I almost never read book reviews, either before or after I read a book, if I know I am going to read the book anyway. Take the Man Booker short list, for instance. Every year I try to read as many of them as I can and always the winner. I don’t care what anyone else thinks of these books. I don’t care what the book sellers think of the books (although they always say nice things so they can sell them). I don’t care what the NY Times thinks of these books. I’m going to read them anyway, so why spoil a wondrous adventure by reading what someone else thinks before I even get there. Now, this may seem a bit of a contradictory attitude from someone who writes a book view blog – and it is. I’m happy to tell you all what I think about a book, and I’m happy to hear what you think after I have read the book, but I just don’t usually ask for advice from strangers. I don’t think you should either so... let’s be friends.
Carol Birch has written an interesting book. I love the premise which is taken from a couple of real life situations. She did some homework and added some inspiration and made a story worth telling. Did I say this is a 2011 Man Booker short list book? It is! I opened it with excitement in my heart. I read about a little boy in the mid 1800s who is full of life. I read about a time that was hard and dirty in England. I read about a man who had a menagerie of wonder. It was all good and I was loving it.
Then I read about a ship that sailed to exotic places seen through the eyes of an innocent. I read about a friendship that felt real and people who were full of conundrums. I read about the wonders of being at sea and landing on foreign places, also full of wonder. I read about a hunt for a dragon.
Then I read – oops, not going to tell you this part. I’ll just say that the next part was hard going. It made me feel insane. I wanted it to end. I didn’t like it. I got scared and tired. It spun me around but it wasn’t spitting me out, it was holding me in there for too long. I couldn’t breathe. I felt like I was tied down and it wasn’t pleasant. OK, enough! I’m not sure whether this was genius or crap and it will take me a while to make up my mind. Thank God I don’t have to do it right now. Birch writes with authority and conviction and that won points with me. It all feels authentic and I appreciate that. I’m just not sure.
When that part did finally release me, melancholy stepped in. Living with the past isn’t always an easy thing to do, and this was my favourite part of the book. It’s tender and sweet (mostly) and I have an enormous amount of empathy with the last 50 pages or so of this novel. And these characters will stay with me for quite a while. As I said, the main character in this novel is based on a real boy’s account of his traumas. Poor lad! Birch brings him back to life in the character of Jaffy in a way that is commendable. I won’t read this again (I hardly ever do re-read a book even though I often say I would) and I won’t recommend it without reservations. I’ll be interested to see how it does in the Man and I will read her next book as well. Carol Birch has just gone on my reading list.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Friday, September 16, 2011
Caribou Island by David Vann
I don't know if I was influenced by my first David Vann novel Legend of a Suicide but I waited to start Caribou Island until I had a whole day to devote to this book. I remembered having to put down Legend at one point and feeling like I was walking around with a chain wrapped around my leg dragging something heavy behind me. I knew that book was waiting for me at home and I knew I had been foolish to ignore it for more than a few minutes. Legend rewarded me greatly for not leaving it lying fallow for long.
Caribou Island started out with a silent scream. There was a tension like a wire vibrating in the wind, not stopping any part of the world but distracting, there in the background. And, again, I didn't know if I was predetermining a disaster or if Vann was just this clever. There was a great little story happening in Alaska, a place I am familiar with. I spent some time there so I know the colours, the cold, the wet, the moss, the wood. I fit into his fictional world very well. But still there was that damned humming coming from somewhere, not distracting me enough away from the story but always there.
This is a story of ordinary people. They are flawed like all of us. But they are living in a dramatic landscape that serves the purpose of overwhelming their petty foibles – snow that locks them into inaction, storms that keep them still and inactive, summer mosquitoes that distract them from their thoughts of leaving. So they settle for less than they are worthy of. They live lives of incompleteness and dissatisfaction. David Vann is an expressionist in the best way. He describes the landscape, the inhospitable north, and the ordinary, everyday crap better than most. I'm not going to tell you what happens in this book and I don't want to spoil the wonder of reading it for the first time but I have to share a few lines that, I hope, will tempt you.
