The great thing about holidays for me is time to read books without any of the interruptions that usually chequer my days.
So for this trip I took a small stack of books and enjoyed wending my way through them.
To clarify before anyone asks, I am blessed to be a speed-reader. The downside of this, is that it makes reading a very expensive exercise as I am always looking for new material to read. The upside is that one-day someone is going to see what a blessing this is and offer me a job reading and reviewing books.
So for those of you looking for something to read, or avoid (because forewarned is forearmed) here is a run down on my holiday reading.
First book was Ultra-marathon Man by Dean Karanzes. I’ve mentioned this book here. Husband is now reading it. It certainly highlights the differing ways genders respond to texts. I spent most of it being both horrified and amazed at his exploits, and in awe of the power of the human mind. Husband however has been in fits of laughter reading passages that personally I thought were masochistic to say the very least. I really enjoyed the book and its’ certainly shifted my mindset whilst training. A 5km training run seems almost meaningless in comparison to Karnazes 20 mile runs before breakfast most mornings!
My second book was read poolside (a lovely place to be) while Mr Small dozed beside me and the older two frolicked in the pool. It’s called “What Kate did next” by Lisa Heidke, not to be confused with “What Katie did next.” I’ve read both books and trust me when I say there is a world (and a century or more) of difference between the two. Heidke’s novel makes for easy reading, and explores the struggle to maintain a family, work balance for women whilst at the same time enjoying a semblance of fun in our lives. Her protagonist Kate faces the minefield inevitably faced by mothers juggling a return to work, in what can only be described as a dysfunctional workplace also coupled with the challenges faced by parents of school age children.
As a former high school teacher, the events Heidke writes of came as no surprise to me, but I suspect they would make for eye opening and possibly a sound warning to parents, that vigilance and involvement in their children’s lives doesn’t end when their children gain possession of a mobile phone. In fact, I’d say the battle has only just begun.
Heidke’s novel looks at everything from the challenges of step-parenting through to the difficulties faced by teenagers through peer-pressure, and whilst her ending does much to tie her narrative up neatly, she also works to position her reader to close the novel feeling simultaneously satisfied and alarmed.
My next read was “A pressure cooker saved my life” by Juanita Phillips. Phillips was and is a highly experienced newsreader and presenter, as well as being a wife, mother and now writer. The book is interesting. The typeface of the book is simply beautiful and Phillips peppers the book with interesting gems and recipes. The book is a mix of helpful tips, sociological observations, family anecdotes and a smattering of recipes. Initially I wasn’t sure exactly what the book was trying to be, however Phillips says early on: “ …it’s basically a collection of postcards from the work/family battlefront written in fifteen minute bursts between kids and work and cooking and all the usual domestic crisis..”
The book is divided into sections about life, food, time, home, family, pressure cooking and recipes. They are all useful, but I admit I found the constant re-iteration that the pressure cooker was the reason Phillips was able to manage her many challenges seems superficial on occasion. She is honest and engaging throughout her narrative, it is simply overworking what could have been a successful premise that was the problem (in my opinion)
HOWEVER I am intrigued by what she does say and coming up soon will be a post devoted to trialling her recipes and using a pressure cooker for the first time in my existence.
The next book was a birthday present from my parents. It’s called “The bread of angels” by Stephanie Saldana. This is an incredibly beautifully written book. I’m not usually a huge fan of overly descriptive prose but Saldana does it in such a way as to evoke an authentic sense of time and place. The story is a recount of her life (incredibly she is only just 30) from her year studying in Damascus. As an American in Syria at the time just post 9/11 she gives us the human faces of a wide variety of Middle Easterners that was both refreshing and instructive. Through her eyes we see thoughtful, well-educated Muslim women, politically disenfranchised merchants, displaced families from Iraq now living in contemporary Damascus, the world's oldest inhabited city. She lost me a little in the second part of the novel as the love story began to unfold, interwoven as it was with her spiritual journey.
Whilst parallels with ‘Eat, pray, love” by Elizabeth Gilbert (and I wasn’t a fan of that book) are inevitable I would venture to say I liked this a great deal more. Saldana’s book highlights her wanderlust, in contrast to what I felt was Gilbert’s naval gazing exercise.
Having read this, I moved onto “Miscellaneous Voices” edited by Karen Andrews. The book is a collection of blog posts from various Australian bloggers and was compiled by Andrews to, in her words “experiment to see how this writing, these writers, stand up to the challenge of the page; or to put it another way, to put them in front of another audience which may be more page-loyal.” As I read each post, I was struck by how unique and distinctive each piece of writing was. Andrews chose pieces from across the spectrum. Given its broadness, some resonated with me far more than others. Throughout though, I appreciated the richness of each piece. That’s the beauty of blogging, the fact that I have access to a range of writing and writers who share their stories, their creativity in a medium that, it could be argued, is often far more accessible than a book sitting remote and often financially inaccessible on a shelf in a bookstore.
My next two books were part of the Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson. I read Book One and Book Three. Yes, I know I didn’t read the second one. They didn’t have it in store when I went on my pre-holiday book hunt. It was okay though, each book is pretty much a self contained narrative and whilst the second one certainly merges into the third, you can read them individually. There is very little one can say about a trilogy of books that have been extensively reviewed world-wide and have sold millions of copies.
The only thing I would add is that even though I was warned the books were violent I was completely taken completely unawares by it and one particular scene in the first novel left my eyes watering in shock.
That said, I LOVED the fact that the names of the characters were, through their very Swedishness, unfamiliar to me and the plot was one I often had to actually think about.
The irony is that Larsson died after handing in his trilogy for publication and so, never saw the huge success his books were to become.
And now having read all those books and written about them. I’m going to have a little lie down.
What have you read lately that you loved?
Do you agree or disagree with my opinions?
I’d love to know what you think!
