The History of Love

Nicole Krauss
2005

I didn't understand this book. The beginning, an old man trying to stay visible in a world that did its best to ignore him, made me uncomfortable - it was so intimate it felt like spying. And yet. I kept going, surprised by the contrast between Leo and Alma, and expected that the confusing parts would iron themselves out, but they didn't - by the time I finished it was a random collection of scenes, seemingly put together to fill the blank pages at the end of the book.

I thought this book was more about sadness than about love, but confusion was the most dominant feeling I got out of it.

Date Finished: 17/06/07
Year Total: 16

Ubik

Philip K. Dick
1969

Two things drew me to this book: it had rounded edges, which is unusual, and the forward is written by Michael Marshall Smith, who I like.

I haven't read a lot of science fiction, as I don't like plunging into a completely foreign world where I don't know the basic rules. I was expecting this to start strange and foreign, and get worse from there, but it was written in a far more subtle way than that. I was intrigued, but I didn't feel totally lost.

The story progresses at a steady pace, with Joe Chip as the star of the show. When his boss is killed by an attacked from an enemy company, Joe must hold his colleagues together until he can figure out what to do next, but things start to go wrong, and Joe needs to figure out why before anyone else dies.

Date Finished: 11/06/07
Year Total: 15

The Lost Gardens

Anthony Eglin
2005

When American woman Jamie find herself inheriting a neglected English estate, she calls in Lawrence Kingston, retired botany professor and amateur detective, to help restore the gardens to their former glory.

When an old chapel is discovered, complete with skeleton, Kinston started investigating, turning up a mystery decades old.

An easy story to read, I was expecting a fair bit of technical explanation about plants and gardens, but it seemed that Kingston knows about everything, with the exception of viticulture, which Jamie spends several pages on.

The mystery itself was interesting, but the characters and tedious technical information wasn't. Anyone with an interest in gardening, viticulture, wine and timber joinery will enjoy this book much more than I did.

Date Finished: 09/06/07
Total for Year: 14

On A Highland Shore

Kathleen Givens
2006

This is the story of Margaret McDonald, whose ordered and pre-planned life is something to cherish and look forward to. Until her betrothed turns out to be an arrogant man she can't stand, and her family is killed by marauding strangers. Left alone with her unstable brother and her younger sister, she turns to mysterious Irishman Gannon MacMagnus, to help find out who destroyed her life and where her younger brother is.

It seems there are a million Gaelic love stories around now, and I was a little hesitant about trying a new author in such a crowded genre, but this was a genuine pleasure to read. The characters were well-rounded, and the bad guys were bad enough to dislike but managed to stay away from being cliched or corny. The love story managed to stay slightly ahead of the impending war in terms of importance, but was written well enough that it worked better that way.

Clearly the beginning of a series, I'd be interested to see how the larger story - that of Margaret's younger sister and kidnapped baby brother - pans out.

Date Finished: 29/05/07
Year Total: 13

The Da Vinci Mole

'Dr Ian Browne'

What is Dan Brown afraid of? Uh, probably nothing. But he should be.

Parodies of books rarely follow the original very closely - they caricature the main characters, and then wander off on a tangent of their own, but this one didn't. This one is so close that you could quite easily read it without having read the Da Vinci Code first. The characters are just as annoying and transparent, the action and mystery just as convoluted and ridiculous. Even the author is a thinly-veiled parody, which just made the book seem even funnier - it gives the entire thing the same edgy hysteria as jumping on sofas on national television does.

That said, I don't think I got the answers to the riddles at the back of the book (there was nothing mentioned at the beginning about a quiz!), although the contest is closed by now anyway. I did wonder if the contest itself was part of the parody, but I guess it doesn't matter.

A quick read, I found it hilarious.

Date Finished: 01/05/07
Year Total: 12

A Man of Texas

Amy Sadler
1993

A Black Horse Western, this is a quick read with minimal character development and depth. It reads like a movie, which is exactly what I was in the mood for. Unfortunately, the blurb on the back of the book tells the entire story - there's really no need to read anything inside. The story jumps ahead months or years without warning, and the writing is best described as thin. Another ten or even twenty thousand words wouldn't have gone amiss.

