Author: whatcathyreadnext

#TopTenTuesday Books I Was Excited To Get But Still Haven’t Read #TuesdayBookBlog

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Top Ten TuesdayTop Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

The rules are simple:

  • Each Tuesday, Jana assigns a new topic. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want.
  • Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post.
  • Add your name to the Linky widget on that day’s post so that everyone can check out other bloggers’ lists.
  • Or if you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic is Books I Was Super Excited To Get My Hands On But Still Haven’t Read. Oh, the joy of acquiring a book you’ve been eagerly awaiting and then the frustration of not yet having found the time to read it. Repeat, ad infinitum. For the purposes of this post, I’ve excluded ARCs; mine are all books I’ve purchased myself. So read on and find out why I was particularly excited to acquire them. Do not expect me to be able to explain why I’ve not yet read them…

Links from each title will take you to the book description on Goodreads.

  1. Burma Sahib by Paul Theroux – Well, it’s by Paul Theroux for a start and it depicts George Orwell’s early years in Burma. I love historical fiction featuring the lives of authors, such as The Chosen by Elizabeth Lowry (Thomas Hardy) and The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng (Somerset Maugham)
  2. James and John: A True Story of Prejudice and Murder by Chris Bryant – Chris Bryant is a politician I admire and this sounds similar to The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed which I loved.
  3. Mr Timeless Blyth by Alan Spence – As a lover of historical fiction, I always try to read the books on the longlist for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. This was one of them and, although it didn’t make it to the shortlist, its subject matter – a fictional autobiography of poet, scholar, musician, linguist and student of Zen, Reginald Horace Blyth – intrigues me.
  4. The Fraud by Zadie Smith – Another one that made the longlist but not the shortlist for the Walter Scott Prize. The author and I have something in common: it’s her first historical novel and it will be the first book of hers I’ve read.
  5. Music in the Dark by Sally Magnusson – And here’s another that didn’t make the Walter Scott Prize shortlist. It involves the Highland Clearances which was the background to another book I read and loved recently, Clear by Carys Davies.
  6. Everything Is Everything by Clive Myrie – My husband and I both admire Clive for his journalism and we also enjoyed his recent TV series describing his travels around Italy. My husband was thrilled to meet Clive at last year’s Henley Literary Festival and have him sign our copy of his book, especially as they have something in common: they’re both married to someone called Catherine. 
  7. The Good Liars by Anita Frank – I love hearing authors talk about their books and this one was purchased at an author event hosted by Fourbears Books in Caversham, the closest independent bookshop to where I live. 
  8. The Fascination by Essie Fox – The same evening I came home with this lovely thing. ‘Victorian England. A world of rural fairgrounds and glamorous London theatres. A world of dark secrets and deadly obsessions…’ sounds good to me.
  9. In Memoriam by Alice Winn – I know, so many people have said, ‘you must read this!’ and I still haven’t found the time. Given all the ecstatic reviews, I’ve no idea why it didn’t make the longlist for the Walter Scott Prize.
  10. The Memory of Animals by Claire Fuller – There’s a pattern emerging here because I’m pretty sure I acquired this book after hearing the author talk about it at a literary event. Plus I loved her previous book Unsettled Ground. 

What books have you excitedly bought or been given that you still haven’t got around to reading?
TTT Unread

Book Review – The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley @SceptreBooks

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About the Book

Book cover of The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

In the near future, a disaffected civil servant is offered a lucrative job in a mysterious new government ministry gathering ‘expats’ from across history to test the limits of time travel.

Her role is to work as a ‘bridge’: living with, assisting and monitoring the expat known as ‘1847’ – Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin’s doomed expedition to the Arctic, so he’s a little disoriented to find himself alive and surrounded by outlandish concepts such as ‘washing machine’, ‘Spotify’ and ‘the collapse of the British Empire’. With an appetite for discovery and a seven-a-day cigarette habit, he soon adjusts; and during a long, sultry summer he and his bridge move from awkwardness to genuine friendship, to something more.

