Me Before You - Jojo Moyes

Read this book! If you want to be moved, read this book! If you want to swept up in a love story and get reminded what love is all about, read this book! If you want to remember what things really matter in life then read this book!

Louisa Clark, 27 is initially horrified by her new job, a six month contract caring for Will Traynor, a  35 year old quadriplegic and understabley suicidal ex-City whiz kid and ex-bon viver. But as the six months progress Louisa not only manages to enhance Will's quality of life but also allows him to enrich hers.

This book had me in floods of tears on several occasions including a very crowded tube journey. It's just fantastic, so good in fact that I felt real sadness as it ended, knowing that I wouldn't get to spend time with these fantastic characters anymore, they were literally ripping my heart out, what better metaphor can there be for the happiness and pain that true love can give you? I really must urge you again to read this book!

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The Paris Wife is about Ernest Hemmingway's relationship with his first wife Hadley Richardson. Hemmingway was a notorious womaniser, and this account being told from Hadley's point of view helps us to understand quite how he got away with it.

Hemmingway comes across as intense, often fun and incredibly needy, so much so that he finds it difficult to spend time alone. He has a hedonistic bent, always taking himself to the edge which you can see in his views on the great toreadors `You have to already be dead in order to really live and to conquer the animal'. And while men like this can be enjoyable initially, and easy to fall in love with, it's difficult to maintain a relationship with them long term.

But this book is told from Hadley's point of view, and she's the person that I found most interesting in this book. Yes, she is madly in love with Hemmingway, but she gives up so much of her life to be with him and depends on him to such a great extent practically collapsing when he goes away on press and then writing trips. It's really a recipe for disaster - no wonder that their marriage collapses.

This is a really well written and interesting book - McLain's voice is so convincing that I had to check a few times I wasn't reading an autobiography. Hemmingway is most definitely a bad guy, but any modern female reader would no doubt wonder if Hadley wasn't partly to blame for the effect he had on her.

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50 Shades of Grey - E L James

This was the first adult fiction book I'd read. I'd heard about them of course as a genre, but not a specific contemporary title in the mainstream. However as I think it's important to read widely, when someone on Facebook mentioned 50 Shades of Grey I thought I would give it a try. It's not a high brow literary read, but enjoyable nonetheless.

While reading it I had the old joke in my head, you know the one:

Why do women watch porn films to the end?
To find out if they get married.

And that seems to be the central thrust (excuse the pun) of the book, as we watch virginal Anastasia Steele's sexual initiation by the multi-millionaire Christian Grey into the world of BDSM.

She does have her inner goddess jumping up and down a little too much for my liking but that annoyance aside it was easy reading and in a style that was very direct and lacking pretence.

There's of course a lot of sex in it and it is very graphic and I admit quite erotic, but, just like the joke, the thing that kept me reading to the end was to find out if Anastasia is able to tame her man and bring him into a loving relationship.

If you are interested in reading widely I would definitely give this book a go and also if you're a writer who finds it difficult to write sexual scenes you might find this book a useful resource.  Lastly thank G-d for Kindle, this is exactly the kind of novel that they are invented for, because unless you tell people, no one will no what you're reading beneath your Kindle covers.

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Why I set up Byte the Book

To say I am passionate about reading would be an understatement. Back in 1995 I set myself the target of reading a book a week. Some years I’ve got to or even exceeded fifty-two books, other years have been less fruitful. I’ve got lists to prove it dutifully noted down in my trusty Filofax and listed here.

I also enjoy writing fiction and over the years have met a lot of very talented writers trying to navigate the changes that are happening in the publishing industry.  Personally I think digital is great (I’ve worked with technology for over ten years) and think that it could do loads to empower writers to keep more of the profits of writing and streamline the fat publishing industry.

Things got more exciting for me in 2010 when I started reading on a Kindle.  Despite always adoring books I fell in love with the device and two things struck me:

1. It was harder to work out what to read when you stopped going to bookshops.

2. Writers could now publish easily to a Kindle device, I was reading a friend’s manuscript sent to my Kindle in a Word document that looked exactly like a digital book I’d bought from Amazon published by a traditional publishing house.

