Karl's Reading List

Published by Hyperion/Disney Book Group: New York, 2013 (2012). When I was training to be a teacher, this book was recommended by a particular vlog post we were directed to during one lesson. I hunted out a copy, read it, loved it, and started recommending it to others.  That was before I started my book list, so was at least nine years ago. Having finally picked it back up, I think I spent about the right amount of time between reads, because although I could remember some of the main beats, I was able to discover the specifics afresh and once again enjoy the process of discovery. The premise of Code Name Verity is quite sad: our Scottish (don't call her English!) protagonist (whom we eventually learn is named Julie), has been captured in Nazi-occupied France during World War 2, and is now being tortured and interrogated as a spy. In order to avoid further torture, as well as hopefully delay her execution, Julie has begun revealing secrets from her time with the Allies, starting w...

Published by Chatto & Windus/Penguin Random House: Dublin, Ireland, 2021. The Promise is an oddly written book. For example, it uses no speech marks or 'section breaks', meaning that at times it is hard to tell who is speaking, if they are speaking or simply thinking, and occasionally even whether something is happening in the same scene or time and the thing that happened just before it. Fortunately for the story as a whole, it is very apparent that author Galgut has done this on purpose, and that any sense of disorientation that results from his stylistic choices are ones that he intended to allow. This is because disorientation and upheaval are two of the main themes of The Promise. Each section of the book is named for one member of the Swart family - with the named member being fated to die in their section of the story. We begin with the family gathering following the death of 'Ma' (Rachel), who had caused a rift in the family by returning to her Jewish faith ...

Published by Canongate Books: Great Britain, 2008 (2002). I knew quite a lot about the general plot of this book before I began reading, thanks to reviews about it when it first came out, as well as having seen at least part of the Oscar-winning film version. Life of Pi tells the story of Piscine Molitor Patel, who starts by growing up as the son of a zookeeper in India and choosing to follow three religions simultaneously, and later on ends up adrift in a lifeboat with a zebra, an orangutan, a hyena and a Bengal tiger. With a plot like that, I knew the book would be somewhat 'quirky', but I wasn't expecting the level of humour, or the level of insight within it. The three religions thing is a bit odd, but then, so is the character of Pi. To him, the three religions of Hinduism, Islam and Christianity all overlap in numerous ways: "Hindus, in their capacity for love, are indeed hairless Christians, just as Muslims, in the way they see God in everything, are bearded Hin...

Published by Faber and Faber Ltd: London, England, 2008. Originally published 1968. The very first Booker Prize winner, Something to Answer For follows Townrow, a protagonist that for the first section of the book I kept misreading as “Tomorrow.” I bring that up, because it reflects, on a smaller scale, the feeling of confusion and disorientation that permeates this book. Very early on, Townrow (who has travelled to Egypt to either help or swindle an elderly widow) gets knocked on the head and left for dead, and as a result has ongoing memory problems. He forgets things that we, the readers, already know, or he remembers sequels to earlier scenes much later, and on occasion even “remembers” as having happened events that we know are fictionalised, or that may have happened to another character. The concept is clever, but having an unreliable narrator who also makes spontaneous and reckless decisions throughout the narrative also makes the book very difficult to follow. For example, at...