78. Ferdinand von Schirach - Der Fall Collini ("The Collini Case")

One week behind but as always, better late than never and I'll try to make up for this lost week another time. For the first time during this challenge I read a German book; Ferdinand von Schirach's Der Fall Collini. German should be really easy for me to read as it's my second language. It wasn't. I have neglected it for so long, that I could hardly understand big parts of this novel. Nevertheless, it was a very good read and I would certainly recommend it, maybe read the English version if that's easier.

The concept of the novel is quite easy to explain, a lawyer receives his first ever case. A seemingly impossible one for him to win. An old man has been murdered in his hotel room and there is no doubt that Fabrizio Collini has murdered him and he even admits to it. He just doesn't want to speak about the motif. Then the case comes to court and the lawyer finds out it's even more difficult than he imagined as he knew the old man that was murdered... 

An interesting novel that touches upon a very heavy subject in German law, but to find this out you'd need to read the book.

77. Peter James - Perfect People

When I started reading Peter James' Perfect People, it felt as if I was reading something by Michael Crichton or Stephen King. The way the novel sets out is very strong. You start when a couple are on a ship, which seems to be a medical ship. Then you find out it's because they want to have a genetically modified child. But why? 

Peter James eases us into the story. He shows us what the parents have gone through with their first born son, so the reader understands why they are getting these extreme measures done. 

I believe James is not able to uphold Crichton's and King's writing style though and that's why the story is sagging towards the end. He cannot really hold the reader's attention. I also believe he went into the wrong direction with the religious cult chasing the genetically enhanced children, but King could've gotten away with that because he would've been able to tell it so that even though it is so absurd we still want to keep reading. 

It's unfair for James that I'm comparing him to these two amazing authors, because in his own right he is a good writer and this was a very entertaining novel.  

76. Alison Moore - The Lighthouse

This novel was a very close call. Until page 165 I couldn't really say where the story would lead, but the last 20 pages are very intense. I'm talking about Alison Moore's The Lighthouse, which was shortlisted for The Man Booker Prize 2012.

It reads like a short story and it's about Futh, a newly separated man who is on his way to Germany to go hiking for a week to get away from everything. When he arrives in Hellhaus, his first stop, he has an awkward encounter with the hotel landlord and his wife. From then on, the story moves back and forth between the wife of the landlord Ester and Futh. 

Retrospectively, I can say that it's worth reading it. The story's strongest moving force are the consequences of things not done and Moore shows great talent by controlling this force. I would read this novel again just because of the strong ending, and as you may have noticed in previous blogs; I don't say this often.

75. Jeet Thayil - Narcopolis

I returned from my holiday in Dubai and Holland yesterday, and I have to start work in a few minutes but I wanted to quickly say something about Jeet Thayil's Narcopolis. It's a very powerful book. I can see why it was nominated for the Man Booker Prize 2012.

According to the main narrator who only speaks about himself during the start and finish of the book, this is a story spoken through a pipe. An opium pipe. It's telling is at times quite confusing, but while you're reading you won't notice you've actually read another 100 pages. That's how fluent the story telling is and how well it flows.

The story sees the lives of a few people who basically always hang out at an opium den unfold. There is the eunuch, Dimple, her Chinese friend, Lee, the Muslim owner of the den, Rashid, another customer, Rumi. We hear their stories but the stories never find solid ground, they are told and they float in the air, like the opium that is smoke abundantly. As the story progresses the protagonists starts using heroin and that's where we crash and the book ends.

Very powerful story telling, somewhat similar reminiscent of a much more lyrical Trainspotting and I hope to see more books after this début by Jeet Thayil.

74. Victoria Hislop - The Thread

I was surprised twice when I read The Thread by Victoria Hislop. The first surprise started very early on when I found out in the acknowledgements that Victoria is married to Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye and team captain of the TV programme "Have I Got News For You". This might not be the biggest surprise you have ever been presented with, but it just amused me since I've read her first novel The Island seven years ago without knowing.

The second surprise came half-way through the novel. I found out that I loved it, just as much as I loved The Island. I never really buy sappy love stories or even historical novels. However, judging by how much I loved her first book about the Greek/Turkish leper island Spinalonga; I thought this one might disappoint, and how better to find out than to read the book?

Hislop has the ability to drag you into another time and pull you into the characters lives so deeply that you don't notice time is flying by. We start at Thessaloniki, Greece in 1917 and we go through all the tumultuous times of two World Wars and the effects this has on the city and the lives of a handful of people, until we reach 2007. We only stop at this year for a seconds, but it's enough to fully grasp the thread that we've followed in the other 450 pages. 

73. John Grogan - Marley & Me

Marley & Me by John Grogan is not a book I would normally read. I won this book at my previous job and I decided to give it a go this week. I've seen the film, of which the poster is on the book (I hate that!); but the book is just so... Simple.

It's a cute true story about a columnist who writes about his family's rambunctious dog, Marley. Nothing big really happens though, he takes us through Marley's puppy years and ends, very fittingly, at his last breath. It's no literary masterpiece. It's just a story about a guy and his dog.

