Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Quick Catch Up

Just a quick catch up to let you know I am still out here... and reading....

I tried Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down, but just could not get interested in the lives of the characters. They all meet intending to commit suicide from the top of a building on New Year's Eve, but manage to talk each other out of it - for now anyway. Problem is, the characters are not likeable. I did not really care whether they jumped or not. In fact, sometimes you wished they would so you could get to the end of the novel quicker.

I didn't finish, which lets you know exactly what I thought of the book. It's a shame as it was a list text, and I have great respect for Hornby in some ways. Maybe I'm just not into his Weltanschauung.

I'm back at an old favourite right now - Robert Jordan's (seemingly endless) Wheel of Time series. It's a fabulous fantasy epic, that has unfortunately been stretched out too much by the author. But one of my students is progressing through the series, and keeps bringing the books to class, so I have been inspired to give it another bash. I am into the last one of the series - the one after I gave up and decided it would never end.

Of course, my student thinks I am "cheating" by not reading them all again. But they are all 1000 pages long and this is Book 11! You'd never read another entry on this blog again, ever!

So, I will post again when I finish.

Sunday, June 01, 2008

The Memory Keeper's Daughter


Although not a list text, this was a book that I had seen around a lot and heard good things about. So when a friend lent it to me, I put it on the reading pile which Rushdie has been severely holding up.

This was an enjoyable read, and certainly not as dense as the Rushdie (even though I enjoyed that too). It surrounds a young doctor (David Henry) and his beautiful wife Norah and begins on the night she gives birth to twins. The boy is healthy and strong, but the girl has Downs Syndrome.

It’s set in the sixties, when such children were carted off to institutions – so we can sort of understand why the doctor’s first reaction is to do this. The problem is, he never tells his wife who believes the baby has died.

Enter Caroline Gill – a trusted nurse who just happens to be in love with Dr Henry. She takes the baby to the facility, and decides she cannot leave her there.

Ultimately the text is all about what makes us do the things we do, and all the characters lives and motives are more complicated than you can imagine. But it is a satisfying read, which refuses to be boxed into stereotypes. Worth reading.

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