Posted December 16, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Cold Night Lullaby, Colin MacKay
Flashback Friday from 25th December, 2009
I asked for Colin Mackay’s Cold Night Lullaby for Christmas 2009 because of Karine Polwart’s song, ‘Waterlily’. It’s a beautiful song, and one that has been known to make me cry — based on Colin Mackay’s writing about his experiences in Bosnia, about the woman he loved, Svetlana. I couldn’t tell you about the really technical merits of the poetry right now, but the images are so vivid, searing. I doubt I can ever, ever listen to ‘Waterlily’ again without crying. Especially when I know what Colin Mackay went on to do — how he killed himself, so very, very methodically.
Reading around a little, I can see that there are some questions about geography/chronology in these poems. I wouldn’t be surprised by some fictionality, or inaccuracy due to how confusing and bewildering living through something like that can be, how destroying, but I think that Colin Mackay probably believed every word he wrote — and that’s what matters.
Rating: 5/5
Tags: book reviews, books, Flashback Friday, poetry
Posted December 15, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Moon Tiger, Penelope Lively
I don’t know why I originally picked this up: it’s the sort of consciously literary creation that doesn’t normally work for me, and so proved to be the case this time too. The meandering, disconnected narration might’ve been clever, I suppose, but to me, it just got in the way of the story. And the story… well, nothing special as far as my tastes go; full of characters I didn’t really like or root for. Pretty much my nightmare as far as a book goes.
The writing itself is pretty, at times, evocative, though sometimes too consciously so.
Chalk it up to ‘not for me’ and move on…
Rating: 1/5
Tags: book reviews, books
Posted December 14, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
The Man Everybody Was Afraid Of, Joseph Hansen
This is one of those mysteries where you can’t root for the mystery to be solved for the sake of the victim, a man who was a bully, a racist, and thoroughly unpleasant in almost all his interactions. Instead, the characters surrounding them need to get their hooks into you, and in this case that didn’t really work for me. Much more central was Dave’s sadness over his father’s illness, his disconnection with Doug, and the connection he does form with Cecil — one that rather surprises a reader familiar with Dave, who doesn’t seem like the type to be very appreciative of cheating, and yet does so himself.
It gets a little bit too convoluted in solving the mystery, in order to bring in a bunch of red herrings and implicate several different characters. That made it frustrating, and not quite as smooth a read for me as the earlier books. It’s still enjoyable, but not a favourite.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, crime, Joseph Hansen, mystery, queer fic
Posted December 13, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
The Boys from Brazil, Ira Levin
The Boys from Brazil is a bit of a classic; I actually remember my Religious Studies teacher telling us the basic plot and asking us about the moral issues at the centre. So for quite a while, I’ve been very interested to read it. It’s a bit odd to read, because it’s written with a sort of affect-less style: ‘the man did this and then the man did that, and turned to the blond man and said…’ I mean, here’s an actual example of the style:
“The blond man, panting, stopped stabbing, and the black-haired man lowered the surprised-eyed young man gently to the floor, laid him down there half on the gray rug and half on varnished wood. The blond man held his bloody knife-hand over the young man and said to the black-haired man, ‘A towel.'”
Aaargghh.
The actual plot and the thriller aspect is interesting, and the moral dilemma is perhaps more relevant/possible now than it was when the book was written, but I do think it’s dated badly and the writing style does it no favours.
Rating: 2/5
Tags: book reviews, books, SF/F
Posted December 12, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments
Emma, Jane Austen
I came very late to an appreciation of Austen’s work — via a copy of Northanger Abbey some previous student had annotated with rather astute observations, actually. Emma is definitely not my favourite of Austen’s works; it seems to drag, and the whole situation is just embarrassing, with Emma being so stuck up and arrogant, but so naive. I’m not honestly sure why the character she marries in the end actually loves her, since he is a man of taste and discernment. Sure, she realises she’s been an idiot, but I’m not entirely sure she realises why and how not to do it again.
Since I get really bad second-hand embarrassment, then, it’s perhaps not surprising that Emma isn’t my favourite Austen, nor Emma my favourite of her heroines. Austen’s writing is still witty, her eye for character and the ridiculousness of people exacting, but… I just don’t like it. I’m glad I’ve now read it, but I wouldn’t read it again, and I recall enjoying Austen’s other novels rather more than this one, which felt like a chore.
There, Mum, are you happy I’m not a cuckoo in your nest now?
Rating: 2/5
Tags: book reviews, books, classics
Posted December 11, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
Gut: The Inside Story of our Body’s Most Underrated Organ, Giulia Enders
Gut is a fun light read; it’s not in-depth or academic at all — it doesn’t even have an index! — but it is fun and informative for a layperson. There’s no technical stuff here that isn’t explained, and there’s a fairly light tone to all of it, sometimes quite irreverent. Sometimes, however, you can’t really say it’s irreverent because it’s full of an enthusiasm and awe for our digestive system and everything it can do.
