Agatha Christie: The ABC Murders

Hi

This short review is about The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie. The main character in this book is her Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.
This novel is 331 pages long and I got it second-hand.
You can find my other review of a Patrick Rothfuss novel here.

 “There's a serial killer on the loose, bent on working his way through the alphabet. And as a macabre calling card he leaves beside each victim's corpe the ABC Railway Guide open at the name of the town where the murder has taken place. Having begun with Andover, Bexhill and then Churston, there seems little chance of the murderer being caught - until he makes the crucial and vain mistake of challenging Hercule Poirot to frustrate his plans.”

Agatha Christie writes fluent and her novels are very easy to read.
This one differs from her usual pattern of having a murder followed by two rounds of questions and the reveal while everyone is present. We are chasing the murderer in this novel.
The narration is very different from her other works. This novel jumps back and forth between Hastings telling the story from Poirot’s point of view and the occasional third person narration.
The characterization is great; the humor is to the point and it’s a very fast read.
But, in my opinion, it's not one of her best works.

Happy reading.
Helena

Ernest Hemingway: The Old Man and the Sea

Hi again

This is my review of The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.
I got my book as a gift from my brother and his girlfriend. They bought it for me (and my father got the same book) when they were on holiday in Cuba. A very thoughtful gift.
It won the Pulitzer Prize and was cited by the Nobel Committee as contributing to the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Hemingway.
This novella has a beautiful cover and it is only 84 pages long.

“The Old Man and the Sea is one of Hemingway's most enduring works. Told in language of great simplicity and power, it is the story of an old Cuban fisherman, down on his luck, and his supreme ordeal -- a relentless, agonizing battle with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream.
Here Hemingway recasts, in strikingly contemporary style, the classic theme of courage in the face of defeat, of personal triumph won from loss. Written in 1952, this hugely successful novella confirmed his power and presence in the literary world and played a large part in his winning the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature.”

This seems to be a very simple story. It was my first time reading it and I will definitely read it again to understand it better.
Santiago is struggling against defeat though he refuses to give in. It’s a novel about respect, courage, determination, will and hardship.
The marlin he catches and Santiago himself are very close in character. Both are unyielding, proud and honorable. Both are not willing to give in to the ultimate defeat; death. Knowing that at some point they’ll die; both are fighting for their lives. Santiago sees in the marlin a worthy opponent.
I did not feel sorry for Santiago as he doesn’t feel sorry for himself. It’s not about pity; it’s about respect for the marlin and Santiago.
This novel makes you think about humanity and your place in the world.
Not a word is misplaced, there’s not a character too much and not one unnecessary scene. With the bare minimum he shapes this astoundingly beautiful novel. The prose is simple, straight-forward, restrained and yet powerful.

I need to reread this novel to write a more thorough review. But this will do for now.

Happy reading.
Helena

Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451

Hi

This review is about one of the great Dystopian classics; Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
It won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award and the Retro Hugo Award.
My copy has 159 pages.

“Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden.
Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television.
When Mildred attempts suicide and Clarisse suddenly disappears, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. He starts hiding books in his home, and when his pilfering is discovered, the fireman has to run for his life.”

I didn’t love this novel. Not that it's bad, I just expected more of it.
The novel is strictly theme- or plotdriven. Every scene and character has a function. It is too straight-forward for my tastes.
I did love the characters and the story. The story is wonderful. It’s fast, unsettling, realistic and absorbing. Guy starts out as a gullible slave to the system. But things happen and he grows into someone else, he grows into a new role.
The prose is a bit tricky but once you get used to the paradoxes about living while being mind-dead etc. it is a good novel.

I could go on and one about the themes and the messages in this novel, but I won’t, I’ll be quick.
To me, this novel is about the dangers of conformity, the importance of real knowledge instead of biased knowledge fed to us. How changes can be man-made instead of ordered by the government. About censorship, suppressing individualism and the consequences of too much stimulation.

Happy reading.
Helena

Haruki Murakami: Kafka on the Shore

Hi

This review is about Kafka on the Shore; a novel by Haruki Murakami. This is my second Murakami novel. My copy has 505 pages.

