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Olga Tokarczuk – Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead | Review

Title: Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Author: Olga Tokarczuk

Category: Fiction

Page Count: 272

Rating: 4.5/5

This is potentially a late entry into my list of favourite books of the year, and so I’m definitely glad that I picked it up. I think I heard about it from BookTube, although I can’t remember where I first saw it. I mentioned it to my girlfriend in passing and then she grabbed me a copy for Christmas, and it turned out that Charlie Heathcote was reading it at the same time, so we did a buddy read.

It’s a Polish book that’s been translated, a sort of noir-ish literary fiction murder mystery, and it has some deep takes on life and philosophy that we can all learn from. It’s one of those rare books with a delicious mouth feel where for me at least, it was just a pleasure to read all of the way through. I didn’t want it to stop, but I guess eventually and inevitably, it had to.

If you’re looking for philosophical fiction with a poetic feel, you’re in luck. It also scores a few diversity points if that’s your thing, being written by a woman and originally in Polish. But those are all little bonuses, the icing on a delicious cake that I’m super glad I heard about.

I have no idea whether Charlie liked it as much as I did, but I’m sure he’ll be posting about it on Goodreads and on his BookTube channel, so you can find out there. Enjoy!

Learn more about Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.

Yann Martel – Life of Pi | Review

Title: Life of Pi

Author: Yann Martel

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 320

Rating: 3*/5

Yann Martel – Life of Pi

Yeah, I’m not really sure what the fuss is about. But then, that happens a lot when I pick up award-winners, and this one won the Man Booker Prize in 2002, so maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. I also think that if I’d known a bit more about the book then I wouldn’t have bothered with it, as I picked it up knowing nothing except that I’d heard good things about it.

The problem that I had was that while the writing itself was pretty good, nothing really happened. I felt throughout as though I was meant to be asking myself these deep questions about life and religion, but nothing like that was forthcoming. Instead, it felt more like when I read the Oxford English Dictionary – I just kept ploughing through to the end, just so I could say that I’d done it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that I read it. I just don’t think I could recommend it to anyone else without warning them first. Possibly the strangest thing about it was that when I got confused about what was actually supposed to be happening, I actually enjoyed it more than the main narrative. It was a welcome relief and it helped me to pretend I was reading something else for a while.

What I will say is that I haven’t yet watched the movie. Originally, my plan was to pick up the movie after reading the book, but now I’m not so sure. Still, I imagine that the movie is at least visually spectacular, which means that even if nothing happens for two hours, I’ll get plenty of cool shots of a tiger on a tiny boat. Speaking of which, I still don’t understand how Pi never spotted the damn thing. Seems impossible to miss.