How to Read the Air

Title: How to Read the Air
Author: Dinaw Mengestu
Pages: 325 (paperback)
Published: January 1st 2012
Published by: Vintage Books

Following the death of his father Yosef, Jonas Woldemariam feels compelled to make sense of the volatile generational and cultural ties that have forged him. Leaving behind his marriage and job in New York, he sets out to retrace his mother and father's honeymoon as young Ethiopian immigrants and weave together a family history that will take him from the war-torn country of his parents' youth to a brighter vision of his life in America today. In so doing, he crafts a story- real or invented-that holds the possibility of reconciliation and redemption.

Jonas Woldmariam is a first generation African immigrant. His father arrived in the USA after much arduous journeying (though we're never explicitly, clearly or definitively told how) and his mother arrived some three years later. They'd been married four years, and spent the majority of that time apart. Jonas tries to imagine what those first months must have been like for them based on what he's been told, mostly by his mother, but he takes quite a lot of liberty imagining what they both might have been thinking. Intertwined with the story of their 'honeymoon' is bits of pieces of Jonas growing up, his life with his soon-to-be-ex-wife Angela, and some parts of him retracing the footsteps of his parents as they set out on their ill-fated honeymoon.

This was a present, and is not a book I would have bought myself. And it wasn't a bad book per se, just not my kind of thing at all. It was readable, but I didn't find myself caring for the characters. In fact I actively disliked Jonas' parents, for all that both of them have been through. Yes, some of what they do is more than likely made up by Jonas and how he feels about both of them, but they are both malicious people in their own way.

Jonas, as a complete counterpart, doesn't seem to have a malicious bone in his body. He's a very nice guy. But that's all he is - nice. He's not particularly compelling as a character, and he seems to spend most of his time doing exactly what is expected of him, or just lying to people to make it look like he is. How does he manage to not be malicious and lie? I'm not sure, but both are true in my mind. He lies to create the image that he is living 'the American dream', not setting out to hurt people even if that may be the way things work out.

When it come to the storyline, I was expecting there to be be more to his parents' American history than there was and was kinda let down by the lack in that storyline. And although I did quite like the recent-past history of Jonas and Angela, from the blurb I was expecting it to be more about him following in their footsteps and seeing them adjusting to American life or whatever with maybe references back to the life he has left behind. Instead it was more the other way around.

Maybe I should have gone into this book with more of an open mind. Maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't been expecting not to. But it was what I expected in that regard, and at the same time not at all what I expected in terms of the storyline.

This is How You Lose Her - Competition!

Title: This is How You Lose Her
Author: Junot Diaz
Pages: 213 (paperback)
Published: August 2012
Published by: Faber & Faber

The eagerly awaited new collection from Junot Díaz, Pulitzer Prize-winner and bestselling author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

Junot Díaz's first book, Drown, established him as a major new literary voice - 'a strong, fresh, authentic talent' (Hanif Kureishi) - and his first novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao topped bestseller lists. His new collection, This Is How You Lose Her, is about the haunting, impossible power of love - passionate love, illicit love, fading love, maternal love.

On a beach in Santo Domingo, a doomed relationship flounders; in the heat of a hospital laundry room in New Jersey, a woman does her lover's washing and thinks about his wife; in Boston, a man buys his love-child, his only son, his first baseball kit. At the centre of these stories is the irrepressible, irresistible voice of Yunior, a young Dominican finding his way in New Jersey. As he and his family persist through broken promises, broken hearts and painful longing, passion, as always, triumphs over experience.

In prose that is endlessly energetic, inventive, tender and funny, This Is How You Lose Her lays bare the infinite longing and inevitable weaknesses of the human heart.

I won this book from the lovely people over at Dewey's 24-hour read-a-thon, and it wasn't quite what I was expecting. I didn't realise it was a series of short stories, expecting more of a Love Actually inter-connected thing to be going on. And if I had...well, I tend not to read short stories because I don't like the constant switching and changing.

But not all the stories were unrelated: most of them were about Yunior and various relationships he has throughout his life, though not in chronological order so it takes a bit of effort to get it all in the right order in your head, holding what you know has already happened (or will happen) and trying to fit the next story in with what you've already read.

