I love all things dark in literature. I like scary, and deep, and difficult. I am ok with slow reads. I like thinking, watching and trying to understand. That’s why I was sure I’d have a lasting relationship with the complete collection of works by H. P. Lovecraft (it shows $0.59 for the Kindle edition at the moment, by the way, at least for my region). The lasting relationship never happened, even though “cosmic horror” still sounds very intriguing. Truth be told, I haven’t read much of the collection yet. And that is the problem in its core. I can’t! How do you read this? How do you read this boring, preachy, monotonous and-now-my-dear-reader type of writing?!

I’m sure there are movies (and lots of other art too) based on these stories that are outstanding because the ideas are gripping, unique and haunting. But the stories themselves are unreadable! Whenever I tried to get remotely scared I got bored sooner.

There were legends of hidden lake unglimpsed by mortal sight, in which dwelt a huge, formless white polypous thing with luminous eyes; and squatters whispered that bat-winged devils flew up out of caverns in inner earth to worship it at midnight.

I guess, I was supposed to get scared but I was born a century too late for that.

There was actually one short story that I enjoyed. The Beast in the Cave is written in quite the same style but it’s concise and the topic is thought-provoking.

I failed to like a few other stories that I tried. I thought I was looking at a wrong place so I went for something that I expected to be a major treat, The Call of Cthulhu … and failed to like it either! I couldn’t even finish it! In fact, it was worse than a simple DNF – I dropped the story and read the remains of the plot on Wikipedia! I was too interested in the events but couldn’t last through this tedious enumeration of verbs and nouns.

My post is in no way a review of the works by Lovecraft because I’m obviously doing something wrong. A thing that major and important simply can’t be what I now perceive it to be – a product of breathtaking imagination trapped by pompous and unnecessarily entangled writing. So what am I doing wrong? Shall I read something else by Lovecraft first? What then?

Updated to add: got sent this as a reaction to my post. So far it’s the most entertaining thing I discovered about Lovecraft.

Updated. The awesome comment by sledpress:

“It’s okay, babe. Even those of us who love HPL admit that he is pedantic, needlessly verbose, maudlin and overwritten. I came to Cthulhu and the rest at the age of ten, which made it easier to be scared by the scary parts. But he truly did not find a voice that wasn’t a parody of itself until late in life, and I think “The Shadow Out of Time” is the best thing he ever did stylistically. The early stuff, which is all full of fainting from fright and people going “aaaggh” and contrived Gothic, is just one of those acquired tastes, like really peaty whiskey (which I also love). And those of us who treasure cats can relate to the wonderful cats in “The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath,” who in a subplot reveal an ability to leap to the Moon and back carrying a human with them, in sufficient numbers. (Lovecraft adored cats.)

He was a neurotic man deeply damaged by his mentally ill parents, stilted in relationships (his marriage lasted six months), sickeningly racist and absurdly pretentious about his New England background. But there was always something about him that made me want to throw him over my shoulder and burp him, sort of. There is a biography of him by L. Sprague de Camp which might be on Kindle, not too dense, which makes for entertaining reading.

A group called the HP Lovecraft Historical Society (HPLHS on Facebook) has made several retro-style films of the books, and their “Call of Cthulhu” in silent-film style, with captions, is delicious and catches both the horror and the corniness.

If you can get through “Unknown Kadath,” there is what amounts to a piece of fan fiction called “The Dream Quest of Vellitt Boe” which is a feminist excursion on his dream world. Delicious.”

About the book

Nothing about The Old Drift is simple. It’s so complex I couldn’t evaluate it with a standard 1-5 star system. There are many surreal stories and mystical characters. The storyline starts in Africa in 1903 and finishes in the future.

Why it is sometimes difficult to read

The Old Drift is an ultra marathon of a book. I mean not only the size but complexity. When you run an ultra marathon the conditions often change. Sometimes the process is fast and easy, sometimes you stumble and fall. Sometimes the path is barely visible so you have to slow down and watch every step. Sometimes you get lost and you have to trace your steps back. That’s exactly what reading The Old Drift feels like. Sometimes you catch the rhythm and go with the flow but very often you have to slow down or trace your steps back to understand what’s going on.

