Cams
I used to enjoy reading Stephen King a lot. I find his tales to be gripping and well written. I chose this book for my review of personal reading that formed part of my higher English exam. The theme was conflict. That was in 1991.
I just listened to it again and enjoyed it once more. It's quite an appropriate tale for the current swine flu climate actually! It follows a bunch of survivors of a superflu virus, devised by the US Government, that wipes out the large majority of the US population (no other part of the world ever gets mentioned, a shortcoming of the book in my opinion; it could at least have been glossed over). The survivors split into two groups, the first gathering around Mother Abigail, the goody, and the Dark Man, the baddy. So you see the margin for conflict?
Of course the goodies win, but it's SK's style and skill at character building and dialogue that makes the book worth reading. He's an astute observer of the human psyche and the characters are easy to relate to, even if they are all from a completely different culture to my own.
I need to catch up on my books on Vox. I read this a while back but never got around to posting about it. Matter of fact I don't recall that much about it. It follows the tale of a kid who becomes a wizard and goes to wizard school and unleashes an evil spirit and then has to beat said evil spirit.
To be honest, I didn't enjoy it that much at all. I probably would have enjoyed it when I was in my teens, but it was just a bit too formulaic and shallow for me. Perhaps it gets better as the series progresses. I don't really care though; book 1 didn't grab me enough to want to carry on.
I read this as it was the September choice for the Sword & Laser book club. Sci-fi is a genre that I've not read much of, not because of I don't think I would enjoy it, but because I never really got around to it. I read Stephen Donaldson's Gap series twice and they are included in my top 5 list. I also read Dune and enjoyed it too.
So, The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman. This is supposed to be a classic of the genre and, to be honest, I'm not sure why. I did enjoy it but it's quite forgettable in my opinion.
The main themes are war and time dilation. The main protagonist, William Mandella, is conscripted along with a number of individuals with a high IQ. They endure a tough training regime, during which many trainees lose their lives. This happens in a fairly come-what-may sort of way and we don't learn enough about the characters really to care. And this is one of the book's shortcomings: it's too short. Not enough time is spent developing the characters, or the plot. This makes it a short book. Another 100 or so pages would have allowed the author to give it some flesh.
Due to the physics of travelling above light speed, Mandella encounters time dilation. So while a few months pass for him, years pass on earth. When he gets back, things have changed so much that he no longer feels comfortable on earth. So he goes back to the army and gets back into the war again.
I found the idea of homosexuality off putting at first. This is something that happens on earth to prevent population increase. It's an interesting concept.
To be honest, I didn't really enjoy the book enough to write more about it than I already have. As this is not a recommendation list but simply a list of what I've read (because I do forget), I'll leave it at that.
I used to enjoy whisky. I also enjoy Iain Banks's novels. So it made sense to read a book about whisky by Iain Banks. Ironically, I picked this book up from the boxes of books stored in the church hall where we have our Wednesday AA meetings. I put 50p in the honesty box.
The book is very readable. Iain travels around Scotland visiting distilleries and buying up hunners of bottles. One might say that it's a self-indulgent book by a writer with too much money and who likes nothing more than to talk about his cars and motorcycles and throws money away on expensive wine and restaurants. And that isn't entirely wrong either, but for all that it is still strangely compelling and enjoyable. He shares a lot of anecdotes about his life, many of which are rather amusing, such as his enjoyment of urban climbing. And although he talks a lot about his expensive cars, it's clearly more than just self-indulgent prattle; this is a man who knows and loves the automobile and his enthusiasm is infectious. He also knows Scotland very well and it's fun to read his descriptions of the various roads across the country.
Overall this is a great book. I enjoyed it a lot more than i thought I would. I'd give it a four.
I bought this on the strength of a recommendation by freelance journalist and regular MacBreak Weekly panelist, Andy Ihnatko. His recommendation was based on the fact that the audible version is 32 hours long and yet is still only one credit! Thus, one can ‘stick it to the man' with this audiobook. Well, there was a little more to it than that. My interest was piqued and the review I read convinced me that I would enjoy it.
