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A dense, but rewarding read. The narrator is an unnamed young woman living in an unnamed city in - we assume - Northern Ireland at the height of its political strife. She escapes in literature, burying her nose (literally, as she indulges in “reading while walking”) in lit classics. Her determined attempt to live life as quietly as possible, however, fails when “Milkman”, the nickname given to a feared, influential, middle-aged (and married) “renouncer”, sets his sights on her. The narrator is (linguistically) very clever, and often amusing, though in emotional pain. The hidden rules that govern her society, one of renouncers and informers, with very little allowed for political neutrality, defines what is normal. Conformity, even when it results in personal anguish and misery, is demanded (and “reading while walking” is frowned upon). Women face additional restrictions, with women's rights decried (a band of “feminists” are regarded as strange and dangerous, though allowed to continue their meetings in the end). Such precarious living, especially for those who choose to be (at least in action) politically neutral. If the premise intrigues you (as it did me, though the synopsis at the back of the book does not do the story full justice), and you're looking for a different kind of read, I highly recommend this book. “...you do that reading-while-walking and you look nearly-blank and you give nothing which is too little and so they won't let go and move on to the next person....”Dense ==> Both in content and form. The paragraphs are very long, often more than a page, and chapter breaks are few and far in between. This is not a book to read when the mind is tired, which is why I took much longer than expected to complete this book.

4.2 / 5

A murder mystery is truly masterful when it is still able to surprise you with a plot twist after revealing at the beginning the name of the murderer and how the crime happened.
Such is The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino.
A murder takes place in the first couple of chapters, and we know exactly who, how, what, and where. What we don't know are the details of the cover-up so when the body is discovered, we follow the clues through police detective Kusanagi and police consultant and physicist Dr. Manabu Yukawa (the Inspector Galileo of the series). We are also, alternately, following the murderer and accomplice, single Mom Yasuko and her daughter, Misato, who are guided to cover up their crime by their neighbour, Tetsuya Ishigami, a talented mathematician.
The brilliance of the book is in getting readers to root for the perpetrators of the crime, hoping that the wit and strategy of Ishigami would best that of the equally sharp Dr Yukawa (coincidentally, they were university mates). At the same time, we are eager for the trail of clues to be connected and made sense of by the detectives so that we, too, can be in the know.
The narrative is spare, but the dramatic tension and emotional stakes are ratcheted up each chapter, as Yasuko and her daughter anxiously follow Ishigami's instructions to evade police detection.
This was my first introduction to Higashino's work and likely will not be my last. I was racing through the pages, and though the ending with its surprise revelation was not one I was hoping for, the murder mystery was satisfactorily wrapped up and explained. The last time a murder mystery struck me as particularly inventive in plot and presentation was Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.
Highly recommended, especially if you are looking for a fast, clever, and well-spun mystery read.

It started slow at first but after the first few chapters, the sense of menace grew. It's not such a whodunit as a why the murder took place.
The setting is an English countryside and most of the story takes place during WW2. Faith recounts the personalities of her aunts and the events that led to the murder.
Ruth Rendell's characters are fascinating individuals and it's through her sharp portrayals of them that a scene involving women and a child can become as suspenseful as an action thriller.
This was a quiet family drama-tragedy, laying open ugly conflicts and the cruelty that exists within relationships - overt and subtle.

A 3.7. It was a heart warming “read” (via Audible and read by Richard Armitage) about a rich, grumpy old man whose best friend hires children to liven up his mansion at Christmas. Did get me to tear up at the end. A good Victorian Christmas tale that would make you sympathise with the girls born in that time.
Despite the fact that the book was published likely in the 19th or early 20th century, the prose is quite accessible and entertaining. More tell than show as was typical of writers then but the author's descriptions were smart and sophisticated.
The pacing can be a bit ponderous and one wonders at a four year old who speaks and behaves much better than teens in most cases (OK that's perhaps not an apt comparison!), but it's a charming Christmas tale with a solid emotional core. And for a Christmas story, thats really what you look for.

