Sorry, I fell off the thread again 
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5. Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, Americanah. I see a couple of other people have also read this recently. It's taken me 4 weeks to finish this book! That's partly practical - I borrowed it from the library, and it was a HUGE hardback that was too big to take on my commute or even read in bed - but partly because I found I couldn't read very much of the book at a time. The author's detached, observational tone made me feel I was being kept at a slight distance - and so much of the book was given to making various points about race, and homeland, and culture, and belonging, that I had to keep stopping to think about things before I got literary indigestion.
The story follows Ifemelu, a Nigerian girl who moves to America to study and ends up staying more than 10 years, in the process becoming famous for her blog about race in America. We are treated to several extracts from her blog - I didn't find these particularly engaging or original, but the points they made are interesting enough. What I really enjoyed were the sharp observations about the ways that race and class and nationality intersect - the way that Ifemelu didn't feel "black" until she got to America and realised that she was suddenly saddled with a load of cultural baggage by virtue of her skin colour, the ways in which people adapt their tastes and behaviours to fit into a particular milieu, the new perspective that Ifemelu has on her "home" country when she returns to Nigeria towards the end of the book.
Looking at Goodreads, I was amused to see some really disgruntled reviews, especially from Americans who felt that they were being harangued and made fun of. One in particular claimed that the book was not funny, despite the author's claim that she laughed a lot when writing it. But I actually found it very funny indeed in places (possibly because one of my parents is a first-generation immigrant from an African country!) and found a lot of humour in the way that she skewered the hypocrisy and squeamishness with which a lot of (especially liberal) Americans talk about race. I particularly loved the hilarious speech made by the President of the African Students Association to new joiners: "Try and make friends with our African American brothers and sisters in a spirit of true pan-Africanism. But make sure you remain friends with fellow Africans, as this will help you keep your perspective ... Please note that in general, African Americans go to the Black Student Union and Africans go to the African Students Association. Sometimes it overlaps but not a lot. The Africans who go to BSU are those with no confidence who are quick to tell you 'I am originally from Kenya' even though Kenya just pops out the minute they open their mouths. The African Americans who come to our meetings are the ones who write poems about Mother Africa and think every African is a Nubian queen ... You will also find that you might make friends more easily with other internationals, Koreans, Indians, Brazilians, whatever, than with Americans both black and white. Many of the internationals understand the trauma of trying to get an American visa and that is a good place to start a friendship." Those were the moments that kept me reading through all 477 pages, despite the sometimes irritating blog posts, the way that polemic about race turned some of the dialogue stilted and unrealistic, the often dislikeable and self-absorbed character of Ifemelu, the rather over-egged satire of pretentious, liberal academics and professionals - and especially the romantic sub-plot with Obinze, the school sweetheart who remains a constant in her life while she is travelling around. I'm not sure the book was exactly enjoyable, but I'm glad I read it. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is an amazing writer and I'll definitely seek out more of her writing!
6. Bill Bryson, The Road to Little Dribbling. I was looking for a library audiobook to listen to on my commute, and chose this because I hadn't read any Bill Bryson for about 15 years and assumed it would be an amusing, easy read. Well, it was, but... he's got a lot more grumpy since he wrote Notes From a Small Island! Quite a lot of the book is taken up with complaints about British teenagers dropping litter, British shopkeepers being taciturn and unhelpful, and people everywhere (not just in Britain) being fuckwits. Obviously, this is interspersed with a lot of praise for the things that he does like about the UK (mostly the countryside and beer). I felt that the concept was a bit incoherent, too: he's ostensibly following this thing called "The Bryson Line" (the longest line you can draw on mainland Britain, from Bognor Regis to Cape Wrath), but since he manages to take in Norfolk, Oxford, Aberystwyth and Durham, it's clear that he's only paying lip service to this idea. The thing that really cheesed me off was the realisation about halfway how contrived the whole thing is - he's prepared to chuck common sense out of the window in favour of manufacturing a good story. A number of times, he visits an attraction just before closing time, or on a day when it doesn't open, seemingly just so he can insert a schtick about how incoveniently these things are run, and how un-business-minded the British are. If he really wanted to investigate these places, he would have done a bit of research about opening times or bus timetables ... but that would have made for a less amusing anecdote 