I found it to be rather a clever book in that it seems to rise above the geekish realm of fantasy and sci-fi and enter the mainstream. Yes, it is in essence a fantasy book, but not like any other I've read. There are no elves and goblins, no magic talismans, no underdogs coming into their powers and having to save the world from evil against the odds. Rather this is a tale of 19th century England and features such historical characters as Napoleon and Wellington.
The style is a literary one, reminding one of Jane Austen and the Brontes and the characters would not seem out of place in a Dickens novel.
We begin in the north of England, where practical magicians no longer, well, practice magic and the theoretical magicians read books on magic and discuss it in their clubs and societies. That is until Mr Norrell comes along, a practical magician intent on being the only one of his kind. He agrees to prove to the theoreticians that he can do magic, but makes them agree that, if he is sucessful, the theoretical magicians should give up magic all together.
Then Jonathan Strange comes along as another real magician and we follow the relationship between him and Mr Norrell throughout the tale.
The audiobook is read by Simon Prebble and he does a good job. I enjoyed the book a lot but do feel that it could have been shortened without losing too much. The constant footnotes became a little grating but I had got used to them by the end. I don't think that I would read this again and I would be hesitant to recommend it to my fantasy-loving friends, but to those of you who do enjoy the 19th century novel, I'd have no hesitation in recomending it.
I first became aware of Neil Gaiman a couple of years back when he was a panelist on Cranky Geeks. His novels and he are mentioned a lot on a few of the podcasts that I listen to and I decided to give Anansi Boys a try. I got the audiobook from audible and this one is narrated by Lenny Henry. I enjoyed it immensely and will definitely be consuming some more of Neil Gaiman's novels before long.
This one is about the descendent of Anansi, the Spider God. His descendent, Fat Charlie, does not know that he's descended from a God to begin with. He's just a regular schmo working for a firm in London and dating his fiancée. After he hears about his father's death, he attends the funeral and that's when strange things start to happen.
Lenny Henry was the perfect choice as narrator for this novel. A lot of the characters are Carribean in style and he does the accents perfectly.
The novel is funny, clever and engaging. Four stars.
Lorraine bought me this book and told me she'd bought me it before I told her that I didn't have time to ‘read' books any more. And fair enough, I hardly consume paper books any more these days but the fact is that if a book holds my attention for long enough, I'll find the time. More often that not it's whilst waiting for software to install, updates, that sort of thing. Yesterday it was uninstalling CS3 and installing CS4, an unbelievably long task.
And so to the book. This book was written just for me. I'm sure of it. John o' Farrell must have heard how I was feeling and decided to write me a novel. Honestly, that's how it feels. But I guess that a lot of fathers of my generation would be able to relate to this book. The main character wants what I would imagine most fathers want: the ability to do all the great things that make fatherhood such a joy, and go back to being a single man to avoid all the tough bits of being a dad and enjoy all the fun things that a single man gets to enjoy. Trouble is, as any dad worth his salt will tell you, that is an impossible thing to achieve. It's all about compromise and learning how to do the best one can for the family, and it has to be all or nothing. The rewards then far outweigh the investment.
I learned a lot from reading this book, especially its conclusion, which is that the most important thing is to be there for the family, to be there with the family, and to be part of the family.
And the title is very clever too. The man interprets it one way and his wife interprets in quite another. Being a man, I hadn't even considered that there was another way.
So in this book you will follow a 30-something dad who leads a double life, all the while thinking that he's doing a good thing, until it all blows up in his face and he realises that he was actually being quite deceptive. And the thing is that I totally understood his arguments for thinking it was a good thing and then, of course, his discovery that it wasn't was also a discovery for me.
I'd like Lorraine to read this book and see what she thinks about it. It would be interesting to get a woman's perspective on it .
The book had my attention from that first ‘I'll just read the first page to see what it's like' moment and I must have got through it in a couple of weeks. Well, it is only 300 pages, but still, for someone with no time to read, it wasn't bad going! A fun read.
I finished this book a couple of months ago and haven't written about it. I was given it by a Belgian/French friend of mine in Luxembourg not long before we left for Scotland. He'd read it and thought that I would enjoy it as it's set around the theme of a murder at a rock festival and mentions such notables as Pink Floyd and Led Zep. It is two murder tales in tandem, one set back in the 60s and one in the present day. Obviously there is a connection, and it is the job of the present-day detective, whose name escapes me for the moment, to figure out the connection in order to solve the crime. Naturally he achieves this, and I don't see it as a spoiler to say so since it would be rather a different detective novel if the crime were not solved by the end!