A British spy, Nat aka Nathaniel aka Anatoly, returns home to retire, only to find himself placed in charge of The Haven, a derelict sub-station managing a handful of Britain's double-agents and their handlers. Outside of work, he strikes up an unlikely acquaintance in the form and shape of a young, gangly Englishman, Ed Shannon, who challenges him to a game of badminton.
Over their post-game drinks, Ed - who believes Nat to be a harmless retired attache - lets loose with his verbal volleys against Brexit, Trump, and the British leaders who divorced the nation from Europe. It is the politics of post-Brexit Britain and pro-Russia Trump America that give rise to the events that unfold.
It is Nat who we follow for the entirety of the book. He's smart, polished, and over-confident, and makes for a compelling narrator. His family, wife Prue and daughter Steffi, also play a role, Prue playing a much larger role than the long-suffering spouses of spies in other novels. The only other female character of substance is Florence, Nat's young co-worker, also an idealist like Ed.
I had expected an intelligent but slow tale of espionage, but the events in this book develop with satisfying rapidity. They call into question to the meaning of loyalty, patriotism, and idealism. The different threads come neatly together and if there were parts that raised questions, it's to do with the narrator's inability to deal with emotional pain points as well as the hopeful, but abrupt, ending, which left me wanting for a couple more pages of narrative.
This was a solid read from beginning to end, allowing readers a glimpse into the world of modern espionage. Le Carre's genius in this book is the inter-weaving of big issues with individual actions, and the resultant - dangerous - dominos that fall.
Given the views espoused in this book and from what I have read of le Carre's own political views, I would imagine the author must have been relieved by the results of the recent US elections, even though the consequences of Brexit still remain for his country to sort out.

3.5 stars.
Made me laugh in many places, and one line still makes me snicker. What I didn't like were the italics - there were too many of them as if the narrator / author wasn't confident readers could figure out the tone of the sentences from words and context. But this was fun to read and the subject matter of cults and family relationships (lightly) balanced the rom-com.

4.5 stars.

As a caffeine junkie, I found this audiobook delightful.

Michael Pollan is amusing when he explores the rise of coffee in the 16th century and the proliferation of coffee houses in Europe that likely spurred the French Revolution and the movement towards democracy in other countries (interesting tidbit: coffee was the beverage of choice in Britain, long before tea).

The beans as cognitive enhancers necessitated the Industrial Revolution's creation of the “coffee break'', alongside the brew's reputation as fuel for intellectual, creative, and — at times — revolutionary pursuits.

Caffeine addiction is investigated, ironically by the author himself going without his daily java throughout the duration of writing the book (how brave of him!) and talking to experts about the benefits and dangers of coffee.

This short audiobook is superbly engaging, interweaving the author's personal experience of going cold turkey with. history, facts, and opinions.

Best listened to with a hot, steaming mug of, what else? — coffee .

I first read Ken Liu's The Paper Menagerie last year and like thousands of other readers, fell in love with his writing and depiction of inter-cultural, inter-generational relationships. The themes of history, identity, culture, and family feature in this collection, albeit in more futuristic settings.

A lot of the stories deal with earth's inevitable demise as a habitable place for humans. The first, Ghost Days, tells of mutant human children on a distant planet, while a series of inter-connected tales starting withThe Gods Will Not Be Chained deal with the possibility of eternal (digital life) when human minds (and personalities) can be uploaded. Other favourites are The Reborn which deals with memory (and murder) in a world inhabited by aliens and humans, Byzantine Empathy which gives an interesting twist to human compassion, and the short and poignant father-and-estranged-daughter story that is The Message.

There are some fantasy shorts included, including the titular tale, The Hidden Girl, which is a meld of fantasy and sci-fi in feudalistic China. There is even an excerpt from Ken Liu's Dandelion Dynasty series. These tales, though, were not the standout pieces for me. I found his stories of humans and technology far more interesting.

This is an enthralling collection of (mostly) sci-fi short stories told within the context of human relationships, history, and identity.

This may not be the most cheerful book with which to start a new year, but with repeated reminders of death, thanks to the pandemic, it seemed a fitting read.
In war-torn Syria, Bolbol's father dies, after making a final wish to be buried in the family plot near Aleppo. It is only a two-hour drive away but war has made such long journeys treacherous and possibly fatal. Bolbol recruits his brother Hussein and sister Fatima to grant his father's dying wish, and the three of them transport the body of their father in a rusting van to his hometown.
The journey is fraught with danger, from soldiers and militia, falling bombs, and festering family hurts and painful memories.
In less than 200 pages and often with black humour, the author (who lives in Damascus despite the war) paints a vivid portrait of the ravages of war - not just of the lives it takes but also the life that it leaches out from the living, and of the complicated and often treacherous terrain of family relationships.
A five-star read, for its emotional punch and dark humour.

