Read then Write - 12/2/26

Not a bad week for reading.  I finished The Names by Florence Knapp:

The Names by Florence Knapp
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I found the premise of this book interesting - how does the choice of a name affect our lives going forward? The book follows Cora's baby son who is named either Bear, his 9 year old sister's choice, Julian (Jules) his Mother's choice, or Gordon after his Father and Grandfather.

The story is told from those 3 POVs and moves forward in leaps of 7 years starting in 1987 and ending in 2022. It is beautifully written - the author definitely has a way with words. However it felt a little bit disjointed to me and although some things were covered in detail, others were not.

The name choice also isn't what really affects the life of the baby but rather the effect Cora's decision has on her marriage and the events that follow. It should be noted that the marriage is an abusive one for anyone who likes to steer clear of domestic violence.

Overall it's a good debut but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's great.

I also attended a Book Club meeting on Tuesday evening where we discussed The Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris.  It was a good evening as we had seven people there who had all read the book.  Most people liked it.  I was on the fence.  There were things in it I felt didn't quite gel together.  It was a bit slow too.

This week I've also managed to finish this book:

The Guardians by John Grisham
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I don't think I've ever been disappointed by a John Grisham book. Of course there are lots of similarities in many of them - based around the American legal system, often involving injustice and frequently drug cartels and conspiracies.

This one was a bit slow initially and there are several storylines to get your head around as we follow Cullen Post, an innocence lawyer and minister as he tries to prove the innocence of convicted criminals and get them exonerated.  The pace picked up and I really enjoyed it.

I now have 2 books to read for the book clubs:

 and 

I have the Cotterill one on my Kindle App and I have a physical copy of The Muse.  There's a few weeks before the clubs meet again so I have plenty of time to read them.  Hopefully I'll like The Muse more than I did The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton.  I found that quite hard going.  I haven't read anything by Cotterill so that may or may not be interesting.

Of course I'm trying to match these Book Club reads to the 52 Book Club Challenge list of prompts wherever possible but I'm not sure where these will fit yet.  I'm sure I can fit them in somewhere but it may be at the expense of books from my TBR pile! Thankfully I've managed to not add any more books to that pile so far this year.  For anyone who missed it these are just some of those books:

I'm not going to check how many unread books there are on the Kindle App lol.