I read the bulk of this novel whilst watching Windows XP reinstall twice on the au pair's computer and failing to rewrite the drive with the Ghost image that I took originally. Those updates are unbelievable now.
Anyway, I did enjoy the book in the sense that I cared enough about its development to read it to the end, but it was in no particular way a memorable read, other than because of the author's attempt to include rock-n-roll superstars in the plot.
3 stars.
I finished this audiobook a couple of weeks ago after hearing several tech podcasters recommending it. It's a cyberpunk novel, whatever that might mean, set in the near future. The main character, Hiro Protagonist, starts out as a pizza delivery guy working for Uncle Enzo, head of the Mafia. The USA is broken up into corporate franchises and the mafia is now one such franchise.
Hiro is a hacker and was involved in programming The Black Sun, the geek hangout in the metaverse. The metaverse is an idea of the future of the internet, more sort of AI where users goggle in and wander round using avatars to represent themselves.
The book gets into religion and linguistics and, as a former linguist and a current geek, I found Stephenson's ideas intriguing. Some of the best parts of the novel are when Hiro is discussing science and linguistics with the librarian (a piece of software that has access to the digital info archives).
All in all I found it to be an enjoyable, well-written and well-researcehd novel and I liked it well enough to consider reading more of Stephenson's novels.
I just read this novel for the second time and enjoyed it a lot. The first Kelman book I read was A Dissafection, back when I was on my year abroad in Odessa in 1995. Upon my return I got How Late it Was, How Late and liked it a little better.
The novel is written in the Glasgow dialect, which is very close to the Ayrshire dialect that I grew up with. It's partly the poetry of that language that really appeals to me. Having studied linguistics and socio-linguistics probably makes the book more appealing to me than it might to others, as well as the fact that I do not have any trouble with comprehension (as when I read A Clockwork Orange because I speak Russian - not sure if that spoiled that for me but that's another story for another time).
The story is a slice of life, social realism in great form. It doesn't have a traditional beginning, middle and end, rather it portrays the events that surround the main character, the bold Sammy, over a period of a few days. He gets into a scrape with the sodjers (the police) early on and winds up blind. We then follow his journey through the police cells, the benefits offices, medical assessors and such like.
I would certainly class this novel as literature rather than throwaway. I'm not sure how enjoyable it would be for anyone that struggled with the dialect but I'd be interested to know.
I was born in 1971 so a lot of my formative years were spent under Maggie Thatcher's premiership. At the time I cared little about it, other than through the wonderful Spitting Image, which was food for playground banter.
Having recently moved back to the UK after a long spell abroad, I find myself becoming interested to learn about the period that I lived through but knew so little about. Though I cared little about politics until, well, until now really, Maggie stands firm in my mind like an icon.
John Sergeant's book is engaging and entertaining. It is interesting to hear the point of view of one who was so close to the action with the luxury of hindsight. For the layman (and I consider myself such), the book is easy to follow, although I did benefit from a few visits to Wikipedia and YouTube to learn more about the workings of British politics and see news reel footage from the time.
I have no other benchmarks against which to gauge John Sergeant's opinion of the events, but when he does give his opinion, it is always well backed up well. He does a great job of relating the key events, not only of Maggie's time as PM, but of her rise to become leader of the Conservative Party and her influence on her successors and her party; in a word, her legacy.
For those who do have a strong opinion of Margaret Thatcher, and I know that there are a lot of you out there, I think that this book will help to show the other side of the story, whatever side you happen to be on. But for those such as I without much of an opinion, you'll find this a highly informative book that gives a broad overview of Margaret Thatcher but it may leave you still wondering what to think. That's where I am anyway. I'm contemplating reading her memoirs, although I do like John Sergeant's book for its apparent lack of idealogical bias and I could really use some more books like this one.
In short, I enjoyed this a lot and could listen to it again quite easily.
I just completed this for the second time and enjoyed it more than I did the first time around. This is the first of a trilogy, although it was never meant to be a trilogy, just that Mervyn Peake died too soon.
