Diane Setterfield
Rating:
Friday, November 21, 2008
book review: "The Thirteenth Tale" by Diane Setterfield
THE THIRTEENTH TALE
Diane Setterfield
At the heart of this tale is the question, “Who is Vida Winter?” To say
more would be to lose the magic of storytelling. Let Ms. Setterfield and
Ms. Winter captivate you with a story of the past, a story of love and
pain and secrets.
Rating:
Diane Setterfield
Rating:
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
book review: "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer" by Patrick Suskind
PERFUME: The Story of a Murderer
Patrick Suskind
Jean-Baptiste Grenouille was born with a gift – an extraordinary sense
of smell. This enables him to become the greatest, if unrecognized,
perfumer in eighteenth-century France. Yet Grenouille was born without a
smell of his own that would mark him as human. Thus he sought to create
the perfect scent that would make men and women fall on his feet and
worship him – a scent made from virgins on the brink of womanhood.
Patrick Suskind successfully evokes the atmosphere of eighteenth-century Paris by describing the stench of its streets littered with refuse and the odor of its thousands of humans living in close quarters, and he contrasts these with fragrances from the city’s perfumeries that intrigue the reader’s nose – roses and orange blossoms and jasmine and storax… In the middle he places the young Grenouille, eager to experience and catalog in his mind all smells, good and bad, in existence.
Later Grenouille turns this passion into the creation of the perfect scent, regardless of the means needed to achieve it. In doing so he seeks affirmation of his identity and acceptance from the people who in the past ignored him at best and used him for their own ends at worst. He realizes, too late, that his hatred for the same people has surpassed his need for their acceptance, and his success becomes worthless.
Instead of hatred or revulsion, one feels pity for Grenouille and the circumstances that shaped him into what he is. And one is left with a question – Does the need to please the self ultimately stem from the need to please others?
Rating:
Patrick Suskind
Jean-Baptiste Grenouille was born with a gift – an extraordinary sense
of smell. This enables him to become the greatest, if unrecognized,
perfumer in eighteenth-century France. Yet Grenouille was born without a
smell of his own that would mark him as human. Thus he sought to create
the perfect scent that would make men and women fall on his feet and
worship him – a scent made from virgins on the brink of womanhood.Patrick Suskind successfully evokes the atmosphere of eighteenth-century Paris by describing the stench of its streets littered with refuse and the odor of its thousands of humans living in close quarters, and he contrasts these with fragrances from the city’s perfumeries that intrigue the reader’s nose – roses and orange blossoms and jasmine and storax… In the middle he places the young Grenouille, eager to experience and catalog in his mind all smells, good and bad, in existence.
Later Grenouille turns this passion into the creation of the perfect scent, regardless of the means needed to achieve it. In doing so he seeks affirmation of his identity and acceptance from the people who in the past ignored him at best and used him for their own ends at worst. He realizes, too late, that his hatred for the same people has surpassed his need for their acceptance, and his success becomes worthless.
Instead of hatred or revulsion, one feels pity for Grenouille and the circumstances that shaped him into what he is. And one is left with a question – Does the need to please the self ultimately stem from the need to please others?
Rating:
Thursday, September 04, 2008
book review: "Only You Can Save Mankind" by Terry Pratchett
ONLY YOU CAN SAVE MANKIND
Terry Pratchett
While playing the computer game “Only You Can Save Mankind”, 12-year-old
Johnny Maxwell receives a message from the captain of the ScreeWee
wishing to surrender. At first Johnny is bewildered; weren’t aliens in
computer games only there to be shot at and die? But soon he accepts the
mission to save the ScreeWee from annihilation by his fellow game
players.
With this book Pratchett has written a commentary against the 1990s Gulf War, which can apply to all wars in general, in a way that is easy for his young readers to comprehend, and he manages to make it entertaining as well. To humans the ScreeWee are the enemy, and to ScreeWee we humans are the enemy. It is all a matter of perspective and of whose side you are on, so who is to say that what one side is doing is the right thing and what the other side is doing is wrong?
Pratchett also shows his readers that one need not be intelligent or talented like Kirsty/Sigourney to make a difference. Even someone as ordinary as Johnny can do it, because he was the only one who listened and was willing to try. Every one of us is given the opportunity for change, and it is up to us if we are willing to take on the challenge.
Terry Pratchett
While playing the computer game “Only You Can Save Mankind”, 12-year-old
Johnny Maxwell receives a message from the captain of the ScreeWee
wishing to surrender. At first Johnny is bewildered; weren’t aliens in
computer games only there to be shot at and die? But soon he accepts the
mission to save the ScreeWee from annihilation by his fellow game
players.With this book Pratchett has written a commentary against the 1990s Gulf War, which can apply to all wars in general, in a way that is easy for his young readers to comprehend, and he manages to make it entertaining as well. To humans the ScreeWee are the enemy, and to ScreeWee we humans are the enemy. It is all a matter of perspective and of whose side you are on, so who is to say that what one side is doing is the right thing and what the other side is doing is wrong?
Pratchett also shows his readers that one need not be intelligent or talented like Kirsty/Sigourney to make a difference. Even someone as ordinary as Johnny can do it, because he was the only one who listened and was willing to try. Every one of us is given the opportunity for change, and it is up to us if we are willing to take on the challenge.
“Only you can save mankind.
If not you, who else?”
