The Memory Of Running by Ron McLarty

“Is that possible? I said.
All things, all things are possible. What do you think your bike ride says? People would say "Is that possible?" Of course you know it is, now.”

Every decade seems to produce a novel that captures the public's imagination with a story that sweeps readers up and takes them on a thrilling, unforgettable ride.

Ron McLarty's The Memory of Running is this decade's novel. By all accounts, especially his own, Smithson "Smithy" Ide is a loser. An overweight, friendless, chain-smoking, forty-three-year-old drunk, Smithy's life becomes completely unhinged when he loses his parents and long-lost sister within the span of one week.

Rolling down the driveway of his parents' house in Rhode Island on his old Raleigh bicycle to escape his grief, the emotionally bereft Smithy embarks on an epic, hilarious, luminous, and extraordinary journey of discovery and redemption.

I was a fair few chapters in before I felt connected to the story and where it was going, but once I did, I was enchanted by the idea. Imagine hopping on a bike drunk with no plan, then riding for about 2 months, only letting circumstances and the people you meet along the way influence you. I really wish I could do it!

I loved watching each character unfold. Initially they seem a little rough around the edges, but as the story went on, I saw a little deeper into their character and I really felt for them and their hardships in life - but then in the next paragraph I'd be chuckling to myself at or something they said or that happened. It reminded me of the saying "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about". 

I liked how both the best and the worst of life was shown throughout this story. It wasn't too sweet to stomach but it didn't depress me either - I felt like this could be one of those amazing true stories that you hear about every now and then.

Dirt Music by Tim Winton

Luther Fox, a loner, haunted by his past, makes his living as an illegal fisherman, a shamateur. Before everyone in his family was killed in a freak rollover, he grew melons and played guitar in the family band. Robbed of all that, he has turned his back on music. There's too much emotion in it, too much memory and pain.

One morning Fox is observed poaching by Georgie Jutland. Chance, or a kind of willed recklessness, has brought Georgie into the life and home of Jim Buckridge, the most prosperous fisherman in the area and a man who loathes poachers, Fox above all. But she's never fully settled into Jim's grand house on the water or into the inbred community with its history of violent secrets. After Georgie encounters Fox, her tentative hold on conventional life is severed. Neither of them would call it love, but they can't stay away from each other no matter how dangerous it is, and out on White Point it is very dangerous. 

Set in the dramatic landscape of Western Australia, Dirt Music is a love story about people stifled by grief and regret; a novel about the odds of breaking with the past and about the lure of music. Dirt music, Fox tells Georgie, is "anything you can play on a verandah or porch, without electricity." Even in the wild, Luther cannot escape it. There is, he discovers, no silence in nature. 

Ambitious, perfectly calibrated, Dirt Music resonates with suspense and supercharged emotion, and it confirms Tim Winton's status as the preeminent Australian novelist of his generation.

My main emotion when finishing this book was bitter disappointment - the ending was infuriating and it very nearly completely ruined the whole book for me. I don't necessarily need it to be a happy ending where they sail off in to the sunset together, but I don't like open ended tales where I need to guess what happens next - I want some kind of answers.  

But now I've had a bit more time to reflect, and I have come to the conclusion that I can disregard the other 479 pages just because of the last paragraph. 

Dirt Music was a long and very descriptive novel, but if you stay with it you will be able to close your eyes and feel Australia - the humidity in your lungs and the sun scorching your eyebrows. I loved the desolate journey through Western Australia, and now that I have finished, this is what is staying with me the most after I have closed the book.

Nobody can write broken humans quote like Winton. The main themes of the book were brooding - typecasting, redemption, and struggle  - with a tiny bit of love sprinkled in. The connection between Lu and Georgia was only 48 hours, if that even, yet it seemed to have made enough of an impact on both of them that it totally wrecked and ruined them both. 

The characters were flawed and real. Right up until the very end, I didn't know if i could trust Jim Buckridge and his "mission", and Lu's flirting with madness was too believable. Who would have thought that Georgie would end up being the most stable one of the three!?

I really enjoyed reading it, but would love it even more if there was an extra couple of paragraphs to give me a bit of closure.

The Universe Versus Alex Woods by Gavin Extence

In life, there are no true beginnings or endings. Events flow into each other, and the more you try to isolate them in a container, the more they spill over the sides, like canal-water breaching its artificial banks. A related point is that the things we label 'beginnings' and 'endings' are often, in reality, indistinguishable. They are one and the same thing. This is one of the things the Death card symbolizes in tarot - an end that is also a new beginning.” 

A rare meteorite struck Alex Woods when he was ten years old, leaving scars and marking him for an extraordinary future. The son of a fortune teller, bookish, and an easy target for bullies, Alex hasn't had the easiest childhood. 
But when he meets curmudgeonly widower Mr. Peterson, he finds an unlikely friend. Someone who teaches him that that you only get one shot at life. That you have to make it count. 
So when, aged seventeen, Alex is stopped at customs with 113 grams of marijuana, an urn full of ashes on the front seat, and an entire nation in uproar, he's fairly sure he's done the right thing ...
Introducing a bright young voice destined to charm the world,The Universe Versus Alex Woods is a celebration of curious incidents, astronomy and astrology, the works of Kurt Vonnegut and the unexpected connections that form our world. 

