169/111 - The Owl Killers by Karen Maitland

This book was assigned to me by my book club, which I'm quite pleased by as I would probably never normally read a book like this as I'm not really into historical fiction of any sort, but it's good not to pigeonhole myself I guess. I was also pretty intimidated by the size of this book - on my iPhone this was over 2000 pages long, which was pretty hefty. Since it was something I don't normally read, I put off starting it for ages and ages as there was other stuff I needed to do which seemed more important than committing to 2000 pages of something that I might not enjoy. Then I remembered that I would be letting downy fellow book club-ees if I didn't read this in time, so I knuckled down and got to the task.

I ended up really enjoying the book. It's set in the Middle Ages of England, in a desolate village called Ulewic. It follows the narrative voices of several different characters; a small girl, a priest, a teenage girl who has been cast out by her father, and the head of a new beguinage. What on earth is a beguinage? Glad you asked. It turns out that these are sort of similar to nunneries, in that they are communes of women of a religious nature, however the women do not take vows and are free to come and go as they please, although they do have rules and duties to abide by while they are there. There are loads of these in Belgium, and they tried to start some up in England with little success, as they were seen as witches or defying the Church in some way.

The story is about how this order of powerful men known as the Owl Masters try to take control of the village through fear, and how the different groups of people try to stand up to them in different ways. I really liked the story and it kept my interest up the whole way through, and I think the fact that it had so much historical information in it meant that I was also doing some learning without really realising (sneaky books!) which was really cool.

A couple of bits I didn't like so much were the narratives of Beatrice and Father Ulfrid. I found both of them to be so unreasonable and blind as to be unbelieveable. Beatrice has a grudge against Osmanna because she kills her unborn child, and she resents this deeply because she's unable to have children of her own, however I found the level of hatred a little pantomime-ish. Same with Father Ulfrid, who is so weak and spineless, and also spiteful. I found both of these characters to be as little two-dimensional and not very interesting to read. However the others made up for it, I think.

I was also confused by some of the names, as there was a male character called Hilary, which is semi-normal but there was also a female character called Andrew, which was odd but made me laugh. I also really enjoyed the fact that all the women in the beguinage were called Martha, which reminded me of The Handmaid's Tale and made me feel super clever.

I'm kind of curious as to what it would be like to live in a place like this - not in the time, obviously, I like my creature comforts like central heating and modern medicine, but I mean more like giving up your life to go and live as part of a religious order and doing nothing but praying and fulfilling your duties. I imagine that it might be quite relaxing for a bit but that it might become dull eventually, just like most things. In my naïveté I imagine myself sitting around reading books for a lot of the time and then maybe doing some sweeping and tending some goats. It's probably not much like that.

So in all, I enjoyed this a lot. Perhaps I'll have to give historical novels more of a chance in future, and as I'd really like to read some Hilary Mantel, that could work out quite well for me.

152/111 - The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

I bought this book almost two years ago to the day. I bought it at Gatwick airport on my way to a holiday in France with Luke, and I remember being excited to but it because it had just come out and because I was at an airport I was able to get it in a large format paperback instead of a hardback, so that was a novelty. I had heard things about it and I remember being interested in it as the author wrote it, or started writing it, during NaNoWriMo and that now it has obviously been published by a major publishing house.

The reason I've read it is that it's the book I selected for my book club with my friends last time they were at my flat. I had loads of recommendations, however they wanted us to read something that none of us had read before, so I showed a few different ones to people and we decided on this, and we will be discussing it later this month when we all meet up again. The last book we had at book club was The Blind Assassin, which I didn't enjoy reading all that much.

This book was okay. I downloaded a copy onto my iPhone as well so that I could read bits on my lunch break without having to lug the book round with me, which was nice. I was always quite surprised by how much I had progressed in the physical copy of the book when I went back to it, which for me adds to the feeling that you should be able to have a physical copy and an e-book license for the books you buy. If they're doing this with CDs and DVDs nowadays, why not with books?

Anyway, onto the actual book. It's set in a world where magic is real, and you have two old dude magicians who have been challenging each other over the decades. In this instance, they must each train up a student so that they can do battle in a public arena, which takes place in this circus, called Le Cirque des Rêves. I really enjoyed the first half of the book, kind of getting them to the point where they were ready to do battle, however I felt that the second half dragged on quite a bit. This was partly to do with the overly flowery description of all the circus acts and tents and oh my goodness, how sumptuous and magical it all is, which became a little tiresome eventually. Obviously the two students, Celia and Marco end up falling in love, which puts a dent in the plans of their instructors.

I really enjoyed the story, however I didn't feel particularly close to any of the characters, and wasn't really invested in the love story element because I didn't care enough about the characters. They were a bit hollow, and I understood their motivations and their back stories, but for some reason I didn't care about them enough. I think I part because they all took themselves rather too seriously, and there wasn't much lightness or levity or anything.

So, this was fairly good and certainly entertaining, but not as amazing as I'd hoped.

Next, I really think I need to re-read The Shining, as Doctor Sleep is coming out in about two weeks, which I'm definitely going to want to buy and read immediately. Pretty exciting stuff.

140/111 - The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

I've had this book for so so long, I can't even remember when I bought it or why (although it was probably because I was really into Margaret Atwood or whatever). The reason I decided to read this is that every few months I meet up with a bunch of old school friends, and this time around, one of them suggested that we do a little book club format, so that every few months when we meet up we have something new to talk about. Someone suggested The Blind Assassin, and so we were on our way!

I didn't start reading this until quite late, and since I have been pretty ill with a cold the last couple of weeks, I didn't actually get to finish it in time for the book club, but never mind.

I did not enjoy this at all. There were definitely parts which were note resting and I really wanted to like it as I like Margaret Atwood, however it was such a slog. It was very clever - a story within a story within a story - and it won the Booker prize in the year it was released. But I didn't care about any of the characters really. I was already 300 pages in before it had even moved past the main character's childhood!

There was one part that really struck me, which was quite near the beginning, when the narrator is looking back at her life, and she's getting something out of her fridge late at night:

"Standing there with the jar in one hand and my finger in my mouth, I has the feeling that someone was about to walk into the room - some other woman, the unseen, valid owner - and ask me what the hell I was doing in her kitchen. I've had it before, the sense that even in the course of my most legitimate and daily actions - peeling a banana, brushing my teeth - I am trespassing."

I really empathised with this idea of feeling like you're trespassing in your own life, and I often catch myself feeling like I don't deserve to be in the position I'm in at my job, for example, and that I'm going to get caught. Or I'll catch myself being inauthentic with my friends, thinking, I better keep this up or they're going to see me for who I really am. I guess I've never imagined another woman coming to find me and kick me out of my own life, but I get where she's coming from.

That's it, really, for me that was the most interesting part. From talking about this with the others I've come to the conclusion that I love Margaret Atwood's sci-fi, like The Handmaid's Tale, Oryx and Crake etc, but I don't like her 'realist' novels all that much. Luckily she writes awesome sci-fi, so I'll just keep reading that.