Tag Archives: Book

July 21, 2012 · 3:54 pm

Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Lord of the Flies‘Lord of the Flies’ by William Golding tells the story of a group of boys stranded on a remote island after a plane crash who attempt to organise themselves into some form of functioning civilised society while they wait to be rescued. Instead, they quickly descend into savagery with the novel posing key questions about the nature of leadership and rationality.

I’m quite glad I never had to study ‘Lord of the Flies’ at school as I reckon I would have hated it and probably wouldn’t have seen its relevance for today’s world. Continue reading →

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July 18, 2012 · 10:00 pm

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

A Clockwork OrangeDisturbing, powerful and thought-provoking in equal measure, ‘A Clockwork Orange’ by Anthony Burgess tells the story of Alex, a 15 year old anti-hero in a dystopian future who carries out theft, rape and murder before ending up in prison where he is put through an experiment in an attempt to cure him.  Anyone who has tried to read my Kindle over my shoulder on the train to work this week will probably have regretted it. The book is pretty brutal. Continue reading →

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July 14, 2012 · 6:57 pm

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruis Zafón

The Shadow of the Wind‘The Shadow of the Wind’ by Carlos Ruis Zafón is a book that has been on my ‘Probably Won’t Buy But Might Borrow From Someone Someday’ book list for a very long time.  As I am still in possession of my sister’s Kindle, I finally read it this week.  Set in post-Spanish Civil War Barcelona, a young boy named Daniel comes across a novel by the mysterious author Julian Carax called ‘The Shadow of the Wind’ in the Cemetery of Lost Books.  The story of what happened to Carax slowly unravels through the book. Continue reading →

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July 11, 2012 · 7:43 pm

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

Today I read ‘Mockingjay’ by Suzanne Collins, the third book of the Hunger Games trilogy.  This final installment sees Katniss become a Mockingjay leading all the Districts in a rebellion against the Capitol.  Like with ‘Catching Fire’, I have slightly mixed feelings about ‘Mockingjay’.  I think this was because I didn’t really feel sucked in to the story even though this was the grand finale of the series.  For me, this was because Katniss was a pawn rather than an active participant in the war so I think it dragged a bit for that reason.  As for the Katniss-Gale-Peeta triangle, it seems like Collins has been trying so hard to avoid the obvious clichés that she forgot to develop the male characters properly which is something that has bothered me since the beginning because as a reader, I didn’t really care who she ended up with.   Continue reading →

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July 10, 2012 · 8:15 pm

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Today I whizzed through ‘Catching Fire’, the second book in the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins.  Uprisings against the Capitol have begun in several Districts and Katniss and Peeta compete in the Quarter Quell with previous victors for the 75th anniversary of the Hunger Games.  I found this installment of the series to be reasonably compelling but not completely satisfying.

In some ways, ‘Catching Fire’ is an improvement on the first installment of the Hunger Games trilogy.  Right from the beginning, it seemed like a more confidently written book.   Continue reading →

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July 9, 2012 · 7:08 pm

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I’m going to hog my sister’s Kindle for as long as I can get away with it – hopefully I will at least get to read the other two books in the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins before she realises I still have it.  Set in a dystopian post-apocalyptic future, the thirteen Districts of Panem must select one boy and one girl to fight in the televised Hunger Games until only one remains alive – sixteen year old Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark are chosen to represent District 12.  Like all the best YA fiction, ‘The Hunger Games’ is not just for teenagers.

Even though ‘The Hunger Games’ does have a relatively fast pace from the beginning, it did take me a while to get into the book.  I’m not massively into science-fiction and I didn’t think there was anything particularly spectacular about Collins’s writing. Continue reading →

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July 7, 2012 · 4:17 pm

Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick

Nothing to EnvyI don’t own an e-reader so I borrowed my sister’s Kindle this week.  She lent it to me specifically so that I could read ‘Nothing to Envy’ by Barbara Demick which is based on accounts of life in North Korea.  Unsurprisingly, it is an extremely harrowing read.  Demick cleverly interweaves the stories of six North Korean defectors with descriptions of everyday life in North Korea including working in a hospital, life in a labour camp, reactions to the death of Kim Il-Sung, how people survived during the extreme food shortages in the mid-1990s and life after defecting from North Korea.

Demick’s absorbing account of a real life dystopia is both shocking and captivating.  The opening of the book is particularly striking.  At the beginning of the first chapter, the reader is confronted with a satellite image of North and South Korea taken at night-time (similar to the one below).  North Korea is almost entirely in darkness because electricity is so scarce.  But it didn’t always used to be like this.   Continue reading →

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July 2, 2012 · 7:05 pm

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

The Help‘The Help’ by Kathryn Stockett tells the story of Skeeter Phelan, a young white woman from Jackson, Mississippi who decides to write a book documenting the experiences of Aibileen, Minny and other black maids who work for white families.  Set in the early 1960s during the Civil Rights movement, the maids are expected to look after the children, cook and clean yet they are persecuted because they are ‘colored’.  It is a story that needs to be told.

