The Snowman

I picked up this book rather tentatively because I wasn't a great Stieg Larson fan. ( the yellow sticker on the book, didn't work for me at all) But I'm glad I did because the only thing they have in common is that both authors are Scandinavian.

I loved the tension in this book and all the false leads and threads. I enjoyed it far more than I thought I would! Nesbo has a quirky humour in this book too. I also totally fell for the troubled inspector, Harry Hole, what a great character! I loved his demons and the complicated relationship he had with the one woman he loved.  I also enjoyed reading about his relationship with alcohol. All very informative, getting inside the mind of an alcoholic!

Yes, this book was creepy, gruesome and scary but always a great read and nothing was gratuitous ( my biggest issue with Girl with a Dragon Tattoo series.) Infact the story was great and I was totally hooked. The imagery of the snowman and the implement of choice used by the psycho killer was brilliant. I even enjoyed the terror of reading this late at night under my bed covers! Yes, I enjoyed freaking myself out. But to be honest I've read far worse stomach churning novels. But I'll never look at a Snowman in the same light again! Most of all it was a fast paced thriller, which was also translated really well. Often books in translation have a really clunky style, but this didn't! Well done Don Bartlett. 

Today I've already been round the charity shops in Bicester and bought a few other Nesbos! gonna keep them for later when I need a fix of Harry Hole and an adrenaline rush of fear! 

Lost In a Good Book

What a great read. This book is bonkers, bonkers, bonkers. Even maybe a little too bonkers because in each chapter so much happens and my brain was just constantly being fried. The parallel universe of 1985 becomes even more craz y in my second adventure with Miss Next as she realises that she is pregnant by her husband who is suddenly eliminated from the world and all conscious memory ( apart from hers) when the Goliath World Dominating Company black mail her into releasing Jack Schitt from his eternal damnation and hell like existence from within the confines of the pages of Edgar Allen Poe's

The Raven. 

Just writing this weird nonsense above makes me feel strange. I can't write about this book successfully because it is all so crazy and wonderfully insane! Thursday Next realises she has a special talent for book jumping and she can literally move into the pages of novels when  she reads them aloud. She ends up in Great Expectations and Miss Haversham becomes her book jumping or rather 'jurisfiction' guide. ( top notch book jumpers can move from book to book without the need to re-enter reality.)  Miss Haversham teaches her a lot and even Miss H  manages to jump into this real parallel world of Swindon in 1985 in order to buy books at a pound sale and drive fast cars (because Miss Haversham is a demon car racer at heart.)   Thursday Next then learns more tricks from the book librarian, the Cheshire Cat. I loved the surreal world of the eternal book library, to me it was like the Bodleian Library personified, because every book was a living breathing entity.  Thursday Next then deals with characters from books posing as humans, she also ends up trapped in the world of written washing labels on clothes and then simply travels through the centre of the world in a gravitube in 40 mins to Japan.  ( There are no aeroplanes in this parallel existence!) it's all so mad it sounds ridiculous..which it is but I LOVED IT and didn't want it to end.

I especially loved the time warps and bits on coincidences when all probabilities and coincidences merge at one point. The bits on time travel were weird but still fun and the characters who only speak through footnotes were bonkers too.

This book is not for everyone. But hey give it a go if you are a complete freak who would also appreciate   Neanderthals, mammoths and dodos being reintroduced on our planet and Wales to be a Socialist Republic and also if you are someone who literally likes getting lost in a good book!

Great fun! 

Our Man in Havana

I had to read this for my book club and with great trepidation I started it on Friday and finished it today. Not too bad, over quickly! Infact I have never been a Graham Greene fan. Fusty, boring and old fashioned in my opinion. I have never been able to get past page 10 in previous novels I have tried to read. All this spy/thriller shite with cobwebbed men slinking about drinking whisky leaves me cold. Well I DID read all of this and I have to say..not bad. 6/10 but not something I can rave about. 

It's meant to be funny...I didn't get half of the jokes. It's meant to be a spoof spy and I got that. It's meant to be thrilling, well in my opinion it wasn't that thrilling. Infact Greene is supposed to be one of the best writers of the 20 th century. Well, for me he reads more like an Enid Blyton for adults. Simple, spare, modern writing seems more like a script for a play to me with people talking to each other like robots. I then get confused about which character is actually speaking as there are no references. It's just a style of writing that I'm not used to and don't like.