What annoyed me, was that I watched a few episodes of The Dog Whisperer on YouTube and John and Jen Grogan were on it because they couldn't control the dog they had after Marley passed away. This annoys me, because it's quite clear that they just can't raise a dog. The second thing that I found a bit too much was the few pages at the end of the book where John Grogan suddenly starts talking about 9/11. The below passage doesn't add anything to the story, especially since he contemplates the below while visiting the site of the crash in 2003:

"I felt something else, as well - an amazement at the boundless capacity of the human heart, at once big enough to absorb a tragedy of this magnitude yet still find room for the little moments of personal pain and heartache that are part of any life. In my case, one of those little moments was my failing dog. With a tinge of shame, I realized that even amid the colossus of human heartbreak that was Flight 93, I could still feel the sharp pang of the loss I knew was coming." (Grogan 299)

72. Sophie van der Stap - En wat als dit liefde is

This book En wat als dit liefde is, was written by Sophie van der Stap who is famous for her book Meisje met negen pruiken in which she describes living with her cancer treatment. When I say famous I mean famous in the Netherlands, although I believe it has been translated in quite a few languages. I've never read her bestseller, but when my mum visited me in Edinburgh she brought the book I'm reviewing here, so I decided to give it a go.

People who have been reading my blog may have noticed that I'm not a big fan of Dutch literature. I often find it either contains too many explicit sex scenes, or it describes the Second World War, or it just mixes both these topics. This weeks' book though is nothing like that. I'm not sure I want to describe it as literature either though. No reason to get sucked into a debate about which term to use for this novel, let me just quickly describe what it is about (don't worry, this won't take long as I know that there are no translations for this book and only my fellow Dutchies may find this interesting).

The book is about a blind woman in Paris Marianne de Grenelle who likes to be thought of as invisible and likes to spy on her neighbours without anyone noticing her, and her friendship with socialite Tara who has one lover after the other and likes to describe all these events in her blog. This novel is about what love really is and the fact that everyone always thinks the grass is greener on the other side. Marianne has left her boyfriend 25 years ago and is not sure if this was the right decision and Tara cannot chose between her abundance of men. Both of the women are jealous of the other's situation.

71. Deborah Levy - Swimming Home

A few days late and all I can say about this Man Booker Shortlisted novel called Swimming Home by Deborah Levy is that it's not my style at all. I think I stopped paying attention from page 5.

It's about a girl who is found floating in the pool of a group of people vacationing in France. They take this strange girl in their house and she destroys the whole family dynamic, or actually she brings on the destruction that seems to have been pending for a long time.

I'm not so sure about this description, because I really did faze out when I read it. When pages go on like the below, you've lost me. Not a success in my opinion and I'm happy this book didn't win.

A woman with a helmet of permed hennaed hair stopped her to ask if she knew the way to Rue Francois Aune. The lenses of her big sunglasses were smeared with what looked like dried milk. She spoke in English with an accent that Isabel thought might be Russian. The woman pointed a finger laden with rings at a mechanic in oily navy overalls, lying under a motorbike, as if to suggest Isabel ask him for directions on her behalf." (Levy 28)

70. Tan Twan Eng - The Garden of Evening Mists

I have gotten a bit lost in trying to watch all the James Bond's ever made on On Demand. I'm at the fifth film, but due to this I am late finishing this amazing book by Tan Twan Eng. The Garden of Evening Mists is very enticingly written. It's unlike anything I have ever read before and therefore it's very educational.

This book was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012 and I can see why. It tells the story of judge Yun Ling Teoh, who was a Japanese prisoner during World War II and later served as an apprentice of a Japanese gardener Nakamura Aritomo. She struggles between fulfilling the promise she made her sister, who died in this same prisoner's camp where she was held, of making a real Japanese garden and trying to get over her survivor guilt.

It's late, because I read two thirds of the book this evening so I'm not going to write any more. Also my words would not be able to do this book any justice. Hopefully, the Man Booker Prize will do that for me (please note that I'm saying this without having read the other books, so this remark is not all final).

69. Margaret Atwood - Alias Grace

It has to be said that I'm two and a half years late reading this book and Danique, a good friend of mine who I went to University with, will probably scold me for it, since she's written an essay or come to think of it; it might've been her thesis about this book. Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace was discussed during my MA course which focused on biographies and autobiographies - Shaping the Truth. 

I missed this discussion and I hadn't read the book, so I read it now. After reading Hilary Mantel's novel, I was very impressed by Atwood's descriptiveness. Even though she doesn't always use all the usual punctuation and she switches from storytellers quite often, I never felt confused and I felt to be under skin of the main character in the novel, which is a big word of praise from at the moment after disliking the books I've read lately.

Alias Grace is based on the true events of Grace Marks' life. She was a young woman in Canada in the 19th century, who may or may not have murdered her employer Mr. Kinnear and his lover and servant Nancy Montgomery. In this novel she recounts the story (as she remembers it) to a young doctor who is interested to see whether she is insane, while trying to avoid to question as to her innocence. 

I see why my professor chose this book, because as a 'biography' it does have a few noteworthy sentences. The below quote for example shows what always annoys me about autobiographies. I always think that they are always only partly true, because you cannot simply remember all these intrinsic details of your life: 

"It is the only memory she seems to have forgotten, so far; otherwise, every button and candle-end seems accounted for. But on second thought, he has no way of knowing that; and he has an uneasy sense that the very plenitude of her recollections may be a sort of distraction, a way of drawing the mind away from some hidden but essential fact (...)" (Atwood 215)

Not to forget the fact that when you think back on your own memories they are always muddled but what others have told you and little white lies you told yourself to remember something positively. This means of course that you can't actually remember the actual event as it actual occurred:

"What should I tell Dr. Jordan about this day? Because now we are almost there. I can remember what I said when arrested, and what Mr. MacKenzie the lawyer said I should say, and what I did not say even to him: and what I said at the trial, and what I said afterwards, which was different as well. And what McDermott said I said, and what the others said I must have said, for there are always those that will supply you with speeches of their own, and put them right into your mouth for you too (...)" (Atwood 342)

 But why would I quote these things and write this blog when Atwood herself words it so perfectly in her Afterword:

"I have of course fictionalized historical events (as did many commentators on this case who claimed to be writing history). I have not changed any known facts, although the written accounts are so contradictory that few facts emerge as unequivocally 'known'." (Atwood 541)

 

68. Hilary Mantel - Beyond Black

I'm finally back. I couldn't leave my books any longer. I have a few still staring at me from the bookcase wondering when it's their turn to be read, and my wishlist is getting longer. So I'm back in business with this book by Hilary Mantel Beyond Black. This is the first book I've read by her, consciously leaving Wolf Hall for another time.

