The Heart in Winter
by Kevin Barry
narrated by the Author
"October 1891. Tom Rourke is a young poet and ballad-maker of the city of Butte, Montana, but also a doper, a drinker, and a fearsome degenerate. Just as he feels his life is heading nowhere fast, Polly Gillespie arrives in town as the new bride of the extremely devout mine captain Long Anthony Harrington."This turned out to be wonderful, but it took its time - the ending was superb, and the writing unusual. It was narrated by the author, who could manage the Irish accents perfectly but struggled slightly with northern English and Cornish. Still, it was worth it.
Tell Me Everything
by Elizabeth Strout
"It's autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother."I picked this up in the library because somebody recently mentioned the author - I don't even know if they were talking about this book, but no matter, let's take a chance. I absolutely loved it. The blurb suggested it was another crime mystery, but that part of the story was almost incidental alongside the simple reporting of people's lives, doing their best and getting along with other people, whether friends, family, partners or colleagues. They are real people in this book, talking and behaving like real people, and I understood them all, liked them all, wanted the best for all of them whatever they were doing. I would read what this woman writes about the contents of the phone book or the weather forecast because she sees that everything has some sort of beauty, and everyone has something to say and a story to tell, and they are trying to be happy by really considering what that means and trying to live accordingly, which is just what I'm doing. She writes about ordinary people like me in beautiful, unusual prose and now I'm going to read everything else I can find that she has written.
How Long is a Piece of String
by Rob Eastaway and Jeremy Wyndham
"Dating, cooking, travelling by car, gambling and ranking sportsmen all have links with intriguing mathematical problems that are explained in this book. It reveals the secrets behind some of the best con tricks and the hidden workings of the taxi meter, and explains how epidemics start and stop."I borrowed this from the library in anticipation of needing some light reading during my 10 days volunteering. Who am I kidding - I borrowed it from the library because when I'm in the library it is almost impossible for me to leave without borrowing something. And it turns out I have read it before because some of the chapters were very familiar, which slightly diminished my enjoyment of the book because it wasn't all new. But it was still good. I'll try not to borrow it again though.
War and Peace
by Leo Tolstoy
"Tolstoy's epic masterpiece captures with unprecedented immediacy the broad sweep of life during the Napoleonic wars and the brutal invasion of Russia. Balls and soirées, the burning of Moscow, the intrigues of statesmen and generals, scenes of violent battles, the quiet moments of everyday life - all in a work whose extraordinary imaginative power has never been surpassed."As you can imagine, it's taken me a very long time to read this. I took it on my solitary retreat expecting it to fill the time, but the writing is so dense and there are so many characters that a) I had to write down the names with notes to remind me who they were and b) I could only read two or three (short) chapters in a sitting. I'd probably say it's worth it for its instructional nature about European politics in the early 19th century, and about how wars are fought with generals who can have no direct experience of what their armies are doing because they can't see what's going on and communication is via a man on a horse. So Napoleon won all his battles but lost the war. The motivation of men to kill one another is still a mystery to me, however.
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