BOOK FIVE – Yes Please by Amy Poehler

Amy Poehler’s memoir-come-self-help-book was an uplifting, funny, sometimes bitter read. Poehler traced her career from high school to 2014, when the book was published. She charts early roles, meeting her best friends, the early days of The Upright Citizen’s Brigade and her professional successes and failures since in a meandering, non-chronological manner that is very enjoyable to read.

What stood out about this book is how well put-together it was. The pages felt durable and inviting, and every now and then I would stumble across a motivational quip splashed across a double-spread, reminiscent of pull out posters. Each one made me smile. There were even actual skits within the books, comic reflections on the previous section, artfully presented as photocopied realities, like a letter from the brain to the heart and the heart’s reply. It was as funny as any of Poehler’s work, and I expected nothing less.

BOOK SIX – The Enemy by Lee Child

Book 8 out of 21 in the Jack Reacher series (yes, I’m reading them in order) and Lee Child wanted to take a different angle, it seems, because this story jumps back in time to when Reacher was still in the Military Police, this time investigating the mysterious circumstances around the seemingly natural death of a two-star general.

For the uninitiated, the series tells the story of Jack Reacher, hotshot military detective who is cut from the Army in the  descaling of forces after the Berlin wall came down. Having lived on Army bases his entire life, and having never ‘seen America right‘, Reacher wanders around the States, getting into trouble and stopping crime at every turn. There’s always a maniacal bad guy (or two), there’s always a ‘girl’, and Reacher always sleeps with her. It’s an American-style response to James Bond, ironically written by a Brit from Coventry.

Well paced and convincingly researched as always, The Enemy  was a refreshing twist on a formula that becomes more and more apparent and tired with every novel.

BOOK SEVEN – Cain by Luke Kennard 

Luke Kennard’s work has always been a favourite of mine. Funny and distressing, difficult and inspirational, it’s everything I want from poetry. So I am almost disappointed in myself that it took me so long to get around to reading Cain. 

The second section, made up entirely of 355-letter anagrams of Genesis 4:9-12, described the binge-watching of a cult-following DVD boxset. With a strange mix of oblique humour, unforgiving cuts and edits, critical evaluation and the plot of a revolutionary war, it told the story of the show and the people behind it in such a compelling, driving way that made me almost forget that the collection is actually about the man vicariously living through it. This allowed Kennard to achieve incredible, crashing empathy in the reader when the third section began and I was brought back down to earth. It was a very enjoyable intellectual roller-coaster.

BOOKS EIGHT & NINE – A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula Le Guin

It’s my understanding that these books were written primarily with children in mind, but I had been recommended them as background reading by a friend I am collaborating on a theatre project with. Despite its target audience, I found A Wizard of Earthsea extremely entertaining, which is not surprising considering the accolades it achieved.

The first book in the Earthsea saga was written in a heightened, bardic style that felt more like a script for a spoken word epic than anything else. It made the story feel properly mythic, like it would slot right in next to the Odyssey or the Aeneid. However, the second book, The Tombs of Atuan, didn’t quite reach the same heights. It tried to do something interesting by setting up the protagonist from the first book, Ged, as the possible antagonist, but the illusion didn’t last long, and from context the story’s plot was very easy to guess. The first one is definitely worth reading though. Despite its age, it really stands up as great, readable fantasy.

BOOK TEN – The Transition by Luke Kennard

Yes, yes, another book by Kennard. What can I say, I didn’t want to wait as long as I did for Cain.

As I write this, I haven’t actually finished reading The Transition, but I am enjoying it. Set in the near future (or is it?), the millennial generation now in their thirties and forties, the novel tells the story of one couple who are given a choice of going to prison for credit card fraud, or going through The Transition, a slightly mysterious programme that you’ve never heard of, to teach adults how to ‘grow up’. I’m just over half way through and so far the unsettling characters and a message carved into a bed make me think that there might be something ELSE going on. As with all of Kennard’s work, it’s very funny.

This book also takes me over into the first week of March!

BONUS BOOK – The Wicked + The Divine vol. 2 by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie

Aaaaaaand I couldn’t help myself. The first volume ended on too much of a cliff hanger to not continue. Slightly thicker than The Faust Act, Fandemonium felt heavier in plot, too. It felt like writer and artist alike were packing more into their pages than before. While it was still a lot of fun, the humour became more acerbic and the twist at the end was not so much joyous as heartrending, but with such an angle as to set the mind alight with conspiracy theory. There, I managed to do that spoiler-free. Now excuse me while I go and buy the next one.