“She always imagined the opposite: her mother in a fit of passion, distraught at losing her husband to another woman, unable to imagine her life without him. But what if she simply hadn't felt anything anymore, after losing everything? That was a new possibility, something Irene couldn't have guessed. And it felt dangerous. You could end up there without having noticed the transition at all.”
“Without her footsteps, no sound. No wind, no moving water, no bird, no other human. This bright world. The sound of her heart, the sound of her own breath, the sound of her own blood in her temples, those were all she would hear. If she could make those stop, she could hear the whole world.”
I guess I have a Kantian-like hubris because I want everyone to love what I love. I often don't take personal preferences into consideration when it comes to literature. I argue (often alone, in my head) with people who don't enjoy the books that I think are essential to being a human being. So, for this book view I will leave it at this – I loved this book.
Caribou Island started out with a silent scream. There was a tension like a wire vibrating in the wind, not stopping any part of the world but distracting, there in the background. And, again, I didn't know if I was predetermining a disaster or if Vann was just this clever. There was a great little story happening in Alaska, a place I am familiar with. I spent some time there so I know the colours, the cold, the wet, the moss, the wood. I fit into his fictional world very well. But still there was that damned humming coming from somewhere, not distracting me enough away from the story but always there.
This is a story of ordinary people. They are flawed like all of us. But they are living in a dramatic landscape that serves the purpose of overwhelming their petty foibles – snow that locks them into inaction, storms that keep them still and inactive, summer mosquitoes that distract them from their thoughts of leaving. So they settle for less than they are worthy of. They live lives of incompleteness and dissatisfaction. David Vann is an expressionist in the best way. He describes the landscape, the inhospitable north, and the ordinary, everyday crap better than most. I'm not going to tell you what happens in this book and I don't want to spoil the wonder of reading it for the first time but I have to share a few lines that, I hope, will tempt you.
“She always imagined the opposite: her mother in a fit of passion, distraught at losing her husband to another woman, unable to imagine her life without him. But what if she simply hadn't felt anything anymore, after losing everything? That was a new possibility, something Irene couldn't have guessed. And it felt dangerous. You could end up there without having noticed the transition at all.”
“Without her footsteps, no sound. No wind, no moving water, no bird, no other human. This bright world. The sound of her heart, the sound of her own breath, the sound of her own blood in her temples, those were all she would hear. If she could make those stop, she could hear the whole world.”
I guess I have a Kantian-like hubris because I want everyone to love what I love. I often don't take personal preferences into consideration when it comes to literature. I argue (often alone, in my head) with people who don't enjoy the books that I think are essential to being a human being. So, for this book view I will leave it at this – I loved this book.
Saturday, September 3, 2011
The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan
Simile – noun – a figure of speech in which two unlike things are explicitly compared, as in “she is a rose”.
Lots and lots of similes – nouns – distracting and annoying, as in “similes are like mosquitoes because they buzz around you and you want them to go away”.
OK – there is my stubborn opinion and prejudice again. I can't help it. When something annoys me, well, it just annoys me. It just makes me crazy. The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan was a little, no, a lot like that – too many similes amongst other things.
I know, I watch the ABC's First Tuesday Book Club too, and most of them enjoyed it and found it intellectually stimulating. I agreed with them for the first few pages. Interesting character in Jacob Marlowe and great name for a sophisticated, intelligent werewolf. I assumed he was handsome, well dressed, well read and clever. He has an offsider who is willing to go to vast lengths to make sure he survives, a vampire clan after him, a man who has enlisted an army to kill all occult phenomena especially werewolves, and a Lone Rangerette who wants to save him for her own villainous reasons. There is someone else who enters late in the piece but we'll keep that a secret just in case you want to give this one a go. Whatever else I am, I am not a spoiler of surprises – I know how to keep my mouth shut.