I wish I could say that I'm happy I did, but I don't think I am. Unless Beyond Black shows me what is yet to come in her writing. She has a very confusing writing style, bearing in mind though that this might be because of the subject of the book. It's about Alison Hart, who is a medium. She tours through England while performing on stage and giving readings. She always has two companions with her; Morris her spirit guide, an annoying who's stalking her with villains who abused her and her abusive mother in the past and Colette, a desperate woman who has fled her husband to find another life for herself. No one else can see the spirits she sees though.

The book, as expected, revolves mostly around Alison and the spirits that stalk her, but the point-of-view switches in between passages from Alison to Colette. I think what Hilary Mantel was aiming to do in this book, was to show the world what it is like to be a writer; talking to your characters that no one else can see in the dark recesses of your house to write a successful novel. This is unfortunately not my own thought about the book, because I had to read the interview in the back to find out what it was about. I didn't think the book flowed smoothly enough to be entertaining and all too often I had to leaf back to see if we were in the past future or spirit world. However, it's not her most acclaimed book, I'll start on Wolf Hall soon but not just yet.

Taking Some Time Off Reading

I need a little break from reading after reading 67 books in 67 weeks. I'm not on an actual holiday, but I've escaped into watching films and TV series. I will be back at the end of September!

67. M.R. James - Collected Ghost Stories (Part 1)

For this week, I thought we needed to head into a completely different direction. M.R. James' Collected Ghost Stories are certainly world's apart from the E.L. James' series (even though the authors' names are really similar). James is famous for his ghost stories from the start of the 1900's. 

For this week I've read a few of the stories in this collection, not all of them yet:

• Canon Alberic's Scrapbook
• Lost Hearts
• The Mezzotint
• The Ash Tree
• Number 13
• Count Magnus
• "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad"
• The Treasure of Abbot Thomas
• A School Story
• The Rose Garden
• The Tractate Middoth
• Casting the Runes

These are not the kind of ghost stories you might know from contemporary writers. These are turn of the century, uncanny ghost stories. You might notice that I love to use the word uncanny, this is because it's been imprinted in my brain by my professors. 

These stories are not gory, but they are scary it their own way. The first thing to note is that it's always told by someone who has heard or read this story somewhere. The main person in the story will never actually tell you the story. This means that you don't know how it will end. The protagonist could end up dead or alive at the end of the tale. Also it means that we don't get the full information, because it reaches us through hear-say. The effect of that is that it becomes "realistic" in that someone could have actually experienced the circumstances; they are all stories from the past. 

As I said when I had read The Three Musketeers the knowledge I had acquired in university has kind of seeped away; I have to strain myself to read these books. It's good practice do and I do really miss discussing these books with my professor. 

66. E.L. James - Fifty Shades Darker

I rue my words so much.. Why did I say last week that I enjoyed reading E.L. James' book? I may have been high or something. Fifty Shades Darker is absolutely horrible! I can now see how this was inspired by Twilight though, but honestly... How much can the main character keep whining? He loves you! Stop thinking he doesn't. 

I would like to tell you the plot, but nothing happens. 350 pages, and nothing happens! It's this kind of thing over and over again:

"'I have spent all my adult life trying to avoid any extreme situation. Yet you... you bring out feelings in me that are completely alien. It's very...' He frowns, grasping for the word. 'Unsettling.'" (James 27)

Bravely I've been trying to compare this book to Wuthering Heights, but I can't anymore. Wuthering Heights is a romantic, tragic love story. This is... trash. 

65. E.L. James - Fifty Shades of Grey

This week's book had a big effect on me. I was surprised I wasn't as disgusted by reading E.L. James' much talked about novel Fifty Shades of Grey. I didn't think I would be disgusted because of the BDSM and erotic scenes that occur every three pages. I thought the literature graduate in me would be disgusted with how simple and silly this most famous book of this year is.

Which it is; there's almost no plot and no interesting storyline,but it didn't disgust me. I was enthralled actually. I switched the literary part in me off and ignored all the: "Oh My"'s and "Holy shit"'s that are uttered way too often. Even the silly sentences that don't make sense at all, but are just used to 'arouse' readers, were completely ignored by me: "I want to brush my teeth. I eye Christian's toothbrush. It would be like having him in my mouth. Hmm..." (James 76). I switched the girl in me on. The shy sixteen-year-old girl I used to be. The girl that dreamt about this man in this book (mind you, I'm not talking about the S&M part!). It doesn't help that Ana studied English Literature as well and wants to work at a publisher's.

Christian Grey is really similar to Heathcliff:

"She distracted me from the destructive path I found myself following. It's very hard to grow up in a perfect family when you're not perfect." (James 432)

Grey was adopted, because his mother who was on crack died when he was four. Christian Grey is a Byronic hero, and I like Byronic heroes. I think they are what most women seek in literature and, if I may be so bold, in life. Think about it; Vampires are the most popular creatures in literature at the moment and they are everything a Byronic hero stands for: broody, difficult, but when you get them it's all so rewarding, because behind all this darkness is a wonderful, loyal, albeit a bit obsessive, man.

