Monday 28 September 2015

The Dead Zone by Stephen King

19/4 - I liked the story but couldn’t help comparing it slightly unfavourably to the tv series based on the book. In the show Johnny uses his psychic ability a lot more to help the town sheriff solve any cases that he comes across. In the book Johnny only helps the sheriff with one case, I like it better when Johnny helps with police cases because it makes him seem a lot more human and makes his ability seem much more like a gift than the curse it is in the book. I was confused when I read that the man Sarah married was Walt Hazlett, a lawyer on his way to being an important politician, and that the sheriff Johnny helped wasn’t the sheriff of his hometown but of a town some miles away and his name was George Bannerman. I was confused because I realized that for the tv series they merged the “George Bannerman the town sheriff who was helped by Johnny’s psychic abilities” character with the “Walt Hazlett married to Sarah” character to create a new character with pieces from the two separate characters. Walt Bannerman, the town sheriff where Sarah and Johnny live, who is helped by Johnny's abilities. Johnny always helping with police cases also keeps Sarah in the story, which she wasn’t in the book (they hardly speak or see each other in Johnny’s last few years of life). Greg Stillson is on the TV show but they take a lot of episodes to work up to him bringing about the destruction of the planet. In conclusion I like the TV show better.
 
Finished on 18 April 2009
 
 
 
 

 

Velocity by Dean Koontz

8/4 - Another quick read by Dean Koontz, also similar to Intensity in that it wasn’t as scary as I hoped it would be. As I was reading it I often found myself skimming some of the paragraphs because I felt like something scary was going to happen, but it never did, the scary scenes came out of nowhere. Despite the fact that I wasn’t expecting the scary scene I didn’t get a fright or even a start, the tension just didn’t build the way I would have expected it to. Kind of like a horror movie without the creepy music. I enjoyed the story but thought it had a lot more potential than it showed in the actual writing. Koontz could have made it a lot more thrilling if there had been a few more notes left for Billy – killing more of his friends, maybe. I didn’t understand why he put so many chapters in the book; there were 77 at the end, some of them only two pages long. I also didn’t get exactly why Valis wrote the notes or why he chose Billy, he said something about Billy’s short stories but I don’t think that fully explains his motive.
 
Finished on 7 April 2009
 
 
 
 

 

Intensity by Dean Koontz

5/4 - I enjoyed it but didn’t find it as scary as I had hoped I would (I didn’t have to take a break from reading it every so often to think happy thoughts), but it was still a very good story, fast paced – it only took me a couple of days to read it. I intend to read more books to read more books by Dean Koontz as they seem to be a quick, easy read – something to read between chapters of Middlemarch, which I’m still struggling through. Not going to talk about that, Middlemarch will get its’ own paragraph when I finally finish it. The only thing I didn’t like about Intensity was that Koontz had the main character, Chyna, constantly imagining what would happen if she did this or if she said that – it kind of slowed the pace of the story, it still raced along, but it could have rocketed along. I would recommend it to someone looking for a milder scare – someone who does not want nightmares every night while they are reading it.
 
Finished 4 April 2009
 
 
 

 

Saturday 19 September 2015

First Among Sequels (Thursday Next, #5) by Jasper Fforde

Actually 4.5 stars. I really enjoyed it but it lost that ½ a star because it wasn’t quite as funny as the first four books in the Thursday Next series. This is the only book that has really had a cliff hanger so I know that he’s going to write another one. I was a little disappointed that he got rid of the “Friday’s going to be a time traveling hero” storyline because I really liked that idea. It was a bit weird reading Thursday as a 50 year old - maybe that was why I didn’t find it quite as funny as the previous books. I did finally get one of the jokes from the previous books – Millon De Floss’ name is a pun on George Eliot’s book Mill On The Floss, which, because I had never heard of any of Eliot’s books I didn’t get, but since I started reading Middlemarch and found out that we actually have a copy of Mill On The Floss I now get the joke.
 
Finished on 26 March 2009
 
 
 
 



 

A Fortunate Life by A.B. Facey

After reading this book I thought Albert Facey had an AMAZING life. From the age of 8 he did everything there was to do, he experienced every type of situation available, from having his mother abandon him, an employer whip him, getting lost in the bush for over a week and finding the perfect wife and having a family. He lived a very full life; especially career wise (not surprising considering his working life started when he was 8) and travelled all over the country with one job or another. I really liked the chapters about his time in the army (before and during the First World War) as they reminded me of the letters Great Granddad Moore sent to his family, in fact if I hadn’t known better I would have thought they were written by the same man. I am glad he was able to live to see his book published and made a bestseller as your family will always tell you your creation is great, but the only real way to know is from strangers paying you hard earned money for your work. The only problem I had with it was that he went into a bit too much detail about the mundane stuff. He could have cut out many sentences about having cups of tea or what he had to eat (how did ha remember that clearly after 50 years or more anyway?) and put more detail into the last 20 or so years of his life. More information about his children for example. I wonder what he could have written if he’d had the time and skills earlier on in his life.
 