As I was saying, in the beginning I thought this was going to be a great read. Full of Kant-like philosophies on the meaning and meaninglessness of life right alongside bodice ripping sex scenes and descriptions of wolf-eating-human scenes. Not for the squeamish. But pretty soon I felt like I didn't know what I was reading. Is this a dime-store paperback werewolf story or a treatise on the value of life? The dichotomy was too much for this supernatural loving reader. Nope, didn't cut it.
Now, I have been happy with Sookie Stackhouse silly vamp stories (Charlaine Harris needs to give it up though because now they are just getting stupid) or the deeper Sergei Lukyanenko vampire novels. I have also loved some philosophical novels – Rand, Orwell, Woolf (no pun intended), Tolstoy – but Duncan gets the two confused and by mid book you can feel it. Which is it going to be? Unfortunately neither ends up working very well. The flow is not there. One minute you are in the adventure, sex and murder and the next you are reading a diatribe (with lots of similes) on the longing and disappointment and the regrets of a life long lived.
Werewolves live two lives – one as a savage beast and one as an ordinary walking-around person. Duncan writes as if he has two persona as well but I didn't know which one to believe and unfortunately neither came across as very authentic. This book was written to be a movie script right from the start. In fact there was even some music written to read the novel by - http://www.antiquebeat.co.uk/thelastwerewolf/ - and it's been done before so many times. The unhappy outsider who...no, I have to stop there or I'll give it away. Just think Blade meets Kate Beckinsale. Even the last chapter feels like a Sarah Connor voice over.
Lots and lots of similes – nouns – distracting and annoying, as in “similes are like mosquitoes because they buzz around you and you want them to go away”.
OK – there is my stubborn opinion and prejudice again. I can't help it. When something annoys me, well, it just annoys me. It just makes me crazy. The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan was a little, no, a lot like that – too many similes amongst other things.
I know, I watch the ABC's First Tuesday Book Club too, and most of them enjoyed it and found it intellectually stimulating. I agreed with them for the first few pages. Interesting character in Jacob Marlowe and great name for a sophisticated, intelligent werewolf. I assumed he was handsome, well dressed, well read and clever. He has an offsider who is willing to go to vast lengths to make sure he survives, a vampire clan after him, a man who has enlisted an army to kill all occult phenomena especially werewolves, and a Lone Rangerette who wants to save him for her own villainous reasons. There is someone else who enters late in the piece but we'll keep that a secret just in case you want to give this one a go. Whatever else I am, I am not a spoiler of surprises – I know how to keep my mouth shut.
As I was saying, in the beginning I thought this was going to be a great read. Full of Kant-like philosophies on the meaning and meaninglessness of life right alongside bodice ripping sex scenes and descriptions of wolf-eating-human scenes. Not for the squeamish. But pretty soon I felt like I didn't know what I was reading. Is this a dime-store paperback werewolf story or a treatise on the value of life? The dichotomy was too much for this supernatural loving reader. Nope, didn't cut it.
Now, I have been happy with Sookie Stackhouse silly vamp stories (Charlaine Harris needs to give it up though because now they are just getting stupid) or the deeper Sergei Lukyanenko vampire novels. I have also loved some philosophical novels – Rand, Orwell, Woolf (no pun intended), Tolstoy – but Duncan gets the two confused and by mid book you can feel it. Which is it going to be? Unfortunately neither ends up working very well. The flow is not there. One minute you are in the adventure, sex and murder and the next you are reading a diatribe (with lots of similes) on the longing and disappointment and the regrets of a life long lived.
Werewolves live two lives – one as a savage beast and one as an ordinary walking-around person. Duncan writes as if he has two persona as well but I didn't know which one to believe and unfortunately neither came across as very authentic. This book was written to be a movie script right from the start. In fact there was even some music written to read the novel by - http://www.antiquebeat.co.uk/thelastwerewolf/ - and it's been done before so many times. The unhappy outsider who...no, I have to stop there or I'll give it away. Just think Blade meets Kate Beckinsale. Even the last chapter feels like a Sarah Connor voice over.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht
There are few books that I have loved from page one all the way to the end. David Mitchell is one that comes to mind immediately. I absolutely know that as soon as I open one of his novels I will be in an altered state for as long as the book lasts. Jane Eyre is another. Annie Proulx. Alice Munro.
