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tiggymalvern
I do read some books now and then that aren't sci-fi or fantasy - crazy of me, I know! Usually I pick them up just because I read a fabulous review of them somewhere (my friends usually rec me the sci-fi or fantasy). Sometimes it works out. Other times it doesn't...
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. At a charming retirement community in the Kent countryside, a group of residents get together once a week to puzzle over unsolved cold case murders. Then someone who works at the community is killed, and there's a new murder to investigate, which touches on personal aspects for several of those in the village.
This sounded fun, and it was. I had a bit of a quibble initially with the main villain being slightly cartoonish and obvious in his portrayal, but the convoluted story with all the typical murder red herrings won me over. The retirees are great characters - intelligent, slightly bored people who realise there's not much time left for them to make a difference in the world, and who know that eventually they all end up leaving their nice apartments for the nursing home lurking at the bottom of the road...
There aren't many books out there featuring elderly people, and this one was both delightfully and very English-ly charming, but with that touch of underlying pathos that added some depth. I will be reading the sequel. 4/5
The Idiot by Elif Batuman. In the mid-90s, a daughter of successful Turkish immigrants goes to Harvard. I bought this book based on a couple of reviews that said it was brilliantly funny. And it was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, so there should be something good about it, right?
There is humour in this book the same way there is water on Mars. There are faint hints and traces here and there suggesting something that might be funny, but all you ever end up with are buried, frozen, microscopic crystals. Our student protagonist goes to classes on subjects she ends up hating, or alternatively to classes on subjects she likes that are taught by awful people. She starts an email correspondence with a student she never actually talks to when she meets him in person. They seem to be in a competition to be as cryptic and devastatingly intellectual as possible in these emails while saying absolutely nothing, and based on this inanity, she decides he's the most brilliant mind she's ever met and obviously she's in love with him.
The only reason I ploughed on to the end of this book is because I am stubborn, and I hate leaving things unfinished. The protagonist and her group of 'friends' have absolutely everything going for them - they come from families that are wealthy enough that they can go to Harvard without ever worrying about paying for it, and they can all head off to Europe for the summer without paying for any of that either, and all they do with their opportunities is bitch and moan about how dreadful their lives are.
The best way I can sum up this book is to quote from it directly: "The things kept accumulating - the stars, the atoms, the pigs, and the cereal. It was decreasingly possible to imagine explaining it all to anyone. Whoever it was would want to jump out of a window from boredom."
I suffered through 400 pages of the titular idiot explaining it all, and while I didn't want to hurl myself out of a window, it was definitely tempting to hurl the book from one. If reading about massively privileged, intensely self-involved dickheads is your idea of a good time, you'll probably love it. 0/5
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. At a charming retirement community in the Kent countryside, a group of residents get together once a week to puzzle over unsolved cold case murders. Then someone who works at the community is killed, and there's a new murder to investigate, which touches on personal aspects for several of those in the village.
This sounded fun, and it was. I had a bit of a quibble initially with the main villain being slightly cartoonish and obvious in his portrayal, but the convoluted story with all the typical murder red herrings won me over. The retirees are great characters - intelligent, slightly bored people who realise there's not much time left for them to make a difference in the world, and who know that eventually they all end up leaving their nice apartments for the nursing home lurking at the bottom of the road...
There aren't many books out there featuring elderly people, and this one was both delightfully and very English-ly charming, but with that touch of underlying pathos that added some depth. I will be reading the sequel. 4/5
The Idiot by Elif Batuman. In the mid-90s, a daughter of successful Turkish immigrants goes to Harvard. I bought this book based on a couple of reviews that said it was brilliantly funny. And it was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, so there should be something good about it, right?
There is humour in this book the same way there is water on Mars. There are faint hints and traces here and there suggesting something that might be funny, but all you ever end up with are buried, frozen, microscopic crystals. Our student protagonist goes to classes on subjects she ends up hating, or alternatively to classes on subjects she likes that are taught by awful people. She starts an email correspondence with a student she never actually talks to when she meets him in person. They seem to be in a competition to be as cryptic and devastatingly intellectual as possible in these emails while saying absolutely nothing, and based on this inanity, she decides he's the most brilliant mind she's ever met and obviously she's in love with him.
The only reason I ploughed on to the end of this book is because I am stubborn, and I hate leaving things unfinished. The protagonist and her group of 'friends' have absolutely everything going for them - they come from families that are wealthy enough that they can go to Harvard without ever worrying about paying for it, and they can all head off to Europe for the summer without paying for any of that either, and all they do with their opportunities is bitch and moan about how dreadful their lives are.
The best way I can sum up this book is to quote from it directly: "The things kept accumulating - the stars, the atoms, the pigs, and the cereal. It was decreasingly possible to imagine explaining it all to anyone. Whoever it was would want to jump out of a window from boredom."
I suffered through 400 pages of the titular idiot explaining it all, and while I didn't want to hurl myself out of a window, it was definitely tempting to hurl the book from one. If reading about massively privileged, intensely self-involved dickheads is your idea of a good time, you'll probably love it. 0/5