The writing

There are many Italian words or words from an African language (I don’t know which one, Google translated it as Swahili). The book provides no translation for them. You have to guess what they mean. Very often it’s not possible. Try it for yourself. These are actual quotes:

‘Mwashibukeni, Ba Lonode’, Ba George bowed his head fondly. ‘Eyamukwayi, bashikulu,’ Ronald panted. ‘Do you know where Miss Agnes is?’ ‘ Mm?’ The old man frowned. ‘Ah, mwelbantu, katwishi. I do not know.’

“When it rained it sounded like you were in a giant silimba. Loveness kept an mbaula outside, where she fried vitumbua to sell.”

I wasn’t sure what I’d just read. There’s lots of rare vocabulary, words like “tintinnabulary”, “mellifluous”, “recalcitrant”, “malapropism”, “fratricide”. I actually find it amazing that the author used a precise term for each situation but that’s why the book is sometimes hard to read.

The repetition of a phrase about teeth sucking gets really annoying. “She sucked her teeth”, “he sucked his teeth”, “their sucked their teeth”. This phrase is all over the book. Whenever someone gets worried, frustrated or angry they “suck their teeth”. My brain got a blister in the place where this phrase is processed.

The structure

The timeframe shifts between different years. Sometimes it goes forward, sometimes it goes backward. There’s no correlation between the characters and the years. No character belongs to a certain epoch. Instead one character appears in several different timeframes and then another one appears in a few other ones, and then the third one borrows a bit from both of the timeframes but also gets one of his own. You have to really focus to keep track on who’s in the spotlight right now and what’s going on. I wouldn’t call it a traditional saga where characters are linearly connected through generations. Most of the time the characters seem not to be connected at all.

Great things about the book

The writing

Even though the book is often hard to read the first 90 percent is unquestionably an amazing work of art. The way Namwali Serpell uses the language is unrepeatable and unique. One chapter completely blew my mind. The author combined two narratives in one piece of text. If you read the whole text you get a prose version of what happened. If you only read the parts written in italics it becomes a poem.

The events

Some of the described events did happen! Which is incredible taking into account how surreal they are. For example, the bizarre space program in Zambia.

This mix of surrealism and reality creates an effect where you can no longer distinguish between fiction and reality. That’s an interesting thing to experience. The book goes on this way for the first 90%. I have only one explanation for what happens after that – Namwali Serpell left her desk and someone else finished the book.

What went wrong in the end

Suddenly, I was no longer reading intricate prose about unusual characters. The book turned into a second-rate women’s fiction with sci-fi elements about futuristic revolutionaries.

Girlish chats about men and sex promptly appeared on the pages and the heroine started “admiring muscles of his back”.

As the mutations of the book progressed, my notes on it narrowed down to one phrase only: “WTF has happened to the book?!”

I was considering DNFing The Old Drift 97% into the book! The remaining three percent seemed like too much torture. I even counted how many clicks it took to cover one percent (it took 16 clicks)! I was counting the clicks left till the end of the book!

Final thoughts

I cannot come up with one definite conclusion about this book. It’s beautiful in some places and not so much in others. You might love The Old Drift or you might hate it. Most likely you’ll do both at the same time.

I’m very thankful to the publishers for providing me with a copy in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.

What’s a blogging slump?

A slump is a slowdown in an activity. I always imagined a blogging slump to be that cosy, lazy process when you simply don’t want to focus on your blog and choose to focus on something else. Turns out, it’s not always true. I simply had to do other things, but I was really missing my blog and the community. So hi guys, how are you?

The other end of the tunnel

Now when I’m back I thought I’d turn this experience into a positive one summing up those things I noticed while trying to return. I’ll also ask you some questions and if you want to reply to any of them, please, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. My hope is that both the post and the comments will be helpful to other people who are going through similar situations.

Here is how it was for me

I dreaded returning to a project that remained untouched for so long

I think it was one of the main obstacles that kept me away for longer. I felt as if I’d been neglecting a hungry monster and it could now eat me up when I’d finally turn up at the doors. Luckily, it was a mistake. No monsters behind the doors, just dear old blog and lots of familiar people in the comments and Twitter replies.

Replying to comments and messages

This has been my main priority because it’s the people I’m here for. They did help me get back on track.

