I’ve been struggling with overwhelm recently. I received a lot of books for purposes other than review that I hadn’t expected; I’m making progress but together with other happenings it’s been difficult. I’m making an effort to clean up my list of currently reading books, finishing those I’m nearing the end of and making a decision on those I’d not got too far through that have been languishing on the list for months. A Brief History Of Seven Killings is off for now; I only got about 50 pages in and the amount left… I know it’d just languish longer. Twelve Years A Slave has been removed because I think by removing it I might actually get back to it; I was enjoying it a lot (as much as it can be enjoyed; as a historical document). There is definitely something to be said for not having a number of books currently on the go. I think three’s the limit for me – any more and it doesn’t feel as though I’m making any progress. It’s also, I’m starting to realise, a reading slump creator.

I finished Erskine’s Sleeper’s Castle last week. As it continued it seemed to me that it’s two stories put together, a plot thread of time slip and a plot thread heading in the direction of Gone Girl; both threads petered out in the end. I may give Lady Of Hay a go but it isn’t something I’m going to prioritise at the moment.

The past couple of weeks I’ve been making a big effort to read in the tiny moments available; I’m trying out the idea of reading in queues, when waiting for people to be ready to leave, that sort of thing. At the moment it’s an ebook I’m carrying via a tablet so there has been some start up time factored into it, but I’ve read a fair number of pages this way, particularly when considering my slow reading speed. Whether I’m actively retaining the information, in terms of whether the ‘quality’ of such reading will result in a fair opinion at the end of the book I’m not yet sure – I think in this case it will be fine because the book is an easy read.

I’m determined to have finished more currently-reading books by the end of this month for a better reflection of what or, rather, how much I’ve read, which is more than it seems at present. A reading list with many finished books means a clearer head for future reading.

What are you currently reading, and do you read in those spare moments?

‘Let them eat cake’ did not happen here.

Publisher: Bloomsbury
Pages: 470
Type: Fiction
Age: Young Adult
ISBN: 978-1-408-80152-9
First Published: 12th October 2010
Date Reviewed: 30th April 2017
Rating: 2.5/5

Andi’s little brother, Truman, died unexpectedly a couple of years ago, and Andi is struggling to come to terms with it; it happened under her watch. Failing school and with a poor outlook on university, her father tells her she must join him on a work trip to Paris. She doesn’t want to go but Paris was the home of a historical musician she loves and her father’s friends are converting an old museum into a house; the building is full of artefacts from another time, including the diary of a girl living in 1700s Paris.

Revolution is a semi dual plot line book that looks at the horrors of the French Revolution starting from before the time of the fall of Bastille; it connects a young travelling servant’s life with a contemporary person in a not dissimilar position, one grieving her brother, the other trying to look out for a young prince. The book has a lot of promise – history in tandem with the present; the possibility of time travel that is somewhat realised – but is unfortunately plagued by very lazy writing.

Andi does not read as real. Her status in society – high – is not explored enough for you to believe it. The way she speaks does not correspond to her age. Donnelly has inserted a lot of strange non-words that heighten this – ‘parslied carrots’ – and employs the likes of the unnecessary ‘shake my head no’. Were it contained to Andi’s narrative, the laziness would not be so bad, but the 1700s Alexandrine speaks the same way, anachronisms running riot, the two girls sounding one and the same – in a literal way rather than symbolically. You could say Andi is translating it, but it still doesn’t ring true.

The information on the Revolution is the redeeming factor – this book has it in spades. The musician of Andi’s thesis may not be real (in our world) but everything surrounding him and his time is. The underground tunnels. The morbid death parties. The author’s research seeps through the pages.

In regards to the sort of time travel, it’s worth knowing that Andi is always under the influence of pills – she overdoses often – and whilst this doesn’t excuse her awful behaviour, it’s enough to wonder if she would have been such an uncaring person before. (Neither character is likeable.) The time travel concerns Andi, solely. Alexandrine’s part in the novel is limited to her diary. The diary is a bit far-fetched, with Andi reading it everywhere, including the artefacts section of a library, and not being asked about it. Her restringing of a guitar from two centuries ago using modern strings without research… thankfully this is fiction!

If you want information about the underground mausoleums in Paris, it’s worth dipping in and out of the pages, but otherwise it’s one to pass by.

