Jen's Book Blog

End of the Reading Challenge!

So – today I read the last of my 50 books for the year. I have really enjoyed the challenge and it has definitely got me into the reading mood! The surprise of having a prompt to read to, and having my husband pick out the next books I will read has really helped to add a sense of mystery and enjoyment to my reading time.

I thought I would blog my five best and worst books of the year, and then some of my favourites by genre!

Five best books of the year:

Mythos – This is a book I have listened and re-listened to so many times! I love Stephen Fry and can’t wait for his new book on Troy to be released in October. Definitely the best book of the year!
Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society – A fantastic and touching book, with relatable characters, set in WW2 and with enough humour to lighten the dark subject matter.
European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman – Funny and a fantastic gothic and horror series of crossovers, with some excellent female lead characters, Sherlock Holmes and an engaging storyline.
Trickster’s Choice – Very much a fantasy story, with magic, assassins, a female fighter and a very sweet main male character. Lots of plot twists and some excellent world building.
The Travelling Cat Chronicles – Super touching, heart breaking but also funny. Not a book I would have picked up before this challenge, so happy to have discovered it! Loved the voice of the cat and the peep into Japanese culture.

Five worst books of the year:

Do Harm – So laughably bad, it deserves its own category. Awful writing and character development, a very lame storyline and no likeable or relatable characters.
The Bronze Horseman – just an overwhelmingly sad of death after death, a demanding and creepy main male character and a female character who needs to learn to stand up for herself.
Grey Mask – Underwhelming and just a bit odd. Underused female detective character who popped up and disappeared at different points in the story.
Pet Subjects – Interesting facts about pets but more of a ‘blow your own trumpet’ book by the vet – no real storyline and I didn’t like the layout of the book in letter form.
The Incredible Mile – Very slow and did not enjoy the last half of the book. Male narrator very much a ‘man of his time’ when it comes to attitudes about women.

And now (because lists are my jam), my ‘awards’ for the best in genre for this year…

Favourite History Non-Fiction: The Wonders

Favourite Feminist Non-Fiction: Invisible Women

Favourite Other Non-Fiction: Ayoade on Top

Favourite History Fiction: Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Favourite Crime Fiction: The Eyre Affair

Favourite Fantasy Fiction: European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman

Favourite Drama/Romantic Fiction: An Orphan’s Wish

So – what’s next for this blog? My plan is to carry on reading and carry on blogging about what I read and listen to. They might be slightly shorter blog articles, but I have so enjoyed reading and then blogging my thoughts, I would like to continue. I’m undecided about whether I will rank the books as I have done in this challenge – I might just give them a star rating out of five. But I’ll think about it!

My aim is to try and read around three books a month until the end of the year. My current books on my TBR pile are a mixture of fiction, non-fiction, movie art and work books, so might be interesting to some!

Book #50 – Neverwhere

Prompt – A banned book (meant to be read in banned books week, but I was early – this book was banned in parts of the American South).

Medium – Book

About the Book – Set in London, this book tells the story of Richard Mayhew, a normal young businessman, with a fiancee, a flat and a good, if slightly boring, job. One day, on his way to a restaurant with his fiancee, he stumbles across a badly injured young woman who he takes home with him, leading to the break-up of his relationship. He then finds himself thrown into the world of London Below, a land of multiple timestreams, monsters, saints, angels, hunters, murderers and mysterious girls in velvet. The injured young woman turns out to be Lady Door, who is on a quest to avenge her murdered family. Richard joins her, alongside the mysterious Marquis de Carabas and Hunter, the bodyguard. But soon he will find that there is a strange destiny awaiting him in London below, which he is powerless to deny…

My Rating – 8/10. This book is one that my husband has been nagging me to read for years, after buying it for me many Christmases ago. When I found out that it had been a banned book in the Deep South of America (as many of the best books are…), I decided to use it as my banned book and my final prompt for the reading challenge. This book took a little while to get into, but unlike other books I have read which I could speed through as there was no depth to them, this book had a truly thought-provoking storyline, multi-dimensional characters, and really surreal plot twists, which I really enjoyed. The descriptions of London Below as a twisted version of London Above (i.e. Blackfriars being an abbey of actual friars, Earl’s Court being the court of an Earl on an underground train) were fantastic, and I enjoyed seeing all of the mirrors between the fantasy world and this one.

