Alex the Book Reviewer

  This is essentially two stories. The story of the Price family and the story of Africa. The destruction of both really. Both stories horribly sad and infuriating. The book is written in chapters in turn by each member of the family except the father. The Price part of the book tells the tale of the extremely religious father taking his family, wife and four daughters, to the Congo as missionary to convert the population. The population isn't particularly interested in being converted. I wouldn't even say that they resist particularly, they just mostly ignore him and carry on in their own way. Which he, naturally, finds very frustrating. The daughters are: Rachel, the eldest (about 15 at the start of the book) and really only concerned with her appearance. A bit vapid, her most prized possession is her mirror. But she's not a bad person. Does Not Want To Be In The Congo. Leah (twin 1). Worships and adores her father almost unconditionally to start off with. Sort of unoffic...

  I'm not really 100% sure what to think of this book. But one thing I will say is it's not "hilarious" or "a funny, charming rolicking road trip". FFS, what is wrong with these people???! This is written by the author of A Short History of Tractors in Ukarainian which I mentioned in the review of Mr Rosenblum's List . And I had the exact same thing to say about those. Reviewed as hilarious but really, to mis-quote Marsellus Wallace, it's "pretty f***ing far from hilarious". It's basically about exploitation of immigrants with a side order of sex trafficking thrown in for good measure. It starts off with a group of 9 or so immigrants who works on a strawberry picking farm in Kent. All of them live in two small caravans on site. They are paid peanuts and charged for expenses (ie rent, food, the cost of the air they breath etc) naturally. But they're all pretty happy with it. But then the Farmer's wife tries to kill him and they ...

As entertaining as normal. It's set in the future but also strangely medeival. The usual Walliams tropes are all here but this one had added onomatopoeic (yes, I googled the spelling of this) tourettes and it was incredibly irritating. Do I recommend it? I mean, I don't know. I guess if you're 9. I like a lot of children's fiction but I'm not a massive fan of DW's books. Or his comedy come to think of it. Or his judging work either really.

  Do you ever cry at the end of a book just because you can't bear saying goodbye to the characters? I sobbed! This is a book about loss, love, loneliness, wanting to fit in, acceptance, memories, finding happiness. It's both desperately sad and wonderfully happy. A truly lovely book. Mr Rosenblum and his wife escape Nazi Germany and move to London. Mr Rosenblum desperately wants to fit in and be a true English gentleman so he starts creating a list of all the things that he needs to do to achieve this. He believes that golf is the epitome of Englishness but no golf club will have him as he is Jewish so he resolves to build his own course in the country. In the meantime his wife is horribly lonely and depressed. Homesick, unhappy and ignored by her husband, she is sinking lower and lower. Will her husband notice before it is too late? As an aside, the cover has a quote, "Hilarious". This is the second book I've read that quote on (the previous being "A Short ...

  Richard Osman is so bloody annoying. Incredibly clever, very funny, great at thinking of game shows. And now he can write really excellent books too. Irritating. Four octogenarians who live in a retirement village get together each week (on a Thursday) to look at and solve old murders. And then a real life murder happens in the village. The Murder Club are: 1) Elizabeth. The leader. A mysterious past career in intelligence. Contacts everywhere, brain like Poirot, an ability to read people like books and able to manouevre people just as she likes. But she's not hard or unlikeable. Her love for her ill husband and ex-Club member Penny (in a permanent coma) make her an entirely sympathetic main character. 2) Joyce. An ex-nurse. Quietly sits in corners un-noticed and overlooked. Brain like Miss Marple. Roped in for her medical knowledge and to replace Penny, she soon becomes a key and invaluable member of the Club. In turn the Club becomes and key and invaluable part of her. 3) Ro...

