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)