Related Books

None yet

I tend to read a fair amount in the month of July, be it in the number of books I read or page count, but this time I’ve finished very little. It’s been an overcast month (being outside away from electronics helps) and seeing my nephew a lot more than usual ensured I spent more time answering multiple proliferations of questions rather than concentrating on books. Many evenings have been spent playing Monopoly and Mouse Trap. For once, I regret nothing in terms of numbers, even if I’ve now a huge pile to read post haste.

All books are works of fiction.

The Books

Susanna Kearsley: The Shadowy Horses – When Verity is offered an archaeology job in Scotland she takes it and decides to keep it even when she meets the leader of the dig who is basing his theories on supernatural events. A fair book but Kearsley leans too much on a fictional/literal Scots dictionary, constantly halting scenes.

Tove Jansson: Letters From Klara – A collection of short stories with a subtle underlying theme. You need to make time for it, because subtle really is the word, but it’s good.

Zoë Duncan: The Shifting Pools – A woman who suffered war-based trauma as a child and has yet to heal goes through her grief, eventually finding herself in a fantasy world where the people require strength to fight battles. It’s difficult to sum this up well – saying there is a fantasy world sounds, well, too out there, but it really works; a wonderful book.

Duncan’s book wins this month, hands down. I loved it; the fantasy element could be considered too lengthy but the structure of the book and general way it’s all been written is exceptional. It’s worth reading the back story, the author’s childhood, that is the reason for the book.

Quotation Report

In The Shifting Pools, Duncan puts forth the concept of getting over something, healing, and studies it, saying why time doesn’t heal, it merely allows you to scab over, to find new ways to live. Stasis rather than healing.

In theory, August should be packed.

How is your summer/winter going?

I’ve a lot of notebooks lying around and have filled many more that have been thrown away. All have been used for various purposes; the basic idea is to use them for reading notes and blog post drafts but inevitably at some point they also get used for ‘what to take on holiday’ and gift lists and so forth.

My view or almost relationship with notebooks has changed over the years. First I bought anything, mostly refill pads, and also used scraps of paper, to make notes on the books I wanted to review, including notes I actively wanted to include and thoughts and quotes I knew probably wouldn’t make it. I’d throw the notes away once the post was up, because why would I need them?…

Then I realised my error – I did need those thrown away notes, particularly those I’d made for general purposes; I bought notebooks with the intention of keeping them, and gave myself the ‘choice’ to slim the books down later on (if they were spiral bound).

Thirdly, I realised there was no rhyme or reason to this, and I was still using scraps of paper – often notes were split across scraps and books – and they got lost. I reverted to refill pads.

Keeping quotes I want to remember is a sort of compromise I’ve made with myself – I’ve often thought of starting a commonplace book, but putting it into practise strikes me as overwhelming. Where to start, exactly? How to categorise? And would I actually end up using any of the notes or quotes? This new refill pad that I’m not tearing pages out of – as I did all the others – is a way round that. I’ll probably digitalise them all with the caveat that they get kept – I’ve deleted lots of digit notes, too.

This refill pad is almost full so I’ll have to make a decision soon.

What do you look for in a notebook, and how do you go about using them in the context of what you need them for?

The woman went to the sink and washed her cup. I was pulled out of the story – hadn’t she already done that? Looking through the past few paragraphs in the scene I found that she hadn’t.

I realised that as I’d been reading, I’d imagined the two women talking at the table – as the dialogue showed this was happening. I saw one taking sips of coffee as the other spoke and then the reverse, and, as often happens in reality when you’ve a friend with you in the kitchen and it’s all very casual, the home owner had left the table to rinse her mug. That I’d imagined this made me very happy; I’m not great at taking a scene and running with it; description is useful (though I agree with the fact that lots of books have too much description).

(On this note there’s a ‘condition’ in the same region as Synesthesia, called Aphantasia – the inability to create mental images. It’s an interesting thing to read about.)

The washing up brought to mind the fact that stories don’t need to ‘tell’ – even if you’re not actually imagining, you don’t need an exact run-down of what’s happening, you don’t need the minor details repeated. Perhaps that’s where the line is, between telling and showing, the line between a reader taking on the scene’s construction themselves compared to being hindered because the author won’t let them create.

How do you find the visual part of reading? Do you find yourself creating the background and context?