Rich is convinced that I skim-read my books, that it’s the only possible way I could get through eight of them in the space of nine days, but the simple truth of it is that I spend a lot of time reading. An hour or so a night on a normal, work day, but if it’s the weekend or if I’m travelling or on holiday, I can ramp that all the way up to six hours, easily. Often more. It’s basically my default relaxation mode.
Lying out in the sun with a massive hat on and a lightweight towel draped over the top of my head for extra shade? Reading. Lounging in a hammock under a tree with cicadas dropping into my lap every few minutes (downside of that particular scenario): reading. Belted securely into my aeroplane seat? You’ve guessed it.
But if I’m on holiday, and I’m not supposed to be on my laptop, and I feel guilty for doing admin on my phone, then what else is there to do?
Spend time with the family?! Pah!
I jest, of course: that’s the whole point of a holiday, isn’t it, to spend time with each other. But there’s always a major flaw in my holiday plans, which is that I tend to book holidays to places that are hotter than the actual surface of the sun, and also I book them IN AUGUST, when the pavements melt and the water comes out from the taps already boiling. And so it is always too hot for the kids to be outside until the late afternoon comes around. They usually spend half the day hiding inside, watching TV and doing all the stuff we’re on holiday to get away from.
I have no idea why I book the same eye-burningly hot locations every time - for the past five years it’s been Greece, Greece, Turkey, Greece, Greece. Always teetering on the brink of 40 degrees, always ridiculously brutal from around 11am until 4pm, to the point where you can’t walk barefoot on the sand, or potter around the shops.
It’s like a weird compulsion, that I must have a holiday somewhere so hot that the trees spontaneously burst into flames as you look at them, otherwise it hasn’t truly been a holiday. Is it because everyone was so obsessed with “getting some sun” in the eighties?
We’ll return to this subject soon. I’ve done a lot of soul-searching over the past few weeks and I might well have come up with a handy checklist for any parents who are at a loss as to what makes the perfect family holiday. I know I wrote about this briefly earlier in the year, but I totally ignored my own advice, didn’t I (stay in the UK, go somewhere familiar, keep expectations low) and so I have reviewed and revised my guidelines and now have a really solid set of rules to follow. Yes, they’re decidedly pessimistic and yes they also cast parenting in a slightly grim light, almost to the point where you could show them to people as a mild form of contraception, but boy will they save you some money over the years!
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Back to the books. I read eight of them in nine days, which Rich doesn’t believe is possible but when you think that we spent seven whole hours at Santorini airport waiting for our flight home and that an 80,000 word book takes the average reader around 6.5 hours to get through… Of course I ploughed through an entire stash of them. Two flights, two ferry journeys (we went to Paros), countless hours when the kids were inside the little villa watching Is It Cake? and playing Mario Karts, more countless hours when I couldn’t sleep at night, because the bed mattress had only marginally more flex than an iron girder…
Here’s what I finished, what I abandoned and which books I’d recommend:
Look What You Made Me Do, John Lanchester
Massively enjoyed this, tore through it! Oh, I forgot to mention: all of the books I read were ones I downloaded to my new Kindle. So my choices were very much guided by which books were in the 99p sale or, even better, included in the Kindle Unlimited section, which meant that I could borrow them for free.
(I had a three month subscription to Kindle Unlimited thrown in for free when I bought my device recently.)
This one, though, Look What You Made Me Do, I bought for 99p before I left. It had been popping up in my recommended things for weeks and I actually had the paper version in my “saved for later” basket so I was thrilled to get it for a penny shy of a quid.
Good cover, very graphic and bold and fully representative of the middle-class content within, and an excellent, snappy, sharp-witted opening chapter. One of the things I first noticed about the book was that I disliked nearly every character, but once the story got going, with all of its twists and turns, I began to realise that this was sort of the whole point.
The story opens with what seems to be the perfect long-term “cosmopolitan” marriage. Decades long, this marriage, but still lively and full and packed with all of the little secrets and nicknames and shared memories that couples collect together over time. A successful, late-middle-aged couple, no kids, living in an affluent street in West London, going to Ottolenghi-themed dinner parties and having intelligent conversations about politics and so on, which feels a million light years away from my life now but I can totally envisage. Especially as it’s drawn so brilliantly well here. More than a hint of smugness to it.
But - and not to spoil things - the whole idyll is shattered almost immediately. And then there’s a horrible, sickening dark twist. And then we meet a new set of characters and there’s another sickening twist, and as it all goes un-merrily along, the storylines become entwined and the characters become more and more unlikeable and it’s just very well executed.
A strong start to the holiday reading, I must say. The writing was sharp and practical and modern, no flowery descriptions, no meandering passages of self-reflection. And yes, a set of characters who all maybe did or maybe didn’t realise how utterly gross they were.
