The Year in Books: November

In October, I read a grand total of two books.  I think the last time I read so little was February last year when I was working my way through The Sea, The Sea.  I've just bought my first ever car (called Marigold.  When I told mum my car had a name she replied 'of course it does') and so my commute to work now involves a lot of concentrating on the motorway rather than concentrating on a book (and books are a lot more fun than the M27).  Whilst driving to work is undeniably easier, cheaper and generally quicker than getting the train (we'll ignore the day this week when due to the sheer volume of traffic it took me 45 minutes to move less than a mile) it does mean that I'm not doing as much reading.  In theory, I have more spare time in the evenings as I get home earlier than I would if I was on the train, but I seem to just fill this time with I'm not quite sure what.  

So what did I read?  Concentr8 by William Sutcliffe* which I thought sounded quite interesting.  Set slightly in the future, Concentr8 is a drug prescribed for children with ADHD and everyone seems to be on it.  Then it stops being prescribed and a few young people start rioting and the story goes from there.  It had such potential to be good but it didn't do very much for me in the end.  The chapters were short, the language seemed too made up (compared with the language used in A Clockwork Orange which also is made up but worked) and all the characters annoyed me.  Thankfully it was a quick read!

24 Hours by Claire Seeber* was a bit better, but not great.  Laurie is rescued from a hotel which is on fire, but her friend Emily dies.  However, medics get it wrong (I highly doubt this bit) and Emily is mistaken for Laurie.  Laurie thinks the fire was started in order to kill her, and she has 24 hours to rescue her young daughter before the killer(s) realise Laurie is actually still alive. Keeping up?  The book is labelled as 'a fast-paced, intelligent psychological thriller that will leave you breathless' but sadly I was let down by this. It wasn't fast-paced, it was quite long-winded and took a while to actually get anywhere.  I also found a lot of holes in the plot - I know authors are allowed artistic licence, but some inaccuracies are just inaccurate.  Also, I genuinely didn't care about the characters by the end, and when the plot strands came together (as I read the end of books first, I already knew whodunnit) I had no particularly feelings about any of it.  It kept me occupied on a train journey to London, but it wasn't as good as I thought it could have been

Award for most interesting photo of a Kindle?

Oh, I've just looked through my Kindle and I started another book, which clearly didn't stick with me as I'd forgotten all about it.  The Little Red Chairs by Edna O'Brien*. Apparently I got 7% of the way through this before giving up.  You'll have to google it to learn anything else about it as clearly I have nothing to divulge!

Maybe I just need to find a good book to get me out of a reading rut.  Although that's the problem, you never know a book is going to be good until you actually start to read it.  I had Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin on my bookshelf for years before I read it, and I loved it so much I wish I'd read it sooner.  I just need to get my reading kick started!

Joining in with Laura.

*These books were made available to me through NetGalley for the purpose of review.  All thoughts and opinions are, of course, my own.