Alice's Readathon

Procrastination

2009-05-08T22:37:00.004+10:00

As another way of not working on my thesis, which is due in a mind-boggling short space of time, I thought I'd provide some brief reviews of non-thesis related books I've read this year. I mean, seeing as I won't be doing the Readathon properly this year and all. They'll be brief...

Gentlemen of the Road - Michael Chabon
Not my favourite of his, but it had some good bits. It's Chabon, how can it not have good bits? I still think "The Final Solution" is my favourite Chabon to date. Or maybe "The Yiddish Policeman's Union".

Gone Tomorrow - Lee Child
Jack Reacher is back, and he's still a total legend. Also, learned how to spot a suicide bomber. Also learned that if I actually DID spot a suicide bomber, I'm probably doomed. Liked this one much better than the one before ("Nothing to Lose"), which I think I mentioned ended a bit strangely.

Twilight and New Moon - Stephenie Meyer
Yes yes OK I confess, I read two of those vampire teen romance novels. And by golly they are really not that dissimilar to Mills and Boon. There was a lot of jaw clenching going on and plenty of erratic heartbeats and generalised gazing. Oh, and did I mention unresolved sexual tension? Great stuff. As a consequence of reading the books I also watched the filum, and developed a slight crush on the poor lad who plays Edward Cullen, who's young enough to be my - um - much younger brother. I've also started to develop a list of "Questions people never seem to get around to asking vampires", like:

So, like, what's the greatest gig you've ever seen in all your 600 years?
Did you ever meet Disraeli? What was he like?
Is there any substance to the rumour that aliens helped build Aztec temples?
So what happened to the Amber Room, already?
Do you guys go totally nuts when girls get their periods? (Sorry eww gross)

I suppose it's because everyone's too busy trying not to get bitten, or mooning around wishing their immortal beloved WOULD bite them so they could be together for ever and ever. But if I found a vegetarian vampire he/she and I would be having a long chat, let me tell you.

By the way, how much does Edward Cullen's room rock in that film?? NB This reaction clearly puts me in the "Enjoys 'Grand Designs' far too much for own good" age bracket.

Drood - Dan Simmons
I didn't get into this one as much as "The Terror", but still an enjoyable read-a-bit-before-bed novel. I will never be able to think of Wilkie Collins in the same light again though, the misogynist bastard!! Old Chas Dickens didn't pull up so well in that regard either!!

Is that really it? Crap. I want to read novels solid for a month. Gotta finish this thesis first though...

2009 MS Readathon begins soon!

2009-04-23T10:44:00.002+10:00

OK so the 2009 'thon is June 1-30. My thesis is due August 1. So unfortunately, Dear Readers, I won't really be able to do it justice this year!!

I hate to break the chain though, so I'll offer you the following options...

Pay me per word of thesis written
Pay me per boring glue article read
Pay me not to talk to you about my thesis
Just give me some money!!

A reminder that donations over $2 are tax deductible - I'll be able to give you a receipt.

I'll start bugging you soon...

Ancient Binding Media, Varnishes and Adhesives

2008-06-09T21:08:00.002+10:00

By L Masschelein-Kleiner

Alright so I know none of you out there will be reading this book anytime soon, unless you're also doing a thesis about the history of adhesives, but it's a book and I read it during the 'thon, so just dealio, OK??

This is actually a very useful little book, much better than that stupid one by Mills & White, "The Organic Chemistry of Museum Objects". Classification of materials MUCH more easy to follow; useful summaries of how various materials produced. Also, I finally have a definition of what "mucilage" is!! Hurrah!! (I'm not going to tell you what it is, in hopes that it will pique your interest enough to actually read my thesis - or at least a bit of it).

Diagrams not as good as McGee's, but ICCROM not known for the flashiness of their publications.

I don't have a nice picture of the cover to include so I'll put one of my glue bottles in here instead.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Northern Lights

2008-06-09T20:57:00.005+10:00

By Philip Pullman

The first in Pullman's "Dark Materials" trilogy, this book was made into a film recently, starring Michelle Pfeiffer as the evil person, which I haven't seen but I think I will get on on DVD so I can take a look. I liked it! I know, I know, it's one of those books for "young adults", but those young adult books are still some of my favourites. And, they're also quite easy to read because they aren't trying to be all post-modern or redefine the novel or anything.

The story is set in another kind of alternate reality world, a bit 19th century but where humans are born with "daemons", who seem to be little spirits that are attached to you for ever and can change their form to look like different animals. Cool - I want one!! I wouldn't mind a little mousie companion that could change into a tiger when I was cranky. (That is, they can keep changing until you hit puberty, when they decide on one form and stay that way. Apparently, the servant classes tend to have dogs as daemons. Who knew the class system and speciest stereotypes could even persist into fictional alternate realities??). Lyra is our young heroine, a bit of a bossy tomboy type growing up in an Oxford College. True to the best "young adult" fiction, Lyra has no parents around to bug her - only a bunch of Oxford dons. However, someone out there is kidnapping children, and soon Lyra is caught up in a gripping adventure. Liked it a lot - apparently there has been a lot of hoo-hah about this series because it is seen to be criticising the Church. I dunno, it didn't really occur to me while I was reading it, but then it wouldn't, would it??

Must buy the next in the series...only the edition with the nice linocut-style illustrations like above, though...oh yes, have to note that the wicked woman in this book has a daemon who takes the form of - a golden monkey!! (Ha HA!!! I told youse all they were trouble...).

Rating: 8 out of 10

McGee on Food & Cooking

2008-06-09T20:49:00.006+10:00

By Harold McGee

OK so I didn't read absolutely every word of this book, but it's over 800 pages and I reckon I read more than enough of them to equal a decently long novel. I'm actually reading it for my thesis, what with McGee being a pre-eminent food scientist and all, and it's so much more pleasurable to read than your average science textbook. Describing the science behind food - why does bread rise? Why should you start stocks with cold water? - McGee takes you not only through the science but also into some of the history, and this is a large part of its charm. Where else can you learn about why the outside of egg yolks turn yellow on boiling while also enjoying fantastic quotes like this one from Miss Leslie in 1857: “But to stir butter and sugar is the hardest part of cake making. Have this done by a manservant”. Quite - why didn't I think of that? Only bad point from my current perspective is that it's so easy to get distracted by other non-thesis related topics, like how to make cakes and how beer works. Also, nice diagrams!

Rating: 10 out of 10

The Yiddish Policeman's Union

2008-06-09T20:36:00.004+10:00

By Michael Chabon

Another lovely book from Michael Chabon, I think I actually liked this one better than "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay", which I read last year. This one's quite a bit shorter, and based in an alternate world where the Jewish people were sent to Alaska after World War I instead of Israel. Meyer Landsman is a policeman in the Jewish state of Sitka, who tries to solve the case of a murdered chess-playing junkie. Chabon has created a whole society, complete with Jewish gumshoe lingo (which I found a bit hard to get my head around, but no more than actual gumshoe lingo), a bit of sass, a brooding atmosphere and snappy dialogue. Minor quibble in the presence of chess, which I think annoys me because it turns up in quite a few novels as some kind of plot device, but handled here so much better than all the others. At least Landsman also hates chess. Go on, read it...reeaaaddd itttt...

Rating: 9 out of 10

Books wot I have started in 2008 but probably won't finish

2008-06-02T19:19:00.004+10:00

The Riddle of the Sands - Erskine Childers
It's not bad or anything, but I keep putting it down and reading something else instead. Maybe it's just got too much about tides and sandbars and water currents and other boating stuff in it. A young man accepts an invitation to join a friend on a sailing holiday in the Baltic. Set before WWI, apparently they discover a German plot to invade England, but I don't think I'd quite got to that bit yet (page 126). The characters are well drawn and all, but...maybe another time.

Gagged - Richard Asplin
This book is subtitled "A thriller with jokes" but I'm afraid I didn't find it very thrilling, and the jokes must have gone over my head. I read 82 pages too, so I did give it a reasonable innings - maybe suffered from "too many characters" syndrome, Lord knows I can't handle very many...anyway, it's something about people pitching new hit television sitcoms to other people, and someone got murdered (two people I think), and also there were some other people who were related to these people, and still others whose purpose I hadn't entirely discerned.

The Whisperer in Darkness - H P Lovecraft
This is a book of collected short stories - Lovecraft's "tales of mystery and the supernatural", and although I quite liked the three that I read, I didn't really feel the need to read any more of them, if you know what I mean. A bit samey? Might read one or two every so often when I feel like a dose of hellish black mires, troubled and dream-infested sleep, the distant baying of gigantic hounds and ruined and nameless cities. (PS If trying to pretend have read Lovecraft at parties, many of his stories feature the crazed Abdul Alhazred's ancient and forbidden text, the "Necronomicon" and the terrifying giant being "Cthulhu" - a "thing that cannot be described" but nevertheless has "flabby claws").

Books wot I have read in 2008

2008-05-30T14:40:00.003+10:00

Murder in Mesopotamia - Agatha Christie
Poirot is always enjoyable. Not quite as good as "the Murder of Roger Ackroyd", which is still my favourite Christie.

Running with scissors - Augusten Burroughs
If you ever feel your family life is screwed up, read this to be reassured that yours isn't so bad after all. I desperately wanted to see that "psychologist" end up in prison but no luck.

The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Liked this book a lot - a young girl is murdered and tries to tie up loose ends from beyond the grave. An interesting take on what heaven might be like, too.

The Big Ask - Shane Maloney
Can't go past good old Murray Whelan...

Something Fishy - Shane Maloney
Ditto. Do yourself a favour!

My Childhood - Gorky
Life in nineteenth-century Russia, beautifully told, will have to read more of Gorky.

The Act of Roger Murgatroyd - Gilbert Adair
A spoof of Agatha Christie I suppose but not really very good.

The Terror - Dan Simmons
Fantastic!! Loved it!! You gotta read this one!! Dan Simmons' version of what really happened to Franklin's lost Arctic expedition - it involves giant snow monsters and botulism. What more could you ask for?? Also I feel like now I yam an expert in Arctic exploration.

And Now You Can Go - Vendela Vida
A lovely quiet book about a woman who narrowly escapes being shot by someone looking to take himself out but who doesn't want to go out alone. Vida is one of the editors of "The Believer" magazine. An author I think is worth trying.

The Roaring of the Labyrinth - Clio Gray
I remember liking it while I was reading it but obviously not super memorable because I don't remember much about it now. I liked the somewhat agoraphobic "detective" character. Another novel with a mysterious title - don't really remember if I came to a decision about why it was called this. Certainly there are no actual labyrinths involved.

Nothing to Lose - Lee Child
Another Jack Reacher novel, God that man is fantastic. The citizens of a small town called "Despair" really give him the shits so he starts to do a little investigation of his own...bit of a strange ending though.

The Thin Man - Dashiell Hammet
Who knew it was possible to drink so much in one book (the characters, not me). It IS set in prohibition era New York, after all. Features one of the original "hardboiled" detectives of literature, Nick Charles, and his socialite girlfriend Nora. (I wonder if there are any official "softboiled" detectives out there?). The Thin Man is Charles Wyant, murder victim, who's case Charles is reluctantly drawn into. Snappy dialogue and lots of hotel rooms. (It took me a while to twig they were staying in hotels and that was why waiters etc kept turning up).

The Man Who was Thursday - G K Chesteron
Anarchists - gotta love them. Gabriel Syme is given the mission to infiltrate a dangerous group of anarchists (The Central Council of Anarchists, led by the mysterious Sunday) but things go a little awry...I liked it a lot. Lots of good quotes too, which I suppose young anarchists might like to write on toilet walls. (Maybe).

Kingdom Come - JG Ballard
If you really hate shopping malls this might be the book for you. Can't say it grabbed me much - I kept rolling my eyes and all the completely unsubstantiated things the main character would presume about other characters. All the characters seemed very nebulous, samey and inconsistent and Ballard beats you about the head with his rampant consumerism = boredom = sick civilisation = people dying to do something mad and violent message. I get it, already! Nearly gave up on this one several times.

Special topics in calamity physics - Marisha Pessl
Loved it, if my eyes had allowed it I would have read it start to finish. Best book I have read this year, apart from "The Terror". Main character Blue van Meer and her genius Dad move to Stockton, North Carolina for her final year of school and she discovers some very strange things about her new friends. Hmm...just found a website full of comments from people who hated it. Be warned...(it IS over 500 pages long, I suppose...)

Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
Not quite as good as Gaiman's "American Gods" (start with this if you haven't read any Gaiman before) but still pretty good. Apparently this story started off as a TV series, which Gaiman adapted into a novel. Tells the story of Richard Mayhew, who, after helping a young homeless girl on the street (called "Door") ceases to exist in "London Above" and must negotiate the world of "London Below", which normal Londoners can't even see.

2008 MS Readathon begins

2008-05-30T14:37:00.002+10:00

The 2008 MS Readathon runs from 1-30 June.

I'm probably going to put in a pretty pathetic effort this year, because I have to knuckle down and write some thesis chapters. But reviews will still be posted here - and maybe I'll cheat and write a few words about other books I've already read this year. Just in case you're looking for something to read...

Life of Pi

2007-07-01T11:39:00.000+10:00

By Yann Martel
In the beginning I found this book irritating; a character announces sententiously that “this is a story that will make you believe in God”, and the main character, Pi (short for Piscene) is a little righteous in his unwavering belief in God and his dismissal of agnostics and atheists alike. My hackles went up, me being a card-carrying atheist and all.

Pi, who grows up in his father’s zoo in Pondicherry, India, is also righteous on the matter of zoos, and this also made me cranky. Sure, animals can be content in a well-managed zoo enclosure and zoos are important for preserving endangered species, in particular, but he seemed to have no concept that animals could be bored – food and shelter isn’t everything. Also, he assumes all animals are the same - Pi describes cases where zoo animals have had the opportunity to escape and haven’t budged, or have returned to their cages after a short experience of the wider world. I once left my mouse cage door open all night; out of 11 mice only two bothered to escape. Some animals are just bolder or more curious or more active, whereas their brothers and sisters might be more cautious or afraid.

Listen to me, the animal behaviour expert. Where was I? As a Hindu, Pi becomes interested in other religions in his early teens and ends up becoming a baptised Christian and a Muslim as well. This, unsurprisingly, appalls the local priest, pandit and imam when they all meet (by chance) in the town market and congratulate Pi’s parents on their son’s piety and then realise he has been worshipping “at the altar” (so to speak) of all three on a regular basis.

This made me quite fond of Pi. It was interesting to read Pi’s impressions of two other religions, when compared to the Hindu faith – how ridiculously fallible yet reassuringly human Jesus Christ seemed when compared with Hindu gods (I mean, he walks places! What God does that??); Islam’s physicality of worship and its connection with the earth (worship outside!). I have no idea whether Yann Martel is Hindu himself (he was born in Spain so it seems unlikely) so I don’t know how much we can believe in the authenticity of these perceptions, but Pi’s beliefs are engaging - in Gandhi’s words “All religions are true” and in Pi’s own, “I just want to love God”.

This all reminded me of the CS Lewis’ Narnia series, where in The Last Battle the “good” god Aslan reveals that if you do good things in the name of the “bad” god, Tash, you are really doing them for Aslan, and vice versa. In other words, it doesn’t matter who’s name you are worshipping or the manner in which you are worshipping, it is your actions that count in the end. The Narnia books are often held in deep suspicion as being sneakily religious, like they were the literary form of a Mormon doorknocker, but I can testify that in at least one case they helped make an atheist. How silly it seemed to me that a religion should declare that there is only one right way to worship! If there is a God, or gods, it seems pretty unfair to condemn the majority of humanity to hell (or wherever) merely for using the wrong name.

I seem to have got distracted again. Anyway, the book picked up for me from there – Pi’s family decides to move to Canada during the political upheavals of the 1970s and arrange to sell all their animals, many to zoos in North America. They board a cargo ship, with their animals, and set sail. The ship sinks, and Pi finds himself on a life raft with a wounded zebra, a hyena, an orang-utan and very large Royal Bengal tiger.

The zebra, hyena and orang-utan don’t last very long; it is only Pi’s knowledge of animal behaviour that allows him to set up an uneasy truce with the tiger. This part of the book is quite lovely, even though it portrays suffering – in particular, Pi’s descriptions of the sea life he observes. It actually made me want to be adrift in a lifeboat, which I know is silly. (Also I would love to be adrift with a tiger, even though that is really silly, because it would eat me).

So I came round to this book in the end. There were some interesting philosophical bits, some thoughts are provoked (obviously, looking back at my previous rants!) and a mean twist at the end. (I won’t give it away for those who haven’t read it). In the end Martel seems to want you to think about what you want to believe is true – Christian, Muslim, Hindu or atheist – rather than what there is proof for.

Rating: 7 out of 10

The Postman Always Rings Twice

2007-07-01T11:34:00.000+10:00

By James M Cain
Initially, and as Hercule Poirot would say (sort of), I didn’t buy the psychology in this one – our protagonist, Frank (I won’t call him a hero), rocks up at a diner, manipulates the boss into giving him a job, fancies the missus (Cora), forces himself on her within a short space of time and bites her lip badly enough to make it bleed, and yet she appears to fancy him back. She has, apparently, “lips that stuck out in a way that made me want to mash them in for her”. What the?! Surely Cora’s husband, Nick the Greek, must have been a total monster, if Frank is an attractive proposition?? Yet the only crimes she fingers her husband for is being “greasy”. (Not only are the main characters generally unpleasant, they are also racist! And sexist! Still, it was written in the 30s, I suppose).

After a while, though, I got used to the “psychology” of the characters, even though Frank is so repulsive - and Cora’s not exactly fabulous either. So I was in for the ride as Cora and Frank try twice to kill off Nick the Greek and then go through the inevitable court case and relationship problems. This is not a happily-ever-after story! There is some satisfaction, I suppose, in seeing them get their just desserts…

I haven’t seen either of the films upon which this is based, or even any of the other films based on Cain’s novels (e.g. Double Indemnity) but it is not hard to imagine them as films – they are quite visual, and the writing style very fast and punchy. It reminds me a bit of Psycho, where the person who gets killed in the shower is morally flawed, and the story follows her crime and ultimate downfall.

