schopflin's reviews
694 reviews

Frankie and Stankie by Barbara Trapido

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Loveable characters? Yes

4.0

I loved this book. It's clever, funny, informative and highly relatable despite its distance in time and location from me. The book is in the historic present throughout and in the earlier chapters has a 'child's eye' view, neither of which I like very much, but I enjoyed it here. Some may find the growing up story interweaved with politics a bit jarring but I feel it was appropriate. And Trapido never tries to pretend that she's writing from anything but a position of privilege. I much preferred it to Damon Algut's The Promise and that won the Booker... 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs and Racism

The Trio by Johanna Hedman

fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Loveable characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This was well written and translated, with complex well-drawn characters, but it was very hard to care about any of the characters. I loved the Stockholm setting. 

Murder Underground by Mavis Doriel Hay

fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot

3.5

An entertaining enough and well-written mystery. It passed the time on a train journey but was curiously uninvolving. 
EDIT just upped my score because as 24 hours have passed I realise the characters were very well drawn and it was funny!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty and Animal death

Atoms and Ashes by Serhii Plokhy

medium-paced

5.0

Absolutely excellent follow-up to the same author's Chernobyl. I am actually breathtaken to realise the risks taken in the post-war era, mostly for the sake of technological peacocking. Plokhiy tells the stories of the better-known disasters with the same fingertip-tension that he brought to his Chernobyl. His afterword is interesting. He is even-handed on the need for nuclear to take us away from fossil fuels and reduce carbon emissions. But I think he makes clear that the world is too politically unstable for something as dangerous as nuclear tractors to exist at all. But that's my take. 

The Drunken Botanist: The Plants That Create the World's Great Drinks by Amy Stewart

medium-paced

4.5

I loved this book. Beautifully written, a gorgeous print and binding and full of information told with humour and elan. 

Takeaway: Stories From a Childhood Behind the Counter by Angela Hui

fast-paced

3.0

I was disappointed by this book. She had a good story to tell but I found her writing style clunky and full of clichés. It may have been a choice to reflect her awkward teenage self. I would still recommend it as I learned a lot from it about the Chinese experience in Britain. 

The Warden by Anthony Trollope

3.0

When I first read The Warden I absolutely loved it. I thought it was a perfect little gem and a lovely story of old age. This time I really struggled, first with the amount of time we spend with I adequate men, and secondly, with the rather tedious perambulations around the press and the church. And I didn't have as much sympathy with Mr Harding. I don't think there's less of foolish men or dissertations on These Times in his other books, but they are balanced by more chapters featuring intelligent women. I wouldn't want to put any Trollope fans off The Warden, but I wouldn't start here. 

The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett
Did not finish book. Stopped at 60%.

I got off to a bad start with this book as one of its central conceits is jokes resulting from audio transcription errors. But one of the major ones is all wrong because of the emphasis. I did give it a really good go, and I did like the central character, but not enough to battle on through. 

Wifedom: Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life by Anna Funder

medium-paced

5.0

I absolutely loved this. It's in what seems to be a new type of writing where the very essence of telling stories is examined. It's beautifully done and I feel I am familiar with Funder's version of Eileen while also accepting that other versions might exist. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Sexual assault and Blood

Heavy Time: A Psychogeographer's Pilgrimage by Sonia Overall

4.0

Insightful funny and interesting. Overall writes a lot about walking as a woman and I must admit I wouldn't feel safe doing what she did. But she proves that female-perspective psychogeography can be a thing.