The imagery that this novel conjures up is simply wonderful. The descriptive writing is some of the best I have read and Peake's use of the English language is a joy to behold.
The story is about the 77th Earl of Groan, Lord Titus. He is born in Gormenghast, a place of strange rituals whose origins seem to have been forgotten, but which are rigorously adhered to nonetheless.
The calculating and devious Steerpike manages to escape from the kitchens and the abhorrent chef, Swelter and beings manipulating the characters of Gormenghast for his own personal gain. He throws the castle into turmoil with his antics and therein lies the tale.
I ‘read' the audiobook, downloaded from Audible, and it was very well read indeed. I highly recommend this book.
I must've omitted this from my Goodreads list. I struggled with it. Yes, I know. Shocking, huh? I got bored with it about half-way through and actually moved on to something else, which is very unlike me. I generally persevere. But I came back to it. I'm not sure why, but I did, and praise the holy good book that I did. I love, love, loved the ending. It moved me. So much so in fact that I might even have had the sniffles for a second or two.
Just finished reading this, which is, I believe, the first of John le Carré's novels that I've read. I was lent it by a friend and fellow translator.
The main character is an interpreter of various minority African languages and a few European ones. Having worked a little in this field, it was interesting to me in ways that it might perhaps not otherwise have been.
It was rather slow paced until it reached the latter third, when the tension really began to mount. Stylistically, it seems much more literary than, say Robert Ludlum, so not quite as enjoyable on a superficial level but more memorable.
The story focuses on the Congo. The premise is that an anonymous syndicate is putting up the funds to bring peace to the region. A secret conference is organised and held, seemingly by the UK intelligence services, between Congolese warlords on a remote island whose location is never revealed. The main character of the novel is the interpreter at the conference and we learn of his mixed loyalties and his ethics in his role as an interpreter.
It was an enjoyable novel but not one that I would be too excited about recommending to anyone without at least a passing interest in linguistics or Africa. I'm glad I read it though.
I just finished this one this morning. Utterly, utterly brilliant. I read Cannery Row a while ago and bought Sweet Thursday a while ago too. Since the bairns came along, my books tend to be consumed in audio fashion rather than in the more tangible paper form. As we were travelling to Scotland and back recently and would be spending time in a B&B, I thought I would take a book along. I grabbed this one off my shelf and was hooked right from the start.
It's hard to describe why this is so good. Being blessed with a poor memory, I really don't recall much of what happened in Cannery Row. I do recall how much I enjoyed it though, and having forgotten its plot didn't mar my enjoyment of Sweet Thursday at all (it's a sequel, in case you didn't get the connection).
The plot is simple: it's a love story. Not much else to it than that at the plot level. It's at the writing level that it really breathes. The characters are wonderfully crafted and the book is full of depth without seeming deep. There's a whole bunch of philosophy in the book and it will certainly warrant a second read. Although it's set a million miles from where I grew up, both in geographical and temporal terms, it reminds me of just that. It could quite easily be me and my pals from back in the day if we were still in the same little town and had never ‘settled down'.
Doc went on, “Let me put it this way: there is nothing I can do. They say of an amputee that he remembers his leg. Well, I remember this girl. I am not whole without her. I am not alive without her. When she was with me I was more alive than I have ever been, and not only when she was pleasant either. Even when we were fighting I was whole. At the time I didn't realize how important it was, but I do now. I am not a dope. I know that if I should win her I'll have many horrible times. Over and over, I'll wish I'd never seen her. But I also know that if I fail I'll never be a whole man. I'll live a gray half-life, and I'll mourn for my lost girl every hour of the rest of my life. As thoughtful reptiles you will wonder, ‘Why not wait? Look further! There are better fish in the sea!' But you are not involved. Let me tell you that to me not only are there no better fish, there are no other fish in the sea at all. The sea is lonely without this fish. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!”
I just finished reading this for the second time and thoroughly enjoyed it. I was given it by a friend back in 1999 as I departed for Sochi, Russia. I read it whilst I was there and, if I remember correctly, it was my first John Irving novel. (I've since read The World According to Garp and The Fourth Hand).
The story is about a writer, who gets a job with a writer as a writer's assistant and falls in love with the writer's wife (who, later, becomes a writer). The husband and wife have a four-year-old daughter, Ruth, who... yep, you guessed it, becomes a writer. Ruth writes books about a writer.
