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Vanessa Curtis – The Earth is Singing
Every once in a while, you read a book that completely breaks you. And this was it for me. I read this book in one train journey from London to Leeds, and I was full out crying on the train from the horrors that were written inside.
I cried because these horrors were real. Things that actually happened less than 2 generations ago. Things that should not be forgotten, lest we repeat them.
The book follows a young girl called Hanna, who lives in Latvia with her mother and grandmother. Her father has already gone missing – taken by the Russians, and we follow their lives as the germans move into Latvia and slowly start eroding the rights of the Jews who live there.
At times, it was easy to imagine that this was some sort of post-apocalyptic book where food is scarce and living in shells of houses is the norm – hunger games style. But this is not post-apocalyptic, it’s a true story.
I can’t even bear to write it here, but the part of the story where the book title comes from – The Earth is Singing – it was brutal. I had to stop reading a number of times to get through it.
I feel that books like this should be essential reading – we need to remember the atrocities of the past to ensure we don’t allow them to be repeated in the future. It’s all well and good to say we would never let this happen – but it’s only by keeping watch for those initial signs that we can catch these things before they progress.
I could pick many quotes from this book as noteworthy, but this one in particular stuck with me:
I lean against the side of the carriage and am surprised to realize that I don’t mind being a Jew any longer. I have learned something on my journey. I have learned that the only people worth knowing are the ones who accept me for who I am and not what I am.
The Earth is Singing – Vanessa CurtisSomething we could all take to heart – let’s accept people for who they are and how they behave rather than what they are and the labels we apply to them. In today’s society where we are seeing more and more racially/religiously motivated attacks, we would do well to remember that people are more than the label you choose to assign to them.
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Jojo Moyes – Still Me
Ah, Louisa Clark. I’ve missed you. I absolutely loved Me Before You and kinda enjoyed the follow up, After You. Did we need a trilogy? No. Would I have been happy if Moyes had stopped after the first book? Yes. But am I happy to finish reading about Louisa and that she finally got her happy ending? Very much so.
And I was also glad that the happy ending wasn’t exactly what I imagined it would be – Louisa still had plenty of ups and downs to get through before finding where she needs to be.
Starting a new job across the atlantic, Louisa finds herself working for another rich family, but this one way more obnoxious and stuck-up than Will’s. And it seems like Louisa will find herself caught in the middle of family strife – and used as a dispensible pawn in their deceit.
But it turns out that where Louisa found her life-changing moment was the most unexpected place possible – and turns out that where Louisa thought she would fit in was not at all where she would end up.
As I mentioned, I’m happy that we got to read more about Louisa, and this book was a definite improvement on After You, but it could never live up to the romance and emotion of Me Before You – that book is pretty much unmatchable I think.
471 pages. Published in: 2018Read in Paperbackon 10th – 11th March 2019 -
Camille Pagán – I’m Fine and Neither Are You
I got this book a month before it’s scheduled release date through the Amazon First Reads programme (if you have Amazon Prime, and you don’t know what this is, check it out – free books!).
It jumped out at me from the list of six books because the blurb looked quite intriguing:
A shocking tragedy reveals that Jenny’s life is far from perfect. Reeling, Penelope vows to stop keeping the peace and finally deal with the issues in her relationship. So she and Sanjay agree to a radical proposal: both will write a list of changes they want each other to make—then commit to complete and total honesty.
The shocking tragedy was a major plot twist for me that I wasn’t expecting, and it made me think the book was heading in a more thriller/mystery direction, which unfortunately wasn’t the case. I can see why it didn’t, but that might have added a bit more excitement for me.
Because although I thought the premise of the book was going to be interesting, it was just a bit slow for me. I found myself becoming more and more frustrated with Penelope and her constant need to be in control of everything, but her refusal to make any changes to her own life, while demanding change from everyone else.
I think we’re supposed to see her as a strong, have-it-all kind of mother, but all I could think of was how selfish she seemed. Granted, her husband Sanjay wasn’t exactly Mr Perfect, but I gave him major credit for at least attempting to change to save their marriage.
