has some good touches and there is progression at last - but there is too much navel gazing and internalising for my liking. We kind of know what the characters are about by the 9th book in the series ... do we really need to hear yet again that Rand feels ill every time he fills with "saidin" to perform his magic? No we don't ... just get on with it man. I wouldn't recommend this book if you hadn't already been reading the Wheel of Time series. The first few books were great, but the last couple that I've read have felt a bit like padding, with nowhere near enough stuff going on. I don't think I've helped myself by leaving big gaps between the books - so I think I'll crack on with the next one sooner rather than later.

My STAR rating: THREE

Length: 704 print pages.
Price I paid: £1.95 (in a second hand book shop)
Formats available: print; unabridged audio download; ebook.

In the doldrums

I seem to be doing everything in slow motion at the moment. Maybe it's because the Olympic Games have been on and I've been totally hooked on them,t o the exclusion of almost everything else ... or maybe it's because I've been having dental problems (finally resulting in a tooth extraction last Thursday ... still sore!). I am reading, but only a few pages at a time. I am in the middle of the ninth Robert Jordan Wheel of Time book - where your head just spins with the vast array of characters and plot lines. It's ages since I read book number eight and it's taking me a good while to get back into the rhythm of this epic tale of magic and good and evil. I've also been reading, on audio, Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh. Whilst I'm enjoying this too, it also requires a fair amount of concentration to read as it is highly spiced with Indian dialects. Plus I have been so busy over the last few weeks that my opportunities for reading audio have been few and far between. But today is the last day of the Olympics, and my mouth is getting better (oh to be able to eat something that you can crunch into!) so I should be able to steam ahead once more.

Don't sit under the apple tree .. unless you want to fall in love

When I was in my teens, I went through a phase of reading Mills and Boon books, and have happy memories of doing so. Why then, am I struggling to enjoy the "romance" books of today? I have just finished The Apple Tree, by Lynette Sofras on my ebook and found it to be lacking in the major ingredient to these books - some actual romance! Our heroine (whose name I've already forgotten - which shows you how memorable I found her!) is an irritating, moany, woman who can't decide if she really wants to be a surgeon or not (I would have thought that the business of her fainting while observing operations would have been some kind of a clue here). She has split from her husband and is trying to "find herself" back at the place where she grew up. Along comes Nicholas, who she thinks is a gardener, but who is, it turns out, an incredibly wealthy chap. She falls for him big style and he seems to feel the same way, but when he finds out she is married (she doesn't tell him), he calls it off. There ensues much weeping and wailing and then, to cap it all, the husband reappears. Will Nicholas and ... no, really can't remember her name and can't be bothered to look it up ... find their way back to happiness? Well, we all know the answer to that but I have to admit, I didn't really care - but at least the book is fairly short. Maybe I need to go for something a little bit more sophisticated in the romance department ... Jane Austen is a hard act to follow!

My STAR rating: TWO

Length: 188 pages.
Price I paid: FREE (although it no longer is)
Formats available: print; ebook.

Perfect People ... with a few flaws!

Having just finished Perfect People, by Peter James as an ebook, I have mixed feelings. It is a thriller with a chilling premise, but it just didn't quite hit the high notes that it had the potential to. The action starts with Naomi and John arriving aboard a ship in order to met Dr Leo Detorre - who is offering them the chance to tweak the genetic make up of their child to avoid a repeat of the devastating loss of their son from a rare genetic disorder. All they want is a healthy baby to help rebuild their lives as a family. They decide to go ahead with the procedure and are overjoyed when Naomi is confirmed as pregnant. However, when they discover she is expecting twins, they fear that the pushy and confident Dr Dettore may have got things a little wrong. Into the frame comes a sinister threat from a previously unheard of religious cult who are hunting down any couple who have been to see the infamous doctor. Soon the twins are born, and they are not like any children Naomi and John have come across before. The action builds up until a climax with an ending that you will not see coming. The lesson is, DON'T MESS WITH GENETICS! I may try other Peter James - he is more famous for his crime novels featuring DI Roy Grace - but I just didn't feel that this particular novel gripped me enough and that the characters were not quite 3-dimensional.

My STAR rating: THREE

Length: 460 print pages.
Price I paid: £0.20.
Formats available: print; unabridged audio download; ebook.

Oliver Twist - not nearly as jolly as the musical!

Continuing my foray into Dickens this year, I have been reading Oliver Twist on my Kindle. I thought I knew this story pretty well - after all, I've seen Oliver! the musical a few times (Consider yourself, at home!) and I even studied it in English literature for one year at school. But how wrong I was. The main events and characters are all there - the orphan (Oliver), his life at the workhouse, then the undertaker's, followed by his escape to London and falling into the company of the Artful Dodger and Fagin - petty thieves and pickpockets. However, we also have a range of other characters and events that I had absolutely no recollection of at all. I was not displeased by this turn of events as it meant that I was surprised by a book I thought I knew pretty well! You can't help but root for Oliver who is definitely not suited to a life of crime. The looming threat of one of London's most notorious criminals - Bill Sikes - who decides to find a use for Oliver - is balanced by the tenderness of his girlfriend Nancy, who knows Oliver could have a better life and wants to help him get it. I have to say that Mr Dickens has redeemed himself with this book. The characterisations are excellent and the story bowls along. Not completely bereft of the descriptive passages of the previous stories I've read, the balance between action and atmosphere is almost perfect. Particular highlights are the relationship between Bill Sikes and Nancy, which is spiky to say the least, and violence never seems far away. I was a bit shocked at how dark a character Fagin is, with apparently no redeeming features (maybe this was a sign of the attitudes of the times - hard for me to say - but there were repeated references to his ethnicity). When he gets it right, Dickens does transport you to a different time and place where the sights and smells really come alive. Highly recommended.

My START rating: FOUR

Length: 400 print pages.
Price I paid: free.
Format available: print; audio CD; audio download; ebook.