The Tiger's Wife is one of those that took me by the hand immediately and led me into a world that was sumptuous and ripe with story telling and adventure. I would have loved to have been sitting around the fire at night, knitting with my sisters, listening to someone like Juliet Stevenson reading this story to me. Maybe with Stephen Fry reading the Grandfather bits. This is an amazing first novel (somehow I had to say that even though this girl could have been writing for years and just has not had anything else published! I don't want to jinx her or put that second-novel curse on her!) Tea Obreht is a young woman with an amazing talent for holding a rapt audience with words written on a page. The Tiger's Wife won the 2011 Orange Prize and is well deserved.
There are three stories in this novel all centring around the narrator's grandfather. The setting is in the Balkans from seventy-odd years ago to today. One story is about the Grandfather and the copy of Kipling's Jungle Book that he carries around in his coat pocket. It is a wonderful book full of awe and if you haven't read it, I recommend that you do. The second story is about a man who cannot die and has seemingly chance meetings with the Grandfather at different points in his life. The third is about the tiger's wife who is a deaf girl forced to live in unhappy circumstances in the village where the grandfather grew up in. Each story stands on its own and each is intertwined with the others.
I think I could wax on emotionally about this novel for quite a few more paragraphs but I won't. I am taking a 'writing short narratives' course at university this semester and I am learning how to say less more effectively. So...
Read this book, please. You will thank me later and I will write you a very long 'your welcome' letter and we can spend months emailing back and forth on the merits and joys of The Tiger's Wife. For now, just do yourself a great favour and read this book.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Vampires and Weres and Telepaths Ho Hum
In a few weeks I will be deconstructing poetry and deciphering narrative so I wanted to fill myself with as much silly and fun reading as I can right now. Like filling up on junk food before going to the health spa. So my light and fluffy choice for holiday reading involved vampires and lycans. I read both Laurell K Hamilton's new Anita Blake book Hit List and Charlaine Harris's new Sookie Stackhouse book Dead Reckoning. Neither was very satisfying.
Hamilton had backed herself into a corner with the uber-evil dead coming after Anita so she spent the whole book with the lesser interesting characters killing them off. Ho Hum. And Harris has lost the fun - it was all blood and murder and very little sex and romp. Ho Hum. Someone new needs to start up with that innocent good fun of first love.
And I need to read something with a little more substance, I guess. I could finish Maugham's Of Human Bondage which I was loving reading (don't know why that got put down?) or I could start my first Patrick White book, or I could finish Game of Thrones or start Truth by Peter Temple. I have over 100 books in my library that I haven't read yet. I don't really know which to pick next I just know it won't be another Ho Hum vampire story.
Hamilton had backed herself into a corner with the uber-evil dead coming after Anita so she spent the whole book with the lesser interesting characters killing them off. Ho Hum. And Harris has lost the fun - it was all blood and murder and very little sex and romp. Ho Hum. Someone new needs to start up with that innocent good fun of first love.
And I need to read something with a little more substance, I guess. I could finish Maugham's Of Human Bondage which I was loving reading (don't know why that got put down?) or I could start my first Patrick White book, or I could finish Game of Thrones or start Truth by Peter Temple. I have over 100 books in my library that I haven't read yet. I don't really know which to pick next I just know it won't be another Ho Hum vampire story.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
The Wreckage by Michael Robotham
Usually when I write a review of a book I try to be a bit cheeky, a bit funny, a bit clever. I think a book report is not a very interesting way to talk about a piece of art. Sometimes the books are high art and sometimes kids drawings on the fridge, but art all the same. I like to spice things up with witty words and clever repartees.