There was so much talk and love for this book, I had to read it. Fortunately, the good folks at Two Book Nerds Talking sent their Patreon supporters an ARC copy each, and this winged its way to me.

First off: I am not a fan of fables. I read The Alchemist and few other titles some time back, and found them to be too cryptic as well as contrived to be able to derive much pleasure out of the reading of them.

Fortunately, this book strikes a more grounded note - the lead character, Nora Seed, is at the lowest point of her life, and at the moment when despair overwhelms her, she is transported to a magical library where it is constantly midnight and where the books show her different paths her life could have taken. With the guidance of Mrs Elm, the librarian (who happens to be her grade-school librarian in real life), Nora gets to review her regrets, undo them, and experience how her life Might Have Been if her decisions had been different.

I shall be honest, it took awhile for me to fully settle into this book - the episodes of Nora in the library with Mrs Elm were the ones I was most impatient with. At first. But the story is compelling, telling as it is of a young woman's feelings of failure, loneliness, and abject despair, and the revelations she needed to find out herself to slowly pick her way out of the emotional abyss.

It is also interesting - how many of us often wonder “What If?” - through Nora Seed, we get to explore the consequences of those What Ifs. Yes, they are Nora's but they serve to remind readers as well that each decision has a consequence and what might have seemed like a path in the road leading to much greener grass could very well have been another wrong turn. The book is not all gloom; Nora's various experiences - as a rock star, an Arctic explorer, a Mom, a bar owner, and some other roles in between - have their fun moments, ultimately serving to emphasize the story's central message: that no life is perfect but that's no reason to give up on it.

This is the ideal read if you need a pick me up but dislike non-fiction prescriptive writing, or if you simply need to nestle into a story that you know will ultimately lead you - gently and persuasively - out of the dark and into some sunshine.

A 3.5 star read for me but maybe because I wasn't in the right frame of mind to fully enjoy what is an extremely well-written, tightly-woven murder mystery with sprightly sleuths and nice (there's no other word for it) police detectives.
I appreciated the bits about the challenges and fears of growing old, and had more than a few good laughs while reading. It was the case itself, including its resolution, that didn't intrigue me as much as I expected, clever as it was. Also, when one character is far too smart and resourceful, it saps the thrill of the chase.
Having said that, I'm still picking up the second book in this series, just to follow Elizabeth & Co on their sleuthing adventures.
Would highly recommend this if you're in the mood for an entertaining and enjoyable very English murder mystery with four smart and sassy older amateur detectives.

This is a collection of short stories by the renowned Indonesian author Eka Kurniawan. The stories are translated from Bahasa Indonesia, and were published in assorted journals.
While the tales were written across a few years, what is a common thread is disgust, distrust, and outright revolt against the government of the day. In the first story, “Graffiti in the Toilet”, these emotions are expressed via graffiti in the toilet (the author describes bodily functions in excruciating detail in this story so be forewarned) while in others they are expressed via characters or - as in “Rotten Stench” - via a breathless, pages-long sentence describing the putrid smell of dead bodies, the result of government action.
Another recurring thread is women, and their oppressed status - whether they are underaged girls promised to lecherous old men (Dimples), former Dangdut girls (My Lipstick is Red, Darling) or someone's “Aunt” (Auntie).
The stories provoke discomfort, with a few being slyly humorous (Caronang) or absurd (Making An Elephant Happy, The Stone's Story). In any collection, you will have favourites. The Stone's Story - told from the POV of a stone - is one of my favourites, as are Kitchen Curse, Aunties, and Easing into a Long Sleep.
This is not a book to read for enjoyable escape; rather, the stories tell - simply and wryly - of the brutality and ugliness of real life.

