{"id":79626,"date":"2026-10-27T15:12:33","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T15:12:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/?p=79626"},"modified":"2026-10-27T15:12:33","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T15:12:33","slug":"recent-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/recent-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Recent Books"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It feels like ages since I wrote about some of the recent books I’ve been reading. Let’s try to put that right with this handful of recently finished books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Taipei Story by Rebecca F. Kuang<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I first discovered Rebecca F Kuang when I read her fantasy epic Babel<\/a> a couple of years ago. Her lastest book is something a little different since it tells the story of Lily, an American who is looking to understand the roots of her Chinese family. So she is spending the summer on a notoriously tough language course in Taipei as she tries to discover what this all means for her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She shares a small apartment with a friend, but the claustrophobia of the new country, the challenging language, and just the humidity, means that things don’t always run smoothly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This feels like a deeply personal book. There are details about Mandarin that the average reader cannot possibly understand, and I therefore know I’m missing out on a certain level. But at the same time, it’s very readable and very easy to empathise with Lily’s situation. Certainly she’s pig-headed at times, but she has some real challenges to face as she tries to understand herself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the end of the novel, I don’t think she has all the answers \u2014 maybe just some more question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I really liked this book and raced to finish it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Castle by Jon Ronson<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It feels like an age since Jon Ronson last wrote a book. Going as far back as Them<\/em> in 2001, he was writing about people like Alex Jones (yes, that<\/em> Alex Jones) and David Icke. More recently he’s been turning his long-form journalism more into podcasts than the written word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Castle has at its centre a thoroughly fascinating story about a very strange man who is trying to find a “princess” to live with him. He has similar, deeply uncomfortable vibes that the lead in the remarkable HBO documentary series Ren Faire<\/em> had. That is, an old rich guy trying to find a young female companion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The central story lands in Ronson’s lap when his son gets invited to a party that is somehow the beginning of supposed reality series. But the story allows Ronson to explore a number of other stories. We get into a YouTuber who used his family to gain fame and then found himself chasing bigger audiences and getting more extreme until it came crashing down. And Ronson also explores former comedy writer Graham Linehan and his fall from grace as he became an obsessive, losing his family and his career at the same time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ronson briefly digresses into the skeptic area. Back in 2010, I attended a conference called TAM London which was very much aligned with skeptics. Tim Minchin was a star turn as was James Randi, the man who would unmask fakers like Uri Geller. Also around were people like Richard Dawkins. I remember somehow finding the whole thing a bit disarming, and in the end didn’t attend day two of the conference at all, nor the Saturday night session. That’s despite spending a couple of hundred pounds on a ticket (this was 2010 too!). Ronson notes that it all splintered up soon afterwards, with the movement being too male-dominated, and Dawkins own disintegration beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, this book feels a little uneven, but I still found it very enjoyable, and definitely recommended to fans of Ronson’s work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Heights by Ian Rankin<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has been a few years since I last read an Ian Rankin novel, and this is highlighted as the first book he’s written in a long time that is not part of a pre-existing series. So there’s no Rebus here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We get a new detective in Gillian Gish who is investigating the death of one of the doormen in a fancy London apartment block. Within the block you will not be surprised to learn that not all is what it seems, and we meet a cast of characters who all have their own issues, from the designer of the building, a mobster’s wife, a pop heart-throb and several more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gish has to put things together aided by colleagues. She has an interesting backstory, looking after her declining mother in their Tottenham home (very much at odds with the central setting of the novel).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things move along at a nice pace, and the story is satisfying. I wouldn’t be surprised if Rankin is setting up this to be a new detective for him to write about in subsequent novels. Rebus is getting old after all, and he probably needs a year off once in a while!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The French Illusion by John Grisham<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve not read a John Grisham novel in a long time, so I picked this up having heard an interview with the man, and thought I should give one his recent works a go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve got to admit to being a little disappointed with this. In every regard it’s a thriller, but it’s certainly not a legal thriller. And nor is it sold as such. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We begin with a young couple heading off to Paris for their honeymoon when something happens and they’re kidnapped. Individually, their families are asked by the kidnappers for money. They get paid, but the woman is released and the man never is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The CIA gets wind of this, and it seems that there might be a pattern. So we get plan to see if they can track down the kidnappers who are being very cautious in how they carry out their attacks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plot is tightly drawn, and the characterisations are good. But the novel feels a little slight. You wish for slightly more to happen and yet suddenly you’re two thirds of the way through the book, and nothing really has<\/em> happened. The interludes with the kidnapped victim are pretty grim, and aside from cluing the reader in on the fact that he is still alive, serve very little purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We get a fairly satisfactory conclusion, but I felt that this isn’t Grisham’s strongest work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Shadow Step by Mark Billingham<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Somehow, I’ve never read any of Mark Billingham’s Thorne novels and yet I’ve now read all three of his Blackpool set series featuring DS Declan Miller, the ballroom dancing, wise cracking detective who still imagines his dead wife (see the previous two books in the series). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In The Shadow Step<\/em>, Miller gets involved in a case where a young criminal manages to inadvertently kill himself, and the guileless other party dutifully hands himself in as somehow responsible. That begins a series of events that begin to pile up across Blackpool as the criminals react to one of their own’s death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can’t help but love Miller, and while he jokes his way around, and some of the criminals are so stupid, that they deserve what they get, at the same time, the world is believable. The grimness of homelessness and drug addiction is squarely faced, and Miller’s friendship group of fellow dancers and park keepers, alongside his death metal loving assistant, is colourful. A joy to read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It feels like ages since I wrote about some of the recent books I’ve been reading. Let’s try to put that right with this handful of recently finished books. Taipei Story by Rebecca F. Kuang I first discovered Rebecca F Kuang when I read her fantasy epic Babel a couple of years ago. Her lastest […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":79633,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[108],"class_list":["post-79626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-books-2"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79626"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79632,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79626\/revisions\/79632"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}