The central character of each story is from Santo Domingo - the capital of the Dominican Republic - but currently living in New York city. The are all bilingual, slipping into their native Spanish for odd words or sentences here and there. This is nice and authentic I know, but my Spanish is woeful, so for the odd words it didn't really matter that I didn't understand what it meant, but the full sentences caused more issue. Yeah, I could have had like Google translate open next to me, but I didn't want to be breaking off doing that what would have been every few minutes in places. This aside, it was a relatively easy book to read: I never actually struggled with the writing itself.

The stories themselves were enjoyable enough, all looking at failed or difficult relationships, most of them revolving around cheating. Is this a cultural thing? I don't know many people who've had relationships end because of cheating, and it is certainly stated a number of times than Santo Domingo men tend to be like that so maybe. Still, it did present a pretty dismal view of relationships. Which I suppose I should have seen coming given the title, but there you go! A little more variation may have made it slightly more interesting for me: after a while, if it didn't state straight off that they were cheating I was waiting for it to happen.

So while it was a good book and probably deserves a higher rating, with one thing and another it just wasn't particularly for me, unfortunately.

Since I won this book I decided to pass it forward! If you would like to win this book (in very good condition - I try my very hardest to look after my books!) just leave a comment below. I'll leave it open for two weeks and then randomly select a winner!

Battle Royale

Title: Battle Royale
Author: Koushun Takami
Translator: Yugi Oniki
Pages: 617 (paperback)
Published: February 26th 2003 (originally published 1999)
Published by: VIZ, LLC

Koushun Takami's notorious high-octane thriller is based on an irresistible premise: a class of junior high school students is taken to a deserted island where, as part of a ruthless authoritarian program, they are provided arms and forced to kill one another until only one survivor is left standing. Criticized as violent exploitation when first published in Japan - where it then proceeded to become a runaway bestseller - Battle Royale is a Lord of the Flies for the 21st century, a potent allegory of what it means to be young and (barely) alive in a dog-eat-dog world. Made into a controversial hit movie of the same name, Battle Royale is already a contemporary Japanese pulp classic, now available for the first time in the English language.

A class of school children and put on a island and told to kill each other off until there is only one person left alive: it's kill or be killed. They are each given a weapon, ranging from incredibly useful (a machine gun) to completely useless (a fork). How do you trust people in this situation? Even those you've been friends with for you whole life?

Whilst this isn't a book I think I'll ever read again I'm so glad I have read it once, because I was almost put off by the level of violence I was told was in it. This is a violent book, and sometimes a little unnecessarily so, but not to the level I was expecting from what I'd heard. I'm quite a squeamish person and there were a couple of bits that I struggled with but it wasn't too bad for the most part.

This was my first foray into Japanese literature and the style was a little unusual in places and I found myself actually laughing, somewhat inappropriately I'm sure, at some of the things in the narration. I also had trouble keeping track of who was who because I'm unfamiliar with the names and some of them were so similar, which I'm sure took something from the story. I'd be there trying to figure out who was who when two people ran into each other which was a little distracting at times but more a reflection of my inability than an actual criticism of the book.

As a psychology student, I found this book incredibly interesting as a study of human nature and how different people react in extremem situations. Obviously there are some who take to it like a fish to water; those who do what they need to simply to survive; and those who simply refuse to partake: the whole range is covered in this book in a great way. Confusion, fear and mistrust reign on the island, and make for a riveting read. People are second-guessing themselves and those they think they know and whole relationships fall apart right in front of your eyes, whilst others stand the test.There were also moments which were absolutely heart-breaking when tearful goodbyes were made.

Relatedly, the number of characters who claimed to love one of the others was just ridiculous! This may be a cultural thing which I'm missing, but it seemed like ever other person was in love with someone and for me that cheapened the emotion a little because I didn't believe it: they are only 15 and declarations of love are being made all over the spot. It seemed like a device to make the events more harrowing rather than a realistic reflection of that age group. One of the characters does wonder whether the situation is the cause of this which is possible, but so many seem to have been in love with the other person before 'The Program' began that I'm not sure of this.

The ending was a little obvious, though having said this there were genuinely incredibly tense times where I actually questioned whether I was right in my prediction which was wonderful. So often you never feel that the main characters are never in any real amount of danger; not so in this book, and for good reason!