The premise: What do you do when you are a suburban housewife and mom of two, living in a traditional suburban enclave in Charleston in the 80s, and you suspect one of your new neighbours is a vampire? This is the predicament Patricia Campbell, wife of the respected Dr Campbell, faces when a series of strange events, disappearances, and deaths, lead her to conclude the seemingly improbable, and make decisions that lead to wildly unthinkable outcomes.
The battle is never straightforward and the odds are stacked against her, even though she's white, middle-class, and what today we would consider “privileged”. But Patricia is a woman and a housewife, pitted against a suave (male) villain who becomes a rich source of investment for her husband and his friends. Her solace comes from her book club friends but even that is not a guarantee.
This modern vampire tale delivered more than just fun thrills. The housewives in the story do not hold equal power in their marriages, and Patricia's own marriage is a reflection of the inequality. Being a housewife and a mother is regarded as a second-class occupation and the husbands in the story seem to be lightyears away from male enlightenment. If the author intended to increase the ire of his female readers, then he certainly succeeded.
This was also the ‘80s and ‘90s which meant no mobile phones, very little internet, and crazy real estate deals. How the poorer, less white people featured in the story are treated highlights social inequities, but this is not a book about revolutionary change. The changes that do take place within Patricia, her group of friends, and the community they live in are incremental but menacing, and the series of events, many of them unfortunate, some of them gruesome, and a few of them truly gory, makes her re-assess her life and relationships.
Substitute vampire with drug dealer or corrupt official propped by their public facade, community support and popularity, and with levers of power at their disposal, and the premise can be transplanted to the real world, albeit with less fangs and blood.
A hugely entertaining read, providing some unexpected twists to a familiar genre.

This book is weightier than it looks! Extensively referenced, a call from the author for a radically new way to run businesses and live our lives, and a more optimistic take on AI and Robotics. I wish the references were organised as chapter end-notes or footnotes instead of in one long section at the end as hunting for the sources is almost impossible if you didn't highlight them in the first place. I'd recommend reading this in electronic instead of dead-tree format.

Refreshing to read a particularly dark episode in our nation's past without feeling like you're being lectured to or pushed to adopt certain views. Appreciate that she did not whitewash the incident. A well written YA novel that's uniquely Malaysian.

Very brave of the author to choose this particular setting for her debut and to layer on an OCD compulsion dressed up in djinn form but it was well executed. Maybe the final confrontation was a tad too - Hollywood-y - but it was mercifully brief. Characters are immediately recognisable to Malaysians.

Despite the serious setting (I won't use sensitive), the author didn't use a heavy hand and the narrative was allowed to breathe.

Hope there will be more novels like this, especially for younger readers.

Well done, Hanna Alkaf!

