MOBY DICK

TITLE: MOBY DICK

AUTHOR: HERMAN MELVILLE
Pages: 48
Date: 29/05/2011
Grade: 4
Details: Graphic retelling of the story.
            Illustrated by: Penko Gelev
            Retold by: Sophie Furse
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What can I possibly say about Moby Dick that hasn't been said before? Especially since I didn't read the full novel but only a graphic retelling of the tale.
A while ago I was send "The Passages of Herman Melville" by Jay Parini for review purposes, and it seemed like a good idea to have some idea about Melville's most famous book beyond that it is a story about a whale, before I start reading The Passages.
And so I found myself reading this story about obsession, madness and whaling. And, it is a fascinating story. One I think I should read the full and original version of before I actually try to say anything sensible about it.
For now I will limit myself to saying that this was an entertaining way of getting acquainted with the story of Moby Dick, Captain Ahab and Ismael. Which is exactly what I set out to do.

DOWN UNDER

TITLE: DOWN UNDER
AUTHOR: BILL BRYSON
Pages: 394
Date: 29/05/2011
Grade: 4.5
Details: Book Club read
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My second book by Bill Bryson this month. I read them because my book club will be discussing various titles by Bryson this Tuesday and I thought it would be nice if I had read more than one of them since I'll be leading the discussion. But I have to say it was no hardship reading these two books.
Bill Bryson has an original and funny way of looking at his surroundings and the people in it. A quality that is more apparent in this book then it was in "A Walk in the Woods". It is also clear that Bryson has a weak spot for Australia. His love for this country/continent that we in the rest of the world know so very little about jumps of the pages, although that love doesn't stop him from putting his finger on any Australian quirks and short-comings.
I never quite realised and had never really given any thought to how much of Australia is more or less empty and inhospitable. It is amazing to think that there are huge sections of the country that have never been properly researched and that it is very likely that Australia contains huge amounts of life-forms and minerals that we just don't know anything about yet.
I'm not quite sure what else to say about this book except to recommend it to anyone who has even a remote interest in Australia, its history and people. Bill Bryson has a way of describing what- and who-ever he encounters in a way that is both funny and thought-provoking, opening the readers eyes to things they had probably never thought about before. It is a revelation to see how much you can learn while having tremendous fun and quite a few laugh out loud moments.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if I read another Bryson book in the not too distant future.

PLUGGED

TITLE: PLUGGED

AUTHOR: EOIN COLFER
Pages: 275
Date: 25/05/2011
Grade: 4
Details: an Daniel McEvoy story
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  This was my first book by Eoin Colfer. My daughter has read and loved all the Artemis Fowl books though, I've met the author at a book signing and liked him and his sense of humour and I am a fan of the crime genre, so this book seemed a save bet. And I wasn't wrong.
This is a action packed book, but not to be taken too seriously with a story that has so much happening in it that I'm not quite sure how to summarize it.
Daniel McEvoy is an ex Irish army sergeant working as a doorman in a low-grade New Jersey casino. His biggest worry is growing bold and he has recently had a hair transplant in the firm believe that all will be fine in his life if only he can get a full head of hair. During the week or so in which this story takes place, his hair will be the least of his worries, although it's never far from his thoughts.
It all starts when his friend and doctor Zeb Kronski disappears and McEvoy ends up killing a known gangster in the man's waiting room. From there things go downhill when a waitress in the casino where he works gets herself killed and McEvoy finds himself being framed for the murder. Soon McEvoy finds himself trying to clear his name for that murder, and trying to find Kronski, with a cop-killing cop as his only ally and gangsters desperate to kill him. And while you might think that this would be enough to bring any man down, it turns out that his army training hasn't been wasted on McEvoy and that the Irish gift-of-the-gab can come in handy in New Jersey.
There is quite a bit of violence in this story which should have made it very dark, but Colfer throws in enough light relief to make this a fun read. Yes there are deaths and blood and fights but there is also the voice of Zeb Kronski talking in McEvoy's head, the obsession with hair loss and a mad neighbour to keep the reader entertained. And McEvoy is a hard man with a heart of gold, who can't help wanting to do the right thing even if it is against his better judgment, which makes him an easy character to like. Think of this book as Jack Reacher meets Stephanie Plum and you won't be far off.
I wonder if this is a stand-alone title or the first book in a series. If it is a series I think Mr. Colfer will need to be careful and not allow the stories to turn into a farce. However, if he manages to keep on getting the balance between violence and humour right, I'd love to read more books staring Daniel McEvoy.