"We're coming near the end of the bridge, and the road is once more bathed in the neon light of the street lams so his face is intermittently in the light and the dark. And it's such a fitting metaphor. This man, whom I once thought of as a romantic hero, a brave shining white knight - or the dark knight, as he said. He's not a hero; he's a man with serious, deep emotional flaws, and he's dragging me into the dark. Can I not guide him into the light?" (James 355)

The exact reason why women flock towards this book is easy to say though:

"'Anastasia, I'm not a hearts and flowers kind of man... I don't do romance. My tastes are very singular. You should steer clear of me.' He closes his eyes as if in defeat. 'There's something about you, though, and I'm finding it impossible to stay away. But I think you've figured that out already.'" (James 72)

I will try to go into more detail about Byronic men; the reason this book became so popular as it did, but for now this is it. I can't allow myself to be distracted for too long, because I need to start reading the second part.

64. Maarten H. Rijkens - We always get our sin too

A silly little book this week by Maarten H. Rijkens, called We always get our sin too. The reason I read this little book is because I went on a business trip to London this week. Not much time to sit around and read when you're in London!

This book is basically a book full of Dutch expressions literally translated into English. It's not great, because I think the author actually touched upon most of the funny expressions when he wrote the first book. This is meant to be a kind of dictionary, but I have never needed it and it isn't very practically because the way the index works is not ideal. 

And to give you an idea of the phrases:

"We were hanging on your lips" (Should be: We were hanging on your every word)
"It's not a one day fly" (Should be: It's not a flash in the pan)
"How do you do and how do you do your wife?" (Should be: How do you do and how is your wife?)

63. Anthony Bourdain - Kitchen Confidential

I skipped a week and I apologise. I figured though that after 62 weeks, one week would not be too bad. And I have a good excuse, because the week before last my boyfriend and I had to live in a flat without a bathroom. A flat in complete disarray because the landlord decided to change it into a luxury apartment for the festival. Long story short we moved. A bit farther away from city centre, but it's an amazing flat and I'm happy because the first thing that I have organised are my books (mind you, I have many more books in The Netherlands):

Now, let me start discussing this week's book by Anthony Bourdain, who is apparently a famous chef. Kitchen Confidential is about his rise in the world of culinary establishments in New York. It's about his ups, but really mainly about his downs. He used a lot of drugs and somehow he managed to secure a foothold in the ever changing world of top-range restaurants.

I'm a foodie, but I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to life in a restaurant. I order food, but I never think about what the kitchen goes through. And Bourdain is unable to give me a good view in the kitchen. I think he chose the wrong backdrop for his books and he fails to describe his work, instead he goes on and on about several colleagues of his and different establishments without going into much detail about any of it. So, I feel like I've quickly skimmed over his life, but I still have no idea what it's about.

Maybe that's what life in the kitchen is all about though. Living on the fast track. It's not suitable for novels though, even for an autobiography it's too hasty, but what can you expect of a man who works over 80 hours a week. You can't expect him to sit down and describe his life in detail. He describes the pace of the book perfectly when he tells us the 14 things you need to be ready for when you're an aspiring chef,:

"7. Lazy, sloppy and slow are bad. Enterprising, crafty and hyperactive are good" (Bourdain 297)

62. Stephen King - The Dead Zone

All I can say about Stephen King's book The Dead Zone, is that it is very similar to his earlier novels; especially, The Stand, which preceded this week's novel. I have the feeling that King actually had some ideas that he couldn't use in The Stand so he used them in this book. 

Mostly because of the visions. In The Stand the visions occurred during the night when the character were sleeping. In The Dead Zone the visions are restricted to one character; Johnny Smith. Due to two head traumas, he can see glimpses of the future when he touches someone. This gives him the ability in some cases to change the course of the future. 

This is were another similarity occurs; in The Stand the characters are trying to stop a very powerful, influential - yet crazy - man, called The Walkin' Dude. In The Dead Zone there is another crazy man, who is introduced to us as an influential door-to-door salesman, who strangles a dog because of an anger rage. "Never catch me, I'm the Invisible Man." (King 359) Greg Stillson, his name, then enters into politics by manipulating the crowds and fooling them into liking him. He gives Johnny and his clairvoyant gift a very bad feeling. 

As you can see very similar stories, although the scope in The Dead Zone is considerably smaller than The Stand. The thing with King's books though, is that every one of his books are a joy to read. So the fact that I read a very similar story a few months ago did not bother me one bit. 

61. Roald Dahl - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

I have never read Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but I have watched about a hundred film adaptations, maybe even some TV series. The story is nothing surprising really and I don't think I should tell you exactly what it's about.

I feel that there is one important difference between the films and the book, however. Namely, in the book Grandfather Joe and Charlie do not break the rules by flying around in the bubble chamber. The director clearly felt that Charlie and the Grandfather could not be portrayed as too perfect, because this might dumben the story down a bit. In the case of the book that isn't much of a problem, because it's clearly aimed for young children. The films, however, try to reach a wider audience.

I have to say though, of all the Roald Dahl fillers I've read, this one was the best. It had a more adult feel to it. Nice book if you have an hour to spare and you don't want to read a full length novel.

60. Susan Hill - The Woman in Black

Susan Hill's The Woman in Black is a Victorian Gothic novel as any written at that time. The landscape the story is set in is so convincingly Gothic that I keep having to check if the novel was really written in 1983. 

