Number 84- Twas The Nightshift before Christmas- Adam Kay

 

Appropriately enough, I read this on Christmas Eve.

Early this year I read his book This Is Going To Hurt- extracts from his diaries from his days as a junior doctor. It's easily one of the two funniest books I've read this year.

The second of the funniest books I've read this year is this one. It's more extracts from his doctor diaries, but this time purely the shifts he did over the Christmas seasons in the 7 years he was a doctor. 

It's very short, hence being able to read it in one day without any issues. It's very funny and wince inducing.

There's a particularly painful image raised when he retells the story of a man who covered himself head to toe in gaffer tape (for sexual purposes apparently), and the negative impact of trying to remove it... If you've read this book and you're a man, you've probably just winced at the memory of it. I know I'm cringing as I write this.

The book has the same mix of funny and heartfelt, with serious messages about the state of the NHS and how badly the staff are treated.

Just like the previous volume, it's a must read. 

Number 83- Tales from the Cafe- Toshikazu Kawaguchi

 Book two in this series translated from the Japanese by Geoffrey Chousselot is more of the same as the first volume.

In a strange little café in the back streets of Tokyo, you can travel back in time, with limitations. You have to wait for the ghost in the corner seat to go to the toilet. You take her seat and when the waitress pours your coffee you will travel back to the time you need to go to.  Once you're there, you cannot leave the seat, nothing you do in the past will change the future, and you can only stay until the coffee gets cold. If you fail to drink the coffee in the allotted time, an unspecified bad thing happens, which almost certainly involves death.

The regular cast from the first book are still running the café but we're now 7 years after book one and the young daughter of the now deceased owner (whose story is the last novella in book one) is now a regular.

We find out more about the ghost in this book and her link to one of the staff.  There seems to be a fairly strong continuity building now and I'm expecting to learn even more about her in book 3.

Slipping back into the world of Funicili Funicula (the café) feels like greeting an old friend you've not seen for ages- coincidentally something that happens in every story. There's a soothing feel to the writing and the whole thing moves at a nice relaxing pace.

I'm sure  how memorable these books will prove to be. The themes are quite repetitious and everyone who sits in the chair has the rules explained by the coffee pourer. This is never skipped in the narration so the same text appears almost word for word in each story.

That's a minor quibble though as these are excellent palate cleansers and well worth the read. There's nothing big or exciting going to happen. These are small scale human dramas. intimately told. It's feel good fiction tinged with some human tragedies at the heart of each story, yet each one ends on a hopeful beat.

If you want a soothing read, I can't think of anything I'd recommend before these. It's the literary equivalent of soaking in a hot bath after a long hard day at work.

Number 82- Playing Possum - Stephanie Rabig

 

Another book that was created to match a cover drawn by Keelan Patrick Burke featuring an unlikely killer beast. The first of these was The Roo- which was my introduction to Alan Baxter, who is now one of my go-to writers. There's a third book called The Cassowary which is also on my shelves. The proceeds from all three go to the World Wildlife Fund which is as good a reason as any to buy these books.

Sadly in this case it's the best reason to buy it. Despite loving the first chapter, which features one of the best shreddies I've seen for a while in a horror novel, the rest of the book doesn't quite work for me.

The storyline is truly bonkers and should be right up my street. The possums in a small town have gone berserk and started eating people. Those fortunate enough to survive an attack find themselves mutating into human sized possums and going on the warpath themselves.

There are some good set pieces scattered through the book and some laugh out loud funny moments so it isn't a total loss.

The characters just never really came alive for me. I know in the scy-fy channel movies that this book seeks to emulate, the characters are not alllowed more than one dimension, and cardboard cutout is a generous description, but other than Vanessa- the hero of the hour, the characters in this struggle to even gain one dimension to make us care about them. 

The prose is very basic too and didn't drag this particular reader through the book the way it should have done. 

There wasn't enough possum action. With the lack-lustre characters there needed to be more possum mayhem, and less personal relationship issues. Basically, a few more shreddies would have really lifted this up to a good fun and silly read. Instead it was more silly and less fun.

It's worth reading, but I would struggle to score this more than 5/10.

Number 81- A God In ruins- Kate Atkinson

 The last Kate Atkinson novel I read was a detective type story where one of the characters was introduced with the words “Character name had never harmed a living thing in his life”- or words to that effect.  One thing was certain, this guy was harmless and had never hurt anyone or anything.  At the end of the book, we found out that, previous to the events of the book and his introduction, he had once accidentally killed a Russian lady of the night and thrown her off a hotel balcony into a skip. Although it was an enjoyable read, such a lack of attention to detail in the writing put me off her books somewhat.

This book is entirely different.  It tells the life of Edward "Teddy" Todd, a WWII bomber pilot, from his early childhood to his death in the early 21st century.

Teddy is apparently the younger brother of the lead character in Life After Life, but, as far as I can tell, it doesn't impact on this story. This was my book group read and those who'd read both books made no mention of any Easter eggs between the novels.

The title is derived a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson which defines a man as a God In Ruins.  

The story took a bit of getting into due to the constant time leaps. Even in the first chapter, which deals with Teddy's childhood, there are references to his life as a pilot, as a 50 something and a pensioner. This made it quite hard to follow for several chapters until the characters were properly established and all the time periods were fixed in my head.

