page-turner

Who They Was by Gabriel Krauze

Portable WonderlandLeave a comment

PREMISE: The unforgettable narrator of this compelling, thought-provoking debut goes by two names in his two worlds. At the university he attends, he’s Gabriel, a seemingly ordinary, partying student learning about morality at a distance. But in his life outside the classroom, he’s Snoopz, a hard living member of London’s gangs, well-acquainted with drugs, guns, stabbings, and robbery. Navigating these sides of himself, dealing with loving parents at the same time as treacherous, endangering friends and the looming threat of prison, he is forced to come to terms with who he really is and the life he’s chosen for himself.

I’m really trying NOT to use Goodreads as the basis for each book post I do, but I was really curious about the 1-starrers on this one. Or, more accurately, I was keen for Goodreads to reaffirm my view that there’s some complete nobjockeys out there. And it didn’t let me down.

Caroline’s review starts with the startling admission that she “doesn’t like books about violence and drugs” and that she “isn’t the target audience”. Why the fuck are you reading it then Caroline? Is your junkie mobster husband forcing you to? Just think of the physical and emotional effort Caroline went through to read a book she knew she would hate just so she could then tell everyone how much she hated it. Some people just don’t help themselves.

Deborah stated “One of the least enjoyable books I think I’ve ever ploughed my way through (on audio)”. On audio? What the shit? You could have pushed the stop button at any time Deborah. That’s masochism for the digital age. And just fucking stupid.

I’ve picked on Caroline and Deborah there but there’s really three types of people who irritate me and why I think ultimately that book reviews are pointless:

  1. The people who did not finish the book but still rate it. One guy rated it 1 star and didn’t even finish the first chapter.
  2. The people who ‘struggle through’ the book just so they can bitch about it in a review.
  3. People who do either of the above and then tell people not to bother reading it.

And it’s this third bit that really gives me the shits. My intention with this blog is to talk about books that I’ve really enjoyed and that I think others will too. There’s millions of stories and authors out there and finding new ones based on other’s recommendations is one of the joys of reading. I’ve read books that were ultimately disappointing but I’d never suggest that others don’t read them. There’s an American Tabloid (or Who They Was) out there for everyone. One man’s Oscar Wilde is another man’s Oscar Pistorius. Something for those negative nonces to think about; why not expend energy on writing something positive about something you enjoyed? We can all easily find a stack of books that aren’t for us…the ones that really hit our sweet spots are usually harder to come across.

<Jumps off his high horse> Right, sorry about that. I may have digressed. I really enjoyed this book, probably due to its subject matter and the fact that it’s a difficult and divisive subject to discuss. I thought it was intelligent, engaging and well-written. But hey, that’s just me. I think Caroline and Deborah disagree.

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North

Portable WonderlandLeave a comment

PREMISE: Harry August is on his deathbed. Again. No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before. Nothing ever changes. Until now. As Harry nears the end of his eleventh life, a little girl appears at his bedside. “I nearly missed you, Doctor August,” she says. “I need to send a message.” This is the story of what Harry does next, and what he did before, and how he tries to save a past he cannot change and a future he cannot allow.

Claire North is a genius in my eyes. Not only is she a fantastic writer and storyteller but she comes up with just the best story ideas; a man who lives multiple lives, a person who can move between bodies just by touching them, a girl who nobody can remember, the Harbinger of Death. She also has such a ‘smooth’ way of writing, which I realise is just a fancy way of saying that she’s a really good writer. I mentioned it in a previous post; some writers words you can just swallow like soup whereas others might contain a few small croutons or large chunks of Ryvita. Ultimately tasty but might take a bit of work to get there. Claire North to me is the Heinz Oxtail of writers. Gloriously good.

The Circle by Dave Eggers

Portable WonderlandLeave a comment

PREMISE: When Mae Holland is hired to work for the Circle, the world’s most powerful internet company, she feels she’s been given the opportunity of a lifetime. The Circle, run out of a sprawling California campus, links users’ personal emails, social media, banking, and purchasing with their universal operating system, resulting in one online identity and a new age of civility and transparency.

