Tales of terror from the tunnel’s mouth – Chris Priestley
It’s the third part of a trilogy, but it can easily be read on its own (I’ve read the first book, Uncle Montague’s Tales of Terror, but couldn’t find the second book, Tales of Terror from the Black Ship, at least not in the library’s e-book catalogue – have since requested the physical book from the library). Young Robert travels by train to school and encounters a woman in white who has a way with scary stories:

“It was a curious thing, but I realised that listening to these stories was different to listening to any stories I had heard before. I felt myself actually there, as if I were a witness to the events being described. It felt as though, instead of listening to the words the Woman in White was saying, I was actually seeing images, hearing voices; it was like a dream, but at the same time more real than any dream.”

A fun RIP read with great illustrations.

 

Before I go to sleep – S. J. Watson

Generally you have no consistent memory of anything that happened since your early childhood, but you seem to process new memories in a way I have never come across before. If I left this room now and returned in two minutes, most people with anterograde amnesia would not remember having met me at all, certainly not today. But you seem to remember whole chunks of time—up to twenty-four hours—which you then lose. That’s not typical. To be honest, it doesn’t make any sense, considering the way we believe that memory works. It suggests you are able to transfer things from short-term to long-term storage perfectly well. I don’t understand why you can’t retain them.

Such a promising premise! A woman wakes up every morning and doesn’t know who she is, where she is. She essentially has several different kinds of amnesia and has to figure things out from scratch every single day. So far so interesting, right? Yeah but then it gets a bit repetitive as the narration moves into the form of a (very detailed – too detailed?) journal. And then as we head towards the ending, I am trying my hardest not to roll my eyes at how it just spirals into this rather predictable conclusion that seems perfect for the big screen. Interesting idea, not very good execution, terrible ending – this book was not for me, although I seem to be in the minority as it’s gotten plenty of good reviews on Goodreads!

Relish: My life in the kitchen – Lucy Knisley

I wasn’t such a fan of her first graphic novel, French Milk. But I quite adored Relish – and even bought my sister a copy as a belated birthday present. Fun ‘recipes’, including ways to jazz up a shepherd’s pie – avocado! Such a cute read.

The wise man’s fear (Kingkiller Chronicle #2) – Patrick Rothfuss

I hesitate to write about this book. It – and the first book, The Name of the Wind – probably deserves a whole post to itself. But I don’t quite know how to talk about it, to write about it. I feel like I need to reread it, reread them. And of course wait for the next book (next year?). The Name of the Wind was such a gorgeous gorgeous loonnnngggg book. The Wise Man’s Fear is just as long (maybe longer – I was reading an ebook version so I can’t really tell), still telling a great story, but a little infuriatingly so, because other parts of the story are not moving along at as fast a pace as I would’ve liked it (saving the exciting parts for the third book, are we?). Instead we have long bits about other things (I’m trying not to reveal any spoilers here) that are still interesting to read, but perhaps a bit too drawn out. I think I would still read pretty much anything Patrick Rothfuss puts out there.