10. Roald Dahl - The Magic Finger

I have to admit that I'm cheating this week. I'm going to Sweden for the Midsummer Festival this weekend and I'm not sure how much I can read there. That's why I picked an extra short book that arrived by post today. I ordered the full box set of Roald Dahl's children's books and this week's pick was The Magic Finger. 

There's not much to say about this book. It took me ten minutes to read it. It's about a girl who, when she's upset, can use her magic finger to change the situation. In this story she is upset by the Gregg's because they shoot animals. This enrages her and she changes them to geese. It's a cute little tale, but nothing more than that. I wouldn't say it has a happy ending though and that's why I always kind of enjoy Dahl's books. They're cute horror stories for kids. To be honest Charlie and the Chocolate Factory still scares me. I think I should start reading that one soon as well... 

9. Stephen Fry - Moab is my Washpot

For this week I had the idea to read Fry's first autobiography because his latest the fry chronicles amused me a lot, but when reading Stephen Fry's Moab is my Washpot I suddenly remembered how much I loathed reading his non-fiction book The Liar. This novel he wrote around the same time as his first autobiography, in 1997. Fry's language can be so pompous, which is often enjoyable in real life.

However, in this case, in book form, it's terribly tedious. I am so used to reading about English boarding schools because of my Literary education. And to read the same story again only then by Fry's hand is nothing short of annoying. I had to read half of the book in one day simply because I kept dreading to read more at the beginning of the week. I even started displaying SOG (study evasive behaviour as we used to call it at uni) and I almost started cleaning the whole house because I didn't want to continue reading. 

He sums himself up in such a great way that I almost feel I don't need to add anything to my little article:

"No. I was Stephen. I was always going to be Stephen. I would always be that same maddening, monstrous mixture of pedantry, egoism, politenes, selfishness, kindliness, sneakiness, larkiness, sociability, loneliness, ambition, ordered calm and hidden intensity. I would cover my life with words. I would spray the whole bloody world with words. They were still all that I had but at last they were getting me places." (Fry, 432)

Don't get me wrong I love Stephen Fry. I love watching him on television and reading his tweets. But I don't know if I fancy 500 pages of him in one go. For me it's now 1 - 2 for Fry. And only future will tell if I will ever pick up one of his books again.

Mo Hayder - Hanging Hill

I missed my deadline by one day again, but you can't blame it on me this week, my mum and her friend came to Edinburgh for the weekend. So I was busy showing them around. 

It's not because I was procrastinating reading this book. As I may have pointed out before I'm not the biggest fan of crime novels, but I have been a big fan of Mo Hayder. Ever since I read Tokyo I bought all her books the moment they came out. Even if they were only available in hard cover. I did the same with Hanging Hill this year. However, I'm sad to say that for the first time in a long long time, she has disappointed me. 

Firstly, by not  writing another Jack Caffery novel, since I want to know how he is doing after Gone. And secondly, by not making this book interesting or surprising in the slightest. Tokyo wasn't a Caffery novel but it packed a punch. This novel does not overwhelm you at all. If anything, it's boring. The story of the two sisters who grew apart due to an incident (which is never really clarified), never really appeals to me. It's almost as if Hayder as made writing about solitary characters her trait, but when she has to write about familial situation, she fails. It's a pity, because this means I'll probably have to wait another year for a new book. Please let it be another Caffery novel then, because I don't particularly enjoy these deviations. Thank you.

Stieg Larsson - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

This week the challenge was even harder than last week. Stieg Larsson's third book in the Millennium series The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest is considerably lengthier than it's predecessors. In this case, that wasn't bad at all, because you get the desire to finish it as soon as possible since you want to know how the events that started in The Girl Who Played With Fire come to a conclusion. 

It's hard to say anything about the book because it literally continues the story that ended abruptly at the end of the second book. I can't tell you whether I find it more or less enthralling than the second one, because it's as if Larsson wrote a book that 1300 pages long, only he decided to sell it in two different covers. The only problem is is that the first book in the Millennium series does not really fit in with the other two books. So I don't think of it as a trilogy. It's a pity Larsson is not among us to continue the series of Herr Blomkvist and Fru Salander because even though things come to a good conclusion in the third novel it would be good to stay with the main characters for a bit longer. Larsson is someone with such a good writing style, for example the passage in the court room; we already know all the details of the story, but he makes it interesting for us to read again. And someone with such a good eye for detail, should have written more books than only these three. 

As I said before, there is not much I can write about detective novels, so I'll skip most of the book talk and start reading the book for the next week. I'm quite impressed with myself that I've been keeping this project up for at least seven weeks now. To be continued....