Something super exciting happened while I was away

I’ve been featured in an article called The 19 Best Book Blogs to Read in 2019 by Scribendi!!!

Of course, I’m over the moon about it, and it also encouraged me to come back here sooner.

My genius plan on how to avoid such long breaks in the future

I’ll try to schedule several posts ahead so that if the trouble does happen again I will be able to still stay connected with everybody while not having to spend time on writing new posts.

Questions to you

• What’s your experience with blog slumps or any other long breaks in your projects?
• Do you dread returning to a project after you have stayed away for some time?
• What is the thing you try to address first once you do return?
• Has anything exciting ever happened to the project while you were away? Did it help you return?
• Do you think there’s a way to avoid slumps?

Hope to hear back from you! Wishing you inspiration and enough time to do what you love doing!

If you want to chat more, here’s my first post with blogsitential questions.

December was unusual. I dropped more books than I had ever dropped in one month. Probably, thanks to this attitude I ended up mostly liking all other books I read. Here they are. Click the links for more information about the books.

1. The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt by Andrea Bobotis

It’s a beautifully written family story and my most favourite book of 2018. It will be out in the summer 2019. I’ve also published my full review of the book and I also talked about this book in my other post.

2. No Motive by Daphne du Maurier

It’s a fast-paced and gripping short story. If you want to know why a perfectly happy woman just shot herself, read the story.

3. The Familiars by Stacey Halls

This is a historical novel about a woman who’s trying to save herself, her baby and her friend. The book will be out soon!

4. Patrick Melrose novels

There are five novels about Patrick Melrose. At least the first three focus on just a few short events that illustrate Patrick’s whole life.

Never Mind is about Patrick’s childhood.

Bad News is about Patrick in his 20s.

Some hope is about Patrick when he’s 30.

5. Woman Last Seen in Her Thirties by Camille Pagán

I didn’t like the book, but I quite liked the protagonist, although Maggie was slightly too needy. People seemed to have enjoyed my review.

6. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

A nice story about two teenage boys who are discovering love and life.

7. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

This is a story about a book store owner. It’s basically a library in a form of fiction.

The three books that I did not finish

Daughters of the Lake by Wendy Webb

I hoped it would be a gothic scary story but it turned out to be a not very well written chick lit.

The Dry by Jane Harper

I liked Force of Nature, another thriller by Jane Harper, but I couldn’t finish The Dry. There is lots of fuss but no meaningful action. I got bored by the middle of the book so I dropped it.

The Bette Davis Club by Jane Lotter

I got the book because of a heartwarming introduction. This novel was initially self-published. The author didn’t live to see the book picked up by the publisher. The description is also intriguing. It’s a story about an aunt whose niece ran away from her own wedding so the aunt and the groom set off on an adventure to find her. Unfortunately, the book lost its logic by the middle. It also started focusing too much on unnecessary details and the protagonist started behaving very implausibly. That’s when I quit to give time to other books.

That is it for December. My January already started with something I liked and something I didn’t. I will tell you more soon. Meanwhile, here are some other posts where I mention several books at once.

Books I read in September
Books I read in October
November was awesome!
If somebody asked me what to read

1. Classic fiction

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

I’ll never grow tired of recommending this book. It is actually a memoir, but it’s much more than a personal story. It tells you about the way Paris looked and lived in 1920s. A Moveable Feast has a complicated history. Read my post to learn more.

Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood

The book is a beautiful farewell to Berlin. The stories tell about people Isherwood met in Berlin in 1930s before Nazis came to power.

I don’t think anybody ever read my review of the book because I posted it in the very beginning of my blogging when nobody was reading my blog yet.

Daphne du Maurier’s short stories

I am starting to suspect that no works by du Maurier can disappoint. I’ve read only her short stories so far, but I can recommend all of them. Here are the posts where I talk about the short stories: Short Stories By Daphne Du Maurier and Reading Books In December. And here’s the post about Birds.

2. Modern fiction

Virgil Wander by Leif Enger

I really liked this book. I would prefer a more solid ending, but even with the ending as it is, it’s still a perfect book with well-developed characters and an interesting plot.