  An alien race kills a mathemetician who has solved a mathematical equation which will change the world in some unspecified way that humans are not ready to handle. Quite frankly, this is exactly how I felt in GSCE maths every single time there was a tick at the end of my sum. Or was it dangerous to the rest of the galaxy/ universe. I forget. Although these things are fairly intertwined. Anyway, they send one of their own to replace him so that they can make sure he hasn't told anyone so they can stop the secret from spreading. The great thing about writing from the point of view of a non-human, especially one who is studying humans, is that you can make all sorts of poignant observations and highlights of our oddities and absurdities. Let's face it, we're an odd bunch. Matt Haig, of course, does this brilliantly. He makes you laugh, makes you pensive, makes you sad. Sometimes all in one page! He also does a list of great pieces of advice too including: "Don't wor...

    This was an incredibly frustrating book. I wanted to love it but it was just too unsatisfactory. It is set in Lagos, Korede is a nurse and her sister is .... well... a serial killer. Korede helps her clean up after the killings and cover up what she's done. I mean the premise sounds great, right? Or at least like it might make for some amusing shenanigans. But no. It just somehow fails to raise more than a vague (very) occasional smirk. Ayoola, the sister, is just the most unsympathetic and unlikeable character. Yes, yes... she's a serial killer, they're not known for their jovial friendly personalities. But there's nothing there. She's just vapid and self-centred, no idea of or care about the effect of her behaviour on anyone else around her. I suppose it's a representation of a narcissitic personality disorder which is fine but you're left completely bemused by the motivation of Korede in protecting her. A background is referred to. There's somethi...

  Did this one as an audio book. Kya (Kai-ya) is born in The Marsh with her parents (violent drunk dad) and 5 brothers and sister. Gradually by the age of 7 all her family leave, leaving her behind to fend for herself and survive alone. Which she does impressively but the town continues to ostracise her and treat her as sub-human.  The book covers her trying to learn to have relationships and has wonderful descriptions of the marsh life. My favourite bit was how she learns about human relationships by the behaviour of the marsh creatures. Particularly the parallels between the science descriptions of the mating rituals of marsh creatures - “Sneaky fuckers” As is well known, in nature usually the males with the most prominent secondary sexual characteristics such as the biggest antlers, deepest voices, broadest chests and superior knowledge, secure the best territories because they have fended off weaker males. The females choose to mate with these imposing alphas and are there...

 I'm not sure what it is about famous people thinking they can write kids books but there's a lot of it about lately. However, David Baddiel is definitely very good at it and I'm glad he diversified in this way! This book sees the return of Rahul from the Taylor Turbo Chaser. Pip, accidentally ends up in 2019 from 3020 (it was supposed to be 2020 but he decided not to use that year. For some reason.). 3020 is a time when all interactions are online, no one can go outside because it's 50 degrees and also because of pandemic deseases, it never rains and people have artificial robot friends who look exactly like themselves. Pip's robot friend (Pip2) decides she likes Pip not being around so stops her from being able to return and Rahul needs to help her, her talking cat and talking (like, proper talking) parrot to get back to their own time. The thing I like most about David Baddiel's books is the diversity. Not just in terms of race, but also in terms of economic ...

  I basically only read this book because of the title with the obvious reference to the "Night time" book. However, there's no sign of any dogs. Or nightdresses. Or incidents of any description really.  The main character, Ross O'Carroll-Kelly, is one of the most unlikeable of any I've ever read. In fact there are no particularly likeable characters. I'm really not sure what kept me turning to the next page but I did with enthusiasm. It's very much like, "The Only Way is Dublin". So I guess I now understand why people watch that programme. It's written in an Irish accent though, which is fun. ... Oh my god.... I just googled it for the picture and have discovered that it is the 5th in the series of Ross O'Carroll-Kelly books. FFS. This explains so much! Why it felt like it started in the middle of a life story for a start. Why the characters seemed so developed already! What it doesn't explain is how the heck he, the author, has been...

    This is my first David Walliams book! I basically avoid them because he always slips in a horribly sad bit! Why must he do this?! It's not essential. He seems to kill off a parent or grandparent in every book. He has issues. But, yeah, it's great. Fun, funny, gross, silly. Everything you want in a kids book. There's really very little else to say!

