From Goodreads: The inventive, exuberant, and totally original literary fun that began with The Eyre Affair
continues with Jasper Fforde's magnificent second adventure starring
the resourceful, fearless literary sleuth Thursday Next. When Landen,
the love of her life, is eradicated by the corrupt multinational Goliath
Corporation, Thursday must moonlight as a Prose Resource Operative of
Jurisfiction, the police force inside books. She is apprenticed to the
man-hating Miss Havisham from Dickens's Great Expectations, who
grudgingly shows Thursday the ropes. And she gains just enough skill to
get herself in a real mess entering the pages of Poe's "The Raven."
What she really wants is to get Landen back. But this latest mission is
not without further complications. Along with jumping into the works of
Kafka and Austen, and even Beatrix Potter's The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies,
Thursday finds herself the target of a series of potentially lethal
coincidences, the authenticator of a newly discovered play by the Bard
himself, and the only one who can prevent an unidentifiable pink sludge
from engulfing all life on Earth.
Thoughts: I think Fforde is my new go to fun author. What this man does with literature is hilarious. I mean really, who would have thought that Miss Havisham is a speed freak??
This is one of those books that's hard to review without giving too much away. Needless to say if you are one of those who has lived your life wishing you could literally get lost in a book - this series may be for you. Thursday Next's life is beyond chaotic. Her husband has disappeared - worse he's been eradicated so no one except her even remember he ever existed, the Goliath Corporation are after her as is the public relations manager for SpecOps.
This is a series you need to read from the beginning, but I highly recommend it. It all starts with The Eyre Affair (Jane Eyre will never be the same again). I'm highly interested to check out his Nursery Crime series as well.
From Goodreads: In a stunning work of insight and hope, New York Times
bestselling author Wally Lamb once again reveals his unmatched talent
for finding humanity in the lost and lonely and celebrates the
transforming power of the written word. For several years, Lamb
has taught writing to a group of women prisoners at York Correctional
Institution in Connecticut. In this unforgettable collection, the women
of York describe in their own words how they were imprisoned by abuse,
rejection, and their own self-destructive impulses long before they
entered the criminal justice system. Yet these are powerful stories of
hope and healing, told by writers who have left victimhood behind.
In
his moving introduction, Lamb describes the incredible journey of
expression and self-awareness the women took through their writing and
shares how they challenged him as a teacher and as a fellow author. Couldn't Keep It to Myself is a true testament to the process of finding oneself and working toward a better day.
Thoughts: I read this as part of my quest to read anything by Wally Lamb. While Lamb did not pen this, he worked closely with the women who did, teaching them, supporting them and ultimately editing their stories for publication.
Books like this are invaluable. They provide a window into a world the majority of us are lucky to not inhabit. The stories of these women are heart wrenching. They focus mainly on early life experiences rather than the crimes they have been incarcerated for. Those stories are enough to show you how some of the ended up where they did. I don't think there was a single story in this book that didn't include sexual abuse. None of these women had support structures in their lives that could help them when they needed it most. Many of them found that support in prison and a voice in writing. This book is equal parts inspiring, heartbreaking and uplifting.
From Goodreads: From award-winning
novelist Ceridwen Dovey, a collection of linked short stories as
innovative and beautifully written as Nam Le's The Boat.
Ten
tales are told by the souls of animals killed in human conflicts in the
past century or so, from a camel in colonial Australia to a cat in the
trenches in World War I, from a bear starved to death during the siege
of Sarajevo to a mussel that died in Pearl Harbour. Each narrator also
pays homage to an author who has written imaginatively about animals
during much the same time span: Henry Lawson, Colette, Kafka, Virginia
Woolf, Tolstoy, Günter Grass, Julian Barnes, and others.
These
stories are brilliantly plotted, exquisitely written, inevitably
poignant but also playful and witty. They ask us to consider profound
questions. Why do animals shock us into feeling things we can't seem to
feel for other humans? Why do animals allow authors to say the
unsayable? Why do we sometimes treat humans as animals, and animals as
humans? Can fiction help us find moral meaning in a disillusioned world?
Ceridwen
Dovey is a prodigiously gifted storyteller, an insightful thinker, and a
prose writer of great range. Each of the storylines is an opening to a
new way of considering the nature of violence and the relationship
between human and animal experiences of the world. Only The Animals will ask you to believe again, just for a moment, in the redemptive power of reading and writing fiction.
Thoughts: I read this as part of an online book group through That Book You Like. I follow the FB page and always up for a new reading adventure I jumped on board.
