Mini-rant on book reviews

Why, oh why do folk on Goodreads feel obliged to summarise the plot of every book when they review it?  Waste of time when the blurb is already available (and presumably includes all the author wanted to reveal in advance) and too often way too much information for the reader who's wondering whether or not to read it.

Losing Faith - and accurately justifying it.

This is one of the eight books I picked up in New York, this from the wonderfully-named 'Mysterious Bookshop'.

A typical example of the title (spine only visible when I selected it) i.e. font plus colour initially attracting my attention, and then the blurb, which began "We are burying her today."

Speed-reading, I omitted the next paragraph and read the first line of the third: "Faith had been dark, disturbing, a Goth" which presumably (because I remember no conscious thought) removed all expectation that it would be at all religious.

Third paragraph of the opening page describes a breakfast which "sizzles and giggles to itself"; egg yolk described as "a malevolent yellow eye watching me from the plate."
And I am hooked.

And continue to be so throughout the book.  My Goodreads review was as follows:  "I did enjoy this. Disconnected. Fractured. Slow to start, hard to see for much of the time where it is heading. Not at all consecutive and the main character un-named and of dubious character, but a thoroughly engaging read. And one I'll read again."

And two novels more by Daniel Blythe are on their way from Amazon (despite the fact that I subsequently discovered he also writes Dr. Who books!!!)
He also kindly sent me the image for the cover since it does not appear on Goodreads

Top ten books of 2012

Never until this year have I kept track of what I'm reading - thank Goodreads for that - and I'm not a Top Ten sort of person - but yesterday my younger son sent me his Top Ten and it was easy enough to select, from the 127 read so far, the twenty I'd awarded five stars.   Duplicates of all but one author were eliminated, as were books read for the second time (Angla Carter's 'Love', Iain Banks 'Espedair Street', Ian Rankin).
All were memorable except for Sarah Moss's 'Waking' which, from my review, I was impressed with at the time but cannot now recall -   obviously I need to re-read that one.
What is left is in no particular order, but is surprising insofar as there are not that many crime fiction there - most of them fell into the four star category, which totalled forty-seven.

Denise Mina                Garnethill

Louise Welsh              The Bullet Trick

Angela Carter              Heroes and villains

Jose Carlos Somoza    The Art of murder

Michael Robotham      Shatter

Sarah Hall                   How to paint a dead man

Cormac McCarthy      No country for old men

Stuart MacBride         Birthdays for the dead

Cormac McCarthy      Blood Meridian

Douglas Coupland      Eleanor Rigby

Ian Rankin                  The St. Leonard’s years

 Emma Donoghue       The room

Louise Welsh              Tamburlaine must die

Angela Carter              Love

Ian Ayris                     Abide with me

Iain Banks                   Espedair Street

Louise Welsh              The Cutting room

Susie Nott=Bower      The Making of her

Sarah Hall                   Haweswater

            Sarah Moss                 Night Waking

Sarah Hall - Goodreads review

Haweswater by Sarah Hall

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Strictly speaking I would have awarded half a star less, but for its strength and ability to ensnare me it deserved the extra.
I'd come to this after several well-writ, fast-paced, dialogue-heavy detective novels; the slow and rich descriptions took some adjusting to but the strength of the characters and of the developing love affair was irresistible, the inevitability of the end compelling, the pain real. Superb.

I picked up, from a charity shop in Sedbergh, Hall's 'How to paint a dead man' (How could I not!) and was enthralled;  this is the third one of hers I have read, all very different, but equally vividly, addictively-written.


View all my reviews

Goodreads

Always a bit slow to pick up on technology, I finally found how to put my Goodreads list on my blog, selecting (after a couple of false starts) the option of posting the twenty-seven or so most recently-read books.

Still mostly crime novels, and generally a preponderance of Scottish  crime, which I began reading over a year ago in preparation for 'Not wanted on voyage', my NaNoWriMo2011 novel.   I'd not had anything against crime novels, but felt that there was plenty more other stuff I'd choose to read first.   Now, I own at least a bookcase full and have my daughter, youngest son and friends to thank for the loan of many more.

Obviously the original idea was to learn about crime writing.   Invariably I got hooked on the story and forgot to be watching how it was done.   Eventually I learnt to re-read those that I thought might usefully point me in the right direction, and at the same time I realised that I preferred those books which became a series, in which there was the development of a small cast of central characters.
Some, such as Stuart McBride - an early loan - I found too far from my natural style, but I am now wanting to re-read, others I found too awful for words and they were very quickly sent to charity shops, many were so good that I almost gave up there and then, and latterly, as can be seen, I have concentrated on those I was due to see at the Orcrime festival.

I've now got back into the habit of using the library too since, much as I prefer to own books, there is a space constraint:  already this year I have read ninety plus books ...

When 'Not wanted on voyage' is fnally done I shall return to the follow up, working title 'Susannah Elphinstone' (and ~40K words so far), but that's intended to be more of a thriller ...