Or, “Stuff what I read last month”. Once a month is enough for this, I reckon. Writing up my thoughts on a scheduled day once a week would be too risky (I may not have finished a book that week!), and writing up my meagre thoughts as soon as I’ve finished something would mean lots of little posts dotted around. We’ll see how it goes. Anyway, on to my thoughts of the books I have read this month.
The Minotaur Takes A Cigarette Break
by Steven Sherrill
After gushing on about how much I loved the juxtaposition of the normal and the fantastic in Jasmyn, James and Dave from the forum recommended I give this a read. I was not disappointed – the juxtaposition was delightful. At first I wondered how a Minotaur could end up as such a shadow of it’s former self, but further reading explained how his long life had ground him down. I felt so sorry for “M”, as he was called. His mind was sharp but his unwieldy bull vocal chords and awkward bull lips often betrayed his thoughts, and this only made him more misunderstood. In the end it was lovely to see his neighbours come together and protect him from persecution via misunderstanding – a perfect, unspectacular ending to a fantastic book about a Minotaur’s normal life.
Blacklands
by Belinda Bauer
Now, I’ve never seen the TV Book Club on Channel 4 (or More4, or whatever channel it’s on), but according to the little sticker on the front of this book, they quite liked it – and I can see why. All the characters were very well imagined, they felt very real, if a little extreme. The basic premise is quite original: A boy writes to a paedophile in jail for information on where his uncle’s body is. The boy suspects the man killed his mother’s brother over a decade ago when his uncle was a child, before the boy was even born. This leads to all kinds of emotions being explored, such as how the boy relates to his dead uncle having never known him, and how he wants to find the body so his Grandmother can finally stop holding out for his return. Despite there being long periods of time between correspondence, the pace zips along and I found it hard to put down – it had that “just one more chapter” quality.
The Lovely Bones
by Alice Sebold
Incredible read, this one. Very eye-opening and thought provoking. It’s quite similar in some respects to Blacklands, in that it’s all about a family in which one of their own dies and goes on to show they deal with the death. But, in actuality, it’s much more imaginative thanks to the narrator being the girl who died. It was lovely how she watched her family and friends grow up from her very colourful and vibrantly described personal Heaven, lamenting that growing up was something she would never be able to do. It was heart rending in places as relationships soured, loved ones made horrific mistakes, and her killer evaded capture by being horribly polite. I had actually read this one before, a good few years ago when it first came out (probably before I read all the Harry Potter books, thinking about it), but with the recent cinematic adaptation I thought I’d give it another go – it was still as joyous and evocative as the first reading.
I also read The Hobbit, but my thoughts on that are back in the Random Fury Book Week.
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