I'm Not Dead!

2015 has not been my reviewing year. I do apologise if people do follow this blog for reviews. I have been slack and lame. I also have been through such an intense reading slump. I didn't finish a book from mid-June to August. Just nothing I picked up worked for me, and I now have a whole heap of half read books littering the house.

I also have a pile of books from pre-slump and post-slump sitting here to review. So once again, let's knock those over quickly, and then I'll get my shit together from now on.

A Study in Scarlet

First Sherlock book I have read, although obviously well acquainted with the world and characters. I really enjoyed the original book though, and felt that the book was incredibly easy to read over a hundred years later. Also made me really respect the latest BBC series SOOO much more, and I didn't think that was possible.

The War of the Worlds

Wins for the best use of the word "ejaculation" I have seen for a long time. I can see why it is a classic, and I can see it was completely mind blowing at the time. I did find it dragging in parts, just a slow pacing that Victorian novels can have. I am glad I read it, but I was a little let down due to all the hype I have heard for years.

Cocaine Blues

Phryne Fisher is more badass in the book than the series. Sometimes to the point of ridiculous, but more badass. But great intro to the 1920s lady detective running around Melbourne causing mayhem. And different enough from the series that you can happily read and watch with only minimum spoilerage.

Faceless Killers

Another intro to a detective I have watched on TV. Due to this, I spent the entire book imagining Wallander as Kenneth Branagh, and his offsider as Tom Hiddleston. I was slightly annoyed as I had watched this story a few times, but couldn't remember the ending and it bugged me. But this was not the book's fault, it was a victim of it's own success. Another good Nordic Noir series to stick your teeth into.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Oh my. Neil Gaiman. Gush. This book delivered on all the things you want in a Neil Gaiman novel and I devoured it in hours. Just a beautiful book.

The Oxford Murders

An Argentinian maths student gets a scholarship to Oxford to study, and it quickly drawn into the investigation of a serial killer. Maths puzzles, logic sequences and pattern recognition plays a large part in the book and takes it to another level than a standard murder mystery. I couldn't work out the time period though, and that bothered me with the attitude to women by the main character.

Jar City

I've avoided reading this book for a while, due to the English publishers ignoring series order and just publishing willy nilly. But I've waited so long, and it fitted a Toppler read so well, I just went for it. I am glad I did though. Icelandic murder mystery, not as dark and gritty as other nordic noir, but quite enjoyable. Standard fare really, but enjoyable and well told.

Ready Player One

How much nostalgia can you fit into one book?! This is an 80s-early 90s kid's heaven. So many memories, in a great adventure thriller. The world has descended into a dystopian future, where we spend all our time if we can plugged into a virtual world. It's like what would have happened if all the predictions about Second Life had come true. But throw in a quest and pursuit of an evil corporation, and it's just brilliant.

Moon Called

Too many hairy werewolves, for me, to, bear. I'm not a fan of werewolves and this is the best werewolf book I have read. I really like Mercy, I liked the world, the story was not too bad. I wanted to know more about everything else besides the werewolves though, like the fae and how they all worked. I would continue the series, as I enjoyed it enough, but it seems to be all werewolf based. I'm not sure if I can handle that.

The Messenger of Athens

Death of a young woman thought to be an adulterer on a small Mediterranean Greek island. Written off as an accident but thought by all as a suicide. Until an investigator from Athens shows up and asks questions. I liked the setting and the place. I wasn't fussed with the story. Didn't care for the characters, and again, was pissed off with the treatment of women in the book. I thought it was 1960s or so, then right at the end of the book we are given a timeline and I worked out it was 1994. Not on. Don't think I'll carry on with this one.

Let the Right One In

Image sourced from here

Sometimes you pick up a book, or get recommended one, and it is absolutely nothing like what you expect. This book was both of these things. I picked it up a couple of years ago for a couple of dollars, as I heard it was a movie and Swedish. I like Swedish things, and movies, and Swedish movies. Give it a go.

It's then sat on the bookshelves for a while, until my brother in law saw it last year and exclaimed (which is always exciting as he's incredibly tall) when he saw it. "Have you read that?! You have to! It's so scary! It's really good!". Right noted. Swedish and scary. Vampires no less.

So it is all of this, but not the scary vampire book I had in my mind. We meet Oskar, who is a bullied and psychologically traumatised if we are being honest, 12 year old boy living in the outskirts of Stockholm. He meets a girl who has moved in next door to him at night time (although that's not hard as it's late autumn/early winter in Sweden) in the playground, and he strikes up a friendship with her. But Eli is a little odd and has some very strange behaviours. But to be fair, so does Oskar.

There are vampires. They do gorey things. But that's not the point of the book. The point of the book to me is really more about friendship and finding someone you can trust and be yourself with. It's about overcoming adversity whether that's bullies, loneliness, thirst for human blood and being the size of a 11 year old. You know. Big issues.