Mae can’t believe her luck, her great fortune to work for the most influential company in the world—even as life beyond the campus grows distant, even as a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, even as her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public.

What begins as the captivating story of one woman’s ambition and idealism soon becomes a heart-racing novel of suspense, raising questions about memory, history, privacy, democracy, and the limits of human knowledge.

The Exalted Bellendage of Goodreads once again delivers for The Circle. Some great 1-star reviews (which, as we know, are rarely accompanied by anything objective and, when we’re lucky, contain some fantastic bile and profanities). Brad wrote 1400 words (broken down into 8 subsections) on how much he disliked it and then at the end provided a link to his review of the sequel! Jarrod simply stated “The worst handjob I’ve ever had” (his accompanying picture suggests a person who gives himself shit handjobs on a nightly basis). Kate goes with the one-word, one-emoji “Frown 😦 “. Useful. Sera stated “I didn’t feel satisfied when the book ends”, presumably writing this while she was driving her DeLorean. Nick just went with “Sucked buttfarts” (made me laugh) and Juliette H weighed in with “Wat een kut boek”, helping me learn the Dutch word for ‘shitty’. There’s also an alarming amount of people mentioning 50 Shades Of Grey in their review, which probably says a lot.

Is it the best book in the world? No, not at all. But it’s an intriguing story, definitely an interesting subject and it’s well-written and entertaining. That’s good enough for me.

Six Stories series by Matt Wesolowski

Portable WonderlandLeave a comment

PREMISE: The Six Stories series by Matt Wesolowski is a collection of interconnected thriller novels that focus on true crime investigations, often with a dark, folkloric or supernatural edge. Each book follows a central case where six individuals connected to the event share their accounts via interviews on a podcast hosted by journalist Scott King.

In my blog manifesto (copies available by request) I state that I don’t write anything negative on here. Not because I’m a good person or that I’m trying to attract sponsorship from the Church (the constant swearing may have put paid to that) but mainly due to the fact that who am I to judge someone’s work? All book reviews (you’ll find none here) are completely subjective and ultimately one person’s view on whether they liked the book or not. One man’s Dr. Zhivago is another man’s Dr. Shipman. Or something.

Anyway, with all that said…sometimes to explain how good something is you have to compare it to something shit. And there are two authors I’ve previously read who are insanely popular but whom I will likely never read again who could benefit from reading Matt Wesolowski’s books and see how proper plotting and pacing, twists and reveals, suspense and pure page-turning addictiveness is done. All six of these babies are top notch.

The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier

Portable WonderlandLeave a comment

PREMISE: In June 2021, a senseless event upends the lives of hundreds of men and women, all passengers on a flight from Paris to New York. Among them: Blake, a respectable family man, though he works as a contract killer; Slimboy, a Nigerian pop star tired of living a lie; Joanna, a formidable lawyer whose flaws have caught up with her; and Victor Miesel, a critically acclaimed yet commercially unsuccessful writer who suddenly becomes a cult hit. All of them believed they had double lives. None imagined just how true that was.

Or: A plane lands once, and then the exact same plane lands again 3 months later.

Yesss. Novels like this are right up my particular alley, tickle my particular sweet spot, caress my metaphorical love handles. I was going to say that I’m amazed nobody has come up with this premise before, but someone probably has. My level of research for this blog doesn’t go that far. I’m just going to assume that it’s never been done until someone tells me otherwise. This book was fascinating and thought-provoking, along with it being a cracking read. Which, for my money, ticks all the boxes.

All The Colours Of The Dark by Chris Whitaker

Portable WonderlandLeave a comment

PREMISE: Late one summer, the town of Monta Clare is shattered by the abduction of teenager Joseph ‘Patch’ Macauley. Nobody more so than Saint Brown, who will risk everything to find her best friend.

Patch lies alone in a pitch-black room – until he feels a hand in his. Her name is Grace and, though they cannot see each other, she lights their world with her words. But when he escapes: there is no sign she ever even existed. Left with only her voice and her name, he paints her from broken memories – and charts an epic search to find her.

Straight into my top 5 all-time favourite reads. Absolutely astonishing book which, I’m more than happy to admit, made me cry at the end.