Overall an amazing, fast-paced book that keeps you guessing and hoping and reading right to the very end.

Different Seasons

Title: Different Seasons
Author: Stephen King
Pages: 688 (paperback)
Published: November 1st 2007 (first published August 29th 1981)
Published by: Hodder

Each of the four stories, markedly different in tone and subject, present a journey: Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption is a tale of an innocent man who devises an exciting escape from prison; The Apt Pupil is the story of a golden schoolboy and an old man with a hideous past who join in a dreadful union; in The Body, four young boys venture into the woods and find life, death and the end of innocence and The Breathing Method is a macabre story told in a strange club of a woman determined to give birth…no matter what.

This book contains four novellas written by Stephen King: Rita Heyworth and Shawshank Redemption, Apt Pupil, The Body, and The Breathing Method. They are four very different stories (though there are some nice little links between them, as often pop up in King's work) but all well written, and very enjoyable.

Rita Heyworth and Shawshank Redemption is amazing - it's Shawshank! Andy Dufresne is sent to Shawshank Prison for the murder of his wife and her lover. He says he's innocent, but then so do a lot of people in there. We follow his life through his fellow prisoner - and later his friend - Red. The way it was written jumped around a little which I'm not a huge fan of, but makes sense in the medium. It's interesting to see the original and the stories are pretty much the same, though I've got to say I think I prefer the way the ending was reached in the film. This is probably because I saw the film first (and several times) and so in my head that's the way it's 'supposed' to be. And I think I read the whole thing in Morgan Freeman's voice!

Apt Pupil was completely engrossing and quite chilling. A teenage boy unearths a terrible secret about an old man, and his actions drastically change both their lives in the following years. They get enmeshed in this tangled relationship of mistrust that neither can escape because of its very nature. You see the way their relationship impacts them and changes them, and the ultimately disastrous outcome. Wonderful read.

The Body was a bit different. It follows four young boys as they go to look at a body in the woods: Gordy and his friends Toddy, Vern and Chris tell their parents they're going camping in a nearby field, but instead follow the train tracks up to where they've heard the body of a missing kid is. Not  a lot really happens, and I struggled a bit to get into it, but still liked it overall. The interactions of the 12-year-old boys were done well, though maybe it's a generational thing but their language seemed particularly foul for their age.

The Breathing Method was probably the creepiest of the stories in this collection. And the one which leaves the most unanswered. An old man goes to the meeting of his club a couple of days before Christmas and hears - as traditional - a story of the unnatural. We go back and see how he came to be a member of the club and some of the mysteries surrounding it. I found it a little annoying, namely in that tories are begun and never finished, and the mystery surrounding the club is hinted at but never really touched on. I would love for there to be more about this one! Unfortunately, there isn't anything that I can find...

All these books are enjoyable, and most of them wonderful in their own way. A great collection of short stories, and a nudge to me to read more short story collections.

Run With the Horsemen

Title: Run with the Horsemen

Author: Ferrol Sams

Series: Porther Osbourne Jr. #1

Pages: 422

Published: August 28th 1982

Published by: Peachtree Publishers

A boy's account of growing up through the rituals of life on an ancestral farm in middle Georgia between the big wars. It is a rueful, humorous story of the people in one rural county, but the telling cuts so deep it breaks through to the universal. Reminiscent of To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Sawyer, and The Catcher in the Rye, "Run with the Horsemen" is the powerfully moving and delightfully endearing story of Porter Osborne Jr.'s journey to adulthood.

It's deep-south USA during the Great Depression. Porter Osbourne Jr. is just doing his best to grow up among all the other stuff going on. Ambitious and intelligent, but also a consummate (thought not always intentional) trouble-maker, he's lives on a cotton plantation with his parents, sisters and much of his extended family, never mind the coloured people who work the farm with them. This books follows the first 15 or so years of his life.

I'm not entirely sure exactly at which point I began to love this book. It's just a series of stories - with a slightly unsatisfying end, at least up until the point where I was told it was the first in a series - about a boy growing up on a farm in Georgia during the depression. That's it. Just...stuff that happens to him, troubles he faces (and gets himself into) and him growing up.

