Quick Book Review: Pieces of Light by Charles Fernyhough (DNF)

This is a non-fiction book about memory and recent research into memory. I love non-fiction about memory. In fact, in my study of Experimental Psychology, I chose some extra courses on the topic. That was a while ago, so I’m not up-to-date any more. So this sounded like a great book for me.

And really, it was. But, I’m sorry to say, I lost interest with the book. The sub-topics were interesting enough, for instance, how people pull together bits of general information and bits of memory to make a coherent story about something that happened in the past. I thought the idea was fascinating that you don’t just remember something, but you actively “make something up” from what you know/remember – and how you tend to remember only what is important to you. This is how you can remember something almost right, but not quite. Or how siblings can have different memories about the same event.

The problem with the book, for me, was that the author made it almost into a memoir. He uses (and tests) memories from himself and describes them in some detail (and to which degree they correspond to the reality – e.g., places he remembers and revisits in the current time). Also, other people’s stories are told in some detail.

All this detracted too much from the (for me) interesting phenomena that were being described about memory. That is, the personal evidence going with this phenomena was too detailed for me and not interesting enough to keep me reading. Maybe I’ll try again some other time, but for now, my interest in the book (though not the topic of the book) has waned a bit.

Book description from publishers: “How is it possible to have vivid memories of something that never happened?

How can siblings remember the same event from their childhoods so differently?

Do the selections and distortions of memory reveal a truth about the self?

Why are certain memories tied to specific places?

Does your memory really get worse as you get older?

A new consensus is emerging among cognitive scientists: rather than possessing fixed, unchanging memories, we create recollections anew each time we are called upon to remember. As the psychologist Charles Fernyhough explains, remembering is an act of narrative imagination as much as it is the product of a neurological process. In Pieces of Light, he eloquently illuminates this compelling scientific breakthrough via a series of personal stories—a visit to his college campus to see if his memories hold up, an interview with his ninety-three-year-old grandmother, conversations with those whose memories are affected by brain damage and trauma—each illustrating memory’s complex synergy of cognitive and neurological functions.

Fernyhough guides readers through the fascinating new science of autobiographical memory, covering topics including imagination and the power of sense associations to cue remembering. Exquisitely written and meticulously researched, Pieces of Light brings together science and literature, the ordinary and the extraordinary, to help us better understand the ways we remember—and the ways we forget.”

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Rating: Did not finish

Number of pages: 320 (I read about 100 pages)

First published: 2013

I got this book: from Harper for review

Genre: non-fiction, memory

Have you read this book?

Did you enjoy it?

Book Review: Flamenco Baby by Cherry Radford (DNF)

Having read and enjoyed Cherry Radford’s previous book, Men Dancing, I was pleased to be offered her second book for review. Reading back my review for that book, I notice that I mention there that at points, I was confused what was going on.

In Flamenco Baby, I got confused too often to enjoy the book as a comfortable read. I tried for 100 pages, but then gave up.

Flamenco Baby: What it is about

From the author’s website: “Musician and dance enthusiast Yolande has just finished with yet another faithless boyfriend, even though her body clock is ticking wildly and she longs for a child. However much gay best friend and ideal man Jeremy adores her, he refuses to be the father.

Should she relent and take back her repentant ex? Conceive with a sperm donor? She has become entranced by flamenco, music of the outcasts… Could seeds secretly planted at a London flamenco evening with enigmatic dancer Fernando Morales begin to flower into a ‘flamenco baby’?

Then, while Yolande starts a cosy relationship with a teacher on her flamenco course in Granada, Jeremy becomes drawn to Fernando – and so begins a whirl of secrecy, love and jealousy that has them all wondering if, in the spirit of flamenco, they dare to give the truth…“

Flamenco Baby: What I thought

Yolande, at 39 and newly single, is desperate for a baby. Her best male friend is gay and she’d happily have a child with him, if he only would agree. Then she meets an interesting Spanish Flamenco dancer…

This all started off well. I was curious to know how this story would develop. However, from the beginning I had to work really hard to understand the story. The characters weren’t explained, I had to infer their relationship to Yolande, sometimes pages after they were introduced. I also didn’t always understand the settings. At some point I thought Yolande was visiting her sister in Jersey but then is home two pages later, without having traveled. When she is in Spain, I don’t understand who are in her respective classes. When I thought there were just Spanish and English students, some Finnish girls are mentioned a page later, and later again, the number of non-Spanish students present didn’t seem to add up with the people I had in mind. These are only a few examples of the issues I got confused with.

I am not a careful reader. I may have missed some bits of information here and there. For instance, there is a mention of a Liz whom I didn’t remember, but paging back I found her mentioned once before.

I think for me, there was too much “show, not tell” in this book. I had to work (too) hard to understand the story. When at page 100, that Liz (see above) was mentioned and I didn’t recognise her, and there was no mention that the scene described was “the next day” (which was kind of obvious, but not totally), my irritation reached boiling point. It does not harm to state the kind-of obvious every now and then, to better anchor the story in place and time. The story was kept vague, maybe because the author considers her readers clever enough to figure it out for themselves.

