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January 24, 2006

Books not reviewed

I'm way behind on my book reviews. So I don't completely forget what I've read - here are the ones I remember, with a few brief notes that I hope to expand on.

Nicole Krauss - The History Of Love - Bad

This year's 'Shadow of the Wind', all about a book and the writer of the book. Far too much Polish/Yiddish stuff in here - do we really need another post holocaust lost love novel. I hated that some foreign words were included with no translations so I have no idea what they meant.

There are passages of the 'book within the book', and they are tediously awful. No one would want to read it, and interestingly in this novel, not many people do.

The best thing about this book is that it's short - and some pages only have a few words on them.

Alistair Reynolds - Century Rain - Good

Raynolds does it again, nice cold hard science fiction, with a detective novel sort of thrown in.

Terry Pratchett - Going Postal - Funny

Funny stuuff, on Discworld as usual. You either like these books or you don't, and I like 'em.

Alistair Macall Smith - The No 1. Ladies Detective Agency - Goodish

It's a short book that needs to be read slowly. This perhaps reflect the easy tropical pace of life in Botswana that our lady detective enjoys. Several short detecting cases are threaded together with an unlikely love story. I enjoyed it a bit, it's not bad, just not that good either.

Neal Stephenson - Quicksilver

Never finished - 100 pages in and I give up - if I wanted to read an encyclopedia then I'd buy one.

James Patterson - Sam's Letters for Jennifer - really terribly bad

Not sure why I picked this one up - probably morbid curiousity as I read a similar book by Patterson and wondered if he would have the temerity to do it again - he has!

Nick Hornby - Long Way Down - Crap

Four characters, all either boring or unlikable, want to commit suicide on New Years Eve and climb up onto a roof. They persuade each other to go on living - but I rather wish thay had just made the leap and spared me from this dross. Nick Hornby wrote 'About a Boy', and 'High Fidelity' - both absolute classics. How can he write such terrible stuff as this (actually, 'How to be Good' was just as bad, I should have know better.)

Iain M Banks - The Algebraist - Good

Huge scale space opera, totally confusing in the middle third where I nearly gave up, but ultimately worth it as I gradually pulled together the different threads to understanding.

Andrew Taylor - The American Boy

Persuaded by the Richard and Judy Book Club, and by my interest in Edgar Allen Poe, I dived into this historical novel. What a mistake. Despite him being a near namesake of mine, I really struggled to empathise with the lead character Thomas Shields. He was so much motivated by the civilities of the age, that you could see him easily willing to die rather than offend a person of higher class. Poe only makes brief unsatisfactory appearances, and never does anything intersting.

Posted by se71 at January 24, 2006 05:42 PM

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Posted by: Cate at January 25, 2006 02:05 AM

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