But I do know why I love it. It is, I think, pretty much entirely because of the character of Porter Osbourne Jr. - most commonly referred to in the narrative simply as 'the boy'. He is determined and intelligent and kind-hearted, with quite a strong mischievous streak running through him which provides much entertainment for him and others, but also getting him into trouble on occasion. His father says something at the end of the fist chapter which I think sums him up brilliantly: "He's not a bad boy. He minds well. I just can't think of enough things to tell him not to do." But for all this, he is principled: he stands up for what he believes is right no matter what, and that is because of his parents.

You don't see much of his mother. She is present but not central, but he obviously loves her and she has done a wonderful job of bringing him up 'proper'. When it comes to his father, he teaches him some very good lessons but is very flawed. The start of the book put me in mind of To Kill a Mockingbird namely because of the setting I believe, but now I think about it, Porter Osbourne Sr. is similar to Atticus Finch, but a less perfect version. He does his best to bring up his children well and give them freedom to grow and learn, but he has some quite significant flaws of his which inhibit this somewhat, and he is a lot more absent that Atticus.

Each chapter is a self-contained little story and while some of them are better than others, all of them are enjoyable. Of course, with this comes the problem that most of the time, though the writing is engaging, there is a natural breaking point at the end of each chapter as whichever little story is wrapped up. Unfortunately, this makes it all too easy to put the book down at the end of each chapter, and is probably a lot of the reason why it took me as long as it did to read this book. On top of this, the very southern accents of the coloured staff made it difficult at times to understand just what was being said. I have minimal experience of this accent, so it may be that this is less of an issue for those who are more used to it, but it was a little difficult at times. 

Still, overall a very good book.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

Title: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
Series: Flavia de Luce #1
Author: Alan Bradley
Pages: 382 (paperback)
Published: January 19th 2010
Published by: Bantam

It is the summer of 1950 - and at the once-grand mansion of Buckshaw, young Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, is intrigued by a series of inexplicable events: A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Then, hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. "I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn't. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life."

I grew up reading Enid Blyton adventure books: kids running round and solving mysteries; The Famous Five mostly but also bits and pieces of The Secret Seven. They were set in a different time, when four children (and their dog) could go on holiday together and snoop around new places. Sweetness was recommended to me by a friend, and as soon as he told me about it this sort of the thing was the first thing that came to mind and I was quite excited by the idea.

Flavia is a fiercely independent 11-year-old girl living in a big old house in the English countryside. She has two very annoying older sisters and a passion for chemistry, a love which riddles the entire book in the form of her thoughts and role-models. She is clearly incredibly intelligent and has spent much time learning about all things chemical, aided by a laboratory inherited from a long dead relation - one of the benefits of an ancestral home I suppose! When a dead body turns up in the garden, Flavia wastes no time in trying to get to the bottom of what's going on.

Bradley has created a very good leading lady in Miss Flavia Sabina de Luce. She is smart and quick-witted, if a little forgetful at times. Some things are forgiveable given the amount she learns in such short spaces of time, but forgetting that the local post office will be shut on a Sunday and going wandering about the back of it because of it was a little unbelievable. Though of course you couldn't have had her and the plot kicking their heels for a day, waiting to find out certain important pieces of information.

And of course, this is still a crime novel so the there are the requisite lengthy expositions about the past so that motives can be uncovered, and the the big long explanation at the end where all the clues are brought together. All this is necessary, but these are the things I don't like about crime books and may be part of the reason I don't really read them any more.

Flavia is really the only central character; there are secondary characters with whom she interacts, but her main companion is herself and her musings are all internal. I think it would have been nice for her to have someone to bounce off of, and also so she wasn't working everything out for herself but I can understand why she is so solitary given the nature of her two sisters. Maybe this is something that may be built on further in the series? Though her companion would have to be quite brilliant in their own way to keep up with Miss de Luce!

The writing itself is very easy to read and very descriptive of the surroundings, maybe overly so at times. On a number of occasions I was actually pulled out of the story and noticed just how much description was being used and it was a little distracting, but then Flavia herself is very observant so it is the way she sees the world, and probably quite useful in all her sleuthing.

I don't really have any complaints about this book, but while it was very good it wasn't amazing. There maybe wasn't quite enough happening during her actual detecting: there was a big finish, but after the inital murder the rest of the story is just her finding out stuff. Still, a very enjoyable book, with a mystery with enough twists and turns to keep you guessing and a nice story all-round. A series I'm sure I'll carry on with at some point.