Incidentally there is no postman in this book, which is a tad confusing because I was imagining some kind of “Cape Fear” story with a psychopathic postman. In fact I don’t believe there are even any doorbells rung. I googled it and apparently the phrase “The Postman Always Rings Twice” is code for the general sentiment “What Goes Around Comes Around”. I wonder if Justin Timberlake ever considered an alternate title for his song??

Rating: 6 out of 10

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club

2007-06-30T13:56:00.000+10:00

By Dorothy Sayers
By Gad, it was such a relief to read this after “Let the Right One In”!! Yes, in Dorothy Sayers’ books there are actually characters that say “By Gad!”. If you already read Sayers books with gusto then you won’t need to read this review, unless you want to confirm your own righteousness. The Wimsey novels are kind of addictive and you just have to read them all. Unless, of course, you didn’t warm to Sayers’ detective hero, Lord Peter Wimsey, or if you find characters that say things like “By Gad!” deeply annoying. You might have guessed by now that I LOVE the Lord Wimsey novels. Admittedly, some are better than others – this is a strong one - but regardless I have yet to convince anyone else I know that these books are as fabulous as I think they are.

This novel begins with the death of General Fentiman, who is found in a chair by the fire at his club, the titular Bellona Club. Needless to say this shocks other club members, but it is supposed that he merely died of old age while reading the newspaper. Then it is discovered there are complications involving the will of his estranged sister, Lady Dormer, involving which of them died first. So our hero Wimsey is asked to investigate.

I thought I was reading a Wimsey novel I had previously overlooked, but I suspect I have read it before as I had strange premonitions about who did what that I couldn’t chalk up to simple cleverness. The nice thing about having a terrible memory for books you have read, though, is that you forget the words and phrasings, the small details, machinations, characterisations and convolutions of the plot, and so the pleasure of reading it for the second time is undiminished – augmented, even, as you can kid yourself that you must be cleverer than you really are because you think you know whodunnit.

Lord Peter Wimsey helped me through a rough patch once, so perhaps I am biased. Go on, give him a go – you know you want to! A word of advice, though – don’t start with The Five Red Herrings or Murder Must Advertise. These aren’t his best. The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club is classic Wimsey, though.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Let the Right One In

2007-06-30T13:53:00.000+10:00

By John Ajvide Lindqvist
Well there was no mistaking that this was a vampire story, because it says “A vampire love story”, right there on the cover! Unfortunately it is a rather sordid and gruesome vampire story (I know, I know – what should I expect??), devoid of any trace of hope or humour. (Unless you count the odd smirk about character names that sound like IKEA furniture). Unremittingly grim. Also it is written in that kind of style that forgoes proper sentences. Yes.

Set in Stockholm, our main character is Oskar, who is thirteen and bullied at school. Another child, Eli, and a man who Oskar assumes to be her father move in next door. People start being killed, gruesomely, which of course those foolish police assume is the work of a serial killer. Well, they're half right. So, who do you think the vampire is??

I don’t feel I have the energy to write much more about this – it was depressing. Every character’s relationships with everyone else were crappy. Everyone is unhappy, sad, deeply ashamed about some aspect of their lives, cruel, or all of the above. What can I say? These vampires aren’t the sexy doomed vampires of Anne Rice, or the trendy, sassy doomed vampires of Buffy, they are just doomed. Eli’s “Father”, Håkan, is a particularly revolting character, being a pedophile and all. Bleah. And seriously, what love story?? Still, this kind of realistic, gritty vampire novel might appeal to many readers.

I'd read Fangland instead. It’s not exactly a laugh a minute either, but there is something about it that lifts it out of the unrelenting gloom…

Rating: 5 out of 10

The Andromeda Strain

2007-06-30T13:49:00.000+10:00

By Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton must be a rich man. This book was written in 1969, and was followed fairly quickly by a a film version (involving lots of white lab coats, I’m told), and it seems barely a year has gone past since without some other Michael Crichton blockbuster on our screens or bookshelves.

Well, I’m pleased to report that The Andromeda Strain is a bit of a page-turner. A space probe returns to earth and is found by some unsuspecting civilians. It seems that the probe contains some kind of alien life form, because shortly after the unsuspecting civilians find the probe, they are all dead – so quickly they probably didn’t even have time to think something like “By Gad, that probe must have contained some alien life form!”. (It’s only a small town of about 50 or so, though; in a modern film version I imagine they’d up the body count). The government agents sent to retrieve the probe also die mysteriously, although not particularly gruesomely (the bug causes blood to clot almost instantly, so there are no bloody external hemorrhages from orifices or anything). This puts in motion the “Wildfire Protocol”, in which five specialists are called in to deal with the situation.

However, those smartypants at mission control who thought they’d thought of everything had missed a few tricks. They’d obviously never had to put together a Disaster Plan because one of the critical specialists was ill (busted appendix or something) and they had no back-up!! Maybe things work differently in top-secret government circles. Several other things went wrong during the response; the book is kind of written like a after-the-fact review of what went wrong with the plan - what us Disaster Planners like to call a “debriefing”, because it makes us feel important.

The Andromeda Strain has a kind of “old-time” feel about it, being a 60s jobbie and all, but not just because the technology described is so obviously now out-of-date. The old-time feel is also due to the pacing and the focus – like how even that gem of an action film, Die Hard, seems awfully slow to get going by today’s standards. By today’s standards, the Andromeda Strain didn’t feature nearly enough gruesome deaths, and the inevitable containment-field-broken-will-they-stop-the-self-destruct-bomb cliffhanger sequence was over remarkably quickly. Crichton spends a lot of time talking about the science of it all – how they set up Wildfire (hidden in a cornfield, no less! Were all those episodes of the X-files merely an homage to Andromeda??), why they set up the area, the design of Wildfire, the decontamination processes, what happens exactly when such and such occurs…it all lends to the aura of plausibility, but after a while I did wish for a bit less scientific justification of the plot and a few more acts of unsubstantiated derring-do. After all, these days all you have to do is have someone say something like “By Gad, Captain, some alien force has constructed a web of crippling anomalies!” and we don’t bat an eyelid. Those tricky crippling anomalies – they’ll get you every time!

Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Devils' Corner

2007-06-30T13:43:00.000+10:00

By Lisa Scottoline
I’m afraid I found this book quite dull. Really dull, in fact. So dull it gets my annual award for Crime Novel Least Likely to Inspire Me to Stay Up Past My Bedtime as well as my other annual award for Least Plausible and Least Interesting Love Story.

So why was this book so dull? It wasn’t badly written. It had a relatively good plot – at least, it wasn’t one of those ones about some shifty white-collar crime involving convoluted financial arrangements, which I always find particularly challenging to follow…no, I think it was because the characters weren’t terribly engaging. They got a bit better by the end of the book, but I didn’t really get a sense of our heroine ever being particularly interesting. Her love interest was silly, as I believe I have already inferred. Also, she had a very annoying way of interviewing suspects and witnesses and so on, which seemed to be essentially to bombard them with a long series of questions and not let them have any time to respond. No subtle Inspector Goran-type methods here!

Anyway, what happens? Our heroine, Vicki Allegretti, goes to meet a confidential informant about some gun-running but interrupts the murder of said confidential informant, and the theft of some very good quality cocaine. Also, her partner gets killed. So naturally she has to investigate, against the express wishes of her boss, of course. (I think Lisa Scottoline needs to read a bit of Jasper Fforde, to make her more aware of crime novel cliches). Ho-hum.

Rating: 4 out of 10

Star of the Sea

2007-06-30T13:41:00.000+10:00

By Joseph O’Connor
Really I picked up this book because it was on sale (only $3.95!) and because the cover blurb mentioned something about a monster stalking the decks of a ship, at night. So naturally I thought it would be about vampires. Really, there should be some kind of government inquiry into book jacket blurb writers because needless to say this book has nothing to do with vampires. OK, possibly I am obsessed with vampires, but what would you think the word “monster” is meant to represent, particularly when associated with “night”? (Apart from werewolves, maybe).

Lack of vampires not withstanding, this book was actually very absorbing. When I am trying to recommend a film to someone, I might say “I wouldn’t mind paying full price for that” or “Cheap Tuesday flick, man” or “Wait for it on video, bud” or just a bald “Don’t bother”. I think Star of the Sea classifies easily as a Cheap Tuesday book, possibly even a “Wouldn’t mind paying full price”, so feel free to ask for a lend of my copy.

The Star of the Sea is actually about the Irish potato famine. There are many characters involved, one of whom is a poor Irish peasant who has been appointed the task of murdering an Irish aristocrat on the trip over the Atlantic to America. Though the present-day plot is set on board, there are many flashbacks, in order to highlight who the characters are and how they got that way. It is very successful in showing the reality of the famine and how shocking it must have been; also the realities of travelling by ship back then and how yucky that must have been; also also some of the realities of immigration, and how enormous a decision this must be.

There is even a bit of post-modernism in there (I think it’s post-modernism, anyway, you post-modernists will have to tell me) where the aspiring author character despairs of writing a novel about the famine because it is impossible to write about something so terrible. And yet – we are reading a novel about the famine!! How post-modern.

The book is written as if it is a “piecing together of the facts”, well after the events occurred, and so is written from many different viewpoints and includes parts written as the Captain’s Log, unpublished memoirs or fiction by some of the characters (drawing heavily on actual factuals, of course) and so on. Also, in between each chapter the author has included an extract from letters written by Irish immigrants to the US. Chapters are subheaded things like “In which are sketched certain recollections of The Star of The Sea; the condition of her passengers and the evil which stalked among them”. (Seriously, stalking evil-doers? That can only mean vampires!). I found this all a bit of overkill and distracting from the story; I think it would have worked much better had the author left out all the frilly clever bits. All the chopping and changing made the story seem a bit overworked and diminished its credibility, rather than adding to it. I think the author did A Lot Of Research for this book and By Gad He Was Going To Use It All.

Still – it did make me stay up past my bedtime.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Clean Break

2007-06-20T22:43:00.000+10:00

By Val McDermid
I really really want to like McDermid’s books, because I heard her speak at an Adelaide Writers’ Festival once and she was fabulous. How many authors will admit that the reason they made their main character a journalist was because that was the author’s own area of expertise and they didn’t want to have to do any research?? But I’m afraid McDermid’s books just don’t do it for me.

I think Clean Break is the third novel of McDermid’s I’ve read, this one featuring her private eye heroine Kate Brannigan. Brannigan is trying to track down a stolen Monet (there’s a gang of art thieves on the loose! Very topical…) while simultaneously investigating a bit of industrial sabotage. She’s independent, tough and feisty, needless to say, and grappling with some relationship problems with her partner, Richard (a music reviewer). Sound familiar??

McDermid’s books are OK, but they don’t make me want to stay up way past my bedtime to find out what happens. Somehow the jaunty dialogue seems forced. Also, even though I suspect McDermid wrote these before the tough action chick was a bit of cliché, unfortunately the tough action heroine is becoming a bit of a cliché. Also also, and I mention this as advice to any budding crime writers out there, why do crime writers persist in describing their character’s outfits?? Maybe it’s because I’m not a fashion person, but they always sound terribly ugly, unless the crime is set in the nineteenth century or something, in which case I don’t mind reading about greatcoats and bonnets and things. I don’t care if our heroine is wearing tan jodhpur-style leggings, a cream linen collarless shirt and a chocolate brown jacket with a mandarin collar, so just leave it out, OK?

I know McDermid has a staunch fan base, particularly for her series featuring Kate Brannigan and another featuring journalist Lindsey Gordon (not to mention the books that the Wire in the Blood series was based on, featuring crime psychologist Tony Hill), so don’t necessarily be put off by my review. Give it a whirl – airplane reading, maybe.

Rating: 6 out of 10

The Vesuvius Club

2007-06-20T22:39:00.000+10:00

By Mark Gatiss
Well, I really quite enjoyed that. Mind you, I passed this book onto a friend straight after I’d finished, and she didn’t go for it at all – not gritty enough, apparently. So be warned.

This book is written by one of the people behind “The League of Gentlemen”, which was that simultaneously macabre, wicked, camp and occasionally disturbing show that was on the ABC a few years ago. So that should give you a bit of an idea about the style of this novel, although disappointingly there was no local store for local people featured in the book.

The Vesuvius Club introduces us to Lucifer Box, by day merely a devilishly handsome, charming and stylish painter and by night (and often also by day) a secret agent for Her Majesty’s government. (Or is that His Majesty’s government? It’s set in Edwardian times). Oh, and he’s also extremely vain, selfish and a general rake, not fussy about the gender of his conquests. (To quote Living Colour, everybody loves you when you’re bi). Box must investigate the mysterious deaths of some high-profile scientists, which lead him through the houses of fashionable London, some graveyards, some naughty clubs and eventually to the tunnels of Naples, nestled beneath Mount Vesuvius.

There were maybe a few too many unbelievable cliff hangers at the end (this isn’t a Beethoven symphony, after all!), but by and large quite an enjoyable novel. Cads make such attractive heroes. Isn’t that terrible?? Excellent holiday reading.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Fangland

2007-06-10T13:20:00.000+10:00

By John Marks
It’s been a long time since I read any horror, because, you know, me and horror don’t get along so well, so I’m not sure if I’m correct here, but I think this book might, well, be sneaking over into the horror genre. There are no ice picks involved, or chainsaws or people being skinned or anything (not directly, anyway) and the book cover doesn’t make use of dripping blood; the horror it contains is more of an intellectual quality - the horror that has been inflicted on real persons throughout the centuries.

Interestingly, also, Fangland is a post-9/11 horror story; the horror that was nearly 3000 people’s last moments (plus all the associated shock and emotional damage that was the survivors’) is woven into the narrative. I’ve only read one other book that was quite so directly a post-9/11 novel, Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close; and although I thought Foer’s book was excellent, I think Fangland was more effective at capturing what the events of that day did to the city of New York.

Fangland is a modern take on the vampire legend, and at the start I thought it was going to be a bit too clever for itself, but I ended up really quite liking it. I will look for other novels by John Marks. It is set (for a good part of the action) in the offices of a television current affairs program (The Hour) in downtown New York, located just next door to the holes that exist where the World Trade Centre used to stand. The rest of the story is set in Romania, as we follow what happens to one Evangeline Harker, who has been sent there by her bosses at The Hour to assess the possibility of a story on an Eastern European crime lord called Ion Torgu.

The story is told from the viewpoints of a number of different characters; for me it was Evangeline’s voice that read best, challenging my pet theory that it is difficult for men to write convincing female characters and vice versa. (I can’t really test the vice versa; male characters written by women often seem quite convincing to me, but what would I know? You blokes will have to confirm/deny). Not all of the book works for me and there are, to paraphrase the C&C Music Factory, a few bits that made me go “Hmmm” - such as the scene in which Evangeline uses her sexuality to fend off an attack by Torgu. To paraphrase the evil Mexicans in For a Fistful of Dollars, “ehhhh??” I suppose at least it wasn’t the same old “vampires are sooo sexy” thing that most authors peddle. But overall, the book was moving and chilling…if you feel in the mood for a vampire novel, definitely read this one over Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Silas Marner

2007-06-10T13:18:00.000+10:00

By George Eliot
It’s been a while since I read Middlemarch; I remember enjoying it immensely (a good book to read while travelling on trains through the UK, incidentally) but had forgotten why. Reading Silas Marner reminded me – George Eliot takes you right into a community, building up the many characters and their foibles, illuminating the customs and beliefs of their society, and when she depicts foolishness, weakness or error, she does it kindly.

Silas Marner, a weaver, was brought up in “Lantern Yard”, an unspecified religious community, but is banished after a “friend” sets him up for stealing the church’s moolah and steals his chick. Marner makes his way to Raveloe, where he is not the most popular of residents, as the pain of his betrayal and banishment has made him a bitter and withdrawn person. He hoards his gold, earned through long hours on the loom, which is the only precious thing to him. So when it’s stolen, he kinda goes to pieces. Through chance, however, a young orphaned child turns up on his doorstep, bringing about his personal salvation. (He names the child Hephzibah, after his mother and sister; when it is noted that this is a bit of heavy duty name for a child he says, don’t worry, she will be called Eppie for short. I don’t know why I feel the need to note this – it’s just such a terrible name!! NB Apologies to all people called Eppie out there).

I have obviously been watching too many television soaps, because I expected many more twists and turns and disappointments and much more anguish before the finally happy end of the novel. Apparently this was Eliot’s favourite of her own work; I found it enjoyable and I love Eliot’s gentle style; but overall the story was a little bit “so what”. To channel the Queen for a moment, one isn’t always in the mood for a bit of nineteenth century novel. But if you are, this is a nice one.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Fight Club

2007-06-10T13:14:00.000+10:00

By Chuck Palahniuk
I did a bit of research on Wiki after I finished this book, because I wondered if it had ever been banned anywhere – it does read like a bit of a primer for civil disobedience, after all, and that usually gets the book-banners’ blood boiling. Waiters spitting (and worse) into restaurant food, selling soap made from liposuction fat to the ladies who had the liposuction (at outrageous prices), bare knuckle fist-fight clubs, blowing things up…this book had it all. I can also easily imagine the society depicted in Fight Club appealing greatly to the disenfranchised, angry, despairing, bored and/or lonely – the type of person who can often end up in a cult. As Hercule Poirot would say, the psychology of the book was right.

Well Wikipedia didn’t mention any attempts to ban the book (or the subsequent film), although Fight Club has attracted some criticism for its violent nature, suggestions of misogyny etc. (Incidentally, my own inbuilt misogyny detector was not activated while reading this book). The Wiki entry on Fight Club did indicate, however, that it has generated rather a lot of deep and meaningful essays and critiques. (Arrrgh). To quote Wiki, “[Fight Club] is now widely considered to be a defining work and an uncompromising critique of humanity's loss of identity through mass consumerism.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_club). Oo-er.

Interestingly, the fight club society that evolves in the book is made up entirely of men. I’m not sure if this makes me prey to gender stereotypes, but I don’t think I would have found it believable if there were lots of women joining up to bash each other’s faces in and obey ridiculous rules unquestioningly. Tell me if I’m falling prey to gender stereotypes, won’t you? I'd hate to fall prey to gender stereotypes...