But seriously though, it's a serious book about love and relationships. It's contains a lot of sadness but there's a thread of humour that runs throughout.
The way Irving deals with characters and their relationships really draws you in. I like his novels for reading on holiday as they're not that demanding but they draw you right in and, to use the cliché, are hard to put down. This book seems superficial on the surface, but really it's quite deep and it stays with you. I'm afflicted with a terrible memory (which is why I can enjoy rereading novels so much) but I did remember a few things about this book, particularly about how the two brothers were killed. (They die before the novel beings and their presence is felt throughout the entire first part).
I would highly recommend this for reading on the plane or bus or boat, or sat by the pool somewhere away from it all. But wherever, it's a great read.
I just finished listening to the unabridged recording of the Bourne Legacy, starring Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne but written by Eric Von Lustbader. It was as gripping a tale as the three that precede it, and equally as forgettable. Just a ripping good and highly enjoyable yarn that will be forgotten as soon as it's back on the “shelf”.
I listened to the first in the series, The Bourne Identity, after watching the film of the same name. The film and novel are the same in name only; I thought for a few minutes that I had the wrong book – it's that different!
Since then, I've listened to all four and enjoyed them all. Great for long car journeys, short car journeys and any kitchen work (dishes, cooking, etc.)
I went for a Hogmanay walk with the last chapter, listening to it as I wandered along a country path with my iPod. No distractions; just a chilly winter's day.
I'll probably get tore into the second in the series of George R. R. Martin's Song of Fire and Ice series, A Clash of Kings next. If it's as good as the first in the series, I'm in for a treat!
A bit of a chore to be honest. Narrated very well by Scott Brick - even the Russian is good, and I should know. The plot though, just so bloated and contrived.
This was my second time listening to this book and I remembered very little about it, possibly because if its being so bloated that I simply forgot. I remember having it on in the car taking my daughter to nursery school, so we're taking around 2006. I love the first book, so much so that I don't know how many times I've read it - three of four anyway. I think that's me done though - enough with Bourne. Time to stop rereading and start reading anew.
A bit of a chore to be honest. Narrated very well by Scott Brick - even the Russian is good, and I should know. The plot though, just so bloated and contrived.
This was my second time listening to this book and I remembered very little about it, possibly because if its being so bloated that I simply forgot. I remember having it on in the car taking my daughter to nursery school, so we're taking around 2006. I love the first book, so much so that I don't know how many times I've read it - three of four anyway. I think that's me done though - enough with Bourne. Time to stop rereading and start reading anew.
Well, finally I've got to the end of Gloriana, the now fulfill'd Queen.
I've read through the reviews already posted and agree with much of what has been said, but I'll start my review by saying that I really enjoyed it.
I'll also point out from the outset that I have read Gormenghast but that my memory retention is so bad that my reading of that didn't really affect my enjoyment of Gloriana.
There was something about the book that I can't put my finger on, but shall nevertheless try.
The whole novel centres around a palace that is full of dark secrets from the past but is, in itself, a complete, insular entity.
The plot is full of dark secrets from the past, is a complete entity.
Gloriana herself is full of dark secrets (that even she herself does not know until the end) but a complete entity.
The conclusion of all three comes at the same time – the palace is opened up, walls and all; the plot is concluded (although I think Quire could have done with a knife in his back at Gloriana's hand); and Gloriana herself is fulfill'd.
I know I haven't managed to explain what I want to say very well but it shall have to suffice.
I'll also go against what others have said about the “florid” style and say that I found it to be entirely suitable for conjuring up, not just an image of the places described, but an atmosphere. One might say that the writing style itself were a character in the novel, and a pompous one at that.
The characters themselves were well painted, although it would have helped a bit to make a written note of all the council members near the beginning of the book as I found myself getting quite confused where characters that were introduced at the beginning appeared later after a long absence.
Gloriana's self delusions were well portrayed I thought, as well as the reasons for such delusions. She was unwittingly manufactured by Montfallcon and as such, was open to manipulation by him and those others who shared their past with Hern. The result is that her fulfilment at the end where suddenly she is mere Self for the first time was, for me, fulfilling.
