Bitter Chocolate - Lesley Lokko

I read Lokko's Sundowners a few years ago and quite liked it, so I hoped this would be as enjoyable. It's not a cerebral read (and sometimes that's just what's needed), but a light-ish novel, bit chunky, about the lives and loves of three girls, Laure, Ameline and Melanie. Set in Haiti, Chicago, L.A and London, it follows them as they grow up, lose their innocence and find their places in the world. At times, it seems to focus more on Laure than any of the other characters, and seems to struggle to keep three narrative threads going, especially when it's unclear how they're going to intersect in any way. Laure and Ameline grow up together in the heat of Petionville, Haiti, Laure is the granddaughter of a formerly wealthy family, and Ameline a servant, but they're closer than sisters, until one day they're divided and Laure moves to Chicago to live with her mother. It's difficult at first to see how they will meet up again and what circumstances their lives will be in. It's even harder to see how Melanie ties into any of this, and indeed she doesn't until the last third of the book, making her storyline slightly discordant with the rest.
Overall it was a fairly un-taxing read, perfect for the summer's heat, when you just want something gentle to read. People who enjoy slightly more intelligent "chick lit" (oh how I loathe that term) will probably enjoy this.

Some to start you off...

A while ago I wrote a post about how important books are, especially when you're a kid. That's when it starts, that's when the seeds of a love affair with words and stories are planted. I mentioned the Guardian's booklist, and that I could easily think of a whole list of books they'd missed. Well here's that list, with my commentary. Most of these books are ones I can remember reading when I was younger, some I seemed to have missed, and caught up on as an adult. How many have you read?

• Black Beauty - Anna Sewell. This was from my horsey period, a lot of little girls go through it. BB and I survived it, I'd still recommend this, it's a beautiful book, and unusually is told from the horse's point of view.
• Peter Pan - J.M Barrie. I have been enchanted by this book for years, studying it at uni only strengthened my affections for it. It's a deceptively sweet tale, re-reading it as an adult revealed the darker side to Barrie's Neverland and the boy who wouldn't grow up.
• The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery. A classic. Short, sweet and lovely. It has some important things to say, and everyone should read it.
• Carrie' War - Nina Bawden. I know some people don't like this book, I didn't at first. But then I realised how interesting it is. An odd omission from the Guardian's list, along with Tom's Midnight Garden, it's a look at what being a child far from home is like, and there's magic in it too!
• Winnie-The-Pooh - A.A Milne. How they missed this I'll never know. Everybody knows the endearing tales of Pooh and his friends, Christopher Robin, Piglet, Tigger, Eeyore, Kanga, Rabbit, and Roo in the Hundred Acre Wood.
• Mary Poppins- P.L Travers. Much better than the film with Julie Andrews and Dick van Dyke, much more going on too. There's a slightly dark core to Travers book, it's more sophisticated and enjoyable than Disney's pared down musical leads you to believe (but I have fond memories of the film too).
• Boy - Roald Dahl. I love Dahl, I love his weird stories, his courageous children and his adult short stories are dark and twisted too. Boy is the story of Dahl's own childhood, and it's a great way to see where he got some of the ideas for his children's books.
• Nation- Terry Pratchett. Sir Terry is amazing, this is his most recent children's book, I recommend it to everyone.
• Junk - Melvin Burgess. A contentious book. More for teenagers than children, it's been complained about, banned from school libraries, and as with any book treated like that, I wonder how many of it's critics have actually read it. Yes it's about heroin addiction, but it doesn't make it sound remotely appealing. Burgess doesn't shy away from serious subjects, and I agree that his books should be top of any young reader's list.
• Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe. I read this a long time ago, I think I was 7 or 8. It's stayed with me.
• The Water Babies - Charles Kingsley. This is my mum's favourite ever book. I have a gorgeous illustrated edition that never leaves the house. Full of weird and wonderful characters with names like Mrs Do-As-You-Would-Be-Done-By, it's an enchanting fairy tale of life underwater for a chimney sweep.
• The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman. Another recent book, from another writer I adore reading. I highly recommend it.
• A Gathering Light - Jennifer Donnelly. Based on true events, another book for slightly older readers.
• Children of the New Forest - Captain Marryat. As far as I'm concerned, the best book written about the English Civil War, for children, ever.
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll. It's a bit everywhere now I suppose, but the book's much richer and weirder than most.
• Tales of Redwall - Brian Jacques. I don't know if anyone else has ever read these, but I think they're fantastic. Chronicling life in an abbey populated by mice, hedgehogs, moles, badgers, and other woodland folk, Jacques' books have a little bit of everything going on. Hunt them out!
• A good selection of myths and legends. These should be on every bookcase. From the Greeks, to the Egyptians, to the Norse gods, the Legend of King Arthur and beyond. These stories form the backbone of much of the world's literature, they provide depth and understanding of human nature down the ages.
• A good collection of fairy tales. As with myths and legends, good folktales are the basis for almost all stories that came after. The Grimm's are quite gory, and Perrault cleaned them up. Get a good anthology or just pick up a couple of collections.
• The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame. Another true classic, sadly only really known nowadays it feels, for the rambunctious Toad. But there's a lot more there.
• Howl's Moving Castle - Diane Wynne Jones. Turned into a wonderful film by Japan's Studio Ghibli, Howl is a wizard who lives in a magical house, and Sophie is the girl who ends up there, trapped under a horrid curse. Wynne Jones' books are full of magic and mischief.
• Pippi Longstocking - Astrid Lundgren. I have to say, this isn't one I read as a child. It's an odd little story, but quite fun.
• Alex Cold Trilogy - Isabel Allende. Magical realism for young people, these could be called. Alex and his journalist grandmother embark on three amazing adventures to parts of the world rarely troubled by outsiders, great for anyone who wants to explore their adventurous side from the comfort of their own home.

