Category Archives: Books

Devil’s Food by Kerry Greenwood

This is the second Corinna Chapman novel of Kerry Greenwood’s that I’ve read. And, like the first, Earthly Delights, I was once again amused by this unlikely heroine. An overweight baker in downtown Melbourne.

She’s a feisty chick this Corinna, not afraid to wear a corset nor have friends that perhaps the more conservative of us might shun. She’s also good natured, loyal, passionate and a damn fine cook and you can’t help but like her.

There are lots of local references in this series, some of which I wondered if overseas readers might miss. I’m sure I missed a lot of the Melbourne ones. She mentions “the current prime minister” and “John Howard“, a man fast fading into history.
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I wonder how these books will stand the test of time?

Luckily for me, I live in the here and now and in this cold weather – made even colder by the current gas crisis – snuggling down under two duvets in my flannelette – I can think of nothing better than some light detective fiction and a cup of tea. Black, no sugar, English Breakfast by preference.

Hanna’s Daughers by Margaret Fredriksson

Hanna's DaughtersThis is the first book selected for the Blogger’s Book Club I’ve joined. (if you’re interested in joining just say!)

This book is set in Scandinavia – in Sweden in fact – right on the border of Norway. I haven’t read much Scandinavian fiction before so was interested immediately – also because my friend James is planning a journey to that very part of the world.

It’s the saga of three women – Hanna – who lives at the turn of last century in a remote town near Norway, Joanna – her daughter (who in the present is dying in a nursing home) and Anna the grand-daughter – who is piecing their stories together.

I didn’t think I was going to like this book at all. The opening sequence of Anna stressing out about her mum in a nursing home left me cold. But the story of Hanna kept me turning the pages and then I wanted to finish it.
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The cover reads as if Anna is finding out the history of her forebears but the text doesn’t read like that and it spoils it a bit as you are constantly fighting against the logic of it all. After all it’s not like she can ask her mother anything – she’s not speaking – and Hanna is long gone… Once you let go of that logic it draws you in.

The writing is sparse. It’s hard to tell if that’s a function of the translation. I didn’t mind it but it didn’t feel warm or engaging.

Overall I felt it was an interesting book, but it left me a little cold. A bit like Scandinavia I suspect! Well, in winter anyway…

Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

Book cover Angela\'s Ashes by Frank McCourtAngela’s Ashes won the Pulitzer Prize in 1997. Everybody was talking about it that year and mostly they were saying how sad it was. Oh brilliantly written dahling but oh soooo sad.

Maybe because of that and also maybe because I’m not into autobiographies I decided Frank McCourt’s memoir of his childhood was a book I could safely miss.

Last week, waiting for my Bloggers Book Club novel to arrive, I scanned Groover’s collection of bookclub books and saw it on the shelf. I’ve been thinking about Ireland lately because of Ken and because I’ve recently re-discovered my Ireland blog and photos and so thought maybe it’s time.

I. Loved. It.

What a brilliant book. Yes it is sad. The poverty of his Irish Catholic childhood in Limerick unbelievable. Grinding. Unimaginable.

But it is also inspirational. You know by the very fact it’s a memoir, an autobiography not a biography, that he survives and makes a success of his life. His indomitable spirit is a light in the grimy lanes of Limerick.

His writing is wistful, funny, sad, shocking and most of all engaging. So while the subject is sad the book overall is uplifting.
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I was looking for the book cover image and I came across the film on imdb.com. What amused me were the key words:
Masturbation | Urination Scene | Eclipse | Sadistic Teacher | Social Commentary

There are a lot more but those five were the plot keywords mentioned first.

I might have to go out and see if I can find the dvd… was it any good?

Book reviews all readers
Judd Brothers

Interview with Frank McCourt

Trip of a Lifetime by Liz Byrski

First of all a declaration – I know Liz personally having worked with her. Since that time she’s gone on to write 4 novels and one memoir and probably countless non-fiction works.

Trip of a Lifetime is Liz’s latest novel and is set in Newcastle in New South Wales (where according to the acknowledgements, her son lives). Heather Delaney is the local member and one night after work she is shot in the shoulder. This sets up the tension in the story which compares and contrasts the lives of several “older” women.

There’s Heather – successful, single mid 50s politician. Jill, successful working mother of two tweens, mid 50s. Diane, bitter divorcee, also in her 50s with a grown up daughter on drugs and Barbara, in her 70s, single, successful now retired, with a “male friend of significance” shall we say.

