Sofa Spotlight - The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

This has been on my list as a book that I felt I should read, rather than one I wanted to read. I’d seen the film a few years ago and wasn’t that fussed about it, but thought that maybe the book was better. Turns out that if I hadn’t seen the film I would have had a problem understanding what was happening in the book.

It won’t come as a surprise to learn that the plot follows the fortunes of a character called Gatsby. Gatsby throws outlandish parties in the hope that Daisy, who he was in love with but couldn’t marry, will come. Thing is Daisy is now married, but that doesn’t stop Gatsby from being obsessed with her. And eventually things go pear shaped.

My biggest problem was finding a character that I could get behind. None of them were likeable and some of them, like Daisy’s husband, I really didn’t like. When the book came to an end I wasn’t left with a great impression. If anything I was glad it was over as it had been hard work to get to the end. Not one I would recommend, but maybe I’m missing its significance. Either way it’s ticked off my list.

Sofa Spotlight - The Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead

Last week I talked about how I felt Furious Hours by Casey Cep was one of the best books I read last year. Nickel Boys is also a strong contender. It is a fictionalised account of what happened in a real school in the states. 

Nickel is the name of the Nickel Academy, a reform school for boys, and the story follows Elwood Curtis who is a black teenager growing up in the 1960s. An innocent mistake leaves him as a pupil at the Nickel Academy and we see the horrors through his eyes. 

There is a grittiness to this book that is hard to come to terms with. The subject is handled well, and doesn’t dwell on graphic details, but in no way does it downplay the brutality of what happened. 

I was taken by surprise by the way the book ended, but that was one of the features that made this such an impactful read. I highly recommend it but it’s not for the fainthearted. 

Sofa Spotlight - Furious Hours, Casey Cep

One for you if you are a fan of either Harper Lee or In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. I think this is possibly one of the best non fiction books I read last year and I’m not alone in that opinion. Really you could split this book in two. 

Part of it deals with the murder of The Reverend. The Reverend being Rev Willie Maxwell, a suspected serial killer in Alabama, who was shot at the funeral of what may have been one of his victims. The second serves almost  as a biography of Harper Lee and focuses in on her investigation of Maxwell. 

Harper Lee’s involvement in the research needed for Truman Capote’s book In Cold Blood, also comes under scrutiny. And it essential for understanding why she may have been working on a manuscript for a book about Willie Maxwell. Certainly Cep makes a valid case for parts of the book having been written, but sadly it’s one of those things we may never know for sure. 

I read To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time last year and fell in love with it. Needless to say I was eager to get my hands on this book and I wasn’t disappointed at all. Casey Cep makes this an exciting and very readable tale. If you didn’t catch it last year, make sure you do this year. 

Sofa Spotlight - The Key to the Half Words, Andrew Chaplin

Very glad for the recommendation of this one. I have to admit that I wasn’t overly sure what I was getting myself into when I picked it up and it took a couple of chapters for me to get into it. But once I had got my head around a genre I don’t often encounter I found myself enjoying it. 

As I read I felt there was a heavy influence of Tolkien on the narrative. The plot line follows the adventures of two boys who live on one side of a divide. There was once one world occupied by both humans and mythical creatures. Only mythical creatures are not mythical in this book they just live on the other side of the divide. Our heroes fall through a gap and find themselves in the other half world, where they help wizard Toby in his efforts to stop an evil queen.

So not just seeing the influence of Tolkien but also of C. S. Lewis. Having said that, the story is unique and stands apart from both these authors. For one thing it addresses issues pertinent to today that neither Lewis or Tolkien would have had knowledge of. Whether Chaplin intended his work to be a metaphor or not, its possible to read into it about how divided our own world is and how those divisions can be overcome, if dealt with gently and kindly, or exploited with disastrous consequences. 

So yes my recommendation is, check this book out!