Tag Archives: books

#BookReview ‘A Long Long Way’ by Sebastian Barry #Irishhistory #WW1

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A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry is the story of Willie Dunne, an innocent, who goes away to war not understanding fully what is involved but determined to do his bit. Written in 2005 and nominated for the Booker Prize, it is the tender tale of a young Irish man who volunteers for the British army and ends up in Belgium. Sebastian Barry Set against the background of the Easter Rising, Willie does not fully understand the political implications of what is happening around him. He is born in Dublin, as a baby “he was like the thin upper arm of a beggar with a few meagre bones shot through him, provisional and bare.” Barry’s language throughout is a delight, something I didn’t expect when the book is about the worst of trench warfare. Barry does not spare punches, at times the action and conditions he describes brought me close to tears, but I read on, pulled forwards by Willie’s life force.
He travels to new places, “ravished by the simple joy of seeing new places of the earth.” This joy unravels when arrives at the trenches. “The biggest thing there was the roaring of Death and the smallest thing was a man. Bombs not so far off distressed the earth of Belgium, disgorged great heaps of it, and did everything except kill him immediately, as he half-expected them to do.” And all the time he longs from Gretta, his girl at home. “He was in love with Gretta like a poor swan was in love with the Liffey and cannot leave it.”
I will be reading more by Sebastian Barry.

Read my reviews of these books also by Sebastian Barry:
A THOUSAND MOONS
DAYS WITHOUT END
OLD GOD’S TIME
THE NEWER WORLD
THE WHEREABOUTS OF ENEAS MCNULTY… and try the #FirstPara of THE WHEREABOUTS OF ENEAS MCNULTY

If you like this, try:-
‘The Lie’ by Helen Dunmore
‘Life Class’ by Pat Barker #1LIFECLASS
‘Wake’ by Anna Hope

And if you’d like to share a link:
#BookReview A LONG LONG WAY by Sebastian Barry http://wp.me/p5gEM4-Bx via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘An Officer and a Spy’ by Robert Harris @Robert_Harris #thriller

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Robert Harris is a master storyteller. Whether he turns his attention to a volcano exploding, ghost writing the memoirs of a questionable politician, the deathly politics of Rome’s Senate, or the Nazis winning the Second World War, you know you can rely on him to tell a rollicking tale based on sound handling of the historical facts. An Officer and a Spy has so many echoes of today it is uncanny. Robert HarrisThe true story on which this novel is based too place in 1895. Don’t let the historical basis of the story deter you; this is a good old-fashioned spy story complete with forgeries, eavesdropping, surveillance and murder.The spy of the title is Captain Alfred Dreyfus, convicted as a military spy and sent to Devil’s Island. The captain is Georges Picquart, who witnesses the humiliation of Dreyfus in front of a baying mob. Picquart, who after this opening scene is promoted to run the Statistical Section of France’s Ministry of War, discovers evidence that puts Dreyfus’ conviction in doubt. His superiors dismiss his concerns and tell him to forget them. He doesn’t forget, instead undertaking his own investigations which uncover evidence of a new spy. His efforts lead him to a prison cell.
Aghast at the army’s willingness to accept a miscarriage of justice rather than the upset of a retrial, Dreyfus doesn’t stop fighting for justice. “For the first time in my life I carry hatred inside me. It is an almost physical thing, like a concealed knife. Sometimes, when I am alone, I like to take it out and run my thumb along its cold, sharp blade.”
Underlying the spy story is the fact that Dreyfus is a Jew. The anti-semitism in the French army portrayed by Harris is deeply disturbing in the light of rising right-wing extremism in Europe today against minorities.
The cause of Dreyfus is taken up by luminaries of the time, including the novelist Emile Zola, who uses the power of the press in the fight to bring Dreyfus home for re-trial. To Picquart , the army’s refusal to admit its mistake “really, it is beyond hypocrisy; it is beyond even lying; it has become a psychosis.”