One of the things I love about book groups is they challenge you to read things you normally would not have read. This is very true for Only the Animals. I'm not an animal person. That's not to say I don't like animals, I do, but unlike a certain percentage of our population I don't see them as anything other than animals. I have pets and I love them dearly, but they are still animals. I've never drawn a parallel between my pets and my kids and I have pretty set ideas on how pets should fit into a family. I've also never been a big fan of the anthropomorphisation of animals in stories. I just never really got why animals would think or act like humans.
All of this most probably goes towards explaining why this book missed the mark for me. Truth be told, without the book group motivation, I wouldn't have ever picked it up. The stories were ok, but I cannot stretch my disbelief enough to buy that animals are at all interested in our lives. The one exception would have been the elephant story - the story which not surprisingly had the least amount of human/ animal interaction.
Only the Animals is something I would recommend only for those true, dyed in the wool animal lovers. For those I say go forth and enjoy. As for the rest of us, give it a miss.
From Goodreads: Lincoln Rhyme was once a
brilliant criminologist, a genius in the field of forensics -- until an
accident left him physically and emotionally shattered. But now a
diabolical killer is challenging Rhyme to a terrifying and ingenious
duel of wits. With police detective Amelia Sachs by his side, Rhyme must
follow a labyrinth of clues that reaches back to a dark chapter in New
York City's past -- and reach further into the darkness of the mind of a
madman who won't stop until he has stripped life down to the bone.
Thoughts: A couple of posts back I was lamenting the difficulty in finding a new crime author to sink my teeth into. I love a good crime series, something I can return to and catch up with the same characters. I love Val McDermid's Tony Hill and Carol Jordan series, I've read all the Kathy Reichs Temperance Brennan series and while not a series, I devour Minette Walters.
I knew about Jeffery Deaver's Lincoln Rhyme series, I've even read The Bone Collector before, a long time ago and thought maybe this is what I was looking for - and I was right!
What I want more than anything in a crime novel is the need to keep turning the page - to have to know what happens next and Deaver delivers in spades. I am now eager to see how Rhyme and Sachs develop, how their relationship grows and changes.
Reading this straight after reading Minette Walter's Acid Row also has lead me to reflect on the differences between American and British crime fiction. Straight up, I cannot remember ever reading any American crime fiction that does not have a least one (if not multiple) deaths by gun shot. The gun culture in America is so entrenched I'm not sure an American crime novel without guns would be believable. Body counts in American novels also tend to be higher, with the deaths usually more violent. I also find American crime novels are more action based - car chases, chaotic crime scenes. The British tend to deal more with suspense and analysis. I'm not saying one is better than the other - both can be equally good and bad - but I do find it interesting that I find it a lot harder to find an American series that sustains my interest. Hopefully I have found it in Lincoln Rhyme series.
From Goodreads: Acid Row - a no-man's
land where angry, alienated youth controls the streets. Sophie Morrison,
a young doctor, is trapped at the centre of a terrifying siege with a
known paedophile. Young Amy is missing and the mob want retribution, no
matter what.
Thoughts: No one does crime fiction like the Brits and Minette Walters is one of the best. Acid Row is the nickname given to a run down council estate which descends into chaos when it becomes known that a paedophile has moved in. On the surface you can read Acid Row simply as a crime novel, trying to work out who actually has the child who has gone missing and how the police are going to get the situation under control. On another level you can view it as a piece about the dangers of partial information and whether or not the public should be informed if a paedophile is living in their area.
Personally I have very mixed views about public registration of sex offenders. I read many years ago (and I so wish I could find the article now!), that studies in America showed that in states that had public notification of sex offenders (and that's all sex offenders, not just child sex offenders), only 60-70% of offenders reported to police when they moved or changed jobs. In states where the register is available to law enforcement only, over 80% of offenders complied with the requirement to notify when changing address or place of work. In my mind, I would rather the police know where over 80% of offenders are and me not know at all as opposed to knowing where only 60-70% of known offenders are. The other reality for me is recidivism rates for sex offenders is low - around 2% and the majority of arrests for sex offences - 96% - are the first arrest for the perpetrator - ie. They were not on the register and therefore an unknown threat. (Source: http://theparson.net/so/#no%20effect) The reality is, your child has a more of a chance of being abused by a family member or friend than by a random person in your street. More and more studies are showing that laws such as Megan's Law in the US are not effective.In my mind nothing beats vigilance and teaching your children how to protect themselves.
Anyway, back to the book! I enjoyed Acid Row - it's fast paced, the characters are engaging and while it doesn't tax your brain, it does give you something to think about. Whether you support a public register or not, Acid Row highlights the importance of having all the information before acting. Things are not always as they seem.
