Author: Kate Gardner

I live in Bristol and I like to read books and share what I thought about them here. I read mostly general or literary fiction, with pretty much every genre making an appearance from time to time. I love to receive comments, whether you've read the same books or not!

You start off as coal and you end up as coal

Midnight LibraryThe Midnight Library
by Matt Haig

This novel was selected by my work book club, and it was a classic example of my having loved a book until I started to talk about it with other people, at which point I found many flaws. I love Matt Haig and his style is very readable, so I think I probably did notice some of this book’s problems while I read, but skimmed over them. And I would still recommend this book, just with a little commentary about my reservations.

The problems begin with the premise itself. Nora is having a terrible day and as midnight approaches, she attempts suicide. But instead of leading her to death or a hospital bed, she finds herself in a magical library where every book represents a version of her life. The librarian tells her that she can try on these variants of her life to see if any of them fits her better than the life she just tried to leave. If she isn’t happy there, she will return to the library.

The librarian explains that these lives are based on decisions that Nora made, so she can’t choose a life where someone else’s decision was different, only those where she opted for something else. To help guide her choices, Nora is given a book of regrets. She has many regrets, but if she can undo all those decisions will it make her life a happier one?

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A brief rain shower, sweeping swiftly across the valley, gently moistening the parched leaves

The Harmony Silk FactoryThe Harmony Silk Factory
by Tash Aw

This novel seemed to have all the right elements for me to love it, but I’m not sure I even liked it. I see a lot of Goodreads reviewers have called it 2/3 a good novel and I can see their point, but I think it fails long before the final section that others disliked.

Set in Malaysia, with its key events taking place in the 1940s, this is ostensibly the story of Jonny Lim, a poor country boy turned wealthy textile merchant, but his story is told through the lens of three narrators who all think they knew him far better than their accounts suggest is true. Was Jonny a Communist leader, a gangster, a murderer, a traitor? His son Jasper thinks so, but his account appears to be the least reliable of all.

Jasper is the first narrator. Following his father’s death, he is trying to piece together Jonny’s life from a combination of official documents, his own memories, rumours and a generous dose of his own imagination. His unreliability is so thickly laid on that I found it tedious rather than mysterious. There is some satisfaction to be had from seeing some of the events later through another perspective and finding a version of the truth that rings truer, but a lot of what Jasper covers is never revisited, so it can only ever be pure speculation.

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February 2021 reading round-up

Beckett and a book

It finally feels like spring is here. I have more energy with each week that passes. And it’s way easier keeping a dog with very long fur clean when it’s dry weather for a few days in a row.

This month’s reading was pretty good. Five books, of which I loved two. I watched some pretty trashy films but for a genuinely good watch, I highly recommend The Handmaiden.

Here’s to a March of walks, bike rides and more good books.

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The spiteful snake that slithers out of her tongue to hurt her mother

Girl Woman OtherGirl, Woman, Other
by Bernardine Evaristo

This novel is funny, smart and encompasses so much through the specifics of its 12 narrators.

It starts and ends with Amma, a playwright who, after years of struggling to make ends meet while making gay, feminist art, is finally on the brink of success. Subsequent narrators include her daughter, mother and closest friends, as well as people who seem to be unconnected at first. We’re given a potted history of each person along with some degree of meeting them “now”, learning how they are connected to Amma and her premiere.

Evaristo’s style is engaging; sometimes funny and sometimes serious; issues-driven without sacrificing storytelling. What is most immediately noticeable is that it is written in fragments not sentences, which seemed like it might be challenging, but I loved it. It gives the novel a quality similar to natural conversation but more elegant.

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January 2021 reading round-up

Beckett and a book

This post is delayed because my laptop once again almost died. Tim saved my sanity and my wallet by fixing it, but I suspect I will need to budget for a replacement in the next year or so.

I read six books in January, which isn’t bad at all for someone who was constantly sleep-deprived. My favourites were Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo and Arabella by Georgette Heyer, which I guess were also written in the most straightforward style, so maybe I shouldn’t be attempting anything too experimental at the moment.

In other book-related cultural stuff, I watched the TV series Bridgerton (as apparently did half the planet), which is delightful frothy fun, and The Luminaries, which I enjoyed more than the book. I am also really enjoying Pose (currently on season one so no spoilers in the comments please!).

Top films I saw last month have to be Do The Right Thing (yes, I have only just watched it for the first time; I am trying to plug some of the gaps in my film education) and Good Vibrations, which is a wonderful celebration of the power of music.