  This is a Sean and Michelle book. Apparently this is a thing. Not a thing I've come across before though. I have read quite a few David Baldaccis before but not one with them. I like David Baldacci. His books are always entertaining and never stupid. As in, you always get the motivation and you are never shouting, "why tf are you doing that??!" This one meets all expectations. Their friends, a lawyer, asks them to help investigate a serial killer who is in high security jail but he, the lawyer, gets murdered before they can meet. It turns out the "serial killer" worked for the government and has special abilities, not exactly supernatural but definitely very special. But all is not what it seems. A classic who-to-trust mystery with twists and turns aplenty. Kept me interested until the end. Which is all you can ask really!

  "An Absolute Joy", Caroline Cantrill. 08.08.21 Ok, I admit I wasn't going to review this because I didn't feel like I could be totally honest if I knew the author was going to read what I said but as it turns out I have nothing but positive things to say about it so I'm happy to share my thoughts! As per Caroline's quote above, the book is an absolute joy from the very start. I mean ... it starts with a twat of a husband having dumped the protagonist for another woman so that's not totally joyful but you know what I mean. So ... Thea's husband, the aforementioned twat, has been having an affair. Thea has left and then she finds out she's inherited a house in a small village in Scotland so she moves up there (temporarily). The house is on the grounds of the local laird and then she ends up working in the bookshop which is owned by the brother of the local laird. There is obviously far more to it than just that but that's me briefest of summari...

  These are the books that Grantchester, the ITV series, is based on. I've never seen Grantchester but for some reason I thought it was a gritty, inner city, contemporary crime drama with dark streets and neon lights flickering in the rain. I was very, very wrong. Unless they have done some serious plot mangling for the telly! The detective is Sidney Chambers, a vicar. His good friend is the local police inspector. Occasionally his friend asks him to help out by looking into the moral side of a crime and occasionally he just randomly stumbles across a murder. As these curious villagey types are so frequently wont to do. Anyway, it's a book of four short stories. I bloody hate short stories. Just as you really get into the characters you have to start to get into a whole new set of characters. It's so annoying.  However... My notes from the time say, "Cases a bit wishy-washy, cute dog though". But my memory, in retrospect, is much more complementary. I often find i...

  My first review of a non-fiction (by which I mean not a novel or biography - I'm sure there's a proper term for the type of book this is but I don't know what it is! Reference book maybe??!) book! I first heard of this fashion movement/style in a documentary about Africa. Might have been the Ade Adepitan one or maybe the Rita Ray one . (Both were excellent and I highly recommend them!) The documentary focused on the Sapeurs (or Le Sape) in the DRC and I was immediately fascinated! It's stunning. Basic explanation - people dress in stunning suits and outrageously gorgeous formalwear. I'm a bit biased but I love it! There's seriously not a single page in this book that isn't gorgeous! Every photo is just beautiful. One day I want to do a dandy photo shoot myself, you know except for the fact that I hate having my photo taken or dressing up (I am not including ridiculous fancy dress - obvs. Fancy dress is my raison-d'etre!) but anyway ... I don't wan...

Can you all please remind me to stop reading the biographies of musicians. Most of the time they turn out to be tossers. This, I am really, really sorry to say, is the biggest tosser of them all.  I'm going to be honest (and this is potentially going to lose me some friends!) I'm not the most massive fan of Fela Kuti's music. The trouble is, I really don't like saxaphone music. At all. I cannot bear the sound of it. So it doesn't matter if you are the most amazing saxophonist in the world, and I'm sure Fela is up there (not as good as Rob Lowe in St Elmo's Fire, obvs), but I'm not going to enjoy it. I love the Afro-beats parts of his music but as soon as the (often 20 minute long) saxophone solos kick in, I just want to turn off. By the way, he doesn't like "Afro-beats". He wants it to be called "African Music" or preferably "African Music by Fela". *Serious eye-roll*. If this was a line at the beginning of t...