Fight Club is a curious book – definitely worth reading – it feels like it’s being written by someone with ADD (or possibly extreme sleep deprivation, which is what our unnamed hero suffers from), but as you get towards the end and it all comes together…geez! I mean, I didn’t see that coming! I think Chuck Palahniuk is a bit clever.

Also Fight Club has the rare commendation of being a book that invites comment by total strangers on public transport. I was only on about page 5 when a bloke on the train started telling me what an awesome book it was; I can only recall two other books inviting comment from strangers, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 and one of Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey novels.

I think I’m going to give this book a 10, even though I didn’t quite like it as much as my other favourites, but it was just so well done. A dangerous book!!

Rating: 10 out of 10

2007 MS Readathon begins!

2007-06-06T16:42:00.000+10:00

The 2007 MS Readathon runs throughout June. I'm not aiming to read quite as many books this year, maybe about 12. Stay posted for reviews! To learn more about MS, go to www.msreadathon.com.au.

archy & mehitabel (2006)

2006-06-12T18:42:00.000+10:00

By Don Marquis
A lovely little book that I squeezed in right at the end of the ‘thon. From what I understand, this semi-poetry used to appear as columns in an American newspaper, and is purportedly written by Archy the cockroach, a former poet reborn in a more lowly form. As Archy typed this verse by jumping up and down on the keys of a typewriter, there are no punctuation or capital letters. (He couldn’t reach the shift key).

This volume is a collection of Archy’s works, about his life as a poet-turned-cockroach (and emerging lobbyist for insect rights around the world) and about the life of Mehitabel, an alley cat who was actually Cleopatra in a former life. Mehitabel’s life motto is “toujours gai” (“always gay” - I checked with someone who knows) and also, quite often, “wotthehell”.

This books is funny and moving, particularly in the accounts of Mehitabel's adventures. (Maybe that is just because I am a cat person). Although he wrote many wiser and more profound words than this, I will leave you all with one of my favourite of Archy’s “certain maxims”:

The honey bee is sad and cross
And wicked as a weasel
And when she perches on you boss
She leaves a little measle

See you next Readathon!!!

Rating: 7 out of 10

A Gentle Plea for Chaos (2006)

2006-06-12T18:34:00.000+10:00

By Mirabel Osler
This is a book about gardening, but the author seems to have applied the idea of chaos to her writing also. The book is divided into five chapters, one each about trees, water, stones/wall, roses and bulbs, but it seemed to me that the chapters didn’t necessarily stick exclusively to their theme, making the whole book a bit of a jumble. The more enjoyable parts of this book talk about Osler’s own garden (acres of land somewhere in England) and how it came into being, interdispersed with musings on gardeners and gardening in general.

I became bored by Osler’s repeated “pleas for chaos” in gardens. (She really really doesn’t like neat gardens, gardens with dirt spaces between neat rows of plants and anything else that smacks of an even vaguely anal retentive personality). I mean, each to their own, I reckon – and Osler seemed to look down her nose at anyone who didn’t happen to share her gardening philosophy. (There were some quite snide remarks about clubs of little old ladies that visit open gardens, the "plant collectors"). Live and let live, you snotty cow!!

I haven’t had much gardening experience myself, but I won’t let that stop me putting in my two bits about Osler’s own gardening style – because she hates dirt showing between plants, she plants very densely, and then wonders why things don’t work. She despises those who sit down with pencil and paper to plan their gardens before they plant (presumably this is not organic enough or something) and then again wonders why things don't work. I mean, derrr.

Maybe I just wasn’t in the right mood for this book. Maybe I don’t know enough about plants to fully enjoy a book about gardening that has no pictures.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Down and out in Paris and London (2006)

2006-06-12T18:31:00.000+10:00

By George Orwell
Another book by my new literary hero, detailing his actual experiences of being poor in Paris and London. Should be mandatory reading for anyone who reckons that people who beg on the street make a good living! Also by anyone who wants to be discouraged from eating in restaurants or staying in hotels. A very interesting read, in Orwell’s simple, succinct style about which I have raved previously.

I might have to take Orwell off his pedestal though, and just place him near it instead – undoubtedly Orwell was a smartypants and a fabulous writer, but my ever-alert misogyny detector thought it detected a hint of misogyny. Near the end of the book, Orwell notes that the majority of homeless poor in England are male, and surmises that a woman who has fallen on hard times “can at least attach herself to some man”, which seemed a little over-simplified to me. I don’t suppose Orwell spent any time hanging out with women forced to work in brothels or live in the homes for unmarried pregnant women – although technically they do have a roof over their head, I wonder if he would really think their situation was a desirable alternative? (Orwell recounts at one point a particularly disgusting tale told to him by someone he met in Paris, about a girl who had evidently been sold into sexual slavery).

Nevertheless, this book is a fascinating account of how the poor of London and Paris survived at that time – I wonder if much has changed?

Rating: 7 out of 10

Sputnik Sweetheart (2006)

2006-06-04T21:51:00.000+10:00

By Haruki Murakami
I don’t suppose you’re really supposed to know precisely what’s going on in any of Murakami’s novels, but just once, I’d like to know FOR SURE what happened. I nearly had this one nailed, but then in the last couple of pages he threw in a metaphysical curveball (or something) and my brain missed. The confusion is part of the charm of Murakami’s writing, but every so often I have a sneaking suspicion that the author has no idea what’s going on either and so purposely leaves everything vague and uncertain at the end, correctly assuming that the reader will assume that they are an idiot if they don’t get it.

Sputnik Sweetheart is narrated by K, who loves Sumire, who unfortunately for K falls in love with Miu, who in turn isn’t really capable of loving anyone. (Read the book to find out why). In other words, unrequited love double jeopardy. I’ve read three of Murakami’s books now, and I think I see a recurring theme – people who somehow manage to split their personality between this world and some other place (e.g. ‘the other side’). What this other place is supposed to be I’m never to sure about, and in Sputnik Sweetheart I couldn’t even tell on which side the narrator ended up.

There’s certainly no other author I can think of that writes quite like this, so if you haven’t read any of Murakami’s novels this one might be a good place to start. I liked this book, but didn’t love it – I think I liked Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World better, but it was a while ago that I read that now. Overall I felt more satisfied with Sputnik Sweetheart than I did with Kafka on the Shore, but I really loved Kafka up to a certain point, the point where reality started shifting sideways and my damn left brain refused to go with the flow.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

The Outsider (2006)

2006-06-04T21:48:00.000+10:00

By Albert Camus
A nice little shortie of a novel, I do like it when you can read classic fiction and it doesn’t take very long – such a sense of virtuous achievement! Also, another piece of classic fiction that is remarkably easy to read. Take note Thomas Pynchon: Great Literature Does Not Have To Hurt Your Brain. Some, in fact, would argue that the easier a book is to read (i.e. smooth, seamless and concise writing), the better the writer…this theory may fall over when considering the adventures of Spot the dog, however.

The Outsider tells the story of Meursault, a fairly normal young Algerian clerk who is undone through is inability to empathise with other people. Today he might be diagnosed with Asperger’s, or if he had been a lot more buff and also a genius he could have been another Jack Reacher – i.e. no remorse gene. Meursault somehow manages to kill an Arab man at the beach (yes this was the inspiration for The Cure’s song “Killing an Arab”) and during his subsequent trial his lack of remorse is used against him. Also, his Mum died a few days before and the prosecutors make much of the fact that he did not cry at her funeral – a.k.a. Lindy Chamberlain. Heartless bastard!!!

It is a very interesting novel – as we read from Meursault’s perspective, all his responses seem perfectly logical, and therefore other people’s responses to him equally surprising. (At least up until he murders someone). It reminded me a little of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley, a book I found quite disturbing – because we were inside Ripley’s head, we can understand perfectly where Ripley is coming from and think, perhaps, “there for the grace of God go I…”. I suppose you have to have empathy to think that, though, so Meursault and Ripley might not have liked each other’s books very much.

NB: Reading tip: Do not read copies of books that have parts underlined, especially if you have seen the film Heathers. It is very distracting.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Why I Write (2006)

2006-06-04T21:45:00.000+10:00

By George Orwell
This books is actually made up of four of Orwell’s essays, of which “Why I write” is the first and one of the shortest. The longest, which makes up the bulk of this volume, is called “The Lion and the Unicorn” and is a call for the reform of England’s system of government. Orwell wrote this essay in 1940, during the World War II, and it is interesting to compare Orwell’s hopes for the transformation of England (and of other countries) to the changes that actually occurred. I think Orwell would have been disappointed, having strong leanings towards socialism. I must look up when 1984 and Animal Farm were written, because they seem to present a fairly gloomy view of the future and of human nature, in contrast to the feeling of hope that permeates this piece of writing.

Apart from Orwell’s apparent fondness for the word “got”, a word I despise (The Lion and the Unicorn is full of “We’ve got to do this” and “We’ve got to do that”), I think Orwell is my ultimate writing role model hero pin-up boy and I’m going to read all his books. His writing is so good! (Concise, smooth, seamless…). Also, his writing has a passion behind it, which never hurts, and it is nice to read something infused with a sense of energy and hope for a change – so many books have a melancholy air. (I’m looking at you, Tolstoy and Murakami).

This book is part of the “Great Ideas” series that has recently been published by Penguin Books. Other titles in the series include Machiavelli’s The Prince, Darwin’s On Natural Selection, Nietzsche’s Why I am So Wise, Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and, one I personally can’t wait to read, Hazlitt’s On the Pleasure of Hating. Expand your brain now!!

Rating: 9 out of 10

Everything is Illuminated (2006)

2006-06-04T21:41:00.000+10:00

By Jonathan Safran Foer
I’ve been trying to write this review for ages and can never get anything coherent out. From what I can tell, Foer is one of the latest darlings of the literary world, a bit of a boy genius, and his book is suitably complex and unique in style and subject matter. Foer once tried to find a Ukrainian woman who saved his Jewish grandfather from the Nazis, and he has used this true story as the spring board for Everything is Illuminated, even including himself as a character in the book.

More often, however, the story is told from the viewpoint of Alexander, a young Ukrainian man who Foer hires to be his guide and translator in Ukraine. Alex’s command of the English language is less than perfect, but very entertaining. (It does make the start of the novel a bit hard going, though, until you get used to Alex's unique vocabulary). Alex’s cranky sort-of anti-Semitic grandfather (who claims to be blind) is their driver, as they search for the town where Foer’s grandfather used to live, and they are also accompanied by Alex’s good-natured but rather slobbery dog, Sammy Davis Jr Jr. At the start of the book Alex is not a terribly likeable character, but it is his story that was the most moving in the end for me, in a book that involves the stories of many people from many different generations.

I really enjoyed this book and am keen to read Foer’s next novel, which is apparently about a child searching for his father on the day the Twin Towers collapsed in New York City. Foer’s writing style is engaging, humorous and unique, although a few ‘literary devices’ towards the end of the book seemed a bit silly. I think you should read this book, because people will probably be talking about it at parties. Also, it’s good.

Rating: 9 out of 10

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2006)

2006-06-03T15:48:00.000+10:00

By Mark Haddon
I have avoided reading this book for ages, because the title annoyed me. How pretentious, I thought. Hear ye, hear ye: ye shall not judge a book by its title. (Unless it be The Horse Whisperer). This book was GREAT. Apparently it is really a book for “Young Adults” but has not been any less popular amongst adult readers. This book is another example in my ever-growing pile of evidence that some of the best books ever written are those written for “Young Adults”. Incidentally, imagine how you would feel if you were old enough to have relations with a woman, and yet – you could not drink in pubs. Sorry, where am I? Channelling “The Young Ones”, evidently.

This book is narrated by Christopher, who we soon discern is a fairly unusual teenager – for example, he is a maths genius, but hates the colours brown and yellow. He can’t eat food on his plate if different foods are touching each other. He doesn’t really like people much. He screams and rocks if he is afraid or confused. It is never said, but we assume Christopher is autistic. About a year and a half ago Christopher’s mother died, and now his father looks after him on his own. At the start of this story, Christopher is on one of his late-night walks when he discovers a neighbour’s dog (Wellington) dead in the neighbour’s front yard. Wellington has obviously been murdered, because he has a garden pitchfork sticking out of him, and Christopher resolves to find out who did it, in his own unique way, and despite his father’s instructions not to play detective.

As I’ve written elsewhere (in another review), I’m always a bit suspicious of authors writing from the perspective of someone who is very much unlike themselves. (Must check whether Mark Haddon is autistic himself; presumably he must at least have close contact with someone who is). How can I check whether Haddon’s representation of Christopher’s view of the world, his thinking patterns and is logic, is authentic? Well I can’t. But this book was a fascinating glimpse into what it may be like to be autistic (i.e. it successfully fooled me), and into the damage an autistic child can unwittingly wreak on his parents’ relationships - also, how easy it can be for an autistic person to fall afoul of the police and other people who do not recognise the cause of his unusual behaviour.

Rating: 8 out of 10

The Death of Ivan Ilyich (2006)

2006-06-03T15:38:00.000+10:00

By Leo Tolstoy
Well, I must say I do feel proud of myself having read some Tolstoy, even if it was only a little shortie like this one. Perhaps one day I will manage to read War and Peace – not this Readathon, though. Interesting that the publishers (Penguin) felt the need to have a testimonial on the front cover from Zadie Smith (‘Every time I read it, I find my world put under an intense, unforgiving microscope’). Not to belittle Smith, but it does seem a bit like getting Michael Leunig to talk up Rembrandt’s paintings, in hopes of making them seem hip and modern, when their work is a different kettle of fish altogether.

Spoiler alert: Don’t read on if you don’t want to know what happens. Still here? Sure you want to know? Okay: Ivan Ilyich dies. There, I’ve said it. I know this seems kind of obvious, given the title of this book, but I confess it came as a bit of a surprise.

Now, Tolstoy writes with an unerring sense of the satirical (in people’s actions, thoughts, motivations and so on), which kind of tricked me into thinking this book might be amusing, and that maybe Ivan Ilyich managed to cheat death somehow, or at least died with a fair amount of panache – perhaps also I was still in the grip of The Master and Margarita. Also I thought maybe his wife had some kind of secret plot to kill him going on, when in fact Ivan Ilyich just becomes ill and dies, fairly straightforwardly, but not pleasantly. (This red herring I gleaned from the blurb on the back cover, which I accuse of being slightly misleading).

No, this book details a man’s realisation that his death in unescapable, not just something that happens to other people, and in this realisation begins to question whether anything about his life was at all worthwhile. At the end of this book I had a slow, dim, small sort of epiphany. I’d always heard that Russian writers were pretty heavy going, but assumed it was something to do with the writing style and a cast of thousands with complicated Russian names. But it is the unflinching grimness of the subject matter, not the writing or the style, that is the source of the heaviness. The book was in fact exceptionally easy to read. It is, as Zadie Smith implies, pretty intense. It’s very good. But don’t read it at two o’clock in the morning, whatever you do.

Rating: 8 out of 10

She (2006)

2006-06-03T15:34:00.000+10:00

By H Rider Haggard
I have a vague memory of seeing the film of this book, probably from when I was about 12, something about a woman stepping into a pillar of blue light and shrivelling up into a very old woman. How could I not want to read the book?? So, finally I got around to it.

Written by the same author who wrote King Solomon’s Mines and other tales of derring-do, She sees our heroes, Holly (a bloke, not very attractive, by his own admission, about 40-odd, the narrator of our story) and his adopted son Leo (very attractive, twenty-five, not quite as brainy and wise as Holly) travelling to deepest darkest Africa in search of a legendary race of people (the Amahagger) and their legendary Queen, Ayesha, who is said to have lived for thousands of years on the wild plains of Kôr. (This is the titular “She”, always italicised and short for “She-who-must-be-obeyed”; yes, this is where Rumpole got it from).

Our heroes know about all of this because of the writings on a ancient potsherd and various other bits and pieces left to Leo by his birth father, all contained in a locked chest with strict instructions not to open it before Leo’s 25th birthday. (And in true Victorian fashion, they even stop to have a cup of tea before opening it – obviously those Victorians would have passed the delayed gratification marshmallow test with flying colours, but I fear those Victorian adventurers could have waited so long for the second marshmallow that the original marshmallow would have rotted away, if such a thing is possible. I mean, imagine if the delayed gratification tester went out of the room and got hit by a bus? They might have waited for ever! Certainly the Victorian adventurer would never survive in a modern movie version of such events).

Anyway, Leo is apparently descended from Kallikrates, an ancient Greek priest loved by She but (mysteriously) also murdered by her. I think we can all see where this is going, can’t we? So Holly and Leo struggle through wild seas, fever-filled swamps and fight off dastardly natives (who speak Arabic, interestingly enough, which when translated into English for our benefit, contains lots of “thees” and “thous” and "didst thy knowests" and so on, which I must say was a little tiresome) who would kill them by putting a large red-hot cooking pot on their head, before eating them for tea, in order to find She and (supposedly) avenge Kallikrates death. Amazingly, it turns out that Leo is the exact image of Kallikrates!! Who would have thunk it??

This book is interesting in that Ayesha is not presented as evil – both men fall in love with her, although Holly concedes it might be because she is so amazingly beautiful and nothing to do with her brain, which is in pretty good shape, it must be said. (Ayesha holds her own in lots of philosophical discussions about right and wrong, good and evil, life vs. death and so on). In fact, Ayesha reminded me a lot of Akasha, Anne Rice’s Queen of the Dead – a two-thousand-year-old babe with a brain, neither truly good or bad, but wrapped up in her own desires. I wonder if Rice may have been influenced by Haggard? Anyway, call me Alisha from now on, obviously this style of name has got something going for it.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Dead Sleep (2006)

2006-06-03T15:30:00.000+10:00

By Greg Iles
Another thriller – in this, our heroine, Jordan Glass, is a burnt-out photojournalist whose twin sister vanished over a year ago from her home in New Orleans and is thought to have been the victim of serial killer. While in Hong Kong, Jordan stumbles across an exhibition of paintings, all of nude women, who may be sleeping but look more like they may be dead. And – one is an exact portrait of Jordan’s sister! (And therefore also of Jordan). Jordan immediately contact the FBI agents investigating the disappearances in New Orleans with this new information, and the story goes from there.

