The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz

Oscar de Leon is one of life's losers. He's the ultimate nerd, living in a world populated by characters out of the sci-fi and fantasy novels he loves. All he wants to do is lose weight and find love. His family are living under a curse that's blighted it for generations, so how can Oscar ever get what he wants.

I liked this book, it speeds along at a nice pace, jumping between Oscar's story as narrated by his best friend Yunior, and the stories of his mother, sister and grandparents, explaining all that's gone before.
Set in both New Jersey and the Dominican Republic the family hails from, it explores what it is to be young and misunderstood, and seemingly doomed.

Stone's Fall - Iain Pears

Industrialist John Stone, Lord Ravenscliff dies after falling out of his window, his death is kept from the papers for several days. After it is finally reported, his wife, Elizabeth, hires a journalist ostensibly to write a biography of her husband, but really to solve a mystery left in his will. What that journalist, Matthew Braddock uncovers, is more shocking and more far-reaching than either of them expected.
Like An Instance of the Fingerpost, his previous novel, this is a story wrapped in another story, itself containing another narrative. What starts as Braddock's account of his investigation in London in 1909, flows backwards through history into Henry Cort's account of his involvement with Stone in Paris 1890 and finally into Stone's own memoirs of Venice in 1867, unravelling until the shocking, unexpected and utterly brilliant (in a dark kind of way) final page.
The ending has a real sting in the tale, so even if you find the first section slightly dull and heavy going as I did, stick with it, Cort's section and then Stone's (which fills in a few gaps in Cort's account, as his does for Braddock's) picks up pace and really throws the reader into a mystery that will stun.

Poetry, better than you remember from school

A lot of people run poetry down. It's the ugly stepsister of fiction. Stories told in verse, seem to make some people nervous. This may be because of learning poetry at school, always being made to read aloud, trying to ignore the giggles, and you didn't even write it. I blame English teachers and the National Curriculum!! Stop picking rubbish poems, there are some great, funny for the right reasons, brilliant, beautiful poetry out there.

Our Poet Laureate is a good place to start, Carol Ann Duffy, first woman to hold the post, her collection, The World's Wife, is one of my favourite and as good a place as any to start with her work.
Other great female poets include Wendy Cope (who is hilarious, try Serious Concerns or Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis), Jenny Joseph (most famous for Warning, which starts "When I am an old woman/ I shall wear purple/With a read hat that doesn't go and doesn't suit me"), Fleur Adcock, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (rescue these ladies from being condemned by students everywhere!) and on it goes. A good series of anthologies to start you of are published by Bloodaxe Books, Modern Women Poets (ed. by Deryn Rees-Jones), Eliza's Babes (ed. Roby Bolam) and anything Virago do.

Then there's the gents. Many a student has come across William Wordsworth (not the bloody daffodils again, I hear you cry) and his contemporaries, Blake, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley and Byron. That's right, the Romantics. I have a soft spot for Coleridge's Kubla Khan, we were told not to write about it for our A Level as it's a complex piece that can't be compared with anything else. It's also incredibly vivid.
Blake's apocalyptic visions (check out the artwork he created to accompany his poems, most good editions should be illustrated), are fascinating, and anyone with a passing interest in surrealism should check them out.
Even Wordsworth isn't beyond redemption. His Lyrical Ballads (written with Coleridge) are interesting too, he was a country lad, and it shows in the Prelude, he's clearly not comfortable with the sprawling city, despite his initial impression (Composed Upon Westminster Bridge).
I like Roald Dahl's funny, slightly bizarre verse, and also the more surreal elements of a good but of nonsense verse (try Lewis Carroll or Edward Lear). I also like Andrew Marvell, Matthew Arnold (the imagery in his Dover Beach is wonderful, and tragic), some of the modern comic poets are good for a giggle (I suggest getting hold of a copy of The Nation's Favourite Comic Poems for a nice selection of funny poets of both genders). I also think Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Songs and a Song of Despair is beautiful, moving and tender. I'm also partial to a spot of Rilke, a light dusting of Larkin, and a dash of T.S Eliot with a smidgen of E.E Cummings to go!

There are some fantastic poets out there, and some great poems. So go, explore the oft neglected poetry section of your local bookshop and pick a new favourite or two to roll around in your head and on your tongue (it's meant to be read aloud you know!!)

A Conspiracy of Violence - Susanna Gregory

Set in Restoration era London, this follows spy Thomas Chaloner as he attempts to unravel a series of mysteries dating back to the English Civil War and the execution of Charles I. Having returned from Holland, Chaloner is looking for employment, Oliver Cromwell's former spymaster suggests he try the Lord Chancellor, who asks him to look for some missing gold. While undertaking this mission, he becomes involved with the Brotherhood, a group of men claiming to be seeking tolerance and understanding in the political and religious tinderbox that is England at this time, or are they all following their own agendas?
A good, well-paced, historical mystery, that cleverly comes together as Chaloner resolves his many investigations, with explosive consequences.

