Sef Hughes

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running was okay, I suppose. Not only do I admire Murakami, but I'm also a runner and a writer. So I expected to love this book. In fact, I couldn't wait to start it. My enthusiasm, however, was soon quelled. There were a few interesting insights about how his running fuels his writing – he believes that the former relies on the latter – and the first couple of chapters did inspire me to think about running differently, so as far as that goes, it was a success for me. However, I found the book quite dull on the whole. Ironically, it felt like a long-distance run and I was most definitely flagging towards the end. I'll stick to his wonderful fiction in future.

An incredible little novel (is it a novel?) about a family of two boys and father, and a crow. The wife/mother has just died and this is the story of the family's journey through grief, which is helped along by the crow. It's a beautifully written mix of prose and verse, which made me laugh out loud and cry a little (which is not something I do very often while reading). I loved it.

I'm not sure how much it should matter, but I guessed what was going to happen pretty early on in the novel. So, I was looking forward to being proved wrong most of the way through. Unfortunately, I wasn't. But maybe that's not so important. What is important is that I thoroughly enjoyed the concept and the story, and Clarke's writing was excellent.

Piranesi isn't really my genre, although I did enjoy Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell a few years ago. Anyway, it was a very enjoyable deviation from my usual reading.