November 2004 Archives
I'd seen other people reading the book, and picked it up many a time, but the blurb on the back put me off, so I'm glad Hazel bought this at Gatwick. We both read it whilst on holiday in Kerala, a mere state away from where the story starts in Pondicherry.
It's a crazy-sounding, but increasingly plausible tale of an Indian boy, Pi, who is shipwrecked en route to Canada, and manages to save himself plus a baboon, a hyena, a zebra and a royal bengal tiger, all also en route to new lives as a result of Pi's father owning and running a zoo.
This is where the blurb misleads.... I had expected a cosy surreal chat between the species to while away the days until they were miraculously saved, but it is not so. Pi's story deals with the survival of the fittest, leaving no room for queasiness or cowardice as he figures out how to survive with a hungry tiger, a life-raft and emergency kit and supplies for company.
And survive he does (as you find out before the cast-adrift story starts, so no spoiler there!), but by dint of determination, ingenuity and good luck.
Buy it: Amazon link
Purchased by Hazel in a Books etc 3 for 2 offer for "easy holiday reading" we both polished this off in a short day. It's nothing spectacular, but fine for a beach read and satisfies the need (?) for reminders of home, basically being a tale that combines starting university with University Challenge, with a veneer of a love story.
Buy it: Amazon link
I've not read any crime for ages, and picked this up second hand in Hereford over the summer. A good choice for a return to the genre, with a macabre story played out by a range of interesting characters. It reminds me of CSI: american-set, coroner/pathologist-investigated crime. If you enjoy that, you'll enjoy this.
Amazon.co.uk link: Cruel and Unusual - Patricia Cornwell
Amazon.co.uk list: Kay Scarpetta Collection (in order)
A hefty historical novel, but an interesting one, telling the tale of the Tudor court from the perspective of a jewish girl growing up through the Spanish Inquisition and Reformation Europe. The bulk of the novel set in England as it slowly and painfully progresses through the decades of religious strife - from Henry VIII's opportune adoption of protestantism through the short reign of Edward VI and the burnings under Catholic Mary I to an eventually more tolerant era under Elizabeth I. It's an unusual angle and a riveting read, mixing well known facts with the more personal insights allowed by fiction.
Buy it: Amazon link
I wasn't too sure about reading a collection of travelogues whilst lazing on the beach in India - I thought that Gavin Young's collection might make me miss our more usual exploratory-type holidays. Fortunately, my fears proved unfulfilled. This collection provides insights into countries and peoples far and wide, over many years, and most of which were originally published as pieces in The Observer. For me, the section covering the 20 or so years Young spent in Vietnam, and his friendship with a vietnamese family in Hue was the most memorable - and the most heart-rending.
One of my favourite travel books and travel writers - and in looking up The Observer link, I've discovered he died in 2001.
Buy it: Amazon link
Do believe the Hype!
This present-day-historical-whodunnit-cum-religious-conspiracy gripped me, and I read it in a day, not wanting to take a break even for the daily G&T on the verandah (and that's saying something).
Hazel and I were not the only ones devouring Da Vinci - I don't think there was a single party on Le Meridien Kovalam Beach's beach who didn't have a copy for their holiday read.... we saw versions in English, Spanish, Swedish and German.
Buy it: amazon link
...... although reading the reviews on the website, I'd say that if you are a Holy Grail connoisseur, or looking for something deep and meaningful in a novel, this holiday blockbuster isn't the book for you.
On the other hand, if you're after a bit of escapist holiday/commuting/bedtime reading, which teases out half remembered bits of information on christianity and (western) european history, and weaves them all together into a believable narrative (so long as - like me - you don't analyse every plot line), then you should enjoy this book!
Great chicklit (written by a bloke - so is that blokelit?) set in Birmingham (which gave it extra brownie points from me), with a techie-yet-cool leading man who returns home from NY to "celebrate" his 30th birthday, having first split up with his girlfriend.
Lots of nostalgia (even if you don't come from Brum, although being bornin the 1970s must help), lots of familiar events and emotions - revolving reaching the dreaded (it's not that bad!!) Three-O, and lots of humanity in there too - as one of the amazon reviewers says, "Buy it, read it and you will see yourself in there somewhere.".
Buy it:Amazon link
I felt obliged to start my holiday reading with this edition of Granta I'd picked up in Hereford, but I'm glad that I did as it provided lots of historical background to post-Independence India, some of which I was able to enlighten Hazel with during our fortnight in Kerala.
As with other Granta specials, this one combines fact and fiction, this time around the theme of India's Golden Jubilee.
Buy it: Amazon link