Reading

One of the joys of not studying has been the time and inclination to read for pleasure. I have read three books that I can remember:
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka
I think this was the best of the three. I liked the characterisation and I learnt a lot about the oppression of the Ukrainian people during the reign of Stalin. However I thought the ending was a little weak and understated. If you build up your novel in a comic and bold way, subtle isn't the way to draw your conclusions. It made me think and was an entertaining tale however. 6.5/10
A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby
This was a brilliant premise and it didn't stray much further from that. It was funny and the characters were very well fleshed out but as that was all that held this book together, they needed to be. Again the end was lame. 6/10
Last Things by ?
I thought this looked interesting and looked an easy read. It was but again was a single premise book. I found the eccentric mother an interesting study. Particularly interesting was how this impacted her daughter. This should have been explored better. I liked the way we saw the impact of the behaviour of a bullying cousin in her behaviour. We should have had a more dramatic parallel with the mother. The ending again was confusing. 5/10