117 Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman
Best title of the year, for sure. I’ve read a few scifi books with climate change as their theme (if anyone is interested, then The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson is particularly good) but this assumes the climate crisis is more or less a given and yesterday’s problem while the world now has moved on to the biodiversity crisis. As a result, extinction credits are selling for a high price, allowing corporations to wipe out species unless and until they are certified as intelligent, at which point the extinction prices increases significantly. This was a really smart funny book which was also really unsettling. The financial crime thriller component was well done, as was the post-Brexit subplot which I thought was very good. And the venomous lumpsucker is indeed a real – and intelligent – fish.
118 Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Ali has written a lot about why Islam is bad for women (and people in general), drawing on her experiences growing up as a Muslim in East Africa before leaving for Germany and claiming asylum. This is her autobiography, including her time as an elected politican in the Netherlands. I found this fascinating. She’s highly opinionated and her journey from devout Muslim to one of its harshest critics has made so many people so angry they want her dead.
119 Kala by Colin Walsh
After Kala goes missing as a teenager, her friends find their different paths in life before coming back to the town where it happened one summer where they piece together the story of her disappearance. I know this has been widely read and reviewed here, and generally loved. I can see why though I found it slightly hard to follow in places. I think I wasn’t paying close enough attention, which was needed to unpick the various threads of the story (I think it had something to do with the multiple narrators, and strongly suspect it was a me problem). I particularly liked the teenage segments which felt very well observed.
120 Ready for Absolutely Nothing by Susannah Constantine
Just what I needed ahead of Christmas, picked up on a whim in the library. I thought there’d be more Trinny but there was very little. There was a lot of very high quality Royal and celebrity gossip as well as some very moving reflections on growing up, parents and substance abuse. Constantine sounds like she’d be enormous fun to hang out with and I’m glad she’s found happiness.
121 Occupational Hazards by Rory Stewart
Stewart was the deputy Governor of an Iraqi province after the second Iraq war and this is his account of his time in the country. I could have done without his attempts at accents which varied from ok to really bad, but he tells a good story. He did as good a job as he good in impossibly challenging circumstances and clearly has enormous affection for the country and the people he spent time with there. His fundamental decency comes through. It’s a shame he left the Tories; they could have done with a few more people like him around. I don’t share his politics but I think his principles are firmly held and humane.
122 The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict by Martin Bunton
One of the Very Short Introductions. And it did the job; I feel a lot better informed about the history of Israel since the mid 1800s as a result of this. I don’t know enough to know how balanced it was; it seemed to me at times he leaned in an anti-Israeli direction, but I also suspect it’s nearly impossible to write a history of the region that doesn’t at times appear to favour one side over the other. It ends in the late 2000s, so misses a lot of the more recent developments.
123 Grown Ups by Marian Keyes
Sometimes a Marian Keyes is just what’s needed although this wasn’t one of her best. A slightly convoluted family come together regularly for celebrations and festivities, and everyone has a story line. Arguably there were too many of them for any of them to be really satisfying. I could have done without either of the sets of in-laws, neither of which brought much to the story.
124 Skipping Christmas by John Grisham
When their daughter travels to Peru for Christmas, Lester and Nora decide to skip Christmas and take a cruise instead. Their neighbours disapprove but Lester in particular is determined they will save money and avoid the Christmas madness. I loved the first half of this, then got rather concerned in the second half that it was going to end up somewhere I really didn’t want it to go but the ending just about redeemed it for me. It did at least stop me from ordering more Christmas lights on the 20th December to put on the bushes outside the house, so for that I’m grateful.