August in Books
I read 10 books in August, although one was an omnibus, so does that count as 11? This year's longlist for the Booker Prize for Fiction was announced at the end of July, and I've managed to get almost halfway through. I also finally caught up with one of my favourite series, just ahead of the next book's release in September.
The first book I read in August was Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead, shortlisted for this year's Women's Prize for Fiction and seemingly beloved by everyone I follow on Twitter!
Great Circle tells the story of Marian Graves, a young woman who grows up, in 1920s Montana, determined to become a pilot. More than half a century later, Hadley Baxter is playing Marian in a film about her life and eventual disappearance. I liked the structure of this book, which alternates between the past and the present day, so that we get to learn about both Marian and Hadley. I liked how real the story felt, and I liked the way we see how Marian's life gets interpreted in the future. The main downside for me was the length of the book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Up next was The Dirk Gently Omnibus, which consists of the first two books featuring the private detective Dirk Gently, by Douglas Adams.
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul are science-fiction/fantasy stories which feature the private detective Dirk Gently. The stories were a little hard to follow at times, as they set up several (reasonably complicated) plots before explaining how they fit together, so four stars rather than five from me. But I really enjoyed this book, and found it as brilliant, absurd, and laugh-out-loud funny as I've come to expect from Douglas Adams.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
My next read was By the Sea by Abdulrazak Gurnah, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature last year.
By the Sea is a beautiful story, with extraordinary depth behind the everyday details. When Selah Omar arrives in Gatwick Airport as a refugee from Zanzibar, he eventually finds himself placed in an English seaside town, where he reconnects with Latif Mahmud, a man from his past, whose memories of that past occasionally differ widely from his own. By the Sea is a slow, ponderous read, but beautifully written. I will definitely be picking up another book from Gurnah soon. Any suggestions?
⭐⭐⭐⭐
After this, I moved onto this year's Booker Prize longlist, starting with The Trees by Percival Everett, an author I'd wanted to read for a while.
The first thing that struck me when I started reading The Trees was how easy it was to read. The chapters are blissfully short, the writing is direct, and the main characters are highly entertaining. The Trees is a real page-turner, not least because you want to get to the bottom of the mystery at its heart. But don't expect a neat resolution. This hard-hitting murder mystery, set against a backdrop of historical and present-day racism in America, leaves a lot of the possibilities it raises in the air, and I found myself feeling less sure of what was possible as I got further into this brilliant book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
My next pick from the Booker longlist was Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet, which came highly recommended.
Case Study is presented as a collection of notebooks given to the author, written by a young woman who visited a certain, infamous psychiatrist in 1960s London, and interwoven with the author’s biography of the psychiatrist’s life. I always enjoy books which pretend to be about real life, and I certainly enjoyed this one. I found Case Study almost impossible to put down. I was hooked from the first page and remained so until the very end. I particularly liked the slow-burning tension, the clarity of the writing, and the realism of the everyday details.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Up next was The Colony by Audrey Magee, which I went into knowing nothing about it.
The Colony is the story of Irish island, whose inhabitants’ routines are disturbed when two tourists come to stay for the summer, interspersed with snippets of stories from the contemporaneous Irish troubles. Once I started reading The Colony, I didn’t want to put it down. I found myself invested in the lives of its characters, even the ones I didn’t particularly like. Audrey Magee explores the theme of colonisation with humour and subtlety, and I particularly enjoyed the sense of place, and the attention to detail.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer is one I almost read before, after it won the Desmond Elliott Prize (for debut novelists).
Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies tells the story of Lia's struggle with breast cancer. It not only alternates its focus between the main characters (Lia, and her daughter, husband, and mother) and Lia's past and present, but there is also a strand of the book narrated by Lia's cancer cells. I found the book's deliberate attempts at poetry a little pretentious but never too off-putting, and struggled more with the focus on cancer. I found this one an interesting and unusual read, but it unfortunately never really grabbed or held my attention.
⭐⭐⭐
I followed this with Booth by Karen Joy Fowler.
Booth tells the story of the Booth family, alternating its focus between the children of celebrated Shakespearean actor, Junius Brutus Booth, one of whom is John Wilkes Booth, the man who killed Abraham Lincoln. Interspersed with this story are brief sections of historical context. I found this nineteenth-century family saga a really engaging read, despite its length, but I'm not quite sure what point it was trying to make. Booth raised some interesting ideas and questions, but I just don't think that it achieved its full potential.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
I took a break from the Booker longlist, over the bank holiday weekend, and read The Man Who Died by Antti Tuomainen (translated by David Hackston).
The Man Who Died opens with Jaakko receiving what are supposed to be routine results from his doctor, but actually reveal that he has been poisoned. So he determines to find out who has poisoned him, a task made more difficult by the discovery that his wife is having an affair, and the arrival of a new - and dangerous - business rival. A quirky, page-turning mystery, filled with memorable characters and witty observations. Antti Tuomainen is definitely a new favourite author.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
I ended the month with Abandoned in Death by J.D. Robb, the 54th book in a series I can't resist.
As with the rest of this series, which centres on a homicide lieutenant in a future New York, this book can be read as a standalone, but is best enjoyed as part of a series. Fans of the series will recognise the characters, storylines, and basic formula, although Abandoned in Death does something a little different, alternating not only between the cops and the victim(s), but also between the past, where the mystery of the killer’s motivation is slowly unravelled. I’d been missing the characters of this series, and it was good to get back to them.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
What did you read in August?
