David > Recent Status Updates

Finding this curiously hard-going. The themes are interesting and I usually enjoy Ghosh (the exception being 'The Hungry Tide'), but the writing in this just seems bad in places: none of the characters speaks like a real person and it is full of info-dumps... I'll persevere but if I hadn't read Ghosh before I think I'd be abandoning this.

100 stories by one author is too many to read all at once and I'm enjoying these too much to want to risk fatigue, so 27 stories in I'm going to pause and read a couple of other collections before returning. So far though I'd give this 5 stars - some brilliant stories ('The Night', 'The Scythe', all the Martian ones...).

Putting this one aside for a while. It reminds me of Sara Baume's 'A Line Made by Walking' but whereas I really liked that book, this one is a chore to pick up. I think I either need more time to sit down and read a big chunk of it, or to be in the right mood for it.

Abandoning this for now due to complete lack of toss-giving with regard to Paul and Susan. I may come back to it at some point.

Hmm, this doesn't bode well - picked this up and realised I couldn't remember most of the characters' names and had forgotten most of the first 45 pages after a day. Why is this on the Booker shortlist?

I sometimes think American and Canadian writers don't read or watch anything British (or Irish) - "sidewalk"? "jelly doughnut"? How hard can it be to get this right?

There is a puzzling quote from Michelle Huneven on the cover of this wherein she states that she had to keep putting the book down to catch her breath. I am forced to wonder why? Emphysema? Was she reading whilst doing strenuous exercise? Because so far (and admittedly I'm only two stories in) I'm failing to see the reason for Huneven's respiratory distress.

Mercifully just one story left to go now, though I did really like 'Wings' (even if it did suffer from the same lame joke syndrome as the rest).

Four stories in, this feels like watching a once-good sitcom that has gone off the boil: predictable and nowhere near as funny as it thinks it is.

I read the title novella/story this morning and was initially a little disappointed, but over the last hour or two it has continued unfolding in my mind and revealing itself... superb stuff. I hope the other three are as good.

At about the halfway point this suddenly started working for me. I still have some issues with it, but at least I'm enjoying it now.

So many 5 star reviews of this novel - clearly I must be missing something, but I'm finding it to be one of the least engaging things I've read all year... ah well, I shall plod on with it.

Four stories read and the standard is being more than maintained - this really is excellent stuff.

If the rest of the stories can maintain the quality of the first two then this could well be one of my books of the year. Fingers crossed!

This book currently has two 5 star reviews on Goodreads, but both are from employees of the publisher and are entirely misleading - two good stories so far, the rest are at best mediocre.

"As she passed, his eyes ran over but didn't acknowledge her" (Page 270). Oh, the image that conjures... putting this one aside for now.

Agh! It's like de Kretser has gone through her book and stripped away anything with even the whiff of superfluous exposition. Admirable in its way, but it can be really baffling. Just been reading about Hazel's 'second', Robbo, and her 'fourth', Kev. I thought she was on about husbands - took me two and a half pages to twig they were her sons!

Crikey, this is a slog. I found 'The Lost Dog' hard-going and dull too... maybe de Kretser just isn't for me.

Seriously considering giving up on this. Could Amy Sackville be any more in love with her own writing? Precious to say the least. Her two central characters are paper-thin and the story (such as it is) is stuck in a repetitive loop.