The story is set somewhere in the middle of England called Crythin Gifford. A young London solicitor has to go up there to attend the funeral of Mrs. Alice Drablow. He also has to evaluate her property and her papers. Her house is set in a very eerie landscape in the middle of Marshlands. A pony and trap can make the crossing twice a day and for the rest of the time the house is unreachable. It goes without saying that this house is haunted. 

It's passage like this that remind me of my English classes back at university when we spoke about Gothic novels:

"Could I not be free of it at least for that blessed time, was there no way of keeping the memory, and the effects it had upon me, at least temporarily? And then, standing among the trunks of the fruit trees, silver-grey in the moonlight, I recalled that the way to banish an old ghost that continues its hauntings is to exorcise it." (Hill 19)

And he does this by writing a book about it, which is not something that we see any more in modern horror fiction, but it's something so necessary in a good horror novel, I think. This is because it lets the people experiencing the story tell us, which is a much stronger story than told from a third-person perspective.

The horror sequences actually work when read, which I didn't think could be done any more after films made sure we need to see everything worse and scarier for us to feel anything. In this novel, a short walk through the hallway can be quite unsettling. Especially when there is a strange noise coming from the door ahead.....

"They asked for my story. I have told it. Enough." (Hill 128)

59. Suzanne Collins - Mockingjay

For the first time I made the connection. What The Hunger Games is really about. Obviously I read the third part of the Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins this week, Mockingjay. What I found out, is that it is really a copy of the Roman Empire. And I found that out through this passage: 

"Panem et Circenses translates into Bread and Circuses. The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power." (Collins 261)

I hadn't made that link before. Strangely enough, since I had Latin for about six years in high school. The Hunger Games resemble the Colosseum games so much, that I'm almost embarrassed I didn't recognise this before.

Again, I won't say much about this story but it's worth reading if you like reading; otherwise, do yourself a favour and wait for the films. It's not much more than the Twilight story, apart from the fact that it's more bloody maybe. A nice story to read in the summer months, but nothing more

58. Suzanne Collins - Catching Fire

I can't say too much about this week's book, because it's the sequel to The Hunger Games I read last week. I don't want to give anything away that happened in the previous novel and therefore I can't describe any of the events in Suzanne Collins' Catching Fire. 

I can only tell you that it's well worth reading. It's completely different from the first book and it takes a few steps away from the actual Hunger Games spectacles (so its not so similar to the sequel to Battle Royale, apart from the rebellion). It was a sunny week in Edinburgh this week and this novel is a perfect read when you lie in the park and bask in the sun. 

I'm afraid I will be able to say much less about next week's novel because that's the last book in the trilogy, but I will be able to report if the trilogy as a whole is worth your time or if you should just wait for the films to come out. 

57. Suzanne Collins - The Hunger Games

I've had a very exciting weekend, because my Scottish football team Heart of Midlothian has won the Scottish Cup on Saturday. I managed to get a ticket, because my boyfriend knows one of the star players Rudi Skacel. Needless, to say I had an amazing weekend. 

Now to the book I read this week, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. It's a bit lame reading a book right after it has become famous because of a film, especially when you read it after you have seen the film. I must say, however, that it was a good read nevertheless and even though I remember every part of the story; the film was so similar to the story, that I can't laud the film maker enough for making it so. 

For those who don't know The Hunger Games yet, it's basically the American answer to the gruesome Japense novel and film Battle Royale, where whole school classes are shipped off to an island where they have to kill each other. The American version is a bit more subdued, because here it's only 12 districts that compete and every district brings forth a very unwilling girl and boy to fight. There can only be one victor.

In the first book Katniss and Peeta are picked from District 12 to fight for survival. It's a very powerful story and if you haven't seen the film yet, the book will keep you on the edge of the seat. I would not call this the Twilight version of Battle Royale as some people do, because it's not as sappy as Twilight is in the slightest and the body count is immense. I can't wait to start reading the second book now though, because I don't know what's going to happen there. 

56. Laura Hillenbrand - Unbroken

It is not surprising that Laura Hillenbrand has only written two books. The first book Seabiscuit: The True Story of Three Men and One Racehorse she finished in 2001. And as I wrote in my blog about this book, the amount of research she put into that novel was astounding. If anything, she put more research into writing Unbroken, that's why I'm not surprised it took her seven years to write it. The story is about a young American lieutenant Louie Zamperini who is stuck on a raft for weeks after his plane went down over the Pacific.

It's such an interesting novel, because you can sense in everything sentence you read that Hillenbrand knows what she is talking about. Everything she writes has been thoroughly researched. Remarks and description are never made in vain and everything that is written carries weight. So much so, that I have already bought a book she quotes as a source. Saying that the story is extraordinary does not do Zamperini's life any justice. The way his odyssey is described is not sad, it's uplifting and at the same time nerve-wrecking. 

It's not Hillenbrand's fault that you can't read the story through Zamperini's eyes and that you distance yourself from the narrative. It's because the human mind is designed not to imagine such hardships, because even thinking about going through one or two of the things he goes through is unthinkable. One cannot fail to compare Seabiscuit to Zamperini. Hillenbrand has set a path for herself in describing someone's hardships and overcoming them against all odds. I don't mind if it's going to take another nine years and I don't care what the next book will be about, but Hillenbrand please keep writing! 

55. Iain Banks - Walking On Glass

The reason I'm a few days late with this week's book is because I was on a holiday in Egypt. Internet access is quite restricted there and pricey as well. That does not mean I did not finish the book well before Sunday. That's the benefit of lying on the beach all week. 