Captain Corelli's Mandolin

Title: Captain Corelli's Mandolin
Author: Louis de Bernieres
Pages: 534 (paperback)
Published: 1994
Published by: Vintage

It is 1941 and  Captain Antonio Corelli, a young Italian officer, is posted to the Greek island of Cephallonia as part of the occupying forces. At first he is ostracised by the locals, but as a conscientious but far from fanatical soldier, whose main aim is to have a peaceful war, he proves in time to be civilised, humorous - and a consummate musician.

When the local doctor's daughter's letters to her fiancé - and members  of the underground go unanswered, the working of the eternal triangle seems inevitable. But can this fragile love survive as a war of bestial savagery gets closer and the lines are drawn between invader and defender?

I'm not really a big fan of books about war, but between this and Birdsong by Sebatian Faulks my opinion is being changed. True, the focus isn't so much on the fighting itself as it is in Birdsong, but it is the backdrop and catalyst for all that happens. Yes, soldiers are followed, but the focus is really on Pelagia and her father and the way in which the war impacted normal people who had no way to fight back or get away.

It follows Pelagia during, and after, World War II as she lives in her little town on the Greek island of Cephalonia, and because the Greek/Italian side of the war isn't something I'm particularly familiar with I did find it quite interesting.

There is a great cast of characters - Velisarios and Lemoni were particular favourites of mine in terms of side characters - and you grow to care for Pelagia and her father Iannis as you follow their life before the war really hits them, and their struggles once it does. Various characters are followed throughout the book, all offering something in their viewpoint but some more easily read than others in my opinion. Iannis' (Pelagia's father) chapters were often concerned with his writing of his book 'A Personal History of Cephalonia' which served as a history lesson more than anything.

Rather unexpectedly, there were also a number of quite amusing characters and moments through the book - the simple shepherd who thinks a soldier parachuting in is a falling angel stands out for me in particular, as do various other parts relating to this 'angel'. Captain Corelli himself is also often amusing, and I think his character is my favourite of them all.


The writing in general seemed unnecessarily over-thought, and it often struck me that the author was using big words for the sake of it. His descriptions of the island itself, though, are wonderful and he paints a beautiful image of how it was before the war. I now really want to go there, even if by the end of the book the civilised world seems to have taken a lot of that away. There are various passages where we are faced with the reality of what it was like for soldiers fighting in this time and the sheer brutality of what they had to try to survive. Again, these parts and wonderfully written and because of this quite horrifying to read.

The last hundred pages or so are about life after the war, and whilst I think it is quite obvious to the reader what has gone on the, characters don't work it out. For this reason, I found it a little frustrating, but there were still some nice moments in there.

P.S. Nicolas Cage totally is not Captain Antonio Corelli.

Before I Go To Sleep

Title: Before I Go To Sleep

Author: S. J. Watson

Pages: 384 (paperback)

Published: January 2nd 2012

Published by: Black Swan

Memories define us.

So what if you lost yours every time you went to sleep?

Your name, your identity, your past, even the people you love - all forgotten overnight.

And the one person you trust may be telling you only half the story.

Welcome to Christine's life.

She wakes up not knowing who she is, or who the man sleeping next to her is. Assuming a drunken one-night stand, she creeps into the bathroom to escape and instead finds herself decades older than she was expecting and a mirror surrounded by photos of her with a man she doesn't recognise.

Christine is suffering from both retrograde and anterograde amnesia: she has forgotten most of her life from before the accident which caused it, and has been unable to retain new memories ever since. She is a stranger to herself, and lost in her own life. You can't help but feel sorry for Christine and Ben for what they have to go through every day.

We join Christine as she begins trying to piece her life together and we are just as lost as she is. We only know as much as she can remember and there always great swathes of time left unexplained. Unremembered. The tension built through this is wonderful and I read this book in a matter of hours because I wanted to know what had happened. Having said this, the beginning of the story was a little slow because of this as we establish what has happened. Necessarily, the same past events are covered on multiple occasions. Watson skims over them a little more after the first instance, but it's still slows the story a little as you're relearning things you already know even if this happening is necessary to the story.

