Forgot to write an entry for this one. Actually I found this book so boring I could not get past the first chapter. If I’m not intrigued by page 3 I usually give up (life is too short) but this one I read until page 20 or 30 since it won the Commonwealth Writers Prize Best Book Award.

At first it was interesting to read about Roman Britain BUT but but I found the description of modern Rome by one of the characters so annoying if the book was mine I would gladly throw it in the fireplace. Sadly I had to return it intact to my friend so I just put it aside.
Things to remember:
1. I got this one from J, the same J that insisted on lending me “the time travellers wife”, another waste of time. Avoid recommendations from J in the future.
2. I should just avoid SCI-FI, obviously it’s not my cuppa.

Mixed feelings about this one. The main character is an idiot, but is portrayed in a way that you can somehow walk his shoes. I mean I’m not middle-aged, I’m not even a man… but I could sometimes sympathize with the disgraced-lecturer. As for his daughter: even though she suffers the main blow I simply couldn’t care less for her, I found her so irritating. Interesting to go through the reviews at Amazon.co.uk, some people read a lot into this book… well I’m not one of them. After reading this one I was so surprised to learn Coetzee is a Nobel laureate writer.. I might try another of his novels in the future.

Unpredictable story, told by teenager Kambili, about growing up, escape and discovery. I could not put this book down.

Describing one of the characters: ”...there was nothing commonplace or trifling about this young man; the least thing he said was so exactly right and so directly to the point that one felt like crying “touché”.”

“What is urgent is not urgent forever but only ephemerally. All work and all love, the search for wealth and fame, the search for truth, life itself, are made up of moments which pass and become nothing. Yet through this shaft of nothings we drive onwards with that miraculous vitality that creates our precarious habitations in the past and the future” so wrote Iris Murdoch in 1954.

Fascinating novella, never tought of Goethe as a “page turner”. But what a disappointing finish.

I was in a foreign country and this was the only book available at the time, so I read it from cover to cover… it took me weeks. There is a lesson for me here: never travel again without options. This seems to be a cult book, well… different strokes for different folks. I’m staying well clear of both writers from now on.

I had to give this one up. I’d rather carry on looking up in blissfull ignorance than to go through this load of waffle.

I usually enjoy stories about immigration and growing up in a different culture but this was not that great. Each chapter starts with some witty remark or interesting phrase, sadly in most cases I found the chapter title more interesting than the chapter itself. It’s about this child from a West Indies background growing up in Manchester in the 60s.