As for her protracted moment of fulfilment, I would interpret that differently from the way that others have. It's my view that she didn't have an orgasm. Instead we witnessed a display of fierce joy, resulting from her finally being free of something that was far bigger than she could ever have imagined – she was released. Her reaction was an unchecked display of happiness, of joy, of elation, and that meant that she was now capable of orgasm. It isn't the having of an orgasm that makes her complete, it's the capability of having an orgasm. She is free.
The revealing of family ties between Montfallcon and Gloriana could have sounded a bit soap-operaesque but I think Moorcroft* pulls it off well. For me it was a bit of a shivery moment where a lot of threads are suddenly tied together, and I had been wondering about the loose thread wandering around in the walls that we had been introduced to much earlier. It was tied together nicely.
I also intuitively assumed that Quire's background, revealed at the end, was entirely manufactured. There was another part in the novel where such was hinted at, that the manufacturing of noble ties was of little consequence. Although where his captaincy comes from is a mystery.
To conclude, I enjoyed the novel but not enough that I would recommend it to anyone. I give it 3 out of 5.
Cams
* ;-)
Well, I got as far as p208, just after all the waffle about the two Germans, and decided enough was enough.
Nobody can say I didn't try. It was simply not an enjoyable novel.
I agree with what others have said about the short story and the padding. The story itself could have been told in a dozen pages if the padding were removed. That said, the padding is clearly included to give an insight into the character of Lucifer but to my mind it goes way over the top.
I may read the last couple of pages to see how it ends.
Marks out of 10?
Overall I'd give it 1.
Originally posted on the Motley Fool UK Bookclub board
I'll start off by saying that I enjoyed the book, and enjoyed the feeling of being part of the [Motley Fool UK] book club. I wouldn't have read this book otherwise.
Narration
I found the style of narration easier to follow than I expected. Then again, a multi-person narrative isn't uncommon in the fantasy genre which is where I'm usually to be found. Such narratives generally lead to a more-favoured and less-favoured but in the case of this book, there weren't really any narratives that I dreaded. If I had to pick a more- and less-favoured, the former would be Peevay and the latter, Potter. More on that to follow.
I think the author had to do a little toying with time in order to bring the narratives together and it seemed a little contrived to me. Jack Harp's demise was a bit sudden and the minor thread pertaining to the prison system seemed to vanish. I guess they were minor parts and supplemented the story both in terms of its plot and to add a bit of historical significance.
Characters
The three English Passengers were quite obviously caricatures with little depth to them but they played their parts well: Wilson on the “religious” end of the scale, Potter on the “scientific” and Renshaw sort of in the middle. I agree with Greatrakes that Renshaw could have had more to do. He should at least have been given a bit more airtime to allow us to see an Englishman's view of the other two.
I found that Potter's style of narration gave a good impression of the sort of character he was, but it did get annoying to read.
The scene with Potter and Wilson battling it out on the ship's pulpit was a particular favourite of mine and showed just how ridiculous both characters were. Potter got his just desserts, with his remains being showed at the exhibition; I found that to be most satisfactory for the reader.
Wilson did seem to have a bit more depth than the other two but not much; it was funny to note that his “unselfish” wife encouraged him on his quest - no doubt she couldn't see the back of him quick enough!
The Manxmen were my favourite characters in the book, although for a crew who were as unfamiliar with a ship as they were at the beginning, they seemed to handle such a long voyage with some ease.
The Manxmen's attitude towards the English was well done.
I found Peevay's style of narration quite endearing and him a likeable fellow. I think it was a good choice to make the spokesman of the natives a half-caste as it showed from the outset the horror of what the colonials did.
Overall, I found myself strangely compelled to read this book and I got through it quicker than I thought I would. That said, it's now two or so weeks since I finished it and it's not a book that will remain in my mind as one of my favourites but I'm glad to have read it. It's a shame my location means that I have to buy each book rather than borrow it as this one will take up shelf space and I'm quite sure I won't read it again.
The main thing I'd say I got from the book was an idea of a part of history about which I knew absolutely nothing. If the conversation of the history of Tasmania ever comes up, I'll now be able to hold my own! Or indeed, a Trivial Pursuit question about the former name of Tasmania!