This was quite a nifty book, plot wise – nicely written too, and the author has certainly done some research regarding painting and art authentication. However…the character of Jordan bugged me from the start. She’s a pretty hard-nosed character – she’s tough, she gets what she wants, has had to survive in a man’s world etc etc – and I wondered if I was suffering from some culturally inflicted misogynism that disapproves of a somewhat mannish woman. Or did I succumb to my prejudices regarding men who write from the female perspective? (I.e. It never quite works). Whichever, I felt Jordan didn’t ring true. It felt like Iles was trying a bit too hard to make her a post-feminism modern woman – and yet a woman of which men would approve. Tough, but non-threatening all round. I don’t know, I’m babbling now. But not a bad read – I’ll give Iles another go.

So, is it possible for a man to write convincingly from a woman’s perspective, and vice versa? People seem to get in trouble, for example, for writing from the perspective of a black underprivileged drag queen if they are in fact a straight, upper-class white chick, but nobody blinks twice at men writing as women and so on. Not that I think you should blink, I think anyone should be free to write in the character of whoever they like – just that your resulting book might not be terribly convincing to anyone who really is a black underprivileged drag queen. The trouble with my theory is that I can’t judge its validity from anyone else’s perspective – I can only really judge books portraying white middle-class women of a certain age, after all.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Making the Cat Laugh (2006)

2006-06-03T15:26:00.000+10:00

By Lynn Truss
Lynn Truss rose to fame with her book Eats, Shoots and Leaves, about grammar, and it seems pretty certain this book has been published to cash in on her current popularity. This book is a collection of columns Truss wrote for The Listener, The Times and Woman’s Journal, from the perspective of a single woman with cats, and about topics that concern a single woman with cats who is very fond of grammar (and male tennis players).

I kind of read this book out of spite for all the people that have recommended I read “Marley and Me”, a book about a man and his dog, currently high on the bestseller list, which I resisted because I am a cat person. However, this book had disappointingly little to do with cats, despite its title. Truss’ cats turn up every so often to observe and emphasise some pathetic aspect of her life (cats are very good at that) but otherwise we don’t hear much about them.

Truss is an entertaining writer and I often laughed while reading this book, but there is something curiously unsatisfying about the book as a whole - and something irritating about her style of writing. Mum suggested it might be because she is always ironic, or satirical, or whatever, and never serious about anything, which may be the case. I guess this book has highlighted for me the differences in writing for a newspaper column and writing a novel – they are written for different purposes and read for different reasons. I guess I expect something more intriguing from a novel; it is a long-term investment with long-term rewards. Still, it was good for reading on the train. And maybe Truss would be interested in joining my "Family Last" party - except of course she can't vote in Australia.

Rating: 5 out of 10

Breakfast of Champions (2006)

2006-05-25T23:39:00.000+10:00

By Kurt Vonnegut
You know, I’m starting to think I should develop a more complicated rating system than the good old “score out of ten” method. There are some books that are good in so many ways, yet strangely unmoving. I’m afraid I found this book to be one of them - The Master and Margarita was another.

Vonnegut tells the story of the not-so-gradual disintegration of the mind of Pontiac salesman Dwayne Hoover, intertwined with the semi-adventures of one Kilgore Trout, science fiction author, and a number of other characters. (Many of these characters appear in other novels by Vonnegut). From the books I’ve read, the disintegration of the human mind appears to be a recurrent theme of Vonnegut’s – and there is always a suggestion that it mirrors Vonnegut’s own experiences quite closely. But who can tell – authors are paid to make things up, after all.

One interesting thing Vonnegut describes in this novel is how he wishes to make all the facts and people presented in this book equal in weight, with none more important than the other – the structure and style of the book made a lot more sense after I read this bit, not unlike how you need commentary to fully appreciate an abstract painting. (NB: Another Vonnegut creation, the modernist painter Rabo Karabekian, also makes an appearance in this novel). Vonnegut feels that everyone expects their life to resemble the structure of a novel, with major players, bit players, beginnings, middles and ends (and so on) and thinks instead that we should all just get used to chaos and our unalterable insignificantness in the universe.

The way in which Vonnegut tells his stories is so different from anybody else, which makes his books quite fascinating to read. (E.g. “I had a paper tube in my mouth. It was stuffed with leaves. I set it on fire.”). Normal things become surreal. But the emotional aspects of this one left me a bit cold – strange, because Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5 is one of my favourite books ever.

Writing style: 9
Brain food: 8
Emotional drain: 3
Enjoyment factor: 6

The Hard Way (2006)

2006-05-25T23:35:00.000+10:00

By Lee Child
If you were in a tight spot and you could call anyone in the world, living or dead, real or unreal, anyone at all to help you out, who would you call? Miss Marple? Ha! MacGyver? Ha! Ha! Batman? Don’t make me laugh. Let me tell you who I’D call – Jack Reacher, that’s who. You wanna know why? Well for starters, he’s a six foot something ex-military policeman who knows his guns, ammo and the most effective places to punch people, AND quite attractive and incredibly buff, but mainly because he’s a GODDAMN GENIUS. Sherlock Holmes has got nothing on Reacher’s powers of deduction, let me tell you. Jack Reacher is the ultimate blend of brains and brawn.

OK, I confess, I’ve read all the Jack Reacher novels, and this is the latest. So I’m a fan. Reacher left the army many years ago and kind of drifts around the US, solving all the problems which invariably and incredibly coincidentally drop in his lap. (He’s not unlike Miss Marple in that way). Also, he sleeps with a different woman in every book – strange how women seem to find Reacher completely irresistible. Were these books written by a man? Let me check…

In this adventure he becomes involved with a group of ex-US-military mercenaries – the wife of the boss mercenary has been kidnapped, and Reacher just happened to witness a critical piece of evidence in the whole deal. It was a bit slow to get going, but by golly pretty soon I was hooked. Every so often when reading one of Reacher’s adventures it crosses my mind that this is all a bit far-fetched (the start of this novel, for example), but usually I’m enjoying the book too much to care. Maybe don’t read several in a row though; the plot devices and even Reacher's own infallible geniusness start to wear a bit thin.

Also I had a moment of unease near the end of the book where Lee Child writes that “…the remorse gene was missing from his DNA. Entirely. It just wasn’t there.” Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe this may make Jack Reacher a registered and card-carrying sociopath – let’s just be glad he’s on our side.

Rating: 7 out of 10

They do it with mirrors (2006)

2006-05-25T23:32:00.000+10:00

By Agatha Christie
You know, I’ve never read an Agatha Christie before. I know, I know, what have I been doing with myself? Reading Georgette Heyer and Dorothy Sayers instead, that’s what. But anyway, how did I like it? Not bad actually, and this book was even a Miss Marple adventure, who I’ve never been terribly interested in on the telly – she’s much more enjoyable in person. Maybe I’ll even like Poirot, if I read him instead of watch!! Anyway, it’s a good thing I liked Christie’s book, because I understand there’s a lot of others around and it’s always nice to know there’s a tidy stash of good books tucked away waiting to be read.

So what happens? The inherently mild-mannered, nosy Miss Marple leaves her intrigue-infested home town of St Mary Mead to visit an old friend, Carrie Louise Serrocold, who may be in trouble, according to the unspecified hunch of a mutual friend. Carrie Louise lives in a large mansion with her husband, two stepsons from a previous marriage, a daughter from a different previous marriage, a granddaughter, a grandson-in-law, a very efficient house-keeper/personal companion and about 200 juvenile delinquents and their attending physicians and psychiatrists - her husband has turned the family mansion into a school for recently released young offenders, but don’t worry, none of them are ever suspected of the murder. Wait – did I say there was a murder? Well there is, and Miss Marple figures out who did it!!

I think you could probably sum up this book as “charming”. I’m probably the last person on the planet to read it, but if by chance I’m wrong and that person is you, go on, give Miss Marple a go. You know you want to!!

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Deal Breaker (2006)

2006-05-16T23:45:00.000+10:00

By Harlan Coben
Well, I have to say I really quite liked this book. A classic it ain’t, but the hero, Myron Bolitar (ex star basketballer and FBI agent turned sports agent) is really quite good – he’s always got a smart line with which to annoy the bad guys. Myron’s newest star is footballer Christian Steele, who, on the cusp of a very profitable NFL contract, receives evidence that suggests his dead ex-girlfriend might not be dead at all – and so of course Myron has to investigate. It helps that Christian’s ex-girlfriend was the sister of Myron’s ex-girlfriend, with whom Myron is keen to reconcile.

Myron is assisted in all of this by his best friend and business partner Win (short for Windsor Horne Lockwood III) who is a sort of cross between Richie Rich and a sociopath with a black belt. Apart from some amusing banter with Myron, I wasn’t sure I approved of Win; he kills too many people and seems to enjoy it.

Another author to remember for a good holiday read though.

Rating: 6 out of 10

The Leopard (2006)

2006-05-16T23:42:00.000+10:00

By Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
What can you say about a book that is an acknowledged masterpiece? It is beautiful, terribly sad, frequently amusing (in a sly kind of way)…not a book to read if you’re looking for an upper, though. Apparently it also made a lovely film, but I haven’t seen it so I can’t add my two bits on that.

The Leopard tells the story of the dying days of the Sicilian nobility, during and after the 1860 revolution, led by Garibaldi, that resulted in a unified Italy under King Victor Emmanuel. The main character is the Prince, Don Fabrizio, a Sicilian nobleman, who reflects on the changes to his country and way of life, while negotiating the rise of a new and increasingly wealthy middle class and the corresponding decrease in the fortunes and status of his own family. The novel seems to be about betrayals (personal and state), the sadness of things ending, the feeling that lives have been wasted, mortality, yet this is all presented gently and eloqently, so the the sadness steals over you while you think you are just enjoying the language.

I do wish I could read Italian, so I could read the original and then compare it to this translation. I wonder how different they are? It must be like writing a whole new book…well, kudos to Archibald Colquhuon (the translator), kudos. I remember being disappointed with Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, because I thought the writing would be more beautiful than it was – it felt kind of clunky, and I wondered if the original Italian novel was more lyrical and poetical, or if Eco just wasn’t a poetical kind of guy. No such worries here, though.

Rating: 9.5 out of 10

The Queen of the Damned (2006)

2006-05-16T23:39:00.000+10:00

By Anne Rice
I’m always a bit suspicious of books that contain the word “frisson”. It turned up relatively early in this book, but at least I didn’t notice a repeat offence. This book all seemed a bit silly at first, but I got sucked in (Ha!) by all those eternally youthful beautifully beautiful dark and mysterious and sexy vampires. Really, it did start to bother me after a while that they were all so attractive. Rice even muses, through the voice of her hero vampire Lestat, are there any ugly vampires? Well I think I spotted one, but he didn’t last very long.

This book is the third in Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, following Interview with the Vampire (the one made into a film with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt; not bad, from memory, surprisingly…) and The Vampire Lestat. To sum up, Lestat has gone and woken up the Mother of All Vampires (I’m not kidding), the titular (that’s for you, Ian) Queen of the Damned, Akasha, who has been dormant for thousands of years, but now she’s awake again and this time she’s a lot crosser.

For some reason, the Queen seems to be killing off all the vampires, except for our favourites of course. What is she up to?? We find out along the way how vampires came to exist and what the Queen’s badass dealio is anyway. I got a bit addicted to the whole story, if a little impatient with all the descriptions of how gorgeous and tortured everbody was.

Rice even manages to weave in some serious topics, a la Cocoon. For example, if someone offered you a smoothie that would make you immortal, would you drink? (Ha!) If someone dangled a tempting tidbit in front of you that would make your loved ones immortal, would you bite? (Ha! Ha!) Also, more to the point, would you ask them first?? Would a world run by women really be any less violent than one that’s still pretty much ruled by men? (You’ll have to read the book to see how that one fits in). She also offers some interesting alternative theories as to how embalming and mummification came to be the dominant way of honouring the dead – as opposed to eating their corpses, of course. (I must confess I began to be persuaded of the merits of this option – eww!! Boy, I was really sucked in).

This book was written in 1988 and I’m wondering if that was the same era as Virginia Andrews and Flowers in the Attic and so forth – it has that same kind of outrageous gothic scandalous mixed up relationships thing going. Hmmm…must re-read some good old Virginia Andrews sometime…

Rating: 6 out of 10

Cadillac Jukebox (2006)

2006-05-16T23:36:00.000+10:00

By James Lee Burke
Detective Dave Robicheaux is probably a cliché amongst crime heroes now – an alcholic (recovered, in this book), Vietnam vet, some anger management issues, a murdered wife, relationship troubles with his current wife, a big chip on his shoulder about the haves and have-nots…in a word, Robicheaux has Demons. But James Lee Burke does it all so well! Robicheaux should be treated as the archetypal troubled cop, with all others relegated to mere pale imitations. (That means you, McCallum).

Burke’s books are all set in and around New Orleans, Louisiana, and his descriptive powers are way beyond that of most crime writers. In fact, they make me want to go to Louisiana, despite it clearly being a hotbed for pimps, extortionists, murderers and alligators. Burke’s writing is beautiful – I wonder what he’ll write next, post Hurricane Katrina, with his beloved landscapes and cityscapes destroyed?

Anyway, the plot. A guy who was convicted of killing a black activist many years ago insists on his innocence, and for various reasons Robicheaux decides to investigate, which leads to all sorts of problems with some really very nasty people – see above, not including the alligators. Hmm, that doesn’t really tell you a lot, does it? Never mind, I think maybe it’s worth reading James Lee Burke for other reasons.

A minor quibble - maybe it was just the flawless Cajun slang that admittedly I was having some trouble following, but characters kept saying things like “Hey, you’re a bright guy, I know you connect on this” and I’m, like, “No! Spell it out for me!” but Robicheaux seems to be awfully good at putting two and two together, if you know what I mean...

Rating: 7.5 out of 10

The Master and Margarita (2006)

2006-05-16T23:30:00.000+10:00

By Mikhail Bulgakov
I wanted this book to be one of my favourite books of all time, but it isn’t – which isn’t to say I didn’t like it; it was enormous fun!! Just look at the rating I gave it!! I did enjoy it, but it didn’t move me, I guess. (So eat a prune…).

The Devil arrives in Moscow (during Stalin’s era) in the guise of a Mr Woland, professor of black magic, with an entourage that includes a kind of rubbery-looking man named Koroviev, a man with a fang named Azazello, a nude witch called Hella (her character is not terribly developed, unfortunately) and a large walking talking living cat, Behemoth. (I became quite fond of Behemoth, but it might have just been because he was a cat). They proceed to cause havoc, especially amongst the local literary elite, many of whom are of course athiests, and pompous to boot, and could be said to get their just desserts.

It’s all a bit like a “Carry on Satan” film until the character of Margarita appears, who decides to see if she can use Woland to find her lost lover, an unnamed man (the “Master”) who has checked himself into the local asylum without telling her. He has written a novel about Pontius Pilate, known of course for having Jesus executed, which Margarita thinks is a work of genious (she might be biased, of course) and Woland finds it of interest because of course he was there at the time. The story of Pontius Pilate is woven throughout the whole story, I think with the aim of showing him redeemed at the end of the novel, but I’m not quite sure about that. I confess I was a bit mystified by the whole Pontius bit, which is perhaps another reasons why this book wasn’t a fave.

Rating: 8 out of 10

The Raphael Affair (2003)

2006-03-28T23:15:00.000+11:00

By Iain Pears
I received a lot of criticism for my criticism of another of Iain Pear’s books, “Death and Restoration”. Well, this one was better! A lot better – I think because we didn’t have to endure so much of Jonathan Argyll’s “inner monologue” about his ethical dilemmas – he was just a slightly kooky art historian. (And we all know how kooky art historians are). I also enjoyed the plot of this book much more, as it relied more on legitimate historical detective work and less on the philosophical musings of monks.

Oh yes, the plot – I’d like to say, a painting gets nicked and they get it back, but this is not really true!! See, the plot thickens already…

The “restorer” in this book wasn’t so much of a tosser as the one in “Death and Restoration”, but did come across as slightly pathetic.

Rating: 7 out of 10

The Prisoner of Zenda (2003)

2006-03-28T23:14:00.000+11:00

By Anthony Hope
Okay this one’s not being counted in my Readathon tally either – again, I only got up to about page 50 before giving up. This is one of those “oh-my-god-you-look-just-like-the-King-who-has-just-mysteriously-disappeared-can-you-fill-in-for-him-and-get-it-on-with-his-chick?” books, written in “Boys Own Adventure” style. The Swashbuckling Hero is Rudolph Rassendyll, on holiday from England in the green forests of Zenda. The Bad Guy is “That damned hound, Black Michael”, the King’s brother. People say “Courage, lad!” to each other, look “paler than was his wont” and seem to bite their moustaches a lot when they’re nervous (??). There’s lots of drinking and smiting. It even features the odd buxom wench and rosy damsel!

I often like this kind of book (I’m eagerly waiting for the word “cad” to come back in style) but this was very tedious – too tedious to laugh at even. Don’t bother – I’m pretty sure a film was made of this one and for once I feel that the movie must be superior.

Rating: 0 out of 10

The Merlin Conspiracy (2003)

2006-03-28T23:12:00.000+11:00

By Diana Wynne Jones
The most recent and most disappointing book by Diana Wynne Jones. Wynne Jones has been around for many years and is another of my favourite children’s authors - Harry Potter pales in comparison to her best. However, published in 2003, I get the feeling that this book was rushed out to cash in on the Harry Potter phenomenon and therefore skimped on some essential editing.

Set in a parallel universe to ours (this is a common theme in Wynne Jones’ books) called Blest, the book tells the story of Arianrhod (Roddy), Nicothedes (Nick) and Ambrose (Grundo), who between them must foil a plot hatched by some evil witches and wizards to drain all the magic of Blest and take over the world. It is told through the eyes of Roddy and Nick, in roughly alternating order. Nick’s adventures, in particular, have a dreamlike quality about them for at least the first half of the book (probably because Nick does think he’s dreaming for a while), but “dreamlike” in that it meanders and wanders and doesn’t seem to make much sense. And we all know how other people’s dreams are incredibly boring and not at all as deep and mysterious as our own.