As you can probably tell, the book wasn’t perfect for me, but it was a fairly pleasant read and although the characters bugged me, I felt invested enough in their story to want to read through to the end. It wasn’t a terribly long read, and I can tell that for other people, it would probably be a much better fit – it just wasn’t my type of book in the end.
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Matt Dunn – 13 Dates
It’s been a while since I read anything at all, and I’m stuck halfway through a couple of epic books, so I needed something light to kick-start my reading habit again. I borrowed this book for free from the Amazon Prime Reading section, and I was quite looking forward to something a bit cosy and heart warming.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t really find any kind of empathy for either of the main characters which really spoilt my enjoyment of the book.
We have Angel who is living life to the full at every minute (for supposedly good reasons), but she is extremely unappreciative of anything that anyone tries to do for her.
And we have Noah, who I think is supposed to appear charming and lovestruck, but to me felt borderline stalker-ish and a little bit desperate.
Don’t get me wrong, I love a good romance book as much as the next person, but I like to be able to feel like I could be friends with the main characters, as if the story could be being told to me over a glass of wine in someone’s sitting room.
I did like the pace of the story, and the idea behind it that it supposedly takes 13 dates to fall in love with someone, but because of the lack of feelings I had for the main characters it just didn’t do it for me really. I did read through to the end and I did feel slightly invested in how it turned out, but I think the main attraction of a so-called ‘chick-lit’ book for me is how it makes me feel, and I was lukewarm at best.
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Charlie N. Holmberg – Smoke & Summons
Holmberg has been one of my favourite authors since I read The Paper Magician, and when this book was released a month early as part of the Amazon Prime First Reads programme, I was really excited!
I immediately fell in love with Sandis, the main character. She’s a young woman who was kidnapped at a young age and is now kept as a vessel for a fiery power called Ireth, at the bidding of her master. She only sees daylight when she’s needed to fight one of his battles, and although she isn’t supposed to remember what happens when she’s turned into the demon, she’s starting to remember things, and they terrify her.
After witnessing something horrific, she manages to escape from his clutches, and the book follows her as she tries to keep away from him. After she escapes, she steals a magical device called the amarinth from Rone, who is going through his own set of challenges right now too. It looks like she might have made another enemy, but the unlikely duo realise they may be able to help each other.
I loved the fact that although the book had an element of romance, it wasn’t the main focus. I also loved the fact that we unravel the extent of the magic gradually, as Sandis starts to realise how powerful she might be.
The book was filled with suspense and shocking twists that I just didn’t see coming and left me wanting to scream! I felt like perhaps the ‘evil’ side of the book could have been fleshed out more, and the two main characters did spent a lot of time running around the city rather than actual action, but I don’t think it detracted too much from the book.
I can’t wait for the second in the series to see what happens to Sandis and Rone next, and I really hope Ireth makes another appearance, even though I probably shouldn’t wish for a reappearance of a fiery demon from another world!
307 pages. Published in: 2019Read in E-bookon 29th-31st January 2019 -
Carrie Hope Fletcher – All That She Can See
I’ve been looking forward to reading this book ever since I bought it last year and added it to my growing TBR list. It’s taken a while to get to the top of that list, and I do have mixed feelings about it.
There’s no doubt that this is a feel-good book. Cherry is a baker who can see other people’s bad feelings. And she uses her special talents as a baker to make them cakes with an added ingredient to cure their emotions. Empathy Eclairs or Confidence Cookies etc etc.
She moves to Plymouth as she’s done all the healing she can do in her current town, and there she finds Chase. Chase is only the second person she’s ever met who can do what she does. But whereas she can see the bad things, Chase can only see the good. Which sounds better, right? But Chase has become bitter from always seeing the good while it doesn’t happen to himself. And what could be worse than seeing someone’s joy manifesting itself while they’re giving you a beating in the school playground?
Unfortunately, Chase and Cherry get into a bit of a battle (which, granted, doesn’t last very long), and they draw themselves to the attention of ‘The Guild’ who are supposedly people who keep a watch on ‘the feelers’ to make sure they don’t interfere too much.
But The Guild isn’t quite what it seems, and when Chase ends up getting ‘arrested’ by them, it’s up to Cherry and her childhood friend Peter to save him.