If you can get over that, this could be a fun story. The flamenco classes and the setting in Spain were new to me, and could make for a good read.

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Rating: No rating, did not finish the book

Number of pages: 394 (read to page 100)

First published: 2013, February

I got this: from the author for review

Genre: contemporary fiction

Book Review: The End of the Point by Elizabeth Graver (DNF)

This book looked really interesting to me, and it was, for a while. But eventually I lost interest and did not finish the book. I read just under half of it.

The End of the Point: What it is about

What the publishers say: “A place out of time, Ashaunt Point—a tiny finger of land jutting into Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts—has provided sanctuary and anchored life for generations of the Porter family, who summer along its remote, rocky shore. But in 1942, the U.S. Army arrives on the Point, bringing havoc and change. That summer, the two older Porter girls—teenagers Helen and Dossie—run wild. The children’s Scottish nurse, Bea, falls in love. And youngest daughter Janie is entangled in an incident that cuts the season short and haunts the family for years to come.

As the decades pass, Helen and then her son Charlie return to the Point, seeking refuge from the chaos of rapidly changing times. But Ashaunt is not entirely removed from events unfolding beyond its borders. Neither Charlie nor his mother can escape the long shadow of history—Vietnam, the bitterly disputed real estate development of the Point, economic misfortune, illness, and tragedy.

An unforgettable portrait of one family’s journey through the second half of the twentieth century, The End of the Point artfully probes the hairline fractures hidden beneath the surface of our lives and traces the fragile and enduring bonds that connect us. With subtlety and grace, Elizabeth Graver illuminates the powerful legacy of family and place, exploring what we are born into, what we pass down, preserve, cast off or willingly set free.”

The End of the Point: What I thought

This book started really good, with the story of the Porter family spending their summer at Ashaunt Point, as they have always done. But with the Second World War well on its way, there are soldiers everywhere and everything is different from normal. Bea, the nanny, falls in love with a soldier. This part of the story was wonderful. It felt very much like Atonement by Ian McEwan, with the same atmosphere of a well-to-do family in wartime. The children and the staff of the family become more and more acquainted with the soldiers, which leads to an incident, which is hushed down. Most of the story is in Bea’s perspective.

After about 100 pages, the story shifts forward in time and changes narrator. This time it’s Helen, the family’s oldest daughter, who in the form of letters to her parents, writes about her time in Switzerland. This was very different from the first part of the book, and I hoped the story would pick up again and deliver the lazy, sunshine atmosphere from the first part.

However, the book then skips another decade and moves on to focus on Charlie, Helen’s son. He was not present in the earlier parts of the book and therefore, it was almost as if I was starting a whole new story. It seems he has been taking drugs. This was such a contrast with the much more relaxed and easy feel of the earlier stories, that I didn’t want to continue reading, as the book now was nothing like how it started off.

I think the issue for me was that the first part of the book was really good, and I wanted the story to linger there, or at least bring back the same feel in the rest of the book, but that didn’t happen.

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Rating: No rating, did not finish the book

Number of pages: 352 (read to page 160)

First published: 2013, March 5th

I got this: from the publishers, Harper (Uncorrected proof)

Genre: historical fiction

Quick Book Review: The Mad Scientist’s Daughter by Cassandra Rose Clarke (DNF)

This book sounded just the thing for me: an SF story about artificial intelligence and how close it can get to human intelligence. Unfortunately, I could not get into the story, so I abandoned the book after I read about a quarter of it.

In a new future, Cat, a young girl, is given a robot as a tutor. He was build to look like a human and adapted by her father, a cybernetic scientist. At first, she doesn’t realise he’s not human, and really, it doesn’t matter, she loves him.

As she gets older and develops love affairs with boys and men, she can’t forget about Finn, the robot, who is still living at her parent’s house. But his love for her is programmed and not real.

There are hints of a Disaster in the past, after which a new, high-tech society has been created. But not everyone is keen on technology which they claim caused the Disaster in the first place. They frown upon the existence of robots such as Finn.

The story felt like a YA story, although it is not meant to be one. The writing is not very demanding and there is just the single storyline (I’m not saying all YA is like that, but it’s maybe more likely to be like that than adult books).

I didn’t find the story very engaging or exciting. It’s a kind of and-then/and-then story, very linear. It also skips years very abruptly at times, moving from one period in Cat’s life to another one.

I would have loved to know more about the society they were living in, the Disaster and the anti-automaton movement. Maybe this was further explained later on in the story. In the part I read, I found that kind of information rather sparse. Instead, the book focused mainly on Cat and her boyfriends, and of course, Finn. It felt more like a love story than a more general science fiction story.

This was obviously not the book for me, so I gave up after 110 pages.