All stories begin with the basic premise, What If, and this book is no different, albeit the protagonist is a famous politician: Hillary Rodham Clinton. The author, Curtis Sittenfeld, is known for these semi-fictional portrayals of well-known personalities, having written American Wife, a lightly-fictionalised account of Laura Bush.
Written in the first person as a memoir, the book traces the personal and professional trajectory of Hillary Rodham's life.
The Hillary Rodham in this book is serious, intelligent, hardworking, and committed to making her country a better nation. She is also lonely, confident, insecure, competent, ambitious, and full of self-doubt. In other words, and it is credit to the author's skill and craft, the Hillary Rodham in this novel is completely believable as a career woman with big goals in a field long (and still) dominated by men: politics.
Back to the central question of What If. What if Hillary had not married Bill in 1975? Well, she becomes a law professor, then decides she wants to run for Senate when she watches Clarence Thomas, despite allegations of sexual harassment, get approved by the (mostly male) Senate to the Supreme Court. Her decision to run is tested when another woman, an African-American, also makes a bid for the Senate, and here Hillary faces a decision that male candidates most likely do not. Given that very few women will get voted into the Senate, should she run against another woman, and a woman of colour at that, or should she withdraw and throw in her support for the other woman? I won't spoil the surprise here except to say that the other female candidate is Carol Moseley Braun who did run for Senate in real life (and win, becoming the US's first African-American female Senator).
There are many other “real” people who feature in this novel, among the most interesting are Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Obama is given mostly respectful reference and some distance from Hillary. He defeats her in her bid for President in 2008 (just like in real life) while Trump is more colourfully portrayed, providing some entertaining relief in the final third of the book (I confess, some of the lines were so Trump-like I burst out laughing; it seemed that the author did lift some of them from his real-life speeches). Trump also has his own alternate history in the novel, and some readers may wish that had really happened instead of what actually occurred.
Of course, the most prominent other real person in the book is Bill Clinton. In the novel (and perhaps as in real life), Bill is handsome, driven, smart, and charming, and he completely enfolds Hillary into his life from the time that they meet in university.
> “But I always hoped a man would fall in love with me for my brain.”
Their relationship is intellectual and physical, and the book does not shy away from describing their passionate encounters. But Bill has a problem, one that he recognises will not go away (it involves women, in case you don't know) and in a moment of remarkable emotional clarity, he realises Hillary is too good for him. She leaves him instead of marrying him in 1975.
They meet later on in the story, and these encounters eventually prove to be the eye-openers Hillary needs when it comes to Bill, as well as much of the fuel for the book's third act.
There are many, many instances of sexism and prejudice that Hillary Rodham encounters as a law student, professor, Senator, and Presidential candidate, encounters that I am very sure the real Hillary faced too, albeit in different forms.
A contention of the book is that women political candidates often have to be “likeable”, one that is underscored by the most recent debate between Kamala Harris and Vice President Mike Pence, where Ms Harris had to keep smiling almost throughout the entire debate to avoid coming across as unlikeable.
> “And really, wasn't this endless ruminating over my own likability in itself a thing only a woman would do? Did Bill—or Ted Cruz or Rand Paul—ever ponder their likability, or did they simply go after what they wanted? Did Bill ever stop to think about which of us was more qualified, did he question his own motives for entry into the race? The idea was laughable.”
Another is that every aspect of their physical appearance are minutely examined as much as, or sometimes even more than, their competence or policy decisions. The “pink tax” is the extra hour that women have to spend on wardrobe, hair, and make-up, to avoid negative scrutiny by the press. Then there is the double standard when it comes to women candidates, that they have to be squeaky clean whereas men with skeletons banging around in their closet can still run for office and - shock, horror - may even win. As Hillary puts it, “You know when true equality will be achieved? When a woman with these kinds of skeletons in her closet has the nerve to run for the office.”
This book drives home many of these points through its story of Hillary Rodham. I did not expect to enjoy this novel, but I did. The narrative, as it's written from Hillary's perspective, is clear, direct, and provides some insight into the possible thought process of a woman aiming to become President of the United States of America. The book does not go into the controversial decisions that the real Hillary made, perhaps because the positions occupied by Hillary Rodham are less powerful than the one occupied by the real Hillary, and some of the bigger events that happened are either left out or mentioned only in passing (9-11 being one of them), but the book does present the hard considerations and cold calculations that a woman aspiring to power may need to make. The ending is satisfying in its conclusion of fictional Hillary's career, and a hopeful nod for the future.
If you want a fictional lens through which to read about American politics or politics in general, or if you want to delve into the challenges that women political candidates face beyond the headlines and statistics, this book provides a smart combination of reality, personalities, alternate history, and entertainment.
#bookreviews #klbacbookreviews
Note: This book was kindly sponsored by Times Read.

More a 3.5 than a 4.
I expected to fall in love with this novel, the same way I did with On Beauty. But the love affair did not happen and I found myself, unfortunately, racing through the pages not because I was entranced but because I wanted to get to the end, quickly.
The core issues are that of identity and belonging - do these come with family, nationality, religion, culture, or cause? Along with these, the novel explores migration, nationalism, genetic engineering, extremism, elitism, love, activism, and a smattering of other subjects. The narrative is super-smart; you're definitely in the company of high and frank intelligence, one with plenty of wit and humour, layered faintly with condescension.
The characters are richly drawn out - there's Archibald Jones, the middle-aged white guy; his unlikely best friend Samad Iqbal, the Bangladeshi who uproots from his home country to have a better life in England; Clara Bowden, Archie's young, Jamaican wife; Alsana Begum, Samad's wife; their children Magid, Millat, and Irie; and the Chalfens, just to name a few. Their dialogue sparkles. The author takes great delight in poking fun at her characters, in whose emotions, lives, and minds we delve quite deeply but without - at least on my part - the effect of caring about them.
One critic praised the novel as being a “riot” and that is an apt word. The author throws out many threads of plots, characters, arguments, and histories, and we get this amazing weave of colour and texture. It's just that it's hard to discern the pattern in the tapestry.
This is a smart and funny novel but though my mind was stimulated and the funny bone tickled, the heartstrings remained quite untouched.