This part, for me, is where the book loses a star on the review. I felt like this could have so much drama and could have been a great place to reveal secret details about their abilities. But unfortunately, the details about Cherry and Chase have already been given to you flat out without any mystery, and the breakout to me felt very rushed and a definite anti-climax.
I had enjoyed the book so much up til that point, getting to the end in less than a day, but the ending just let it down slightly for me and took the shine off it.
Still a great book, and I’ll definitely be looking out for Carrie’s other books as I think she’s great. If you don’t know who she is – check out her music – she’s got pipes!
356 pages. Published in: 2017Read in Paperbackon 29th-30th January 2019 -
The Cactus – Sarah Haywood
When I picked up this book in Waterstones, it was with a caption card that compared it to the likes of The Rosie Project, which is a book I completely fell in love with. And while I can kind of see why you would compare them because of their protagonists, this book fell way short of the mark for me.
“In Susan we find a character as exasperating and delightful as The Rosie Project’s Don Tillman.”. Exasperating, yes. Delightful, not so much.
In The Rosie Project, although Don was slightly obnoxious and extremely blunt, he had an endearing quality which meant it was quite easy to warm to him. In The Cactus, I’m afraid I just couldn’t warm to Susan at all, I found her unnecessarily rude and completely oblivious to anyone else’s feelings.
It’s kind of addressed by the main character herself, when she lends a book to her neighbour and they have this exchange:
‘I quite liked it,’ she said, ‘but I didn’t get Miss Brodie. She didn’t seem very likeable. I can’t enjoy a book if I don’t warm to the main character.’
‘I disagree. I’d rather read about someone interesting than someone who’s just nice.’
Unfortunately, I side more with Susan’s neighbour – I can’t enjoy a book if I don’t warm to the main character, and Susan left me feeling cold. I understand that you’re supposed to realise that Susan is a product of her upbringing (no spoilers here), but to me, it just wasn’t a good enough excuse.
We do see Susan start to defrost a little bit as time goes on in the book, despite the legal drama that she’s going through, and I do think she turns a corner in terms of relationships – gradually, mind. But I definitely found myself more attuned with the side characters like Rob than I ever was with her.
I can see why people would enjoy this book – it’s a Richard and Judy book club choice so it definitely has fans, but unfortunately it just wasn’t really for me.
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Jimmy Dodd & Larry Magnuson – Pastors are People Too
I remember when I first bought this book, our Vicar was a few months into his new role in our Church, and he shared a link to it on Facebook. I bought it thinking that it sounded interesting, but it just never popped to the top of my reading list. Probably not helped by the uninspiring cover, I never got around to it.
But I’m now quite sad that I didn’t – I know now that there’s a reason why our Vicar probably shared this book – a few months into a new Church which has been without a vicar for over 6 months, I can only imagine the mountains of work and the high expectations that had been placed on him.
I think this book should be essential reading for anyone attending a Church. We tend to put out Vicars on a pedestal and expect something incredible from them, but they are just people, and they only have the same 24 hours in the day that we do. They can’t be everything to everyone (no matter how much they want to be), but we need to be realistic and try to be a support to them rather than a burden.
As the book says:
The demands on pastors can be staggering. Pastors are asked to be dynamic preachers, compassionate counselors, capable administrators, bold visionaries, confident strategists, effective fund-raisers, strong leaders, and much more.
The book is filled with stories of vicars who have been completely let down by their congregations – acting as a pillar for hundreds of people who need their help, but then dropped like a hot coal as soon as they come to a testing period in their lives. Right at the point that they most need help, they are abandoned. As if because they are a vicar, they’re not allowed to struggle.
I’d like to think that I could never be like that, but this has definitely opened my eyes to the need to be more aware. More considerate. And just kinder in general.
As you may be able to tell from the title, the book is American, and it may be easy to dismiss the contents as things that only happen in American mega-churches, but I think it’s just as likely (if not more likely) to be a problem over here in the CofE. When you think of a CofE vicar, there’s probably a certain picture in your head, and it may look something like this:
But vicars come in all shapes and sizes, and all of them are human. All of them need support and care just like we do.
