Gave up mid way, perhaps I’ll try again in the future (yeah, right).

Had to make an effort to finish this one, will try his older stuff to see if I like it better

The world is full of riddles only the dead can answer. I’d like to educate myself about Nigeria its history and traditions and re-read this novel.

Convoluted prose and no sense of direction. I love Gordimer’s older works but this novel was just irritating. I so much wanted to enjoy this, but after many akward sentences turned paragraphs I gave up, coulnd’t get pass page 51.

I’ve been an atheist for many years, and I didn’t enjoy this book. Hard to tell exactly why, but I felt as he was trying to enlist me in some cult of atheism or something. Guess what, I don’t like being preached at. And couldn’t he be more concise? Some bits felt like endless rants. I found this book a bit irritating and gave up mid way.

Forgot to write an entry for this one. Actually I found this book so boring I could not get past the first chapter. If I’m not intrigued by page 3 I usually give up (life is too short) but this one I read until page 20 or 30 since it won the Commonwealth Writers Prize Best Book Award.

At first it was interesting to read about Roman Britain BUT but but I found the description of modern Rome by one of the characters so annoying if the book was mine I would gladly throw it in the fireplace. Sadly I had to return it intact to my friend so I just put it aside.
Things to remember:
1. I got this one from J, the same J that insisted on lending me “the time travellers wife”, another waste of time. Avoid recommendations from J in the future.
2. I should just avoid SCI-FI, obviously it’s not my cuppa.

Mixed feelings about this one. The main character is an idiot, but is portrayed in a way that you can somehow walk his shoes. I mean I’m not middle-aged, I’m not even a man… but I could sometimes sympathize with the disgraced-lecturer. As for his daughter: even though she suffers the main blow I simply couldn’t care less for her, I found her so irritating. Interesting to go through the reviews at Amazon.co.uk, some people read a lot into this book… well I’m not one of them. After reading this one I was so surprised to learn Coetzee is a Nobel laureate writer.. I might try another of his novels in the future.

Unpredictable story, told by teenager Kambili, about growing up, escape and discovery. I could not put this book down.

Describing one of the characters: ”...there was nothing commonplace or trifling about this young man; the least thing he said was so exactly right and so directly to the point that one felt like crying “touché“.”