All of Liz’s books feature women of a certain age and that certain age is the one that no one else is writing about! Perhaps that is why her books have found their niche. These women are still having sex (well… most of them), and still have many of the problems – insecurity, body-image, jealousy etc – that their younger peers have. We just don’t hear about them.

Once your hair turns grey remember – you turn invisible – or at least, that’s how it seems.

In the story Heather gets contacted by an old flame – an old flame who it must be said treated her rather shabbily in the past. Perhaps she is vulnerable after the shooting but she latches onto this new-old love and appears to be falling into the old relationship.

They just take the formula that was look at this now viagra 50 mg already developed earlier and produce the same drug without the added cost of research, development and marketing. In brand levitra 20mg order to eliminate ED from their lives, medical science has given a great variety of treatments. However, purchase levitra online there are some exercises that strengthen the pelvic floor muscle tissue, can improve a woman’s sexual response. How can you take cialis 5mg uk ? The technique to look at cialis is normally oral, approximately 60 minutes before the sexual act occurs, as o once daily dose. Now, I don’t know if you remember Liz’s story – she wrote about it in her memoir Remember Me but I wondered if she used her rekindled love story as the basis for this relationship between Heather and Ellis.

I’m not saying that her Karl is anything like Ellis – that would probably be slander – but I wonder if the emotional roller-coaster that Heather goes on are like the ones she must have felt when Liz reunited with Karl? The whole weird transposition of bodies… you remember the young person you were in love with – your body remembers their body – but the reality is the older version. Very different from growing older together I think.

And then (and I don’t know whether this is Liz’s personal experience or not) mentally you’re in a different place. You’ve added decades of experience to your decision making processes… emotional as well as practical… but you expect your old lover to respond in the same way they would have back then. A very interesting dilemma.

I wonder if any relationship could survive that?

Anyway I digress, back to the book.

It’s a fast, holiday read. A bit Maeve Binchy. Interesting but not challenging – but it’s not claiming to be Booker Prize fiction. 🙂

Extras by Scott Westerfeld

The four Uglies booksExtras is the fourth book in the Uglies trilogy. Well, strictly speaking the trilogy – Uglies, Pretties and Specials – stands alone. Lets just say this is another book set in the Uglies world. You can read my review of that series here.

Extras is set around a new heroine in another city – this time in Japan. This city is based on a “reputation economy” where the most famous get the most resources. Sound familiar? To get famous you either need to be clever at something or you need to report or “kick” the story.

Fame is everything.

Your fame buys you luxury apartments, beautiful clothes, invitations to the most exclusive of parties. It’s kind of how our celebrities live now!

(You can also get merits by being a doctor or scientist… the merit system runs alongside the reputation economy.)

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The kickers in his story are our “Naturals” of today. They don’t travel anywhere without their cameras, they are completely at home with hi-tech equipment and then they “kick” their stories onto the internet. Just like on social networking sites of today – but of course far more integrated into their society. 🙂

Stories are then “kicked” on by others – just like you Stumble and Digg stories today.

I think that’s why I’ve found this series so engaging. Scott manages to pick up on contemporary themes and spin them out to see where they go.

A good series for teens, late tweens and young minded adults. 🙂

Wideacre by Philippa Gregory

Wideacre by Philippa GregoryYou are probably more familiar with Philippa Gregory’s later historical novels from the Tudor period: The Other Boleyn Girl etc… I say later because they were written this century although the period they write about is in fact earlier in time than this series which was written earlier, in 1987. Confusing maybe?

Wideacre is set in the late 1700s. A younger daughter born to the Quality in Sussex aches to own the land she farms. Her father – the squire – is her idol and she can’t bear the thought that one day she must marry and leave the farming lands she knows and loves.

This is a bodice ripper to the highest order.

As the review on the cover says: “Beatrice Lacey leaves Scarlett O’Hara in the dust” or words to that effect…
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There are no lengths to which she will not go to stay on Wideacre. And some of the lengths she goes to are long indeed. At some points I audibly groaned and had to put the book down.

She’s surrounded by a pretty wet bunch most of the book who let her get away with it it must be said.

It all gets a bit too much in the end and the ominous spectre of her past seems a little contrived – hey it’s a fictional bodice ripper – what should I expect – nonetheless I enjoyed the escapism and will probably pick up the next two in the trilogy for a gander.

A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo

A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu GuoI picked up this book in my local bookshop last Sunday. It was a toss up between this one and a Philippa Gregory novel Wild…something…

I loved the way this book started. “Sorry of my English.”

