Marcus Hobson > Recent Status Updates

I'm really enjoying this memoire now, but the pages are dense with words and long twisting stories.

I've been taken on a quite different story, one about Brit and then Florence, and finally fifty pages later it loops around and joins the first story in the book. One hell of a trip.

It takes to to orientate yourself in this novel, it is not clear at the start what is happening, but that doesn't matter because the paragraphs are so good - witty, profound, clever, rubbing ideas together to make fire.

This simply keeps getting better and better, so trying to read slowly.

Set in the early 1980s in a world where Alan Turing didn't kill himself but invented computers and AI, Charlie buys one of the first synthetic humans. OMG this is good.

Chapter 1 is three pages long. We have a stolen plane, vanished people, an invasion of birds & tropical plants, helicopters hunting overhead and a man who has escaped life and death.

This book is a pure delight. As a US hardback it was not something I would expect to find in a local charity store, but this could be the best $4 I've ever spent. Beautiful art, stunning photos and cooking recipes. Perfect.

When someone says a novel left them breathless, I think cliché alert. But I am literally breathing hard, heart beating fast, shaking slightly, wiping my eyes because I must have got some dust in them. Later, I will try and write something more helpful about just how good this is. More than 5 stars.

Lanny is a young boy. His mum is writing crime novels and she worries that Lanny will be contaminated by what she writes. The she says "Does my husband sit on the train and worry that the crushing dullness of Collateralised Loan Obligations might be leaking into Lanny? I doubt it."

I picked this up just to look, but I have found myself quickly drawn in to the story, which I suppose is a good sign.

Timothy, the tortoise, reflects on his family:
"Possessed of the memories I know to be ancient instinct. Broken shells and a common nest the only sign of kin. Mother a scent on the gravel. Father a scent on mother."
That is so beautifully said.

Enjoying the contrast of the stories.

Love this line "Life-Like is not the same as life."

Thanking people for all the terrible things that happened in her childhood, and how they helped her develop as a writer, is beginning to wear a little thin.

This begins with the dull repetition of guarding the same stretch of concrete wall, but suddenly changes tempo and you find yourself caught up in the action and the changing circumstances.

Big fan of previous books by John Lanchester, so looking forward to this.