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  I liked everything about this book and I found myself picking it up at every opportunity as I almost missed it's company when I wasn't reading it.  It even took over the times when I usually scan through reels on Instagram, so it must be good. Thomas Hart is a journalist writing a weekly column for a local Essex newspaper, and he is one of those people who seem to have arrived from another era with his well pressed suits and charming manners.  He is the newspaper's longest running contributor and his editor wants him to come up with something interesting to write about as the circulation numbers are down.  The editor suggests he write something about the moon; 'Five hundred words, please, and six if the night is clear.' The moon turns out to be a revelation to Thomas, and it's almost as though he has never seen it before.  Once he starts observing it properly, he finds himself falling in love, and it is not long before he reads up on all things astronomical, i...

  Aaah!  How annoying!  I got to the end of the book before I found out that this is book three of a trilogy and it's a Lars Mytting!! I hate reading a series of books out of sequence, and now I'm not even sure if I will want to read the other two books as now I know how it all ends up.  Fortunately, the book works very well as a stand alone and I enjoyed it a lot, but why can't publishers state in big writing on the front 'Book One of trilogy' etc so readers don't get caught out. Oh well, too late now.  Lars Mytting is worth reading, even out of sequence, and this a translation from Norwegian, although that never detracts from the pace of the text, in fact the translation by Deborah Dawkin is brilliantly done.  The book begins in 1613 when a farmer comes across a dying ewe in the deep snow of the mountains, and she has used the last of her strength to protect her young lamb form the biting cold and snow piled up all around them.  Eirik Hekne carries b...

Cities of the Plain is the final volume of the Border Trilogy set in the parts of America either side of the Mexican border.  It's one of those books that you could read in isolation, but without the backstories you would be missing out on a lot of depth.  It really is worth reading all three and immersing yourself in cowboy culture. After I read the second volume I was sorry to find that young John Grady from the first book wasn't in it, and I had to get to know Billy Parham instead.  This was no bad thing and now I have reached the third book I find I can read about both of them working on the same ranch.  Time has moved on to the end of World War Two when John Grady is nineteen and Billy around thirty.  Neither served in the war as John Grady was too young and Billy was turned down at three different recruiting stations because of a heart murmur.  The ranch they are working on belongs to the very elderly Mr Johnson, who Billy has known all his life, and ...

In my last blog post I reviewed Book One of the Border Trilogy by Cormac McCarthy, and I said that his writing stayed in my mind long after reading the books.  Well, now I'm on Book Two, I'm starting to think that these books will not only stay in my mind, but will possibly alter it.  I feel that McCarthy knows things about humanity that can only be conveyed through story telling.  If fiction writing was described as churches, then these books would be cathedrals. Time has to be set aside to read these books because McCarthy will not be rushed.  There are long, long, monologues where a character is allowed to express their innermost thoughts on such heavy topics as the nature of God, life and the possibility of justice in the world.  There are also many lines in Spanish, and once again, McCarthy is not interrupting the flow of his thoughts to translate all that for you.  You either understand it or you don't, but it's surprising how quickly I was starting t...

  I have read all sorts of books over the years, and very few of them have stuck in my memory, but the two that I had read by Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men and The Road), remain in my head.  There is something about his story telling that is so compelling, that it's very hard to put the book down, even when the text makes for uncomfortable reading. McCarthy's books are earthy and raw and All the Pretty Horses is no exception.  It's the first book of a trilogy, and just a few days after starting it I was heading back to the library to pick up volumes 2 and 3 to make sure I could read them all back to back. The story is set in the early 1930s and sixteen year old John Grady and his friend Rawlings secretly leave their comfortable homes in Texas and set off across the open country heading for Mexico.  They are both experienced with horses and have a level of maturity that helps them manage the challenges of the terrain, but everything changes when a young lad ...

The backdrop to the story line in Don't Make Me Laugh is the stand-up comedy circuit, but do n't go into this expecting a laugh a minute just because the characters include a (fictionally) well known comedian.  There is a serious message in here, and anyone who doesn't understand that an abusive relationship can be emotional as well as physical, really ought to read it. We have all seen the big story-lines on the news that involve internationally recognised personalities who have used their industry clout to seduce vulnerable women, but this kind of abuse can happen in any level of society and women need to know what to watch out for. In the book, radio producer Ali Lauder is just over thirty and has got herself in a bad relationship with a married man.  When that affair is found out and comes to an end, Ali is emotionally vulnerable and responds to flattery from one of the big-name comedians who is in middle age but seems comfortable and unthreatening.  Once he has her c...

  I'm not sure how someone can write a book that is both sensitive and brutal at the same time, but somehow Alana S. Portero has managed it.  It's a debut novel so she has dived in at the deep end by telling the story of a young boy convinced that he is really a girl. The book has been translated from Spanish and has become an international best seller since its first publication in 2023.  I said it was both sensitive and brutal and that is because the young person is dealt with gently, but the family home is in a run down area of Madrid in the 1980s and some people in the neighbourhood are cruel and judgemental.  The apartment blocks are filled with people from all walks of life, and violence within families is commonplace, so no-one particularly takes any notice of cries in the night - unless the crying turns to screaming.  It is mind boggling to imagine how much pain and suffering some people have to endure before anyone does anything to help them. The singer...