The spoof part I did enjoy. The British Secret service comes across as so ridiculous that they employ an English vacuum sales man (an expat living in Cuba, for over twenty years ) to spy for them. He obviously knows no spies and no massive plots to overthrow the Americans but he wants the money for his Kim Kardashianesque, Pony loving, Virtuous Catholic yet also an implied tart, 16 year old daughter. He makes up stories about spies and draws copies of his vacuum parts and makes them out to be secret weapons being built by the communists in the mountains. All mad and funny but then people really do start to die and Mr. vacumn seller gets involved in more than he can chew. ( this part of the story I loved as it made me think of our government's response to Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Were these just drawings of enlarged hoover parts too?!   I think so! )This book was written in 1958 though, well before and also a year before Castro came to power.

This book revolves around a sad,squirrel like, dried up old expat racist trying to earn a few extra bucks whilst spending most of his time in his mans club drinking whisky and daiquiri with his German chum and  deceiving MI6.

I know I probably didn't 'get it' and I'm not intelligent for the 'humour' but I didn't like any of the characters, apart from the fascist policeman with his human skin cigar case. But hey, he was a great James Bond villain. The love story was rubbish ( like a teenage boy writing a love story for homework.) The sexism and racism I could accept, because that's how these important novelists wrote but the whole story was rather sordid and unpleasant. It was redeemed by one scene through... Draughts played with tiny bottles of whisky and bourbon instead of pieces. So when you take a piece you have to neck the miniature bottle. I liked this idea because it meant the better player would get drunk quicker and then lose his powers of concentration. The players were weasel Wormold ( vacuum seller man) and my favourite character, the James Bond villain. I loved him trying to win, stay in control and then finally get totally plastered! 

Oscar and Lucinda

phew, what a book. Such a weird one.  It took me an age to read and in the middle I got that 'walking through treacle' feeling but ultimately it's a book I absolutely loved!  A strange one that I can't really put into words because parts of it were pretty tough to get through whereas other parts were brilliant to read.  Carey is an amazing writer who just takes you on a roller coaster ride.  Both Oscar and Lucinda were born a century too early.  If they had been born 100 years later they would have got together in Las Vegas, made a fortune in the dot coms of silicon valley and then settled down to a life of farming,  all night card games for pennies, household chores and true love.  This was what was so sad and frustrating about their love for each other, the fact that the restrictions of their uptight Victorian lifestyle kept them apart and kept them from understanding each others true feelings. it was so infuriating (as bad as Remains of the Day, another book I loved.)
I also enjoyed the harsh portrayal of life in Sydney.  This was a life full of people with no redeeming features.The landscape is harsh, the people are harsh and even the rivers are full of menace. I loved it. But the way Carey writes is so brutally funny.  He doesn't do sentimentality but some of his sentences are truly beautiful. He just seems to cut through all the crap and get to the heart of things.
I also liked how he described his characters.  His descriptions were so good it's like they were all in 3D, right in front of you and Victorian life was going on right in front of you too.  Scenes from this book will stay with me for ever. Especially the boat crossing from London to Sydney and Oscar's life with his strict father in Devon.
My favourite part of the book was the beginning and how Oscar and Lucinda 's lifestyles built up to their independent expressions of their gambling addictions.  Both had such different upbringings but the joy they got from the 'logic' or 'peace'  of a good card game or a great run at the races was really well described. I especially enjoyed how both of them enjoyed losing just as much as winning. This last feature of their gambling addiction came into true focus by the end of the book and it was just so sad I had to stop reading it 50 pages before the end and have only just finished it off today. the ending was weird.  Almost like Peter carey was suffering from an author ending frenzy.   It was very different from the rest of the book...but hey, that's why I like this author. He's full of surprises. I'm sure when I read it again it will be a completely different book!

