Home - Toni Morrison (book with a one word title)

This was another book I took out from the library to help me get through my whiplash injury and fill my days at home.

I guess I was in a hurry that day to get back to my sofa and medicated, pain free bliss as I remember thinking "One word title - that will do". It may also be due to the medications that I don't really recall much about this book and it's only a couple of months later. Incidentally the French doctors love to give you lots of medicine. I was on Valium (2 per day, which I dropped to one) as well as anti-inflammatories and ibuprofen, so it was no surprise that I felt like a zombie and now can not recall all aspects of this story.

Frank is a returning soldier from the Korean War who has difficulty in re-acclimatising to being back in the US and his sister Cee who is in trouble.

I covered the Korean War during history lessons at school but have to admit that, despite learning all the facts and figures, M*A*S*H provides a more visual reference for me. UK forces were not deployed in any large scale in either Korea or Vietnam so we have no sense of the impact that these wars had on army personnel and their return to civilian life.
I found it difficult to relate to Frank but did find it easier to identify with his sister Cee and found that side of the story more memorable. Cee gets offered a job as a domestic servant with a 'respectable' doctor and becomes his subject for eugenics.
Frank gets a message that she needs help and overcomes his demons to travel home and rescue her. Cee also is given the time to heal and make peace with her past.

It was a very short book (it could have also been in the 'read in one day' category) and the last few chapters seemed a bit rushed and the story finished quickly and could have done with more time to finish off the various story-lines. Toni Morrison normally tackles racism in her books and this was only given a small mention probably due to the issues of displacement that were the bigger themes of the novel.

An interesting book that I felt lost its potential and had only just got going when it ended.

How It All Began - Penelope Lively (an author you've never read before)

After a rather eventful trip back from our holiday, I had whiplash and a few days off work and so time to get a good start on the reading challenge.

I found this book in our local library. It has one and a half shelves of English language books, most of which look as if they have been donated as it is a rather random selection. It does contain some bilingual books and rather too many that I have read before.

How It All Began was one I had not read before and Lively is not an author I have read before either so I thought this would fit nicely into that category.
It was an easy book to read with friendly characters and tells the story of the events that seem to domino after a mugging, the classic butterfly effect. I found the telling of that more interesting and realistic than other books that cover the same theme - The Birthday Kiss springs to mind where I found the idea of that book interesting but the plot-line unbelievable. This storyline was more believable about how different and seemingly small connections were impacted by this one event.

That being said, I did not find it a memorable book in any way and although the characters were friendly and inoffensive, they did not stand out in any meaningful way.

Still another category checked off the list and a new author tried out.

The Visitor - Lee Child (A mystery or thriller)

I started reading this book on New Year's Day accompanied by a spectacular hangover.
We were in Bavaria for a week after Christmas and were in the far corner of Germany, spitting distance from Austria and a short drive into Czechoslovakia. It was very cold (for us) with daytime temperatures between -10 and -2°c. we would go out for a daytime tip and visited some lovely (but cold) cities in the area - Linz, Cesky Krumova and Passau and then would scurry back to the hotel, warm up in the sauna and then binge on the all inclusive.
This meant there was plenty of time for reading and I soon got through the books I had brought with me, so New Year's Day and hangover meant no trips out on the snowy roads and a rummage through the books my boyfriend had brought.

I have read a couple of Jack Reacher books before and guess this is one of the early ones as he has a girlfriend, something that is a no no in later books. When reading it I could see more of the formation of the character as a loner and working independently and not wanting to trust anyone.
However after a couple of books you 'get' the formula and it is not as interesting as the first time. I was able to work out the 'who' quite quickly but not the 'why' so this, at least, kept me reading.

One thing I do find interesting about the way Lee Child writes is his descriptions of guns. He will write in detail and describe the guns and their abilities but someone like Baldacci writes about guns as if he was describing a lover, it comes across as almost sensuous. For me this is the difference between an English writer and an American writer and the countries having different gun cultures. It almost feels as if Child is writing about guns because he has to whereas Baldacci writes about them because he wants to. And yes, I've read several of my boyfriend's books.

Not wanting to give to much of the plot away (as it is a who done it) Reacher is reluctantly forced into helping catch a serial killer, whose female victims are found dead in a bath of paint, as threats are made against his girlfriend and he needs to prove that he is not the killer.
It is a book I finished quickly and if you haven't read a Jack Reacher before then give it a go. If you're a Reacher fan you'll love it. It is a blokes book - is there a male version ChickLit? - and I found it a little formulaic for me.

Welcome

Back in December I came upon this pin on Pinterest and thought it might possibly be a fun idea to take up a different type of challenge for the New Year.
Me being me, I mulled it over for a while before deciding to go for it. Me being me, it has also taken until the end of March to decide to write up about each book I read! I have found some books really interesting and others I wish I hadn't wasted time on. Some books were originally in one category and then have been placed in another.
Though I have read several books already, I will try and write about them in the order I read them, so it will take several posts until I catch up with myself - so please bear with me.

The basic premise is to read 52 books in a year one from each of the categories, which sounds tough going but then one of the categories is read a trilogy, so 54 it is then. The good news is that another category is 'a book that can be read in one day'. Not so bad!

I know that some of the categories will be strange for me - scfi, a book with nonhuman characters and a comic strip book but I realize that the idea is to get you reading different things. However am puzzled by 'a book that scares you'. Will need to think on that.

The challenge was set by the website Popsugar and feels American as it asks for a book set in high school, but also find it strange that a book originally written in a foreign language is included as many books I read fall into that category. however, as stated the idea is to get you reading different books than normal. In the spirit of this I am also trying to source as many books as possible locally (which will be interesting) using book fairs, exchanges and charity bookshops, though a few may have to be ordered from the online bookshop run by one breasted female warriors.

After a conference via Facebook another friend of mine has taken up the challenge and we have agreed to no double-ups ie one book fulfilling several different categories.

So let the reading commence...