Book Review: Rule of Four

I know, I know, I've been slacking on my book reviews, but this one was so good, it gave me the kick in the pants that I needed to share it.

The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason was a really fun book for those that like puzzles.  It's much better than anything Dan Brown ever wrote. The puzzles in this one reference renaissance art and humanism in Florence, and it has a compelling story line with fun subplots going on around it. It combines history and mystery in a wonderful sort of way. Definitely recommended.


Synopsis: 

Princeton. Good Friday, 1999. On the eve of graduation, two friends are a hairsbreadth from solving the mysteries of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a Renaissance text that has baffled scholars for centuries. Famous for its hypnotic power over those who study it, the five-hundred-year-old Hypnerotomachia may finally reveal its secrets—to Tom Sullivan, whose father was obsessed with the book, and Paul Harris, whose future depends on it.
 
As the deadline looms, research has stalled—until a vital clue is unearthed: a long-lost diary that may prove to be the key to deciphering the ancient text. But when a longtime student of the book is murdered just hours later, a chilling cycle of deaths and revelations begins—one that will force Tom and Paul into a fiery drama, spun from a book whose power and meaning have long been misunderstood.
 

Book Review: Forever Odd

I just read the second of the Odd Thomas series, by Dean Koontz. This one was called Forever Odd. Though many of the amazon reviews hated it compared to the first book, I loved it.  I really enjoy falling in love with a character and then seeing what happens to them next. These books really make me want to meet this "odd" guy in real life, and fictional characters like that are hard to find.

If you haven't read the first book, Odd Thomas, you might want to read that one first as a lot of the characters are set up in that one.

I'm reading the third book right now, Brother Odd, and so far, so good.

Synopsis:


Grieving the loss of his fiancee, killed during the climax of his eponymous debut despite anything he and his supernatural intuition could do, Odd Thomas returns in a more suspenseful but less piquant adventure. Only a year older (21), he feels almost ancient and more rueful than ever about his gift for seeing ghosts, Dr. Wilbur Jessup's in particular. The loving stepfather of Odd's brittle-boned friend Danny was alive yesterday, so Odd investigates, as the "psychic magnetism" that attends his ghost-seeing compels him to, and finds the physician brutally murdered and Danny missing. Odd tracks Danny and his abductors to an abandoned casino-hotel, closed by an earthquake that killed dozens five years ago. It's a trap. Danny is bait to draw Odd to Datura, a spookily self-absorbed, wealthy porn entrepreneur and New Age nut, who, obsessed with violent death, wants Odd to make ghosts visible to her.

Book Review: Do Penguins Have Knees

I love to know the answers to life's most trivial questions, and that is exactly what you'll find in "Do Penguins Have Knees?" by David Feldman. It's a part of a series about life's imponderables, of which I've now read three.  


I do have to warn you that if you read it, you may annoy your significant other.  Every five minutes I found myself asking the boyfriend, "Did you know such and such?", which really cut into his TV watching experience.


Synopsis:



Ponder, if you will
What happens to your Social Security number when you die?
Why are peanuts listed as an ingredient in plain M&Ms?
Why is Barbie's hair made out of nylon, but Ken's hair is plastic?
What makes up the ever-mysterious "new-car smell"?
Pop-culture guru David Feldman demystifies these topics and so much more in Do Penguins Have Knees? -- the unchallenged source of answers to civilization's most perplexing questions.

Book Review: The Night Circus

This month we read The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern for my book club.  I can't say enough about what a beautiful book it was.


It's written in a non chronological order of events, and yet you get the complete story.  The characters were colorful and I developed a bond with each and every one.  Even the character I didn't quite like still managed to move me by the end of the story.


If you are a fan of the circus and of odd things, then this book is for you.  I could totally see it done in a Tim Burton movie, at least, that's how I saw the story in my head.


Synopsis:

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus per­formers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart.

Book Review: Life Expectancy

The other day I finished reading Life Expectancy by Dean Koontz. It was absolutely wonderful.  Unlike some of his older books, this one is not horror, and actually is quite funny.  The ridiculousness of it all made me laugh, and there were also parts that got me a little misty.  I love it that at times the narrator is messing with the reader, it really made me feel even more a part of the story.


Plus, there's clowns in it and I love clowns.  The boyfriend is a former Ringling Brother's clown.  And even though there weren't any nice clowns in the book, I still enjoyed it.


Synopsis: Jimmy Tock comes into the world on the very night his grandfather leaves it. As a violent storm rages outside the hospital, Rudy Tock spends long hours walking the corridors between the expectant fathers' waiting room and his dying father's bedside. It's a strange vigil made all the stranger when, at the very height of the storm's fury, Josef Tock suddenly sits up in bed and speaks coherently for the frist and last time since his stroke.