Read my reviews of these other thrillers, also by Robert Harris:-
MUNICH
PRECIPICE
V2

… and try the #FIRSTPARA of THE GHOST, also by Robert Harris

If you like this, try:-
‘The Ways of the World’ by Robert Goddard #1WIDEWORLD
‘Homeland’ by Clare Francis
‘Dominion’ by CJ Sansom

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview AN OFFICER AND A SPY by Robert Harris @Robert_Harris via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-Cm

#Books Great opening paragraph 46… ‘After You’d Gone’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“The day she would try to kill herself, she realised winter was coming again. She had been lying on her side, her knees drawn up; she’d sighed. And the heat of her breath had vaporised in the cold air of the bedroom. She pushed the air out of her lungs again, watching. Then she did it again, and again. Then she wrenched back the covers and got up. Alice hated winter.” Maggie O’FarrellFrom ‘After You’d Gone’ by Maggie O’Farrell

Here’s my review of THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US also by Maggie O’Farrell

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The Collector’ by John Fowles 
‘The Sense of an Ending’ by Julian Barnes 
‘The God of Small Things’ by Arundhati Roy 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara AFTER YOU’D GONE by Maggie O’Farrell http://wp.me/p5gEM4-mP via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Cheesemaker’s House’ by Jane Cable @JaneCable #contemporary #romance

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The Cheesemaker’s House, the debut novel by Jane Cable, starts with a mystery and turns into a ghost story. After her divorce, Alice moves with her dog William to a village in North Yorkshire. Newly-arrived, she walks the dog beside the River Swale and sees a naked swimmer. She watches, feeling like a voyeur but unable to leave. Then suddenly he disappears. Jane CableFeeling guilty that she didn’t search, or call for help, she drives into town where she goes into a coffee shop down a side street. And is served by the mysterious swimmer. Disturbed by his presence and at the same time attracted to him, she cannot work out how he left the river without her seeing or how he got to town before her.
This first mystery is followed by others, competently handled by this first-time author who draws a fond picture of life in rural North Yorkshire. My only minor quibble would be that for three-quarters of the book, the meaning of the book’s title was lost on me.

Read my reviews of these other novels by Jane Cable:-
ANOTHER YOU
ENDLESS SKIES

Also by Jane Cable, writing as Eva Glyn:-
THE COLLABORATOR’S DAUGHTER
THE CROATIAN ISLAND LIBRARY
THE MISSING PIECES OF US

If you like this, try:-
‘The House at the Edge of the World’ by Julia Rochester
‘Butterfly Barn’ by Karen Power
‘Somewhere Inside of Happy’ by Anna McPartlin

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE CHEESEMAKER’S HOUSE by Jane Cable @JaneCable https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-4bw via @SandraDanby

Great opening paragraph…45

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The Secret Agent - OP
“Mr Verloc, going out in the morning, left his shop nominally in charge of his brother-in-law. It could be done, because there was very little business at any time, and practically none at all before the evening. Mr Verloc cared but little about his ostensible business. And moreover, his wife was in charge of his brother-in-law.”
‘The Secret Agent’ by Joseph Conrad

Great opening paragraph 45… ‘The Secret Agent’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“Mr Verloc, going out in the morning, left his shop nominally in charge of his brother-in-law. It could be done, because there was very little business at any time, and practically none at all before the evening. Mr Verloc cared but little about his ostensible business. And moreover, his wife was in charge of his brother-in-law.”
Joseph Conrad From ‘The Secret Agent’ by Joseph Conrad 

Here’s the #FirstPara of LORD JIM, also by Joseph Conrad.

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Jack Maggs’ by Peter Carey
‘Original Sin’ by PD James
‘The Heart is a Lonely Hunter’ by Carson McCullers

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE SECRET AGENT by Joseph Conrad http://wp.me/p5gEM4-eE via @SandraDanby

#Books Great Opening paragraph 44… ‘The Hunger Games’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim’s warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course she did. This is the day of the reaping.” Suzanne CollinsFrom ‘The Hunger Games’ by Suzanne Collins

Read my reviews of the five books of the Underland Chronicles, also by Suzanne Collins:-
GREGOR THE OVERLANDER #1UNDERLANDCHRONICLES
GREGOR AND THE PROPHECY OF BANE #2UNDERLANDCHRONICLES
GREGOR AND THE CURSE OF THE WARMBLOODS #3UNDERLANDCHRONICLES
GREGOR AND THE MARKS OF SECRET #4UNDERLANDCHRONICLES
GREGOR AND THE CODE OF CLAW #5UNDERLANDCHRONICLES