 “Kafka Tamura runs away from home at fifteen, under the shadow of his father's dark prophesy. The aging Nakata, tracker of lost cats, who never recovered from a bizarre childhood affliction, finds his pleasantly simplified life suddenly turned upside down. Their parallel odysseys are enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerising dramas. Cats converse with people; fish tumble from the sky; a ghostlike pimp deploys a Hegel-spouting girl of the night; a forest harbours soldiers apparently un-aged since WWII. There is a savage killing, but the identity of both victim and killer is a riddle. Murakami's novel is at once a classic quest, but it is also a bold exploration of mythic and contemporary taboos, of patricide, of mother-love, of sister-love. “

This was a very strange novel. There are parts of it I loved and parts I had to push myself to read further. The first half of the novel flew by. The second part however was too long; it was a much slower read and a bit boring at times.
This is a very inventive novel, something unlike anything I have read before.
Most of the chapters about Kafka were wonderful. I was quite intrigued by him and I wanted to know more about him. He’s a strange boy and I loved him in the first part. Right up until he starts sleeping with miss Saeki.
Reading about Tanaka was a different experience. The scene where those cats were killed was superfluous and unnecessary. What was the point of that? There is no freaking point to this scene whatsoever. But Tanaka is a wonderful character. Him, I loved more by the end notwithstanding the surreal and incomprehensible events around him.
Murakami could have cut 100 pages easily because the novel was a bit tedious.
The way Oshima talks, his self-importance and his sermons about ‘important stuff’ were just annoying. It felt forced, contrived and a way for Murakami to show off his knowledge.
And every word about sex Murakami wrote was bad. And I mean really bad. He could have won the Bad Sex in Fiction Award in my opinion.
I don’t mind reading a novel without a completely rounded and satisfying ending. This makes you think about the novel. But this? So many things we never learn, so many situations never explained, characters never revisited. There were too many loose ends. What caused the children to faint? Who killed Kafka’s father? Was it Tanaka used by Kafka or Kafka himself? What about The Boy Named Crow? What about this prophesy Kafka’s father made? To me, it feels as an uncompleted novel. Or rather as a test by Murakami about how much stuff he can put in one novel and people will still love it.
And all those supernatural elements are never explained on how to interpret them. How does it all fit together? Is it meant as a surreal novel with supernatural elements or are we supposed to interpret it as is?
The main feeling I have after reading this book is ‘maybe I do not understand this novel at all’ or ‘maybe this is just a bad novel’.
I loved both the protagonists, the novel itself; not so much.

Happy reading.
Helena

Time to relax.

Khaled Hosseini: And the Mountains Echoed

Hi

This novel was highly anticipated. I Loved Hosseini’s previous work so I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this one.
But, I knew reading this would be a very emotional journey, and you have to pick the right time for that.
My copy has 466 pages and I pre-ordered it from bol.com.

“Afghanistan, 1952. Abdullah and his sister Pari live with their father and stepmother in the small village of Shadbagh. Their father, Saboor, is constantly in search of work and they struggle together through poverty and brutal wintersOne day the siblings journey across the desert to Kabul with their father. Pari and Abdullah have no sense of the fate that awaits them there, for the event which unfolds will tear their lives apart; sometimes a finger must be cut to save the hand.
Crossing generations and continents, moving from Kabul, to Paris, to San Francisco, to the Greek island of Tinos, with profound wisdom, depth, insight and compassion, Khaled Hosseini writes about the bonds that define us and shape our lives, the ways in which we help our loved ones in need, how the choices we make resonate through history and how we are often surprised by the people closest to us.”

This novel is about utter loneliness, how people change, how one decision can affect a whole family and those around them.
Ultimately, it’s a story about love. Love for a sister, a father, a friend. The things we do for love. And the things we don’t do.
The prose is beautiful! Such wonderful words and sentences, I wanted to take it all in. The picture he paints us is fascinating, absorbing and yet very painful. He really is a master storyteller.
Unlike Hosseini’s previous work; And the Mountains Echoed is written from the perspective of multiple characters. Every chapter is told by a different character. They are all intertwined though they might not know it themselves. It sounds wonderful, but it ultimately didn’t work for me. The characters didn’t get enough time to develop; they are clearly defined, but they lack depth and fullness. This made the novel less gripping, touching and compelling. It did however give us a better understanding of the whole country and not just the poor living in Kabul during the war. And every character has a very moving story to tell.