A WALK IN THE WOODS

TITLE: A WALK IN THE WOODS
AUTHOR: BILL BRYSON
Pages: 350
Date: 24/05/2011
Grade: 4-
Details: Book Club read
Library

In the past I have listened to one or two Bill Bryson books on audio, and I really enjoyed them. I do most of my listening in the car, and it must have been strange for people in oncoming cars to see this woman driving along on her own, laughing out loud.
This time I went for the paper version of one of his books, and once again Bryson had my smiling and laughing at different times during the story.
In this book Bryson tells about the time he decided to take one summer to walk the Appalachian Trail with a friend he had not seen in years.
The Appalachian Trail runs through 14 states on the east coast of the USA and is over 2100 miles long. For most of this distance the trail is uncultivated wilderness, with all the dangers that implies.
To say that Bryson and his friend, Stephen Katz, were ill prepared for the ordeal that lay ahead of them in an understatement. A fact that makes it all the more remarkable they made it as far as they did without either of them getting seriously injured or worse.
Overall I enjoyed this book. Bill Bryson is very good at humorous writing and gives great descriptions of people and their quirks. It has to be said though that at times his comments border on being cruel to the person in question.
I mostly liked the descriptions of the trail, it's environment and history although there were times where it went on too long for my liking and I found myself wishing Bryson would get back to the hiking already.
I'm glad I didn't let those moments of impatience put me off finishing the book though, since the last part of the book was by far the best for me. In the last 43 pages the reader will find most of the action, and those were also the pages were I found myself laughing and smiling the most.
The overall verdict on this book for me is therefore that this was an enjoyable read that could possibly have been a bit shorter. I enjoyed it enough though to want to try and squeeze in another book by Bryson before the book club meeting 6 days from today.

JAMRACH'S MENAGERIE

TITLE: JAMRACH'S MENAGERIE

AUTHOR: CAROL BIRCH

Pages: 344

Date: 22/05/2011

Grade: 4+

Own

Copy received from and reviewed for Bookhugger and its Realreaders programme.

"I was born twice. First in a wooden room that jutted out over the black water of the Thames, and then again eight years later in the Highway, when the tiger took me in his mouth and everything truly began."

So starts Jaffy Brown's story. Born into poverty to a single mother in the 19th century he can't help himself when, aged eight, he sees a tiger lose in the street. He feels compelled to go to the tiger and stroke it, only to find himself in the tiger's mouth. It's an encounter he miraculously survives, and one that lands him a job in the Menagerie of the tiger's temporary owner, Mr. Jamrach.
Here he meets and befriends Tim Linver and falls in love with Tim's twin sister Ishbel.
Some years later a client of Mr. Jamrach wants to own a fabled but never seen or captured dragon, and Jaffy and Tim join a crew on a whaling boat part of a quest to bring home one such creature.
The journey before the dragon is captured goes well; the whaling is succesful, a lot of the world is seen and friendships are made. The post dragon return journey is one long nightmare though, reaching its climax when the ship sinks and the crew finds themselves in two live boats in the middle of the ocean with little food and water. From then on survival is the only concern of those remaining, leading to dreadful choices and a lifetime of nightmares for those who might be "lucky" enough to survive.

"One way or another I suppose you could say that voyage was the making of me. I'd have been a yardboy. Is that what it was all for? To make of me the man I am now? Is God mad? Is that it? Stuck between a mad God and merciless nature? What a game."