2026 update…this baby is my 2025 Portland Award winner.

American Tabloid by James Ellroy

Portable Wonderland1 Comment

PREMISE: We are behind, and below, the scenes of JFK’s presidential election, the Bay of Pigs, the assassination—in the underworld that connects Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, D.C….

Where the CIA, the Mob, J. Edgar Hoover, Howard Hughes, Jimmy Hoffa, Cuban political exiles, and various loose cannons conspire in a covert anarchy…

Where the right drugs, the right amount of cash, the right murder, buys a moment of a man’s loyalty…

Where three renegade law-enforcement officers—a former L.A. cop and two FBI agents—are shaping events with the virulence of their greed and hatred, riding full-blast shotgun into history….

My all-time favourite book. Read it more times than I can remember and it’s an absolute fucking monstrous ride through America’s shittest period every time I read it. Follow it up with The Cold Six Thousand and Blood’s A Rover and you have the finest body of non-fiction fiction ever written. Totally masterful and, for me, something everyone should read if you want to understand even a little more of the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK, the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam and the utter corruption of the United States. This may be fiction, but it’s likely right on the money.

The Trees by Percival Everett

Portable WonderlandLeave a comment

PREMISE: When a pair of detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive in Money, Mississippi, to investigate a series of brutal murders, they find at each crime scene an unexpected second body: that of a man who resembles Emmett Till. After meeting resistance from the local sheriff, his deputy, the coroner, and a string of racist white townsfolk, the MBI detectives suspect these are killings of retribution. Then they discover eerily similar murders taking place in rapid succession all over the country. 

Man, this was one funny, entertaining book. Dark and funny as hell and Percival Everett is clearly as mad as a box of frogs. And have I mentioned it’s funny? If I had Everett’s sense of humour I reckon I would have been better-liked at school. Brilliant, brilliant book.

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Portable Wonderland1 Comment

PREMISE: Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end.

Twenty years later, Kirsten moves between the settlements of the altered world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They call themselves The Traveling Symphony, and they have dedicated themselves to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who will threaten the tiny band’s existence. And as the story takes off, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, the strange twist of fate that connects them all will be revealed.

My most recently read book (well, it was when I wrote this…one of the many downsides of ‘time’). Not that that has anything to do with anything. In fact, I’m not entirely sure why I said it and now I’m running out of (admittedly self-imposed) space to explain how fantastic this book is. It just is. Loved it. ESJM is such a beautiful writer.

Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang

Portable WonderlandLeave a comment

PREMISE: Authors Juniper Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena is a literary darling while June is a nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls?, June thinks. So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse, stealing Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers during World War I.

So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? This piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller. That is what June believes, and The New York Times bestseller list agrees.

But June cannot escape Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens her stolen success. As she races to protect her secret she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.

I’m back on Goodreads for this one as I knew this caused some debate and where there’s debate, there’s bellends. Some colossal twat called Clive Williamstein wrote this elloquent diatribe:

“There are no people in this book. There are only “white people” “Asian people” and “cis-het people”. Because you know how everyone fits neatly into those categories and it tells you everything you need to know about them? When referencing or thinking about another human being, their race is the only real important thing to consider.

I hate the protagonist, and not for the reasons I’m supposed to. We are supposed to accept that this person believes in actual literal ghosts and makes decisions accordingly. Fuck off.

I’ll save you some time… white people are all bad, successful people are all women, dumb people are all men, Asian people are all awesome and hard done by. Feeling slightly guilty about being a piece of shit makes people believe in ghosts and attempt murder. The end”

Now, I’m all for people having their own opinions. As I’ve said in other reviews, all books are either liked or disliked…that’s okay…that’s how it works. But Clive then signed off his review with this beauty:

“Fuck this book and everyone who gave it 2 stars or more”

Which, for me, lends a completely different slant to his review. Whereas he might have come across as being someone who was trying to make a point about race (and this book certainly encourages people to do that), with that last sentence he now just comes across as an old, white, grumpy, argumentative, racist prick.

As for the book itself, I really enjoyed it and absolutely flew through it. It’s an entertaining story and fantastically, addictively well-written and that’s all I’m after from a book.