It is a wonderful novel, I just liked it better with the focus on less characters.
I’m left a bit unsatisfied. Like I’m waiting for more, as if the story isn’t finished yet.

Happy reading.
Helena

Enjoying this very much.

Yoko Ogawa: The Diving Pool

Hi again

I finished this collection of three novellas’ on Monday but I couldn’t write a review about them.
These are strange and disturbing stories and I still don’t know whether I liked them or not.
My copy is in Dutch and counts 158 pages.

“A lonely teenage girl falls in love with her foster brother as she watches him leap from a high diving board into a pool--a peculiar infatuation that sends unexpected ripples through her life.
A young woman records the daily moods of her pregnant sister in a diary, taking meticulous note of a pregnancy that may or may not be a hallucination--but whose hallucination is it, hers or her sister's?
A woman nostalgically visits her old college dormitory on the outskirts of Tokyo, a boarding house run by a mysterious triple amputee with one leg.
Hauntingly spare, beautiful, and twisted, The Diving Pool is a disquieting and at times darkly humorous collection of novellas about normal people who suddenly discover their own dark possibilities.”

All three novellas’ have a detached, alienated and very, very lonely protagonist.
They don’t know why they are doing what they are doing and they don’t seem to understand the consequences of their actions, they are adrift. And in their isolation they try to reach out to others without knowing how. This leads them to cruelties both large and small. They get bitter and lost in their own world where there is no empathy for them.
Ogawa has a subtle, detached writing style. We are observing the characters and while we do so we get glimpses of their emotions, but only glimpses. It’s bleak and cold.
The stories are deeply unsettling and downright creepy.
Definitely unique and the stories have been turning around in my mind for two days now.

Happy reading.
Helena

Neil Gaiman: American Gods

Hi

American Gods is my 5th Neil Gaiman novel. This is the first novel in The American Gods series.
My copy is the new, extended edition with the author’s preferred text and it has 736 pages.
I got it from Book Depository.
You can find my Neil Gaiman reviews here.

The book won the 2002 Hugo, Nebula, Locus, SFX Magazine and Bram Stoker Awards. My hopes were high!

“Days before his release from prison, Shadow's wife, Laura, dies in a mysterious car crash. Numbly, he makes his way back home. On the plane, he encounters the enigmatic Mr Wednesday, who claims to be a refugee from a distant war, a former god and the king of America.
Together they embark on a profoundly strange journey across the heart of the USA, whilst all around them a storm of preternatural and epic proportions threatens to break.
Scary, gripping and deeply unsettling, American Gods takes a long, hard look into the soul of America. You'll be surprised by what - and who - it finds there...”

Gaiman put a lot of thought into this novel. He didn’t simply pile everything that interests him into the novel. And he has a very, very broad interest. His ability to fill a novel with small and seemingly unconnected tidbits of information is amazing. The true King; the writer who has been doing this for ages is obviously Terry Pratchett but Neil Gaiman definitely succeeds in this too.
What’s so wonderful about this is the amount of layers to discover in the novel; hints to later events, details about the god and its religion.  

Shadow is endearing. He is gentle, easygoing and not much of a thinker. He is quiet and steady. Basically, he is the perfect protagonist for such a crazy story.
The story is ambiguous. It’s not simply black and white, good versus evil or old against new. It does start out this way but when you read further and think about it, it is not that clear who’s good and who’s bad. Or whether either of them actually are.

It is unique and imaginative. It is dark, engaging, thought provoking and weird in the very best way. But honestly, it's a bit boring and same-same too.

Happy reading!
Helena

 Me time!

Wrap Up: October 2014

Hi

Here I am again with my monthly wrap up.

I had a mixed reading month.
I did very little reading in the first two weeks of October because my grandfather passed away.
And I started two novels I hated so much I didn't even finish them.
I read a total of 1714 pages exactly.

Here’s the list of the books I read last month.

•   Terry Pratchett: Night Watch
•   F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
•   C. J. Sansom: Dark Fire
•   Arnon Grunberg: Tirza

And here is the book I tried to read.

