Should you read this book?

  Soooo many brilliant books, TV series and films in 2020. Couldn’t work out why there was so many, then I remembered lockdown. So thanks, world of entertainment. Here’s my very complicated list of what I’d recommend – please let me know what you think of them, or recommend me stuff I’ve missed. Firstly the much maligned (by me) world of fiction writing .  Four books stand out as masterpieces. I would warn you that you need to be into fiction and beautiful writing, for all of them.             Joint First           Joint First      Third              Fourth   I’m finding it hard to write about them – “masterpieces” seems to cover it. Hamnet and Fingersmith are slow unwindings, interior worlds, atmospheres (and lots of plot); Girl Woman Other has a terrible title and impr...

In need of hours of thought provoking entertainment? I reckon I've sorted it for you.  Here they are in order of greatness. Three of them are fiction - IKR!!! Fabulous, entertaining, life enhancing, educating in history, emotion and philosophy type fiction though. So, At joint number one (fiction award) The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber . Powerful, shocking, no-holds barred depiction of Victorian England. Ir's what Dickens should have written. An excellent listen. Here's my original post At joint number one (non-fiction award) Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari A great, energetically written philosophical tour of pre human history, human history and some bets on the future. A great great first half, and a good second half. here's my original post   At number three (fiction) BY THE SAME AUTHOR AS THE WINNER Under the Skin by Michel Faber I listened to this on audible and gradually worked out what was going on This...

Nope However my esteemed friend Val writes "Re The Dry - I SO disagree! It breathes the Australian outback, captures exactly how people speak and react, and the denouement is spot on. Aussies are imprinted with the dread of fire - I’ve seen a tiny version of a grass fire and it terrified me - the power of fire in the dry is overwhelming. I thought it was a terrific book! I completely love her latest The Lost Man too."

Maybe - if you're an angst ridden teen or if you like her music. It's enjoyably written - direct and plain in a good way - and there's a lot about the music industry in it. There's also continuous moaning, little humour - the self deprecation is woeful not funny, and nothing has gone right for her. Wound me up a bit.

Maybe read. I t ried listening and couldn't concentrate. Probably needed to read the book for an hour, get into it, then I'd be able to follow. It looked really interesting and the bits I caught whilst astro planing were cynical, bitter, ironic, satirical etc.

Overall no. Started promisingly - was there a Roman Empire, was there a decline, was there a fall? He problematised all 3 ideas and I thought great. It isn't a book as such btw, it's a lecture series. Anyway it then descended to a description of each emperor and such an emphasis on one person (each time) seemed to ridiculous to me. Trade wars and the emergence of other countries weren't even side shows, they were bare mentions. Got to hard to remember which emperor we were on. Gave up.

Should you read this book? Yes for history fans. It's not a book, it's a series of lectures and I loved them. I rushed off and watched The Last Kingdom, then Vikings because of them. I did Anglo Saxon at Uni in 1984 and I swear I learned more in this lecture series. This was the lecture series I needed BEFORE I did the course.  Here's one thing a liked - a centuries mnemonic: MCGVR (Mcgyver) 6th century - migration 7th century - conversion 8th - golden age 9th - vikings 10th - recovery

Yes -  most of it. It's Sara Pascoe's autobiography in more random order with her opinions on her body in a political way. Some interesting stuff on the evidence for polygamy in early humans, and a lot on the politics of rape.

No. I thought it'd be the legal equivalent of 'this is going to hurt" but it wasn't. More mini essays on the history of magistrates and juries. Needed more case studies with those histories woven in. Got bored, couldn't concentrate, stopped listening.

No.  Well I quite enjoyed it but it was a bit of a slog. I'd say only for those totally enthralled by Viking stuff. Basically the Vikings TV series took lots of good stories and gave them all to Ragnar, when they were spread out over centuries and continents. Fair enough. So Vikings in England, Scotland, Orkney. Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, Nova Scotia, France, italy, Russia and Constantinople. Amazing. What happened to the settlement in Greenland - why did it disappear? Sounds grim. So many wars were between Vikings who were raiding and the Vikings who had settled the same land previously. Vikings raided neighbours in Scandinavia for their stuff - well it all became a bit mixed as to who counts as them and who counts as us. 

Yes an enjoyable listen. Main bewildering amazement: head of year, maths teacher, young family AND racing all over the country doing comedy gigs. How???

Should you read this book? I thought this was great - until about half way through. My friend thought the opposite. So either it's all great or all shit. Stand out moments:  interesting description of carving out a role as deputy prime Minister; brilliant analysis of populis; demolition of Theresa May; Osborn and Cameron not that nice.

Yes. Definitely. I'd heard of Biafra, I thought it was about famine. Turns out that famine was a deliberate war strategy to starve a section of what is now Nigeria into submission. This is the story. I'm aware it pretty much followed rich Biafrans, with some visits to camps of starving people, rather than having its protagonists suffer the full event. Even so, worth knowing, important stuff. Dreadful film btw.

Yes probably. It's a bit of a hotch potch of columns mushed together. But it provoked lots of thoughts on a pretty regular basis which is invaluable.

Yep 100% and straight into my all time good reads. It's a fictional autobiography of a whelk picker turned music hall star, It's pretty explicit, loads of plot, historically interesting...what more could anyone want?

I'm 50/50 on whether you should read this one. It's plotty (hurrah!) and fast moving. Descends a bit, flipping between characters and scenes and grating punchlines . Really good, powerful and thought-provoking ending, which you needed the rest of the novel to really get.

Read it for quirky Irish gloom. The book won the 1996  Guardian  Fiction Prize and the 1996 South Bank Show Annual Award for Literature, is a  New York Times  Notable Book, won the  Irish Times  International Fiction Prize and the Irish Literature Prize in 1997, besides being shortlisted for the  Booker Prize  in 1996. [2]  It has been translated into 20 languages. [3] It's just ok.