[I've been
reading]
The Eight

I picked this up in an airport because I was desparate not to have nothing to read on the plane and this wasn’t a self-help book. The blurb said it was a “feminist version of the DaVinci code” or something and I was not totally psyched about that but it turned out to be a fun airplane read. It sort of IS like the Dan Brown books -- it’s a historical romp with a big-scale mystery driving the action - but most of the main characters are women. And they’re not women in some like super-feminist matriarchy, they’re just female characters. There are a lot of male characters too, they’re just not primary. And it’s about chess but instead of it being a totally cerebral novel with a bunch of chess in-jokes, the chess in this book is mostly understandable to someone who has at least played the game once or twice. As a random airport book this was a pleasant surprise. I’ll probably pick up Neville’s next book when I see it.