I saw the film quite recently and enjoyed it but my mum said she thought the original book was better and lent it to me this week.  Unsurprisingly, the film version is more saccharine than the book but the adaptation was still well done and the plot wasn’t altered too much.  Moreover, watching the film beforehand and knowing how the story ends did not hinder my enjoyment of this excellent book.

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June 28, 2012 · 4:31 pm

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Wolf HallNOTE TO SELF: Do not start reading giant, complex historical novels on the day your final university exam results are due to be released.  Absorbing the content of such novels in the hours before such crucial, life-altering events will prove extremely difficult if not impossible.  Moreover, the shocking discovery that you did indeed achieve a First Class Honours degree against all the odds (such as developing an extreme blogging addiction in the final weeks of the course instead of diligently revising French verbs for inevitably soul-destroying translation exams) will result in the aforementioned giant, complex historical novel being abandoned for longer than you anticipated and therefore will be quite hard to get back into once you have recovered from the realisation that maybe, just maybe, you will one day get a Proper Job like a Real Person and that some may even consider you to be a semi-valuable member of society once your good-for-nothing-student days are behind you.

This has been my experience of reading ‘Wolf Hall’ by Hilary Mantel this week.   Continue reading →

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June 23, 2012 · 5:12 pm

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

‘Brave New World’ by Aldous Huxley is one of the most famous dystopian novels of all time. I’m generally not a fan of science-fiction but this book is undeniably a classic.  Set in London hundreds of years in the future in which humans are conditioned in a caste system of Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons, ‘Brave New World’ initially presents an ‘ideal’ World State to the reader.  But below-average Alpha, Bernard Marx, believes there is something missing in this society where everybody is supposedly ‘happy’.  The arrival of John ‘the Savage’ from outside the World State inevitably raises even more questions about just how ‘ideal’ this society really is. Continue reading →

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June 22, 2012 · 4:01 pm

The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

After reading ‘1Q84’ last week, I felt like tackling something a tad shorter this week (although pretty much anything would seem short after that).  Winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize, ‘The Finkler Question’ by Howard Jacobson was the first ‘comic’ novel to win the prize since Kingsley Amis won in 1986 with ‘The Old Devils’.  I’ve read some terrible reviews for this book but as part of my ongoing quest to read as many Booker Prize-winning or nominated novels as possible, I thought I’d give it a go anyway when I found it in the library the other day.

‘The Finkler Question’ tells the story of middle-aged former BBC producer Julian Treslove, his old schoolfriend Jewish philosopher Samuel Finkler and their former tutor Libor Sevcik.  It’s certainly not an easy book to fall in love with.  The satire of the BBC was nicely done as were the general observations of relationships and aging but I still think Julian Barnes is more skilled than Jacobson when it comes to incorporating subtle humour and irony into his work. Continue reading →

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June 18, 2012 · 4:54 pm

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

1q84Wow.  What can I say?  I loved it.  All 925 pages of it.  Haruki Murakami’s magnum opus is a crime thriller and a love story set in 1984 and a parallel world of 1Q84 (Q for question mark) with elements of magical realism.  Told through Murakami’s characteristically surreal and dream-like prose, ‘1Q84’ is a spectacularly addictive read.

The thing about ‘1Q84’ that you can’t ignore is that it’s… well… very long.  It’s certainly the longest novel I’ve ever read anyway.  Before I started reading it, I found the sheer length of the book quite daunting given that it is unusual for me to take over a week to read a novel especially when I’m not working.  But the way in which the stories of Aomame and Tengo gradually become more and more entwined through the mysterious religious cult of Sakigake in the parallel world of 1Q84 is highly absorbing.  It was so brilliantly written that I still didn’t want it to end. Continue reading →

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June 10, 2012 · 5:28 pm

Spine Poetry

I know I’m jumping on the bandwagon a bit late but here is my first attempt at spine poetry.  Now that I have moved back home this week, I have been reunited with my own/family book collection so I can experiment with it properly.

P.S. I will be going into hibernation again for the next few days as I plan to finally start reading ‘1Q84’ by Haruki Murakami…

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June 5, 2012 · 8:08 pm

Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit‘Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit’ is Jeanette Winterson’s controversial debut novel first published in 1985.  It is a semi-autobiographical novel: the main character is called Jeanette and her experiences of growing up in a Pentecostal household in Lancashire and exploring her sexuality are heavily drawn from the author’s own life.  It is a coming-of-age story like no other.

