Top Reads for August

Not read as many books as I'd hoped, but for the best reason - family visitors.  I can't complain too much as they both bought books with them, which, as the weather seems to have turned here, will keep me occupied until the new school year.

Once again, I was trying to keep apace of my 1001 reading challenge, not doing badly despite distractions! 

My favourite would have to be Invisible Cities, which is a short book, but not a quick read. The prose is beautifully written, Marco Polo's musing on cities as told to Kublai Khan, though really he is describing one city and throughout time.  I also read Half of a Yellow Sun, a book off my long-term TBR pile and also one of World Book Night's 2011 selection,  is not just a warts and all account of civil war, but also a history lesson. I really felt drawn in by her narrative style and the story she wove, the terrible realities of civil war and very human reactions to it, the positive and the negative. I also enjoyed The Rainbow, which was strangely compelling, I say strangely because at times I wasn't sure what kept me reading. Curiousity maybe, interesting characters certainly, but also possibly because of the lack of external dialogue. I did find the reading exhausting, if that is the correct word, almost binging on a chunk of text, then having to put the book down to digest the narrative.

As is normal over the summer, I did read my fair share of thrillers, The Ghost was the best of the bunch.  The author takes as a starting point a ghost writer called in to help finish the memoirs of a former British PM, modelled on our very own Tony Blair.  This is not non-fiction, but rather a story which takes its starting point in reality, covering many current grievences - the invasion of Iraq, the War on Terror, the use of torture, Guantanamo Bay, Britain's Pro-American stance under Blair.  The Righteous Men was also good, a thriller based around a Jewish tradition of Righteous Men.  Much better than the Da Vinci Code which it has been compared to.

As for the rest, I got an Ian Rankin out the library, The Flood, not a Rebus book, but one of his earlier works, with a view to bumping that series up my TBR pile when I get back to the U.K.  I don't often get to read books set in the area around where I went to school, especially not one which shows this side of Fife life. Small town superstition mixed with the harsh reality of unemployment, Rankin brings many elements together which make up this gripping read.  The House of Sand and Fog stood up its reputation, surpassing the good film which I saw a few years ago.  It is very tensely written, showing how a clerical error causes complete chaos for an American girl and an immigrant Iranian family.  My brother brought a few books with him, all Latin America themed, I have read one so far, Bitter Grounds, which follows three generations of women through El Salvador's bloody recent history.  Well-written and informative.