Date Finished: 17/04/07
Year Total: 11

Sasso

James Sturz
2001

Two teenagers are found dead in a cave, in a city of caves in Italy. Before they died, they ate the walls, revealing painted frescoes. Foreign experts, including Americans, are recruited to examine the walls, while the police examine the bodies.

The police investigation goes nowhere, and the work the Americans undertake seems to go nowhere too, especially when more bodies show up and they are ordered to stop their work. As both investigations grind to a halt, so does the flow of the book, and it became as frustrating to me as it was to the characters. They lapse into lethargy, interrupted by brief bursts of determined snooping, while I continued reading only to add the book to the total of finished books.

The ending is unsatisfactory, and after the dull drag of the rest of the book, feels rushed.

Date Finished: 15/04/07
Year Total: 10

Thud!

Terry Pratchett
2005

Commander Vimes is one of my favourite characters on the Discworld, and seeing him in the role of doting dad is adorable and very nearly outshines the case Vimes find himself dealing with, which is the most politically-prickly he's ever had to deal with.

Trolls and dwarves have been sworn enemies longer than anyone can remember, and, according to both sides, for good reason (not quite the same reason, naturally). Now, things are stirring on both sides that could see a legend re-enacted in Vimes' own city, which could seriously interrupt the Commander's busy schedule. He begins an investigation, which meanders in seemingly random directions, the way the best cases do.

Something that struck me that was different about this D/W story was that there are a lot of memories from past books. It seemed a lot more personal, knowing the details of past events mentioned by the aging Watchmen. I like the idea of characters evolving and changing along with the city they patrol, although it did make me wonder about who is going to retire first.

Date Finished: 25/03/07
Year Total: 9

Odd Thomas

Dean Koontz
2004

Recommended to me by several people on the 50 Books group, I wondered how good yet another 'I see dead people' story could be, especially one that featured Elvis.

Odd Thomas lives up to his name - he is both funny and screwed up, just the right combination for a hero you can't help but like. His circle of friends are just as screwy, which seems to ground Odd as he moves in a world haunted by people and shadows alike.

I wasn't so keen on the way the ending was written, as I felt that I was deliberately misled, as opposed to just missing something subtly implied. Still, I enjoyed the rest of it, and will definitely keep an eye out for more Odd Thomas books.

Date Finished: 24/03/07
Year Total: 8

Dark Delicacies

Edited by Del Howison & Jeff Gelb
2005

Seeing as I'm neither a connoisseur of neither horror or short stories, I began this book with trepidation. The only horror I read is Stephen King, who stuffs his tales with so much detail you get lost in it. In these stories, by definition only a handful of pages long, every detail is important somehow, and everything else is stripped away, leaving you with the bare, bloodied bones of the story.

Each story left me feeling uneasy and uncomfortable, although there were no moments when I lost myself enough to feel fright. I'm not sure that wasn't the idea though - fright can be dispelled with the flick of a lightswitch, whereas the uncomfortable feeling settled like the aftertaste of too-greasy food.

I'm surprised by how much I enjoyed these stories. They were just the literary ad-break I was looking for.

Year Total: 7
Date Finished: 21/03/07

Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures

Walter Moers
2003

Fun, amazing, completely original, this book blew me away. Completely different to anything I've read in years, it was a tale that begged not to be put down, and the wide range of people, places and stories is mind-boggling.

Rumo, torn from his adopted family by marauders of the sea (technically not pirates), he grows up quickly and, under the guise of Smyke, a shark grub, begins his long list of heroic deeds. We follow his progress as he makes it to Wolperting, the city of his people, and from there to Hel, the city of the Netherworld, where he must save the rest of his people, as well as the love of his life, Rala.

This book was a real find, and I picked it purely because the cover stood out from the rest of the adult fiction. There are pictures throughout the story, of each of the main characters, and various random bits, like when Rumo steps into a pitch-black tent, the story is printed white on black. Things like that amuse me, so long as they don't overwhelm the story.

Year total: 6 (other books can seen here)
Date Finished: March 3, 2007