It did pick up a bit towards the end, but if you are interested in giving Dianna Wynne Jones a go (which I hope you are!) skip this one and try some of her best, like Charmed Life, Howl’s Moving Castle and Dogsbody. In my opinion, they leave Harry Potter for dead.

Rating: 1 out of 10

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (2003)

2006-03-28T23:10:00.000+11:00

By Washington Irving
In case you were wondering, this book bears very little resemblance to the recent movie of the same name – there is a headless horseman in the book, and many of the characters’ names are the same, but that’s about it. There are no wicked stepmothers, no crazy witches, no secret Wills, no bizarre dreams about long-dead parents, no magical symbols drawn on the floor, no autopsies and not much of a love story. Also, the hero isn’t anywhere as good-looking as Johnny Depp, but then dentistry wasn’t as advanced back then, was it?

The book isn’t very scary either, but it was written in the nineteenth century and tastes were different then – after all, in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, everyone seems to sit around drinking cups of tea, despite the presence of an all-consuming evil that could destroy the world at any minute.

It is well written, and kind of cute, but not very relevant, somehow – it’s good, but not compelling. I can’t see that many people would find it very interesting these days. It does have the advantage, though, of being very short.

Rating: 5 out of 10

The Eyre Affair (2003)

2006-03-28T23:09:00.000+11:00

By Jasper Fforde
I thought this book was tops. It follows the adventures of our heroine, Thursday Next, who works for a special government agency that tracks down crimes against literature (eg forgeries, exceptionally bad productions of Shakespeare etc). Things get a bit weird when the villain, Acheron Hades (a truly villainous villain), steals the original copy of Dicken’s Martin Chuzzlewit and threatens to take out the hero and thus change the manuscript for ever – with the help of Thursday’s uncle’s new invention, the Prose Portal. (In the testing stages his wife gets trapped in one of Wordsworth’s poems – and it turns out Wordsworth’s a bit of a flirt). When this evil plan doesn’t work out quite as he intended, Hades decides to pick on Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre instead.

Next’s world is one in which literature is much more popular with the masses than in ours – so much so that there is a copy of William Shakespeare’s Complete Works in every hotel room, along with the Bible and several other religious texts, and the true authorship of Shakespeare’s plays is a frequent and serious topic of discussion. I liked the character of Thursday Next extremely (she’s a smart chick! Maybe not at genius level, but pretty good), and Acheron Hades was an excellent villain. I think I’ve found a new favourite author and will be looking for a hardback copy for my bookshelves.

Rating: 9.5 out of 10

Slaughterhouse 5 (2003)

2006-03-28T23:08:00.000+11:00

By Kurt Vonnegut
I think I’ll find it difficult to say anything meaningful about this book because although it’s written in an amusing style it is about terrible things – the experiences of members of the American army during the fire-bombing of Dresden in the Second World War. Vonnegut himself was in Dresden at this time, as he says in the first chapter, but writes the story through the eyes of Billy Pilgrim, a chaplain’s assistant who became a successful optometrist after returning from the War but who also became “unstuck in time” – he may be in Dresden during the war one minute, and then 40 years ahead in his life the next, writing letters to the local paper about the planet Tralfamadore and how he was kidnapped by its inhabitants and kept in an intergalactic zoo for over 6 months. It manages to be both light and tragic simultaneously. Hmm I’m not sure what to say next, only that I thought this book was excellent and I will be reading more of Kurt Vonnegut soon. Although it has some science fiction overtones, it is primarily a book about how horrible people are to each other, so I don’t think despisers of science-fiction should worry.

Rating: 10 out of 10

Book Collecting as a Hobby (2003)

2006-03-28T23:07:00.000+11:00

By P H Muir
This is obviously not the kind of book to pick up for a bit of light reading or escapism. About a year ago I read a book by Christopher Hitchens (an English columnist and probably a bona fide “intellectual” who has been very damning of many people, including Bill Clinton, Princess Diana and Mother Teresa) called “Letters to a Young Contrarian” where he writes a series of essays to a fictional student in order to give them advice about how to think for yourself (and other things).

I liked the general idea of the book and knew there were a few series based on this format – where the author imparts his knowledge to the reader through a series of letters. It is an easier, more immediate way to absorb information. I picked up “Book Collecting as a Hobby” for this reason and of course because I thought it might be useful for work.

The book is very informative and well written, with lots of information on what sets the value of a book, amongst other things, and provides an insight into the motivations of a true collector. (For example, he suggests as a project collecting one book to represent each year of the last 300 years, to show the change in printing, binding and presentation over the years. I thought people just collected books because they were by authors they liked!!). If you are looking to learn a little more about books and collecting, I recommend this one, but you may not be able to read it all in one go – I tended to read a chapter at a time and then have a break.

Rating: 8 out of 10

An Instance of the Fingerpost (2003)

2006-03-28T23:06:00.000+11:00

By Iain Pears
Iain Pears does Umberto Eco – I am being tough on poor old Iain Pears, aren’t I?? Set in England after the restoration of King Charles, this book is essentially a murder mystery – who murdered Dr Grove? – and consists of four sections, each told by a different character, relating certain events from their own viewpoint.

This is an interesting idea, as the four people have very different ideas about who killed Dr Grove and why, and often works very well. However, as always happens to me in these kinds of books, I lost track of who all the different doctors and monks and Earls and Lords were and tended to get bogged down in all the philosophical and religious discussion. (I skipped quite large sections of Eco’s The Name of the Rose; all the bits that seemed more like advanced lectures in religious history). The first section, told by the Venetian Marco da Cola, was especially tough going. However, it did get better as it went along, and the following three sections were easier to get into. These sections were written in a less formal style and dealt less with esoteric topics and more with revenge and betrayal and all those other topics close to all our hearts. The last two sections I did enjoy quite a lot.

Overall, though, the book did have a slight feeling of “effort” to it – Iain Pears had obviously done a lot of research for the book and was determined to include everything he possibly could. And what’s with the title? I’m still not sure what the “fingerpost” is exactly, it did come up near the end but by that stage I wasn’t terribly interested as it didn’t seem to have much bearing on the plot. Could I use it in a sentence? Nope.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Call for the Dead (2003)

2006-03-28T23:05:00.000+11:00

By John Le Carre
A story involving Le Carre’s famous hero, George Smiley, the ultimate spy. Set around the same era as the James Bond novels (Cold War), but so much more interesting – probably because George Smiley has much more depth than Bondy, and because it’s a book it doesn’t matter so much that he’s a bit podgy and sweats a lot.

Smiley interviews an MP who’s been accused of having Communist sympathies – and the same man turns up dead the next day, apparently having killed himself after his talk with Smiley. There’s a scandal, and Smiley senses he’s about to be made the sacrificial lamb. Then someone tries to kill him and all sorts of other exciting things happen.

This is spying as I had always imagined it, with people sending each other coded messages on postcards and swapping secret documents in music cases at the theatre. Why is this so much more suspenseful than the shark attacks and voodoo magic of James Bond? Perhaps because it is easier to feel empathy with poor, sad, tired George Smiley.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Complicity (2003)

2006-03-28T23:03:00.000+11:00

By Iain Banks
I’m not counting this one in my tally of books for the Readathon because frankly I thought it was crap and only got up to about page 50. It starts off alternating between the activities of an unnamed murderer and the activities of a semi-junkie journalist, set somewhere in Scotland. The unnamed murderer (assuming it was all the same guy, I didn’t get far enough to find out) is very busy and had killed two people, several dogs and sexually assaulted another (person) by the time I gave up. The journalist seemed to drive around the countryside a lot getting uptight about the quality of beer in Scotland, smoking, drinking whiskey and sniffing one of those white powders, I forget which, to keep him awake and hanging around in telephone boxes waiting for some secret source to call him about something. By page 50 there was still no apparent connection between the two although obviously there must have been, unless the author was trying to be all post-modern or something.

In the end it was all getting a bit sordid for me – and to top it all off I thought it was pretty badly written, relying way too much on shock value. I won’t be picking up any more Iain Banks books unless they come with a very good recommendation!!

Rating: 0 out of 10

Death and Restoration (2003)

2006-03-28T22:56:00.000+11:00

By Iain Pears
This is the second of these series of books that I have read, about the fictional adventures of the Art Theft department in Italy, and although it’s nice to read some crime novels about art for a change instead of all those ones about serial killers and autopsies and things, these are pretty light-weight books and not much to get excited about. Good for reading on the plane or the bus, or when you don’t want to tax yourself overly. I don’t think I need to tell you anything about the plot – a painting gets nicked and they get it back. (Oh damn, I just ruined the ending).

Also it bugs me that the heroine, Flavia, who works for this particular branch of the Police Department, never seems to solve a crime without the help of her bookish failed-art-dealer boyfriend, Jonathan. (He failed at the art dealer thing because he was too ethical and nice). Jonathan seems to be the author’s alter ego in this book in that he has the superior academic knowledge, lateral thinking skills, sensitivity and all that while Flavia tends to run around a lot being the tough cop chick. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all in favour of the tough chick and am very glad she’s been written about more in recent years, but now I would like to see more of the “genius chick”. Where are the books with incredibly clever sheilas in them, who solve mysteries with their smarts?? And don’t say, what about “Murder, she wrote” – that doesn’t count. I can only think of Trixie Belden, Nancy Drew and Elizabeth from “Pride and Prejudice” (and that’s not really a crime novel anyway). Any others you can think of? Are there even any female evil geniuses out there?

Rating: 4 out of 10

Game Design - The Art & Business of Creating (2003)

2006-03-28T22:47:00.000+11:00

By Bob Bates & Andre La Mothe
Have I told you about any of my fabulous ideas for computer games? Well, I’m not going to because you might steal them and they could be my one and only shot at becoming a millionaire – because let’s face it, the only way I’ll get rich doing conservation is by pinching a couple of Rembrandt’s, faking my own death, fleeing to Rio de Janeiro and selling the pix to a private and ethically challenged collector for his living room wall. So I’m not even going to tell you what’s in the book, in case you get any ideas and beat me to the post or the pip or the cake or whatever that saying is. As “how-to” books go, though, it’s not bad – easy to read and well laid out, perhaps not quite as informative and step-by-step as I would have liked. I still don’t have much of an idea about what all those IT people do to make all those little people move, but I guess I don’t have to because I’ll just be coming up with the kick-ass ideas and story line and getting other people to do all the hard work.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Harnessing Peacocks (2003)

2006-03-28T22:43:00.000+11:00

By Mary Wesley
I think Mary Wesley is most famous for her book The Camomile Lawn, which I haven’t read. I have read a few of her others though, and she is an author that is worth trying out, if you haven’t already. This book is not one of her best – my favourite to date has been The Vacillations of Poppy Carew – but still quite enjoyable. She tends to write about the same sort of characters a lot, and in this book I didn’t find her set of characters as likeable or convincing.

One thing I have liked about Mary Wesley’s books is that her heroines tend to be unconventional, but maybe this one went a bit too far. In this book, the heroine (Hebe) runs away from home as a teenager as she is pregnant and her family wants her to have an abortion. Many years later, she supports her son by travelling around the countryside and cooking for various elderly ladies and having flings with their sons, as a paid mistress. All men in the book seem to develop an uncontrollable passion for Hebe but her “business” relationships are all very nice and well-mannered and end very tidily when they need to. OK, it’s unconventional, and maybe I’m just a prude, but I mean, come on!! How likely is this?? Still I suppose they ARE British.

In general Wesley’s blokes aren’t as well written or as three-dimensional, and the ones in this book just seem to be arrogant and bad-tempered (except perhaps for Hebe’s son) and you don’t get to know them well enough to care about them particularly.

Rating: 6 out of 10

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2003)

2006-03-28T22:39:00.000+11:00

By J K Rowling
The Harry Potter books have never been able to live up to the standards of the books I read when I was a girl, but I still enjoy them nonetheless. Except for Harry, he needs to calm down a bit. In this book he’s hit the teen angst zone, and really, why does Hogwart’s seems to have a Professor for every (magical) subject under the sun but no counsellor?? In the last book Harry saw a fellow student get deaded, and all sorts of terrible things happened to him, but does anyone try and help him work through his feelings?? Of course not.

In this book the evil wizard Voldemort is back from the semi-dead, and deep divisions have formed in the wizarding world – the official Ministry of Magic line is that V’s resurrection is a load of baloney, and so they send a particularly nasty Professor to Hogwarts in order to keep Dumbledore and the rest of all the teachers and students in line. However, there is growing evidence to suggest that V is amassing his forces in anticipation of a final showdown…presumably this will occur in the seventh book, which will be Harry’s last year at Hogwarts.
I think I actually enjoyed this book more than the others, as it was more plot driven, and I didn’t find it particularly dark – a criticism of the Potter books which seems to be growing. I’m not sure why, it’s not like children’s books have ever been all sweetness and light, people get killed or suffer terribly in them all the time. Mind you, I’m still cross that When the wind blows was on our primary school reading list, there must be a generation of people out there who were scarred for life by that book.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (2003)

2006-03-28T22:36:00.000+11:00

By P G Wodehouse
If you like books where people say “Ho!” and “Ha!” and even “What Ho!” a lot then I reckon you should try the adventures of the hapless man-about-town Bertie Wooster and his unflappable butler, Jeeves.

This is not my favourite Jeeves book so far but still very enjoyable. Bertie Wooster is interrupted in his reading of a thrilling new novel “The Mystery of the Pink Crayfish” by Rex West (I wish someone would write this novel) to attend to the problems of his Aunt Dahlia, who is trying to sell her woman’s literary magazine Milady’s Boudoir to some difficult house guests, without her husband discovering that she pawned her pearls to pay for its publication. As usual things go terribly wrong and Bertie gets himself engaged (accidentally) to a woman who would prefer him to read the works of T.S. Eliot and Auden. As usual, however, everyone is saved by Jeeves in the end.

I picked up a few good insults in this one – how does “inhuman gargoyle” grab you? Or “You ghastly sheepfaced fugitive from hell”? Or even “You revoting young piece of cheese”?
I should say, that although I love these books, I expect a lot of people won’t – my friend Tash can’t stand them.

NB Some of Rex West’s other thrilling titles include Murder in Mauve, The Case of the Poisoned Doughnut and Inspector Biffen Views the Body.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Live and Let Die (2003)

2006-03-28T22:33:00.000+11:00

By Ian Fleming
Good heavens, James Bond has feelings! And, sometimes he is afraid!! While this book is really quite well written, it beats me how anyone saw the huge commercial potential for Bondy – i.e. it didn’t really do a lot for me. It was interesting, though, to see which bits of the book turned up in various movies (not necessarily the same one) and how they updated various aspects of the plot – for example, instead of smuggling gold coins that were part of a pirate’s hoard (the book) they smuggled heroin or cocaine or something (the movies). Also, there was no Q or fancy gizmos in the book, and very few smart one-liners from Bond.

If you’re interested in the plot (such as it is), Bond gets sent to the US to help investigate the flood of antique gold coins appearing on the market. He and his pal Felix Leiter fall foul of “Mr Big” who has set himself up as an underworld voodoo master up in Harlem. Mr Big’s chick, Solitaire, escapes with Bondy to Florida and after this there’s a lot of violence involving sharks and barracudas. I won’t ruin it completely by telling you everything, but rest assured Bond comes out of it OK, although slightly more injured than he appears to be in the films.

Rating: 4 out of 10

Lost in a Good Book (2003)

2006-03-28T22:31:00.000+11:00

By Jasper Fforde
The second in the Thursday Next series, this book lives up to the high standards set by the first. Thursday finds herself somewhat of a celebrity after the events of The Eyre Affair, she is happily married and expecting a kiddywinkle in several months – but then things go a bit weird. Her husband is “eradicated” by the ChronoGuard and the evil Goliath Corporation, and she discovers that there is a police network that acts within works of fiction, that has decided to bring her up on charges for changing the ending of Jane Eyre. (The trial scene is particularly good – Thursday and her lawyer have the misfortune to draw the magistrate from Kafka’s The Castle to oversee her trial).

It’s great to discover a new favourite author. I am looking forward to the third book in the series, which is apparently due out any time now.

Rating: 9.5 out of 10

Menagerie Manor (2003)

2006-03-28T22:28:00.000+11:00

By Gerald Durrell
I’ve always known about the existence of Gerald Durrell and had the impression that there was much to recommend him, but never got around to reading one of his books. A lifelong animal freak, this book is about the zoo he set up on the grounds of an old manor house (Jersey Zoological Park) in the Channel Islands, with the help of his wife, his mum, his staff and many very tolerant neighbours.

While by no means a work that puts any strain on the old brain cells, the book is nonetheless very enjoyable and contains lots of cute animal stories – I liked the one about the fat skunk, and another one about a young lion who decided he needed to learn how to roar but had to practice quietly in the back of his cage for a long time before showing it off. I did feel sorry for all the mice that inevitably were fed to various reptiles, and occasionally wondered how good the living conditions for the animals really were (the book was written in the 1960s), but it is still a very “feel-good” book. When I finished, I even wondered whether I should reconsider my intense dislike for the entire monkey family, so charming did the author make them sound.

I’m not going to rush out and read another one of Durrell’s books as I suspect you could overdose very easily, but it’s nice to know there’s a group of books out there that will be enjoyable reading at some stage.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (2003)

2006-03-28T22:27:00.000+11:00

By Jean-Claude Carriere
Written as a sort of journal, this book details the holiday of the accident-prone Monsieur Hulot, as seen through the eyes of a terminally bored and jaded man on his annual holiday to some dreary beach in France. While some of the scenes are entertaining, this book ultimately failed for me because nothing really happened – no characters had a crisis or came to a greater understanding of anything about the world or the people in it. Also, I found it difficult to be sympathetic towards the character of the narrator, who obviously found his wife stupid, inane and boring and consequently his own life stupid, inane and boring but was too pathetic to do anything about it but be glad that poor old Monsieur Hulot was there to make an ass of himself and liven things up a bit.