The Air You Breathe by Frances de Pontes Peebles

It’s a wonderfully written story about two women, and their lives and love to music. The story starts in Brazil in 1930s when both of them are still kids. In my personal rating this book is definitely among the best I read in 2018.

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

If you are looking for something really kind and heart-warming, you will definitely like this book.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

I wouldn’t call this book my personal favourite, but I do realise many other people will like it more. The book does entertain. It’s a gripping fast-paced story about an elderly movie star who decides to reveal all her secrets to a writer.

Melmoth by Sarah Perry

Melmoth is quite the opposite of the book mentioned above. It’s not an easy read aimed to entertain. It’s perfectly written and it has several interesting stories, but the main treasure of the book is its message which is thought-provoking and deep. I am in love with the book, but I know that some people found it disappointing because they expected it to be a gothic ghost story. Even though there’s such an element in the book, it’s merely a tool for delivering an idea. If you are looking for a book that will make you think, Melmoth is a good choice.

The Last List of Miss Judith Kratt by Andrea Bobotis

This book hasn’t been published yet but it’s the best book I read in 2018. You might like it less than I did, but I think you will still like something about it. It’s perfectly written, and perfectly made, with an intriguing start and a beautiful ending. It’s about a complicated history of one family from the American South. It will be published in July 2019. I definitely recommend pre-ordering it, or marking the date in your calendar so that you can read a sample when it’s out and make your choice. I can read my full review of the book.

3. Thrillers

I think 2019 will become the year when I’ll finally accept that thrillers are just not my genre. I love being thrilled, spooked and scared by a book, but unfortunately most of the thrillers I encounter are either horribly written or have silly plots (or both). Still, I was lucky enough to have found these two thrillers that I can recommend.

You Were Made For This by Michelle Sacks

This is a psychological thriller about relationships that look perfect on the outside, but in reality have some other, often sinister dynamics, and about disasters that such relationships can cause.

Force of Nature by Jane Harper

This is a crime thriller about a group of women who venture out into Australian wilderness as a team building exercise. And then, of course, something goes wrong…

4. A strange book

The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien

If you are looking for something surreal and crazy, this might be the right book. I was initially very confused by the book. But as time goes by, I’m starting to understand how deep and genius it actually is. In fact, chances are I will be re-reading it to discover more of its philosophy and craziness.

4. A book with good humour

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

I love the humour of this book. It’s funny but not dumb. Besides, the story is also kind and quite interesting. The Rosie Project is about one very special scientist on a quest to find a wife for himself.

5. A young adult novel

Bone Gap by Laura Ruby

I hardly ever read young adult novels but I really liked this one because of its deeper message. It’s a story about young people living in a strange town where people, animals and things keep mysteriously appearing and disappearing. It’s a story about friendship and love, but most importantly it’s about people who are learning to see the true nature of others and themselves.

6. Controversial

There’s actually nothing controversial about these novels. They are perfectly written and I find them very interesting but they focus on some taboo or traumatic topics and so I think some people might find them disturbing.

Patrick Melrose novels

There are 5 novels about Patrick Melrose. Patrick is a very troubled man. The novels are perfectly written (at least the first four, I haven’t started the fifth one yet), but they are hard to read because of the topics they focus on such as child abuse or drug addiction. Here are my reviews of the first two novels: Never Mind (Patrick Melrose novel #1) by Edward St. Aubyn and Bad News, Patrick Melrose novel #2 by Edward St Aubyn.

Everything Under by Daisy Johnson

The story is based on a myth. It’s a magical realism story about a river, a mother and a daughter. It’s so beautifully written, it brings a whole new world to life.

7. Memoirs

Miss Ex-Yugoslavia by Sofija Stefanovic

Guess what? That’s the book that finally got me into blogging! I loved the book so much that I just couldn’t keep quiet anymore. I wrote to the author to express my gratitude but I still felt like I had more to express. So I wrote a post about it, and this post became the first one on my blog.

When Sofija Stefanovic was a kid, her family immigrated from Belgrade to Australia. In her memoir she speaks about her experience of changing countries, cultures and languages. It’s exciting to see the world she then discovered from the perspective of a young child who was never before exposed to such education, entertainment or customs. You become aware of many things that are taken for granted nowadays, and you also become aware of the fact that there are often several truths all of which are equally real.