I downloaded it here
North Woods, Daniel Mason
This was a completely different kettle of fish: intricate, dense with history, the story of one piece of land in America and the people who inhabited it over generations. There’s a lot about apples in it, and it did make me want to taste the specific apple they grew in the orchard that was planted on the land, all trees grown from the pip of an apple core that was in the stomach of one of three soldiers who had attacked the first woman who had lived in a cabin on the land, but then who had either got an axe in his head or shot with an arrow, I can’t now remember, but you now see why I say that the book is dense with history: but honestly I can’t believe that this special apple could be better than a Pink Lady from the Co-op.
I don’t use the Co-op often, I don’t think there even is one in Bath, but there’s one in Bridport, not too far from The Dorset Nook and The Dorset Nest (holiday cottages I own and run, one open, one about to be) and let me tell you that their Pink Lady apples are a cut above anyone else’s. Just the right balance of sweetness and crisp, delicious tartness, oh my God. I struggle to believe that the apples described in North Woods, that are so central to the story and to the conflicts between characters in the story, can be as good as the ones at the Co-op.
I say this as an authority on Pink Ladies, as I have tried them from every single supermarket and I always take note of the particular orchard or “farm” they have come from. Although I didn’t for the Co-op ones and so I will have to get more, check that they’re the same and then tell you the specific name. Protect this orchard at all costs!
Anyway the book is good. The last couple of chapters annoyed me and when you read it you will probably see why - a weak ending, I thought, but it didn’t detract from the overall enjoyment. A great, interesting passage-through-the-ages sort of book that has stayed with me.
I bought it here
Nesting, Roisin O'Donnell
A difficult read. Big trigger warning for domestic abuse, and the way this is written feels very immediate and urgent, altogether very stressful. But at the same time, you’re rooting for the central character so intensely, completely invested in all of the highs and lows, and when the highs come, you find yourself loudly cheering.
I actually think that this is a hugely important read; it shows that abuse can come in all shapes and forms and that being under the threat of violence, or being gradually, quietly controlled by someone, can be utterly life-ruining and terrifying.
I borrowed it from Kindle Unlimited here
The Correspondent, Virginia Evans
I enjoyed this book immensely but also sobbed quite loudly and alarmingly before I’d even reached the halfway point. I surprised myself, and also the two little resident Greek kittens who liked to bask underneath my sunlounger while I was reading. Out they shot, off down the garden!
Premise of this one, if I had to shove it unceremoniously into a nutshell: woman in her seventies, is a writer of letters and has been since her teens, gradually reveals her backstory and thus the events that have shaped her life through a series of letters.
Oh it’s a tear-jerker. I found her very rude, at first, Sybil Van Antwerp - too direct - but that is obviously a deliberate strategy, because it makes what she reveals and her growing vulnerability all the harder to take. The hard exterior gradually cracks and it’s heartbreaking.
One thing: the cover for this book makes it look like an airport novel, some generic story about love letters or whatnot, “woman with cupcake shop meets complicated bearded lumberjack with a shady past”, which is why I avoided reading it for so long. The cover doesn’t do it justice! It’s completely unsuitable. I can only think that there’s some sort of thing going on with publishers where they make book covers bright and simple so that they are more universally appealing. It feels like the Great Dumbing Down of Book Covers, 2026.
Not that there’s anything wrong with stories about cupcake shop owners and lumberjacks, but when the cover doesn’t match the quality of the writing inside, it’s like entering a Burger King shop front only to find an award-winning bistro within. Admittedly a brilliant surprise, but I love a good book cover.
I was similarly disappointed with the cover of The Names, one of my books of the year, if I was forced to choose some; thought that it was a story about a holiday romance from the cover art. Couldn’t have been further from the reality. Very jarring.
I downloaded The Correspondent here.
Theo of Golden, Allen Levi
I had to abandon this one I’m afraid. The main character irritated me before I’d even reached page four, with his exaggerated attentiveness to every single detail on the street and in the cafe and his sickly do-goody goody-two-shoes charade. I had to flick ahead to see if he (hopefully) turned out to be some sort of serial killer or deviant but he just got more and more virtue signally.
Disclaimer: I did have rampant PMT when I tried to read this. But come on! He goes into a coffee shop and it’s filled with pencil portraits (as in drawn in pencil, not portraits of pencils, that would be bizarre and boring, wouldn’t it?) and he tracks down the people in the portraits and buys them their picture.
Ugh.
The first recipient, honestly, you should hear the amount of discussion that goes on between her and her husband about whether they should go and meet the old man (who is called Mr Theo, which also enraged me for reasons I can’t quite work out) and get the portrait from him. You’d think they were deciding whether to sell their car as collateral to go all in on a roulette wheel.
Not for me, I’m afraid. It was free on Kindle Unlimited.