I also really liked the characters – Richard is a bit of a wimp to start off with, but really grows into a character that you just want to succeed. The female characters are great – Door, Hunter, Lamia and Anaesthesia, although they appear for varying lengths of time, are strong, interesting characters with very definite motives. The baddies are sufficiently evil, doing away with their victims in very imaginative and gory ways, but always with a pinch of humour – I can see why Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman collaborated with each other as their writing styles are really similar. As the last book for this reading challenge, I feel like this was a really interesting one to end on – fantasy, my favourite genre, but very much a twist on this.

Would I read it again? Probably – but I am very much looking forward to reading more books on my TBR pile!

So, the end of my challenge – now I have a massive pile of other books, and a load of audiobooks to have a listen to! I’m going to write a summing-up post, rating some of my favourite (and least favourite) books of the year.

Book #49 – Target Alex Cross

Prompt – A book with a three word title.

Medium – Book

About the Book – The book begins with Alex Cross, a psychologist and former FBI agent (now FBI contractor), and his family at the funeral of the President of the USA. Soon after the funeral, a senator is killed on her way to an early morning yoga class, leaving the country shocked by the deaths of two members of the cabinet. As readers, we start to meet supplementary characters who narrate parts of the book, and we soon realise that these characters are all assassins, hired by an unknown person to try and de-stabilise the USA. Alex Cross and his wife, Bree, investigate the killings and soon find that the danger may not be over.

My Rating – 9/10. This was the first Alex Cross and only second James Patterson book that I had read (see my blog on ‘Juror No. 3’) and to be honest, I wasn’t expecting much. I have generally found that with books with a recurring detective, after book ten, the whole thing gets a bit old. So I was pleasantly surprised with this book. There were a number of things I really enjoyed about the book – the short and fast-paced chapters, the shifting in narrative from Alex Cross to the different assassins, the nuances in the motivations of some of the assassins and the ending. Which was great, and not at all what had been expected.

I also really liked the character of Alex Cross. He is cool and calculating, a prime example of a brilliant detective and psychologist. His family are great, especially Bree, who is the Chief of the Washington DC Metro Police. He is protective of her, but not to the point where he feels the need to be all masculine and stop her from doing her job. There are lots of different strands to the story, one of which only comes to fruition right in the last couple of pages and ties nicely into the next book in series (which I have already added to my TBR pile). Unlike books which you expect to be good and surprise you with their awfulness, this one was a book I expected to not be great, but was actually right up my street. As a side-note, I am not a fan of too much swearing in books, and this was great in that regard – some swearing, but not too much!

Would I read it again? As much as I enjoyed it, probably not. But I would like to read the other Alex Cross books!

Book #48 – An Orphan’s Wish

Prompt – A bildungsroman (a coming of age tale – not necessarily for the main character in this instance, but definitely for one of the supporting characters!)

Medium – Book

About the Book – Set in WW2, the book tells the story of Lana Ashwin, a young teacher whose fiancee, Dickie, dies at sea. Her home and village are full of memories of Dickie, and when the opportunity comes for her to be the headmistress of a village school in a little village just outside of Liverpool, she takes it. Whilst there, she gets to know the matron and children of the local Dr Barnardo’s Orphanage, including a young girl who is struggling with the grief of losing both of her parents. Another child, Peter, is the son of a German officer, now working for the British at Bletchley Park. When the German officer comes to visit, Lana feels an instantaneous connection to him, but she is still working through her own feelings of anger towards Germany after the death of Dickie. And then, there is the good-looking local vet, who also seems attracted to Lana…

My Rating – 8/10. Books like this aren’t my usual reading matter, but I have enjoyed reading things I usually wouldn’t in this reading challenge. I read through the book quickly – it had a fairly simple (although it doesn’t look like it with my precis above!) storyline, and the characters fell into three categories – nice, bit rough around the edges but will be nice by the end of the book, horrible. The book was a nice, gentle way to spend the first of my two holiday weekends (I’m going to be getting much more reading done this week!), and it was about one of my favourite periods of history, WW2 – so had a lot to recommend it. It was also recommended by my husband, who, despite his generally thriller/adventure reading tastes, has a soft spot for very soppy romances.