This week's choice of beach read was Iain Bank's Walking On Glass. Not a very light novel in the sense that it's difficult to understand what it's about. The separate stories are easy to read and quite enticing. One is about Graham, whose in love with a girl and in his chapters he is on his way to her while he reminisces about their past. The next story is about Steven Grout a paranoid person who believes he is under constant threat to be attacked by the Microwave Gun. He believes he is from another world. Then the third story is about Quiss who is a war criminal. Together with Ajayi he has to solve puzzles inside a science fiction castle to get out. 

I guess you have to have one foot settled deeply in SF to actually understand what this book is about and how deeply this stories correlate. For me they were just pleasant to read and apart from the fact that the first story is quite disturbing, they did not really mean that much to me, but according to the Literary Encyclopedia the author slightly agrees: "Iain Banks commented that the book didn’t do exactly what it set out to do and I think you have failed to an extent if the reader can’t understand what you’re saying. I worry sometimes that people will read Walking on Glass and think in some way I was trying to fool them, which I wasn’t." 

54. J. Eijkelboom - Wat blijft komt nooit meer terug: Eigen en andermans gedichten

A book which ensures there is no gap in my blog due to holidays. I'm in The Netherlands this week and next week I'll be in Egypt, which means that next week I should really be able to finish a decent sized book. What else is there to do in Egypt then sit in the sun and read books?

J. Eijkelboom's Wat blijft komt nooit terug: Eigen en andermans gedichten is a compilation of poems. I just had this lying around and to be honest I'm not very interested in Dutch poetry, so this collection did not really excite me. Some of the poems in this compilation are translations from Emily Dickinson and others. I don't really see the use of this, because if you would like poetry you should go through the effort in understanding them in English. And Eijkelboom should really just try to fill this tiny tiny booklet with his own works as opposed to other peoples'. 

53. Ian Rankin - Let It Bleed

"He went over to the hi-fi. After a drink, he liked to listen to the Stones. Women, relationships, and colleagues had come and gone, but the Stones had always been there. He put the album on and poured himself a last drink. The guitar riff, one of easily half a dozen in Keith's tireless repertoire, kicked the album off. I don't have much, Rebus, thought, but I have this." (Rankin 38)

I find it ironic that out of all the books I could've picked this week, I picked Let It Bleed by Ian Rankin, which is apparently named after a Stones album. So after reading Keith Richards' autobiography last week, I have another book filled with Stones allusions.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. I like the Stones. What I don't like is that Rankin's books are getting more and more complicated and less intense. After Chapter 21 he had lost me. It started with a double suicide on the bridge and wound up to be a novel full of acronyms of different parts of the Scottish government (I think...).

It's a very complex book, and I wouldn't call Rankin a crime novelist anymore. After reading approximately 4 books of his that involved politics, I would call him a political intrigue novelist. I don't like films about politics because I forget names and functions, but I definitely don't appreciate books about it, because it takes me so much longer to plough through it.

It's a pity, because Rankin describes my surrogate home town so well! Maybe Mo Hayder should move to Edinburgh, because she knows exactly what my favourite crime novel should look like.

52. Keith Richards - Life

This week's autobiography was amazingly written. Surprisingly so, because that's not what you expect when you read a novel by famous druggie and musician Keith Richards. The fact that it was co-written by James Fox might have something to do with it though.

Keith's autobiography Life is perfectly named. It tells us about his full career. No nonsense with sequels. What you see is what you get and you'll get his full life, all his ups and downs in about 600 pages. It's amazing how he remembers everything in so much detail, but then most of the time he talks about music and that's probably what is going through his head non-stop. Drug haze or not.

It's hard to keep up sometimes, especially because I'm not familiar with any of the "famous" musicians he mentions in his books and all the different methods he uses to play his guitar. I know the Rolling Stones, but I don't know most of the songs he talks about or any of the albums. His writing has peaked my interest and I'm now listening to all the albums and I'm trying to catch up, with something that has been popular for 40 years. I'm a bit slow when it comes to music...

He is one of those autobiography writers who doesn't want the public's compassion. Not even when he describes the deaths of his best friends and the agonies he's been through. In fact, he never talks abouth his history with any kind of sorrow or regret. He cherishes the people he has known and he seems to be content with the way his life has progressed.

Apart from the fact that, according to the book (sorry I'm not much of a music-wiz), he is one of the best guitarists around; he is also a dog lover and an avid reader. What's not to like?

51. Hubert van den Bergh - How to Sound Clever: Master the 600 English Words You Pretend to Understand...When You Don't

This week I have been naughty and I haven't actually read a book. I've just browsed through one. Author Hubert van den Bergh has a very Dutch name; nevertheless he wrote the book called:  How to Sound Clever: Master the 600 English Words You Pretend to Understand...When You Don't.

It's a clever concept, but it won't have all the words that you might be looking for in it. His spiel is that he has written down all the words you frequently see in newspapers, which you don't really understand but you just skip over it thinking that you do. The entries in this book are meant to clear those words up.

I have to see a lot of the words I would skip over in newspapers as well, but it's good to see what they mean. For example: glib, garrulous, dissipate. Surely, I've learnt all these words in uni, but I have forgotten the meaning and it's good to have a little book in the house where you can quickly look it up. Although dictionaries have become antediluvian now that we have the internet.  

50. F. Scott Fitzgerald - Tender is the Night

A classic this week by F. Scott Fitzgerald. 

Tender is the Night is about psychiatrist Dick Diver, who falls in love with one of his patients Nicole Warren. After she is released from the clinic he decides to marry this rich young woman and they move to the French Riviera. There Dick meets the enchanting young actress Rosemary Hoyt. His life is never the same after that. Nicole spirals up and down from insanity to sanity and at the same time Rosemary, after a short affair with Dick, leaves them. All these events result in Dick slowly being driven to insanity himself,  but this is mostly brought on by the rich American culture in Switzerland, which he can't escape. 