So, I know it's a long list, and it's probably not a complete list. Give me a while, I'll raid the shelves and have more to add. What were your favourite books as a child? How many have you re-read since then?

The Agnes de Souarcy Chronicles - Andrea H. Japp

The Season of the Beast
The Breath of the Rose
The Divine Blood

Originally written in French, these books tell the story of Agnes de Souarcy and her family, and the conspiracies swirling between medieval France and papal Rome. There's a knight, a lord, a convent full of nuns, the Inquisition, a boy who might not be a boy, ancient manuscripts, and murder.
The first two books were the strongest, the final third devolved into quasi-Da Vinci Code territory (which was rather disappointing), and got a bit tangled up in it's conspiracies. I liked the characters of Clement and Sister Anneline, resourceful and clever, and also the clerk Agnan, who was rather sweet. These are well written historical romps, the appendices at the back proving that there's some rather thorough research gone into writing the trilogy. I enjoyed reading these, although the ending was a little weak.

The Death of Achilles - Boris Akunin

This is one in a series of Russian crime mystery novels featuring Erast Fandorin, described in the blurb as "a 19th Century James Bond", I think he's more of a Russian Sherlock Holmes.
I haven't read any of the others, and picked this up randomly in a charity shop. It's quite good. The weird language quirks probably come from it being a translation (I don't read Russian), common to a lot of translated literature.
The 'Achilles' of the title, is a General in the army, who is seen as a hero for everyone to look up to. He dies in mysterious circumstances and it's up to Fandorin and his Japanese sidekick Masa, to work out what is going on, what's in the briefcase, how is the singer (and concubine) Wanda involved and how far does the intrigue stretch?
Fandorin gets through several disguises, a few murders and discovers a conspiracy that might just end with the Emperor! It's quite a fun read, well paced and at times a little silly (Masa seems to exist purely to provide comic relief).

In The Kitchen - Monica Ali

This is Ali's third novel (Brick Lane & Alejanto Blue), set in a hotel kitchen, it tells the story of Gabe, the head chef, as his life begins to unravel. This is prompted by the death of a kitchen porter who appears to have been living in the hotel's basement and Gabe's investigation into how he came to be there and how the mysterious Lena is involved, and just what the restaurant manager is up to. Ali's novel peels back the layers of life in a hotel, the immigrants and the management, everyone from the lowliest pot washer to the general manager himself is studied by Gabe as he attempts to see beyond the veneer of respectability and also to work out his own family relationships.
This is different from Ali's famous first novel and again from her last, which I always think is good, novelists get typecast, just like actors, and Ali is veering away from that, although immigrants have featured in both this and Brick Lane, she doesn't get as indepth as previously. It's well written and intelligent, part crime novel, part introspective study of the protagonist.

Life of Pi - Yann Martel

This is the story of Piscine Patel, called Pi, who finds himself adrift in the Pacific Ocean on a small lifeboat with a 45lb Bengal Tiger called Richard Parker for company. It's the story of their journey, survival and exactly how to stop a tiger eating you after it's eaten the hyena, zebra and orangutan who were previously also stranded on the boat.
Martel's book falls into the category of magical realism, or books that could be real stories if it weren't for the fantastical elements, and bits of this story are certainly fantastical, I won't ruin it for anyone who has yet to read it, but it's quite outlandish at times. It's an easy read, made up of short chapters, recounted mostly in first person as the adult Pi tells his tale to an unknown writer looking for a good story. The construct of Pi's story being reported works quite well, with the addition of a report from the shipping company's representative who visits Pi in an attempt to find out why the ship he and his family were on sank and how he became the sole survivor (except the tiger). I liked this one, it's quite slight, so it makes a good holiday read.

Deliver Us From Evil - Tom Holland

This starts off as a Restoration era murder mystery but becomes something a bit ludicrous and is clearly meant to be dark and scary. It features a few real-life people (which I can't stand) including the dissolute Earl of Rochester. Spanning from the Salisbury plains, to Bohemia and the New World, it follows Robert Foxe as he attempts to find out what happened to his father and what led to his mother's being burnt at the stake, as he learns about the evils haunting the world, he becomes corrupted and loses his core values, making him quite hard to like.
If you like historical fantasy novels, this might be for you, but to be honest, this wasn't for me.