"You Couldn't Make It Up" by AB Monroe which appeared to be a lighthearted 'aren't-foreigners-funny' tale of a family moving to France. I saw it advertised at a tube station so assumed it was a legitimate book, although it was a little difficult to track down in an actual book shop, which is a bit weid for a tube-advertised book. They're usually more at the bestseller end of the scale, and available everywhere. Anyway, I like a tale of Brits in France so I bought a copy online. It was terrible, self-published hogwash, and smacks of someone telling the person who wrote it (if they're not AI) that she should write a book, so she did. She should NOT have written a book. It was bad, very bad, and in desperate need of a good edit and, at times, seemed to be written by someone with only a passsing acquaintance with English - for instance, talking about the 'subtotal' of her knowledge, meaning, I guess, 'sum total' or a 'barrel of complaints' - 'barrage', perhaps? Who knows? Anyway, don't trust tube adverts...
So, I tried to get rid of the taste of that with 'Convent Wisdom' by Ana Garriga and Carmen Urbita. I ddn't much like that either. I didn't realise that it was based on a podcast and I disliked its chatty, over-familiar style. But it did indirectly, via Catherine of Siena and some other holy anorexics, lead me to a late mediaeval poet Thomas Hoccleve who wrote about his mental illness in a moving and very modern way. 'My Complaint' - it's a short work with a modern prose translation available online.
Currently reading 'The Invisible Doctrine - the Secret History of Neoliberalism' by George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison. It's very pleased with itself...
Might give the Elif Shafak 'There are Rivers in the Sky' a go next.
I'm felling a bit rudderless in terms of reading at the moment.