Finished on 22 March 2009
 
 
 
 
 

 

Annie's Rainbow by Fern Michaels

I really enjoyed this book, it was a reasonably lightweight book but I found it an entertaining and quick read. Unlike another book I am wading my way through at the moment (hopefully I will be able to review it sometime soon) the language was easy to read. Although I found some of the dialogue a bit odd because of the way the characters went from one subject to another in the same breath without waiting for a response to any of the things they had said in the previous few minutes. I felt it resembled the way Rory and Lorelai speak in The Gilmore Girls, but written down it doesn't work as well as it does spoken. I have already recommended it to my mum and made the comment that I felt like I could write a story like this as it did not go into too much detail on any particular subject and it didn't read as if Michaels had needed to do a whole lot of research in order to write it.
 
Finished on 20 March 2009
 




 

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

As I was reading the book I was thinking it would be a 3 star review but the ending kicked it up a notch. I found some of the prose confusing and actually skipped over a paragraph here and there because they didn’t change what was going to happen in the story, they were just Montag’s (the main character) odd, slightly hallucinatory thoughts and feelings. The second half of the book saved it for me. It got quite exciting when he was discovered and I found myself wanting to know what would happen next instead of reading it simply because I felt I had to finish it. At the end I was a little disappointed that it was the end because I wanted to know what happened once they reached the destroyed city and whether the outlaw scholars were able to change the public’s view of books and bring them back to the mainstream and make them legal again. I felt like Bradbury could (or should) have written a sequel.
 
Finished on 2 March 2009
 
 
 
 

 

The Bottle Factory Outing by Beryl Bainbridge

I don’t really know what to make of this book. It was a quick read, it only took me a few hours to read. I found both main characters completely unsympathetic – Brenda was weak, lazy and seemed completely unable to find any joy or happiness in her life. Freda was cold and unsympathetic towards Brenda, often mocking her and calling her a victim, she is also prone to odd fits of laughing or unnecessary violence. I don’t think I really understood the deeper themes of the book, as I know from reading the Amazon website reviews that other readers give it five stars and call it a “delicious black comedy” and an “excellent portrayal of the down side of life”. I did not get any sense of humour from it, in fact I had no idea until I read the reviews that it was meant to be comedic at all.
 
Finished on 23 February 2009
 
 
 
 
 

 

Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson

Despite the fact that this is actually a young adults' book I really enjoyed it. The story is about Mattie, a 14-year-old girl living in Philadelphia, 1793, during an outbreak of yellow fever. I had not heard of this epidemic before and was impressed by the amount of detail the author included in what amounts to a children’s book. At the end of the book she included an appendix, which answered questions readers might have about subjects and facts in the book – e.g. "Did the epidemic really happen?" or a description of 'coffeehouses'. I enjoyed this book so much I will read her other books Speak and Catalyst.
 
Finished on 22 February 2009
 




 

Churchill's Triumph (Winston Churchill, #4) by Michael Dobbs

Once again I found the information about not only Churchill, but also Stalin and Roosevelt fascinating. The apparent senility of Roosevelt, the manipulation and inhumanity of Stalin. I had no idea how brutal and merciless Stalin and his army were, it’s almost a toss-up as to who was worse – Hitler or Stalin. Michael Dobbs makes the politics behind wars (a subject I thought I would find boring) an engaging, riveting subject.
 
Finished on 21 February 2009
 
 
 
 

 

Winston's Hour (Winston Churchill, #3) by Michael Dobbs

Whether it was all completely true or not (not knowing anything at all about Churchill or much about the British government during WWII, it didn’t matter if Dobbs made it up or not, I couldn’t tell), I found the thought that what Dobbs wrote might have been true absolutely fascinating. I have two more books to read in the series – Churchill’s Triumph and Never Surrender. Triumph is the last in the trilogy set in 1945 and Never Surrender (actually the first in the quartet, but didn’t know that at the time and so, read them out of order) is set during the Dunkirk days.
 
Finished on 15 February 2009
 




Ghostwriter by Traci Harding

This book renewed my interest in ghost stories, so much in fact that it has prompted me to add a number of ghost stories to my personal list of 1001 books to read before I die, including all the books that Traci listed as her references. I also really enjoyed knowing that Traci is from Sydney and still lives in Sydney, even after national if not international success.
 
Finished on 12 February 2009
 

 
 
 

 

Winston's War (Winston Churchill, #1) by Michael Dobbs

I was fascinated by the dreadful mistakes the British government made leading up to WWII. I knew nothing except the names of Churchill and Chamberlain before reading this book, but now I can talk about the British side of WWII almost as well as I can the Australian and the American. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in WWII or political intrigue.
 
Finished on 11 January 2009
 
 

 
 
 


 

Ravensdale Spring (Ravensdale, #3) by Kate Fielding

I really enjoyed it. It was part medical drama, part crime thriller. I am going to read the other books in the series.

(That was written over six years ago. I was so detailed back then, wasn't I? When I re-read it, I will definitely have to re-review it as well. Also funny to note, since then I have often thought of re-reading this book and finishing the series, but haven't gotten around to it yet. All my good intentions regarding books are so often distracted by pretty covers and trendy new authors. Oh well, one day hopefully.)
 