My main quibble was that it was too casual, too light, too much for the layperson. This wouldn’t be my chosen field even if I wanted to, but with just a couple of other books covering similar topics under my belt, a lot of it was just boring. (For example, for stuff on microbes, go for Missing Microbes by Martin Blaser, instead. Much more informative and in-depth, albeit not so easy a read.)
It’s fun, and it probably works well for the intended audience; I’m just not that audience, really. I did learn some interesting facts, and the diagrams/illustrations are pretty fun.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, non-fiction
Posted December 10, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
She-Hulk: The Complete Collection Vol 1, Dan Slott, Juan Bobillo, Paul Pelletier, Scott Kolins
It took me a while to get round to reading this, especially since the opening few pages feature what read very much like shaming Jennifer/She-Hulk for her sexuality. It makes some sense — she is partying hard and putting the other Avengers at risk (or at the very least inconveniencing them), and taking her status as an Avenger for granted. It also leads into a whole thread about her double identity, and what might be the advantage of being Jennifer Walters. (For those who don’t know, unlike her cousin, Bruce Banner, she has more control over her transformations, and spends a lot of time as She-Hulk.)
There’s also some wacky hijinks and fun plots involving law, since Jennifer Walters is a lawyer. I liked the art and colours, too, so I’m somewhat surprised now to be writing the review and not knowing quite what to say. It’s entertaining, and I enjoyed this version of the character, but I did start to feel like maybe it needed some fresh blood — and this is only the first collection! There’s another Dan Slott collection as well. Hmmm…
I asked for volume two for Christmas, so here’s hoping it stays lively and fun.
Rating: 3/5
Tags: book reviews, books, comics, Marvel
Posted December 9, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments
The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Flashback Friday review from 13th September, 2010
The Gulag Archipelago is not a book I think you can really read for pleasure. It’s heavy, heavy stuff, and it is — to the best of anyone’s ability — non-fiction. It contains a lot of stark truths about Russia — Stalin’s Russia, and after — and the conditions in the camps. We know plenty about the camps in Germany, and yet even now, decades after this book was published, I knew little about this.
I could as easily shelve it as ‘horror’ as I could ‘non-fiction’ or ‘history’.
Despite that, it’s not unrelenting. There’s hope — the very fact that I read this says there’s hope: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s been heard. And there’s a kind of dark humour, on nearly every page, in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s analysis of events and of people.
Definitely worth reading, if you can brace yourself for it. I read an abridged translation, but the author worked with the translator/abridger on it, as far as I can gather, so it could be more cohesive and easier to read than the original volumes. Even just dipping in and out of it, a chapter here and there, is better than not reading it at all.
Rating: 5/5
Tags: book reviews, books, Flashback Friday, non-fiction
Posted December 8, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 3 Comments
Augustus, John Williams
It’s amazing the range of opinions you can find on Augustus Caesar. Some think he was the saving of Rome, a morally upright man who revitalised his country. Others think of him as a traitor, and a hypocritical one at that. I don’t know exactly what I think; I guess I probably think that he was a complex person who ultimately did what he thought best, like most of us. This book goes with the latter view, with a fairly sympathetic eye. It took me a while to decide whether I really enjoyed it: it’s slow-paced, and sometimes the timeline is difficult to follow, as people are writing from one point in time about an earlier point in time, but then the next letter might be from the earlier point in time, but portraying the next set of events. Did that make sense? It sort of does in context, but it can make it a bit more difficult to follow.
I did enjoy Williams’ decision to examine a central issue of Augustus’ life: his moral reforms, and then the fact that his own beloved daughter fell afoul of them. He had her banished from Rome, for all that he spent a great deal of her life watching over her and guiding her in a way many men didn’t bother with for daughters. And Williams does some interesting things with unreliable narrators: we get several different perspectives on the same people and events. Was Julia kidding herself, or was Augustus right — did she plot against her father?
It is rather slow, as I said, and the epistolary format combined with the complex timeline doesn’t help. I enjoyed it as a sort of thought experiment, but I’m not sure how much I enjoyed it as a story, if that makes sense.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: book reviews, books, historical fiction
Posted December 7, 2016 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments
Broken Homes, Ben Aaronovitch
Reading the end of this book for the first time made me realise I really was hooked on the series. It just punched me in the gut and made me realise how much I cared. Reading the whole series again, I’ve been anticipating this book. And yet… for most of the book, you have no idea what’s coming. It’s pretty much like the other books in the series: police work, friendship, the mysteries of various characters… It widens up the world again, of course, giving us another glimpse at magic elsewhere in Europe. But the tone feels the same.
Even the ending is, I suppose, not that big of a twist: we get a similar shock ending to Rivers of London itself. But it’s something about the particular circumstances that really make it work. We really care now, and we definitely weren’t expecting this.
I don’t know how to review Broken Homes except in terms of that ending. Until that point, it’s a fairly typical book for the series. There’s some interesting stuff, the characters remain fun, etc. But it’s that ending that pulls things together and raises the stakes.
I haven’t read Foxglove Summer yet, but I hope it takes the momentum of this and, well, runs with it.
Rating: 4/5
Tags: Ben Aaronovitch, book reviews, books, SF/F
