Breathing Just a Little

This month has been dominated by mystery fiction (cosies and puzzles) for me, with not one, not two, but THREE of the contemporary series / writers that I follow having new books out. These were Richard Osman's latest Thursday Murder Club novel, The Impossible Fortune; Janice Hallett (main fame from The Appeal, which I read early in 2024 and have gobbled up everything she's published since) with her new book, The Killer Question; and Benjamin Stevenson, of the Everyone... books, with his latest, Everyone in This Bank is a Thief. While I absolutely enjoyed all three, and have not diminished my interest in continuing the series as they unfold, I thought at least two of these are not the writer's best work, and won't stand as the best in their series or anything close. Here are a few more notes on each! This was another extremely fun, funny, moderately clever, and at times very affecting mystery in the Thursday Murder Club series. I loved everything about it, basically - h...

 The Booker Prize shortlist was announced about 2 weeks go. The six books that made the cut were: Susan Choi,  Flashlight Kiran Desai,  The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny Katie Kitamura,  Audition Ben Markovits,  The Rest of Our Lives Andrew Miller,  The Land in Winter David Szalay,  Flesh I had already read Audition and The Land in Winter in my longlist tilt, and I read and reviewed The Rest of Our Lives last week. Tonight I finished the fourth book from the shortlist - David Szalay's Flesh. With four read, my front-runner for the prize is The Land in Winter, but I am aware I still have the bookie fave and heaviest hitter., The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, still to go! Flesh is - ostensibly at least - the life story of István, aged 15 when the book opens and living with his mother in a quiet Hungarian apartment complex. The book charts the twists and turns of his life and the many unexpected detours it takes, until we finally leave...

The Booker Prize shortlist was announced about 2 weeks go. The six books that made the cut were: Susan Choi, Flashlight Kiran Desai,  The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny Katie Kitamura,  Audition Ben Markovits,  The Rest of Our Lives Andrew Miller,  The Land in Winter David Szalay,  Flesh Of these, I had only read two as part of my tilt at the longlist - Audition, which I reviewed here , and The Land in Winter, which I reviewed here . I really liked The Land in Winter, predicted it would shortlist, and thus was neither surprised nor unhappy that it has; while I had greater reservations about Audition, I recognised its strengths and said at the time that it would likely shortlist, so that's not a shocker either. I'm a little disappointed that my two longlist faves, Love Forms and Seascraper, didn't make the cut, but with hindsight, not really surprised; and it's a reasonable trade-off, given that some of the genuinely weak books on the longlist also got l...

I've recently returned from a 5-day work and fun trip interstate, during which I read one book start to finish (the short story collection) and finished off the novel I had been ambling slowly through. Very different books! My thoughts are below. (My next reading mission is to circle back to the Booker shortlist and clean up the four books on it that I haven't yet read, so that will probably be the next book post). I love short story collections, and I do tend to favour single-author collections as I think it gives you more of an opportunity to read yourself into the author's oeuvre, but this book was a real departure for me in terms of genre. I am not usually a horror reader, although I do read SFF horror crossovers from time to time; reading urban horror fiction is not my usual jam. That said, I really enjoyed this collection, and read it very quickly. As with all short story volumes, there were stand-outs and weaker stories, but overall, the tonal effect was consistent (...

I thought I'd have a bit of a stab at a found poem sestina, which is a device I have used before. I create the first stanza from a line from one of today's news articles (I try to look across a variety of outlets), then build the poem from that base. The sestina is a weird form, anchored by the final words of each line of the opening stanza. The pattern is: 1. ABCDEF 2. FAEBDC 3. CFDABE 4. ECBFAD 5. DEACFB 6. BDFECA 7. (envoi) ECA or ACE In this pattern, A is the final word of line 1, B is the final word of line 2, and so on. Source articles: 1. Quote from President Trump in The Guardian live feed 2. Artificial intelligence to dominate Australia's future economy, but who will reap the benefits? by David Taylor (ABC Australia News) 3. Brett Sutton quoted in "'We never want to do that again': Brett Sutton on the lessons that must be learned from the pandemic by Neil Mitchell, Nine News 4. France transfixed by murder trial without a body by Hugh Schofield, BBC New...

This is an outstanding reflection on the complex and often surprising things that happen when humans completely destroy a landscape and then abandon it, for reasons as diverse as "used up all the resources", "irradiated it ooops", "poisoned it ooops again", "political structures collapsed so we didn't need it anymore", "economic forces shifted away", and "failed to account for natural disasters in a compellingly obtuse human way". Flyn, herself a resident of a remote Scottish area, takes us on a journey through places as diverse as the blaes (huge spoil tips) of West Lothian, the "Green Line" DMZ in Cyprus, the vast abandoned collective farms of the former Soviet Union, and of course the Chernobyl exclusion zone (what book about humans brutalising the environment would be complete with it?) We visit the Place a Gaz in France (which is polluted by war detritus heavy metals), the contaminated mouth of the Passaic R...

This will be my last longlist post - I'm bailing out at 8, with 2 partially read (Endling and Flashlight) and 3 fully unread, being The Rest of Our Lives, Flesh, and The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny (the last of which won't even be out until after the shortlist drop). Overall, I haven't been super delighted by this longlist, which is why I have decided to punt at 8. When the shortlist is announced, I'll circle back to pick up any that make the cut which I haven't read  (I'm certainly expecting that the Desai book, which comes out two days after the shortlist drop, will make an appearance, given the usual quality of her work). Of the 8 books I've read, if I personally was compiling the shortlist, the two definites would be Seascraper and  Love Forms. I'd also add The Land in Winter and Audition as strong possibles if the balance of the list doesn't cut the mustard. That's me, but I suspect the judges could also go for The South and / or One Boat,...