May/June Reading Update – Loooong Books

I’ve read three quite long books in April and May, so in terms of books, my totals are quite low, but in terms of pages or words, close to normal. I’ve read around 1600 pages in April and May across these three books.

This is how it has been going (see To Read List). I linked from The Bone Tree (reviewed in March) with Tree but having exhausted all my Trees used ‘of‘ to move onto Salt.

• The Flame Trees of Thika – Elspeth Huxley (Memoir)
• The Years of Rice and Salt – Kim Stanley Robinson (Alternate History/ Speculative Fiction)
• As Meat Loves Salt – Maria McCann (Historical Fiction)

The first book I read was The Flame Trees of Thika by Elspeth Huxley (4 stars). Six-year-old Elspeth’s observations of the romances and escapades around her while living in Kenya in the lead up to World War I.

Secondly, The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson (3 stars). Alternate history is one of my favourite genres (the classic example is Hitler wins the Second World War). In this book, the Black Death kills off virtually all Europeans, leaving the Chinese and Islamic settlers to recolonise and eventually make the technological advances which Europeans did in our timeline. Nearly 800 pages. Parts were compelling, parts a bit of a slog.

Thirdly, As Meat Loves Salt by Maria McCann (3, borderline 4 stars). I had no idea what to expect, and what I got was a dark LGBT romance set at the time of the English Civil War. So dark, you feel grimy, but with the unusual situation of having not only an antihero, but a hero it’s very hard to like. I can see that this kind of gothic novel would really appeal to many.

As far as my reading challenge goes, I have the next book up my sleeve, which is a book of short stories called Island by Alistair MacLeod. It’s a bit of a loophole as it was previously published as The Lost Salt Gift of Blood. I am finding that I have to be careful with planning what to read next in case I run out of books with common words in the title.