This is a fascinating yet horrific story. The book is very well written, and Jaffy is a well rounded, likeable yet entirely human main character. However, there were times, after the ship had sunk in the story, when I had to put the book down and walk away from it for a little while because the story got to gruesome for me. I did find myself having to return to the book though, to see how the story would end. To find out if anything positive could ever come out of all the horror the characters were put through.
It says a lot about the qualitity of the writing that I managed to finish this book. In the hands of a lesser author, the more horrific parts of the story would have lead to me putting the book aside without finishing it. As it is, I'm glad I did finish the story. Yes, it is gruesome in parts, but ultimately it is a story of humanity and what it takes for us to let go of some of our humanity, and the price we pay for that afterwards.
The fact that the story is based on a true event, the sinking of the whaleship Essex only makes this book more fascinating. I'm glad I didn't know about the background of the story until I finished reading the book though. If I had read the acknowledgments first, as I sometimes do, I might not have read the book at all.

THE TRINITY SIX

TITLE: THE TRINITY SIX

AUTHOR: CHARLES CUMMING

Pages: 404

Date: 20/05/2011

Grade: 4.5

Library

Dr. Sam Gaddis is an academic, specialising in Russia. He lectures at a London College and writes unpopular books. He is also facing some grave financial demands he can’t meet. What he needs is an idea for a book that will be a bestseller, a proposal for which he will get a huge advance.

When a friend comes to him with an idea for a book which will unveil a well kept and still very potent cold war secret, it seems like the answer to his prayers. When his friend suddenly and unexpectedly dies, it is put down to her bad habits and Gaddis decides to go on with the research on his own. It is only when someone else connected to the story also dies that he becomes suspicious.

But, by then he is in too far, and still needs the money desperately.

He appears to be on the tail of an unknown sixth member of the infamous Cambridge spy ring. A man whose identity and existence has been kept secret his whole life, a man whose existence various people want to keep secret indefinitely.

Gaddis is determined to get to the bottom of this sixth man, but soon finds others who are or have been involved with this mystery dying around him and that he can't be sure who can and who can’t be trusted. It seems to be only a matter of time before he too will be hunted down and killed, but by the time Gaddis comes to that realization he already knows so much that stopping his search would probably not save his life.

It has been a while since I last read a spy story and I had forgotten how much I enjoy the genre. And this was a good one. It reminded me of the John Le Carre “Smiley” novels.

In this story the reader knows more than the main character, and is lured into thinking that they know exactly what is going on and why, only to find out that secrets are being kept from them as well, leaving room for several revelations in the last few pages of the book.

The only reason this book didn’t get a grade 5 from me is because I found Sam Gaddis exasperating at times and thought the story depended a bit too much on luck on his part. Other than that the book, the idea behind the story and the way in which it was executed fascinated me.

SILENT MERCY

TITLE: SILENT MERCY

AUTHOR: LINDA FAIRSTEIN

Pages: 384

Date: 16/05/2011

Grade: 4.5

Details: no. 12 Alexandra Cooper

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Alexandra Cooper and NYPD cop Mike Chapman are amongst the first officials on the scene when the body of a young woman is discovered on the steps of a Baptist church. The body is naked, burnt and headless.

Their investigation has only started when a second body is discovered. Again it is a young woman, but this time her throat was slashed and her tongue cut out, and the church is a Catholic one.

When a link is made between the two women, it becomes clear that they are more than likely dealing with a religious fanatic determined to punish and silence those who threaten his faith. It takes a while longer though to figure out who the fanatic is. And by the time they do, another young woman is in danger and Mike and Alexandra have to put their own lives on the line in an attempt to save her life.

As always this was a well plotted and equally well written mystery. The story was also filled with lots of interesting historical facts about New York, and this time, its religious institutions. I admire and like the way in which Fairstein manages to introduce those facts into the story, without losing the pace of the thriller. It could so easily be the case that the factual information gets in the way of the story itself. I’ve seen that happen in enough books, and it always interferes with my reading enjoyment. Fairstein though manages to avoid that trap and keeps the story going while informing her reader.

For me, this series can’t go on for long enough.