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘Brighton Rock’ by Graham Greene
‘The Last Tycoon’ by F Scott Fitzgerald
‘Tipping the Velvet’ by Sarah Waters

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#Books #FirstPara THE HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-4bk via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Doppler’ by Erland Loe @erlendloe #contemporary

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Doppler by Erlend Loe defies description, but I’ll have a go. It’s about Doppler, a Norwegian guy who after the death of his father has an accident on his bike and subsequently turns his back on civilization to live in the forest. Erlend LoeDoppler’s sole companion is Bongo, an elk calf which he feels responsible for having shot Bongo’s mother for food. The conversations with Bongo made me smile. It’s a tale about family, grief, alienation and a gradual warming towards civilization again, or so you think. No matter how much Doppler wants to be alone, he seems to attract people around him.
It’s a charming tale with a cutting edge. Doppler is happy in the forest but is a keen observer of the society he has rejected. Forced to communicate again with his pregnant wife and two children, he struggles to cope with modern society and his responsibilities, Teletubbies add Bob the Builder included. His teenage daughter Nora, named after an Ibsen character of course, insists on talking to him in elfish. His son Gregus forgets the television and instead helps him carve a totem pole, intended as a memorial to Doppler’s father but which comes to represent the three male generations of Dopplers and Bongo.
I read it quickly and wished it was longer, a book that will yield more for re-reading I think.

If you like this, try:-
‘I Refuse’ by Per Petterson
‘Wolf Winter’ by Cecilia Eckback
‘Burial Rites’ by Hannah Kent

And if you’d like to share a link:
#BookReview DOPPLER by Erland Loe @erlendloe http://wp.me/p2ZHJe-yD via @SandraDanby

Great Opening Paragraph… 43

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thomas pynchon - the crying of lot 49 10-6-13“One summer afternoon Mrs Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed, executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary. Oedipa stood in the living-room, stared at by the greenish dead eye of the TV tube, spoke the name of God, tried to feel as drunk as possible. But this did not work. She thought of a hotel room in Mazatlán whose door had just been slammed, it seemed forever, waking up two hundred birds down in the lobby, a sunrise over the library slope at Cornell University that nobody out on it had seen because the slope faces west; a dry, disconsolate tune from the fourth movement of the Bartók Concerto for Orchestra; a whitewashed bust of Jay Gould that Pierce kept over the bed on a shelf so narrow for it she’d always had the hovering fear it would someday topple on them. Was that how he’d died, she wondered, among dreams, crushed by the only icon in the house? That only made her laugh, out loud and helpless: You’re so sick, Oedipa, she told herself, or the room, which knew.”

‘The Crying of Lot 49’ by Thomas Pynchon

Great Opening Paragraph 43… ‘The Crying of Lot 49’ #amreading #FirstPara

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“One summer afternoon Mrs Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed, executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary. Oedipa stood in the living-room, stared at by the greenish dead eye of the TV tube, spoke the name of God, tried to feel as drunk as possible. But this did not work. She thought of a hotel room in Mazatlán whose door had just been slammed, it seemed forever, waking up two hundred birds down in the lobby, a sunrise over the library slope at Cornell University that nobody out on it had seen because the slope faces west; a dry, disconsolate tune from the fourth movement of the Bartók Concerto for Orchestra; a whitewashed bust of Jay Gould that Pierce kept over the bed on a shelf so narrow for it she’d always had the hovering fear it would someday topple on them. Was that how he’d died, she wondered, among dreams, crushed by the only icon in the house? That only made her laugh, out loud and helpless: You’re so sick, Oedipa, she told herself, or the room, which knew.”
Thomas PynchonFrom ‘The Crying of Lot 49’ by Thomas Pynchon

Try one of these #FirstParas & discover a new author:-
‘The English Patient’ by Michael Ondaatje
‘The Secret Agent’ by Joseph Conrad
‘Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World’ by Haruki Murakami

And if you’d like to share a link:
#Books #FirstPara THE CRYING OF LOT 49 by Thomas Pynchon https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-4bl via @SandraDanby