I understand that I liked the book so much because I’m from a similar background but I’m sure that this book will be interesting for many other people too.

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

Even though Born a Crime describes so many horrible things that happened to the families in South Africa during the times of apartheid and later, I still think about this book as kind and often funny. It takes a great comedian to write a heart-warming book about something that is often heart-wrenching.

8. Non-fiction

What if? by Randall Munroe

This book is very funny. It’s scientific but it’s written in a language that everybody can understand. It answers many strange and silly questions in a clever and interesting way.

Bad Science by Ben Goldacre

It’s another book I often suggest to read, especially when some homeopathy or “detoxing” treatments arise in a conversation. It focuses on some popular wrong beliefs about medicine, pills and beauty products. It provides and explains researches for each statement. It also explains the mechanisms behind popularising these products. Although the book is based on science, it’s written in a fun and entertaining way, so it’s really interesting to read. Reading this book can save your money and health.

This will be it for now. Hopefully I’ll make another post like this in a few months. Meanwhile I’m very interested in what you would recommend, especially when it comes to Strange and Humour categories.

I decided that I’ll just show you some of my favourite book pictures that I took for the blog. Looking at pictures is always easier than reading a text, especially on days when you just want to relax.

Here are the photos. If you click the titles you’ll get to my reviews of the books.

1. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

(There are more photos of Usyaka and the book.)

2. The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar

3. Bitter Orange by Claire Fuller

4. Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

There’s no review because I haven’t read the book yet. (And taking into account my unfortunate experiment with reading fantasy, I’m not sure how soon I will read this one). There’s still this nice wintery photo

5. The Birds and other stories by Daphne du Maurier

Here’s the review of The Birds.

And here are the reviews of the other stories.

6. Bad Science by Ben Goldacre

7. Melmoth by Sarah Perry

8. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

9. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

10. The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

This book will be one of my first reads in 2019, so come back soon to read the review!

1. Acronyms and jargon of the blogging world

Life is short and book bloggers know it. There are only that many books that one can read and that many posts that one can write, so it’s only logical to contract as many words as possible and to invent new terms for things.

Here’s the translation:

‘Sorry, I’ve been out of touch.’
‘Have you been finishing all the books you planned to read?’
‘I wish. I just bought tons of new books instead. You? Are you still stuck in this state when you don’t feel like reading anymore?’
‘Yeah, I dropped most of my advance reading copies of young adult and new adult genres’

Yes, it was definitely longer to type.

It takes time to learn all the terms and abbreviations. Once I got so desperate that I started googling for some list of all these terms. Turns out one blogger did compose a list of popular terms and acronyms!

(It actually means: “I’m writing a book of a young adult genre”)

2. To be or not to be a reviewer who posts negative reviews

Apparently, it’s a popular dilemma in the blogging world. This question reappears on Twitter several times a week and it always causes heated debates and attracts attention.

Just a few months ago I naively believed that a book reviewer is a person who reviews books. Apparently, it’s not that simple. Some book reviewers are actually book praisers. They openly state they will never give a book a negative review. They say they don’t want to hurt authors’ feelings.

I actually think they also don’t want to hurt the publishers’ feelings as well, because they are afraid to be cut off from the free supplies of reading copies. So much for “in exchange for my honest review”.

Meanwhile, there are several reasons why negative reviews are needed.

• A negative review still gives a book more exposure that no review at all.
• A negative review helps making future books better.

These are not my primary reasons for writing negative reviews, though. I am here to express any opinion: negative, positive or mixed. There’s nothing like putting your feelings into words. If I can’t get this satisfaction from my blog, I don’t see why bother having a blog at all. (So subscribe to my blog for obviously honest reviews )

3. Paper vs Digital vs Audio format

Another popular debate is on which books count as real books, or which books give a better feeling of books. In fact, whenever somebody brings this topic up, there will be some feedback. Long before anybody read my blog, I wrote my own opinion on paper vs digital copy too. I still like that post, so you can read it now, and tell me what you think.

Now, 4.5 months into my blogging life, I can summarise my updated opinion as: paper books are pretty, Kindle books are practical, audiobooks are a lifesaver if for some reason you can’t use the previous two.