Friends Like These - Danny Wallace

Writer, TV presenter and cult leader Danny Wallace returns with another 'stupid boy project', this time to update his address book by meeting the 12 people he was friends with as a child, that he'd lost contact with. This involves travelling to Australia, Japan, Dundee and Loughborough, looking for his best childhood pals. At times laugh out loud funny, and at one point, quite sad, you too can learn what Man Points are and how to earn them, and turning 30 will lead some men to do. Like his previous books, Yes Man and Join Me, you do wonder exactly why he decides to do these things, and how no one punches him in the face at times.

Red Leaves - Paullina Simons

Detective Spencer Patrick O'Malley meets a girl doing up her black boots one winter in Hanover, New Hampshire, a few weeks later she's found naked and suffocated in the snow. Who was Kristina Kim and why would anyone want her dead? Spencer digs into her past and the lives of her close group of friends, Conni, Jim and the mysterious Albert, as he searches for answers.

I'd read The Girl in Times Square, by the same author, a while ago, and so picked this up, not realising Spencer was in it as well. It's a good read, with echoes of Donna Tartt's The Secret History, and a well-paced detective mystery. I rather enjoyed it's surprising little twists, although the ending was a bit odd.

The Mistress of Spices - Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Tilo is a Spice Mistress, bound to serve the spices and the people who enter her shop looking for help. She knows exactly what they need. Until an American walks in her door and throws her powers off balance, can she find what she needs among the spices?

I quite liked this book, there's a touch of magical realism in there, and that appeals to me. Tilo might be all mysterious and wise, but at heart she's still someone who longs to make a connection with people and fall in love. Set amongst the Indian community of Oakland, CA, Tilo's customers come to her for food that reminds them of their homelands and also for her secret knowledge to ease their lives, there's Geeta's grandfather, angry Jagjit, Ahuja's wife, Kwesi cooking for the woman he loves, and Haroun who's searching for his slice of the American Dream. The one day a man called Raven walks in her door, and she disregards the spices and the voice of the Old Mother warning her not to leave the shop and forsake her calling.
It's a quick, charming read, perfect for now, when the weather's miserable and you're curled up inside wondering where the summer went!

Keeping the Dead - Tess Gerritsen

A forgotten mummy is found in a museum's basement, but x-rays reveal it to be a modern corpse, and now it's a murder case for Detective Jane Rizzoli and ME Maura Isles. Then another preserved corpse is found, could there be a serial killer with an interest in archeology out there?
Gerritsen's novels following the often sensational crimes investigated by her female protagonists, are much akin to other thrillers, unhinged murderers, brave detectives, terrible crimes. But if you, like me, enjoy these as a touch of escapism, then this is for you. Gerritsen writes well, and the characters of Isles and Rizzoli are likable enough.

Carnevale - M.R. Lovric

Set in Venice, this tells the story of Cecilia Cornaro, portrait painter and lover of both the legendary Giacomo Giralamo Casanova and the disreputable George Gordon, Lord Byron. The book moves from the days of the great republic through Napoleon's capture of the city and it's becoming an extension of his empire. Cecilia paints the portraits of the great and good, as well as their wives and mistresses and records her own love affairs in secret portraits of the men she loved.
They're a study in contrast, Casanova who worships women, and who loves Cecilia 'properly', and the narcissistic poet, who demands to be loved but seems unable to return any affection. Both great adventurers, but only one of them seems noble, and it's not the one with a title.
I loved this book, I have never been to Venice, but would love to, even though the age of La Serenissima is passed and the city is no longer the way Lovric describes, conjuring up the great festival of the title and the many noble families who filled its palazzos.

When Will There Be Good News - Kate Atkinson

I've read Kate Atkinson's previous Jackson Brodie novels (Case Histories, One Good Turn) and there's a new one out soon (Started Early, Took My Dog), and her retired policeman turned private eye, is a right curmudgeon, and that's what makes the books work.
In this one, set in Edinburgh, Jackson is in the wrong place at the wrong time (as he sees it), rescued from a train crash by a local girl, Reggie, whose employer, a GP with a tragic history, has gone missing, he's soon manipulated into helping find Dr Hunter and her baby.
Atkinson also tells Reggie's story, and that of DCI Louise Monroe, who has a personal connection with Brodie.

It's a good detective/mystery novel. Harking back to the various characters' pasts as well as their present situations, well written and paced.

Happy Birthday Penguin!

Penguin Books is celebrating it's 75th Birthday at the moment. That's 75 years since Allan Lane was coming home from visiting Agatha Christie and was disappointed by the lack of paperbacks at the train station and so decided to publish handy books, small, slim and the same price as a pack of cigarettes. The rest is publishing history.
Looking at my shelves, there's plenty of little penguins on the spines of my books, and some old Puffins too!!
Take a look at your shelves, which Penguins have you read?