What he says before he dies is that there will be five dark days in the life of his grandson—five dates whose terrible events Jimmy will have to prepare himself to face. The first is to occur in his twentieth year; the second in his twent-third year; the third in his twenty-eighth; the fourth in his twenty-ninth; the fifth in his thirtieth.

Rudy is all too ready to discount his father's last words as a dying man's delusional rambling. But then he discovers that Josef also predicted the time of his grandson's birth to the minute, as well as his exact height and weight, and the fact that Jimmy would be born with syndactyly—the unexplained anomal of fused digits—on his left foot. Suddenly the old man's predictions take on a chilling significance.

What terrifying events await Jimmy on these five dark days? What nightmares will he face? What challenges must he survive? As the novel unfolds, picking up Jimmy's story at each of these crisis points, the path he must follow will defy every expectation. And with each crisis he faces, he will move closer to a fate he could never have imagined. For who Jimmy Tock is and what he must accomplish on the five days when his world turns is a mystery as dangerous as it is wondrous—a struggle against an evil so dark and pervasive, only the most extraordinary of human spirits can shine through.

Book Review: Come Tell Me How You Live

We all know who Agatha Christy is, but when you read "Come Tell Me How You Live", you really get to know her.  That is because this is non-fiction.  It's all about her going on archeological digs with her husband in the thirties.


It's well known that international travel can be difficult now-a-days, but it's fun not only to read how hard it was then, but also how she handled it.  You get a real feel for what kind of person she was, and to me she seems like someone with a sharp mind and a big heart.


Even for those that aren't a fan of non-fiction, this is quite an enjoyable book.


Synopsis:


To the world she was Agatha Christie, author of numerous bestselling mysteries and whodunits, arguably the most popular writer in the English language. But in the 1930s she wore a different hat, traveling with her husband, renowned archaeologist Max Mallowan, as he investigated the buried ruins and ancient wonders of Syria and Iraq. Described by the author as a "meandering chronicle of life on an archaeological dig," Come, Tell Me How You Live is Dame Agatha Christie's first-person account of her time spent in this breathtaking corner of the globe where recorded human history began. It is a fascinating, eye-opening, vibrant, and vivid portrait of a place, a people, and a past, by a legendary writer whose extraordinary popularity endures to this day; an altogether remarkable narrative of everyday life in a world now long since vanished.

Book Review: Room

Wow! We got to read another really great book for book club this month.  It was "Room" by Emma Donahue.


What Donahue did was take an incredibly horrible situation, and put it through a child's innocent eyes.  He thinks of everything as a game, and doesn't know how bad he has it.  It is so touching, and the strength of the mother is totally inspiring.  


I read it in two days, as I really didn't want to put it down.


Synopsis:
To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world. . . . It's where he was born, it's where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma it's the prison where she has been held for seven years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in this eleven-by-eleven-foot space. But with Jack's curiosity building alongside her own desperation, she knows that Room cannot contain either much longer.

Room is a tale at once shocking, riveting, exhilarating--a story of unconquerable love in harrowing circumstances, and of the diamond-hard bond between a mother and her child.

Book Review: Devil in the White City

For my book club this month we read "Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson. It's a non-fiction book that reads more like a novel.  I learned so much from it, but it kept me interested, not like reading a textbook.  


It's all about the creating of the World's Fair in Chicago, while at the same time there's a serial killer on the loose.  I probably was more intrigued by the murderer parts rather than the fair parts, but it was fascinating how many things that we take for granted today, all came from the fair.  


Interesting history and drama, what more could you want?


Synopsis: Erik Larson—author of #1 bestseller In the Garden of Beasts—intertwines the true tale of the 1893 World's Fair and the cunning serial killer who used the fair to lure his victims to their death. Combining meticulous research with nail-biting storytelling, Erik Larson has crafted a narrative with all the wonder of newly discovered history and the thrills of the best fiction.

Book Review: You Suck

No, I wasn't insulting the book review, the title of the book is actually called "You Suck" by Christopher Moore, and if you haven't guessed it yet, it's about Vampires.


I think this is one of the funniest books that I've read in a very long time.  I think one of the most difficult things in writing is comedy as once it's on paper, it's up to the reader to supply the timing.  Most authors fail at this, in my opinion, but not Christopher Moore.  When I was reading this in the dressing room between shows, all the other performers kept asking me, "What are you laughing at?"


Synopsis: 
Being undead sucks. Literally.

