‘The Satsuma Complex’ by Bob Mortimer

Liked this – would recommend.

This novel follows Gary, a thirty-year-old legal assistant, who gets mixed up with police corruption and gangsters. My favourite character was Gary’s next-door-neighbour Grace, with her dog Lasso.

‘Check Mates’ by Stewart Foster

Felix is struggling at school, has ADHD and often finds himself in the isolation room. Grandad’s offer to teach him chess doesn’t go down well with Felix and leads to quite an adventure.

Yep, it’s another teenage novel, probably aimed at 11-14 year olds. But it was a good read, it’s funny and heartfelt, and has a nice twist at the end.

‘In the Spell of the Barkley’ by Michiel Panhuysen

Yep, it’s another running book. This time about the infamous Barkley Marathons and an account of Panhuysen’s various attempts to complete it. Spolier alert: he failed to complete it. Probably not much of a spolier, very few people have ever completed the Barkley Marathons.

Although, it’s more than just a book about how a bloke kept failing, it’s a story of sporting obsession, exploring what drives people to challenge themselves at the limits of what is possible.

It’s quite nice to read a running book where the writer doesn’t actually ‘win’. If you know nothing about the Barkley Marathons this book is well worth a read, if you know a bit, probably not.

‘How to be Invisible’ by Tim Lott

Teenage fiction.

Really liked this book. Gave it 3.5 stars, it probably deserved more, but it is only a teenage novel so can’t really give it much higher.

It follows a teenage boy, Strato Nyman, who learns how to become invisible. Strato is a science ‘geek’ so the book is full of references to science stuff, as well as the explanation of more complex words he uses, he seems to be slightly autistic.

Definitely worth a read.

‘There are Rivers in the Sky’ by Elif Shafak’

I quite liked it. I gave it 3 out of 5 stars, which I think means I would recommend it, although even I’m a bit confused when it comes to my rating.

I’m sure this book is supposed to be understood on a metaphorical deep level, it’s about a drop of water and how water is poetry and water is people and water is memory, or something like that. Or a novel what explores our connections, through water, or course.

Anyway, it begins with a drop of rain that lands on the head of a King in 632BC and then goes on to follow the lives of three people that all have very different lives: Arthur, River Thames, 1840; Zaleekhah, River Thames, 2018, and Narin, River Tigris, 2014.

I really liked Zaleekhah, lived on a boathouse in London, recently split with boyfriend. I quite liked Arthur, born into poverty to become a success, his story jumps between London and Mesopotamia. I was less interested in Narin, hence the 3 stars I suppose.

I should probably finish with a, well worth a read.

‘Dylan Goes Electric!’ By Elijah Wald

After watching the Dylan movie ‘A Complete Unknown’ – which was excellent – it was suggested I should read this book about the exact same thing: Dylan playing an electric set at Newport Folk Festival in 1965.

I enjoyed the book.

It didn’t really definitively explain what actually happened on the night in 1965. For example, there were reports of the crowds booing Dylan off stage, the book goes on to say that maybe it did and maybe it didn’t happen. There were reports of Pete Seeger running around with an axe to cut the cables in rage, again, the book goes on to say some people saw it, others, that it never happened.

What the book does give you is a really good understanding of the folk scene at the time, and the struggle of trying to survive in this new world of pop and rock and roll.