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Solo Reading Retreat - Day Four
Aug. 26th, 2024 06:59 pmIn my usual way with reading retreats, I ultimately set myself a goal and then felt like I was in competition with myself to meet it - sigh. However, I also discovered an excellent reading nook in the corner of the living room, on our new bean bag, with a very convenient coffee table at my elbow for books, journals, colouring books, and - of course - tea!
Anyway, I ended up reading four books in four days (total of around 1400 pages), which made me very happy. Though, sadly, I would say they were all solidly three-star reads, so it wasn't perhaps as great a retreat as it could have been.
Shadow by Karin Alvtegen:
This book had an intriguing opening with a young boy abandoned at a Swedish theme park, followed by a council estate administrator going through the flat of a recently deceased 92-year-old woman.
Then it disappeared into five other viewpoints, which essentially started the story over and over again with character backgrounds and little to link them all together. All the characters were also miserable and unlikeable (except the estate administrator, who unfortunately was barely in it), existing in very dysfunctional circumstances.
It was all extremely well observed, with all the characters being (rather depressingly) realistic - but there was very little momentum or sense of real suspense.
It kept me reading all the way through - though I saw two of the big reveals coming a mile off and the other two were, I felt, unnecessarily unpleasant.
The overall message seemed to be that people are generally terrible, which was a bit of a downer - though it was all very well written.
The Horses Know by Lynn Mann:
What to say about this?
Well, it was a very unexpected find in an Enfield charity shop I'd never noticed before...
Clearly self-published, it really could have used a better editor, since there were a lot of issues with dialogue punctuation, run-on sentences and a flagrant disregard for the correct number of commas - which was a bit of a shame.
Still, it was a very interesting set-up - a post-apocalyptic world where there's been a rejection of urbanisation and technology but an apparent discovery of mind magic, which enables people to manipulate flesh, bone, metal, wood, plants and other materials to heal and craft things more quickly. There are also fully sentient, telepathic horses, who select individual humans to bond with (and who doesn't want to be specially chosen by a magic horse???), to help people towards greater enlightenment.
Though, of course, it's much more important for the humans to learn lessons and discover the path to enlightenment for themselves, so the horses are irritatingly enigmatic.
I loved the acknowledgement that horses have very different attitudes and thought processes to humans, which led to some misunderstandings and bafflement on both sides - though the technical aspects of the problems with riding the horses felt a bit weird (as someone who rode for nearly 30 years).
The plot and characterisations also seemed secondary to the very blunt messaging in a lot of places - it's often more of a treatise on Buddhism than it is a story, with a lot of telling, a lot of didactic speechifying and some very on-the-nose exploration of human exploitation of animals.
So, while I agreed with a lot of what it had to say, and I did like a lot of the characters, I'm not sure I would call this a wholly successful novel. There was also rather too much use of all caps...
Shiner by Amy Jo Burns:
This turned out to be another in a subset of books I've come across that could loosely be described as 'Appalachian grim' - following the story of Wren, who grows up in isolation at the top of a mountain with a strict preacher father and downtrodden mother.
It's very raw, very sad, very grim, but very well-observed and put together in an interesting way with a couple of unexpected switches in timeline and viewpoint to gradually build up the whole story. I did think it got a bit too convoluted towards the end and eventually seemed to suggest that everything was pointlessly tragic in a rather unrelenting way that didn't support the ultimately (sort of) hopeful conclusion.
Not a particularly jolly read, but well written.
Anyway, I ended up reading four books in four days (total of around 1400 pages), which made me very happy. Though, sadly, I would say they were all solidly three-star reads, so it wasn't perhaps as great a retreat as it could have been.
Shadow by Karin Alvtegen:
This book had an intriguing opening with a young boy abandoned at a Swedish theme park, followed by a council estate administrator going through the flat of a recently deceased 92-year-old woman.
Then it disappeared into five other viewpoints, which essentially started the story over and over again with character backgrounds and little to link them all together. All the characters were also miserable and unlikeable (except the estate administrator, who unfortunately was barely in it), existing in very dysfunctional circumstances.
It was all extremely well observed, with all the characters being (rather depressingly) realistic - but there was very little momentum or sense of real suspense.
It kept me reading all the way through - though I saw two of the big reveals coming a mile off and the other two were, I felt, unnecessarily unpleasant.
The overall message seemed to be that people are generally terrible, which was a bit of a downer - though it was all very well written.
The Horses Know by Lynn Mann:
What to say about this?
Well, it was a very unexpected find in an Enfield charity shop I'd never noticed before...
Clearly self-published, it really could have used a better editor, since there were a lot of issues with dialogue punctuation, run-on sentences and a flagrant disregard for the correct number of commas - which was a bit of a shame.
Still, it was a very interesting set-up - a post-apocalyptic world where there's been a rejection of urbanisation and technology but an apparent discovery of mind magic, which enables people to manipulate flesh, bone, metal, wood, plants and other materials to heal and craft things more quickly. There are also fully sentient, telepathic horses, who select individual humans to bond with (and who doesn't want to be specially chosen by a magic horse???), to help people towards greater enlightenment.
Though, of course, it's much more important for the humans to learn lessons and discover the path to enlightenment for themselves, so the horses are irritatingly enigmatic.
I loved the acknowledgement that horses have very different attitudes and thought processes to humans, which led to some misunderstandings and bafflement on both sides - though the technical aspects of the problems with riding the horses felt a bit weird (as someone who rode for nearly 30 years).
The plot and characterisations also seemed secondary to the very blunt messaging in a lot of places - it's often more of a treatise on Buddhism than it is a story, with a lot of telling, a lot of didactic speechifying and some very on-the-nose exploration of human exploitation of animals.
So, while I agreed with a lot of what it had to say, and I did like a lot of the characters, I'm not sure I would call this a wholly successful novel. There was also rather too much use of all caps...
Shiner by Amy Jo Burns:
This turned out to be another in a subset of books I've come across that could loosely be described as 'Appalachian grim' - following the story of Wren, who grows up in isolation at the top of a mountain with a strict preacher father and downtrodden mother.
It's very raw, very sad, very grim, but very well-observed and put together in an interesting way with a couple of unexpected switches in timeline and viewpoint to gradually build up the whole story. I did think it got a bit too convoluted towards the end and eventually seemed to suggest that everything was pointlessly tragic in a rather unrelenting way that didn't support the ultimately (sort of) hopeful conclusion.
Not a particularly jolly read, but well written.