This next paragraph will contain spoilers, so skip if you would like to! There are two intertwined love stories in this book – Carl (the German officer) and Lana, and then Frank (the vet) and Lana. The first love story is the one in the blurb of the book, between Carl and Lana. It comes very suddenly and the characters move from writing a couple of letters each to the other to making outright confessions of love in the space of about 30 pages. I didn’t find it particularly believable and didn’t feel like we really knew enough about Carl as readers to root for him one way or the other. The second love story (between Lana and Frank) was much more slow-burning, more of a friendship to begin, and we got to know Frank really well before anything ‘happened’. I really liked the character of Frank (and was rooting for him and Lana), but in a slightly differently written book, would have enjoyed the whole German/English romance thing to have been explored.

Would I read it again? It’s in the charity shop pile, so probably not – but I would like to read the rest of Molly Green’s Barnardo books.

Book #47 – A Pocket Full of Rye

Prompt – A book published in the 20th Century

Medium – Book

About the Book – Rex Fortescue, an investor and king of a financial empire, is found dead in his office (‘counting house’) after being poisoned. When his body is examined, he is found to have a pocket full of cereal, specifically, rye. His family are not particularly grief-stricken by the murder – his much younger wife; his oldest son, Val, and Mrs Val; his youngest daughter, Elaine; and his first wife’s sister, the slightly demented Aunt Elvira. Inspector Neele is called to investigate the murder and is later joined by Agatha Christie’s sleuth, Jane Marple. However, more deaths soon occur, and the picture starts to look very much like the children’s nursery rhyme – ‘Four and Twenty Blackbirds’.

My Rating – 8.5/10. I am very much a fan of the Agatha Christie books, films and TV shows (though less of the more recent ‘hard hitting’ adaptations by Sarah Phelps). I love the Poirot tales, but I do have a soft spot for Miss Marple. She is one of those extremely underestimated characters who generally ends up solving the mystery and uncovering the terrible murders. This novel has the right amount of suspense and strangeness, alongside Christie’s love for the inclusion of a rhyme, poem or story in the solution to the murder. She is a very easy read without being too straightforward – I’ve never read this novel before and was shocked by the murderer at the end of the book.

The characters are extremely well developed and there is no similarity between them to make it difficult to keep up with who is who. Miss Marple enters the story around half-way through, but unlike in one of the earlier books I read (‘Grey Mask’) with a largely absent detective, Miss Marple, whilst not in many scenes, feels constantly present. She influences the story massively, always seeming to be one step ahead of the action and indeed, the detective (who is, however, a very good detective!) In my opinion, Christie manages to keep the mystery of the murderer secret right until the end – there are no real hints that the character who does the dreadful deed is a murderer. She also does a very good job at inserting some nuance into the story – the murdered man, in particular, is a thoroughly nasty piece of work, and it is only the last murder where the victim truly is innocent.

Would I read it again? Yes, although I do find that Christie’s books are never quite as good the second time around!

Book #46 – Juror No. 3

Prompt – A book you picked because the title caught your attention (I was on a jury once and found the whole thing really interesting).

Medium – Book

About the Book – Ruby Bozarth is a lawyer in a small Mississippi town. She is asked to represent a black college football player against a charge of murder. The murder is of the daughter of one of the richest families in the town, and Ruby soon finds undercurrents of hatred stirring through the town, especially racial hatred. She also notices that one of the jurors in the trial looks awfully shifty. Alongside this, Ruby meets Shorty, the owner of the town’s diner and a political scientist who is undercover with a white supremacist group. But can Ruby really trust anyone in the town?

My Rating – 6/10. There are a lot of things I liked about this book. I liked the way that it was split into two parts – the murder trial detailed above is actually only one half of the book – the other is a far more personal trial for Ruby. I really liked some of the characters, including the lovable Shorty, Ruby and her mentor Suzanne, who is a force to be reckoned with, and not your usual skinny, young heroine. I also really enjoyed the feeling of menace in the book, brought about by undercurrents of hatred rocketing through the town.