Thanks to the blurb and the first chapter, I kept expecting Alex to have super powers or abilities after his accident, but it turns out that The Universe Verses Alex Woods was simply just a story about a boy. I don't necessarily mean this in a bad way, it's just that because I was preparing myself for a bit more drama it took me a while to get into the rhythm of the story and adjust to the characters speed.

I wouldn't consider this a young adult novel. Again, I'm going to blame my misguided impressions because from the cover image and the blurb I thought it sounded like it had all the makings of a dark twisted real life Harry Potter, so I was genuinely surprised when the story talked about suicide and the ethics around euthanasia. 

The writing is really good so I'm not disappointed I kept reading, but in hindsight it probably wouldn't be on the top of my list to read again, it just wasn't what I was in the mood to read at the time.

Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's by John Elder Robison

“My conversational difficulties highlight a problem Aspergians face every day. A person with an obvious disability—for example, someone in a wheelchair—is treated compassionately because his handicap is obvious. No one turns to a guy in a wheelchair and says, “Quick! Let’s run across the street!” And when he can’t run across the street, no one says, “What’s his problem?” They offer to help him across the street. With me, though, there is no external sign that I am conversationally handicapped. So folks hear some conversational misstep and say, “What an arrogant jerk!” I look forward to the day when my handicap will afford me the same respect accorded to a guy in a wheelchair. And if the respect comes with a preferred parking space, I won’t turn it down.” 
― John Elder Robison, Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's

Ever since he was small, John Robison had longed to connect with other people, but by the time he was a teenager, his odd habits—an inclination to blurt out non sequiturs, avoid eye contact, dismantle radios, and dig five-foot holes (and stick his younger brother in them)—had earned him the label “social deviant.” No guidance came from his mother, who conversed with light fixtures, or his father, who spent evenings pickling himself in sherry. It was no wonder he gravitated to machines, which could, at least, be counted on.

After fleeing his parents and dropping out of high school, his savant-like ability to visualize electronic circuits landed him a gig with KISS, for whom he created their legendary fire-breathing guitars. Later, he drifted into a “real” job, as an engineer for a major toy company. But the higher Robison rose in the company, the more he had to pretend to be “normal” and do what he simply couldn’t: communicate. It wasn’t worth the paycheck.

It was not until he was forty that an insightful therapist told him he had the form of autism called Asperger’s syndrome. That understanding transformed the way Robison saw himself—and the world.

Look Me in the Eye is the moving, darkly funny story of growing up with Asperger’s at a time when the diagnosis simply didn’t exist. A born storyteller, Robison takes you inside the head of a boy whom teachers and other adults regarded as “defective,” who could not avail himself of KISS’s endless supply of groupies, and who still has a peculiar aversion to using people’s given names (he calls his wife “Unit Two”). He also provides a fascinating reverse angle on the younger brother he left at the mercy of their nutty parents—the boy who would later change his name to Augusten Burroughs and write the bestselling memoir Running with Scissors.

Ultimately, this is the story of Robison’s journey from his world into ours, and his new life as a husband, father, and successful small business owner—repairing his beloved high-end automobiles. It’s a strange, sly, indelible account—sometimes alien, yet always deeply human.

I enjoyed this book so much more than I was expecting too. I pictured it to be dryly written and have the weight of a textbook, instead I found it insightful, interesting and humorous.

The first section focused on Robinson's early childhood and home life, and I found this part depressing and so sad, but that just makes his achievement to overcome his challenges with  Aspergers so much more incredible. How many other people throughout history that achieved great things in their chosen field, might have had a similar spectrum condition?

I didn't really have much of an understanding of Aspergers prior to reading this, but I'm glad I did, as I feel like I would be able to assist them with feeling comfortable with the conversation and then appreciate their unique ability.  I can see how this novel would be very important to help educate school aged children to be more tolerant and understanding to their peers, regardless of any diagnosis.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

“The happening and telling are very different things. This doesn’t mean that the story isn’t true, only that I honestly don’t know anymore if I really remember it or only remember how to tell it. Language does this to our memories, simplifies, solidifies, codifies, mummifies. An off-told story is like a photograph in a family album. Eventually it replaces the moment it was meant to capture.” …

“In the phrase ' human being,' the word 'being' is much more important than the word 'human.' ” 

Meet the Cooke family. Our narrator is Rosemary Cooke. As a child, she never stopped talking; as a young woman, she has wrapped herself in silence: the silence of intentional forgetting, of protective cover. Something happened, something so awful she has buried it in the recesses of her mind.