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Rating: No rating, did not finish the book

Number of pages: 416 (read to page 110)

First published: 2013, February 7th

I got this: from the publishers via Netgalley (ebook)

Genre: science fiction

Quick Book Review: Man in the Empty Suit (DNF)

I love books about time travel, so a book in which a man celebrates his birthday with his younger and older selves, sounded like a lot of fun. Unfortunately, I found this book too slow going.

It was quirky and the ideas were very good (he witnesses the murder of a slightly older version of himself and has to find out what happened). However, there was a lot of running around the building with younger versions of himself out to get him. There was a woman, the only non-himself present at the party, but I didn’t understand her role at all.

Also, the story was too fixated on the man and the hotel he was in, and didn’t reveal much about the further world around him (which seems to have collapsed). After 150 pages I was still not very interested in finding out who committed the murder and why, so I gave up reading.

If you’re interested, here’s the description from the publisher:

“Say you’re a time traveler and you’ve already toured the entirety of human history. After a while, the outside world might lose a little of its luster. That’s why this time traveler celebrates his birthday partying with himself. Every year, he travels to an abandoned hotel in New York City in 2071, the hundredth anniversary of his birth, and drinks twelve-year-old Scotch (lots of it) with all the other versions of who he has been and who he will be. Sure, the party is the same year after year, but at least it’s one party where he can really, well, be himself.

The year he turns 39, though, the party takes a stressful turn for the worse. Before he even makes it into the grand ballroom for a drink he encounters the body of his forty-year-old self, dead of a gunshot wound to the head. As the older versions of himself at the party point out, the onus is on him to figure out what went wrong–he has one year to stop himself from being murdered, or they’re all goners. As he follows clues that he may or may not have willingly left for himself, he discovers rampant paranoia and suspicion among his younger selves, and a frightening conspiracy among the Elders. Most complicated of all is a haunting woman possibly named Lily who turns up at the party this year, the first person besides himself he’s ever seen at the party. For the first time, he has something to lose. Here’s hoping he can save some version of his own life.”

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Rating: No rating, did not finish the book

Number of pages: 306 (read to page 150)

First published: 2013, February 5th

I got this: from the publishers via Netgalley (ebook)

Genre: science fiction, time travel

Quick Book Review: Cover of Snow by Jenny Milchman (DNF)

One morning, Nora Hamilton finds her husband dead: he’s hung himself. He was a policeman in a small town in the mountains near New York. After the first shock, Nora goes on an investigation as to the reason of his suicide. She comes across some townspeople, including the chief of police, who try to discourage her from looking any deeper or even tell lies. She’s offered help by a client and they discover some unnerving facts about Brendan, Nora’s husband, and his younger brother.

I didn’t get much further than this, as the book didn’t resonate with me. I found the story bland and there was not enough tension. The small facts of mystery that showed up during Nora’s investigation may peak some readers’ interest but it didn’t happen for me. Furthermore, I didn’t find Nora, the main character, a particularly interesting person and didn’t think she was convincing as a widow.

I did like the small-town feel of the book. There is a clear sense of us (the long-standing families of the town, including Brendan’s) and them (including Nora, and other late comers to the town). The mother-in-law is an awful person who undoubtedly will get her comeuppance later in the story. It was almost worth reading on to see in what way! However, as with Nora, I found her rather one dimensional and not an interesting person as such.

This was obviously not the book for me, so I gave up after 120 pages.

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Rating: No rating, did not finish the book

Number of pages: 336 (read to page 120)

First published: 2013, January 15th

I got this: from the publishers via Netgalley (ebook)

Genre: mystery

Quick Book Review: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (DNF)

Caroline at Beauty is a Sleeping Cat and Delia at Postcards from Asia are organising the Dickens in December event. There is a read-a-long, a watch-a-long and there are of course book reviews.

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After A Christmas Carol, which I really enjoyed, I tried A Tale of Two Cities, which I enjoyed at first, but later found extremely uninteresting.

The back of my book says: “A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Dickens’ greatest historical novel, traces the private lives of a group of people caught up in the cataclysms of the French Revolution and the Terror. Dickens based his historical details on Carlyle’s great work - The French Revolution – and also on his own observations and investigations during his numerous visits to Paris.”

I should have read that first. I just thought “Here’s a book by Dickens I haven’t read, let’s try it.” I have enjoyed some of his other novels, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, A Christmas Carol, and one or two others, and I enjoyed those very much.

I did not finish A Tale of Two Cities and I think my main problem is the main topic: the French Revolution and the complots etc. They did not interest me. I enjoyed the beginning where an English gentleman is rescued after many years from a lowly French establishment (Book 1). This was fun. But then it continued with some different characters, I lost track a little, and I didn’t find anything in the story that made me want to read on.

A pity, but it’s just one of those things. Maybe I’d enjoy the book if I read it at a different time, and maybe I will re-try sometime. For now, a did-not-finish (after 120 pages).

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Rating: did not finish

Number of pages: 321 (I read until page 120)

First published: 1859

I got this book: bought

Genre: classic

Have you read this book?

Did you enjoy it?