Amsterdam by Ian McEwan

Another one I took too long to read, and back to his normal fare of unstinting depiction of people making mistakes for who he gives no chance of redemption, didn't feel to me as if it had the heart of his, to me, better works. A bit unsatisfying for the idealist in me. I think I started this but was disappointed and didn't finish it. Hmm, haven't got Saturday or Atonement, or Rose Blanche, must fix that!

AZ: "When good-time, fortysomething Molly Lane dies of an unspecified degenerative illness, her many friends and numerous lovers are led to think about their own mortality. Vernon Halliday, editor of the up-market newspaper The Judge, persuades his old friend Clive Linley, a self-indulgent composer of some reputation, to enter into a euthanasia pact with him. Should either of them succumb to such an illness, the other will effect his death. From this point onwards we are in little doubt as to the novel's outcome--it's only a matter of who will kill whom. In the meantime, compromising photographs of Molly's most distinguished lover, foreign secretary Julian Garmony, have found their way into the hands of the press, and as rumours circulate he teeters on the edge of disgrace. However, this is McEwan, so it is no surprise to find that the rather unsavoury Garmony comes out on top. McEwan is master of the writer's craft, and while this is the sort of novel that wins prizes, his characters remain curiously soulless amidst the twists and turns of plot"

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

I was first introduced to McEwan by my sixth form English teacher, through a slim little book called The Child in Time, a small book with a massive impact, and he's been my companion ever since, shining a light on the unspoken areas of our world, lost children, incest, grief and despair, and writing about them with heartbreaking sparse beauty. Few other authors could write about the marriage night of a newly married couple and extend it into a book length heart wrenching tale of misunderstanding, social life in 1962, hierarchies of life coming from academia and money (her) and squalor and madness (him) and hinted at incest and its devastating consequences for both. A book that makes me hope that I can be less judgemental and more forgiving in my relationships. This is more tender than his usual, a beautiful elegy to lost opportunity that made me more determined to live and speak without restraint, McEwan always has something to teach me.

AZ: "It is June, 1962. In a hotel on the Dorset coast, overlooking Chesil Beach, Edward and Florence, who got married that morning, are sitting down to dinner in their room. Neither is entirely able to suppress their anxieties about the wedding night to come ..."On Chesil Beach" is another masterwork from Ian McEwan - a story about how the entire course of a life can be changed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken."

Exit Music by Ian Rankin

AZ:"It's late autumn in Edinburgh and late autumn in the career of Detective Inspector John Rebus. As he tries to tie up some loose ends before retirement, a murder case intrudes. A dissident Russian poet has been found dead in what looks like a mugging gone wrong. By apparent coincidence a high-level delegation of Russian businessmen is in town, keen to bring business to Scotland. The politicians and bankers who run Edinburgh are determined that the case should be closed quickly and clinically. But the further they dig, the more Rebus and his colleague DS Siobhan Clarke become convinced that they are dealing with something more than a random attack - especially after a particularly nasty second killing. Meantime, a brutal and premeditated assault on local gangster 'Big Ger' Cafferty sees Rebus in the frame. Has the Inspector taken a step too far in tying up those loose ends? Only a few days shy of the end to his long, inglorious career, will Rebus even make it that far?"

Rebus' last days before retirement dealing with 3 cases that may or may not be connected, a grisly murder of a Russian dissident poet linked timewise with the murder of Litvenenko, the murder by fire of a sound recordist and one time session player, and the attempted murder of Rebus' nemesis Cafferty. Read it in one sitting, absorbing in its fast pace and dreamy in the depths of Rankin's writing and memories of Fife.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling AUDIO

Again, another assay with the wonderful voice of Fry, this time with strong memories of flying back from Birmingham to Dundee in a tiny little plane, seeing the endless expanse of the Border Hills and the relative briefness of Fife spread out below me, MP3 turned right up to hear over the noise and rattle of the engine. Bliss. Oh, and great story, the better for being slowed down, there was so much I missed when reading it.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by JK Rowling AUDIO

I read very fast, epecially when a book is as gripping as Rowling's Harry Potter books, and as a result I do miss a lot. So this is where the audio books come in, I have to slow down as I am listening to someone else, and the someone is the wonderful Stephen Fry. Listening to his voice is enough of a joy in itself, but listening to him and really getting Rowling's wonderfully entertaining story is a real pleasure.

The Road Home by Rose Tremain AUDIO

AZ:"In The Road Home, Tremain tells the story of Lev, an Eastern European migrant worker who has left his village and travelled to England so that he can finance a better life for his mother and daugther. He takes with him his grief for his dead wife. There is an almost fairytale-like quality to Lev's chance encounters and where they lead him, although, that said, they also feel natural and possible; Tremain has always been good on the essential randomness of experience."

An amazing story of economic migrant life in the UK, utterly believable characters caught up in the narrative of a widower trying to make a life for his mother and daughter he had to leave behind. Both the depiction of under-class work in the kitchens and fields of the UK and the bleakness of life in an ex-Soviet state were stunning in the effect of making me really think