Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain

“The men of Bravo are not cold.”

And thus the book draws you in, right from its opening line, and keeps you there until the end thanks to the quality writing.

Bravo are Bravo squad, a troop of 8 soldiers. They are being treated to a victory tour of the US following a heroic deed at the Al-Ansakar Canal in Iraq, as they fight against TerrRr. Billy Lynn is one of their number, the Texas-boy and the one who was singled out for being the hero, the news crew footage proves it and only enhances their status. 

Throughout the tour they are treated like heroes by their fellow Americans. But they have to return for another 11 months. The focus of the book is on the end of the tour where they are being treated to a Dallas Cowboys American Football game by the owner Norm Oglesby. But the rest of the book takes you through the painful goodbyes with family, the cheerleader Billy falls in love with on first sight then has to say goodbye to, the option of not going back to war, the narrow margins between life and death, the loss of a good friend in war, the camaraderie the group have for each other etc. 

It is like one of those war films where you know the hero is going to die because of all the goodbyes that are going on. But the poignant ending is left unsaid.

Obviously a knowledge of American culture, in particular American Football will help through parts of the book, although it is not essential. And maybe the hero-worship does go on for a bit too long but overall the writing oozes quality in this well thought out novel on the Iraqi war.

I got this book through Amazon Vine. It is listed HERE.

May Produce Gas (The World of Norm) by Jonathan Meres

I read this with my 6-year-old over several bedtimes. It’s probably not for her age group, what with the talk about hormones, concepts such as global warming, and the use of “flipping” all the time, and would probably be suited more for children around the age of 13.

Despite that I thought it would be interesting to read to her because of the relationships in the book. The particular relationship I liked was that between Norm and his dad who is always telling Norm off for little things like having the computer on or over-filling the kettle, just to give my daughter some idea about how other dads are and other children are put upon by their parents. Also I liked Norm's viewpoint, in that he thinks everything is unfair.

The story though is a mish-mash of ideas. It seems it was written as it went along to wherever the ideas flowed. It starts with global warming, moves on to hormones (i.e. growing up and becoming teenagers), covers bullying in a not all that satisfactory manner (certainly not of any help to those that are being bullied), then ends with some baby-sitting. 

To give the book credit there are regular pictures along the way which do bring the text to life a bit (my daughter's favourite bits), but overall the book is inconsistent (to me at least). 

I got this book through Amazon Vine. It is listed HERE.

Belle & Boo and the Goodnight Kiss by Mandy Sutcliffe

This is a 32-page picture book (together with a sentence or two of text each page) about young girl Belle and her rabbit Boo. There are other books in the series too. I have also read with my daughters Belle & Boo and the Birthday Surprise and this book is in the same format as that one.

The series of books are basically about how much the little girl Belle and Boo love each other, which is a lot. This particular book is about the pair getting ready for bed. It therefore makes an ideal bedtime story in many ways, and of course it ends in the goodnight kiss which is something your children will love (at least at target audience age).

The pictures are good too with nice clean lines, lovely colours and the girl and rabbit drawn to look realistic. The pictures are also set up nicely from an artistic point of view.

Compared to the other book we read in the series (Belle & Boo and the Birthday Surprise) I would say the other is better because it brings out the love the characters have for each other more, possibly because there is an element of danger involved in that one, but this is another excellent addition to the series.

I got this book through Amazon Vine. It is listed HERE.

For more go to: http://www.belleandboo.com/

The Nolympics by Nicholas Lezard

Essentially this book is a big essay on the Olympics and Sport in general. There is some reference to the events of the London games, and the book is based around the days of the London Olympics, but the book is more comment than commentary, for example day 12 of the book contains no actual coverage of the games.

The introduction to the book starts with a synopsis of "Asterix at the Olympic Games", so I guess that could be put on your prerequisite reading list. After that the rest of the book is split into days from day 0 to day 16, with maybe 2,000 words a day.

So from day 0 the author has a moan about how the Olympic cash spent on training the GB athletes could have been more usefully spent on keeping libraries open, or on hospitals. This is followed up by a moan about the medals with the "disgusting logo", comparing them to the "austere beauty" of the 2008 China ones (not mentioning the fact that this was a logo designed by a child). I thought it was going to be one of those moany books, and that the Asterix opening was going to be the highlight. Luckily I was quickly put right.

The funny moments soon came. Like how the author set himself up as Mr. anti-Olympics but when Mitt Romney states that "Britain wasn't ready to host the Olympics" he still takes exception. And how the opening ceremony had the opening line of the Pistols "God save the Queen" in a montage, and the crowd and viewers at home immediately thought of the second line of the song even though it was unsung.