So I decided to set up a Byte the Book to help readers work out what to read next and also help writers keep more of the profits from their writing, I also wanted to set up a community of writers and readers.

It’s early days, the site is just beginning, I suspect it’ll change as the years go by, but for the time being if you’re interested in writing and reading in the digital age then you might find this site useful.  Oh and if you’re interested in contributing as a blogger, reviewer or adding your fiction please get in touch.

Thanks so much

Justine

The Personal History of Rachel Dupree - Ann Weisgarber

The Personal History of Rachel Dupree tells the story of a negro woman's struggle to better herself in early 20th century America. She moves out from working in a boarding house as a domestic in Chicago to the Badlands with her ambitious husband Issac. They raise a family together but life is incredibly tough and we watch across a few months, through a drought and then the subsequent storms and see her family worn ragged by the harshness of their life and Issac's stubborness to stick it out.

I enjoyed this book, life is so difficult for Rachel reading this book encourages one to remember never to take a glass of water for granted or the myriad of opportunities we have available to us in contemporary society.  Not as well publicised as Kathryn Stockett's 'The Help' it deals with a similar period and topic in US history and is a good companion piece to show the limited options available to negro women who tried to make a better life for themselves in Apartheid America.

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Tideline - Penny Hancock

Tideline is a very creepy book and a real page turner. Sonia's marriage is falling apart and she is reluctant to leave her childhood home a Greenwich house that backs onto the Thames. She is clearly not well and is also clinging on to her past so as not to have to face the future. In her past is her first love a sixteen year old boy, Seb, so when Jez, a fifteen year old nephew of a family friend comes to borrow a Jeff Buckley CD, she sees a way of getting back something she once lost. She decides to keep Jez in the house by whatever means necessary, including throwing away his mobile phone and plying him with sleeping pills. Her friend Helen and her family as well as Jez's girlfriend Alisha are thrown into a panic searching for the missing boy but she does all she can to hide her new house guest. When her husband and daughter come back to stay she is forced to move him from the comfortable music room into the dank garage next to the house before she is finally pushed over the edge and has to take more extreme measures to avoid Jez being discovered and taken from her. The story is told with the backdrop of her relationship with Seb and dark secrets start to float up to surface as the story progresses.

This is a really good book, one I enjoyed immensely, it put me in mind of SJ Watson's Before I Go To Sleep, although told from the captor's rather than the captives point of view. While the reader is in no doubt that Sonja is not entirely sane one also feels a sympathy for her, understanding how destructive her love for Seb once was and the disappointment her subsequent life has been. While this past does not justify her actions one cannot help but feel her deep and buried sadness. Worth reading, and throughly enjoyable.

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The Art of Fielding - Chad Harbach

There's been a lot of publicity surrounding this book, notably reports of a $650,000 advance and comparisons to Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections.   I'd seen a lot of five star reviews and heard radio broadcasters talk about it being a safe book one to buy your father, brother, sister or aunt, which perhaps stops it being a great book like the ones it's been compared to.

The story funds Henry Skirmshander a weedy but faultless backstop overlooked by all colleges for his diminutive size but then discovered by Mike Schwatz a ambitious sports jock at Westish College, who arranges a scholarship for Henry,  convinced that Henry has the ability to save the failing Westish baseball team. Henry shares a room with 'gay mulatto' genius Owen Dunne, who is also on the team.  Predicatably Henry is driven hard by Mike and the team suddenly starts to find glory. Much to the delight of the college president, confirmed bachelor and Melville scholar Guert Affenligh  Westish College is lifted from it's provincial status.  Mike is even rewarded with a girlfriend when Guert's daughter Pella runs away from a failing marriage to visit Westish and falls for Shwartz. All is going well until Henry's faultless record is ruined by a foul throw that results in an injury to Owen. This leads to a crisis in Henry's life and the start of an affair between Guert and Owen.

This book is about passion, a monomaniacal desire to succeed and the different types of love one person can feel for another. As Henry observes there is a place for the kind of love that Mike feels for Pella, that Guert feels for Owen but few appropriate places for him to express the kind of  love that he feels for his mentor Mike, perhaps it is only on a sports field that that kind of love can be expressed.

