I enjoyed this book, although it was quite tricky to read at first due to the thick Leeds accent the narrator speaks with. I found myself reading it out loud at times to try to make sense of what the characters were actually saying. The author writes with humor about some fairly bleak situations, but there is an almost poetic style to some of his descriptions as well. Worth a read but definitely requires concentration. Not a fan of the ending.

I really enjoyed this, just the perfect combination of twisted imagination and beautiful writing. I was slightly disappointed with the ending, I personally wanted something different to happen, however I fully understood why the author chose to close the way he did. Well worth a read.

This is a tricky one, it's a collection of his writings published on the anniversary of KV's death... some were laugh-out-loud funny... some weren't. Worth a read even if only for the speech his son delivered in his place 2 weeks after his death. The introduction (by his son) also gives a real sense of who he was and how and why he wrote the way he did.

My book club's August pick... I read it in 2 days, Hurwitz writes with a pace that drags you along with it. You feel like you are rushing, rushing to keep up with the characters as they rush to stay safe. He manages to entwine moments of great emotion within the drama and you feel all of the pain, fear and love along with them. As the plot thickened I could not put this down. A solid 7/10.

This was picked for our book club by another of the ladies and I have to admit it is not something I would have ever chosen to read had she not. I appreciated the realistic way Keyes writes about the darker subjects such as depression, anxiety and rape but there was not enough depth in amongst the cheesy 'chick-lit' comedy for me. I also felt like I didn't really connect with any of the characters, maybe because there were so many of them!

Myself and my best friend joined our very first book club this week. It was organised by the manager of a local non-profit restaurant called The Fork in the Road. We were unsure of what to expect but had a lovely evening, met some interesting people, had an amazing dinner and got given our first read. Not something I would ever have picked from the shelf but I'm looking forward to reading something outside of my comfort zone.

Re-reading old books whilst waiting for new books to be delivered

The way Murakami writes about death sends shivers down my spine. At times I found this book quite hard to read and had to push myself to get through it, I didn't massively identify with the main character and as a result his confusion about Naoko and Midori annoyed me at times. The last few chapters really drew me in however, perhaps because I was so excited to see the outcome he decided.

Obsessed with the magical way Murakami writes!

I could not put this book down from the second I picked it up. Murakami writes about emotional pain in such a way that I could feel it in my own chest. He writes lyrically and rhythmically, carrying you through the story as though on a wave. He manages to create a protagonist who does come across as "colorless" but with great depth and likability too. Such an easy read as it is written so beautifully!

When you sit down to read "one chapter with a cup of coffee" and you're still here 2 hours later.

Still unsure of how I feel about this book... I didn't feel there was a 'story' to it, I wonder whether this is because I didn't feel any great connection with the narrator. However there were brief moments throughout where I felt real understanding for him, mostly when he spoke of the concept of love. I wanted so much to like this book but I felt like I was kept waiting for something to happen.

Hiding from pollen... hay fever sucks

As much as I loved and laughed at the absurd stories of the life of the final POTUS, written in such snappy paragraphs that I felt carried along on his wild journeys without question, I really wanted the ending of the honest, (albeit more traditional) autobiography, that I started to read in the first 12 pages of the book. This felt so familiar that I felt I could have been reading about members of my own family and I wanted more of this.

I got a free kinegram with my copy!

Listen. This book fooled me with how easy it was to read, but it is not a simple novel. Billy is not a heroic character in the traditional sense, but his drily honest thoughts, coupled with a sense of escapism and fatalism, endear him to the reader instantaneously. In true Tralfamadorian style we travel through time in a way reminiscent of PTSD flashbacks, each time understanding more of how he looks upon life and death as he does. So it goes.

Why do we inscribe banal information on gravestones instead of lovely sentences... middle names... birth-dates... death-dates, like these are what we want people to remember us by?

It has been exactly 1927 days since I was able to look forward to curling up with a book that is not a textbook without feeling any guilt! Took my final OU Law exam yesterday and raced home from work today to get my nose stuck into this!