Another problem I had with this book was that we are told Christine has often woken up still believing she was a child, and indeed see one day where this was the case. While it is only her episodic (autobiographical) memories which are affected, I had some trouble with the way this was done. I felt it should have had more of an impact on the way she handled the situation she found herself in and the language used by Christine but this may be me being a bit finicky. There are a couple of others things in a similar vein which didn't quite sit right with me but I won't go into to avoid spoilers.

The entire time I was reading this book theories of what had happened were floating through my head as half-memories begin to return to her. But just when you think you've got it worked out, something else will come up making you question it. Another memory. Something someone says.  A photograph. The end of the book sorts everything out beautifully and the climax is incredibly tense.

Atlas Shrugged

Title: Atlas Shrugged
Author: Ayn Rand
Pages: 1069 (hardback)
Published: September 1st 1996 (first published 1957)
Published by: Signet

Published in 1957, Atlas Shrugged was Ayn Rand's greatest achievement and the last work of fiction genre. In this novel she dramatizes her unique philosophy through an intellectual mystery story that integrates ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, politics, economics, and sex. 

Set in a near-future U.S.A. whose economy is collapsing as a result of the mysterious disappearance of leading innovators and industrialists, this novel presents an astounding panorama of human life-from the productive genius who becomes a worthless playboy...to the great steel industrialist who does not know that he is working for his own destruction...to the philosopher who becomes a pirate...to the woman who runs a transcontinental railroad...to the lowest track worker in her train tunnels. 

Peopled by larger-than-life heroes and villains, charged with towering questions of good and evil, Atlas Shrugged is a philosophical revolution told in the form of an action thriller!!

There is no doubt in my mind that this is an epic book – in the true sense of the word, rather than the more popular form which has worked its way into popular use of late. It is its wide-spanning reach and incisive analysis of humanity that make it so for me. Though focused in America (namely New York), there are implications in the story for the whole world and numerous references to other countries.

Or rather, to other ‘People’s States’ as the majority of other nations had named themselves in the world Rand has built. We follow Dagny Taggart, the Chief Executive of Operations of the national rail network of Taggart Transcontinental, as she tries to fight the failure of her railway in the face of the collapse of American economy. The story spans years (indeed, what I was initially expecting to be the entire story took up only about 200 pages) in this endeavour, and though you can kind of see what is coming sometimes, there are times when the story heads off in a completely opposite direction.

All of the central characters are quite clear-cut: industrialists (good guys) or politicians and pretty much everyone else (bad guys), though there are a couple where it is a little less clear. Of course this makes it quite easy to understand them, and while I didn’t particularly connect on an emotional level with any of them I still appreciated the things they did to try and achieve their aims and the battles they face.

On the more negative side, for me this is a book of oppositions. The beginning was a little slow, then I fell in love with the story, then Rand began to insert huge expositions (and I mean huge…like, pages and pages long) about…heck, I can’t even remember. I read a lot of them without really paying any actual attention to the words. Economy and expansion and stuff. This meant that there were whole sections of the book which if found tedious as hell. I read some pretty dense stuff during my time at university thanks to neuropsychology, but that had nothing on this. And ‘the’ speech. Anyone else who has read this book will know what I mean…I swear it took me two days of slog and putting the book down every few pages to get through it.

On top of this, aspects of the story (namely the government) required huge amounts of suspension of disbelief on my part. I just cannot comprehend how on earth they could think that the road they were taking the country down was a good one at any point in the run up to the book, or indeed the early days. It just seems completely nonsensical to me.

And I get that it’s based on the premise that people are greedy and want to get as much as possible for as little as possible, but in my opinion this is a dreary view of humanity. Yes, there will always be people like this, but I don’t think society would truly support any government which attempted to implement the things the one in this book does. There would be people going ‘Yeah, that’s just plain not going to work.’ There are too many who would see the greater implications, would see that it wouldn’t be sustainable and that there’s no way it would actually work.

While there are times when this book is truly amazing and I immensely enjoyed reading it, there are too many times when it was just too heavy and the expositions were just too long. A great book and one which I think anyone who thinks they can get through it should give a go, but not one I’ll ever be reading again I don’t think.

As a final note, given just how long it took for me to read this…

Ha, book! I win!