Having read Winterson’s memoirs ‘Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?’ last month, ‘Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit’ seems perhaps less shocking to me than if I had read these books the other way round even though the events are virtually the same.   The novel is sensitively written but I found ‘Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?’ to be the more poignant of the two books probably because the distance of time after writing ‘Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit’ made her own memoirs more personal and reflective. Continue reading →

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June 4, 2012 · 8:47 pm

Last Man In Tower by Aravind Adiga

Last Man in TowerI loved Aravind Adiga’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel ‘The White Tiger’ and short story collection ‘Between the Assassinations’ and his latest novel ‘Last Man in Tower’ is equally enthralling.  The story is about a real estate developer Dharmen Shah who offers the residents of a dilapidated tower block in Mumbai vast amounts of money to leave so that he can build luxury apartments on the land.  Of course, one by one they all accept his offer apart from Masterji, a retired widower.  Soon, his neighbours become prepared to take matters into their own hands.

I love Adiga’s evocative and colourful descriptions of life in India. His writing in ‘Last Man In Tower’ truly brings twenty-first century Mumbai to life – everything from the smell of the traffic to the taste of the food leaps off the page.  The book is as much about the city as it is about the large and complex cast of characters who inhabit it with the reader being confronted with the messy realities of life in modern India.   Continue reading →

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June 3, 2012 · 11:49 am

Before I Go To Sleep by S. J. Watson

‘Before I Go To Sleep’ by S. J. Watson has been one of this year’s most talked about thrillers.  The plot centres around Christine who wakes up every day not knowing where she is, who her husband is or what has happened in the last twenty odd years of her life.  With her memories of the day being erased every single night, who can she trust?

The concept of memory loss is an interesting one and if it is done convincingly, like in the film ‘Memento’, it can be highly intriguing and enthralling.  The first part of the novel seemed very promising.  However, as I was reading the book, I found myself wanting to pick holes in the situation that Watson presents to us.  For a start, Christine’s journal entries are too detailed to be plausible  and are still written in the style of a novel (who has time to write 20+ pages in a day with complete dialogue?).  The fact that nobody checked up on Christine after she was discharged from hospital is also barely believable (but then S. J. Watson did work for the NHS so maybe the catalogue of failings in Christine’s care is based on truth…).   Continue reading →

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June 1, 2012 · 2:36 pm

Smut by Alan Bennett

Smut Alan BennettAlan Bennett’s dry, satirical wit and versatile style of writing ensures that he falls naturally under the category of ‘national treasure’ in Britain.  While always surprising, his most recent work: ‘Smut: two unseemly stories’ is not exactly shocking, particularly if you’ve read ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ recently.  The first story, ‘The Greening of Mrs Donaldson’, is about a middle-aged widower and, shall we say, her adventurous student lodgers and their unusual method of paying rent.  The second story, ‘The Shielding of Mrs Forbes’, is about a woman who secretly knows that her married son is secretly gay and who also has her own secrets.  They are both neatly written, enjoyable stories complete with Bennett’s trademark subtle, ironic humour and wry character observations.  However, I think ‘The Uncommon Reader’ and ‘The Lady in the Van’ are more amusing examples of Bennett’s work – those who are unfamiliar with him should probably start there instead.

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May 29, 2012 · 9:39 pm

A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines

Having got my craving for chick lit out of my system for another year, I have been reading ‘A Kestrel for a Knave’ by Barry Hines, one of the grittiest books I’ve read in a while.  Set in South Yorkshire in 1968 over the course of a single day, fifteen year old Billy Casper finds Kes, a kestrel hawk, who he learns to take care of and confide in.  It’s an accurate and poignant portrait of life in northern England at that time (so my mother tells me) and although the book has a very specific setting, it has timeless qualities and themes that would still resonate with disaffected youth today. Continue reading →

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May 27, 2012 · 10:57 pm

The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino

The Devotion of Suspect XTouted as ‘the Japanese Steig Larsson’, Keigo Higashino manages to live up to the hype with crime thriller ‘The Devotion of Suspect X’ which is fast becoming a worldwide best-seller following its huge success in Japan.  The story of how a mathematician helps his next door neighbour cover up the murder of her abusive ex-husband is not so much a whodunnit but more of a how-did-they-do-it with just as much suspense and intrigue as a more straightforward murder mystery plot. Continue reading →

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May 22, 2012 · 6:34 pm

White Teeth by Zadie Smith

I thought I would hate ‘White Teeth’ given the tidal wave of hype which still seems to be continuing over a decade after the book was first published.  But Zadie Smith’s writing is warmer and less pretentious than I thought it would be and her sprawling take on multicultural London focusing on three families in the second half of the twentieth century is ambitious but not exhausting to read.  Although I had my doubts at the beginning, I found myself being carried along by the story to the point where I realised about 200 pages in that I was actually quite enjoying it.  Character observation is her main strength, and the dialogue is often very witty albeit in a wordy sort of way. Continue reading →

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