Summerwater, Sarah Moss
Tore through this clever, short-ish novel by Sarah Moss, author of Ripeness, a book I recommended a little while ago. Summerwater is set in Scotland, at some holiday cabins on a lakeside, and it jumps in and out of the lives of the families staying in them. From a judgemental old GP and his wife, whose mind and memory is clearly starting to fail her, to a couple of very disgruntled teens who would rather be anywhere than in a tiny damp cabin with their parents, it tells you so much about them through their actions and interactions without really needing anything dramatic to happen at all.
(Although something does happen, don’t worry.)
I really enjoyed it. It was like a series of character studies and all of the characters’ traits and failings and guilty secrets are so familiar, so bloody pedestrian! Slightly depressing in some ways, but you know when you read a book and it suddenly makes you realise how many people are just on the same old treadmill of life? Experiencing the same feelings, making the same sorts of compromises… I think Sarah Moss is really clever at drawing these sorts of studies.
There is a grand finale in terms of “action” but honestly I felt as though the storyline played massively second fiddle to the brilliant observations of modern life.
Ooh! Just realised I borrowed this one for free on Kindle Unlimited - it’s here.
This Other Eden, Paul Harding
For Pete’s sake, I was only supposed to be writing two sentences for each book! It was supposed to be a filler post before my proper holiday debriefs! OK, this one I actually started years ago but, for some reason, abandoned.
When I restarted it I remembered why I had abandoned it; it’s not the ideal holiday read. Mind you, neither is Nesting, if you’re after a light-hearted sun-lounger romp. But it is a novel of pure brilliance, and it’s not until right at the end that you realise quite how brilliant it is.
It’s about the lives of a tiny community on an island called Apple Island and how - a century after the island was discovered and inhabited - officials on the mainland decide that the inhabitants need to be evicted. It’s a clever depiction of the world’s intolerance towards people who wish to live differently, or who simply do live differently, who have no other choice, and the ending, where the “other Eden” is placed in sharp contrast with the rest of the world, is shattering.
I bought it here
Heartburn, Nora Ephron
I know, I know: how am I only just getting into Nora Ephron? Hugely enjoyed this short and spiky book about selfish people, life choices and deciding when enough is enough: it could have been a tragic tome but Nora Ephron kills the sadness with humour and I’m always appreciative of that.
My favourite part was the foreword, though, when she talks about how the story in the novel is mostly true and she’s barely disguised any of the characters, and how they were all really annoyed with her because she didn’t go to enough lengths to disguise them. And she writes very cleverly about how the term “thinly veiled” is weaponised against female writers, and how really if her ex-husband hadn’t wanted to be in her book as a cheater then he shouldn’t have cheated. Along those lines, anyway. Had I not wanted to scare the kittens away again I would have clapped, loudly.
Bought it here
Night Swimmers, Roisin Maguire
Another free book on the Kindle Unlimited thing - didn’t I do well? I enjoyed this book, set in the 2020 lockdown in a little coastal village in Northern Ireland. A man, a “townie” is separating from his wife after a terrible tragedy and he rents the holiday cottage from a woman, Grace, who has lived there on the coast for all of her life. She’s very blunt, used to living alone and does badass things like rowing out to sea to catch her own fish, swimming naked in the freezing water at night and rescuing badger-baiting dogs. That sort of stuff.
Grace and the Townie’s lives criss-cross over each other and clash - his grief and her stubborn independence - and the book is a lovely reminder of how people can bend towards one another even in the most unlikely of situations.
Two things that annoyed me though: firstly Grace is supposed to be fifty but she has been written as though she’s eighty-five. This is a fit woman who swims daily but it’s “ooh my knees” this and “ouch my back” that and it just didn’t ring true for me. Maybe I just know a lot of fit fifty year-olds, but I don’t think so. It didn’t tally with her general badass-edness. Second thing: the Townie character. I couldn’t get him straight in my imagination. I know he’s grieving but he was very insipid and it was hard to form a picture of him and what he was about.
Regardless, I stormed through this during my eighteen hour journey home from Paros and found it greatly enjoyable.
Free on Kindle Unlimited here
Well that was the longest eight paragraph post I’ve ever written! Sorry. I’ll make the next post just pictures, shall I? I have lots of holiday snaps! Please do tap on the heart button on your way out so that people think crikey, that post has a lot of likes, I had better just have a little look and see what all the fuss is about, and then wonder what the hell they’ve stumbled upon when I start chuntering on about apples and the Co-op in Bridport and whatever else I digressed towards…
North Woods was brilliant and so different I thought, really enjoyed. I have The Correspondent and Nesting lined up
I also did not finish Theo of Golden and share your opinion about the first couple. What were they so afraid of?? Made no sense. So glad to hear someone else agrees bc my book club loved it and I really couldn’t understand why.