Category Archives: Book I’ll Forget I Read

January 29, 2024 · 3:41 pm

Cormoran Strike: Six Audiobooks to Replace the Podcasts

If you, like me, are struggling to stop listening to All the Politics Podcasts because none of them make you feel anything other than deep worry for the world and sadness and whatcanyoudoanyway, then let me offer you the suggestion of murder mystery audiobooks.

There are two types of audiobooks: those you need to listen to closely and carefully – say literary fiction and those that you can have on in the background while you clean, make lunches, drive. If you are aiming to replace podcasts – that perfect medium for doing something else while listening – then you need the second category. The books that have enough plot and enough repetition of that plot that if you stop paying attention for a few minutes, say to take the clothes out of the dryer, you haven’t missed some crucial piece of character development.

And here is where the Cormoran Strike mysteries shine. Lots of repetition of key plot points as the two detectives, Cormoran and Robin, discuss their investigations, crushingly slow development of their romantic relationship, near endless reminders that Cormoran has an amputated leg and likes greasy food.

What does not work as well is the muddling of the murder investigations themselves. Lots of characters involved – in one of the books, Ink Black Heart, there are eight or so characters who have both internet names and real world names and you have to try to match each to each while only paying Half Attention. It doesn’t work very well. So you really have to accept that you’ll always be a little unsure of who is who in the murder investigation, or maybe actually read the books.

Having finished all six I can’t claim these are the best murder mysteries out there – probably hovering more like average – but I will say I am very glad to have purged my life of endless speculation about the 2024 election and reporting of polls that don’t matter anyway. So if you have another series to recommend, let me know.

Leave a comment

Filed under Book I'll Forget I Read, Mystery

Tagged as , , , , ,

December 22, 2023 · 4:08 pm

Home: Slow and beautiful

I have tried a couple of times to read Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead but each time gave up with boredom (despite it being routinely included on best-of-all-time lists). So what made me think I’d fine the second book set in the town of Gilead and focused on religion to be more captivating, I’m not sure. But I was! More captivated that is. Still not going to run away with any prizes for being enthralling or Utterly Engrossing, but definitely a winner here in the slow burn of character development and theme.

The book follows Jack and Glory, siblings returned home to care for their dying father – a retired minister. I guess Jack didn’t really come home to care for him, or Glory either, both sort of find their lives falling apart and return home, conveniently to care for the dying dad. For Jack it’s a return after a long exile/absence and for his father this is something of a chance to redeem Jack (who’s soul he has been Very Worried About).

Unfolding over many scenes of making tea, or standing in a garden, or rocking on a porch bench, Glory and Jack reconnect and cautiously share and build trust. It asks readers to figure out where the limit of familial bond might be, how we carry/negotiate/give up/fail/rebuild familial expectations, and when – if ever – we might be allowed to start our lives again when they Go Wrong.

If you are tired, sleepy, exhausted, even a bit likely to doze, I’d say make this a Morning Book as you will almost certainly fall asleep within a paragraph as the lyrical writing and slowwww pace are very… lulling. But if you’ve got your 8 hours and a cup of coffee, you could do much worse for a book to read and contemplate What It All Means.

Leave a comment

Filed under American literature, Book I'll Forget I Read, Fiction, National Book Award, Orange Prize, Prize Winner

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

November 10, 2023 · 9:15 pm

One Last Thing Before I Go: Meh

Created with Dalle3: create an image to accompany a book review about the book One Last Thing Before I Go

Jonathan Tropper’s One Last Thing Before I Go has a nice conceit: protagonist Drew Silver is a washed up musician, divorce husband, absent father and disconnected son and brother. In the early chapters he has some kind of Heart Incident (that sounds entirely made up) that means if he doesn’t have surgery he can drop dead at any moment. And because he thinks his life isn’t worth living he declines the surgery, choosing instead some kind of protracted surprise suicide. For the remaining time he has he makes a list of what he will do that boils down to be a better father and man. It does, and doesn’t, go well.

But while this reader found the first few chapters a sort of delight in the creative descriptions of misery, these quickly wore and became grating and predictable. Likewise, the initial interest that the somewhat novel plot offers wanes as it becomes pretty clear that he’s not going to die and will get the surgery in the end and so any suspense or emotional investment just kind of… peters out.

That said there are some funnier moments and some gentle scenes of someone Trying To Be Better. But I’d file this one away under mostly forgettable, if somewhat heart warming (but not so heart warming as to cause a Heart Incident).

Leave a comment

Filed under Book I'll Forget I Read

Tagged as ,

August 18, 2023 · 7:13 pm

Promise Falls Trilogy: That’s where I’ve been for three months

For those of you keeping track, it’s been awhile since I posted. And that’s because I let myself read Linwood Barclay’s Promise Falls trilogy (Broken Promise, Far From True, The Twenty-Three). Guys. None of them are that good. (If you were I. you’d launch into a thing about how great Tana French is and how she’s the only mystery writer you should read, but I like to give new mysteries a ride).

Why then, why did I persist? Inertia? Guilt because I’d taken all three from the ‘take a book leave a book’ shelf at the local coffee shop and the barrista had given me the side eye for taking three books and leaving none? Deep moral failing? I don’t know. But I did.

They’re just not all that captivating, the detective isn’t endearing, the mysteries themselves don’t feel like there’s too much at stake (even when the town’s water supply is poisoned you’re sort of like shrug).

So… skip, pass, move on. And deep apologies for wasting so much of my own time. Like it was so bad I just read My Name is Lucy Barton and only realized in the last twenty pages that I’d already read it. Like I needed some kind of palate cleanse… Anyway.

Leave a comment

Filed under Book I'll Forget I Read, Mystery

Tagged as , , , , , ,