From Goodreads: Late on a hot summer
night in 1965, Charlie Bucktin, a precocious and bookish boy of
thirteen, is startled by an urgent knock on the window of his sleep-out.
His visitor is Jasper Jones, an outcast in the regional mining town of
Corrigan.
Rebellious, mixed-race and solitary, Jasper is a
distant figure of danger and intrigue for Charlie. So when Jasper begs
for his help, Charlie eagerly steals into the night by his side,
terribly afraid but desperate to impress. Jasper takes him to his secret
glade in the bush, and it's here that Charlie bears witness to Jasper's
horrible discovery.
With his secret like a brick in his belly,
Charlie is pushed and pulled by a town closing in on itself in fear and
suspicion as he locks horns with his tempestuous mother; falls nervously
in love and battles to keep a lid on his zealous best friend, Jeffrey
Lu.
And in vainly attempting to restore the parts that have been
shaken loose, Charlie learns to discern the truth from the myth, and why
white lies creep like a curse.
In the simmering summer where
everything changes, Charlie learns why the truth of things is so hard to
know, and even harder to hold in his heart.
Thoughts: Wow. Simply wow. This is my book groups August book and it was fantastic. Craig Silvey has written what I am sure will become an Australian classic. In my mind, Silvey has the potential to find a place in my heart right alongside Tim Winton.
Jasper Jones has many layers. It's a story of small town intolerance, of family dysfunction, of friendship, of guilt, of growing up. It's all these things, yet it all works. The different themes blend and meld into a story that has you cheering, crying and shaking. (thisiswhathappened).
Silvey writes characters that are worth investing in. I found myself desperate for things to work out for the narrator Charlie, for Jasper to find whatever he's looking for, for Jeffrey to find acceptance. Silvey also has the ability to make you forget, momentarily, what the book is actually about and become immersed in something else - namely a cricket match - and even if you don't like cricket, you will be on the edge of your seat.
However, for me, it's the ending that will stay with me. (thisiswhathappened) It's the end that had me rocking, shaking, moaning even as the truth is revealed and you wonder how will they survive this.
Jasper Jones has just become my 2014 you must read this book. Trust me, you must read this.
From Goodreads:
Shadow gets out of
prison early when his wife is killed in a car crash. At a loss, he takes
up with a mysterious character called Wednesday, who is much more than
he appears. In fact, Wednesday is an old god, once known as Odin the
All-father, who is roaming America rounding up his forgotten fellows in
preparation for an epic battle against the upstart deities of the
Internet, credit cards, television, and all that is wired. Shadow agrees
to help Wednesday, and they whirl through a psycho-spiritual storm that
becomes all too real in its manifestations. For instance, Shadow's dead
wife Laura keeps showing up, and not just as a ghost – the difficulty
of their continuing relationship is by turns grim and darkly funny, just
like the rest of the book.Armed only with some coin tricks and a
sense of purpose, Shadow travels through, around, and underneath the
visible surface of things, digging up all the powerful myths Americans
brought with them in their journeys to this land as well as the ones
that were already here. Shadow's road story is the heart of the novel,
and it's here that Gaiman offers up the details that make this such a
cinematic book--the distinctly American foods and diversions, the
bizarre roadside attractions, the decrepit gods reduced to shell games
and prostitution. "This is a bad land for Gods," says Shadow.
More
than a tourist in America, but not a native, Neil Gaiman offers an
outside-in and inside-out perspective on the soul and spirituality of
the country--our obsessions with money and power, our jumbled religious
heritage and its societal outcomes, and the millennial decisions we face
about what's real and what's not. --Therese Littleton
Thoughts: Gaiman, I think is either a love him or hate him author. You're either going to get a mass of enjoyment and reflection out of what he writes or you going to think it's a complete waste of time. Me, I loved it. I loved it because it makes your mind twist and turn in directions it normally wouldn't. It makes you think about the world around us and how we react to it - either passively or actively.
Reality is if you are looking for a book that takes a nice linear line, where you never go "hang on, what the hell happened there!", where your characters always make sense and the story comes together in a nice, cohesive way, this is not the book for you.
It's also an incredibly hard book to review for all of those reasons. David Monroe on Goodreads summed it up beautifully for me. He said:
Much
like any Neil Gaiman story, the devil is in the details, and you just
have to resolve yourself to coming along for the ride or you'll miss it.
It's not one story, or two, it's many, and it's all complete...and you
have to just read it, and enjoy it, and accept it. Or just don't bother.
The devil is in the details and if you can give yourself over to just taking the journey Gaiman wants to take you on, it's fabulous. On the other hand, you could just not bother - it's completely up to you.
This book completes the Fantasy aspect of my 100 Best Books List challenge.