It's a more complicated book than this of course, but as a short description it'll do. This is the last novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and it strongly depicts his own dive into drink and despair, but it also shows us the insanity that haunted his own wife Zelda. As classics go, this is not my favourite. I'm not a fan of the 20's Jazz culture, but then neither is Fitzgerald so at least we have some things in common. I'm more of a British Literature kind of gal, but it doesn't hurt to try reading a classic book from the US every now and again. 

49. Gabriel García Márquez - Leaf Storm

Let's ignore the fact that I'm a few days late writing this blog. This week I've read another one of Gabriel García Márquez' books, this time Leaf Storm and I have to say that I think this book is very comparable to No One Writes to the Colonel in that it is just as bad.

After reading it, and it is only a short book, I cannot tell you what it is about. I can give it a try though. It starts with three people who bury a man; a grandfather, his daughter and her child. We change narrative about every page and we get pieces of the dead man's (a doctor) history. He arrived into a quiet town with a banana company, which turns the whole town upside down. After the company leaves, however, it takes the whole character and life out of the city and out of the man. The grandfather seems to want to fulfil a promise he made to the doctor and he is set on burying him, however the rest of the town detests the doctor.

I don't really understand why all this happens. And what I found especially odd was that sometimes the narrative echoes itself. In about six sentences Márquez uses the same phrase a character has said, as if he had never written that before. There are a lot of reasons why I don't like this book, but it's not necessary to get into further detail. Let's just forgive and forget, because at the moment Márquez has written more good novels than bad ones. 

48. Gabriel García Márquez - Of Love and Other Demons

Gabriel García Márquez managed to make me keep on reading with Of Love and Other Demons. I have reviewed a lot of his books already (although I have quite a lot more to go), and you know that I'm not sure I like him. However, this story again was very good and managed to keep my eyes glued to the pages. I think it might be either love or hate with his books. 

Of Love and Other Demons is about the Marquis' daughter Sierva Maria, who one day is bitten by a dog. This dog later turns out to have rabies. The Marquis who wasn't close to his daughter since she was born and made her live with the slaves in the shed, suddenly realises the error of his ways and he contacts a Jewish doctor. The doctor tells him that if the girl is healthy, she will be fine, but the Marquis doesn't trust it and he turns to the Bishop who in turn advises the Marquis to put his daughter in a cloister because she might be possessed by a demon. It's up to a young priest to exorcise the girl, but he first has to determine if she might be sane after all. And that's where the love in the title comes in...

It was a good story, up until the end when it was suddenly over. The built up was much longer than the conclusion and that doesn't go well with the story. Apart from that it is an amusing tale, but it wasn't as good as Chronicle of a Death Foretold. 

47. Iain Banks - The Wasp Factory

On the cover of Iain Banks' The Wasp Factory it says that this is a Gothic horror story. Since my MA was mostly about Gothic horror I was very surprised to see that most of the book is about torturing animals. However, halfway through the book Banks uses the word uncanny, and we all know that when that word is used it can't be anything but a Gothic novel:

"(..) I saw in the gathering night strange lights, shifting in the air over and far beyond the island. They wavered and moved uncannily, glinting and shifting and burning in a heavy, solid way no thing should in the air. I stood and watched them for a while, training my binoculars on them and seeming, now and again in the shifting images of light, to discern structures around them. A chill passed through me then and my mind raced to reason out what I was seeing." (Banks 109)

This is about as Gothic a passage as one would write and that's when I suddenly understood that this book can indeed be seen as a Gothic horror novel.

It's about Frank and his father on a small island in Scotland. Frank has not been registered and does not have any financial documentation, therefore he has to keep himself to himself. That's what he does. He collects animal skeletons and he has a wasp factory, which in an incongruous way dictates his decisions. However, Frank has already killed three people, but he managed to hide this fact very well. Frank's brother Eric has escaped from the asylum and he is making his way back to the island to Frank and his father's fears because Eric tends to leave a trail of burnt dogs behind him.

It's a good story and the ending is very unique. I was happily surprised by the way the story is told, it kind of reminds me of Lord of the Flies. I have never read Iain Banks SciFi novels, but his first normal fiction novel is really good. Uncannily good even...

46. Sebastian Junger - The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea

At first I found Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea completely unreadable. If you know the film with George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg and if you love that story, you wouldn't like this book. The book is basically a guesstimate of what happens on board the Andrea Gail and what happens around it, but mostly it describes the weather conditions and the way hurricanes are formed. 

This is an example of something from the book that really annoys me, because it's such a random description of the events:

"Every hour, perhaps, Billy might get hit by a breaking fifty-footer. That's probably the kind of wave that blew out the windows. And every 100 hours, Billy can expect to run into a non-negotiable wave (...) Billy's undoubtedly working too hard at the helm to give drowning much thought." (Junger 127)

This is basically a description of what could be happening on board the ship when the hurricane reaches it. However, the perhapses and the probablies outweigh the story. And what annoys me most is that it says that a wave blew out the windows; this is not a known fact. He is guessing, but at the same time he is perhapsing and probablying all over the place in that same sentence.

I didn't like the book until I reached page 160. When Junger starts describing other events that take place during the same storm. When the people who survive are able to tell the tale afterwards. That is quite interesting and that is something he should have centred his book around. Basing it on an event of a ship that sinks with no radio contact since before the storm, is a waste of what could have been a good story. In this instance I'd say film 1 - book 0.