The Art of Fielding felt like a very familiar book, comparisons with Ahab's desire to kill the whale in Moby Dick loom large, there is a sense that The Corrections is a reference point as is Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, but it also owes quite a bit to the recent film Moneyball.  The structure of the book is tied to the fate of the Westish baseball team and its inevitable denouement is pitched against the final ball in the last game and the actions of our hero Henry.  I enjoyed this book, despite it's 515 pages it was an easy read, light even, and despite scenes of male gay sex is indeed a safe book, perhaps due to it's formulaic structure. Worth reading, and it will sell well so probably deserves its $650,000 advance but not a great great book in the way that The Corrections, A Prayer for Owen Meany or Moby Dick was, it would be a good film though, like Moneyball was. which will add further to Chad Harbach's coffers no doubt.

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A Sense of An Ending - Julian Barnes

Julian Barnes has finally won the Booker with this book, so I had some expectation that this might be a great read. It wasn't, it's OK, it's an easy interesting read, but it's not great.

Tony Webster reflects on his life, and specifically considers his old school friend Adrian Finn, a genius, who went off to Cambridge and then ended up in a relationship with Veronica a not particularly nice ex-girlfriend's of Tony's. Adrian suffers a horrible fate and Tony is reminded of him again when out of the blue Veronica's mother leaves Tony some money in her will. The main mystery of the book is Tony trying to find out why his ex-girlfriend's mother, a woman he met only once should leave him money.

Yes the prose is good, but the philosophical lapses feel quite heavy handed, almost school boyish and don't sit well in the context of a novel, however the real problem for me was the ending.  All the loose ties are knotted into a pretty little bow and to be honest I didn't quite believe it, though sign posted through the book, it didn't feel true to life and left me feeling wholly unsatisfied.

To buy this book click on the following link: The Sense of an Ending

Fold - Tom Campbell

I've been reluctant to review this book. I went to one of Tom's readings in Kentish Town and met some of his friends, some of which I'd met before. We had a great evening. He told me that it had taken him just four months to write this book, it's taken me over 7 years and I've still not completed mine, so for that alone you have to got to admire him.

The central conceit is there is a group of five men playing poker once a month for a year, with a monthly meeting at one of their houses in Reading.  There are some great ideas in the book, and interesting thoughts around for a mid-life crisis search for happiness. I did finish the book, and it wasn't an unenjoyable read, but the characters weren't that well differentiated and I wasn't sure who anyone was apart from Doug the main character in the book from whose viewpoint a lot of the story is told and Vijay who is the least complex but is the only one with a non-western name.

I'd like to read Tom's books in the future. I think he's an interesting fluent writer, but I didn't love Fold, which is a shame because Tom really was a lovely chap.

To buy this book click on the following link: Fold

Snowdrop - A D Miller

Our main protagonist, Nicholas, is told by his best friend Steve, that,

'In Russia... there are no business stories. And there are no politics stories. There are no love stories. There are only crime stories'.

This book is definitely a crime novel though business, politics and love are part of the fun. Crime isn't really a genre I usually enjoy, so I was surprised how much I enjoyed Snowdrops.

Nicholas is an English lawyer living in Moscow who gets caught up in a few mysterious situations. Professionally he is acting for a Cossack who has connections with the oil fields of Murmansk. At home he's trying to help his neighbour  when his friend and fellow habitee of their apartment block goes missing. Finally there is the woman he falls for - Masha and her 'sister' who isn't really her sister and ends up helping their 'aunt' who isn't really their aunt.

The narration is a confessional, Nicholas is reflecting on his time in Moscow and coming clean to his fiance before they wed. Although Nicholas complicity and lack of inquiry would be inexcusable in most other situations, as a reader one does kind of get it, as if while he was in Moscow, he was in a fairytale land, a land that at another time on the political spectrum once declared that 'all property is theft' but has now swung the other way to create a society where crimes such as property theft are not only accepted but the norm.

AD Miller is a charming writer, and uses a convincing combination of tight clear prose, intriguing plot and lyricism. I particularly liked the origin of the title of the book -  'snowdrops' are the local name given to the dead bodies that are revealed by the melting snow as the winter ends. This is a real page turner and well worth a read.

To buy this book click on the following link: Snowdrops