Category: Almost Readable

I almost gave up on this one

But I persevered to the bitter end. A whodunnit complete with the twist in the tale that was entirely predictable.

It was going to be long flight there and back.

So I stocked up with what I could find from Andy McNab and Chris Ryan. Books I can skim through. However I do worry that I should be looking for stuff that has a bit more substance to it. Chris Ryans work is readable although the tales are very much do and die.

Helps to pass the time.

Ex SAS Chris Ryan writes combat action thrillers.

OK for a light read. But tend to be a little too gung ho and melodramatic.

A run of the mill crime thriller set in a post Second World War Palestinian theme.

It’s not going to win any literary prizes but it passes the time and I managed to finish it

One of those, when there is nothing else to read books. Marginal at best.

Typical action thriller that get churned out to feed market. OK if it is not taken too seriously.

A work of fiction woven out of historical facts. The melodrama is overdone but it was interesting enough to keep going.

Covering perhaps one of the most interesting periods in the history of the Moghuls. A time when the seeds of conflict were sown, a conflict that has boiled over and which has split the continent between Hindu and Muslim.

Reasonably well written but a weak story line

It is a multi-generational tale of a family haunted by the death of a young concubine in 1930s. Essentially a critique of a custom that is still commonly practised widely throughout Asia. It is naive, lacking substance and authenticity.

Just another story which doesn’t really get anywhere.

A novel based on the true story of Spinalonga, a leper colony established on an island off the coast of Crete.
The book is salvaged from deteriorating into a tiresomely predictable love story by the account of life on the island in the leper colony. That struggle between adversity and the emergence of the human spirit.