[issybird]

A few recent reads for me.

The last in Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe series, Sharpe’s Devil, ended on a sour note. Sharpe must be in his dotage as he’s oblivious to clunky plot twists and Harper’s even worse off, an obese buffoon who serves only to interject “God save Ireland” and cross himself at intervals. Sharpe also falls into the trap of, “Yeah, a monster, but great guy on a personal level.” Better to have left it at Waterloo. That said, while I found the books in the series to be inconsistent, I did
get a lot of entertainment overall from it.

On the other hand, I tore through two excellent memoirs:

Growing Seasons by Samuel D. Haynes, an account of his depression boyhood in the Midwest and, even better, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson and her emotionally and financially impoverished upbringing in the Midlands. Both coincidentally dealt with the absence of the birth mother and a stepmother/adoptive mother who did not fill the void. Books would save them both.