Tower and Town, August 2022 (view the full edition)A Good ReadI know I've said that it's a good idea to read something you might not normally think about- a male or female author, a new genre, or fiction or non-fiction. But sometimes one's first instincts are correct and that's fine too. I recently read - well, started to read - a book that has been enormously popular, raved about and a best seller. I shan't identify it, it's one of a dozen or so books which have been absolutely massive, either through clever publishing campaigns, or word of mouth. I thought it wasn't my sort of thing, and I was absolutely right, I found it unreadable. But that's just me... In the same open-minded spirit, one of my colleagues read a similarly hugely popular and easily-dismissed-as-schlock novel, and absolutely loved it. Do you see how as booksellers, being asked for recommendations can be both the best and worst part of the job? So, I'll tell you about a couple of things I have enjoyed (I can do no more). I've written before about my fascination with the history of the American West, so Katie Hickman's Brave Hearted is just my sort of thing. Her previous book She-Merchants, Buccaneers and Gentlewomen about women in the early days of the East India Company was packed with absorbing detail, and now she's done the same for the stories of the women on the pioneer trails in the middle of the C19th. How the West was Won is an extraordinary story of horrific challenges and endurance, violence, isolation, disease and unremitting toil. It's also, of course, the story of how the west was lost - Hickman includes the testimonies of Native American historians, and their first-hand accounts of the life that was gradually and relentlessly destroyed through warfare, disease and continually broken Government promises. She also writes about enslaved and later emancipated African-Americans, and Chinese concubines sex-trafficked to San Francisco. Altogether I read this book with bulging eyes and gaping jaw at the sheer lunatic/audacious/persistent/criminal (delete as appropriate) enterprise of expanding the American nation. A meaty thriller for a good holiday read, Sir/Madam? The staff in the shop have been passing round Oliver Harris's A Shadow Intelligence. It's a clever, detailed, scarily convincing espionage novel. Dealing with cyber-intelligence and the dark web our hero is suave, damaged, competent, at home in various Middle Eastern and Central Asian cities - everything you want in this kind of book. The second in the series Ascension is out now, hurrah. Debby Guest |