Book Review Year 5 No 8
Sep. 28th, 2019 01:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smallhobbitI've read a number of books in the last couple of months, of varying depths.
Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett
The third in the Industrial Revolution Discworld series. A work colleague passed this onto me. It was okay, but I didn't enjoy it as much as the others in the series. Maybe because it's not set in Ankh-Morpokh so there's much more world building, rather than colouring of the world which has already been built. There's very little interplay with established characters, which for me is one of the joys of the Discworld books.
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
This was a book I'd been meaning to read for some time and finally got around to it. It's set during the Italian campaigns in WWI, and based on Hemingway's own experiences. I had high hopes of it, but was not impressed. The central character Frederic Henry is incredibly self-centred, very little about the war is mentioned, and I finished it simply because I was determined to do so and it had to go back to the library.
Aunt Dimity, Vampire Hunter by Nancy Atherton
Continuing my summer of easy reads, this was also from the library. I enjoyed it and thought the denouement was well done and quite thoughtful. My only bugbear is that Lori Shepherd's five year old twins are only in school part-time, as are all their friends. In a country where children start school as rising fives (the academic year in which they have their fifth birthday), why is no-one in the typical Cotwold village querying this?
The Golden Age of Murder by Martin Edwards
A history of the foundation of the Detection Club in 1930, by the authors who were known as the writers of the Golden Age: Anthony Berkeley and Dorothy L Sayers, together with Agatha Christie.stonepicnicking_okapi mentioned it to me, saying she'd skipped the bits about authors she didn't recognise. I found it rather tedious and overlong, and far too fawning about the founders. I'd have liked to learn a bit more about some of the other authors, who I'd come across elsewhere, but they seemed to have managed to keep their private lives rather more to themselves. I battled through it and returned it to the library.
Colour Scheme by Ngaio Marsh
Inevitably, having reserved a number of books they all arrived at once. I enjoyed this book, featuring Roderick Alleyn, and thought the solution clever. However, it was based on a completely erroneous premise which rather spoiled it.
Motives for Murder by various authors
I sometimes read anthologies of short stories by the Golden Age authors, and feel that a number of them could be improved on. So I was interested to find in the library a recent anthology of similar stories published in 2016. Like the earlier anthologies, there were some good stories, and some which I wasn't convinced by. I would certainly say the overall standard hasn't changed.
The Lie by Helen Dunbar
Recommended by Byslantedlight and set just after WWI, it's the story of a young man who returns from the war clearly suffering from shell shock. He tries to rebuild his life just outside the village he had lived in before he'd gone to war, but one event (key to the plot) has a significant result. Daniel's descriptions of both the actions in the war and how he tries to cope afterwards are beautifully written. Inevitably sad, it's a book I would recommend.
Death at the Bar by Ngaio Marsh
This was the book I managed to walk out of the library with, through the detectors and take home, only to realise the system hadn't checked it out. (I took it and The Lie out at the same time.) Apparently books in the community libraries don't have the relevant magnetic strip. I enjoyed it anyway.
I've now completed my Goodreads Challenge for 2019: 42 books in total.
Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett
The third in the Industrial Revolution Discworld series. A work colleague passed this onto me. It was okay, but I didn't enjoy it as much as the others in the series. Maybe because it's not set in Ankh-Morpokh so there's much more world building, rather than colouring of the world which has already been built. There's very little interplay with established characters, which for me is one of the joys of the Discworld books.
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
This was a book I'd been meaning to read for some time and finally got around to it. It's set during the Italian campaigns in WWI, and based on Hemingway's own experiences. I had high hopes of it, but was not impressed. The central character Frederic Henry is incredibly self-centred, very little about the war is mentioned, and I finished it simply because I was determined to do so and it had to go back to the library.
Aunt Dimity, Vampire Hunter by Nancy Atherton
Continuing my summer of easy reads, this was also from the library. I enjoyed it and thought the denouement was well done and quite thoughtful. My only bugbear is that Lori Shepherd's five year old twins are only in school part-time, as are all their friends. In a country where children start school as rising fives (the academic year in which they have their fifth birthday), why is no-one in the typical Cotwold village querying this?
The Golden Age of Murder by Martin Edwards
A history of the foundation of the Detection Club in 1930, by the authors who were known as the writers of the Golden Age: Anthony Berkeley and Dorothy L Sayers, together with Agatha Christie.
stonepicnicking_okapi mentioned it to me, saying she'd skipped the bits about authors she didn't recognise. I found it rather tedious and overlong, and far too fawning about the founders. I'd have liked to learn a bit more about some of the other authors, who I'd come across elsewhere, but they seemed to have managed to keep their private lives rather more to themselves. I battled through it and returned it to the library.Colour Scheme by Ngaio Marsh
Inevitably, having reserved a number of books they all arrived at once. I enjoyed this book, featuring Roderick Alleyn, and thought the solution clever. However, it was based on a completely erroneous premise which rather spoiled it.
Motives for Murder by various authors
I sometimes read anthologies of short stories by the Golden Age authors, and feel that a number of them could be improved on. So I was interested to find in the library a recent anthology of similar stories published in 2016. Like the earlier anthologies, there were some good stories, and some which I wasn't convinced by. I would certainly say the overall standard hasn't changed.
The Lie by Helen Dunbar
Recommended by Byslantedlight and set just after WWI, it's the story of a young man who returns from the war clearly suffering from shell shock. He tries to rebuild his life just outside the village he had lived in before he'd gone to war, but one event (key to the plot) has a significant result. Daniel's descriptions of both the actions in the war and how he tries to cope afterwards are beautifully written. Inevitably sad, it's a book I would recommend.
Death at the Bar by Ngaio Marsh
This was the book I managed to walk out of the library with, through the detectors and take home, only to realise the system hadn't checked it out. (I took it and The Lie out at the same time.) Apparently books in the community libraries don't have the relevant magnetic strip. I enjoyed it anyway.
I've now completed my Goodreads Challenge for 2019: 42 books in total.