For me, the scariest thing in this book was the setting. Stockholm but where the woods meet the city, in snow and ice and frozen lakes and just fricking cold. But most importantly for me though, was that these things were coming out at night. And it's October/November. THE NIGHTS ARE BECOMING LONGER AND LONGER!

This freaked me out more than anything else really. My own brain doing the maths. I mean, in winter here the nights are only 12-13 hours long at June (longest day). Can you imagine if there were things that could come at you in the night and your nights were 15 hours long and only getting longer?

This was a clever and disconcerting look at vampires. It wasn't what I was expecting and I'm very glad for that. For a subject matter that has been beaten to death over the past decade, this is a refreshing and very Scandinavian take.

The Ice Princess

Image sourced from here

Blind alleys. That is the takeaway of this book for me. If I hear about one more fucking blind alley I am going to punch a kitten. Or a sloth. Or whatever it is the internet finds cute today. Now I have that off my chest, let's continue.

The Ice Princess is my kind of junk food read. It involves murder and crime solving. It's not incredibly taxing. You know (although it's Nordic so god knows really) the good guys will (might) win by the end of the book. You can just tune out and get taken for the ride.

The benefit to this book is again the setting. It's set in a Swedish seaside village in winter, so it's pretty empty, almost deserted, except for the locals. And cold (I believe -15 was mentioned in the middle of the day!?! My Aussie body can not begin to comprehend that) and dark and ominous. People were fishing in that. Maddness! I just wanted to wrap myself up in a blanket while reading, and that included the time while I was sitting in the 22 degree sun in the garden, and really what else do you want for a murder mystery? The sense of setting and place were fantastic.

But that's kinda where the fantastic ended. The rest was okay. The writing was okay, with some bits mentioned above that just annoyed the hell out of you. I was wondering if that was the translation, but guessing from my convo with my favourite Swede the other day, the writing sounds like it was worse in the original.

Then, oh my god, the weight issues and body image in this book. The main character, who by the way, is not at all the main character you expect when you pick up the first book in the Patrik Hedström books. Patrik is introduced but our main character is Erica. Erica tells you how many weight watchers points are in every meal for the first half of the book. Erica freaks out that on the morning of a date with Patrik, a bit after her parents have died suddenly so she's had a few other things on her mind, that she as a tall, curvy Swedish woman has hit 150 pounds (68kgs) and debates calling the whole thing off. Now, I do not know her body shape or whatever of course, but to me, that sounds completely normal for what I have in my head from the descriptions. She sounds like a brainwashed moron. After the particularly bad scene she never mentions it again, which while welcome, seems in some ways like the author forgot about a part of her personality.

It was vaguely predictable. I was thinking, what it needs now, is one more murder, and blah would be a good choice. I turned the page, and blah was murdered. But I didn't pick the killer. And I don't know why. Was it because I was ill when I read the last 40pp or was it just a good twist? Unsure at this point of time.

Look, if you like murders and crime, and you want a pretty straight forward book with a great setting and a cheesy romance, pick it up. I'm umming and ahhing between 3-3.5 stars and I'm heading for the latter as it's exactly what I needed at this point in time. Apparently the series gets a lot better. It's her first book, so not entirely surprised. The promise of that has me heading towards the carrot I must say, because if she gets her shit together she could be fantastic.

Popular Music from Vittula - #43

Image sourced from here

I distinctly remember starting this book. I was on a plane home from Japan, finally from our sudden month in the UK. They had just turned the lights out after meals and drinks so that people could sleep. It was about 12am at night Japanese time, so 1am Aussie time. I was already feeling self conscious as my light was on, but Lexx and my brother were on either side of me. Lexx had taken a sleeping tablet and my brother still hadn't got the hang of sleeping on planes. And I was desperately trying not to piss myself laughing at this book.

This book isn't really a book of short stories, but it kind of is. It's probably better described as a collection of vignettes of the author's childhood. How many of them are true? God knows. He probably doesn't know entirely himself. This is what is the most gripping part of this book. It tells stories of his childhood growing up on the far northern border of Sweden and Finland above the Arctic Circle, where they speak their own language which isn't quiet Swedish, but not quite Finnish, and considered a bastard kind of area by both Finland and Sweden. With all this in the background, he tells you these stories as absolute truths that just sort of get carried away on a child's imagination until they are fantastical in nature and far too big to be true. But you can imagine little Mikael swearing black and blue that's exactly what happened.

This element diminishes slightly as he gets older, and the fantastic, almost magical realism of the book settles back into a more measured reality. But was it is replaced by is a humour and a heartbreaking assessment of the reality of the town that only teenagers can really give.

That's the thing that sucks you in really. It's the brutal honesty of this book. Whether it's him telling you a story at 5 or 15 or 25. You believe his complete sincerity. In a world that undervalues honestly so much, this is a very rare gift.