Mystery Manor Adventure Forum

My other book shelf here has got enough books on it, so time to fill another one!

2010

1. Aravind Adiga: The White Tiger ****
2. H.G. Wells: The Time Machine ***
3. H.G. Wells: The Man Who Could Work Miracles ***
4. Gary Wolf: Who Censored Roger Rabbit? ****
5. Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking Glass ****1/2
6. Christoper Rice: Blind Fall ***
7. James Rollins: Sandstorm ***
8. Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto **1/2
9. William Beckford: Vathek ***
10. William Golding: Lord of the Flies ***
11. Poppy Z. Brite: Lost Souls ****
12. Carlos Ruiz Zafón: Angel's Game *****
13. Abdellah Taïa: L'Armée du Salut ***


Reading:
Neil Gaiman: American Gods
Emily Brönte: Wuthering Heights

Aravind Adiga: The White Tiger

Balram, the White Tiger, was born in a backwater village on the River Ganges, the son of a rickshaw-puller. He works in a teashop, crushing coal and wiping tables, but nurses a dream of escape. When he learns that a rich village landlord needs a chauffeur, he takes his opportunity, and is soon on his way to Delhi behind the wheel of a Honda. Amid the cockroaches and call-centres, the 36,000,004 gods, the slums, the shopping malls, and the crippling traffic jams, Balram learns of a new morality at the heart of a new India. Driven by desire to better himself, he comes to see how the Tiger might escape his cage…

The White Tiger was the Man Booker Prize winner in 2008 and surely deserved it! The book is a fascinating look into the class divisions in India, its corruption and the pitch dark underbelly of its society. Adiga gives an insightful look into the darker side of India in a direct writing style infused with a dark, sometimes cynical sense of humor. An excellent novel that will stay with me for a long time to come!

H.G. Wells: The Time Machine

I have seen a few of the film adaptations and it was interesting to learn that the novel is actually rather brief. Wells touches on a lot of interesting plot elements that he didn't really elaborate on. I feel there was a much bigger, adventure filled novel here than it turned out to be. Still, as it stands, The Time Machine is a fun read that shows the wonderful imagination of its writer. Same goes for the short story The Man Who Could Work Miracles that was included in the paperback I bought. It deals with the interesting question of what could happen if one man learned he could make happen everything he wished for. It comes to end rather quickly though.

Just got back from my exam today for an evening course French I've been following (boy, what an impossible language that is ), so I fiiiiiinally hope to get some more reading and gaming done! I did finish this one on my breaks from studying last weekend:

Gary K. Wolf:Who Censored Roger Rabbit? ****

Enter a world where cartoons characters, known as Toons, live and laugh side by side with humans. Meet Roger Rabbit, up and coming comic strip star, his sexy wife Jessica, lusty thirty six year old Baby Herman with his three year old dinky, and hard boiled private eye Eddie Valiant.

Eddie Valiant is a hard-boiled private eye, and Roger Rabbit is a second banana cartoon star. The rabbit hires Valiant to find out why his employers, the DeGreasy Brothers, the sleazy owners of a cartoon syndicate, have reneged on a promise to give Roger his own strip. Soon though, some of the protagonists end up being murdered and Valiant has gotten much more than the straight and simple case he expected.

This book is probably best known as the inspiration for the Disney film 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?'. This however is an entirely different beast. Gone is the Disney cuteness, and in its place is a hard boiled detective story where Raymond Chandler would have been proud of. Well, only if he would have thought of adding toons to the mix that is. Still the style though is vintage cynical Chandler, and its clash with cartoons provides plenty of fun and humor.

Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking Glass ****1/2

No need to introduce this one I'm sure. I must say that I loved this one even more than Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It's more whimsical, a tad funnier and just a little crazier. Absolutely loved it! And now I can't wait to see what Tim Burton did with the material for his movie version of this classic!

Christopher Rice: Blind Fall ***

John Houck became a Marine to become a hero. But his life changed when he failed to notice an explosive device that ended up maiming the captain of his Force Recon Company, a respected Marine who nearly sacrificed himself to save John's life. Home from Iraq, John pays a visit to his former captain, only to discover the captain has been gruesomely murdered. John pursues a strange man he sees running from the scene, but he discovers that Alex Martin is not the murderer. Alex is, in fact, the former captain's secret male lover and the killer's intended next victim. When it becomes clear that local law enforcement has direct connections to the murder itself, John realizes that to repay his debt of honor, he must teach Alex Martin how to protect himself, even if that means teaching Alex to kill. In the process, John confronts the painful truth about the younger brother he was unable to protect and the older sister he always felt he failed. 'Blind Fall' is a story of honor and integrity, of turning failure into victory. It is a stunning departure for Christopher Rice: the story of two men, one a Marine, one gay, who must unite to avenge the death of the man they both loved -- one as a brother-in-arms, one as a lover -- and to survive.

Not as good as some of his other books, but still a nice read. The strongest point of this one is definitely its strong characterisations, and Rice depicts how people are forced to reevaluate their past and views on life through certain events and struggle to cope with that. And while some of the twists in the story were a bit unconvincing, the general story and smooth prose (reminscent of his mother's Anne Rice writing style) kept me hooked till the end.