Inferno

This has been bloody painful reading.  I was looking forward to reading it because I found the Da Vinci Code a really fun page-turner but this was just dull, stupid and annoying.
Yes, yes, yes, I know I should have stopped reading it and given it away but I kept on believing that it would get better and it never did. What a waste of my time and such a heavy book to carry around in my bag for the last few weeks. It ended up being just a rather naff tourist guide to Florence and Venice with a bit of mad cap charging around Istanbul at the end. Infact I finished it this morning and just 8 hours later I have forgotten it and don't really know what to write about the plot. One good thing though Dante's Inferno looks like an interesting, gory read. It's made me think I should give that a go!

The Eyre Affair

A book I would never have read or even heard of if it weren't for my book club. And well I loved it. What a great read. Really good fun, full of imagination and a great story. What more could you want from a book?! 

I don't even know how to write about it. It's set in a parallel reality in 1985 in a secretive government department in Swindon. It's a Britain where Wales is an unfriendly breakaway Republic, the Crimean war has been raging for over 150 years and extinct animals can be bought back to life. People can also time travel and also portal into the pages of classic novels and chat to the characters and change the plots for ever. Infact books, plays and literature are the number one pastime of people. Books are the beating heart of this society and the evil Mr. Hades has decided to take Jane Eyre hostage for a ransom of a billion pounds.

Miss Next is the full on Swindonian heroine of the novel and she sure kicks arse with her time travelling car, her first edition of Jane Eyre in her pocket and her old friend Mr Rochester who can also magically portal in the other direction out of the novel to help her in times of need. Infact in this reality Jane Eyre has a different ending and Mr Rochester is totally heart broken that Jane marries St. John Rivers. So Miss Next goes out of her way to help change Mr Rochester and Jane's destiny.

Yes, it all sounds completely mad and in many ways it truely is bonkers but I loved it. I think having read Jane Eyre is a must and having a copy comes in handy. The only thing I didn't like were the dumb names. Here I just think Jasper Fforde went a bit over the top and I don't think I understood all the little in jokes. OK, Jack Schitt was obviously a baddie, but why the main character was called Thursday Next, I don't know. I just found it irritating. I understood the character of Oswald Mandias but that's only because I checked out Ozymandias on line after watching an episode of Breaking Bad. So yeah, I can kind of see why the novel has gained a cult following. But hey, me too! I loved it, loved it, loved it. Pure brilliant, geeky barminess with great use of language. Get a copy.( Sorry mine is not going to be lent out.  I will read it again when I'm feeling glum and in need of a laugh! )

Blood and Beauty

This book was really enjoyable. But I'm glad that I don't have to lug the enormous hardback copy I had around with me any more. (It was another 9p bargain from 'Help' the Aged.)

I have never watched anything  about the Borgia family of Rome on TV because I don't have Sky but after this read I feel like I know a damn lot. I have been transported into the corrupt Vatican of the late 15th century and I loved it all. Everyone there was a political, selfish tyrant using the power of God, (trademark) and warfare to gain more land, more political support, more power and more money. Reading about the war plans was like being inside the head of a despot. Loyalties constantly were shifting between the houses which ruled the independent states of Italy, the most powerful States for the Borgias of Rome, being Naples and Milan.   The Borgias were constantly at war with  their neighbours with a bit of French and German interference thrown in to help and hinder. Not forgetting of course that Alexander Borgia, the Pope, was actually a Spanish guy, so even Spanish mercenaries were shipped over too.

Game of Thrones must have been based a bit on this family and their outrageous ways. There was a rumour that the son and daughter of Pope Alexander had an incestuous love affair but Sarah Dunant disagrees and in this book the local people just gossip about them. Also the oldest son of the pope might have killed the youngest son but again Dunant reserves judgement and the murderer is never found.   I actually liked the outrageous pope and his beautiful daughter, Lucrezia, who is just a political pawn who the pope marries off three times at his whim, destroying her previous husbands when they become enemies. I also liked Cesare, her brother, but what a bad, bad man!!!  Watching him change from a handsome young lad full of life , to a man who only wears black and a mask because of his facial pock marks from getting the new 'french' disease of syphillis was fascinating. Yes, a good read. Sarah Dunant wrote really well, making it all seem quite modern and also quite funny. A much better historical novel than that tedious Wolf Hall!