Zhuang is a Chinese language student who arrives in London to attend an English language school in order to get ahead in China.

The book begins in broken English: “Is unbelievable, I arriving London, ‘Heathlow Airport’. Every single name very difficult remembering, because just not ‘London Airport’ simple way like we simple way call ‘Beijing Airport’. Everything very confuse way here…”

Broken but charming, her language is quite poetic: “Immigration officer holding my passport behind his accounter, my heart hanging on high sky.”

Xiaolu Guo’s insights are also really interesting and sometimes funny: “People say ‘I’m going to go to the cinema…’ Why there two go for one sentence? Why not enough to say one go to go?”
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I felt inside her skin as she tried to make sense of the alien Western world and as she comments on the differences learning learning learning about her culture.

Now I suppose the title should have given it away… after all “for lovers” is a pretty big hint, but I was surprised at the amount of sex in this book. It’s not confronting, just… surprising. But it makes sense as part of the novel, for this innocent from China is not only discovering the Western World but also herself, her sexuality.

I really enjoyed this novel. It’s very cleverly written. Zhuang’s English gets better and better throughout the book. And as her language gets better, so does the depth of her insight.

My favourite expression is her description of the English sun while she’s in Portugal: “They got a real sun here in their sky, not like in England. English sun is a fake sun, a literature sun.”

Right on the money!

The Hanging Garden by Ian Rankin

Ian Rankin Hanging GardenIan Rankin‘s book The Hanging Gardenis one of his Inspector Rebus novels. You might have seen the Rebus TV series starring John Hannah?

In this book Rebus investigates two crimes. A war crime and some gangster in-fighting. Both complex, both in their way intriguing and somehow inter-related.

Rebus is a miserable bugger. Wedded to his job. Broken marriage. Recovering alcoholic. He’s a loner but of course a loner with the insight to resolve these puzzling crimes, even prevent them.

It’s set in the grimy underworld of Edinburgh and the grey setting perfectly matches Rebus’s mood.

I haven’t read an Ian Rankin novel before. He intersperses his prose with song titles which is a bit off-putting at first. Is it part of the text or a suggested accompanying playlist? Maybe they are what Ian was listening to as he wrote.
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Overall, I enjoyed the read. He sets a mean pace and I was carried along with the plot.

Worth picking up if you like crime fiction.

Other reviews:
Complete review
Amazon (scroll down to find it)

Chinese Cinderella by Adeline Yen Mah

Chinese CinderellaI picked up this book over Easter. One of our teenage guests had read it for school and was writing a paper on it. It’s not a long read – I read it over the course of a morning.

Chinese Cinderella is the autobiographical tale of Adeline Yen Mah – you may have seen her book Falling Leaves, a more adult memoir.

The story is of her childhood, growing up in China during the second World War. She is the fifth child of a fairly wealthy man and two weeks after her birth her mother dies – she is thought of as bad luck. Her father re-marries soon after and the new stepmother is – as you might expect from the title – not the most even-handed particularly when her own two children arrive on the scene.

She is not allowed to invite friends home, never celebrates birthdays, has no new clothes etc.

Her only champion is her aunt and to a lesser extent her grandfather, whose power wanes as the stepmother’s grows.

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I wonder if her adult autobiography would elicit the same response.

Have you read this book? What did you think?

Another review:
Reading Matters
It is an extraordinary catalogue of abuse and malice which will stay with you for quite a while after you finish the book. And I think you might find this book actually enjoyable, despite the content, because it is so well written.

Dear John by Nicholas Sparks

Dear JohnI picked this book up at the airport waiting for someone called John. On reading the first couple of pages I discovered it was set in Wilmington. We loved Wilmington on our recent trip to the US and so it seemed as if the universe was speaking and I should try out this new author. New to me anyway…

Dear John by Nicholas Sparks is the story of an Army infantry soldier who falls in love and then has to let his love go. No don’t worry I haven’t given away the ending – Sparks tells you that almost in the first sentence.

Yes, a love story. From a man’s point of view written by a bloke.

Interesting. I haven’t read too much male romantic fiction in my time.

There are a few macho bits. The action in Iraq for example, the odd fisticuffs on the beach, but mostly this is a story of a bloke and his feelings. A lot about his feelings – for his girlfriend, his dad, his girlfriend’s childhood friend…
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I enjoyed it. It’s not challenging to read. A fairly gentle story with a hint of doom and you wonder all the way through why it all goes pear-shaped given the depths of his feelings.

Not a bad holiday read.

Other reviews:
Inthenews.co.uk
Book Reporter