Olive Kitteridge (Elizabeth Strout)

Elizabeth Strout
Olive Kitteridge

A very readable novel which I bought Debbie on a whim, along with the sequel. It's a very American novel in the intense descriptions of place and people and therefore very engaging. Follows one person, Olive, and her relationships with others but jumps around a lot going off at tangents about others' lives which you think will be tied together by the end but really aren't. No spoilers but a couple of incidents you really want to know the outcome. Maybe in the sequel...

Renegade: The Lives and Tales of Mark E. Smith (Mark E. Smith & Austin Collings)

Mark E. Smith & Austin Collings
Renegade: The Lives and Tales of Mark E. Smith
 

An amusing book of anecdotes and vitriol which is hardly surprising. You wonder if he really was this moody or it's partly a front. Probably not. A great read but like so many other (auto)bigraphies (of genius) you feel that you really wouldn't've wanted to know him.

The Turn of the Screw (Henry James)

Henry James
The Turn of the Screw

A book I decided to read as I've not read any Henry James and he's mentioned in the The Man in the Red Coat book I recently read. Is meant to be the best horror story ever written but I really didn't feel that as it meanders about and when afterwards I read summaries of it, thinking I really must have missed something, didn't go any further as to why.