March Update and Sunday Post

Spring is here, it’s official. We have just about recovered from the shock of switching over to British Summer time and have been taking advantage of the lighter evenings already.

I had a mammoth walk on Good Friday exploring a part of Dartmoor that I have only seen from the other side of the river and found an impressive line of standing stones over 500 meters long (well they are marked on the map, but it was better in person). I am feeling a little bit battered today, 24 km is further than my legs are used to.

We have been enjoying the lack of alarm clocks over the weekend but I seem to wake up at the crack of dawn regardless. I guess it is the curse of getting older.

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Recursion

by Blake Crouch

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Well that was a mind fuck. It was not what I expect it to be and even though it was a total page turner I had to put it down several times especially during the first half when we find out what the whole thing is about.

The Shape of Darkness

by Laura Purcell

Sophie Aldred (Narrator)

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

What a wonderful Gothic ghost story. So many twists and turns that it was like sitting on a Victorian roller coaster and the one right at the end was a huge surprise, but also inevitable. Told in two first person accounts one from Grace, a spinster who makes her living by cutting or painting silhouette portraits otherwise known as shades. The other POV Pearl, we see the shady world of spiritualism. She is a young girl a spirit medium tightly controlled and abused by her older sister.

The Asylum

by Karen Coles

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

A wonderful Gothic novel about woman in a lunatic asylum at the beginning of the 20th century. Mental health care was a thing of abuses and punishment in the guise of treatment and symptom control and this is where we find Maude.
At the start of the narrative Maude remembers very little, barely her name. She is helped to remember with the help of a young, kind, forward thinking doctor who is trained in hypnotism. Part of this story is her life in the asylum and the other, the memories of her past and the traumatic events which led to the repression of her memories and the subsequent amnesia.
A very engaging and accomplished debut. I shall be publishing my full review very soon.

Normal People

Sally Rooney

Aoife McMahon (Narrator)

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

An interesting book cataloguing the relationship of two intelligent but utterly messed up teenagers becoming messed up adults. Conner is a bit of an arsehole and is quite happy to have sex with Marianne but won’t tell his friends about it because he’s too worried about being rejected. Marianne’s acceptance of this on the other hand is understandable due to her utterly messed up family life. The ending was far too abrupt and left it all far too unresolved for my taste.

As this is a monthly as well as a weekly review I get to choose my best read for the month. Of all the books I finished this month, this one was my only five star read and a very easy pick.

The Midnight Library

by Matt Haig

Do believe the hype. This magical realism book touched my heart in ways books normally don’t manage and this hasn’t faded in the weeks since I finished it. Yes it is a little sentimental but I loved it. One woman’s journey through a myriad of alternative lives to find her way towards self acceptance.

I have nearly finished both Midnight Children and the Stand but I think I will steer clear of any more really long books in April.

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I have been reading a lot in March with a total of 20 books, six audio-books, three netgalley ARC’s. I also seem to be having a bit of a non fiction binge this month.

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I will be linking this to the Sunday Post over at the Caffeinated Book Reviewer , Stacking the Shelves over at Tynga’s Reviews, The Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz and then It’s Monday What are you Reading at The Book Date. And as this is a monthly post: the Monthly Wrap-Up Round-Up at Feed Your Fiction Addiction and Best of the Bunch over at A Cocoon of Books.