Just ask C. Thomas Flood. Waking up after a fantastic night unlike anything he's ever experienced, he discovers that his girlfriend, Jody, is a vampire. And surprise! Now he's one, too. For some couples, the whole biting-and-blood thing would have been a deal breaker. But Tommy and Jody are in love, and they vow to work through their issues.

But word has it that the vampire who initially nibbled on Jody wasn't supposed to be recruiting. Even worse, Tommy's erstwhile turkey-bowling pals are out to get him, at the urging of a blue-dyed Las Vegas call girl named (duh) Blue.

And that really sucks.

Book Review: Before You Know Kindness

Last week I read Before You Know Kindness by Chris Bohjalian.  It was a different sort of premise with really deep characters.  It's amazing how one event can change everything, and even though at the time it seems for the worse, you never know how things will actually come out. 


I also liked how characters I didn't care for in the beginning of the book, grew on me either as they changed, or as I got to know them better.  I'm finding myself more and more being drawn to character driven books as opposed to plot driven ones, although I always love a good story.


Synopsis: 
On a balmy July night in New Hampshire a shot rings out in a garden, and a man falls to the ground, terribly wounded. The wounded man is Spencer McCullough, the shot that hit him was fired–accidentally?–by his adolescent daughter Charlotte. With this shattering moment of violence, Chris Bohjalian launches the best kind of literate page-turner: suspenseful, wryly funny, and humane.

Book Review: Death with Interruptions

I was really excited to read "Death with Interruptions" by Jose Saramago.  His book "Blindness" was one of my favorites.  Unfortunately it's hard to top such a great book.


I must say that the first half of the book didn't live up to my expectations, though it was interesting and I enjoyed the premise.  It really got good when I got to the second part and death was introduced.  From that point on, I couldn't put it down.


Synopsis: On the first day of the new year, no one dies. This of course causes consternation among politicians, religious leaders, morticians, and doctors. Among the general public, on the other hand, there is initially celebration—flags are hung out on balconies, people dance in the streets. They have achieved the great goal of humanity: eternal life. Then reality hits home—families are left to care for the permanently dying, life-insurance policies become meaningless, and funeral parlors are reduced to arranging burials for pet dogs, cats, hamsters, and parrots.

Death sits in her chilly apartment, where she lives alone with scythe and filing cabinets, and contemplates her experiment: What if no one ever died again? What if she, death with a small d, became human and were to fall in love?

Book Review: Sarah's Key

It has been awhile since I've done a book review, and I've decided to start bringing them back.


I recently finished reading for my book club, Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay.  I've read quite a few World War Two accounts both fictional and non-fictional, and this one was very poignant indeed.  I do think that I found the first part of the book more interesting than the second as you got to see both points of view of what happened from present day to the past.


Though not my favorite book of those times, this one will still get to you, right in your heart.


Synopsis: Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten-year-old girl, is taken with her parents by the French police as they go door to door arresting Jewish families in the middle of the night. Desperate to protect her younger brother, Sarah locks him in a bedroom cupboard—their secret hiding place—and promises to come back for him as soon as they are released.

Sixty Years Later: Sarah’s story intertwines with that of Julia Jarmond, an American journalist investigating the roundup. In her research, Julia stumbles onto a trail of secrets that link her to Sarah, and to questions about her own future.                                                                                                          

In Sarah’s Key, Tatiana de Rosnay offers up a mesmerizing story in which a tragic past unfolds, the present is torn apart, and the future is irrevocably altered.

Book Review: The Alexandria Link

Last week I finished The Alexandria Link by Steve Berry. I must say that the subject matter was fascinating, and I'm really interested to know how much he got from facts and how much he made up.

The story itself took a while to get into, but by the end it lived up to it's thriller nature. It was like a spy novel meets The Da Vinci Code. Lot's of biblical intrigue, and many characters that you don't know if you can trust. Though some of the plots cooked up by the characters were just a little too perfect, but that's the kind of thing you'll find in many of today's movies as well.

If you are a fan of these types of books, then you will totally enjoy this.

Synopsis:

At the start of bestseller Berry's second thriller to feature Cotton Malone (after The Templar Legacy), Malone, a former employee of the covert branch of the U.S. Justice Department, is trying to lead a secluded life as a bookseller in Copenhagen. Unsurprisingly, that hope is short-lived when his son is kidnapped and his ex-wife, Pam, asks for his help in rescuing the boy. The abductors intend to force Malone to reveal what he knows about the survival of the legendary lost library of Alexandria, which may hold ancient texts that could undermine Israel's claim to biblical legitimacy. Malone and his allies get mixed up in Washington intrigue and double-dealing as they try to identify the high-level traitor seeking to use the secret sources to change the dynamics of the Middle East.