4. Fantastic followers and where to find them

Of course I knew bloggers want to be read. Otherwise, why post anything online at all? But I hadn’t imagined the scale of this wish before I started blogging. For some, gaining followers becomes the most important thing. It’s almost like currency. People give it to each other, and some think others owe them “a follow” if they followed first. They can even withdraw their “follow” if they haven’t received the “follow-back” they expected! I wonder if dictionaries already added an extra meaning to the word “follow” because it’s definitely not just about reading something interesting anymore.

Meanwhile, another surprising thing is that more followers don’t automatically change anything for a blog. Google (and other search engines) are still the primary judges of how visible a blog should be. Followers are there to have fun conversations with. I love my conversations with: Sarah, Stephen, CJ, Herding Cats, Brittany, Melissa, Silver Screenings, CJStark, NS, Inge, Bella G. Bear, Norrie, Ova, Umut, Eva, Kelly, Evelina, Fay, Jee. I wrote them down from memory!

There are more things I noticed and found surprising as a newbie. I’ll write about them later, if anybody (including me) gets interested in the topic. Let’s keep in touch in the meantime. Subscribe to my blog, if you are not subscribed already, or just remember where to find me and come back soon!

Here are my answers.

1. Favourite Book of All Time

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

I haven’t yet met a book more alive and real than this one. I envy anybody who hasn’t read it yet. Here’s my review of A Moveable Feast.

2. Favourite Book Five Years Ago

Five years ago I was still very much into popular psychology, especially the books that looked into personality disorders. What a fascinating topic! It’s hard to name one book, there were so many of them. Who’s Pulling Your Strings? for example, is very good. It discusses a wide range of arsenal a manipulator uses. I think all people could benefit from reading it.

3. Favourite Duology/Trilogy/Series

I haven’t read series since childhood. Back then I loved Dumas’ books but I’m not sure I’d like them as much now.

Speaking of Dumas, I’ll remind you that his works are in public domain now, as many other books that were published a long time ago. In most countries books become public domain on the 1st January, 70 years after the death of the author. In the US any book written prior to 1923 is in public domain. It means that you can find Dumas and many other authors on Project Gutenberg site. It’s not pirating, it’s absolutely legal.

4. Last book You Read

This will sound awesome, check it out: the last book I read was The Last!

I wrote about this book in my October roundup post. I will post my review of it later later.

5. Last Book of Poetry I’ve Read

I haven’t read poetry for years. In my defence I can say that I know almost all of Anna Akhmatova by heart (original, not translated).

6. What Book most influenced your life

From the most recent ones I would name Miss Ex-Yugoslavia by Sofija Stefanovic. I loved the book so much I had to share the love, so I started my book blog!  The review of Miss Ex-Yugoslavia became the first post on my blog.

7. Book That Made You Ugly Cry

Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. It’s a masterpiece that brings on incomparable grief.

8. Book That Made You Laugh

The non-fiction What if? Whenever I need a laugh I just open a random page of it and laugh.

9. Character You’d Like to Be For A Day

Poirot, or Holmes, or Miss Marple. They all seem to have exciting lives.

10. Book You DNFed

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan. I couldn’t finish it. I’m still surprised how something so full of adventures can turn out to be so boring.

11. What Book are You Excited to Read

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. Everybody calls it an amazing novel but I have never read it!

Here are the bloggers that I love talking to and I’m tagging them for the post:

1. Sarah’s blog
2. CJ’s blog
3. Claudia’s blog
4. Stephen’s blog
5. Norrie’s blog
6. Herding Cats blog
7. Babbage and Sweetcorn blog
8. NS Ford blog
9. Ova’s blog
10. Umut’s blog
11. Evelina’s blog

Dear tagged bloggers, there’s no pressure to take part in this book tag, but if you do post your answers let me know, so I can read them.

The books I really liked

1. Melmoth by Sarah Perry

Melmoth is a huge discovery for me. It’s a gothic story with an element of fantasy that serves to illustrate the nature of human beings. I’m totally in love with Melmoth; with its style and its story. Read my review of Melmoth for more information.

2. The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar

An absolutely gorgeous book with an intricate story about people’s lives in the 18th century London. I haven’t read anything so beautiful in years and there probably will be years till I read something that beautiful again. If you want more information, you can find it in my review of The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock.