But as the true shape of the project that brought them together begins to emerge, Gore and the bridge are forced to confront their past choices and imagined futures. Can love triumph over the structures and histories that have shaped them? And how do you defy history when history is living in your house?

Format: Hardback (368 pages) Publisher: Sceptre
Publication date: 16th May 2024 Genre: Science Fiction

Find The Ministry of Time on Goodreads

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My Review

I first heard about this book at the Women’s Prize Live event in June last year. Listening to the author talk about it, I thought then that the premise sounded really intriguing so, prompted by enthusiastic early reviews by other book bloggers, I was thrilled when my request for it was approved on NetGalley.

I’ll confess that, for a while, I wasn’t quite sure if the book was going to work for me. I recall commenting to another book blogger that the author didn’t seem to have made up her mind whether she was writing science fiction or romance. I shouldn’t have worried because the book is an inventive and totally absorbing blend of both with a dash of historical fiction and an element of mystery added for good measure. If this all sounds a bit of mishmash, think of it instead as a glorious cocktail of different ingredients that once you’ve downed it you immediately want to drink again… except this time surely it tastes slightly different?

I’m not going to try to summarise the plot for fear of spoilers but what I can say is you will meet some wonderful characters. Commander Graham Gore, obviously, but also Arthur (‘1916’) and Margaret Kemble (‘1665’). There’s a lot of humour as the ‘expats’ are introduced to modern technology, attitudes and concepts by their ‘bridges’. Margaret’s 17th century mode of speech and inventive cursing is both endearing and very funny.

But there’s also a serious side as well as the expats learn about world events that have taken place since they were ‘extracted’ from their own time. For example, Arthur, having been plucked from the Battle of the Somme, is horrified to discover that there was a second world war, although in other ways the modern world may be more accommodating than the one he left. Having all been rescued from certain death, survivor’s guilt is real for them. This is especially the case for Gore once he learns the fate of his comrades on Sir John Franklin’s Arctic expedition. He is haunted by the knowledge his markmanship might have made a difference to their survival. I particularly liked the sections which take us back in time to witness the ill-fated mission from the point of view of Gore.

There’s a sinister aspect to the way the expats are constantly monitored (in more ways than they realise), periodically assessed and tested by Ministry officials, and reported on by their ‘bridges’ who also exercise control over the information they are given. Just why these particular individuals were chosen to be ‘rescued’ becomes a source of mystery too.

There’s an interesting parallel made between the assimilation of the expats into the modern world (to misquote E. M. Forster, ‘The present is a foreign country: they do things differently there‘) and the experience of people moving from one culture or country to another. Gore’s bridge is part-Cambodian and the daughter of immigrants so she has had to be a ‘bridge’ for her Cambodian mother, helping her learn a new language and so on.

A wonderfully supportive relationship develops between the three expats and the narrator also becomes more a friend than a ‘bridge’, although this brings its own challenges for her. One particular relationship becomes the main focus of the story and if it doesn’t touch your heart I’ll be surprised.

Towards the end of the book, the author really ups the action and throws in a terrific curved ball that took my brain a while to unscramble. The message I had no difficulty understanding, though, was that whereas you can’t change the past, you can change the future. Oh, and the enduring power of love.

I thought The Ministry of Time was mindbendingly brilliant and definitely among the most enjoyable books I’ve read so far this year.

I received an advance review copy courtesy of Hodder & Stoughton via NetGalley.

In three words: Imaginative, clever, enthralling
Try something similar: The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas

About the Author

Author Kaliane Bradley

Kaliane Bradley is a British-Cambodian writer and editor based in London. Her short stories have appeared in Electric Literature, Catapult, Somesuch Stories and The Willowherb Review, among others. She was the winner of the 2022 Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Prize and the 2022 V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize. The Ministry of Time is her first novel. (Photo: Goodreads author page)