Mrs Blackwell’s April Reading Log

‘The Homemade God’ by Rachel Joyce

Rachel Joyce is the author of at least six books, but this is the first one I’ve ever read. I picked it entirely based on the cover; to me they don’t come much more appealing than this one!

The Homemade God is the story of Vic Kemp and his four adult children. Vic is an artist, made famous mostly by kitschy paintings of minimally dressed women. Vic is in his seventies and announces over dinner in a London restaurant that he plans to marry a woman in her late twenties that he’s met on the internet.

Quite quickly the story moves from London to the family lake house in Italy, and what seemed like a murder-mystery becomes a solid family drama. Great characters and kept me engaged all 400-ish pages.

‘Amma’ by Saraid de Silva

Also in the family drama category, Amma is an intergenerational story of three women in the same family. It tells a story of how choices in their younger lives influenced their adulthood, as well as the lives of their descendants.

This book has a clever structure and moves really easily across countries and back and forward in time. An excellent debut from an author who I’m sure we’ll hear a lot more from in coming years.

‘Room on the Sea’ by Andre Aciman

Another novella from Andre Aciman in the nice hardcover format that was established with The Gentleman from Peru.

Room on the Sea is the story of Catherine and Paul who meet going through the jury selection process in Manhattan. Both are in their mid-sixties and married to other people, this story covers five days in their lives as they get to know each other.

The romantic tension and the will-they / won’t-they reminded me of the Richard Linklater Before Sunrise and Before Sunset movies from the early 2000s.

‘The Diary of a CEO’ by Steven Bartlett

Our business book club pick for April was Diary of a CEO. Steven is an entrepreneur, an investor (he appears on the UK version of Dragon’s Den), and host of the top rating podcast DOAC (also Diary of a CEO). The catch is, Steven is only 30.

The book is written with a youthful certainty, and I don’t say that as a criticism. It moves along at a good pace, saying everything it needs to say about his 33 Laws for Business and Life, but without wasting effort or labouring any points. I would highly recommend this for any young person starting out in work or business, as well as any jaded older person that might just need a refresher!

‘Who is Government’ by Michael Lewis

Michael is the author of The Big Short and is joined in this collection of essays but a range of other writers and journalists, including shop favourite, Geraldine Brooks. In each essay the writers discover a branch of government (my assumption was they got to pick for themselves), or an individual within a government department and explain to the reader when these individuals do all day with tax payer dollars.

If, like me, most of your political bandwidth is dedicated to leaders or figureheads of government, you too will probably find it really interesting to learn more about what the people inside the machine are actually working on. I listened to the audiobook on LibroFM and the bonus was that each author narrated their own essay. The essays are all quite short so you can listen to this bit by bit as if it were a podcast.

In my YouTube video for the reading log, I also finish off with a couple of travel books and a watercolour postcard activity book we currently have in store.

See you again in May!