When I saw this book at ye olde second-hand book sale I had a vague idea that it had been turned into a movie of some repute and therefore may be of literary merit. I have to say I was disappointed. When will I ever learn!!!

Rating: 3 out of 10

Prester John (2003)

2006-03-28T22:25:00.000+11:00

By John Buchan
I got a bit confused reading this book because I kept getting mixed up between the author’s name and the name of one of the main protagonists. Too many Johns – what was the author thinking??

Most famous for his novel The thirty-nine steps, which has been made into a movie several times, this book sees our young hero, David Crawfurd, travelling to Blauwildebeestfontein (yes, that’s right, Blauwildebeestfontein – Monty Python couldn’t have done better if they tried) in sort of deepest darkest colonial Africa, in order to sell lots of foodstuffs and other goods to all those intellectually challenged natives. Not surprisingly, our hero runs afoul of a native uprising, in particular the compelling and powerful figure of the black minister John Laputa, who claims to be the incarnation of an ancient African hero, Prester John. Also, of course, there are large amounts of diamonds around – apparently one of the worst things you could do at the time was to engage in “IDB”, which is something to do with the illegal sale and purchase of diamonds, but I didn’t quite manage to figure out what “IDB” stood for at any time during the book.

This book is so well written, and an excellent adventure story – it is just peculiar to read now because of its obvious racism, which I guess was typical of the era (1910-ish). The most peculiar thing is, though, that it’s almost as if Buchan wrote it deliberately so that the reader would see through Crawfurd’s xenophobia and sympathise with the Africans’ point of view. The “anti-hero” himself, Prester John, is much admired by the hero, for his strength, his education, his integrity and his ability to inspire and lead the people of Africa into war with the European settlers. If someone now was trying to write a book about that time, and therefore trying to “infuse” the text with contemporary views, this is the way it would sound.

Rating: 8 out of 10

2006 Readathon Approaching

2006-03-28T22:23:00.000+11:00

In the lead-up to the 2006 MS-Readathon, I thought I'd post some old book reviews from the 2003 'thon. These follow immediately - stay tuned for 2006 reviews!!

Tricky Business (2005)

2005-07-23T12:50:00.000+10:00

By Dave Barry
Dave Barry is an American columnist who, I have to say, can be very, very funny. Some Australian papers carry his columns from time to time, you might have seen them around. He is also a mate of Carl Hiaasen, a fellow journalist-turned-novelist. This book is humorous and light, except for a few acts of extreme violence, but not quite as good as the Hiaasen’s I have read to date, nor as good as Janet Evanovich. It is better than R is for Ricochet, though.

The plot involves several parties, whose paths intertwine on board a small cruise ship that sails offshore every night so that everyone can gamble relatively legally. The ship is also being used to deliver drugs. This particular night there is a big storm, and some bad guys have a plan and quite a lot of guns. There is also a band, a barmaid and two retirees thrown into the mix. Barry also pokes some well-deserved fun at the inanity of news coverage, where, desperate to drum up a story about the storm, news reporters keep racing to the scene of apparent tragedies only to get killed themselves – thus, they create their own news.

If you could only read one more book before you died, this wouldn’t be it. (My personal choice would be Ulysses, because I know it would take me a really, really long time to finish). More the kind of book you’d read on a plane flight, except that you’d probably be more entertained by Carl Hiaasen.

Rating: 5 out of 10
It’s okay - if you never get around to reading it, it won't be the end of the world.

The Quiet American (2005)

2005-07-23T12:42:00.000+10:00

By Graham Greene
Another book I read after seeing the film, and a really beautiful book. (The film is also good - it convinced me that Michael Caine is an actor worth his salt). It is always harder to write reviews of the books that are truly good – harder to be flippant, I suppose. The story is set in Vietnam, just before the US really get involved in the war, and is told by Thomas Fowler, an ageing English journalist. Vietnam has got under his skin, and he doesn’t want to go home. A young American arrives on the scene, Alden Pyle, talking about “A Third Force” that could bring stability to the region, and who promptly falls in love (of a sort) with Phuong, Fowler's mistress. The story then becomes one of trying to keep hold of what he loves, while still trying to remain neutral, to not take sides in what is happening around him.

To me, this was one of those novels where as I was reading I was conscious of it being perfect in all ways - succinct, poetic writing with complex characters that really seem to breathe, whose passions, sadness and fear are palpable. Strange that most of these books I have encountered so far are quite short.

Oh no, I have just realised this is a book about a LOVE TRIANGLE!! It tricked me! Wow, it really must be a good book.

Rating: 10 out of 10
Don't be put off by the gloomy topic - one of the best books I have read.

Frankenstein (2005)

2005-07-23T12:40:00.001+10:00

By Mary Shelley

Heyyy, wait a minute…where’s Igor? Where’s the lightning? Where are the bolts coming out of Frankenstein’s head?? Where’s Sting???

Well it certainly was interesting finally reading the original. There is no Igor about to say “A brain, a brain, I need a brain for my master!” and Shelley is surprisingly coy about the whole how-to-bring-a-bag-of-bones to life thing. All of a sudden, Frankenstein’s monster opens his eyes, and there he is. Descriptions of the monster are few, apart from a general suggestions of supreme ugliness and the yellowness of his eyes. He is also very agile and strong, which does not suggest the lumbering zombie of the films.

What is more surprising than the lack of Hollywood special effects, though, is that whatever brains Frankenstein managed to get hold of (yes he did all his own dirty work), they appear to be top quality. No grunting here – Frankenstein’s monster teaches himself to read and write and is quite happy to converse on topics as in-depth as man’s inhumanity to man, the nature of God, the meaning of life etc…You see, the monster taught himself to read and speak from such noble texts as Milton’s Paradise Lost and Plutarch’s Lives. Also he finds Frankenstein’s diary, carelessly left lying around when he fled his laboratory, and so learns the circumstances of his creation.

The creation of the monster casts Frankenstein into a deep existential funk, into which he relapses numerous times throughout the novel, beating his breast and cursing himself for bringing this evil upon the world. (This gets a bit tiresome). He makes it his mission to destroy the “daemon” he has created. Yet we seem almost invited to side with the monster, who was created imperfect and then spurned – mirroring Satan’s struggle in Paradise Lost.

Rating: 8.5 out of 10
Even though Frankenstein drones on a bit, beautifully gothic.

The War of the Worlds (2005)

2005-07-23T12:38:00.000+10:00

The War of the Worlds
By HG Wells

I grew up listening to the 1975 rock opera of “The War of the Worlds”, co-written by someone from The Moody Blues and featuring the voice of Richard Burton as hero-voiceover man. It was one of my favourite pieces of music in the whole world, along with “Carmina Burana” by Karl Orff. (Yes, my mother was worried). So, which is better – the book, or the 1970s rock opera?? The rock opera. No wait a minute, of course I didn’t mean that…the book, the book is better, of course, it’s the book. But the rock opera will always hold a special place in my heart…

Still it was peculiar reading the book knowing the words to the rock opera nearly off by heart – bits of sentences would lapse into Richard Burton voiceover and synthesisers in my head and then lapse back into my imaginary 1890s voiceover, which made it a bit of a disjointed reading experience. The rock opera was quite clever at pulling out Wells’ really striking sentences though. I will have to go and see the film now and find out if they used any of the original text – I hope not, because I really don’t want to have Tom Cruise voiceover in my head as well.

Interesting to compare the differences between 1895 and 1975 though – in the book the main character is married (i.e. does not have a girlfriend called Carrie living in London with her Dad), there is no “Beth” who is the pastor’s female companion (I think they must have decided they needed at least one chick in the rock opera so they made her up), the whole section with the Parson is much more “Lord of the Flies” than I expected, and the aliens do not run around going “Ooohhhlaaaaaa!” (spelt “Ulla”) like they do in the rock opera. (There are a few Ullas at the end of the book when the Martians are feeling a bit poorly). The aliens still get killed by “minute, invisible bacteria” though – oh dang, I just gave away the ending!

It was also interesting reading this book in today’s climate of terrorist attacks and live media coverage. Back in 1895, when the book was written, Martians could attack Woking and it would take a few days for the news to reach London, all communication was by telegram, and even then no one really believed it. (MARTIANS LANDED STOP SEND REINFORCEMENTS STOP). The hero and his wife escape on a horse and cart. People learn all their news from the papers. (Golly the hero reads a lot of papers – including the St James’ Gazette!). Not being from 1895 and therefore unable to check matters of accuracy, the book seemed a surprisingly realistic account of how an alien invasion may have progressed at the time, and I’m not surprised it fooled some people when it was broadcast as a radio show a few decades later.

Still, I’m very glad to find out that Wells was not responsible for the line (on discovering one of the Martian attack machines has headed off to London) “London! I hadn’t dreamed there could be danger to Carrie and her father so many miles away!” which struck me as a stupid thing to say even when I was 10 because after all they’ve already made it from Mars.

The 1890s make themselves felt in other ways, as demonstrated by the following excerpt: And before we judge them [the Martians] too harshly, we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought…upon its own inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. I’m not sure which was the more startling assertion – that the Tasmanian Aboriginal people were “like” humans, or that a war of extermination was waged – it’s not often you hear of that part of our history actually called a war, or even that there was a conscious effort to kill the Aboriginals, and it is particularly unexpected in a nineteenth-century text.

Rating: 8 out of 10
A book to read because it is interesting, rather than because it is emotionally involving.

R is for Ricochet (2005)

2005-07-23T12:37:00.000+10:00

By Sue Grafton
What I shame this book wasn’t “C is for Corpse” (an earlier Sue Grafton novel) so I could make a clever joke about what the novel really should have been called. I can think of several derogatory words that begin with C, but none that start with an R. The best I can think of off the top of my head is “R is for Ratshit”, which is kind of cheating.

Yes, I was less than impressed with this latest effort by Sue Grafton in her alphabetically-themed adventures of her heroine Kinsey Millhone, a private investigator. Why? Because it really is INCREDIBLY DULL. And Kinsey is also INCREDIBLY DULL. This is meant to be a thriller detective novel – what do I care whether Kinsey goes jogging, unless something interesting happens along the way? What do I care about the romantic problems suffered by her 80-year old neighbour? What do I care about the precise details of her outfit? Well, I’ll tell you – NOTHING. This book really made me suspicious that the whole female-private-eye genre is nothing more than Mills and Boon in disguise – the word frisson even lurked in one sentence, ready to shock the unwary reader believing she was reading a hard-nosed feminist text. Okay okay, maybe that’s going a bit far, Kinsey is certainly much more liberated than the average Mills and Boon heroine, BUT THE AVERAGE MILLS AND BOON NOVEL IS MORE INTERESTING THAN THIS. Maybe I was just crabby when I read this novel…perhaps if I’d been a fan of the whole series right from “A is for Aardvarkshit” (not the real title) I would be more enthusiastic about the adventures (or not) of Kinsey Millhone. Gee, I can’t wait for “Z is for Zebrashit” to come out…

The only interesting thing about this novel is that it is set in the 1980s, Grafton deciding not to age her characters in real time. And that’s only interesting for its novelty value – how many other novels do you know deliberately set in the 1980s? Pity Grafton didn’t chuck in a bit more Duran Duran and Milli Vanilli – that could have spiced things up a bit.

Rating: 3 out of 10
Only in recognition of the effort it takes to actually write a novel. For die-hard Kinsey fans only.

The Mezzanine (2005)

2005-07-23T12:35:00.000+10:00

By Nicholson Baker
This is a book about the little things in life – the truly, truly small and seemingly insignificant things that we think about every day. Essentially the story of one man’s lunch hour (he works on the mezzanine floor of a large building) and the intellectual history behind his thoughts of this hour, this book celebrates shoelaces, straws and finer points of office interaction.

There is bound to be one topic in this book that makes you think, “By golly he’s right!”. For me, it was the bit about vending machines. (I love vending machines! I wish everything was sold in vending machines. Except maybe fresh meat). More particularly, how the flap at the bottom of chocolate bar dispensing machines is too stiff to open properly with one hand. I have often thought this, struggling to retrieve my Twix bar from the bottom of the machine while trying to minimise contact with said flap, to avoid germs. Okay I know we should all have some germs otherwise we’ll develop asthma and allergies to chocolate bars, but really, if we ever get TB back in this country I’m wearing disposable gloves when I retrieve my goodies. How many germs could there possibly be on a vending machine flap, I hear you ask? Well I don’t know – that might make a good thesis for someone. What I resent is the extreme contact which your hand is forced to make with that damned bit of lead-enforced plastic, or whatever they make it out of, and the way it wants to snap back on your fingers and chop them off. Mind you, if I was a vending machine I wouldn’t want to let any Twix bars out of my little pouch either.

Now that little rant is probably a good example of what the book is like, except it’s better. (The book, not my rant, that would be a bit show-offy of me to say, wouldn’t it?). It is always a pleasure to see in print the expression of things you have privately thought but not thought worth the trouble of expressing to anyone else. One thing, though – the lengthy footnotes did annoy me. They are a clever tool in this book and I wouldn’t argue for their removal, it’s just that they make you lose track of the narrative and you are forced to place thumbs and fingers in between different pages so you can flip back and forth between text and footnote…

Rating: 6.5 out of 10
A book that will make you respect the inventors of elevators, perforated paper and above all, vending machines.

Jason King (2005)

2005-07-23T12:30:00.000+10:00

By Robert Miall
Unfortunately this novel, based on the early 1970s television series of the same name, does not quite make it into the “so bad it’s good” category – no, this novel is just bad. Jason King is a novelist, man-about-town and 007 James Bond-type character, complete with the necessary misogyny but with much more facial hair. King has to solve two mysteries in this book, both highly unlikely scenarios but never mind – the first to do with a clever bunch of crooks that can outwit Scotland Yard’s supercomputer (amazing what those 70s supercomputers could do!); the second a murder mystery to which King appears to have some kind of psychic connection. (Don’t worry, it turns out to be subliminal messages).

It really is very bad. SO bad. But it does have some classic lines…if only there were a few more – it would have scored higher. Try some of these on for size:

If either girl had slipped on the hard-packed snow she could effortlessly have saved herself by grabbing the nearest tuft of King’s sideburns.

The blonde was chattering, shaking her head admiringly to and fro. The redhead simply clung to King, shaking the contents of her sweater admirably to and fro.

The world, thought Jason, was filling up with women who not only did men’s jobs for men’s rates of pay, but insisted on equality in everything else…you were supposed to pass them at the desk or workbench without glancing at their legs...even an appreciative eyebrow should be kept quiescent.

Magic. And what a spunkrat he is!!! (See cover illustration).

Rating: 4 out of 10
It’s not very long or hard to read, so you may as well…just read the first page at least, go on…

The Poisonwood Bible (2005)

2005-07-23T12:28:00.000+10:00

By Barbara Kingsolver
This is one of the best books I have read for some time; I found it quite unputdownable. I nearly chucked at sickie on the Monday after I started reading it so I could stay home and finish it. (Bosses, take note: I did not chuck a sickie).

This book tells the story of a family from southern USA who move to a small village in the Congo (now Zaire) in 1959 to convert the Congolese to Christianity. The family consists of Dad (Nathan Price), Mum (Orleanna Price) and four girls (Rachel, Leah, Adah and Ruth May). On arrival, the family proceeds to slowly unravel. The father is a evangelical Baptist preacher, truly astonishing for his incapacity for empathy or to recognise the strain his choices placed on his wife and children. Ooh, I really didn’t like him – neither did anyone else in the book, much.

The story is told from the perspective of the four girls and occasionally through Orleanna’s eyes. Alternately fascinating and dreadful, the book shows how the Congo slowly begins to shape the girls’ thoughts (adaptability – or the lack of it – is an amazing thing), and how their experiences there make a return to “normal” life impossible. Nathan Price’s original plan was to stay there for a year; some of the characters never return to the US.

Quick soapbox: This book also triggered a chip I have on my shoulder about Europeans – I reckon they get let off really lightly when it comes to colonial crimes against humanity. There is no question that the English committed many crimes in their bid to conquer the world, or whatever they were doing, but so did the French, the Portuguese, the Spanish and (in this case) the Belgians – we never seem to hear about their histories so much. But then, maybe that’s because we live in a country colonised by the English.

Rating: 10 out of 10
This is a book that stays with you for some time.

Toast (2005)

2005-07-23T12:26:00.000+10:00

By Nigel Slater

The thing I was most amazed about when reading this book was Nigel Slater’s apparently incredible memory for food – the taste, the appearance, the context. I tried to conjure up of some of my childhood memories of food, but all I could think of was the time I threw up after eating spaghetti and dreaming about gorillas (left over from an episode of David Attenborough’s “Life on Earth”). And I can’t claim to remember the particular texture or special ingredients of the spaghetti in question. (The appearance and aroma I can probably guess). Also I remember fish fingers, but I doubt I could write about them as poetically as Slater. Clearly, this man was destined to be a chef. (He is a chef, plus a food writer). He even carried out repeat covert operations, at the age of 12 or so, to discover the secret recipe for his evil step-mother’s lemon meringue pie.

This is essentially a biography; memories of food interlaced with Slater’s own family tragedies and a sexual awakening on the part of young Nigel. While I did very much enjoy the food and family bits, I’m afraid I found the sexual awakening bits a bit sordid at times. Still, this is Nigel’s biography, and if he wants to tell everyone about it, well that’s his prerogative. (Go Britney!). Definitely worth a read, though.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10
A good rainy Sunday read, especially if someone is baking a lemon meringue pie.

Hot Six (2005)

2005-07-23T12:22:00.000+10:00

By Janet Evanovich
I went off Janet Evanovich and her sassy bounty-hunter heroine Stephanie Plum for a while, because I thought I detected the emergence of the dreaded LOVE TRIANGLE erupting between Stephanie and the two eligible bachelors around town, Joe Morelli (cop) and Ranger (fellow bounty hunter and general entrepreneur), at the end of “High Five”. And I really hate love triangles, I mean I REALLY hate them. They go on forever, they can’t possible have a happy ending, there’s way too much useless inner turmoil around and they’re just dullsville in general, man. Case in point: Dawson’s Creek, where there seemed to be several love triangles going on all at the one time. Oh, the agony! I thought I would kill someone. Fortunately, I remembered in time that watching Dawson’s Creek was an optional activity.

