“His Illegal Self” by Peter Carey

 Peter Carey is an Australian writer who has won 2 Booker prizes. People on the Goodreads site said that this was definitely not one of his better works and I agree. I hated most of the book because it was vaguely written from the point of view of an 8 year old, and the muddle was increased by the use of Australian idioms. The book was presumably about 1970’s radicals in the US, but quickly became a novel about a kidnapped boy in an Australian hippy colony. I very much enjoyed the few snippets of the boy’s life as an adult, but there were hardly any of these. It’s as if the author used this book to recall the magic of his own childhood, with the attendant cloudiness of memory.

Oriel.

“Death Interrupted” by Jose Saramago

 This was an odd book. The first half was a satire on society, by imagining what would happen if people stopped dying. In the second half, it dealt with death as a female entity and actually became a love story.

“The Thursday Murder Club” by Richard Osman

 This was an enjoyable book. It was fun reading about competent senior citizens who accepted the reality of aging. There were, however, a few too many suicides due to enduring love and guilt.

“Hidden Figures” by Margot Lee Shetterly

The book was quite boring because it was factual, and in fact, it had too many facts. The movie was much more human and alive and interesting. I skipped a lot of sections. Admittedly though, it was interesting and somewhat depressing to get the black perspective.

“Stephen Fry’s Greek Myths 1” by Stephen Fry

 This is a pleasantly modern retelling of the Greek myths. It gave me some new insights into the whole mythology thing. For example, the style of the tv show Lucifer is Greek mythology. The gods walk among us and have human foibles.

“Song of Achilles” by Madeline Miller

 To my surprise, I ended up enjoying this book very much. Initially, I thought it was too focussed on a homosexual love affair, but eventually, the book drew me in. It made me feel that I understood the mindset of the Greeks, it was interesting to be given a broader understanding of a very well established story, and I grew to like Patroclus, the narrator, very much. At first, I had pegged him as a weak person, but he grew in confidence as the story progressed and truly became the best of the Greeks.

"The Foundation Trilogy" by Isaac Asimov

 So, I have finally read these creaky, seminal science fiction books.