The first book I read in August was Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead, shortlisted for this year's Women's Prize for Fiction and seemingly beloved by everyone I follow on Twitter!
Great Circle tells the story of Marian Graves, a young woman who grows up, in 1920s Montana, determined to become a pilot. More than half a century later, Hadley Baxter is playing Marian in a film about her life and eventual disappearance. I liked the structure of this book, which alternates between the past and the present day, so that we get to learn about both Marian and Hadley. I liked how real the story felt, and I liked the way we see how Marian's life gets interpreted in the future. The main downside for me was the length of the book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Up next was The Dirk Gently Omnibus, which consists of the first two books featuring the private detective Dirk Gently, by Douglas Adams.
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul are science-fiction/fantasy stories which feature the private detective Dirk Gently. The stories were a little hard to follow at times, as they set up several (reasonably complicated) plots before explaining how they fit together, so four stars rather than five from me. But I really enjoyed this book, and found it as brilliant, absurd, and laugh-out-loud funny as I've come to expect from Douglas Adams.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
My next read was By the Sea by Abdulrazak Gurnah, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature last year.
By the Sea is a beautiful story, with extraordinary depth behind the everyday details. When Selah Omar arrives in Gatwick Airport as a refugee from Zanzibar, he eventually finds himself placed in an English seaside town, where he reconnects with Latif Mahmud, a man from his past, whose memories of that past occasionally differ widely from his own. By the Sea is a slow, ponderous read, but beautifully written. I will definitely be picking up another book from Gurnah soon. Any suggestions?
⭐⭐⭐⭐
After this, I moved onto this year's Booker Prize longlist, starting with The Trees by Percival Everett, an author I'd wanted to read for a while.
The first thing that struck me when I started reading The Trees was how easy it was to read. The chapters are blissfully short, the writing is direct, and the main characters are highly entertaining. The Trees is a real page-turner, not least because you want to get to the bottom of the mystery at its heart. But don't expect a neat resolution. This hard-hitting murder mystery, set against a backdrop of historical and present-day racism in America, leaves a lot of the possibilities it raises in the air, and I found myself feeling less sure of what was possible as I got further into this brilliant book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
My next pick from the Booker longlist was Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet, which came highly recommended.
Case Study is presented as a collection of notebooks given to the author, written by a young woman who visited a certain, infamous psychiatrist in 1960s London, and interwoven with the author’s biography of the psychiatrist’s life. I always enjoy books which pretend to be about real life, and I certainly enjoyed this one. I found Case Study almost impossible to put down. I was hooked from the first page and remained so until the very end. I particularly liked the slow-burning tension, the clarity of the writing, and the realism of the everyday details.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Up next was The Colony by Audrey Magee, which I went into knowing nothing about it.
The Colony is the story of Irish island, whose inhabitants’ routines are disturbed when two tourists come to stay for the summer, interspersed with snippets of stories from the contemporaneous Irish troubles. Once I started reading The Colony, I didn’t want to put it down. I found myself invested in the lives of its characters, even the ones I didn’t particularly like. Audrey Magee explores the theme of colonisation with humour and subtlety, and I particularly enjoyed the sense of place, and the attention to detail.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer is one I almost read before, after it won the Desmond Elliott Prize (for debut novelists).
Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies tells the story of Lia's struggle with breast cancer. It not only alternates its focus between the main characters (Lia, and her daughter, husband, and mother) and Lia's past and present, but there is also a strand of the book narrated by Lia's cancer cells. I found the book's deliberate attempts at poetry a little pretentious but never too off-putting, and struggled more with the focus on cancer. I found this one an interesting and unusual read, but it unfortunately never really grabbed or held my attention.
⭐⭐⭐
I followed this with Booth by Karen Joy Fowler.
Booth tells the story of the Booth family, alternating its focus between the children of celebrated Shakespearean actor, Junius Brutus Booth, one of whom is John Wilkes Booth, the man who killed Abraham Lincoln. Interspersed with this story are brief sections of historical context. I found this nineteenth-century family saga a really engaging read, despite its length, but I'm not quite sure what point it was trying to make. Booth raised some interesting ideas and questions, but I just don't think that it achieved its full potential.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
I took a break from the Booker longlist, over the bank holiday weekend, and read The Man Who Died by Antti Tuomainen (translated by David Hackston).
The Man Who Died opens with Jaakko receiving what are supposed to be routine results from his doctor, but actually reveal that he has been poisoned. So he determines to find out who has poisoned him, a task made more difficult by the discovery that his wife is having an affair, and the arrival of a new - and dangerous - business rival. A quirky, page-turning mystery, filled with memorable characters and witty observations. Antti Tuomainen is definitely a new favourite author.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
I ended the month with Abandoned in Death by J.D. Robb, the 54th book in a series I can't resist.
As with the rest of this series, which centres on a homicide lieutenant in a future New York, this book can be read as a standalone, but is best enjoyed as part of a series. Fans of the series will recognise the characters, storylines, and basic formula, although Abandoned in Death does something a little different, alternating not only between the cops and the victim(s), but also between the past, where the mystery of the killer’s motivation is slowly unravelled. I’d been missing the characters of this series, and it was good to get back to them.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
What did you read in August?
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