•   Stan Nicholls: Bad Blood: Weapons of Magical Destruction

I hope you had a good reading month!

Happy reading.
Helena

Arnon Grunberg: Tirza

Hi

The last book I read in October is Tirza.
This novel won the 2007 Libris Literatuurprijs  and the De Gouden Uil 2007. Both are very prestigious prices in Belgium and The Netherlands.
Tirza is translated in English, so my international readers can enjoy this one too.
My copy has 430 pages and I got it second-hand.

In this novel we follow Jörgen Hofmeester; devoted father to Ibi and Tirza and husband to his absent wife who lives on a boat with her childhood boyfriend. His life is about perfection, control and keeping up appearances. Fatherhood is a task, a duty and it is his only purpose in life. He wants to be the perfect father for his youngest daughter; Tirza. After hearing again and again how he caused Tirza’s illness he decides to let her be and not to control her life any more. Because Tirza will leave on a trip to Africa, he wants to throw her the best graduation party ever.

This was a rather difficult novel to finish.
It is tragic and sobering.
I felt shamed and humiliated reading about his actions and the events that take place. My heart sunk every time something went wrong or every time he said something racist etc.
I wanted to keep on reading but at the same time I dreaded it because it is so tragic.
The questions behind this novel are urgent though; is Hofmeester a singular case or is he like everyone else? Is he like us or not? Is there a beast in every one of us? What if we lose control over our lives?
It’s about life and how we are disillusioned living it. How we are all alone after all.

Happy reading.
Helena

Relaxing on a Saturday night.

C. J. Sansom: Dark Fire

Hi

Dark Fire is the second novel in the Shardlake Series by C. J. Sansom. I bought the second and the fourth novel at the Boekenfestijn.
I didn’t read the first one so I can’t compare them yet.
I have read two of his other novels though: Winter in Madrid and Dominion and I loved those.
My copy of Dark Fire has a beautiful cover and it counts 581 pages.

I started this novel at the beginning of the month but I couldn’t concentrate on it at the time so I had to put it aside.

“It is 1540 and the hottest summer of the sixteenth century. Matthew Shardlake, believing himself out of favour with Thomas Cromwell, is busy trying to maintain his legal practice and keep a low profile. But his involvement with a murder case, defending a girl accused of brutally murdering her young cousin, brings him once again into contact with the king’s chief minister – and a new assignment . . .
The secret of Greek Fire, the legendary substance with which the Byzantines destroyed the Arab navies, has been lost for centuries. Now an official of the Court of Augmentations has discovered the formula in the library of a dissolved London monastery. When Shardlake is sent to recover it, he finds the official and his alchemist brother brutally murdered – the formula has disappeared.
Now Shardlake must follow the trail of Greek Fire across Tudor London, while trying at the same time to prove his young client’s innocence. But very soon he discovers nothing is as it seems . . .”

I wasn’t blown away by this novel because it’s not perfect, but I liked it.
Sansom is a fantastic writer and this is a really lovely novel.
The mysteries are rather weak and Sansom could've cut 150 pages easily. The pace of the story did annoy me at times.There were a lot of unimportant meetings, talking and traveling that weren't helping the story forward.
I love the setting of this novel. It’s rich, full of details, an astoundingly well-rounded historical background and wonderful descriptions. But it is never too much, I didn’t get lost in the details.
Unlike Hilary Mantel and many others, Sansom made a fictional character the main-character and real historical figures play only supporting roles.
I like it this way better.I find it easier to set the truth apart from fiction.
Shardlake and Barak are perfect together. Guy is a wonderful character and the other supporting characters are very well thought out. They all have their distinct voice.

Happy reading.
Helena

Pie from the bakery my great-grandfather founded and a book!

F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby

Hi

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is one of those books ‘you have to read’ and I finally did.
My copy has 115 pages and a 14-page introduction. I bought it at the Boekenfestijn.

The prose is beautiful and well-crafted. It is however not unforgettable or the sign of a true genius. It is an easy to read novel. You can feel the emptiness in the novel, you can feel how life was in those days.
I enjoyed this in the novel. Everything is very clean and pure; there are no words and sentences that don’t serve a purpose.