My main issue with the book is that in style, it is very, very similar to every single other James Patterson book that he has ever written (and I have another one to read before the end of this challenge…) James Patterson is a really prolific writer. He turns out around ten books a year, usually in conjunction with others – including famously, Bill Clinton. The problem is that because of the number of books he has written, the characters are often quite similar, the threat is often quite similar and the style is often quite similar too. His books are familiar and follow similar patterns, which I think is why he is so popular. It’s just not quite my scene. But, I can say (maybe this was due to his collaborator), the law court scenes in the book were exceptionally well executed and really intense.

Would I read it again? Probably not, it is currently on the charity shop pile (which gets bigger by the day!)

Book #45 – Do Harm

Prompt – A medical thriller

Medium – Book

About the Book – Carter is a widower, whose wife, son and father have all been killed by instances of medical malpractice. Driven by anger and a desire for revenge, he joins up with a group of men who have suffered similar wrongdoings and they decide to get their own back by carrying out a series of murders and maimings of doctors who have killed, maimed or disabled their patients. In the midst of this, Carter meets Anna, a defence lawyer, who helps him to feel ‘real’ again and that there might be something better than revenge.

My Rating – 2/10. OK. You know those books which are so bad, you feel the need to keep on reading, even though they are so awful? The ones where there is no real character development, potholes galore and really, really bad sex scenes? This is one of those books. To be honest, I kind of knew it would be before I started reading – but I wanted to read a medical thriller which wasn’t about a pandemic, so I went for it. I have some thoughts.

Firstly, I am not sure that the author has ever met a woman, but they sure as anything don’t talk like he thinks they do. I have a lovely husband, who I adore, but I don’t think I have ever called him my ‘one true love’ – I think he might throw up if I did. There are three female characters in this book and lots of very MANLY men. Who talk about their dicks pretty constantly and go around casually murdering people. Brains seem to be in short supply with this group and fairly sharpish, a private detective is on to their scheme. Then they all go to pieces. The female characters are ‘interesting’ and very trope-y. You have:

The beautiful, intelligent career woman who decides she wants to have children, leave her high-powered job and settle down with the weird murder-y guy. Despite the murders.
The randomly sexual older woman who (spoilers!) turns out to be the villain of the piece.
The slightly kooky woman-child secretary to the police department, who gets together with one of the guys in the murder group and follows him around doing murders.

I kid you not.

The punctuation and general editing is shocking, lots of weird bits of speech which should be questions but end up as commands (mostly directed at the women, so maybe that was the author’s plan). Highly awkward sex scenes, which say everything and nothing about what is going on. Random characters appearing and disappearing without trace. Lots of drunkenness. Weirdly unspecific death scenes. Just a whole section at the end where there’s a poisoning, a kidney transplant, a weird dream sequence and a death. It’s all a bit trippy. But I did get through it in an evening.

Would I read it again? No. But it has given me hope – if something as bad as this can be published, maybe my dream of being an author isn’t too far out of my grasp…

Book #44 – Baptizing Harry Potter

Prompt – A book you meant to read in 2019.

Medium – Book

About the Book – Written by a monk, ‘Baptizing Harry Potter’ offers a Christian take on Harry Potter. Moving away from the idea that anything with magic, witches or wizards must be inherently evil, Luke Bell suggests that the stories of Harry Potter have a deep mysticism to them, alongside a real understanding of the good and evil in the world. He draws parallels between Biblical events, things that happen in Harry Potter and other cultural references, such as Shakespeare and Greek mythology. He investigates themes such as forgiveness, sacrifice and resurrection which are as profound and meaningful in Harry Potter as they are in the Bible, and demonstrates the values of peace, unity and love which are present in the halls of Hogwarts.

My Rating – 7/10. Baptizing Harry Potter demonstrates a real understanding of the ways in which popular culture can mirror the teachings of Christianity and Jesus. As a young teenager, I adored Harry Potter, but was told by members of my church that it was Satanic. Luckily, my father was as much of a fan of Harry Potter as I was, and was able to demonstrate to me how Harry Potter could be used as an extended metaphor for things that happened in the Bible and for values such as resurrection, goodness and love. His arguments, and those of Luke Bell, marry up well in the book and give a real, learned and thorough demonstration of how the stories of Harry Potter can be seen to mirror those in the Bible.