Rating:
Monday, September 01, 2008
book review: "The Historian" by Elizabeth Kostova
THE HISTORIAN
Elizabeth Kostova
“The Historian” begins with a young girl who discovers a book and
several letters hidden in her father’s library, and inadvertently
triggers a journey into the past and the continuation of the
centuries-old search for Vlad the Impaler, also known as Dracula.
Although the novel has lost some of its intensity for me on the second reading, I am still struck by how well Elizabeth Kostova has created an atmosphere of suspense laced with danger. She makes you want to look behind your back, and the unlit corners of your room and the dark alleys on the streets too, to see if anyone is watching. She paints vivid descriptions of the places she takes you to, as well – exotic Istanbul, the forbidding mountains of Romania…
I also like how Kostova portrays vampires as terrible creatures, and their victims suspended between life and death; not the glamorous creatures popularized by Anne Rice and the like. The movement away from the Dracula of pop culture – with his slicked-back hair, black cape with high collar, fangs dripping with blood – is also refreshing.
We in the present, who are fascinated with history because our experience of it is vicarious, only read about in books and seen on film, are reminded that what we now consider history was once real for the people who lived it. And Kostova shows us how it feels when history comes alive, as her characters experience firsthand.
Ultimately, however, I feel that this is a story about loss. The narrator loses her mother as a young child; Paul, the narrator’s father, loses his mentor and friend; Professor Rossi loses someone dear to him, and even loses the memory of that loss. Kostova lets each character reclaim what has been lost, but only briefly. So which is more painful, the first loss or the second?
“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.” – Pablo Neruda
Rating:
Elizabeth Kostova
“The Historian” begins with a young girl who discovers a book and
several letters hidden in her father’s library, and inadvertently
triggers a journey into the past and the continuation of the
centuries-old search for Vlad the Impaler, also known as Dracula.Although the novel has lost some of its intensity for me on the second reading, I am still struck by how well Elizabeth Kostova has created an atmosphere of suspense laced with danger. She makes you want to look behind your back, and the unlit corners of your room and the dark alleys on the streets too, to see if anyone is watching. She paints vivid descriptions of the places she takes you to, as well – exotic Istanbul, the forbidding mountains of Romania…
I also like how Kostova portrays vampires as terrible creatures, and their victims suspended between life and death; not the glamorous creatures popularized by Anne Rice and the like. The movement away from the Dracula of pop culture – with his slicked-back hair, black cape with high collar, fangs dripping with blood – is also refreshing.
We in the present, who are fascinated with history because our experience of it is vicarious, only read about in books and seen on film, are reminded that what we now consider history was once real for the people who lived it. And Kostova shows us how it feels when history comes alive, as her characters experience firsthand.
Ultimately, however, I feel that this is a story about loss. The narrator loses her mother as a young child; Paul, the narrator’s father, loses his mentor and friend; Professor Rossi loses someone dear to him, and even loses the memory of that loss. Kostova lets each character reclaim what has been lost, but only briefly. So which is more painful, the first loss or the second?
“Love is so short, forgetting is so long.” – Pablo Neruda
Rating:
Sunday, August 31, 2008
book review: "Black House" by Stephen King & Peter Straub
BLACK HOUSE
Stephen King & Peter Straub
Jack Sawyer, hero of “The Talisman”, is forced to remember the summer he
was twelve years old and traveled to a parallel world called the
Territories, when a series of child abductions and murders disturbs the
town he has settled in two decades later.
None of the characters we met the first time appear except Speedy Parker, but we are introduced to new and equally interesting characters – Henry Leyden, the blind man who could see, and the Thunder Five, bikers who happen to be college graduates and brew great beer. The novel begins slowly but picks up after the first hundred pages, and despite it being written by King and Straub, it is almost purely King’s voice we hear. Most reminiscent of another King work “It”, “Black House” is ultimately about a quest to save the world, and like King’s other novels, tells us that despite the horror one may encounter along the way, one needs only to believe in good for good to triumph in the end.
Rating:
Stephen King & Peter Straub
Jack Sawyer, hero of “The Talisman”, is forced to remember the summer he
was twelve years old and traveled to a parallel world called the
Territories, when a series of child abductions and murders disturbs the
town he has settled in two decades later.None of the characters we met the first time appear except Speedy Parker, but we are introduced to new and equally interesting characters – Henry Leyden, the blind man who could see, and the Thunder Five, bikers who happen to be college graduates and brew great beer. The novel begins slowly but picks up after the first hundred pages, and despite it being written by King and Straub, it is almost purely King’s voice we hear. Most reminiscent of another King work “It”, “Black House” is ultimately about a quest to save the world, and like King’s other novels, tells us that despite the horror one may encounter along the way, one needs only to believe in good for good to triumph in the end.
Rating:
book review: "Freak the Mighty" by Rodman Philbrick
FREAK THE MIGHTY
Rodman Philbrick
A story about friendship, and about becoming more than who you are.
Rating:
Rodman Philbrick
Rating:
book review: "The Bad Beginning" by Lemony Snicket
THE BAD BEGINNING
Lemony Snicket
Lemony Snicket tells us drily, a word which here means “with sly humor”
;), how Baudelaire children Violet, Klaus and Sunny lose their parents,
their home and their possessions and have to settle for their evil
guardian Count Olaf, one bed, and ugly clothes.
Rating:
Lemony Snicket
Rating:
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