45. Ian Rankin - Mortal Causes

Mwoah... Ian Rankin seems to be moving further and further away from interesting crime novels to political and religious intrigue. The last two books I read by him were mostly about politics and Mortal Causes is mostly about the Catholics versus the Protestants. 

To be honest I would find it hard to explain the plot, because I lost the plot a couple of times throughout the book, especially when Rankin started speaking only in acronyms regarding the Northern Irish cause and the Scottish resistance. Instead, I'll give you a quote which I like because it says something about the area I want to get a flat in (doesn't it sound appealing?):

"Morningside wasn't exclusive as the way Grange was. There were students in Morningside, living at the top of roadside tenements, and people on the dole. In rented flats housing too many bodies, keeping the rent down. But when you thought Morningside you thought of old ladies and that peculiar pronunciation they had (...) They said Morningside people thought sex was what the coal came in." (Rankin 175)

44. Stephen King - The Stand

"Perhaps one of the reasons I'm almost glad to have her gone is because I'm such a rational old curmudgeon. I like to creep through my daily round, to water my garden - (...) - to read my books, to write my notes for my own book about the plague. I like to do all those things and then have a glass of wine at bedtime and fall asleep with an untroubled mind. Yes. None of us want to see portents and omens, no matter how much we like our ghost stories and the spooky films. None of us want to really see a Star in the East or a pillar of fire by night. We want peace and rationality and routine. If we have to see a God in the black face of an old woman, it's bound to remind us that there's a devil for every god - and our devil may be closer than we line to think." (King 928)

I'm impressed with myself and the fact that I managed to finish Stephen King's epic The Stand in two weeks, but then it is a Stephen King book, which means that it is very readable and very entertaining. So the fact that it's 1200 pages long does not really count.  

The Stand is about an apocalyptic virus which kills off most of the world population. A small group survives and they form two communities in the US. One is based in the West and is overseen by Randall Flagg (the dark man) and the other one is overseen in the East by Mother Abigail. The criminals and the darker minded people in the US flock towards the East, where Flagg treats his community like a totalitarian state. The others move to the East, where Nick (a deaf-mute guy), Stu, Glen (a sociologist), Larry (a musician), Frannie (a pregnant girl) and others try to rebuild civilization by forming a council. 

As the title states; at some point of the story  the East has to make a Stand against the evil powers of the West, before the Nazi-like regime takes over and a second wave of mass destruction comes there way. The novel never loses sight of the Biblical implications of such an apocalypse and the reforming of society, but this fact never becomes overbearing. It's a pity I read Under the Dome first, which is written later but is so much more powerful than The Stand, this means I couldn't appreciate The Stand fully because I know now that King can do better. However, this is still an amazing book to read and it should therefore definitely be on King's top 10 list. 

43. Roald Dahl - James and the Giant Peach

I'm not going to write much about this week's book. It's just a filler again, but this time it has a really good cause. The book I'm reading is amazing, but it's way to big. I'm not going to give it away just yet. Just read the article next week.

Most people are probably familiar with Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach. For those of you who aren't, it's about a little boy whose parents die and who ends up with his two evil aunts. A weird old man gives him special seeds, but instead of eating them he drops them and the magic is transferred into something else. Namely into making a giant peach with as passengers a centipede, a spider, a ladybug, a grasshopper, a glow worm and a silk worm. They become James' best friends.

And that's basically it for this week. I want to show you though how cruel Dahl really is, if you pay attention:

"Then, one day, James's mother and father went to London to do some shopping, and there a terrible thing happened. Both of them suddenly got eaten up (in full daylight, mind you, and on a crowded street) by an enormous angry rhinoceros which had escaped from the London Zoo. Now this, as you can well imagine, was a rather nasty experience for two such gentle parents. But in the long run it was far nastier for James than it was for them. Their troubles were all over in a jiffy. They were dead and gone in thirty-five seconds flat." (Dahl 7)

42. Ian McEwan - Saturday

I decided not to read James Joyce's Ulysses any day soon, so I figured Ian McEwan's Saturday would be a good replacement. I'm just kidding of course, I don't think Saturday resembles Ulysses that much, apart from the fact that both stories narrator narrates one day in his life. 

In Saturday's case it's about the neurosurgeon Henry Perowne, who wakes up early one Saturday morning and by accident he looks out the window where he sees a plane in the sky that's clearly on fire. This is the beginning of a hectic day, which features a game of squash, a protest against the war in Iraq, a senile grandmother, a family dinner and a car crash in an alleyway. McEwan shows us all of Henry's thoughts during these events, which seem to be clinical ruminations mostly to do with the looming war in Iraq and 9/11. 

My literature teacher always said that you will never see anyone go to the toilet in books, simply because it does not add anything to the story. It's easy to understand what kind of book you are reading when going to the toilet is part of the narration, namely an overly descriptive one: 

"There's a view that it's shameful for a man to sit to urinate because that's what women do. Relax! He sits, feeling the last scraps of sleep dissolve as his stream plays against the bowl." (McEwan 57)

Even though I describe the way the story is told as clinical, it isn't tedious in the slightest. If Joyce's book would be half as exciting as this, I don't think anyone would ever put it down and lit teacher wouldn't say that it's just a good book to own but never to read. 

As a little side note I have a short anecdote.I had a discussion with my boyfriend and I told him about my belief that every great civilization will find its demise by the hands of another culture. Afterwards, everything that has been destroyed will be rebuilt again, after years and years of unrest have gone by. This thought would not really be interesting if Henry would not have argued the same thing in this novel:

"When this civilisation falls, when the Romans, whoever they are this time round, have finally left and the new dark ages begin, this will be one of the first luxuries to go." (McEwan 149)