While the joy of friendship allows us to experience the summits of life with one another, true friendship also means walking with one another through the deep valleys of sin, disappointment, anguish, and unbelief.
As I said before, I think this should be required reading for all church-goers. I think if more people had read it, we’d have a lot healthier looking churches, fulled with vicars who are appreciated for who they are and what they do, rather than being overwhelmed and over-worked.
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Satya Nadella – Hit Refresh
Satya Nadella became CEO of Microsoft at a time when Microsoft was definitely on a downwards slide. This book chronicles his efforts to turn around the fortunes of the company, starting with a complete shift in culture which didn’t always go down too well with the employees.
But rewind back a bit, and the book starts with Nadella’s life growing up in India and how he ended up coming to America for a job in tech. He talks about the birth of his children, and how they changed his outlook on how technology can be used in the world.
I told them that we spend far too much time at work for it not to have deep meaning.
Satya NadellaThis hit home to me – I love the job that I do and I’m really fortunate to work for a company that cares about the people we work with – for me, that’s a deep meaning.
I loved the ways that Nadella talked about his leadership style – maybe not always what you’d expect from the CEO of one of the biggest companies on the planet, but it clearly worked – under his helm, the company has completely turned around its fortunes.
That is what leadership is about. It’s about bringing out the best in everyone. It was a subtle, important leadership lesson about when to intervene and when to build the confidence of an individual and a team.
Leadership means making choices and then rallying the team around those choices.
Satya NadellaSo we started off with Nadella’s back-story, then we learnt about his story with Microsoft and how he ‘Hit Refresh’ and turned them into a new company.
But the third section of the book was not really for me. All about the future of AI, machine learning and quantum computing, I found it fascinating, but it was way over my head! There were many times when I felt (and probably looked) like this:
It definitely sounds like technology is going to get wayyy more interesting in the next 20-30 years, but it also sounds like the tech world as a whole is going to have decisions to make around ethics and control. I found it fascinating to read, but a bit confusing – especially quantum computing!
Still, I think this book was a great read, and I’d definitely recommend it to anyone in a leadership position – there are definitely lots of nuggets of wisdom to take from it – even if the most popular reviews on Goodreads suggest that this book is only for Microsoft employees – I don’t think so!
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Darcey Bell – A Simple Favor
Not for a long time have I been so unsure about how a book would end. I don’t read too many thrillers as it’s not my usual genre, but Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick are two of my favourite actresses and I wanted to read this before I watched the film that’s coming out on DVD in a few weeks.
Warning: there will be spoilers below. If you’re planning on picking up this book, don’t read any further. Just know that while I’d recommend this book to thriller fans, it wasn’t 100% my cup of tea – I’d give it 3 stars out of 5.
Stephanie is a lonely widow with a young child, and she’s lonely. So when she’s befriended by Emily, another mum who seems to have it all, she feels so lucky. Miles and Nicky are friends and play together quite happily, and Stephanie becomes Emily’s confidant – she tells her all about the way her husband Sean is constantly putting her down.
Then one day, Emily asks her for a simple favour: “Can you look after Nicky for me this evening until I can pick him up”, and Stephanie doesn’t think twice. Then Emily doesn’t return to pick Nicky up. And what kind of mum wouldn’t at least call to say she was going to be late to pick up her child?
I spent the whole first half of the book convinced that Stephanie had something to do with Emily’s disappearance. The way she immediately wormed her way into Emily’s husband’s life just felt really creepy to me. Almost like it was premeditated. The fact that the whole first part of the book was narrated by Stephanie was I think designed to make you think this way.
So then when the book switches to part 2 and all of a sudden it’s Emily talking, I was blind-sided. I was convinced that Emily was actually dead, so to hear from her was a shock! And to find out that Stephanie is not so crazy after all was a BIG surprise.
And then part 3, where we start to get Sean’s perspective and the tables turn again. Just one surprise after the other, I was really glad that I couldn’t guess the end, that always makes a book feel intense.
The only disappointing thing to me was the ending. I was kinda hoping that we were going to get another surprise twist and Stephanie was going to have outsmarted them both, but I guess she is ‘the fish’ after all.
Louise Douglas
(I've got no) Shelf Control…
Louise Douglas 