But it is a distant novel. I felt no connection whatsoever to the story or the characters. And the novel is described to us; we’re not a part of it. We know nothing about these characters, we get no motivation for their actions. We feel no relationship between Gatsby and Daisy, no passion, no desire. We know nothing about Tom and Myrtle and Jordan except for what we’re told. Even our narrator Nick is a mystery to us.
This novel feels like a story you tell someone and not like a reading experience.

Jay Gatsby is a man who has the means to do anything but who is hungry for love. He has filled his life with pursuing his dream: Daisy. By throwing with money, organizing huge parties and reinventing himself he tries to win her over. He has the illusion that he can rewrite the past, that everything will be fine if he could erase the last few years. He wants to reclaim the past; he needs to hear that Daisy always loved him so he can go back to a time where they were pure and innocent.
His dream of winning back Daisy aside, he’s empty.
And that idea is very beautiful.

Happy reading.
Helena

Terry Pratchett: Night Watch

Hi

Here’s another review of one of TP’s novels. Night Watch is the 29th Discworld novel and it counts 474 pages. This is the first Discworld novel without a cover by the late Josh Kirby. The new artist (Paul Kidby) does pay him tribute by placing him in this picture.
You can find my other reviews of Terry Pratchett’s novels here.

My grandfather died so I had a hard time concentrating on anything. Luckily I was reading two books at the same time so I decided on something I knew I would like and is fairly easy to read. TP never disappoints.

 “Truth! Justice! Freedom! And a hard-boiled egg!
Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch had it all. But now he’s back in his own rough, tough past without even the clothes he was standing up in when the lightning struck.
Living in the past is hard. Dying in the past is incredibly easy. But he must survive, because he has a job to do. He must track down a murderer, teach his younger self how to be a good copper and change the outcome of a bloody rebellion. There's a problem: if he wins, he's got no wife, no child, no future...”

Vimes gets send to his own past while pursuing the murderer, Carcer.
However, this past is very different from what I thought it would be. Ankh-Morpork is on the verge of revolution. And these Men of the Watch are not his men. Some of them are corrupt, others are lazy, some still have to join and some have to learn to become the ‘best’ they can be. Vimes can see how different they were before and what needed to happen to stop de laziness and the corruption in The Watch.
Learning about our ‘old’ characters and how they became who they are now was a really fun ride. I love Vimes. This novel deepened his character and I loved that. The part where he puts on these old shoes and walks around the city is just genius. And Nobby Nobbs is brilliant! Every word out of his mouth and every sentence about him makes me laugh.
This novel shows us how a revolution or a war can get glorified very easily by losing sight of the men fighting it. These ordinary people are the real heroes. Not the ones making the decisions way up.
Vimes already knows the outcome but he doesn’t always see the way to it. Our Vimes has matured and learned by his past. The past he sees now happening to his younger self. And his younger self really needs help to be able to get where Vimes will be in later life. It’s getting weird huh.

This is definitely not a Discworld novel you should start with. You won’t be able to understand the people he’s meeting in the past that we already know from previous books. And to understand how he traveled in time, you should read Thief of Time first.

I loved it, even though it is a bit harder to read then some of the others. You should definitely read this, but you’d better start with some older novels.

Happy reading.
Helena

Wrap up: September 2014

Hi again

I got married on the 30th of August but because I just started work, my husband and I weren’t able to go on a honeymoon and we had to start work right after.
Hence the slow reading in the first half of September. I was just too tired.
And we were busy with wrapping things up after the wedding.

Basically, work and life came between me and my books. I’m afraid it will always be that way from now on. I won’t be able to read as much as I did when I studied. I studied for an hour and then paused 15 minutes. Being alone at home during the day, I read mostly when I took time off from studying or writing my master’s thesis.
It doesn’t work that way at work of course.

I read a total of 2388 pages in September. 

Here’s the list of the novels I read:

•    Brandon Sanderson: The Final Empire
•    Sue Townsend: The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year
•    Hugh Howey: Shift
•    Paulo Coelho: Brida
•    Gillian Flynn: Gone Girl

Did you read any of these? How did you like them?

Happy reading.
Helena