Now her adored older brother is a fugitive, wanted by the FBI for domestic terrorism. And her once lively mother is a shell of her former self, her clever and imperious father now a distant, brooding man.

And Fern, Rosemary’s beloved sister, her accomplice in all their childhood mischief? Fern’s is a fate the family, in all their innocence, could never have imagined.

This would have been a good book to read on my kindle, instead of paperback, because there are a lot of words that I wanted to look up the definition of, and picking up my phone and googling them was more time consuming than highlighting the word on the kindle. But I felt I learnt a few things, which usually means that I am interested in the story enough to want to learn something, as opposed to escaping in to a fairytale.

And I did genuinely enjoy this story! I was a bit hesitant because the blurb on the back was quite vague, but not that I have finished I understand why it had to be that way. Without giving any detail away, the twist was a surprise to me, and I'm glad for that, because now not only did I learn something and enjoyed the story, but it took me somewhere I didn't expect, and I like that.

Initially I thought I had this story pegged as a story about how our parents really screw us up, but the further I went, I realised that it was so much more intelligent than that, and there were so many deeper layers than its face value. I think that the writing style had a lot to do with this, the beginning was the middle, the middle was the beginning and the end, while also another beginning. Confused? Don't be, it was actually really easy to follow and the characters were so normal, with all their flaws visible if you were ready to look at them.

This book made me question so much (it even made me think about becoming a vegetarian, if I wasn't so adverse to carbs) and I have a lot of respect for the author (I kept reading past the acknowledgements and they were just as important as the actual story itself I felt).

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

“Time is a slippery thing: lose hold of it once, and its string might sail out of your hands forever.” 

                                                                               ...

“I have been feeling very clearheaded lately and what I want to write about today is the sea. It contains so many colors. Silver at dawn, green at noon, dark blue in the evening. Sometimes it looks almost red. Or it will turn the color of old coins. Right now the shadows of clouds are dragging across it, and patches of sunlight are touching down everywhere. White strings of gulls drag over it like beads.                                                                               ...
It is my favorite thing, I think, that I have ever seen. Sometimes I catch myself staring at it and forget my duties. It seems big enough to contain everything anyone could ever feel.” 

                                                                               ...

“When I lost my sight, Werner, people said I was brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?” 

                                                                               ...

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great-uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, the orphan Werner grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments, a talent that wins him a place at a brutal academy for Hitler Youth, then a special assignment to track the resistance. More and more aware of the human cost of his intelligence, Werner travels through the heart of the war and, finally, into Saint-Malo, where his story and Marie-Laure’s converge.

Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, he illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another. Ten years in the writing, a National Book Award finalist, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).

It took me two attempts to start reading this book. The first time I had only read the blurb and a few chapters of my kindle sample, but went no further than the first chapter - I was on the lookout for my next 'great' read that would hook me in and I wasn't in the mood for a war story. But I kept reading great reviews and saw how many of my friends rated it so highly, so then came my second, more successful, sitting to read it.

It is very beautifully written with a lot of detail, but not in an overly heavy way. It was easy for me to imagine myself walking down the cobbled streets of Saint-Malo. I loved how it was creatively crafted and flowed a little differently than I was expecting - it was still easy to follow and kept me interested. 

The thing that stuck with me the most in this story is the internal dialogue of Marie-Laure and Werner. At the end of the day they are just two kids who are caught up in a war that they don't want to be a part of, and how it was written made the story all the more real and enchanting.

Ghostwritten by David Mitchell

“The human world is made of stories, not people. The people the stories use to tell themselves are not to be blamed” 

A gallery attendant at the Hermitage. A young jazz buff in Tokyo. A crooked British lawyer in Hong Kong. A disc jockey in Manhattan. A physicist in Ireland. An elderly woman running a tea shack in rural China. A cult-controlled terrorist in Okinawa. A musician in London. A transmigrating spirit in Mongolia. What is the common thread of coincidence or destiny that connects the lives of these nine souls in nine far-flung countries, stretching across the globe from east to west? What pattern do their linked fates form through time and space?

A writer of pyrotechnic virtuosity and profound compassion, a mind to which nothing human is alien, David Mitchell spins genres, cultures, and ideas like gossamer threads around and through these nine linked stories. Many forces bind these lives, but at root all involve the same universal longing for connection and transcendence, an axis of commonality that leads in two directions—to creation and to destruction. In the end, as lives converge with a fearful symmetry, Ghostwritten comes full circle, to a point at which a familiar idea—that whether the planet is vast or small is merely a matter of perspective—strikes home with the force of a new revelation. It marks the debut of a writer of astonishing gifts.

I am so confused. I have no idea why this book has such a cult following. 

I saw the links between each of the characters in each chapter (yes, very clever and very well done) but now that I've finished the book, I still feel like I'm missing something. To be honest, the stories got harder and harder to read and enjoy the further on I got. I nearly stopped at the 75% mark, but I persisted, and now I'm left feeling like I've just wasted my time. 

So much potential but it was obviously wasted on me.