Read in January 2004
 
 
 
 

 

Perfect Victim by Elizabeth Southall


Chilling account of the kidnap and murder of a teenage girl - made especially so by the words straight from the murdered girls' mother, Elizabeth Southall (real name Elizabeth Barber), who recounts her side of the investigation as compared to what Megan Norris writes from the point of view of a court reporter. I read this as an older teenager and it prompted me to say to my mum "If I ever disappear, it's not because I've run away or I'm out with friends. Something's happened to me and you need to make sure the police know that." Ever since I've semi-regularly reiterated that fact, just in case.
 
Read in January 2004





 

Fly Away Peter by David Malouf


Had to read this for year 12 English and I didn't really understand it and therefore didn't enjoy it. I find both situations strange as I am usually drawn to Australian war stories, fiction and non-fiction. Maybe it deserves a re-read with my older, more mature brain...one day.
 
Read in September 2002








 

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

Read it for year 12 English. Probably would have enjoyed it more if we hadn't been forced to read the whole book out loud as a class - some of the scenes were not the kind to be read out loud with idiotic teenage boys jeering at the sex scenes (well, I thought they were sex scenes when I was 17). Despite that horribly embarrassing experience I enjoyed the story and should probably read again now that it's 10 years down the track.
 
Read in April 2002
 
 
 
 

 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (The Script Book: Season One, #2) by Joss Whedon

Some of the dialogue is different from what was actually filmed so it was interesting to see what changed from the original script.
 
Read on June 27 2001
 
 
 
 

 

When My Reviewing Changed

I've finally come to the end of the reviews I wrote before I started taking note of when I read the book, and before I started taking my reviewing seriously.

From this point on my reviews will be dated and the reviews themselves will become more intelligent, longer, and more detailed.  Rather than just saying that I liked the book or didn't I begin to give cohesive reasons for what I did or didn't like, and I begin to notice editing mistakes (perhaps to my continuing downfall, as now I can't not see them and I can't ignore them once I've seen them).

This was also round about the time when I decided that my ongoing mission in life would be to review every book I read (and eventually, every book I had ever read that I could get my hands on).

Friday 18 September 2015

The House Guest by Eleanor Nilsson


 
 
 
I read this for Year 8 English. I vaguely remember the fact that I read it, barely remember the plot. It's lucky the cover is the same as the one I owned, otherwise I never would have remembered that I did in fact read it, a long time ago. I think I found it an okay read.
 
 

 

The Basic Cookbook by Maryanne Blacker

I found this book very useful when I first started cooking in my early teens. I still use some of the techniques at the back of the book, especially the tip about how to check if your steak is cooked to your liking. The recipes are very 80s classic style, but sometimes the oldies are the goodies, if not the best. My favourite recipe is definitely Macaroni Cheese, I make this every few weeks through winter and of all the versions I have tried this, the first one I ever made, is the best. I used to think it was horribly old-fashioned to see tripe or lamb's brains in a recipe book, but the innards are all starting to come back again, so I guess everything comes around again.
 
 
 
 

 

It Happened One Autumn (Wallflowers, #2) by Lisa Kleypas

I really enjoyed this romance, probably better than the first in the series, Secrets of a Summer Night. I am surprised that I did enjoy it so much because I found Marcus really high and mighty in Secrets of a Summer Night, and although I imagined that it might be Marcus who was the hero for Kleypas' next book, I didn't imagine I would like it at all due to my already bad impression of him. Reading his small parts Secrets of a Summer Night I also imagined him to be considerably older than the usual age for a romance book hero - like 65, because of his personality and behaviour towards the Wallflowers when he found them playing rounders in their undies.
 
 
 
 

 

The Devil in Winter (Wallflowers, #3) by Lisa Kleypas

Really enjoyed this light romance. Lots of fun. A little surprising that someone supposedly so shy she can't speak for stammering is able to talk to this intimidating, domineering man with hardly a trace of her characteristic stammer. Looking forward to the final book in the series.
 
 
 
 
 

 

Boris and Borsch by Robin Klein


 
 
 
 
I loved this book as a kid! I always felt really sad for Borsch, who so desperately wanted to be neat but lived in the messy house with food and dirt constantly solidifying in his fur. As a kid that always made me tear up.
 
 

 

The Testament by John Grisham


This was my first (hopefully in a long list of many) John Grisham book (I've been meaning to read one for years). I thought this was a great book to start with. I really enjoyed the beginning where the family of a extremely rich guy (Donald Trump-esque) are waiting for him to die, and then when he does die they are waiting to see how much of his billions they are each getting. The relatives of the guy are repulsive in every way possible and feel assured that they are getting a good cut of his money, so they are spending all 'their' money in the most obscene ways possible. Then the will is finally read out and they have been cut out of it. It's quite funny.




 

The Devil's Gentleman by Harold Schecter

I found this true story of the first New York trial of the 20th century fascinating. I especially liked all the footnotes Schecter used to give further detail of a fact that he used in the story. I look forward to reading his other true crime stories.