Books for Blokes – Cristina Sanders' blog

The Lincoln Highway—book review

Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

The Lincoln Highway follows Amor Towles’ masterpiece that is A Gentleman in Moscow, which I highly recommend. That’s a hard act to follow and this new novel is bigger and more ambitious with a wide cast of characters, multiple viewpoints and a storyline that deliberately goes in the wrong direction. Where the Moscow gentleman was confined to one hotel for almost the entire book, this 580 page monster of a story roams halfway across America.

It is in the style of a classic 1950s American roadie and features a group of footloose young men and a couple of cars.

The Tomo—book review

The Tomo, by Mary-anne Scott

Another great adventure story from Hawke’s Bay writer, Mary-anne Scott, who has corned the shelves in my house for books for boys. Again, she nails it, on-point for pace, topic and characters. The Tomo, hot off the press and in good time for Christmas, is aimed at boys who can read for themselves (8-14 ish) and fancy themselves heros of the great outdoors (at least in their imaginations). Oh, and you have to love dogs to understand this book. I mean, how can you possibly relate to a boy who risks his life for a dog otherwise?

She is Not Your Rehab—Book Review

She is not your rehab by Matt Brown with Sarah Brown

Lots of books glorifying violence out there but I’ve never come across anything so focussed on stopping the intergenerational cycle of harm perpetuated on the vulnerable as this extraordinary work by Matt Brown and Sarah Brown. It’s part story, part autobiography, part self-help guide, part conversation, 100% inspiration.

Matt’s a barber; the creator of My Fathers Barbers. Men sit in his chair and chat. Not so much: Where are you going for your holidays, more : This is a safe space. You can talk about that if you want.

Entanglement — book review

Entanglement, by Bryan Walpert

I read the first page and was smitten. Not sure what it was that hit me, I’m inclined to say the smell, which is nonsense, but it was that kind of attraction, something that comes at you side on and makes you turn your head.

This is a clever book. It’s about the study of time travel, and redemption, and doesn’t unfold for you easily. We come at the story through different perspectives, all of them quite wonderful.

Master & Commander — book review

Master & Commander, by Patrick O’Brian

I felt a huge sense of relief to get through this ordeal of a book without being scuppered or broadsided and blasted by a thirty-six pounder or court marshalled and shot by my own side. I kept a furtive lookout for the massing enemy French fleet showing the tips of their masts over the horizon. The thought of comforting myself with several bottles of wine with dinner occurred to me, and a tot of rum a day wouldn’t have gone amiss.

Much of the detail of the action went right over my head and I know that’s the truth for most readers, though there are men who swear they understand every manoeuvre (who you really should not engage in conversation if you have somewhere else to be in the next, say five hours).

Rangitira—book review

Rangitira, by Paula Morris

What a great book to follow my previous read, This Thing of Darkness. Both Thompson and Paula Morris’s book relate to the 19th Century notion of taking indigenous people from distant lands back to England to “civilise” them and show them off as curiosities. In Thompson’s book, Captain FitzRoy uplifts three Fuegians to ship home, and in Morris’s book the Rangitira travel voluntarily to England. Whichever way you look at it, this is manifest colonial exploitation.

Paula Morris is a descendent of Rangitira’s narrator, the wonderful Paratene Te Manu, Ngāti Wai, and she writes her tupuna with a sure voice. He comes across as a thoughtful and gracious man who, in 1886 while having his portrait painted by Gottfried Lindauer, relates the story of his voyage to England some twenty years before.

This Thing of Darkness

This Thing of Darkness, by Harry Thompson

Sometimes you have to stick your hand up and here we go.
I hereby award This Thing of Darkness the title of my best book ever.

For sheer meatiness, immersion, characterisation, research, story telling, and adventure. For the immensity of history involved. For the reach of these lives and the illumination of their development over the years and the way things build and unravel – all understandable in retrospect but so uncertain and risky at the time. For all the surrounding stuff that comes with historical fiction and the extraordinary passing detail. For the way it made me re-evaluate my life and life in this century generally. For the way it made me feel.

Light Perpetual – book review

Light Perpetual, by Thomas Spufford

Francis Spufford has surprised and delighted me once again. How do you follow a remarkable book like Golden Hill? By writing something completely different, it seems – different genre, different voice and style, different format. You’d imagine that would point to a different audience but I realise it is the integrity of Spufford’s writing that I love every bit as much as the rollicking story that made Golden Hill such a hit for me. I’m sure Light Perpetual will reach all Spufford’s previous fans and garner a legion of new ones.

This is not a rollicking story. It is dysfunctional as a story, if you expect (as I do) a story to follow the adventures and psychological development of one or two main characters. Spufford kills off all his characters in the first chapter.

Shackleton’s Endurance — book review

Shackleton’s Endurance, an Antarctic survival story, by Joanna Grochowicz

Complained about the cold lately? Snowflake! Shackleton’s Endurance will knock that out of you. Comparatively, you have never been cold.

Let Go My Hand — book review

Don’t worry about the blurb, just start reading. This is a clever and erudite read but accessible! Makes you feel like these whip-smart dark comics have packed you into a van with them and are taking you for a ride across northern Europe, letting you sit in on their banter, their arguments, their weird discussions. The story is told mostly by the dialogue between three men and their father: all of them perceptive and intelligent in that very English way that produces such fantastic stand up. Sure, the boys are taking their father to Dignitas, but it’s not a quiet journey. The boys are brought up to talk, and they do. Brilliantly.

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: