|
Click to flag this message as abuse
What is abuse? (1) personal attacks, (2) commercial solicitation, (3) spam. See terms of use. 
44. Silas Marner by George Eliot  I do have to say that Ms Eliot tends to disagree with me, and as such, I find her very hard to read. (Turns out that giving up on Middlemarch wasn't a one-off disagreement.) For some reason, I have to re-read sentences, I have to think about what she's trying, and it's never an easy read. Why this slim volume (a mere 186 pages) took nearly a month to read, I think! For example, the bit that I read over and over again (and still don't quite understand) was actually quoted again in the afterword (argh! I had enough trouble with it the first time around!): "Favourable Chance... is the god of all men who follow their own devices instead of obeying a law they believe in... The evil principle deprecated in that religion is the orderly sequence by which the seed brings forth a crop after its kind." Translations into plain English are appreciated. While Silas's experiences were interesting, he wasn't a terribly likable character or a very interesting person. I suppose I should have considered myself lucky that he wasn't really around for most of the book, which was really about other people while he was the catalyst for the plot. Then when you add in the squire and his badly behaved sons, we've got another bunch of unlikable people to read about. It wasn't until the rather sweet (if a bit too sweet at times, she might give other readers diabetes) Nancy turned up that I finally started to enjoy this book. And she doesn't turn up until half way through! And then cheeky little Eppie appeared, and I got suckered in. Mum told me that her Aunty Pat (who looked after her for many years) loved this book, which is what kept me going. (And Dad's recently discovered Ms Eliot, and enjoys her books, so that was a second incentive to got give up.) Aunty Pat apparently loved the coal hole scene, and I must say I did too. In lesser hands it could have been mawkish and sentimental, but I was giggling. Ms Eliot knows her cheeky children, and this characterisation was pretty spot on. I do have to say that the positives outweighed the negatives - the second half was interesting, the pages just raced past, the characters were believable - but the sluggish first half really slowed me down, even though it had its moments (the descriptions of the Squire and his family, plus the whole village, were very well done; particular mention to the scene in the pub where a number of villagers get into a discussion and argument they've obviously gone over and over and over again on many a night). 45. The Fern Tattoo by David Brooks  Am of two minds about this book. When I liked it, I really really liked it (the haunting ghost stories; the whole concept of interwoven stories that tell our narrator about his unknown family; the incredibly well drawn and fascinating characters; the stories themselves), but there were sections that just drove me nuts at the same time (his sentences run on worse than mine do and possibly have more asides which made for some bloody difficult reading at times; the snippets of stories that I never quite worked out what or who they were about; the sudden jumping about just as I thought I was getting a handle on it). I'm torn, the good bits were so good, and the annoying bits were extremely annoying because they got in the way of the good bits! I'd like to sit down and re-read it right again, right now. But I don't have the time. I'm also toying with putting together a chart of all the characters and how they are all related to try and help me work out how it all fits together, but time is again in short supply. ***1/2 46. The Repossession Mambo by Eric Garcia  Set in the near future, our protagonist is a repossession man for a company that sells artificial organs. Default on your new liver/stomach/lungs/kidneys/etc payments, he'll come and take your liver/stomach/lungs/kidneys/etc back. And he's not at all worried if you die during repossession, that's your problem, not his. It's a great concept, and tightly written. The plot loops around, written in flashback by our biorepo man, and as the book progresses we find out more about his distant past and his recent past, and how he got to where he is now. It's very well done, apart from a slightly obvious ending (okay, it was only obvious to me in retrospect, others will probably pick up on it sooner). Recommended if you like your humour black (so black even the white bits were black, to quote Eric Olthwaite) and you don't mind a lot of splattering blood. (He does repossess livers for a living.) While reading, I thought it might make a good movie, then read the afterword and it was written first as a short story, then as a book, then as a movie, then re-written as a book. (Phew!) And the movie is due to come out this year. It's a great story (caveats about blackness of humour and violence levels), so I'll be looking forward to the movie. ****1/2 47. Brooklyn by Colm Toibin.  This book was lent to me by a workmate, and it's the first book I've heard the 2009 Booker Prize buzz about. (I told my workmate that and she looked shocked. "But it's readable!" she protested. The Booker Prize's reputation proceeds itself...) Back in the 1950s, Eilis emigrates from Ireland to America with the encouragement of her older, more sophisticated sister and an Irish priest who helps her get a job and a place to live in Brooklyn. She has been studying book-keeping in Ireland, but even so jobs are still nowhere to be found. In Brooklyn, although she desperately misses her family at first, she does make her own life. Deceptively simple, this is one of those books where the big ideas (it's all about life, love, death, and family, some of my favourite concepts!) don't come out and hit you over the head with a sledgehammer, but instead are gently suggested. Eilis's struggles with homesickness and trying to create a new life for herself away from everyone and everything she knows were beautifully written, heart-rending yet not sentimental. And the small details of her life were impeccable. The boredom of working in a department store in Brooklyn, the bitchiness and manipulations of her fellow Irish boarders at Mrs Kehoe's house, her understanding of the many levels of obligation sometimes thrust on her, the cleverness of her sister dealing with poverty yet still keeping her head proudly above water... I could go on! While Eilis makes some wrong choices (and some right ones), they were all perfectly human and believable choices. And as readers, we get to make up our own minds about what the right choice would have been. Wonderful, readable, great stuff. Maybe the Booker Prize judges will get it right this year. ;) ****1/2 48. Gilgamesh by Joan London  I'm finding it hard putting what I thought about this book into words! I read it knowing nothing about it apart from accolades, and I really enjoyed reading it without any pre-conceived plot notions. It starts off in England, where an Australian serviceman meets an English woman, Ada while convalescing from a wound received during the Great War. They marry, and go to live in Australia in a tiny settlement on the southern coast of Western Australia where they raise their two daughters and try to carve out a life for themselves by clearing the bush and farming. Frank has no luck, and Ada "couldn't take the life". But that's just the scene setting for the story of their daughter, Edith, who ends up travelling through Europe during World War 2, looking for the man she loves. And that's the end of my plot summary, I don't want to give too much away. The book spans decades and continents and generations; covers all my favourite big themes: death, life, family, love; is filled with well developed characters that may only flit past briefly; has a good plot; and is well written. What more can one want from a book? ****1/5 49. One Foot Wrong by Sofie Laguna  Deeply disturbing plot, but amazingly written and a compelling read. It's from the point of view of a young girl, Hester who obviously has serious mental issues (schizophrenia, at an educated guess) and who is abused by her parents who also have mental issues of their own. (Not to mention an unhealthy religiosity.) So, a very unhappy and disturbing topic. But the imagery was marvellous, as our protagonist seems stuck in this child-like state, talking to her friends tree, spoon, handle, etc; drawing the most amazingly described pictures; linked by invisible ropes to her friends, etc. It also got me thinking about nature vs. nurture, an old quandary I'm very familiar with from my years as an undergraduate Psychology student. What about our behaviour and personality is biological and genetic, and what is learnt? (It is usually, of course, a bit of both. I used to lean on the side of learned behaviour, but after having kids and seeing their ingrained personalities from the start, I'm rather leaning towards genetics.) Hester is a complex case: is she mad because of her abusive upbringing, or is she mad regardless? (And, believe me, she is mad.) In some ways, it reminded me of fellow Australian Nick Cave's And The Ass Saw the Angel, which I read many years ago. I remember disliking the book intensely at the time (I found out later it was supposed to be funny, but I missed the humour), but the crazy imagery and the dysfunctional family triggered my memories and feelings of similarity. *** SPOILERS FOLLOW *** Towards the end, I was worried about where the book was going: I could see no happy end in sight, without sacrificing some semblance of reality. I almost put the book down because I didn't want to go where I thought it was going, but took a deep breath and ploughed on regardless. And I'm glad I did. The ending did sacrifice some reality, but it was a good place to end, and I'll just ignore my niggling quibbles of "yeah, that's never going to happen". ***1/2 50. What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt  A marvelous read, complex, dense, and intricate. It's the story of two New York intellectual couples, who (in the absence of a more traditional family structure) make their own family together, and cope with the ups and downs of each others' lives. It's also a meditation on art, on psychology, on fame, on family, on life, on living, and on death, bereavement, grief, and guilt. Ah, some of my favourite topics! I finished this some time ago (I'm a bit behind on catching up here!) so I can't quite remember why I shaved off half a star from a full rating. I think I was just trying to stop myself from rating everything five stars. :) ****1/2 ETA: Read as part of "Orange July", this book was longlisted for the Orange Prize in 2003. Message edited by its author, Jul 25, 2009, 4:28am. 51. Small Island by Andrea Levy  Another wonderful read. Set in England and Jamaica, this tells the story of Jamaican immigrants to London, having first spent some time fighting in the Royal Air Force during World War 2. The characters were wonderful, the plot intricate with its slow reveal, and the detail of the world was fascinating. The best part of this book was that it was written with great humour and skill, so while there were scenes of heartbreaking racism, it never came across as hectoring or a harangue. Gilbert's teasing of some redneck US army soldiers while treating Queenie Bligh (a white woman) to tea was brilliant, although I was scared for Gilbert and his audacity. And Gilbert's wife, Hortense, was wonderfully more British than the British themselves. Gilbert's disdain for some of his fellow Jamaicans as being from "small islands" is then put into perspective when he realises he's from a "small island" himself when he returns to Jamaica following the war. And, being from Australia, I can only assume that England itself is a "small" island, given the size of the island I live on. ;) ***** This was also read as part of "Orange July". It won the Orange Prize in 2004, and is considered "The Orange of the Oranges" (dunno who decides that one, though!). Message edited by its author, Jul 25, 2009, 4:41am. 52. The Vintner's Luck by Elizabeth Knox  And, finally, my Orange Prize luck runs out. This one was a complete dud, I got up to fifty pages, just didn't care about it at all, and was quite happy to put it aside (permanently, it's now bookcrossed and will be released into the wild for someone else who may prefer it). I didn't like the protagonist, I didn't like that angels and heaven were real (sometimes I do like my angels real, but only when they're brandishing flaming swords or owning second hand bookshops), there were far too many ordinary sex scenes (so shoot me, I'm a prude), and the language was seriously convoluted and hard to get a handle on. For a while there, I thought maybe it just wasn't fair to it to follow on from Small Island, but, no, it failed the fifty page test in its own right. While many people on LibraryThing rated this five stars, I've brought its average down with my: * This was longlisted for the Orange Prize in 1999. Getting (slightly) back on track. (I wanna defrag my brain too!) 53. Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz.  This is the graphic novelisation of the movie adaptation of the novel. (Phew, try saying that one three times fast!) We picked this up at the library the other day, thinking it might be suitable for Mr Bear. Unfortunately, it'll be a few years before he'll be old enough to enjoy this one (there were a few close calls for young Alex that I don't think Mr Bear is quite mature enough to deal with, plus a death or two). Fortunately, I thought it was pretty darned spiffing. Nice manga art, a good plot, plenty of action. I'll be suggesting the series to him in about 5 years or so (unless it's totally passe by then). **** 54. Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin  I picked this one up because of the raves I've seen around LibraryThing about this book. And because it did sound truly great: a forensic whodunnit, set in the 12th century, with a woman as the main character. (Gwan, what's not to love?) Unfortunately, I had a low-level irritation with the first half of this book. While the raves often focussed on the historical detail, I felt continually jarred by small wrong notes (c'mon, passports are a 20th century invention, even I know that), and the whole forensic side of the mystery just did not fit (it was like an episode of "Bones" - silly the-art-director-did-the-computer-graphics and all). And while I was hoping for a tea-and-crumpets style murder mystery, the murder was actually quite brutal and (of course, she says with a sigh) sexually related. But the characters were fascinating, and the social historical details felt spot on, so I soldiered on. (There must have been something to all the raves, after all!) But then, I dunno. There was a twist in the plot I didn't see coming (well, I did, but it was well foreshadowed about 10 pages before it happened, so it hardly counted as a poorly written plot twist, rather a tension-filled 10 pages of me screaming 'nooooo!' at the book). And then I was completely gripped. The irritations had vanished into thin air. Rather interesting (maybe only to me, who doesn't read that many thrilleresque whodunnits) was the fact that there were a lot of suspects, but they weren't really the focus of the story. The story was about Adelia (our "Mistress of Death"), her friends and friendships, and the solving of the crime. At first I was slightly irritated because I couldn't keep all the suspects straight, but once I got into the rest of the book it didn't really matter that they all blurred a bit. Another major moment of "nooooo!" occurred at the very end, when the killer is (literally) unmasked but it takes several action-filled pages before our heroine utters his name. I almost flicked ahead to see who it was before returning to the action, but I somehow managed to restrain myself. So, while I was considering even just giving up on the book at about the halfway mark, the second half was unputtdownable and would have to be one of the best half thriller/whodunnit novels I've ever read. This somehow averaged out to: **** And I will be looking for the sequel asap... 55. The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon  This one has been gathering dust on the shelves for far too long. For some reason I just never quite got around to picking this one up, even though I've really enjoyed everything Michael Chabon ever wrote. I finally got around to it for the "Reading Globally" challenge, as it's set in Alaska and July's theme was polar regions. (Everyone else seemed to be reading histories of polar explorers, I did feel a little left field!) Picture if you will, an alternative reality: the nation of Israel failed, leaving the Jewish people still scattered across the globe in their diaspora. In Sitka, Alaska, there is a Jewish community but they are about to be scattered again as their 60 year lease is up and Sitka is about to be re-integrated into the rest of Alaska. Our protagonist, Meyer Landsman, is a recently divorced cop who is called in when one of the neighbours in his seedy hotel is murdered. While the pressure is on to just rubber-stamp all outstanding crimes before re-integration, Meyer is compelled to find out the truth in this case. And I found it a complete page-turning, rip-snorting, funny, hard-boiled, dry-humoured masterpiece. I can't believe that he could think such a reality up, and then make it so believable. It's about family, friendships, Judaism, politics, gangsters, murder, dispossession, life, drugs, chess. And it's written as a page-turning hard-boiled whodunnit. And it has Yiddish puns in it. (Oy vey. And he doesn't use "oy vey" until page 168. I was amazed by his restraint, because I started using that phrase as soon as I hit the first Yiddish word in the book.) It's really quite marvelous, and I love this author for his audacity and talent and ability to pull this one off. I gave this one: ****1/2. Message edited by its author, Aug 10, 2009, 8:44am. 56. The Discomfort Zone by Jonathan Franzen  Another one that has been languishing on Mt TBR for far too long, bought after I read and enjoyed The Corrections. I was worried it might be Angry Young Man angst after the snarkiness of The Corrections, but turns out he's about 50, so although he's still allowed to be an Angry Middle-Aged Man, he's surprisingly cheerful and normal. Or at any rate, his upbringing and adolescence (what this book is about) was very normal, if almost scarily so. He was brought up slap-bang in the middle of America, in Webster Groves, MO, in a town so normal that even though the Vietnam War protests and Kent State were rocking the rest of the country, Webster Groves was a paradise of comfortable middle class values. The essays range all over the place, and tend to wander off the track all the time, and by the time I've forgotten what they were originally about, brings it all back together and ties it all up very neatly. Very well written, very true. Recommended. **** 57. Affinity by Sarah Waters  A library book I happened across, with much glee. She's very popular, so it's a rare occasion to actually find one of her books at the library. Another of Waters' Victorian pastiches, this one is from the diary of a young woman, Margaret Prior, who is recovering from an unspecified illness and takes up the job of being a Lady Visitor to Millbank Prison to show the inmates the error of their ways through her refined lady-like behaviour. I love the Victorians. So repressed, so much emotional mileage to be had from said repression. We also get the occasional note from Selina Dawes, a medium who has been sent to the prison after something went wrong. And as the book progresses, Margaret becomes obsessed with Selina and her case. The historical detail is simply marvelous, as one would expect of Waters' books. For example, I have no idea of whether lady visitors to the female prisoners actually existed, but I truly believe they did now because of this book. The book slowly and tantalisingly gives us clues as to what happened previously, and builds up the tension until the final pages. I didn't actually see the ending coming, and it wasn't what I was hoping for, but I did love it. A fabulous story, wonderfully told, highly recommended. ****1/5 58. Houdini: The Handcuff King, Jason Lutes  I confessed some weeks ago to a childhood adoration of the great Harry Houdini. Mr TQD remembered this when he was trawling through the graphic novel collection of the local library one day (without kids! without me!) and came across this graphic novel. It's one for kids, and is a very straightforward retelling of Houdini's plunge into an icy river in Boston, handcuffed and shackled. And, of course, his escape from said handcuffs and shackles, in the nick of time. (Well, probably in plenty of time, but Houdini was nothing if not a showman who knew the meaning of timing.) The historical detail (covered in some interesting notes at the end) was lovely, the black and white art was simple but effective, and it was a quick and easy read. ***1/2 59. Point Blank: The Graphic Novel, Anthony Horowitz  Back at book number 53 up above, I read the first of this series (vetting them for Mr Boo, who is too young I think), and I did enjoy it. And Mr TQD found this, the second in the Alex Rider series, while ferreting in the graphic novels section of the local library. Another spiffing, dare-devilling, great romp of an action novel for young adults. With fab gadgets. It's all about the gadgets. **** 60. The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader", C.S. Lewis  I've been very slowly reading the Narnia books out loud to Mr Bear. He's probably a bit too young for them still (I get lots of questions, which I do actually like, unless they're about PlayStation Lego games), so I think it's probably just pure self-indulgence on my part, as they are childhood favourites of mine. This one has the two youngest Pevensies, Lucy and Edmund, returning to Narnia with their strangely-brought up cousin, Eustace. Eustace doesn't read adventure books, so has no idea what is to become of him! They land in the sea next to the 'Dawn Treader', a ship sailed by King Caspian (Prince Caspian, last book around), get hauled on board and set sail to the far east of Narnia, possibly towards Aslan's Land. There are all sorts of delightful adventures on the way. I particularly liked revisiting the Dufflepuds, a bizarre race who are insistent that they've been "uglified" by a wizard. I liked them as a kid, I still like them as an adult. The final chapter, however, as they approach Aslan's Land and the human children return home, laid on the religious metaphors with a trowel. Next time I read this out (to Miss Boo, maybe), I'll just summarise that last chapter, I think. ***1/2 61. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion  I've had this one kicking around for a while. And it's also the second copy to have passed through my hands, the first one unread. I was obviously reluctant to read it, given its subject matter. Joan Didion, an American journalist and writer, describing her year of grief - and inability to think, behave, or act one hundred percent rationally - following the sudden death of her much loved husband. Whoa, barrel of laughs there. Of course, it wasn't a barrel of laughs at all (spot on the money there), and I was reduced to tears on a number of occasions (picture if you will, me sitting on the sofa, saying "and... and... and... *sob* she kept his shoes because he might... might... might... *hiccup* need them when he came back, and he's never coming back... *wail*" etc). But, while it was obviously an exercise in coming to terms with her deep grief at such a loss (and at a time when her entire life seemed to be going pear-shaped around her), it was also a paean to her husband, to their long marriage and life together. She didn't flinch from the hiccups that occur in any long-term relationship, but it was a wonderful marriage and a wonderful description of what I hope many people get to experience in their life. Being a bit of a data-freak myself (and coming from a science background), I enjoyed her "research" side of things, when she got waylaid by facts and scientific papers about grief and mourning. Being the sister of a doctor, I will never lend this to my sister, as she would loathe Didion's need to control everything in the hospital, and her positive smugness when she "won" the minor battles. While it was good reading about it (from the point of view of having been a patient myself, and dealing with the occasional doctor who treats you as if you have the IQ of a retarded amoeba), overall I had more sympathy with the medical profession in this case. Finally, I thought this was a positively necessary book, given our modern society's need to sanitise death and to be rather embarrassed by other people's grief. I'm still embarrassed by other people's grief (it'll take more than one book to undo that bit of my anal buttoned-down personality), but I hope in the future I will not be mortified by my own grief, should I ever have to go through what Didion did. **** Message edited by its author, Aug 23, 2009, 7:06am. 62. Fables: Storybook Love, Bill Willingham  Another of Mr TQD's finds at the library. (I promise to not whinge about how he gets time to look at books at the library, while I spend my time reading to the kids - which can be fairly dire, depending on what has caught their eye. Whoops, I think I just fell into whinge mode...) This is volume three of an ongoing graphic novel series, that has been highly recommended by both freelunch here on LibraryThing, and by one of Mr TQD's mates. So it was a no-brainer for him to pick it up, but I think I startled him by pouncing on it with much glee. Imagine a world where fairy tale characters actually live. But for some reason (covered, no doubt, in volumes one and two) they have fled their country which has been invaded by the mysterious Adversary, and are living in New York (as you do). The fairytale creatures that can pass for human live in New York City, while the ones that can't (the three little pigs, Thumbelina, etc) live on a farm somewhere rural. Prince Charming is a complete cad and a bounder, but not quite as caddish as Bluebeard; there's a full complement of fairytale princesses (Briar Rose, Snow White, etc); the Big Bad Wolf is currently known as Bigby and isn't allowed anywhere near the farm so passes as a very hairy man in New York City; and Old King Cole is the nominal head of them all. This is a collection of various stories, revolving mostly around a loose theme of love. Some work wonderfully - those revolving around Bigby and Snow White in particular; others are less good. But it's a great world with some wonderful ideas, and I'm going to be delving further into it in the future. ***1/2 63. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi  A simply marvelous book, recommended to all. If you've never read a graphic novel in your life, and can't see why you would ever want to, then you should still read this book. It's not your standard graphic novel, but it is such a beautiful story and so well done, you will be won over to the dark side. I'd seen the movie when it came out, and absolutely loved it. While my memory of it is a bit hazy now, this seemed a remarkably faithful adaptation. I found the plight of the family incredibly moving: their lives, work and family are all in Iran, but they can see this isn't a good place for Marjane to grow up. But to send their only daughter to Europe on her own was just heartbreaking. I did shed a tear or two while I read some of her adventures. And her honesty in retelling what she went through made this an exceptional book. I am always affected by people who end up "between" countries. In Europe, she was an Iranian. But when she returns to Iran, she's seen as a decadent westerner. And everyone deserves a Grandma like her Grandma. She rocked, and is now my role model for my twilight years. ***** Message edited by its author, Sep 3, 2009, 6:56am. 64. Faceless Killers, Henning Mankell  Picked this one up on the strength of some very good buzz here on LibraryThing. (And, yes, if you all jumped off a cliff, I'd probably follow you all happily, especially if you were recommending books on your way down.) This is the first Inspector Kurt Wallander mystery. One bleak January morning in a rural area of Sweden, an elderly farmer and his wife are brutally beaten, leaving him dead, while she dies in hospital a short while later, muttering one word: foreign. Cue one helluva lot of racial tension in what I'd always seen as a very nice, gentle, peaceful country. Goes to show what I know. (And am I the only one who thinks that Henning Mankell must be simply loathed by the Swedish Tourism Board, or their equivalent?) On a number of levels, this reminded me of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Brutal murders, racism, Swedish, bizarre level of details. I always thought maybe it was something about the translation with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but now I think it's something intrinsic to Swedish crime. I'm not complaining, however, both have been excellent reads. The crime is brutal; our "hero" is a policeman who has managed to ruin his relationship with his father, his daughter, and his wife and is sliding into ruin and alcoholism; politics plays a major role in the police force; and far too much junk food is consumed. I'm sure it's all cliched, but I lapped it all up, whinged when I was dragged away from it, and was left wanting more at the end. (I have book two - The Dogs of Riga - perched upstairs on Mt TBR as I type.) **** 65. The Twits, Roald Dahl  This is one I read out to Mr Bear. I'd previously had a copy foisted on me by the lovely bookcrossing (and occasionally LibraryThinging) jubby, who was shocked and appalled that I'd never read it as a child. So I read it a few years ago to myself, and wasn't so impressed. What a difference reading it to a six-year old makes! Mr Bear made appropriate disgusted noises at all the tricks the Twits play on each other (and guessed a few tricks as well, so he felt awfully chuffed), and was entertained, amused, and fascinated. I can see we're going to be reading more Roald Dahl in the future. **** 66. The Household Guide to Dying, Debra Adelaide  Delia Bennett is dying. She's the author of a series of "Household Guides" (to cooking, to laundry, to gardening, etc) and so has the brainwave - in between writing a list of what needs to be done for a potential future wedding for her eight year old daughter and endlessly leaving notes for her husband so he can manage the house to her exacting standards - to write a "Household Guide" to dying, encompassing everything a totally anal person needs to know to make their passing easier for themselves and their family. (Choosing a coffin, wills and wishes, the funeral, etc.) As a totally anal person, I appreciated this. (I didn't quite take notes, however some points were filed away for future reference.) There's a lovely sense of humour in this book: I loved the idea of laundry being sexy (although it so patently isn't); so many moments were spot on (yes, some of us enjoy mowing because it's a space of completely child-free time); and it was hard for me not to smile in self-awareness at her detailed list making. However, I took away 1/2 a star for making me blubber pathetically. I left my copy on a workmate's desk, with a post-it note at the start of Chapter 42, with "don't read this chapter" on it. When I was questioned elsewhere about why blubbering pathetically made me take away 1/2 a star, not add 1/2 a star, it's because I get all mean when I feel emotionally manipulated to that extent. This was more subtle than a Spielberg movie, but I still resented being pushed that far emotionally. (I pay Spielberg back by not crying during his movies, and by eternally calling him "Senor Spielbergo", a Simpsons reference.) Plus, it left me with piggy red eyes, and I've got a very shallow streak. **** 67. Throne of Jade, Naomi Novik  SPOILER ALERT FOR BOOK ONE OF THE SERIESThe second in the Temeraire series, this starts off with Captain Laurence stuck in London, dealing with bureaucrats and diplomats over his dragon, Temeraire who was discovered to be a Chinese Celestial dragon at the end of book one (His Majesty's Dragon). And the Chinese are rather peeved that Temeraire is being used as a weapon against the dastardly French. Almost immediately, Laurence and Temeraire fly off to help battle the dastardly French in the air, and then almost immediately again, they're shipped off to China to deal with the political ramifications of having a Celestial on English soil. While voyaging, they have many adventures. And all of a sudden I realised that was about all this book was: one thrilling dash from one adventure to another. And while the adventures were exciting and action-packed (I particularly liked the sea serpent), sometimes one does crave a bit more something to a book. Maybe plot? It does all eventually resolve quite satisfactorily in the end, but the pacing could have been a lot more even. I shall be buying (and reading) book three in the series, but I do hope she's discovered some plot for the next one. *** 68. Dewey: The Small-Town Cat Who Touched the World, Vicki Myron  Yes, I am a cat lover. Who else would pick up a book like this? One wintry January morning, in a small town in Ohio, the librarian discovered a small, bedraggled, and very cold kitten in the returns chute. He survives (and thrives), gets dubbed "Dewey" and becomes a focal point for the town, during the financial crises that hit the American mid-west in the 1990s. I found the background to the agricultural financial crisis very interesting - while I lived through the era and remember it happening, I never realised what started it in the first place. However, reading about another cat lover's cat isn't as much fun as hanging out with your own cats. (Yes, Dewey is wonderful with kids. Has Ms Myron met my Jimbo? Yes, Dewey is a special cat. What about my Little Jim? Yes, Dewey is spoilt rotten. Just like my Stumpy. Although I never slipped down the cat worshipping slope far enough to think that Jimbo was part Persian. Just like Dewey, he's got good alley cat genes.) And what is with the throwaway line about library cats having a well-established tradition? I needed to know more about that! They even have their own publication, society, and organisation (if Google is anything to go by), yet there's no history provided on this wonderful institution. (And why doesn't the City of Sydney provide a cat or two to each of their branches, hmmm?) Finally, the upbeat style of the book wearied me. Ms Myron has been through hell and back in her personal life, but she's just so positively cheerful that it all got a bit much after a while. But Dewey was a wonderful cat (if a whisker short of Jimbo level perfection). I hope he inspires many more libraries to have library cats of their own! *** 69. Jasper Jones: A Novel, Craig Silvey  Set in a small Australian mining town, Corrigan, one hot summer in the mid-1960s, young aboriginal Australian Jasper Jones is the local town ne'er-do-well, secretly admired by all the other young folk and used as a generic scapegoat when anything goes wrong. He's cheeky, smart, likeable, courageous, and indomitable. He knows he's the bottom of the heap, and he just doesn't care. One night he knocks on the window of our young bookish narrator, Charlie Bucktin, asking for his help. Charlie has recently been introduced to the literature of the American deep south (Faulkner - unsuccessfully - Twain and, most importantly, Harper Lee) and sees the rest of the plot unfolding in a Mockingbird-like manner. But the book is less about Jasper (even though he has the starring role in the title) and more about small town attitudes, and blind prejudice. There is also a Vietnamese family - Jeffrey Lu is Charlie's best friend - and there are parallels between what happens to the Lu family, as well as what happens to Jasper. One interesting aspect to Jasper's treatment by the town is he is the star football player (this would be VFL - Victorian Football League, now AFL - Australian Football League; and I'm not sure if it really resembles any other football code in the world). He is reviled, distrusted, and generally hated by the adults, until he takes the field. Then he is liked and cheered on by everyone, until the end of the game when he takes his jersey off and just becomes Jasper again. I think it might just be the best book I've read this year. It was simply wonderful - sad, funny, beautiful, all at the same time. So what are you doing, sitting here reading this review? Go out and buy a copy (and support Aussie literature!) right now! ***** Message edited by its author, Sep 23, 2009, 6:58pm. 70. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain  Following on from the giddy heights of Jasper Jones, I didn't want to let go of the buzz, so I moved straight on to one of its obvious influences: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I had tried to read this once before, as a child, after enjoying the fun romp of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer very much. However, the language and phonetic spelling put me off until many (many!) years later. Mea culpa. (The language still stumped me at times. Jim's "shet de do'" only just made sense this evening - shut the door - after puzzling over it several weeks ago, on and off.) But it was a wonderful adventure story, with Huck and Jim lazily fibbing their way down the Mississippi (and sometimes not so lazily), gently whiling away their time. Jim, of course, is heading for freedom from slavery, while Huck is heading for freedom from society. I loved Twain's opening comments: Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished, persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. And at times, yes, there was no real plot, just a jumping from one peril to another adventure via a scrape or two, and I craved a bit of structure or over-arching plot. But at the risk of being prosecuted/banished/shot, I do have to say that Jim & Huck's friendship was a wonderful thing, allowing an escaped black slave to be seen as a human being, capable of love and deserving of respect. Although possibly not deserving of a rescue planned by Tom Sawyer. I don't think anyone's quite deserving of that. Highly recommended. **** 71. To Say Nothing of the Dog; or, How We Found the Bishop's Bird Stump at Last, Connie Willis  In the future, we will have invented time travel. But since it is impossible to use this technology to exploit the past, it has ended up as a tool for historians, to investigate at first hand important events in history. Or, to be bullied by ladies of the realm into making excessive trips into the past, trying to ascertain minute details about Coventry Cathedral before its destruction during the bombing of Britain in World War 2, so that said lady of the realm can have everything exactly perfect for the dedication of the rebuilding of the cathedral. In particular, whether a Victorian atrocity known as the "bishop's bird stump" was in the cathedral when it was bombed. Suffering from time-lag (my favourite symptom was excessive sentimentality), our historian Ned Henry gets sent back to Victorian times to escape Lady Schrapnell's demands and to get some rest. And to help fix a potential rip in the space-time continuum, only he was so time-lagged he has no idea what he's supposed to be doing in the 19th century. Cue boating down the river in Oxford, rescuing eccentric dons who would drown each other over opinions, meeting the most beautiful woman he's ever seen, being introduced to Victorian morals, rigging seances, meeting the inventor of the jumble sale, and trying to rescue Princess Arjumand, a very cat-like cat. Another delightful adventure from the mistress of time-travelling tales, Connie Willis. **** Message edited by its author, Sep 23, 2009, 8:30am. 72. Murder, With Peacocks, Donna Andrews  The first of the Meg Langslow mysteries, this kicks off with Meg, a blacksmith, packing up for the summer so she can go home to Virginia and help out with the three weddings she is maid of honour for: her best friend, Eileen, who is terminally vague and is currently considering a Native American herbal purification ceremony; her sister-in-law-to-be, Samantha, who is highly demanding and currently requiring peacocks to be sourced for her wedding; and her mother, who is marrying her new beau after an amicable divorce that was positively cheerful and who still has Meg's father pottering around, gardening. Cue a whirlwind of far too much wedding planning (but it was fun, because you know it's all going to be a disaster), peacock wrangling, dodging dodgy wannabe-beaus, endless garden parties, deliciously described food, the drop-dead-gorgeous but probably gay Michael, and one dead body and what looks like a serial murder trying to bump Meg and/or her family off. And, believe me, there's a lot of family to bump off. And therein lies the charm of this series (well, the first book, at any rate). Meg's family are charmingly, dottily, scattily, eccentric. Meg's father is a retired doctor with an obsession over crime and poisonous plants. Meg's mother is part of the local royalty and is a perfumed bulldozer who gets her own way just by expecting it. The smaller roles are delightful too, I really liked the aunts and uncles playing croquet during a garden party, and yelling "duck!" whenever a ball gets too close to the other guests. Croquet is obviously not quite as genteel as one would have expected. And Meg is terribly good fun too, with a good blend of niceness, ability, intelligence, and sass. (Sass has to be my favourite thing in literary female detectives.) It's rather nice to have the Evil Person in a murder mystery just being unpleasant - she's mightily unpleasant, of course, but the worst thing she seems to do to Meg & her family is blatantly out one of Meg's aunts as wearing a wig. This was also a well-plotted whodunnit, which kept me guessing until the end. This series was originally recommended to me by my mate Miss FiFi Trixibelle (well, no, that's not really her name, but we like to torture her by calling her that), and it only just got rejigged in my memory when RichardDerus highly recommended it over on his thread. So, thank you both! It may have taken me a while to get around to it, but it was worth the wait. ***1/2 73. The Other Hand, Chris Cleave  This was beautifully written, with some genuinely funny bits, but it's about refugees, and they've escaped from torture and death and at times it all got a Bit Too Much and I had to put it down and read something fluffy for a while. Little Bee is a refugee from Nigeria and currently dwelling in a detention centre in England, before she is mistakenly released along with a handful of other women. At the same time, we are also introduced to Sarah, an English journalist who is mourning the death of her husband, and who has met Little Bee before. Slowly their two stories come together and we find out their history. I particularly enjoyed Little Bee's character, and some of the things she said were quite wonderful - scars being beautiful because they show you've survived, but then she has to turn away from the girl in the yellow sari because one can have too much beauty. (Although I felt slightly sucker-punched by that second bit.) At times it reminded me of the great Small Island with the fish-out-of-water humour with the refugees/immigrants to England. And I think the fate of those three other refugees released with Little Bee were probably the most fascinating bit of the book for me, although we never returned to them - were they returned to the detention centre? Were they taken back to their countries? What happened to them?? And I would have liked more sympathy from the English characters. Sarah is obviously sympathetic towards Little Bee, but Lawrence and the whole Home Office that, even though he despises it, he's so obviously part of the system, and the system is definitely not in favour of Little Bee. And none of the minor characters showed much sympathy towards her plight, they too were all working within the system and were unable to see beyond that to any basic humanity for the refugees. I found the ending a bit disappointing - I had the feeling that he'd painted himself into a corner plot-wise, and there were a number of annoying inconsistencies and fudging to get it to "work". But overall it was an interesting look at a emotionally charged topic (refugees) with some very funny bits. And some bleak bits, as befits the topic. This was read for the ANZLitLovers group. ***1/2 Message edited by its author, Oct 7, 2009, 6:52am. 74. Frenchman's Creek, Daphne du Maurier  Young Lady Dona, fleeing with her two children a debauched lifestyle in 17th century London which has left her ashamed of her behaviour and disenchanted with her life, returns to a relatively small house in Cornwall, and settles in to rethink her life, only to discover pirates (arrrr) are in the vicinity. She stumbles across said pirates, and they give her back her sense of adventure and spirit, and a love of life again. In some ways, this is a fairly standard spiffingly fun adventure romance (with pirates, arrrr), only our heroine is already married and so is embarking on an affair which is certainly not standard to the genre. My copy rather sniffily says on the back that Dona is a character that we would all love, despite her somewhat "questionable" behaviour. I think that the reviewer who wrote those lines never got stuck in a miserable marriage, and quite possibly Dona is a character many women love because of her behaviour. (Not that I'm in a miserable marriage, but looking back at some previous relationships, I am incredibly grateful for living in an era when one isn't bound irrevocably to one man. I made some choices that would never have lasted happily, although they were fun at the time.) Read for the "Monthly Author Reads" (September was Dame Daphne). ***1/2. Message edited by its author, Oct 7, 2009, 7:04am. 75. Murder with Puffins, Donna Andrews  The second in the Meg Langslow mysteries (Murder with Peacocks was the first; and I do hope Donna Andrews writes a Murder with Penguins as well, they're such delightful birds), this takes off pretty much where the first stopped. Meg and Michael are trying to get away from her family and have a romantic weekend together by visiting her aunt's small cottage on the tiny island Monhegan off the coast of Maine. Only to discover that it's bird watching season on the island (known for its puffin colony) and that half of her family is already in residence in said aunt's small cottage. Cue the (what I assume is standard) amusingly dotty Langslow family, a small island filled with bird obsessives, and a dead body. Of course, everyone disliked the dead body (even when he was alive) so there's a multitude of suspects to choose from, including Meg's beloved father. It's an amusing romp, but the plot was stretched wafer thin at times. The charm of Murder with Peacocks (I will keep on typing Penguins!) was that it was cozy crime, but had an excellent plot underneath it all, keeping it all delightfully readable and interesting and afloat and bubbling along, giving some structure to the whole madness. This one just doesn't. Still, I'm putting the flaws down to being a "difficult" second novel, and have the third in the series awaiting me on Mt TBR upstairs. *** 76. The Deeds of the Disturber, Elizabeth Peters  Ah, when life gets you down, Amelia Peabody is guaranteed to pick you up, dust you off, and send you on your way with a slightly foolish but cheerful grin. Ms Peabody is the embodiment of anachronism, but we love her for it. Her modern feminism, her stout parasol (steel reinforced) and rejection of fashion, her undying love for Emerson and Egyptian archaeology, her complete utter and unwavering belief in her intellectual superiority, her fabulous hourglass shape, her unbridled enthusiasm for sex, and her intolerance for anyone vacuous makes her a heroine unlike any other. In this book, the fifth in the series, takes a turn from the earlier books in that Amelia and Emerson are in London instead of Egypt, and are solving a murder that looks as if it may be a mummy's curse. This gives us a nice breather from hot and dusty Egypt, re-introduces some earlier characters who haven't been seen for a while, and allows Amelia to be let loose in a different city, dealing with over-enthusiastic journalists, opium dens, and some very ill behaved young family members. And, as usual, I chortled happily all the way through. **** 77. The Girl Who Played With Fire, Stieg Larsson  So, is this a novel, or a glorified shopping list? The characters are forever buying Billy Pan Pizzas at 7-Eleven, Big Macs at McDonalds, etc. I flippantly said at the beginning of this book "there's more to Sweden than Ikea!", and then there was the excursion to Ikea for a shopping spree. (If I had an Ikea catalogue and I was an obsessed fan, I could probably replicate the exact shopping spree.) The writing (or translating) is terribly clunky, and both this and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo needed a far better edit than they got, in my (not so humble) opinion. Yet... they are so terribly gripping. I actually had to put this down a number of times and go and read something fluffy in the meantime because the tension got too much. Lisbeth Salander may be a complete psycho, but I do love her, and I was so worried for her at times. There was a bit too much meandering around with the plot - for a long while it did feel as if we were just twiddling our thumbs while the real plot got put together. And at times I wished we'd stick with Lisbeth a bit more. (And all the sexually adventurous middle-aged Swedes just gave me the giggles, frankly. Good on them for enjoying themselves, but could we have some more plot, please?) But, when we finally got some plot, and concentrated on Lisbeth, I was a very happy reader. Although maybe a happy reader craving a Big Mac. ***1/2 79. Twilight, Stephanie Meyer  Okay, this was a book that I felt I had to read before I could make a judgement on it: I can be a hardline feminist at times, but, well, I also enjoy some pretty trashy trash. Maybe this one could sneak under the feminist radar as a guilty pleasure. In one word: no. It is just so incredibly wet. For example: there was one bit where Edward was very "I love you, against my better judgement" which was soooo Mr Darcy, and Bella really didn't reach any Miss Lizzie Bennett heights in response, but just went all confused. (I repeat: pathetic.) Now, it may be cruel comparing this book to Pride and Prejudice, arguably one of the world's greatest novels, but Ms Meyer brought it on herself. She's the one who writes Bella as a fan of literature, the Brontes and Austen in particular. So she's the one who cast my mind towards some proper heroines and highlighted the ghastliness of her own creation. If you're going to have a love/hate relationship with your two main romantic leads, it would be good if there was some actual hate happening: Bella meets Edward and is instantly smitten. She's a pathetic pushover. And what's with the yellow/tawny/amber/golden eyes? He sounds jaundiced. I couldn't wait until we got mustard coloured eyes. (Unfortunately, we didn't.) Then later, Edward is being all "I'm ever so dangerous, you shouldn't be near me, but I love you and can't bear to be apart". (This is after stalking her, by the way.) It's bloody psychological abuse, that's what it is. He's scaring her, and then backflips straight into "I'm the only one who can protect you". And she bloody well thinks it's *romantic* (ditto the stalking). I cannot believe that adult women have read and enjoyed this. Further, I cannot believe that we are allowing teenagers to read such twisted attitudes in the guise of romance. I'm banning it from my house (assuming it's still popular when Miss Boo is of teenage years). Or at least giving her the run down on how they are not in a healthy relationship, and how that cannot possibly be romantic. Bella is unhealthily obsessed with an undead man who treats her appallingly, is many, many years older than her (what's with the hanging out in a school? Who would want to repeat High School ad infinitum?), and who stalks her. An undead paedophile. How gross can you get? It's a train wreck of a book, but I couldn't quite turn away. At the end, there was about 50 pages of plot in there somewhere, amongst the angst and wetness. But even then, thinking about it, it was the most useless excuse for a plot ever. The outcome was never in doubt: Edward was going to rush in and save her and kill the bad guy. Sorry if that's a spoiler for anyone. 1/2 a star. 80. The Little Stranger, Sarah Waters  Buying & reading the latest novel by the wonderful Sarah Waters was a no-brainer. I have enjoyed her previous novels, in particular Fingersmith. No, wait, Affinity. No, wait, Tipping the Velvet was the best. Maybe. Too hard to decide! This is the second of her novels to be set not in Victorian era, but in England in the period after the Second World War. Dr Faraday is a village doctor, barely keeping his head above water, when he gets summoned to visit a patient at Hundreds Hall, a grand Georgian house, whose inhabitants can barely keep it going. The Ayres family are being left behind by a changing society that no longer seems to have time for the old families of England. And in the atmospheric gloom of the run-down old house, imagination starts running wild... The writing is wonderful, the atmosphere of hot summer days filled with tension was wonderfully created; the character of Dr Faraday caught between the old world and the new was good, even if sometimes you wanted to slap some sense into him; and quite a bit of the plot was left ambiguous which I rather liked. But overall this was a slightly disappointing book. After the richness of her previous books, with immense detail and spiffing plots and quirky characters, this is a much slower work, more involved in the psychology of the characters. At times the spookiness sent real shivers down my spine, but on the whole it was all a bit too distant, not really immediate, and I didn't care enough about any of the characters to be completely involved. And the ambiguity towards the end was just a bit too ambiguous - was I just imagining it could have happened the way I thought? Was I reading far too much between the lines? From a different author, I would have loved this. But from Sarah Waters, it was almost a miss rather than a hit. It just lacked the oomph that I've grown to expect from her novels. ***1/2 Message edited by its author, Nov 4, 2009, 5:04am. 81. Everything I Knew, Peter Goldsworthy  In 1964, the unfortunately named Robbie Burns is fourteen years old in the small town of Penola in South Australia. He's bright and precocious, writing endless science fiction novels, surviving the tough world of High School, and becoming mesmerised by his new teacher, the young, glamourous and passionately intellectual Miss Peach, who seems to want to mentor Robbie and help him with his writing. Miss Peach is unlike anything the town has ever seen before, with her passion for poetry and art, her Vespa scooter, her stylish Audrey Hepburn fashions, her Kool cigarettes. The entire school seems to fall under her spell, but Robbie falls particularly hard given he's a teenager and she seems to be singling him out for special treatment. I do have to say I didn't really get into this novel. It was evocative, but it was obviously all going to end rather badly so I never really wanted to warm to any of the characters. Miss Peach acted badly, Robbie was your typical sex-crazed egocentric teenager who is just far too literary to be totally believable, and most of the adults were unimpressive as well with their jealousies and flirtations with Miss Peach. Although Miss Peach's housemates and fellow teachers, Miss Hammond and Miss Burke, never seen without a glass of wine and a cigarette to share between the two of them, and never heard without a quip to put down Robbie, are wonderful creations. I read this for my bookgroup, and I do have to say that everyone else enjoyed it much more than I did! I barely took part in the discussions, because I just didn't care enough about the characters to want to discuss it or think about it beyond the initial read. I didn't hate it, but neither did I love it or even particularly enjoy it. And while the final coda on memory and its notorious unreliability was excellent, and made me think that maybe it'd be worthwhile to go back and re-read sections, it was just all a bit too little, too late. *** 82. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl  This was read aloud to Mr Bear over a couple of week's worth of bedtimes. I'd previously read it as an adult to myself - I'd seen the movie with Gene Wilder as a child and was so scared by Violet Beauregarde blowing up into a giant blueberry I had nightmares for weeks and could never read any Roald Dahl books. Now I wish I could turn back time and sit my younger self down with a copy of the book and skip the movie until I was several years older! What a ripsnorter of a novel. Mr Bear hoovered it up, he loved the descriptions of the sweets, he loved the bad endings that came to all of the naughty children (who, I kept on drilling into him, just did not listen to Mr Wonka, and that was their downfall! Yes, we have having Not Listening To The Parental Units issues at the moment), he adored Charlie winning. And, yes, I have let him see the most recent adaptation of the book. I warned him it was a bit scary at times, and then at the end, he turned around and said "that wasn't scary!" with scorn in his voice at the perceived wussiness of his Mum. (He did enjoy the movie, but it wasn't scary. Not even the melting dolls at the beginning, which I must admit, gives me the creeps.) Of course, Miss Boo ended up cowering under her security blanket when Violet Beauregarde blew up into a giant blueberry. I wonder when I can get her started on Roald Dahl therapy? ***** 83. Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen  Maybe Twilight had one redeeming feature. It made me think "right, that's it, I'm going to read something by Jane Austen now to get the taste of Bella & Edward out of my brain". And at the bookshop, there was a tantalisingly gorgeous and ridiculously cheap edition of Sense and Sensibility, and I was thinking that maybe I hadn't read it, or then again, maybe I had... So, due to my incipient early-onset-Alzheimer's, I got to re-read a Jane Austen novel, as if it was brand new. Completely cleaned the synapses of glittery vampires, too. What's not to love? I really enjoyed this amusing tale of two sisters, one far too emotional for her own good, and the other one far too emotionally bottled up for her own good. I did side with Elinor for the most part, but I actually had a lot of time for silly Marianne, who usually I would have dismissed as a drama queen. I can't believe that anyone could write a drama queen as a character I would care for, but I obviously underestimated Miss Austen's talents. And now I can go and read Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. :) ****1/2 X. Blindness, Jose Saramago  I picked this up from the library, read quite a bit, but then realised I just had no energy to finish it. It was just far too bleak for me. Too much about Humankind's Inhumanity To Humankind, and things just kept on getting worse, with no indication that it would get better. I was, truth be told, quite relieved to put it down and move on to more entertaining fare. No rating, as it was unfinished. 84. The Island of Doctor Moreau, H. G. Wells  I picked this up on a whim when Blindness (my then current read) proved to be too bleak for me and I was stuck at work without a book to read on the bus home. Set on the eponymous Island, which is rather well known by now given this book's classic status, the megalomaniacal Doctor Moreau experiments turning animals into humans. This is a over-the-top gothic horror, with Well's usual blunt-force moralising, and the creepiest scientist-gone-mad-with-power ever to grace fiction. Enjoy it? Absolutely. Something about Victorian adventures, they're just awfully good fun. Usually I baulk at the whole mad scientist character (something about having a science background myself, it just makes me feel picked-upon), but I really enjoyed hissing and booing at this particular villain. And this book also had a nice frisson of horror at the end. ***1/2 NOTE: this is when I started scaling things down 1/2 a star or so. I was just giving too many books too many stars. Time for some Tough Love with my reading. Message edited by its author, Nov 19, 2009, 5:24am. 85. The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman  I love Neil Gaiman's books, and this is no exception. A young boy escapes the slaughter of his family and ends up taking refuge in the local graveyard, where the ghosts bring him up. The book dips in and out of his life as he grows up and learns, each chapter being a particularly important part of Bod's life. I found this charming, an easy read, and entertainingly quirky. ****1/2 (There goes my resolution to shave off half a star... Unless this really was a five star read. ;) 86. Strangers, Taichi Yamada  A Japanese ghost story, this concerns TV scriptwriter Harada who is a man without any family. His parents were killed in a hit and run when he was a boy and he spent the rest of his life with his elderly grandfather (now dead) and uncle (now also dead). He is recently divorced, and estranged from his only son. As he is penurious following his divorce, he is living in his office, meaning that at night he is often the only person in his building, next to a noisy express way. In this empty life, he one day runs into a man who looks uncannily like his father, at the same age he was when he died. He goes back to this man's house and meets his wife, who is also a dead ringer for his mother. Have his parents come back to him? Why? How? In the midst of this intriguing story, there is also a second plot revolving around a young woman who also lives in the office block. This second story doesn't resolve nearly as well as the first, unfortunately, and since it ends after the story of Harada's "parents", it did mean that the entire ending felt disappointing. I was expecting something with a bit more "BOO!" in it, in the style of Japanese horror cinema like "The Ring" or "Dark Water". It's not that sort of ghost story for the most part, being mainly about family and missed opportunities. It was more hit than miss, but an interesting story overall, with a fascinating premise. *** 87. Red Harvest, Dashiell Hammett  The first of the Continental Op series by Dashiell Hammett who single-handedly invented hard-boiled crime, if Wikipedia is to be believed. Red Harvest is set during the prohibition era in a small mining town, Personville - more commonly known as Poisonville - which is riddled with corruption. The (unnamed) Continental Op is called in to solve the murder of the son of town's founding father who also happens to be the source of all its corruption. You see, some years before, Daddy brought in some hard men to break the Union. The hard men did that, then looked around, liked what they saw, and settled in. With corruption going all the way to the top, it's every man for himself. Our hero solves the murder by about page 60, which was a bit of a surprise to me. But then turns his sights on cleaning up the corruption of Personville. However, it proves to be far too easy to slide into corruption himself in his quest to clean up... I loved the atmosphere of this book. There were beautiful tough dames, ugly tough men, gunfights in the middle of the town on what seemed to be a daily schedule at one stage, tight dialogue, touches of dry humour, and gripping action. But most of all, it's not a clear-cut book, it is filled with moral ambiguities with our hero's actions being most un-heroic, even when done for the best of intentions. 'Look. I sat at Willsson's table tonight and played them like you'd play trout, and got just as much fun out of it. I looked at Noonan and knew he hadn't a chance in a thousand of living another day because of what I had done to him, and laughed, and felt warm and happy inside. That's not me. I've got hard skin all over what's left of my soul, and after twenty years of messing around with crime I can look at any sort of a murder without seeing anything in it but my bread and butter, the day's work. But this getting a rear out of planning deaths is not natural to me. It's what this place has done to me.' "Poisonville" is a very apt name for the town, poisoning everyone's lives. **** Message edited by its author, Nov 26, 2009, 5:20am. 88. A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole  Finally picked this one up after many, many recommendations. The person who recommended it to me last and loudest reckoned that Ignatius J Reilly *is* the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons. (Fat, overly enamoured of his own literate opinions, a Masters degree in something arty, etc.) So he was a big simply-drawn yellow slob in my mind as I read it. :) And A Confederacy of Dunces took me an age and a half to finish! I kept on putting it down and picking up other books in between (never a good sign). I could *see* the humour in Confederacy but it wasn't tickling my funny bone much. It's not that it's not a good book (Ignatius J Reilly is an amazing comic creation), it's just that if a nuclear bomb were to be dropped on New Orleans in the book at about the halfway point, I might have just breathed a sigh of relief that all these irredeemable characters were blown to kingdom come. There's not a single character that I could identify with, let alone *like*. I tagged it "grotesque" at one stage, and I'm sticking with that as the one-word-summing-up. Can't say I enjoyed it - all the characters were most unlikeable, and there didn't seem to be any point in the plot (they're all still revolting at the end, and I like a bit of character development). It's been highly recommended by a number of people (most of whom are men, if that makes a difference), and is on the 1001 You Must Read Before You Die list, but I think it's a personal thing - they probably got the humour. It's not a dreadful book, it's just not for me. *** 89. Un Lun Dun, China Mieville
 A serendipitous library find. We'd borrowed this once before, but hadn't gotten around to reading it. This time, thanks to a nasty headcold, it was the book of choice while I wallowed in bed for two days, feeling stuffed up and sorry for myself. I am a fan of China Mieville's adult fiction, in particular Perdido Street Station, so I was curious to see how he'd go with a young adult book. I do have to admit that the opening chapters were a bit too young for my tastes and felt slow and awkward, but there were some potentially great ideas, and I stuck with it, sure that it would settle down (or that I'd settle into it). And I'm glad I did. What felt forced in the first half became effortless in the second, and I really soaked up all the imaginative details and the page-turning plot. Highly recommended, especially for Neil Gaiman and Lewis Carroll fans. ***1/5 Debug test: your member name is: |
Touchstone worksTouchstone authorsDebra Adelaide Aravind Adiga Andrea Levy Donna Andrews Jane Austen Honoré de Balzac Iain M. Banks Allyson Beatrice Emily Brontë David Brooks Jim Butcher by George Eliot Peter Carey Willa Cather Nick Cave Michael Chabon Agatha Christie Chris Cleave Colin Cotterill By Roald Dahl Roald Dahl Kate DiCamillo Joan Didion George Eliot Eric Garcia F. Scott Fitzgerald Ariana Franklin Jonathan Franzen Neil Gaiman Eric Garcia Lisa Genova Stella Gibbons Charlotte Perkins Gilman Peter Goldsworthy Sue Grafton Amanda Grange Linda Grant Graham Greene Javier Grillo-Marxuach George Grossmith Dashiell Hammett Chloe Hooper Anthony Horowitz Zora Neale Hurston Siri Hustvedt John Irving Joan London Gail Jones Barbara Kingsolver Elizabeth Knox C. J. Koch Sofie Laguna Stieg Larsson Stieg Larsson Andrea Levy C. S. Lewis John Ajvide Lindqvist Joan London Jason Lutes Scott Lynch Mark Twain Henning Mankell Daphne Du Maurier Cormac McCarthy Stephanie Meyer Stephenie Meyer Kasey Michaels China Mieville David Mitchell Vicki Myron Nerida Newton Naomi Novik Anthony O'Neill Emily Perkins Marisha Pessl Elizabeth Peters Edgar Allan Poe Julie Powell Debbie Robson José Saramago Marjane Satrapi Craig Silvey Alexander McCall Smith Strachen Emma Tennant Colm Tóibín Leo Tolstoy Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa John Kennedy Toole Christos Tsiolkas Mark Twain Jeannette Walls Sarah Waters Evelyn Waugh H. G. Wells Joss Whedon Bill Willingham Connie Willis |