This review will not be silly or smart. I'm not going to search for the right words or try to make you laugh. I approached Michael Robotham's new book The Wreckage with a reading experience in mind. I loved his last book Bleed for Me and wrote a little review of it a few months ago. It was a great adventure full of delicious suspense and an all around rollicking good mystery. The Wreckage started out the same way. The flawed but loveable and probably redeemable protagonist – an ex-detective in London, Vincent Ruiz, has an exchange with a small young thief which turns out to be the beginning of a roller coaster of a ride involving corruption at it's highest level. At the same time Luca Terracini, a Pulitzer prized winning journalist in Baghdad, falls upon a story which becomes an obsession and extremely dangerous. These two stories follow their own paths until they intersect later in the book and work together to uncover a world-effecting diabolical plot.
The story is a serious lesson about the financial state of the world and the people who manipulate money and lives without any thought for future consequences. It is a true story. Well, it's fiction, but it is based on truth. The world is a screwed up place in some respects and the arse-holes who have contributed to that state need to be found out and corrected, severely.
The twists and turns, the characters, the story line, the descriptions – all of it is top notch in this book. Robotham doesn't put a pen-stroke wrong here. He has captured the feel of the heat in Iraq and the drizzle in London. He has made me love some of his characters and, without over-dramatising, abjectly fear others. I was cheering for the grit and determination of some and hoping for the downfall of others.
Robotham has written a book, which is a suspense-filled, attention-grabbing, tightly written crime novel, AGAIN! I loved reading it. It kept me glued – another sleepless night (thanks Michael, at my age it is getting harder to catch up on missed sleep) - and totally enthralled. I didn't see any of it coming. I have said before that this isn't my favourite genre to read but that I would read anything Robotham writes. Well, that promise still holds after finishing this book. It is a winner with a message. Wake up and smell the money laundering. It is affecting us little folk too.
I so recommend this book – no jokes, no puns, no kidding around. This is one of those serious moments when I think the rest of the naive world should read this story and discover just one of the dirty little secrets of the upper echelon of society – bankers, investors, politicians and war-mongers. But I don't want to tell you too much more – I don't want to Wreck the ending. (Sorry – couldn't resist!)
This review will not be silly or smart. I'm not going to search for the right words or try to make you laugh. I approached Michael Robotham's new book The Wreckage with a reading experience in mind. I loved his last book Bleed for Me and wrote a little review of it a few months ago. It was a great adventure full of delicious suspense and an all around rollicking good mystery. The Wreckage started out the same way. The flawed but loveable and probably redeemable protagonist – an ex-detective in London, Vincent Ruiz, has an exchange with a small young thief which turns out to be the beginning of a roller coaster of a ride involving corruption at it's highest level. At the same time Luca Terracini, a Pulitzer prized winning journalist in Baghdad, falls upon a story which becomes an obsession and extremely dangerous. These two stories follow their own paths until they intersect later in the book and work together to uncover a world-effecting diabolical plot.
The story is a serious lesson about the financial state of the world and the people who manipulate money and lives without any thought for future consequences. It is a true story. Well, it's fiction, but it is based on truth. The world is a screwed up place in some respects and the arse-holes who have contributed to that state need to be found out and corrected, severely.
The twists and turns, the characters, the story line, the descriptions – all of it is top notch in this book. Robotham doesn't put a pen-stroke wrong here. He has captured the feel of the heat in Iraq and the drizzle in London. He has made me love some of his characters and, without over-dramatising, abjectly fear others. I was cheering for the grit and determination of some and hoping for the downfall of others.
Robotham has written a book, which is a suspense-filled, attention-grabbing, tightly written crime novel, AGAIN! I loved reading it. It kept me glued – another sleepless night (thanks Michael, at my age it is getting harder to catch up on missed sleep) - and totally enthralled. I didn't see any of it coming. I have said before that this isn't my favourite genre to read but that I would read anything Robotham writes. Well, that promise still holds after finishing this book. It is a winner with a message. Wake up and smell the money laundering. It is affecting us little folk too.
I so recommend this book – no jokes, no puns, no kidding around. This is one of those serious moments when I think the rest of the naive world should read this story and discover just one of the dirty little secrets of the upper echelon of society – bankers, investors, politicians and war-mongers. But I don't want to tell you too much more – I don't want to Wreck the ending. (Sorry – couldn't resist!)
