Matthew Hurst

Currently reading: Blue Machine by Helen Czerski 📚 lining up to be one of my favourite ever books. There’s a lot of sea to be fascinated with and Czerski’s a fantastically lucid, enthusiastic and grown up writer. #booksky #bookstodon

Abandoned: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt 📚 There’s something good there, but it’s very well hidden. I lost patience with looking for it. #bookstodon #booksky

Read: Death on the Island by Eliza Reid 📚Christie fanfic, right down to the island location, and Roger Ackroyd shaped red herring. Passed the time and didn’t annoy me, so there’s that.

Read: City of Vengeance by D. V. Bishop 📚Very readable and atmospheric. I kept wanting to return to it despite the central murder mystery being puny and the outcome of the Medici political shenanigans being well known.

Abandoned: Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck 📚 DNF. East German love affair round end of East Germany, trans. Michael Hoffman, booker winner 2024 Intense and Germanic and pervy. Worth another go at reading when I have the headspace.

Read: The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas 📚 Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes Rebecca, and both elements are Good Things. #booksky #BookSky #bookstodon #amreading

Read: Astor by Anderson Cooper 📚 Wearying and padded out with tangential ‘context’. Most bios can be top and tailed: first 2 chapters for the origin story, then the last quarter of the book because there’s actual story. Everything in between is predictable. #booksky #BookSky #bookstodon #amreading

Read: Night of Camp David by Fletcher Knebel 📚 Recognisably, POTUS goes mad and wants to take over Canada, and surveil everyone. Unrecognisably, the power elite try to stop him rather than saying ‘where’s my share?’. Shonky and dated in some ways but weirdly relevant. #booksky #bookstodon #amreading

Read: Ardis a life on water by Timothy Paleczny 📚 I’m a sucker for wartime shenanigans and science, so this was great for me, with spying and marine biology against the backdrop of WW2 Portugal, plus walk on parts for Ian Fleming and Kim Philby. It weaves together a cast of characters as a nuanced way into the humanity and morality of the hard moral choices forced by wartime, More Graham Greene than James Bond, but more charm and warmth than either of them.

Read: Transcription by Kate Atkinson 📚 Fictionalised version of actual counter-spy operations in England against the Germans in WW2. I read the nonfiction book it’s abased on ages ago, and this is pretty much the same ground, but through the eyes of an invented young spy. Atkinson’s funny and perceptive, as usual, and it’s fun to spot the roman-a-clef elements. There’s definitely a Mitford or two knocking about, for instance. There’s also the obligatory queer-wartime-London plotline too.

Read: A Necessary Evil by Abir Mukherjee 📚 Loved the setting, and the humour. Mysteries can be so po-faced. Made me want to try his non-series thrillers too. #booksky #amreading #bookstodon

Read: Triple Cross by Tom Bradby 📚

Smart, efficient, gripping. Does what it says on the can, in a very good way. #bookstodon #booksky #iamreading

Read: My Father’s House by Joseph O’Connor 📚 Less than keen on his others, but this is manages to be richly told without losing suspense. #bookstodon #booksky #amreading

Abandoned: Red Queen by Juan Gómez-Jurado 📚

No feeling for pace, language or humans, for people who would secretly prefer a comic but a book makes them feel more intellectual, made worse in the audiobook by Scott Brick’s overwrought self-infatuated narrating style. #bookstodon #booksky #iamreading

Read: An Honest Man by Michael Koryta 📚 Straight ahead innocent man vs corruption, gripping and unpretentious. Fast, easy read. #Bookstodon #booksky #iamreading

Read: Heartwood by Amity Gaige 📚

Great American wilderness novel on the Appalachian Trail. Three women intersect after one of them gets lost. It’s character more than breakneck action (in a good way) and human warmth rather than darkness.

Read: This Is Not a Game by Kelly Mullen 📚

Self consciously smart arse and genre-aware. People say things like ‘but how could the maid be leaving the kitchen at 9pm? Letitia said the dog hair wasn’t on the vicar’s collar till 10pm!’. Not my thing. #BookSky #amreading #bookstodon

The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel📚

Safe to skim everything before Chapter 24 (which covers Diesel inventing his engine and getting rich in a boringly methodical way) because all the interesting stuff about his disappearance is in the last third.

… and it’s weirdly underdeveloped, as though the author is far more interested in the licensing agreements Diesel had with foreign engine makers than - [SPOILERS] - the British secret service making him disappear and secretly setting him up in a new life with his wife in Canada to stop the Germans forcing him to make submarines for them to win WW1.

There are literally two sentences about his wife’s disappearance and perfunctory research.

And there’s strangely little about the fuel we call diesel now, as opposed to petrol or gasoline. Diesel engines can run on anything that will ignite under pressure and Diesel the man specifically wanted them not to use oil-based fuel. However, Rockefeller somehow managed to ensure his oil company got in on the act, hence the oil based fuel we now call diesel. However, this is skimmed over in the book, in favour of copious infodumps of Diesel’s tours of America and development agreements with other companies.

No idea how this got to be an NYT bestseller.

Read: Never Flinch by Stephen King 📚

King is always compulsive, without me being able to figure out why. He’s sneaking some suspense in there without me realising how. #Booksky #amreading #bookstodon

Read: Mood Machine by Liz Pelly 📚 Audiobook recorded by the author, Liz Pelly, in an intensely irritating? slackjawwwd valleh girrl drawl? that almost made me? stop listening? Not helped by? Adolescent horror that? the music business? is a business? #BookSky #amreading #bookstodon

Read: Who Could Ever Love You by Mary L. Trump, PhD 📚

As fellow family-of-a-narc, I found a few moments in this resonated, but if you’ve come across The Donald ever before, there’s not a lot new here. #BookSky #amreading #bookstodon

Read: Come Closer by Sara Gran 📚

New York architect is either possessed or has a psychotic breakdown in a tightly written novella. Psychological thriller or horror? You choose.

Read: The House of My Mother by Shari Franke 📚

What life was actually like for the kids of picture perfect but abusive 8 Passengers vlogger Ruby Franke. Gets the nuances and complications over better than the Netflix doc, including the spineless and acquiescent father.

#booksky

Read: Presumed Guilty by Scott Turow 📚

Courtroom thriller that actually uses the legal procedures and tactics for its twists, and plays with the reader’s knowledge of Presumed Innocent. Class.

#booksky

Read: How to Lose a Country by Ece Temelkuran 📚

Turkish writer who’s fled Erdogan tries so hard to stay humane, humorous and hopeful despite the pandemic of populist demagogues. She almost succeeds.