What I've been reading: January and February

Home Fire by Kamila Shamshie was given to me by my mum, who said she enjoyed it despite it not being a book she would have picked up had it not been for her book group.  It's not a book I would have chosen either, but I loved it - it's about three Muslim siblings, their jihadi father and their wider family and communities.  An incredibly gripping story and a heartbreaking ending.

I'm not sure from where I got this copy of Hot Milk by Deborah Levy - I'm guessing it came from our favourite local charity shop warehouse.  Slightly odd story about a daughter who moves with her mother to Spain for the latter to be treated for her mysterious chronic illness by a local renowned doctor.

I think the aforementioned charity shop warehouse has had quite a lot of donations over the last couple of months, as when I went in there towards the end of January there was a great deal of new stock, and many of the bookcases contained titles I'd not seen there before.  There were several Maggie O'Farrell books (I'm regretting not buying them all) and I chose Instructions for a Heatwave.

I loved it.  Absolutely loved it.  During the heatwave of 1976, a retired father goes out for the newspaper but doesn't come back.  His disappearance makes his adult children come back together as they help their mother unpick elements of their family history.  The dialogue is gorgeous and I am on the look out for more books by her, as I think I'm going to enjoy them.

I'm making an effort this year to read more of the NetGalley books I have on my Kindle.  Quite a few I requested a long time ago and I am trying to be better at reading them more promptly and giving feedback (and not requesting quite so many in the first place when I know I may not get round to reading them for a while!).

The Glass Woman by Caroline Lea* is set in 17th century Iceland and perfect for reading in the winter as goodness, it is cold!  It's a story of a young woman trying to find her place in a family, a household, and a community.  Something completely different, Diary of a Drag Queen by Crystal Rasmussen* is pretty much what it says on the tin: I quite liked it and in places it's quite a contrast to what you may see of drag queens in the media such as Drag Race.  Not for the faint-hearted or easily offended, though, much like In At The Deep End by Kate Davies* which follows Julia as she learns more about love, lust and pleasure.  I requested Your Heart is a Muscle The Size of a Fist by Sunil Yapa* well over a year ago and it was on the third 'page' of my Kindle so I kept forgetting about it when I was looking for something new to read.  Funnily enough, I heard someone mention this fact at work, which reminded me of this title and I started reading it the same week. Set during the WTO protest in Seattle in 1999, the book explores the key characters' reasons and motivations for being there on that day - I really enjoyed it, and shouldn't have waited so long to read it!

Notwithstanding by Louis de Bernieres and Tell Tale by Jeffrey Archer are both collections of short stories, which I've found myself reading more in the past couple of years than I think I ever have done.  Notwithstanding contains stories of English rural village life, with some gorgeous and memorable characters and that charm which in turns is funny ha-ha and funny weird.  I've not read any Archer books before, but I did enjoy these short stories and he's definitely an author I want to read again.

The Wind on the Moon by Eric Linklater, Guys and Dolls by Damon Runyon, and It Only Happens in the Movies by Holly Bourne were all library book selections.  The Wind on the Moon is a children's book written in the 1940s and I generally love books written in the early to mid 20th century but this just didn't do it for me and to be honest, I can barely remember what it was about.  I adore Holly Bourne's books and I think This Only Happens in the Movies is the only one I hadn't yet read, so I had to borrow it when I saw it on the YA shelf.  Not my favourite of hers (that would be The Spinster Club trilogy) but it's a good story nonetheless about a teenage couple who meet whilst working at the local cinema.  I admit to not knowing Guys and Dolls the musical was originally a short story, and this gap in my knowledge was enough to make me pick up this collection.  It's one of my favourite musicals, but the stories just weren't the same.  I wonder if it would have been better to have read the stories first? 

Doctors at War by Mark De Rond and Paramedics On and Off the Streets: Emergency Medical Services in the Age of Technological Governance by Michael K. Corman were books I've read indirectly for work.  The former is an ethnographic study of doctors working in Afghanistan and the latter is about paramedics in Canada.  I've always been interested in ethnographic research and pre-hospital medicine, and these books were both insightful and moving.  I have a lot of respect for the clinicians the authors met.

A varied couple of months!

*Sent by the publishers via NetGalley - all thoughts and opinions are, of course, my own.