I’ve just returned from a wonderful holiday in France with the family, and am reintegrating into normal life, and looking ahead to a busy term! One of the highlights about the holiday was an upgrade in our accommodation, which gave us a nicer-than-expected outside seating area, perfect for long afternoons and evenings reading (accompanied by good French wine!)

For me, holidays are largely a time for reading fiction; for light, easy reads that draw me in quickly and keep me wanting to turn those pages. All the stuff I long to read through the year, but struggle to make time for. This year I got through nine-ish books (one remains unfinished, and one I was already halfway through before the holiday began). So in case you’re curious, or are looking for some ideas, here’s a roundup.

Fiction: The Best

By far the best book of the holiday was The Island of Missing Trees, by Elif Shafak. It’s a beautifully written story about love, sorrow, division, and the importance of roots. The story oscillates between 1970s divided and war-torn Cyprus, and 2010s London. It follows a young couple – a Greek man and Turkish woman – who cultivate their love in secret, against the backdrop of religious and racial division. Decades later, their child Ada begins to untangle their story, filling in the gaps, and seeking to make sense of her own grief and rootlessness. And standing over the whole story is a fig tree, which has observed every twist and turn.

The story is evocative, and stunningly written, containing insights from the natural world, and hints of magical realism. I’ve visited Cyprus only once (on my honeymoon, no less), but the brilliant descriptions transported me back there with ease. I would definitely recommend reading this!

A second favourite was Pereira Maintains by Antonio Tabucchi (translated from Italian by Patrick Creagh). It’s a short novel, set in Lisbon in 1938. Pereira, a journalist and widower, leads a lonely life, keeping his head down and avoiding conflict with the authoritarian regime of António Salazar. When a young, headstrong writer Monteiro Rossi crashes into his life, everything changes, and he is finally forced to take a stand.

This was a powerful little book, about courage in the face of political evil. It’s subtle, haunting, and full of tension. I found the repeated refrain ‘Pereira maintains’ a little tiresome after a while, but that’s a minor gripe for a brilliant and important novel. Well worth a read.

Fiction: The Rest

The rest of my fiction reading was largely comprised of thrillers and crime novels.

I read the three Harbinder Kaur novels by Elly Griffiths, which were enjoyable. I definitely preferred the first two, The Stranger Diaries melding gothic horror and modern crime fiction, and The Postscript Murders feeling like a more substantial and better-written alternative to Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series. The third – Bleeding Heart Yard – was fine, except for a gaping plot hole in the final reveal! And the problem with reading three books in such close succession is that you can’t help but notice all the repeated phrases and themes, in a slightly annoying way. (I found the constant references to The Tempest in all three books somewhat tiring!) But all in all – I enjoyed these, and would definitely read a fourth, as well as her other writing.

The Conspirators by G.W. Shaw was an enjoyable action thriller. Pacy, gripping, with a few gruesome moments and some idiot characters that make you want to scream at their naivety. This was the first novel of the holiday – started in the queue for the Eurotunnel, where incidentally I started his first novel (under this pen name) Dead Rich the previous year. I would happily make an annual habit of beginning my holiday journey with a Shaw.

I don’t really read Christian fiction, but I recently had a nostalgic hankering after some Frank Peretti, having loved The Oath as a teenager, so I read his 2012 novel Illusion. It tells the story of Dane and Mandy Collins, a retired popular magic duo, who are separated through Mandy’s death in a car accident. Reeling from the grief, Dane moves town and quickly finds himself meeting a nineteen-year-old magician, who bears haunting similarities to his wife, forty years previously. The story keeps you guessing – is it romance, supernatural thriller, sci-fi? (To which the answer is, yes). Ultimately it’s a story about the enduring nature of love.

Would I recommend it? I dunno… It’s a great concept, pretty well-executed. It’s a bit flabby, and I found the folksy American Christianese dialogue really grating and hard to get past. But there were some genuinely moving moments. So, if you already liked his previous books, go for it. If not, don’t bother.         

A Monstrous Regiment of Women by Laurie King was another enjoyable crime thriller, set in the world of Sherlock Holmes and following his apprentice Mary Russell, as she investigates a strange religious cult led by the charismatic Margery Childe. It’s the second of a series, but stood alone enough for me to enjoy it still. It was an interesting story, well told, with the added bonus (for me at least) that the protagonist – like the author – is a theologian, with a keen interest in the Old Testament. So there was plenty I enjoyed about it, although I found the Holmes/Russell relationship a little creepy (especially following Illusion, where there was a similar icky age-gap in a quasi-romantic relationship). And I also couldn’t help but keep thinking how much more I preferred Anthony Horowitz’s Sherlock novels (The House of Silk and Moriarty), and how I wished he would pen more.

Non-Fiction: Two half-reads

I had already part-read Amazed by Jesus by Simon Ponsonby, so I’m only counting it as a half holiday read here. But this was a brilliant book, looking at different aspects of Jesus’ life, ministry and character. Inspired by over 70 of Simon’s sermons, it is a great devotional read, and it’s classic Ponsonby! Each chapter is deep, rich, well-illustrated, and inspires you to worship. I don’t know whether I would recommend it to someone who is not already a Christian? I suspect it is better suited to someone who already knows/believes in him, but needs to recapture their wonder and see him in fresh ways. If that’s you, I definitely recommend it! And it would make an especially good book to read over lent.

And the final book that I am yet to complete is The Gospel of John by David Ford. I decided I would try reading through a commentary in my daily quiet times, and deliberately picked this because I felt it was likely to be more devotional than technical, and so better suited to holiday reading. To be honest, I have mixed feelings. I’m a third of the way through, so maybe I’ll have a better sense by the end, but for now I’m somewhere between underwhelmed and disappointed.

The strength of the book is the attention to key themes that run through the gospel (abundance, abiding, word and Spirit, etc). The weakness is that it all those insights are shoehorned into a format that doesn’t quite work, so it fails to deliver on its promise of being a commentary! There are too many sections where key questions are raised and unanswered (or just ignored entirely), ideas are repeated over and over, or discussed in the wrong place entirely (a section on one chapter spending more time commenting on a later chapter, for instance).

I really wish this had been a book on key themes in John’s gospel, with chapters devoted to each, showing how they unfold throughout the book (like Bauckham’s Gospel of Glory). That – to my mind – would have served the material far better, and also created less disappointment for someone who is seeking to understand more of the detail about John’s gospel. As a commentary, it’s a disappointment, although I could see it being useful as a more devotional companion to, say, D.A. Carson, or Marianne Meye Thompson.

Hmm… that was longer than I intended to spend commenting on a book I’ve not yet completed. I will definitely continue reading – partly out of stubbornness, having forked out a fair amount for it! And perhaps I’ll revise my opinion once I’ve finished it. Who knows?!

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Photo by Kourosh Qaffari on Unsplash