Bell sets out the book in themes, investigating the ideas of sacrifice, humility, love and compassion. He looks not just at Harry, but at other characters in the stories as well, demonstrating instances where Biblical teachings and values are most on display. I particularly liked his depiction of Voldemort – and the ways in which Voldemort shows the complete absence of God, goodness, unity and in the last book, strength. I think the only reasons that I marked this book down were due to some slightly more spurious links between the Bible and Harry Potter, and the slightly off-beat humour used by the author which I don’t think added to the text! But otherwise, eminently readable and a book I will recommend!

Would I read it again? It will go on our Christian book shelf and we’ll see. I am now slightly desperate to re-read Harry Potter though!

Book #43 – Children of Blood and Bone

Prompt – A book written by a woman of colour.

Medium – Audiobook

About the Book – Set in the mythical kingdom of Orisha, this book tells the story of Zelie Adebola, a young woman who is a Diviner – a magical person who has had their magic removed by the evil King, Saran. At the beginning of the book, she is an angry young woman trying to get by with her brother Tzain and Father Baba. However, one day at the market, she meets the mysterious Amari, who turns out to be the princess of Orisha, and who is carrying a magical scroll, which brings the magic back of any Diviner who touches it. Zelie, Tzain and Amari travel to temples and other sacred sites on a mission to bring magic back to the kingdom and defeat Saran. They are pursued by Amari’s brother, Inan, who is determined to stop magic but who has his own connection to magic and to Zelie.

My Rating – 8/10. I love the premise of this book. So often fantasy stories are very white – white heroes, white supporting actors, white villains – or characters are undescribed, but convention demands that imaginings of them are again, white. In this book, African mythology and stories are intertwined with the main narrative. All the characters are people of colour, and have their own rounded heritages and backstories. Yoruba, the official language of Nigeria, is used as the language of magic, and the story is loosely set in and around Lagos as the capital city. The magical people (Maji) are organised into Clans, each of them possessing a different type of magic, adding to the fantastic sense of ’roundness’ in the story. The world-building feels full and complete, which is brilliant in a fantasy novel.

The characters are all really interesting in different ways. The most likeable and relatable, I would argue, were the characters of Princess Amari, and Zelie’s brother Tzain. One of the reasons I have marked this book down a bit is out of personal preference – the book is a little bloodthirsty in places, there’s a lot of death, and it is quite long! The main love interest for this book Inan, is one of those characters that you really want to like, but I found myself hoping Zelie wouldn’t end up with him in the story. He’s a bit of a wimp in places and I really just wanted him to pull himself together and make a decision about his allegiances. Overall though – excellent, well told storyline, good characters and something that hasn’t been done before!

Would I listen to it again? Yes – it’s really long though so probably on a roadtrip or something!

Book #42 – The Incredible Mile

Prompt – A book with only words on the cover – no graphics or pictures (my copy doesn’t have graphics or pictures, unlike the above!)

Medium – Book

About the Book – A temporarily homeless Englishman decides to try and get from St Pancras to Euston on the train. To do so, he travels across continents and countries – to Russia, Mongolia and Eastern Europe, meeting all sorts of people on the way. Written 40 years ago, the author writes about his experiences travelling across communist countries, discussing the ways in which men, women and children perceived him being from the Capitalist West.

My Rating – 5/10. This book was picked for me by my husband when I didn’t have a book in my own collection to match the prompt. He is really good at picking books for me, and I have to say, I really enjoyed the first part of the book (the journey through Russia on the train). I’m a real fan of trains and train stories, so the descriptions of the traveller’s journey on the Trans-Siberian Express was fantastic – it’s a journey that I’ve always wanted to make, so I found it really interesting. By the second half of the book, I thought that the author had ‘lost his way’ slightly – he was now in Mongolia and seemed to not be able to find much of interest to discuss apart from the scenery.

This book is very much a book of its time. The traveller’s dealings with women are many and numerous – he must have some kind of magnetism because at some points in the book he seemed to be sleeping his way across Asia. Funnily enough, all the women he attracts seem to be young, attractive, and deeply in love with him. He is either God’s gift to women or a bit of a fantasist. He also comes off as a bit ‘British Empire-y’ – he’s quite high-and-mighty and seems to think that being British means that he can go to all of these places and walk around like he owns them.

Would I read it again? Probably not. I like travel writing (and trains) but found that I skimmed the last half of the book.