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Books are my Constant
What is it that witches call their cats? Familiars - that's it. Books are my familiars. I am a bit of a restless soul. One month all I want to do is knit socks – I'll knit four pairs and post them off before the thirty days are up. Next month I'll be in a sewing frenzy – sewing aprons for all my friends. Next I will be completely besotted by chocolate and I will cook 15 chocolate desserts and all of the people who usually just put up with me are, suddenly, my best friends. I'm exaggerating just a little but I do switch crafting and cooking loyalties at the drop of a calendar.
Books are the one thing that I never give up – that I never want to change. I do change genres and moods but I always have at least one book to read.
I have all my books in my bedroom. I don't necessarily want them in there but that's where they live. I can't kick them out. They are comfortable there. They wink at me as I walk by. I fondle them on a daily basis. They are the last thing I see as I close my eyes at night. They aren't my friends – they are my refuge.
When I feel that wanderlust creeping up on me, I pick up a book. When I get the urge to start looking in the rentals in Maui, I pick up a book. When I think I can't stand it all one more minute, I find a book to help me. I hardly ever get bored. I have books to read.
I have a restless mind too. I need to learn something every day. If I have had a routine day at work I need to come home and learn something. Usually from a book. I have books about maps, which fascinate me. I have geographic atlases and historical atlases. (Is that how you spell the plural of atlas?) I love planning trips down rivers in Europe or on trains through Russia.
I have cookbooks, craft books – mostly knitting but I am building up my quilting collection – which I never tire of. I have architecture books that can keep me entertained for hours. I have gardening books which I hardly ever look at but when I do, I love planning what I will do with my backyard. I have a collection of Vogue Entertaining, Rachel Ray and Cooks Illustrated magazines that I wander through often.
If I am not watching TV or a movie, if I am not cooking or sleeping, if I am not performing my nightly dance - I am reading something. I know I have said this before but I am not myself if I don't have a book. Even if I probably won't be reading it in the next couple hours I still carry one with me. What if I have to sit still for a few minutes? What if my friend is running late? What if I find myself in a park on a bench in the sun? I have had quiet un-reading moments, but not many.
Books are my familiars and I am sure that when I die - I will be able to take my favourites with me.
Books are the one thing that I never give up – that I never want to change. I do change genres and moods but I always have at least one book to read.
I have all my books in my bedroom. I don't necessarily want them in there but that's where they live. I can't kick them out. They are comfortable there. They wink at me as I walk by. I fondle them on a daily basis. They are the last thing I see as I close my eyes at night. They aren't my friends – they are my refuge.
When I feel that wanderlust creeping up on me, I pick up a book. When I get the urge to start looking in the rentals in Maui, I pick up a book. When I think I can't stand it all one more minute, I find a book to help me. I hardly ever get bored. I have books to read.
I have a restless mind too. I need to learn something every day. If I have had a routine day at work I need to come home and learn something. Usually from a book. I have books about maps, which fascinate me. I have geographic atlases and historical atlases. (Is that how you spell the plural of atlas?) I love planning trips down rivers in Europe or on trains through Russia.
I have cookbooks, craft books – mostly knitting but I am building up my quilting collection – which I never tire of. I have architecture books that can keep me entertained for hours. I have gardening books which I hardly ever look at but when I do, I love planning what I will do with my backyard. I have a collection of Vogue Entertaining, Rachel Ray and Cooks Illustrated magazines that I wander through often.
If I am not watching TV or a movie, if I am not cooking or sleeping, if I am not performing my nightly dance - I am reading something. I know I have said this before but I am not myself if I don't have a book. Even if I probably won't be reading it in the next couple hours I still carry one with me. What if I have to sit still for a few minutes? What if my friend is running late? What if I find myself in a park on a bench in the sun? I have had quiet un-reading moments, but not many.
Books are my familiars and I am sure that when I die - I will be able to take my favourites with me.
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