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Book Review: Little Green Men

It's been a while since I've done a book review, but my reading is kinda outpacing my blogging... but anyway, here's the latest.

On Thursday, I finished reading Little Green Men by Christopher Buckley. I do enjoy him as an author, and how his over the top writing, paints a funny satire of our society.

But even if you're not into commentary on life, the story does stand up on it's own. It made me think that even as ridiculous as it sounds, I could see something like this going on. And though it sounds like a Sci-Fi book, in my opinion, it isn't one. Just a funny and interesting novel.


Synopsis:

In Christopher Buckley's hilarious fourth novel, Washington, D.C., is naturally enough a place of sex, lies, and videotape. Unfortunately for Little Green Men's pundit protagonist, John Oliver Banion, it is also the HQ of Majestic Twelve, a very, very covert government project. Since "that golden Cold War summer of 1947," MJ-12 has had a single mission--to convince taxpayers that space invaders are constantly lurking below what's left of the ozone layer. "A country convinced that little green men were hovering over the rooftops was inclined to vote yea for big weapons and space programs," the author thoughtfully explains.

But one disgruntled operative wants out. Nathan Scrubbs is fed up to the back teeth with the art of alien abduction--not to mention his cover as a Social Security flunky--so when his request for a transfer is quashed, he drunkenly decides to take it out on ubiquitous ultra-prig Banion, who happens to be on TV at the time. The ensuing high-tech kidnap, at Maryland's Burning Bush Country Club, is only one of the thousands of convulsively funny scenes in Little Green Men.

Book Review - The Curious Curate

I finished reading a book called Agatha Raisin and the Curious Curate by M.C. Beaton. It was a fun little detective novel, although the ending kind of came out of nowhere. It was, however, entertaining. It is one of a whole series of detective novels.

Usually I tend to like these types of mysteries when it's the police investigating, not an amature. I'd probably tend to enjoy the characters more having read more books in the series, but I think I'm going to read something else next instead, and perhaps come back to this one later.


Synopsis:

At the core of every village cozy is a pinch of arsenic. In the Agatha Raisin Cotswold cozies, the arsenic is Agatha herself, a pushy, whiny, unsociable, self-pitying sort who investigates murders in the tiny village of Carsely the way other women might shop, as a distraction from boredom. Despite Agatha, this series, now in its thirteenth outing, is very popular. In the latest, the village is shaken by the appearance of a gorgeous new assistant cleric. Before long, the cleric is hated by the vicar for pulling in record crowds at services and lusted after by every woman in the village. After the cleric is found stabbed to death at the vicarage, Agatha takes it upon herself to discover who did in the body in the library.

Book Review -The Secret Scripture

The other day, I finished reading The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry. Honestly, through the first couple of chapters, I was kinda bored, but then slowly, it sucked me in, until by the last couple of chapters, I couldn't turn the pages fast enough. The writing was beautiful, and you could actually see Ireland through the main characters eyes. There were times when tears sprung to my eyes at what Roseanne was going through, as well as times when I got so angry at the priest that my hands began to shake.

If you like historical fiction, beautiful writing, or an old mystery, then you should definitely pick up this book.

Synopsis:

The latest from Barry (whose A Long Way was shortlisted for the 2005 Booker) pits two contradictory narratives against each other in an attempt to solve the mystery of a 100-year-old mental patient. That patient, Roseanne McNulty, decides to undertake an autobiography and writes of an ill-fated childhood spent with her father, Joe Clear. A cemetery superintendent, Joe is drawn into Ireland's 1922 civil war when a group of irregulars brings a slain comrade to the cemetery and are discovered by a division of Free-Staters. Meanwhile, Roseanne's psychiatrist, Dr. Grene, investigating Roseanne's original commitment in preparation for her transfer to a new hospital, discovers through the papers of the local parish priest, Fr. Gaunt, that Roseanne's father was actually a police sergeant in the Royal Irish Constabulary. The mysteries multiply when Roseanne reveals that Fr. Gaunt annulled her marriage after glimpsing her in the company of another man; Gaunt's official charge was nymphomania, and the cumulative fallout led to a string of tragedies.

Book Review -Another World-

Yesterday I finished reading Another World by Pat Barker. There were some really cool elements in the story, and some, not so cool. The characters were great, and really well thought out, and the main story was both interesting and heartbreaking. There were other stories going on in the periphery that seemed to start the reader down a line and then were barely mentioned again. I was left wanting to know what happened with those stories after the main one was resolved. I don't know if this is a "must read", but if you do pick it up, it will definitely draw you in.