Anyway, the book. The eleventh adventure of Ms Stephanie Plum has just come out, so I am really behind the times with number six here, but I am pleased to report that, despite a little bit of love triangle action, this book is thoroughly enjoyable. (In brief, it’s about Stephanie Plum trying to help get Ranger off the hook for the suspected murder of a member of one of the local crime families). I think Evanovich’s skill is that her books really are fun – they’re not heavy, man. So I will get back on the Stephanie Plum train, which is a bit exciting really because I know I’ve got another five books to enjoy before I have to wait another year for the next one. I hope they will be just as reliably entertaining as all her previous books.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10
Good fun. Warning: May make you want to eat doughnuts.

A Clockwork Orange (2005)

2005-06-19T22:39:00.000+10:00

By Anthony Burgess
I wanted to read this book because I decided it was high time I read the real thing and not rely only on the Mad Magazine version of the film by Stanley Kubrick. (Interesting fact: the film is based on the US edition of novel, which did not include the semi-redemptive last chapter). I imagine most people are familiar with the premise – Alex, a very violent teenager, undergoes treatment while in prison that makes him physically unable to commit violence in any way. In a word, this book is confronting – mostly for its straightforward descriptions of “ultraviolence”, including bashing and gang rape. It is not written in a voyeuristic manner, a la Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, just as it happens, from the point of view of one of the perpetrators, who clearly enjoys what he is doing. So, maybe two words: confronting, and disturbing.

It is also, though, a deeply interesting book, leaving the reader with a lot to think about at the end. The central question the novel presents (and I know this because I read it in the introductory essay afterwards) is this: is it better to choose to be wicked than to be forced to be good? I guess central to any code of conduct, religious or otherwise, when we really think about it, is the concept of choice. I remember someone once telling me that Brenda was the only really interesting character on Beverly Hills 90210 because you could see her deciding to be a good person from episode to episode, rather than automatically being one, like all the rest of them, although the assertion that the gang at the Peach Pit were “good” people may have come under fire from the book reviewer in the St James’s Gazette of 1890.

But that is another story…also interesting was Burgess’ depiction of society’s conflicting attitudes to violence: all agree that Alex’s acts of violence are reprehensible, but then embrace violence as part of his punishment. There is as much violence in prison, in this novel, than out of it, and not all of it is committed by fellow inmates – a bit like how in every cop show these days the cops threaten pretty young men into confessions by reminding them of the atrocities against their persons that they can expect in prison. Now, I’m not past a bit of the old “eye for an eye” myself, but I found this book (intentionally or not) quite a strong argument against vengeance. Mind you, all this does not solve the problem of how we should punish people who commit violent crimes, which is a topic too large for a humble book review, I suppose.

The last thing to say about this novel is that Burgess’ use of language is truly astounding – if a little hard to decipher at times. I wonder if Moloko the band took their name from Alex’s word for “milk”?

Read this novel when you’re feeling strong, but do read it.

Rating: 9 out of 10
For being a powerful and original piece of writing, but not really because the reading of it was enjoyable.

The Diary of a Nobody (2005)

2005-06-19T22:37:00.001+10:00

By George and Weedon Grossmith
Well I have to say this book didn’t quite live up to Evelyn Waugh’s testimonial on the back cover: “The funniest book in the world”. Mind you, Waugh did write Brideshead Revisited, so he wasn’t exactly a laugh-a-minute kind of guy. Maybe he had lower standards when it came to humour than the rest of us. In fact, were Waugh still about today, I’d write him a terse but witty note and ask him to refund my purchase money. Not that it was a terrible book or anything, it was well-written, and somewhat amusing, but in a Mr Bean kind of way, or like the boss in “The Office”, in which the humour comes from people being made to look foolish – only in a much milder form.

The hero of the book, Mr Charles Pooter, is an ordinary and unassuming man and a well-drawn character, just not a particularly interesting one. He writes in the introduction as follows: I fail to see – because I do not happen to be a “Somebody” – why my diary should not be interesting. This book proves that interesting diary entries are entirely independent of the status of the diarist, fictional or not.

The book was originally published in Punch magazine, in serial form, and might have worked better this way – familiar friends, who’s modest adventures you could enjoy each week; not required to be astonishing or confounding. Interesting aside: both of the authors worked with Gilbert and Sullivan, of “The Pirates of Penzance” fame. There are no babies swapped at birth in this story though. One good thing, Pooter’s son is called Lupin, possibly a good name for a future son of mine, if my husband will stand for it – it might end up being the name for the cat.

Rating: 5 out of 10
A bit dull, really – probably only for extreme turn-of-the-century literature fans.

The Poison Principle (2005)

2005-06-19T22:35:00.000+10:00

By Gail Bell
Quite a satisfying non-fiction book about poisons, poisoners and the poisoned. The author’s family has its own poisoned past, the investigation of which she threads through the narrative. More of a “researched stream of consciousness”, as my friend Libby said, than a manifesto of any kind, I have to say I did get a bit frustrated towards the end with all Bell’s wafty semi-philosophical ramblings when all I wanted to know really was if her grandfather really poisoned his sons or not. (Obviously not the son that eventually begat Bell, though). That is the inherent problem of this type of book, I suppose, where you begin on page one with a mystery to be solved, knowing you will not find out the answer until page last. Somehow, you have to keep the suspense going, and it wavered a bit for me by the end. For instance, I am not really interested in Bell’s idle imaginings of how Cleopatra may have been saved by one of her poor handmaidens when she was trying to kill herself via snakebite – this has too much of the “well the Romans COULD have built it this way” SBS faux-history documentary for my liking.

But still, quite a fascinating read, and I may be employing a food taster once I am rich enough because Bell’s right, we do every day partake of thousands of small acts of faith, e.g. that the sandwich we bought from the shops for lunch isn’t poisoned – accidentally or deliberately. And by the time I’m wealthy enough to afford a food taster I’d probably have lots of enemies; maybe I could even claim it as a tax deduction.

Rating: 7.0 out of 10
Not to be read at a restaurant, or in the doctor’s waiting room, and you might want to have the Poisons Information Centre on speed-dial.

Queen of the Flowers (2005)

2005-06-19T22:33:00.001+10:00

By Kerry Greenwood

You know, I find that I don’t really like Greenwood’s heroine, Phryne Fisher. I tried to read one of her mysteries before and gave it up quite fast; Phryne is kind of cold and superior, and, to paraphrase her own words, not prone to guilt or remorse, or to any extreme kind of emotion, in fact. I did warm a bit towards her in the end of this book, for being so capable, and the plot is quite satisfyingly twisty, so I might be persuaded to read another one. (Plot of this one in a nutshell: Phryne is hired to locate a missing girl who is to be part of the Flower Parade at St Kilda; also one of her adopted daughters is having who-is-my-real-father issues).

There is something quite insufferable about Phryne, though. I started to wonder whether I was succumbing to culturally indoctrinated ideas of what women should be like – you know, all warm and nurturing, or at least prone to a good bit of irrational PMT. I wondered, am I judging her more harshly than the boys? (Boy private eyes, I mean). For example, I am quite fond of Sir Peter Wimsey, another toffee-nosed well-to-do detective-because-he-can-afford-to-be literary character. But Sir Peter is tortured, sometimes, and prone to self-doubt. I also enjoyed Sherlock Holmes stories when I was younger, who is not renowned for his emotional depth - but we could excuse him a bit because he was a genius and because there was good old Dr Watson there with him, who had a more normal range of human responses and got hurt when Holmes left him out of things and so on. It’s all that personal growth business – Phryne doesn’t seem to feel she needs any. Also it annoys me that she’s called “Phryne” because it’s so difficult to spell.

In any case, I have the impression Greenwood wouldn’t be the slightest bit perturbed at Phryne not being universally liked – and I’m quite certain that Phryne herself wouldn’t give a toss.

Rating: 7 out of 10
A good lazy Sunday read when you’re in a superior mood – or, to feel, like Phryne, read it in the bath with a good French red.

Basket Case (2005)

2005-06-19T22:31:00.001+10:00

By Carl Hiaasen
I confess I picked up this novel out of thousands of others because it features a band called “Jimmy and the Slut Puppies” – such a great name for a band. The hero of our story, Jack Tagger, is an experienced journalist who pissed off the boss and so has been relegated to the obituaries desk. Jack now suffers from a kind of obsessive compulsive disorder about dying – he knows off-by-heart how old all the celebrities were when they died and he gets complete physicals every month because he’s worried he might die early like his Dad. However, once members of the Slut Puppies start dying, he has the opportunity to get back into real news stories once again – plus, he was quite a fan of the Slut Puppies way back when, so he would like to find out if justice is being served.

I liked this book a lot – the dialogue is good, it has some humour, it has some suspense, although the plot wasn’t as devious as it could have been – a bit too straightforward. It’s one of those “light and frothy” reads that’s good for beach holidays. I’ll read some more of Hiaasen’s books.

The only thing that really bugged me was Jack Tagger’s name, because it kept reminding me of “Taggart”, the television series, where “mairduh” is done so often and everyone is so very serious.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10
Not outstanding, but fun.

Wilt (2005)

2005-06-19T22:29:00.001+10:00

By Tom Sharpe

This is the story of Henry Wilt, who’s a chap not really content with his middle-class existence. Neither is his wife, Eva, who wishes he had a more prestigious job and a bit more ambition and so on. Wilt fantasises about murdering his wife, especially after she meets an odious American couple, Sally and Gaskell Pringsheim, who are into Sexual Freedom and Women’s Lib and all sorts of revolutionary new things. Wilt even goes so far as to “practice” Eva’s murder, while she is away with the Pringsheims, after which he decides not to murder Eva.

Unfortunately for Wilt, his practice body (a blow-up plastic doll) is discovered and everyone believes he has murdered Eva after all. People become increasingly hysterical from then on, especially at some staff meetings at Wilt’s workplace, which are really very good scenes.

This book is written very cleverly, and is quite amusing, only it bothers me that the “bad guy” of the story is Sally Pringsheim, who really is a super bitch, but also the representative of “Women’s Lib” in the story. So, in satirising Sally, the author also makes Women’s Lib seem shallow and callous and selfish. Eva is “saved” in the end and she and Wilt return to their normal, comfortable existence, but partly because at some level Eva rejected Women’s Lib and what it represented.

In other words, I get the feeling Tom Sharpe is not a fan of Women’s Lib. But then, he is entitled not to be a fan…literature would be very dull if we all had the same opinions…all the same, I will be reading more of Sharpe to decide whether or not I think he is a misogynist, as well as to enjoy his depictions of bureaucratic ridiculousness.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10
Read when you feel in the mood for an episode of “Yes, Minister” or are feeling very anti-Women’s Lib.

The Picture of Dorian Gray (2005)

2005-06-19T22:23:00.000+10:00

By Oscar Wilde
Amongst other things, this novel was accused by contemporary critics of being effeminate – and it really is quite startlingly so, in places, especially at the beginning. I did catch myself thinking at the start, oh for goodness sakes stop poncing around (oh look at the pretty flowers ooh ahh), but then thought I was being mean and that I may as well say something like “this is so gay”, in the unfortunate terminology of today’s yoof – today’s yoof! Don’t get me started – and after all, Wilde does write about those flowers so prettily. (An interesting aside – The Picture of Dorian Gray started life as a short story, and Wilde consciously made the longer version much less “effeminate” than the original).

However, I did find myself agreeing a bit with the critic in the June 1980 St James’s Gazette, who found Dorian’s petulant behaviour near the start of the novel a bit silly: “…when he is rebuked for being a naughty, wilful boy, he makes a pretty moue – this man of twenty!”. I mean really. In my defence I will say that I find moues unbecoming in women also; if you’re going to be sulky you should at least stomp around a bit and maybe throw something and stop trying to be sexy at the same time. (I tell you what, though, they knew how to write a totally decimating review back in the 1890s).

The book does get going a bit after the moue incident, when Dorian starts to dabble in doubtful activities, all the while staying youthful and unblemished while his portrait becomes steadily more ugly and decrepit. His friend Lord Henry, who really should cop more flak than he does for his part in the whole sorry story, really started to tick me off during his long speeches on how nothing is important except for pleasure and the senses and enjoying yourself. Oh yes, you’re so clever, Lord Henry, now shut up will you? Perhaps I inherited more of the Scottish Protestant Work Ethic than I thought. This all makes it sound like I didn’t like the book, which is not true; I enjoyed it very much. It is a strange mix of philosophy and horror; lovely writing; a good book for a cold rainy winter’s night with the fire going and a bottle of vintage port nearby.

Rating: 8 out of 10
One point deducted for the bit about the moue.

Nice Try (2003)

2005-06-19T22:17:00.000+10:00

By Shane Maloney
I can’t really find much to say about this book. I very much enjoyed Maloney’s two previous books in this series, Stiff and The Brush Off. Nice Try is cut from the same cloth but somehow lacks the spark of the previous two. Our hero, David Wenham, I mean Murray Whelan, is still in the employ of Angelo Agnelli, Minister for Water Supply and the Arts, but is borrowed for a week by mates in the Melbourne Olympics Bid, Incorporated, to sort out some issues that could affect Melbourne’s chances for the 1996 Games - issues that include an Aboriginal activist and a semi-psychotic bodybuilder pumped up on steroids. Also, Whelan is on a health kick and feeling increasingly estranged from his son, Red, who lives in Sydney with his Mum, so there’s some personal stuff going on too. (Not a bad name, Red, only of course it’s short for Redmond and I’m not sure I could name potential future sons Redmond in case he copped flak at school for being named after the bloke that hung Ned Kelly). Whelan’s style of getting things done is still refreshing though – upfront, free of menace and table-thumping; he’s essentially a humble man who wants to get along with people, and that makes a nice change from a lot of crime fiction.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10
A pleasant entertainment, but not much more.

2005 MS Readathon Begins June 3

2005-05-30T21:56:00.000+10:00

Yayy it's here again - the 2005 MS Readathon begins Friday June 3, ending July 20.

The MS Readathon raises money for multiple sclerosis research, in hopes of finding a cure. MS seems to be caused bythe body's immune system attacking it's own tissues, which damages the protective sheath of nerve fibres. This results in a number of disabilities that affect movement, vision, speech and other functions.

You can sponsor people (usually kids - it's really a school program) to read as many books as they can during the Readathon, which encourages people to read AS WELL as raising money for MS research, so there are warm fuzzies all round. Even better, this fundraising strategy involves no skipping, jogging or fasting on my part; instead I can just lie around reading books and eating chocolate.

Reviews of books I read during the 'thon will be posted here, so you know I'm not just making it all up and so the people who sponsor me get a little something in return for their generosity. My reviews from the 2004 Readathon are still on the site so you can have a look at what I read last year - happy reading!.

Bad Debts (2004)

2004-07-28T22:37:00.000+10:00

By Peter Temple
I’ve been trying to avoid giving books a rating of “7” because it seems a bit of a cop-out. But I’m afraid I couldn’t resist giving a seven for “Bad Debts”; it’s a good fun book while not being spectacular. I’ve been looking for a good crime writer for a while (one that isn't an autopsy person) and yay here is one!! Also, he’s Australian!

The hero of the story is Jack Irish, an ex-lawyer who now specialises in finding witnesses for trials and betting on the horses to make ends meet - he hangs around in the dodgy end of town a fair bit. Oh yes, he also enjoys a bit of woodwork, and used to have a drinking problem. It’s all set in and around Melbourne, which is nice seeing as I’m moving there soon. An ex-client of Jack’s contacts him because he’s in trouble, but is murdered before Jack can meet him. Of course, Jack starts to investigate, and meets a few leggy dames, crooked pollies and eccentric football fans along the way. I must say I am a bit worried about moving to Melbourne now, it seems to be a den of vice and a haven for criminals, and I will never think of Daylesford in quite the same way again. (Read the book to find out why).

It took me a while to get going with this book but by the end I was quite fond of Irish and will definitely try the others in the series. I have to say it did remind me of Dick Francis novels - perhaps that was just because of the horse racing element, and that strange feeling you get that the hero is into exactly all the same things the author likes to do in their spare time. More fun and better written than Dick Francis, though.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Fahrenheit 451 (2004)

2004-07-28T22:33:00.000+10:00

By Ray Bradbury
It was such a relief to read this book after trudging through Ulysses and other books requiring intense concentration. Here’s an author who calls a flame thrower a flame thrower. Guy Montag is a “fireman” who’s job it is to burn books (with flame throwers!!), but who comes to the realisation that maybe there’s something to them after all. It feels a bit lightweight somehow, and even though Bradbury is trying to be all meaningful and so on it reads more like a potboiler - sort of a science fiction Mills and Boon, if that makes sense. (OK it doesn't really). Still, I kind of enjoyed it – I might give Bradbury another go sometime, maybe after I’ve actually finished Ulysses, in order to realign my brain to normalcy.

Rating 6 out of 10

The DaVinci Code (2004)

2004-07-18T21:57:00.001+10:00

By Dan Brown
I bought this book at Melbourne airport, as the Virginia Woolf I was reading at the time really wasn’t working out. Woolf requires solitude and silence, which is not what you find in the average departure lounge.

The DaVinci Code proved to be an excellent departure lounge novel, although I suspect if I read it in silence and solitude it might not hold up so well – it did cross my mind once or twice that the whole thing was a bit far-fetched. However, whether it was gory murders, albino monks, high-tech surveillance gear, secret societies or pagan sex rites, the DaVinci Code had it all. You could even pretend you were educating yourself about the history of Christianity at the same time. I would have liked a few more Matthew-Reilly-style italics to let me know when things were really amazing, though.

Perhaps I should try re-reading The Flanders Panel in a departure lounge, to see if I like it better? Incidentally, the DaVinci Code was fairly free of VTA (Violence Towards Art), except for a few Caravaggios that were handled rather roughly.

Rating: 8 out of 10

The Nanny Diaries (2004)

2004-07-18T21:56:00.000+10:00

By Nicola Kraus & Emma McLaughlin
This book really wasn’t very good, but still somehow I kept reading. Nanny, our heroine, is employed by Mr and Mrs X, to look after their son Grayer. Mrs X, in particular, is so unbearably awful that you keep turning the pages in hopes that she will be socially humiliated, made to realise what an awful parent and worthless human being she is and then consequently die of shame.