James Rollins: Sandstorm ***

An inexplicable explosion rocks the antiquities collection of a London museum - a devastating blast that sets off alarms in clandestine organizations around the world, as the race begins to determine how it happened, why it happened, and what it means. Lady Kara Kensington's family paid a high price in money and blood to found the gallery that now lies in ruins. And her search for answers is about to lead Kara and her friend Safia al-Maaz, the gallery's brilliant and beautiful curator, into a world they never dreamed actually existed. For new evidence exposed by the tragedy suggests that Ubar, a lost city buried beneath the Arabian desert, is more than mere legend...and that something astonishing is waiting there. Painter Crowe, a covert government operative is also drawn there. But at the end of a perilous journey lies an ageless power that can create a utopia - or tear down everything human kind has built over millennia of civilisation ...

This was a nice action packed mystery/thriller that is luckily more like Indiana Jones, less like Dan Brown. good pacing, strong characterisation, only too bad that the finale was filled with just a little too much techno babble that dragged the pacing down just a nod. Other than that, a fun page turner!

Horace Walpole: The Castle of Otranto **1/2

'The Castle of Otranto' is often quoted as the very first Gothic novel. It is a fast paced story of jealous passion, intrigue, murder and supernatural phenomena, unfolding in an atmosphere of thunderclaps, moonlight, and dark castle walls--mirroring the inner turmoils of the characters themselves. In its blending of two kinds of romanticism, ancient and modern, it is also a precursor of Romanticism.

I've read plenty of gothic novels, and simply love the genre! So I thought it might be fun to see where it all started. From a historical point of view 'The Castle of Otranto' is an interesting read as you can see all the elemenst of the genre coming together, but the story itself is unfortunately not very strong, with especially the lack of any suspense a sore point.

William Beckford: Vathek ***

Witches, demons, human sacrifices and other spectral horrors: all intercept Vathek as he journeys to the underworld in this weird and wonderful gothic masterpiece. This classic of 18th century Gothic literature, was highly acclaimed by such eminent writers as Byron and H P Lovecraft and remains the most extreme example of this genre. 'Vathek', an oriental tale by an eccentric millionaire, exotically combines Gothic Romanticism with the vivacity of 'The Arabian Nights' and is a narrative tour de force.

This is an entirely different gothic novel than 'The Castle of Otranto'! Gone is the sentimentality, and in its place is a dense plot, reminiscent of the The Arabian Nights stories. There's a fair amount of violence and cruelty, putting the emphasis more on horror rather than terror, but it all remains rather tame compared to later gothic novels. All in all a nice read. Looking forward to exploring this genre some more!

William Golding: Lord of the Flies ***

The classic tale of a group of English school boys who are left stranded on an unpopulated island, and who must confront not only the defects of their society but the defects of their own natures.

Though I found its characterisation and writing a bit dated, I still enjoyed reading this one a lot! The plot has been rehashed many times over and the ending is abrupt; but on the other hand the story of a group of kids stranded on an uninhabited island kept me turning the pages and the underlying themes are as relevant today as they were then. Glad I finally got round to reading this classic!

That is a memorable book. I read it in high school, lo these many years ago, and it has stuck with me where 99% of everything I read flies (pun not intended, really!) right out of my head.

We never read much English books in high school, and once at university, where I studied English fiction, we often read only excerpts to be able to cover as much material as possible. So I'm trying to read up on the many classics, and this one was long overdue! I'm sure Lord of the Flies would have had an even bigger impact on me if I hadn't read other books written later that use plot elements and themes from this one, eg 'The Beach' to name just one.

English, or English language? Joseph Conrad wrote some excellent stuff in English (although he was born Polish), like Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness. Also there are some pretty good American "classic" authors, too ;) like Hemingway.

English language actually, but most courses dealt exclusively with authors from the UK. We did get some courses on American literature though, and even one on Irish fiction, but again, we hardly read entire novels, mostly excerpts or short stories. Hemingway is one of those authors, but also William Faulkner, Poe, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Mark Twain, and so on. So yet another full list of authors I still want to read a novel by. Is there any novel by Hemingway you would in particular recommend?

A Movable Feast is a memoir about Paris in the 1920s that you might enjoy, and then there are the classics For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea.

A Farewell to Arms is my Hemingway novel, but I agree, A Movable Feast is a wonderful read, especially if you like Paris.

Mark Twain is well worth reading, whether you read his fiction (although some of the colloquial language in, for example, Huckleberry Finn, might be hard to understand) or his non-fiction (like The Innocents Abroad or Life on the Mississippi).

Also, if you are interested in adventure or horror stories, you may want to try Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan, John Carter, and Pellucidar series), or H.P. Lovecraft or Robert E. Howard. And Andre Norton is wonderful for Science Fiction adventure.

The Old Man and the Sea is the only Hemingway I've ever read, and I couldn't stand it. Different strokes for different folks, I guess I will say it was memorable, though. It's another one of those that has stuck with me through the years.

Thanks for the recommendations everyone! I'm going to add the Hemingway titles to my wishlist. They all do ring a bell from the course, and we probably did read some excerpts from them. It also seems that there's a new restored edition of A Moveable Feast being published in June. Don't know whether it's really worth waiting for that one or whether it's just a marketing scheme.

We also read some excerpts from Mark Twain's books, but I wasn't a big fan of those. Still, I'm going to give one his books a chance in the near future, I might think differently now.

I actually have collection of Lovecraft's stories on my shelves. As it is over 800 pages, I'm saving it for when I have a long holiday. Looking forward to them, I've heard so much good about them. There's a similar collection of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian that I have my eye on, just haven't gotten round to buying it yet. And I have noticed that I also have a copy of Jungle Book by Kipling already, from my students' days when I bought an entire set of those cheap Penguin classics pockets. Never heard of Andre Norton before, will look into his work as well!

Thanks for all the advice everyone! You've just raised my to read pile to reach the ceiling!