And if you think that this book uses the games "as an excuse for a jumped up commentator to get on his hind legs and see only what he wants to see" then you'd be wrong because the author says so.

Anyways, even though the author in failing to actually watch the Mo Farah race says that "I feel I've let my publisher down, I've let my agent down, I've let my friends and family and girlfriend down, I've let the cat down, but most of all I've let myself down," in a parody to an losing athlete's speech he really hasn't because I enjoyed the book. Sports books don't need to contain the details of the events taking place on the field, Fever Pitch is an example of that. 

I got this book through Amazon Vine. It is listed HERE.

The Lying Year by Andrei Gelasimov

The Lying Year is the tale of Mikhail over one year of his life which he spends basically lying. He loses a job, gets lucky in that he is employed by his former company boss to teach his son the ways of life, gets mixed up with his girlfriend leading to a show-down in the middle of the book, before the second half where he becomes a kidnapper. And thanks to his lying there are some really funny, but ultimately disastrous, moments where he keeps digging his own hole.

This is a Russian book that has been translated into English. At first I was struggling with the translation and thought it was quite poor, although maybe that is just me as the translator has awards. Anyway I got used to it. And to its credit the conversations worked alright.

The format of the book is funny because it starts as a straight narrative before breaking into a diary and letters to show other characters viewpoints in the centre as there is a dramatic crescendo in the story as the gun makes an appearance. Then it goes into narrative again with the diary element returning at the end for the next crescendo. This worked well.

Mikhail gets into all sorts of situations through his "lying" but also his cowardice, which makes the book very funny, and the book is very fast-paced but I did have the translation issues at the beginning so it has to be a 4 out of 5.

This book is available on Amazon UK HERE.

The Man Who Wanted to be Happy by Laurent Gounelle

The Man Who Wanted to be Happy is a self-help book built around a story. The story is that of Julian who is a school teacher on holiday in Bali. He hears of a healer and goes for a check-up. Whilst there the healer, Samtyang, diagnoses Julian's problem - he is unhappy.

From there Julian is taken on a journey with the healer/wiseman where many things are revealed to him. And Julian laps it up across several visits on several days of his holiday.

Samtyang reiterates ideas that are already widely known, e.g. you are what you believe, and to achieve your goals you need to set out in detail the steps needed to get there. But there is other stuff in there you might not know.

For me the two best bits were one part where Julian is tasked with getting five people to say no to his requests. He struggles to do it though because each person he approaches refuses to give an outright no and instead try to help with his request, no matter how absurd. The other best bit was where Julian talked about how he was bad at something because he had done it once and it had not gone well. Samtyang talked about a baby taking his first steps as he learned to walk, and how he would fail time and time again, but his parents encouraged him and the baby becomes an expert walker.

Lastly to get the most from this book you need to read it slowly to digest it, and do it at the same time, e.g. Julian has to write out some lists along the way, and that was something I couldn't do at the time on the train with all the other commuters giving me the beady eye (although Samtyang would probably have some words of wisdom about that ...).

The book reminded me a bit of The Richest Man in Babylon which was a book with some simple stories with messages to do with money management, except not as good in my eyes (and on a different topic) but it's short and easy to read along with.

This book is listed on Amazon HERE.

Jammy Dodger by Kevin Smith

A couple of shysters create a fake poet to write for the provincial poetry magazine they run because their cushy jobs are at risk – that is what this book is about, with the end being the unravelling of their great masterplan.

They are essentially jammy dodgers, dodging real work, and instead using their work time to discuss biscuits such as the jammy dodger, which is the conversation that the book opens on.

In the first part of the book there were a few quotes from various poems and I was thinking “ah, it’s going to be one of those books”, but that was just setting the scene stuff and the story soon took hold. And as you might expect from a book where poetry plays a big part, the writing in places is poetic. For example the way the geography of Belfast is explained at one point, and also a chance encounter with a kingfisher whilst out walking with a girlfriend (We both saw the flash of blue-green – stood stock still – caught his intense singularity of purpose; a microsecond drawn out. Rosie turned to me in wonder, and in her eyes... etc.).

The book is funny too with the humour never being forced. There are big funny moments in the book, like when milk is first introduced to the story, and a funny radio interview.

It is set in late-1980s Belfast with its troubles and all, but that is never really brought to the forefront of the story and is kept in the background. As it says in book the narrator was using poetry as an escape from the “bomb-lit domain of chaos and violence” on the evening news.

And if you want an escape from real life too you’d do worse than spend your time reading this book.

This book is listed on Amazon UK HERE.