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It’s hard to resign ourselves to making money out of those we love

To Leave With the ReindeerTo Leave With the Reindeer
by Olivia Rosenthal
translated from French by Sophie Lewis

I quite like books that are strange and hard to categorise, but I found this a little too weird, or at least too minimal in actual story. It’s certainly ambitious and I’m sure will have its fans.

A second-person narrative describes a woman from early childhood, trying to break free from her mother’s stronghold. One winter she fantasises that after Christmas she will leave with the reindeer, to wherever it is that they go after they have assisted Santa with his work. She desperately wants a pet, a wish that is never fulfilled. When she grows older this becomes a desire to work with animals. Her romantic relationships flounder until she figures out how to complete her separation from her mother.

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K-drama review: Itaewon Class

Itaewon Class poster
In Itaewon Class Park Saeroyi is a warmhearted man filled with revenge. He’s complicated.

This was a good series, leaning into some K-drama cliches while thoroughly confronting others. I chose it after only getting halfway through another K-drama (Record of Youth) before I had to give up on it for being homophobic (I also wasn’t especially gripped, possibly because I find its star Park Bo-gum wooden in everything). In response to that, I looked up a list of K-dramas with good LGBTQ representation.

Itaewon Class (2020 Showbox/JTBC/Netflix) takes a couple of episodes to get going, because it is heavily loaded with backstory. We meet Park Saeroyi (played by Park Seo-joon) on his first day at a new high school, where he stands up to the school bully only to find himself expelled for the trouble. The bully turns out to be Jang Geun-won (Ahn Bo-hyun), the oldest son of millionaire CEO Jang Dae-hee (Yoo Jae-myung) of Jangga Group, Korea’s largest food corporation. By coincidence Saeroyi’s father works for Jangga Group and his job is now under threat.

The Jang family’s abuse of power does not end there. Saeroyi’s father is killed in a hit and run in which a Jang is implicated, but the police turn a blind eye. When Saeroyi realises who is to blame he takes justice into his own hands, and winds up with a prison sentence for assault.

So when we next meet him he is a high-school dropout with a prison record and a need for revenge. He visits his old friend and first love Oh Soo-ah (Kwon Na-Ra) in her new home in the Seoul district of Itaewon, which he is instantly attracted to. It’s depicted as youthful, international, LGBTQ-friendly and buzzing with a party atmosphere. But before he can build a life here, he has a 10-year plan to earn enough money to implement his father’s dream of opening a pub.

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Best of 2020, books edition

Kate and BeckettI read 63 books last year, which is a better total than I feared it would be. Some of them were amazing books, some stretched my perspective, some purely entertained. Like many people, I am ashamed to say, 2020 was the first year when I put real effort into my anti-racism education, and I am now determined that will continue in my reading and in the rest of my life.

Of those 63 books, 40 were written by women and 12 were works in translation. A small change this year is that 17 of those books were non-fiction and only three were SF. But the real point of this post is my favourite reads of 2020, so here we go.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

Loving Sabotage by Amelie Nothomb

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

We That Are Young by Preti Taneja

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge

Circe by Madeline Miller

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

Giant Days Vol 13 by John Allison

The Smallest Lights in the Universe: a Memoir by Sara Seager

Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas by Maya Angelou

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December 2020 reading round-up

December reads

It’s been a cold, wet, grey end to a difficult year. Which means we’ve spent most of the last week curled up indoors with blankets and hot drinks. I think even Beckett is feeling the cold, despite her double fur coat, as she’s been cosying up to us more than she had for a couple of months. It’s either the cold, or she’s just grateful to have more of our attention while we’re not working for a week and a half. Next week could be stressful for her.

This month I finished seven books, which is pretty high for 2020, though it should be said that includes two books I started last month and one that I started in October. I blame Christmas and my dead/dying laptop for my not having written a book review despite having had a week of holiday.

I think I badly needed to unwind this past week. And the quantity of TV that I’ve watched suggests I’ve not done too badly at that. I have watched and thoroughly enjoyed both seasons of Home For Christmas, a Norwegian romcom about a nurse who lies to her family on 1 December that she has a boyfriend who she will be bringing to her parents’ on Christmas Eve, and then spends the next three weeks trying to find a suitable man. It’s not cheesy or simplistic, the characters are all interesting and varied, but it’s still fun and very Christmassy.

I also watched the first season of Dash & Lily, another show set in the run-up to Christmas, this time set in New York and based on the books by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. As there are multiple books I’m guessing they hope to do another season, but they probably couldn’t shoot it this year so the teen characters might look rather older when next we see them! This one was also enjoyable but quite cheesy and fluffy, and I am starting to get a little annoyed by the trope of the bubbly, happy-go-lucky girl being paired with a sulky, constantly negative boy.

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