Synopsis:

Geordie, a WWI veteran, is over 100, but is hanging on to life with the same stubbornness and iconoclasm that have seen him through the entire 20th century. His grandson, Nick, living in grim, contemporary Newcastle-on-Tyne, is struggling with his own life as he monitors Geordie's last days. Nick's teenage daughter from a previous marriage, Miranda, has come to stay; his new wife, Fran, with her own kid, Gareth, a computer games freak, has two-year-old Jasper to contend with and another baby on the way. Now it seems that their new house may be haunted by the kind of malign domestic spirit at large among Nick's little family. Geordie, too, has his own ghostsAa hideous war memory, long buried, that must be exorcised before he can die in peace.

Book Review: Shantaram

I just finished reading Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. It was a fascinating read since it was based on a true story. It's a rather large book, which can be quite a time commitment for some people, but worth every word of it. It sucks you into the story, while at the same time being really well written. If you like books of intrigue, books about the mafia, or books on travel, this is one you might want to put on yor wishlist.

Synopsis:

At the start of this massive, thrillingly undomesticated potboiler, a young Australian man bearing a false New Zealand passport that gives his name as "Lindsay" flies to Bombay some time in the early '80s. On his first day there, Lindsay meets the two people who will largely influence his fate in the city. One is a young tour guide, Prabaker, whose gifts include a large smile and an unstoppably joyful heart. Through Prabaker, Lindsay learns Marathi (a language not often spoken by gora, or foreigners), gets to know village India and settles, for a time, in a vast shantytown, operating an illicit free clinic. The second person he meets is Karla, a beautiful Swiss-American woman with sea-green eyes and a circle of expatriate friends. Lin's love for Karla—and her mysterious inability to love in return—gives the book its central tension. "Linbaba's" life in the slum abruptly ends when he is arrested without charge and thrown into the hell of Arthur Road Prison. Upon his release, he moves from the slum and begins laundering money and forging passports for one of the heads of the Bombay mafia, guru/sage Abdel Khader Khan. Eventually, he follows Khader as an improbable guerrilla in the war against the Russians in Afghanistan. There he learns about Karla's connection to Khader and discovers who set him up for arrest. Roberts, who wrote the first drafts of the novel in prison, has poured everything he knows into this book and it shows.

Book Review: Olive Kittridge

It has been a while since I've read a really fabulous book, and Olive Kittridge by Elizabeth Strout definitely fits the bill. Through a series of stories you find out about this strong yet frustrating lady, and through each person, the author manages to touch your heart. I was very sad when it ended, not because the ending was sad (I won't say whether it was or wasn't), but I'd fallen in love with this book and I wanted it to go on, and on, and on.

Synopsis

“Hell. We’re always alone. Born alone. Die alone,” says Olive Kitteridge, redoubtable seventh-grade math teacher in Crosby, Maine. Anyone who gets in Olive’s way had better watch out, for she crashes unapologetically through life like an emotional storm trooper. She forces her husband, Henry, the town pharmacist, into tactical retreat; and she drives her beloved son, Christopher, across the country and into therapy. But appalling though Olive can be, Strout manages to make her deeply human and even sympathetic, as are all of the characters in this “novel in stories.” Covering a period of 30-odd years, most of the stories (several of which were previously published in the New Yorker and other magazines) feature Olive as their focus, but in some she is bit player or even a footnote while other characters take center stage to sort through their own fears and insecurities. Though loneliness and loss haunt these pages, Strout also supplies gentle humor and a nourishing dose of hope. People are sustained by the rhythms of ordinary life and the natural wonders of coastal Maine, and even Olive is sometimes caught off guard by life’s baffling beauty.

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Book Review - Time and Again -

We read Time and Again by Jack Finney for book club last month. (Not to be confused with Nora Roberts' "Time and Again"), and it really was a lovely book.

Now I'm not usually a fan of time travel books, although I've read a few that I've enjoyed, and this is one of them. If you've ever seen the movie "Somewhere in Time" and liked it, then you might like this one. The movie was actually based on the book, though they are so completely different, you can't even say if one is better than the other, but they have the same sort of feel to them.

I probably never would have picked this up if it weren't for book club...which is one of the reasons I like belonging to one, so that I'll read new types of things. If you do decide to read it, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Synopsis:

Simon Morley, an illustrator, is enlisted by a secret govenment project to hypnotize himself into 1880s New York. He is successful, and goes back to investigate a mystery. As we are overwhelmed with details of 1880s New York, we can almost believe that this time travel is possible. Morely finds himself in love with his landlady's daughter in the past, and must deal with threats both in the past and in the present.