3. You Were Made For This by Michelle Sacks

You Were Made For This is an intense psychological thriller about people who are not what you initially think they are. I loved how perfectly the characters were being unveiled. I loved the controversial ending that I felt was natural for these characters. You can read more in my review of You Were Made For This.

4. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

If you want to get lost in a book, get a copy of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. Despite the several flaws that I noticed in the book, I generally liked it very much. It was so much fun to be reading a book without getting bored for a single minute. Here’s my review of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.

5. The Last by Hanna Jameson

The Last is an apocalyptic story about a small group of people who are trying to survive in the wake of a nuclear war. The Last hasn’t been published yet, but if you are building your reading list, I would definitely recommend adding The Last to that list. My review of the book will appear on the blog later.

Other books I read in October

1. The Salt of the Earth by Jozef Wittlin

The Salt of the Earth could be a very interesting historical novel about ordinary people during the WWI. Unfortunately, because of its writing style, it’s very hard to read. It’s also a first book in a trilogy that never got finished so it also leaves its mark on the whole perception of the book. It was published before, and will be republished in February 2019. My review of The Salt of the Earth will also appear later.

2. The Darkness by Ragnar Jónasson

The Darkness is a thriller that causes very contradicting feelings. I liked most of the book and hated the ending. Some people actually liked the ending too. You can read my review of The Darkness.

3. The Chalk Man by C. J. Tudor

The Chalk Man is a thriller that many raved about. People couldn’t sleep at night, they were scared and found the book very spooky. I didn’t. It is gory, but it is not scary. You can read more about it in my review of The Chalk Man.

4. The Songbird by Richard Parker

The Songbird is actually not a bad thriller. I didn’t find the ending satisfying but the writing and the plot were quite good. The Songbird hasn’t been published yet, and my review of it will appear later.

I feel so lucky to have read so many books that I can actually recommend! Off to November now! My reading list is getting more and more exciting with each day!

I’m starting to suspect that some level of implausibility is expected in thrillers in the same way as dragons and elves are expected in fantasy.

The Stranger Diaries is not a bad thriller. It’s gripping, fast-paced and it’s a very easy read. It took me just a few hours to finish the book. My eyes were gliding through the book. I wasn’t bored once and I even managed to like a couple of characters and to chuckle a couple of times. That alone means that the book is a proper read for a few hours to kill.

The story is about students, teachers and their families. Someone of them is a murderer.

I found it hard to believe, though, that two main characters managed to miss major spheres of each other’s lives. Their friends and even random strangers who accidentally walked into their rooms discovered the secrets within minutes and yet these two family members living under the same roof did never notice such things.

The Stranger Diary is described as “contemporary gothic” and it’s not really untrue. It’s just that contemporary in this book goes one way while the gothic part goes the other. The gothic floats in contemporary like oil in water. They do not mix or match. There’s a modern family story, there’s a gothic family story. They do not cross. If you try really hard you can find a few threads to bind them together just for the sake of justifying the existence of the gothic part in the plot. If you pull them apart you will have two fully formed unconnected stories. Up to the shocking point that one of them is squeezed whole at a very unexpected moment of the other.

My other, very likely overly subjective, reason to be confused with the story is that its characters’ names often start with the same letter. Try to distinguish between them when you have a dozen of others to keep an eye on: Holland, Henry Hamilton, Herbert. One of them is a dog. At one point the protagonist talked about two of them. It took me some time to remember who of them was the dog.

A few other implausible moments happen when a character contradicts his own behaviour. At first he protects something and just a few pages later launches to destroy it with no reason for the change. One mystery is solved because apparently nobody has ever looked at a historical artefact close enough, but now a teenager did so and the answer is suddenly found. A character gets shocked at an “unacademic” word “creepy” but then says something as unacademic as “soonish”. (That “soonish” made my Kindle come too close to be disposed through the window).

Thus, although The Stranger Diary is entertaining, fast-paced and gratifyingly easy to read, these details soured my experience. I’m giving the book 3.5 stars, but I can imagine that many people will like it more than that. 

I’m thanking the publishers for the copy that I received in exchanged for my honest and unbiased opinion.