Unfortunately this never happens. Nanny continues to work for the X’s, carrying out all of their unreasonable demands and never once fighting back. When she is sacked at the end of the novel she doesn’t even leave a few prawns hidden around the apartment for good measure. She does leave them a recorded message on the Nannycam they have installed in the apartment, but it wasn’t anywhere near as vitriolic as I would have liked.

I think what was most disturbing about this book, despite the authors’ protestations of fictional status, was that I am sure every incident in this book is based on fact, and that such shocking people really do exist. I just wanted to shake everybody – the X’s for obvious reasons, and Nanny for continuing to work for them.

Rating: 3 out of 10

Portuguese Irregular Verbs (2004)

2004-07-18T21:54:00.000+10:00

By Alexander McCall Smith
Another one by McCall Smith, but featuring another of his characters, Professor Dr von Igelfeld, a German philologist (word freak) whose seminal work is entitled “Portuguese Irregular Verbs”. This collection of stories describes some of Igelfeld’s adventures with his two closest colleagues, Professor Dr Detlev Amadeus Unterholzer (a quote for my friend Detlev: “…to be called Detlev was a misfortune…”), and Professor Dr Dr Florainus Prinzel, all who work at the Institute of Romance Philology.

I became quite fond of Professor Dr von Igelfeld and his slightly aquiline nose by the end of the book; Igelfeld is proud, arrogant and a snob, but also socially hapless and fond of walks through the countryside and pleasant views. He also realises his failings every so often (particular with respect to the hapless Unterholzer) and tries to make some amends.

I’m starting to think of McCall Smith as a modern Wodehouse – a writer of gentle, entertaining stories about eccentric characters with peculiar names, which occasionally provoke emotion, sometimes cause the reader to laugh (or at least smile), and that function as “an entertainment” (the author describes his book on the cover as “A Professor Dr von Igelfeld Entertainment”), rather than great literature. The world needs books like these, but I doubt they will end up on anyone’s Top 100 Books of All Time list – those seem to be reserved for heavier, worthier and more indigestible tomes.

A good holiday read – I’ll give Dr von Igelfeld another go.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (2004)

2004-07-18T21:51:00.001+10:00

By Alexander McCall Smith
The adventures of Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s only female private eye, are something of a literary phenomenon at the moment, from what I understand. There are at least four in this series so far, and I’m sure there will be more. The book describes the adventures of Mme Ramotswe, a smart, large woman who opens up her detective agency after her father dies. (Her father recommended that she buy her own business, but a detective agency was not what he had in mind).

I liked this book, although it’s not going on my list of all-time favourites. I will certainly keep the others in the series in mind for my next holiday or MS Readathon, whichever comes first. This is a gentle book, despite dealing with some fairly serious issues, not the dark, gritty kind of detective novel. Or even the smart, sassy kind of detective novel. Or the suave, world-weary kind of detective novel. Anyway, you get idea. Give Mme Ramotswe a go.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Gulliver's Travels (2004)

2004-07-18T21:46:00.000+10:00

By Jonathan Swift
This is an odd kind of book. The author describes his (accidental) voyages to Lilliput, where everyone is about 6 inches high, and to Brobdingnag, where everyone is about 60 feet high. There is no plot, as such – the author merely gets stranded on said islands, is captured by the locals, learns to communicate with them, and eventually finds his way back to England again.

It is quite interesting to see the details Gulliver thought to include, such as the various punishments passed on criminals, court intrigues, exactly how many Lilliputian sheep were needed to make up a meal for a standard-issue human, the philosophical musings of the respective kings of the realm and so on. Ingenious and very easy to read, but it just didn’t really grab me. I was vaguely expecting talking horse-people, so maybe that was why I was disappointed. I wondered if perhaps it might be more fun to read aloud with children?

Rating: 5 out of 10

One Fat Englishman (2004)

2004-07-04T13:47:00.000+10:00

By Kingsley Amis
The fat Pom of the title is possibly the most convincingly odious and repugnant character ever written. It is not even possible to enjoy disliking him, as with so many other nasty literary characters. He’s fat, he sweats a lot, he lusts after married women a lot, he has an anger management issue, he likes to play at emotional blackmail, he has a British superiority complex, he doesn’t seem to even really like women, except for a bit of recreational activity - he’s just generally foul.

This book is all about his attempts to get it on with Helene, the wife of an associate of his. Roger Micheldene (the said fat Pom) is a publisher, and in America on business. While he tries to pressure Helene into having sex with him (eww), he tries it on with a couple of other women he meets for good measure, while having arguments with a young American author called Macher, despising everyone around him (especially Helene’s son, Arthur) and generally behaving like a total asshole.

While the quality of the writing was undoubtedly good, I found it hard to keep reading. I wondered who it was meant to appeal to – other fat Englishmen? It seemed to me that the author also despised Mr Micheldene quite thoroughly, and wondered what made him want to write about such a person. Was he writing about himself in some way, thus purging himself? (Kingsley was a Pom, and I think a bit on the fat side; OK tenuous link I admit). Perhaps he was trying to cure the world of the notion that all fat Englishmen are jolly old fellows. If so, he succeeded. This book is clever, but I found it impossible to enjoy.

Rating: 3 out of 10

Blandings Castle (2004)

2004-07-04T13:46:00.000+10:00

By PG Wodehouse
Past MS-Readathon supporters of mine will already know that I am fond of Wodehouse, most famous for his “Jeeves” series. This book is a collection of short stories about several of Wodehouse’s regular characters, but particularly Lord Emsworth of Blandings Castle, an elderly and absent-minded gentleman who loves his gardens and his pigs and who really wishes that all of his relatives would leave him alone so he can potter in the garden undisturbed.

These stories are written in a gentler, slower, more flowery way than the “Jeeves” books; Wodehouse seems less interested in being hilarious. I warmed to Lord Emsworth after a while but didn’t find him as enjoyable as poor old Bertie Wooster and Jeeves, his eminently capable butler, and the other characters lacked the spice of Bertie’s various relatives and acquaintances. Possibly also Wodehouse gets a bit samey after a while; I got a bit bored.

Some good bits though – particularly the insults; Wodehouse is good on insults. I’ll include one other quote I particularly enjoyed to see if my sister is reading these reviews: Lord Emsworth has bought a new telescope, and he is enthusiastically trying it out on the turret of the West Wing. He is delighted about being able to see his cows so closely from so far away, but… “Presently the cow’s appeal began to wane. It was a fine cow, but, like so many cows, it lacked sustained dramatic interest”. Many would probably also accuse Wodehouse of this flaw.

Rating: 5 out of 10

The Hours (2004)

2004-07-04T13:45:00.000+10:00

By Michael Cunningham
The book upon which the recent movie of the same name was based is pretty good. You would hope so, seeing as it won the Pulitzer Prize AND the Pen/Faulkner Award when it was published in 1999.

The novel describes the interlinking lives of Virginia Woolf, who wrote (amongst others) the novel “Mrs Dalloway”, Laura Brown, a 1950s housewife who is reading Mrs Dalloway, and present-day Clarissa, who is called Mrs Dalloway by her friend Richard (a poet dying of AIDS). All three are trying to deal with physical and mental illness – for Woolf and Brown it is their own, for Clarissa it is Richard’s. The author’s portrayal of mental illness (or at least, deep unhappiness) was particularly effective, in describing the small, everyday successes and failures which can change a person’s mood so drastically and make death seem alternately attractive and inconceivable.

I liked this book a lot, although I found the present-tense style a bit annoying (e.g. “Clarissa opens the door and looks outside” etc). Maybe that’s what you have to do to win Pulitzers these days. Anyway, a good holiday read, if you happen to be going on one soon.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10

The Flanders Panel (2004)

2004-07-04T13:43:00.000+10:00

By Arturo Perez-Reverte
I probably became unfairly biased against this book, when the heroine, a Spanish paintings restorer called Julia, first lit up a ciggie in front of the 15th century Flemish painting she was “cleaning” in her lounge room, on page one. She smoked in front of the picture for the first seven pages and did so again and again throughout the entire novel. During the novel, she also had long hot showers in the adjacent bathroom, with the door open, ate her meals while gazing at it, and brought drunken not-to-be-trusted friends home to it. At one point, she even kissed the painting! I mean really. With all of this going on, it made it hard for me to concentrate on the quality of the writing, the plot and all those other aspects you are supposed to consider in a book review. Clearly, however, Perez-Reverte has not done his homework properly!!

Now, perhaps this is just jealousy speaking, but how could Julia possibly become “one of the art restorers most sought after by museums and antiquarians” within only a few years of finishing her degree? Rot, I say. Also, apparently she was a restorer known for “the respect she showed the original work, an ethical position not always shared by her colleagues.” Ooh, that whole paragraph made me mad.

OK, so what happened in the book? Julia finds some hidden inscription underneath the paint that suggests that one of the people depicted in the painting was murdered. She and her guardian Cesar link up with a master chess player called Munoz to try and figure out the mystery - the painting shows two people playing chess, so they try to figure out what moves have been made in the game from the positions of the pieces on the board, in order to figure out who was guilty. (Many tedious descriptions of chess moves ensue). Of course, all this business has great implications for the value of the painting and people start getting murdered in present day too, and Julia’s life is in danger! (Gasp).

I was in a bad mood with this book anyway, but once the thing was solved it reminded me of those documentaries on SBS where a bunch of crazed archaeologists try to reconstruct some bridge over a river in order to prove that the yes, the Romans could have done it this way! Emphasis on “could” – they still don’t have any real proof, but they make up some good stories along the way. Or some bad stories. And I’m afraid I thought this was one – no-one’s motivations seemed believable to me, and if anyone arched their eyebrow one more time or smiled without really smiling, I was going to scream.

My Dad did say that it made good reading at 2:00am flying home from South America though.

Rating: 2 out of 10

The Dressmaker (2004)

2004-06-27T15:58:00.000+10:00

By Rosalie Ham
It must always be so annoying to writers when they read reviews of their work that say things like “yeah it was fantastic but I really didn’t like the ending much’. Writers must thank their lucky stars that they aren’t poor unfortunate film-makers whose ultimate vision is compromised when the test audience decides they’d prefer it if the two main characters got married and lived happily every after instead of dying alone in some garret somewhere after contracting a terminal disease and a broken heart.

So I do apologise to the author for saying this, but…I really did enjoy the book except for the ending. The story is about Tilly, who returns to her childhood town (in country Victoria) to look after her sick mother. Tilly and her mother were the town outcasts when she was young, and she finds that they still are. (Why? Not telling; read the book to find out). Everybody is horrible to her, despite her whipping up fantastic dresses for them all (she became a dressmaker in Paris during her years of exile), except for Teddy McSwiney, who thinks she is beautiful and carefully begins to work on winning her heart. The only other person who is nice to her is Sergeant Farrat, a decent bloke with excellent manners who enjoys sewing his own frocks.

The book is described on the front cover as “an Australian gothic novel of love, hate & haute couture”. It’s a good read, most people get their just desserts, but I felt the end was a bit of a cop-out. I also felt sorry for the poor old Sergeant – in a book where people sort of got what they deserved, I thought he was short-changed. I don't think it’s destined to be a classic or anything, but it was enjoyable and often quite clever – good character sketches, especially. A good holiday read.

(NB: If there really is a town called Dungatar in the wheatlands of Victoria, they must really have it in for Rosalie Ham now).

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Interzone (2004)

2004-06-27T15:56:00.000+10:00

By William S. Burroughs
I'm really not sure what kind of review to give this book; I found it kind of patchy. I’ve only read one other work by Burroughs: “Junky”, an autobiographical account of his life as a heroin addict, which I thought was excellent. (Other MS Readathoners take note: it’s also very short). Burroughs has a bright, sharp way of writing that can’t help but hold your attention, and his ruthlessness in his descriptions of people can make you breathless on occasions.

Interzone is made up of short pieces or sketches, diary-like accounts and ends with a stream-of-consciousness-like part called “Word” – so, patchy in nature but also in quality. Parts here and there I thought were brilliant, like “Twilight’s Last Gleamings”, “International Zone” and “Antonio the Portuguese Mooch”. Other parts I found tough going, particularly “Word”, which I was tempted not to finish and in all honesty didn’t read terribly carefully anyway.

For those who haven’t read Burroughs before, he writes a lot about taking drugs and being queer, and the inevitable seamier side of life that went along with these in the middle of the twentieth century. Don’t read his books unless you are willing to read bits about shooting up, gay sex and lots of talk about cocks and so on. In particular, “Word” is about 60 pages worth of Burroughs being as confronting and as offensive as he can be, without any particular story to it that I could find, and was all a bit much for a prude like me. Even so, I would still encourage you to read Burroughs – maybe don’t start with this one, though.

Interzone feels less like a novel and more like a writer’s journal, about Burroughs trying to figure out how to write, which is weird because he’d already written two books, “Junky” and “Queer”, by the time he wrote this one. His next was “Naked Lunch”, his most famous – his previous works were autobiographical, so perhaps Interzone was Burroughs trying to figure out where to go next; how to step away from writing as “I”. I’d better read “Naked Lunch” so I can see where Burroughs went next.

Rating: Averaged out, 6 out of 10. Some bits I’d give a 10, others a 2, others somewhere in between.

The Passion (2004)

2004-06-27T15:55:00.000+10:00

By Jeanette Winterson
After reading a few of Winterson’s books now (Sexing the Cherry, Oranges are not the only fruit, Art Objects, the Lighthousekeeper and this one) I profess to being a fan, particularly after her visit to the Adelaide Festival’s Writers’ Week. She said that week that she wasn’t into the whole self-help thing, but by golly if she wanted to start a cult she could do it by snapping her fingers, we were hanging on her every word.

OK so I had a revelation while reading this book; I think I’ve figured out that love is the great theme of all Winterson’s books. (Took me a while, didn’t it?). Love is what it’s all about for Winterson; I suspect of her of being a hopeless romantic at heart. Life seems more of an intellectual experience for writers like Vonnegut and Burroughs, which is not to imply that love and other human emotions play no part in their writing (nor that Winterson’s writing is not intellectual); they’re just more cynical about the whole thing.

I really enjoyed The Passion, a novel set during the time of Napoleon’s empire. The first section especially was compelling, about French peasant Henri who becomes a cook for Napoleon, and who essentially hero-worships the emperor. Partly it is the historical element that makes it fascinating, but Winterson is such a beautiful writer than any enjoyment of her books has to come from the language as well.

The other main character of the story is Villanelle, daughter of a Venetian boatman, an employee of the casino. She falls passionately in love with another woman, who is married. Henri and Villanelle meet when both are sent on Napoleon’s march through Russia, in the section called “The Zero Winter”. Both of their hearts are damaged; Henri’s as he realises Napoleon is not worth his idolatry; Villanelle’s because she literally doesn’t have one - her lover has stolen it. (An odd bit of magical realism thrown in which didn’t quite work for me). As she says, though, it is a blessing – the zero winter is no place for a heart.

You know, sometimes I wonder if war and pain and suffering are worthwhile after all because of the stories and art and film that it has caused people to create. It can’t possibly be – rather this probably indicates something a little unpleasant about humans; to quote Vonnegut in Bluebeard: “what Pollock did lacked that greatest of all crowd pleasers, which was human sacrifice”.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Bluebeard (2004)

2004-06-27T15:53:00.000+10:00

By Kurt Vonnegut
I’ve read one other book by Vonnegut, “Slaughterhouse 5”, which would definitely get a spot on my list of 100 best books of all time, so I had high expectations of Bluebeard. I was initially disappointed. One of the reasons why, I think, was the style of the writing.

The book is the autobiography/diary of Rabo Karabekian, a (fictional) artist of Armenian origin who became part of the American Abstract Expressionist art movement. (Incidentally all his works were destroyed due to a strange chemical reaction between his paint brand of choice, Sateen Dura-Lux, and the canvas, which resulted in all the paint falling off – one for the conservators out there!). He has been encouraged to write his story by a visitor to his house, Circe Berman, herself an immensely popular author who writes under the name of Polly Madison and who is a very bossy person. Karabekian, not a writer, writes in an unsophisticated way – for example, Rabo uses far too many exclamation marks! And he uses italics way too much! This made the book seem a bit unsophisticated too. Boy, what a snob I am.

By the end of the book, though, I was convinced it was very clever of Vonnegut to do this, because it helps draw the character of Karabekian so well – he’s just a guy trying to live his life, and who doesn’t have too many tickets on himself (not anymore, anyway). We learn of Karabekian’s early apprenticeship to a painter (Dan Gregory, a fairly nasty piece of work), his time in World War II (where he lost an eye) and his subsequent marriages, all the while on a kind of quest to become a painter with passion – a lack of passion being his essential problem in life; as an art teacher once said of him, “why should I teach him the language of painting, since there seems to be absolutely nothing which he is desperate to talk about?”

Though Bluebeard does not reach the heights of Slaughterhouse 5, it was in the end an immensely satisfying book. Vonnegut has a unique ability to show how unbearable life all is, without making it unbearable, if you know what I mean.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Welcome

2004-06-22T23:29:00.000+10:00

The 2004 MS Readathon is now upon us! The Readathon happens every year, and is a program run in schools to encourage kids to read, while at the same time raising $$ for research into finding a cure for multiple sclerosis. Adults can join in too!! Participants read as many books as they can in a certain period (this year from June 21 to July 31), with hapless family, friends and colleagues sponsoring them per book or for a set amount. (Donations over $2 are tax deductible!).

Kids are supposed to get an adult to initial each book they read; instead I thought I'd post reviews of all the books I read, so you can decide if you'd like to give them a try. (I've accepted a challenge to read James Joyce's Ulysses this year; for progress reports see www.alicereadsulysses.blogspot.com).

MS is a disease that affects the central nervous system of the human body, by destroying the insulating sheaths around nerves in the brain and spinal cord. The cause of MS in so far unknown, and there is no cure. For more info on MS and the 'thon, see www.msreadathon.com.au.

Hope you enjoy my reviews...
Cheers,
Alice