Ted and his family become very real characters. I found myself totally absorbed into the intricacies of his life.  I hated his daughter Viola and had endless sympathy for poor misunderstood Sunny, who only had his grandad on his side.

The final chapter created a huge split in the book group. Half hated it and the rest loved it.  I was definitely in the loved it group.  

The style of writing, once I'd tuned into the time periods and characters, was compelling. There are some gorgeous sections of the book, some heartbreaking sequences, and thrilling accounts of the bomber raids teddy flew on in the war.

This has changed my opinion of Kate Atkinson after the annoying errors in the other book of hers I've read. I will be seeking out a copy of Life after Life to find out more about Ursula and her many lives...

Number 79/80- Monstress Vol 8 & Descender Vol 1

 

I really should have reread the end of volume 7 before I picked this one up as I found it a bit confusing for the first section.

The artwork is stunning as usual, and the storyline continues to expand. this book is set in the one place the being Maika shares her existence with fears.  The Prison world where its brethren have been held for millennia.

All the usual comments apply about this series.  Now I have to wait a year for the next volume again.  I'll probably do a quick reread of the whole thing before that though.

 And a new series for me from the writer of the rather magnificently mind-bending Gideon Falls.

This is set in a distant future, a decade after planet sized robots called Harvesters wiped out swathes of the population of the galaxy before disappearing. Since then robots are not trusted and destroyed by many factions. 

The old question of at which point does genuine AI become it's own individual being raises its philosophical head in this one.

A child companion robot named Tim-21 wakes on a mining colony, alone except for a mining robot and a robot dog.  The family he was ensconced with are long dead from a gas leak that killed all the organic life on the station.

When Tim connects to the Base computers the rest of the galaxy is advised of his existence.  This is bad news, since the roots of the Harvesters machine code is apparently contained in Tim's circuitry.  Thus he becomes a highly sought prize for many organisations. 

There are twists and turns I did not see coming, and Tim-21 is an intriguing protagonist so far.  His robot companions are amusing and the human cast is a good mix of flawed and vulnerable. 

The whole thing is gorgeously drawn by Dustin Nguyen.  I will be searching out the other volumes ASAP as well as the sequel series Ascender.

Despite the vast differences in approach and look, there are some thematic links running through these books. Both feature incredible detailed world building and a central character with the key to immense danger built into their DNA/Circuitry (whether figuratively or literally in the narrative).

Number 77- the Kindness - Jon Ajvide Lindqvist

Ever since I read let The Right One In all those years ago, Lindqvist has been one of those writers whose books jump to the top of the TBR as soon as I can get my grubby paws on them.

Therefore, when I found out about this I was rather excited. 800 pages of Lindqvist goodness! Look at the thickness in that second picture. And that cover is so clever. A shipping container drawn from the angle to make it look like a coffin. very apt when you look at the plot.

A shipping container is found on the shore of a Swedish town with a long, complicated name. Inside the container are the bodies of 28 refugees... and something else.  Something that gets into the river and pollutes the town with fear and malice. 

We follow 6 characters as they try to live their best lives while the town (and their psyches) are sullied by the strange presence in the water.

This being Lindqvist, the people portraits he paints with his words are almost perfect.  We know these people, warts and all. With nearly double his usual word length we have plenty of time to get to know them. 

There's something missing from the book though.

In all his previous works, there is an abundance of incident.  There are set pieces that will disturb and shock you.  In 800 pages, he barely does that.

There is a distinct atmosphere of building threats, and sequences in this are very tense indeed. But there doesn't seem to be much payoff at any point. Lots of build up, and no release. It doesn't deliver on the majority of the drama it promises. The vast majority of the violence happening in the town happens off screen and our protagonists learn of it second hand. 

There are a couple of cutaways to the interior of the container before it was dumped which are truly horrific, with a graphic depiction of the inhabitants as they turn on each other and hope dies screaming around them.

Other than that, probably the two most shocking scenes happen to a minor character who doesn't appear till nearly 600 pages in,

Even the big finale feels a bit pat and all sorted far too easily.

There are a couple of really strange chapters written in first person that don't seem to add much overall except for pointless surrealism.

That's not to say that it's all bad. I enjoyed reading it throughout. The characters are beautifully drawn. The whole town feels real (even if I did find myself glossing over unpronounceable street names  so never quite got a grasp on the geography of the place).  I wanted to know what happened next.  He never took the plot in quite the direction it seemed to be heading (a good thing sometimes, but in this case, not always). The feeling of dread he creates is palpable.  It just didn't go anywhere and it all sort of fizzles out with the very disappointing ending..

It's mostly very good, and occasionally great for 770 pages or so... then he puts that ending on. The crescendo he seemed to be building towards was more of a kazoo squawk that spoilt the whole symphony. 

If this was my first Lindqvist, I would think twice about buying another. 

I'm not sure if this has just lost something in translation but it was a definite let down by his usual high standards.

Bonus review - Number 78 - the Worst Breakfast- China Mieville and Zak Smith

China Mieville wrote a nonsense poem about a bad breakfast, and it was illustrated rather coarsely by Smith.

Probably fun for the age group it's intended for.  It raised a wry smile from me a couple of times, but I really didn't like the artwork.  Even for a children's book it's messy and a bit incoherent.

Buying books like this is the worst part of being a completist on authors I really like...