The suspense is terrible. I hope it lasts. ~Willy Wonka [easyazon_link identifier=”B00E84D060″ locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]1Q84[/easyazon_link] is a deep novel. It has many layers. We start off following two main characters. We hear about their work, their passions, their hopes. One is a writer and there is a good deal of talk about the publishing industry. The other is an assassin, and there is a good deal of talk about who she kills and why she kills them. For such a long book, it clocks in at about a 1,000 pages, we really have only a handful of characters. At one point…
Category: book review
The Ghost in My Brain
Ain’t that a kick in the head? [easyazon_link identifier=”0525426566″ locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]The Ghost in My Brain[/easyazon_link] starts off with Dr Clark Elliott coming close to freezing to death. This happens as he makes the two hour trek from his office to his car in the college parking lot. He goes into mind numbing detail about why this trip is taking him two hours, as opposed to the ten minutes it would take anyone else. He talks about his decision paralysis. About how he knows that he should just lay down and die-only he can’t remember how to lay down. He eventually makes…
Tune In: The Beatles: All These Years
The Beatles-The Early Years. [easyazon_link identifier=”1408704781″ locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Tune In: The Beatles: All These Years[/easyazon_link] follows in the footsteps of James A. Michener, we start the story of the Beatles in the 1840s or so. I’ve never been that into the whole Roots thing and have little interest in what John, Paul, George, and Ringo’s great grandparents were up to. I do like the idea that the Beatles are towering historic figures worthy of such treatment, but on the other hand, it seems a bit silly. As the Beatles themselves liked to say, they were just a band that got very…
Between The World and Me
Morpheus: The body cannot live without the mind. [easyazon_link identifier=”0812993543″ locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Ta-Nehisi Coates[/easyazon_link] lays his book out as a letter to his son. He talks about race, life, death, and how the world he grew up in and the world where his son now lives are slightly different places. But still very dangerous places. If you happen to have dark skin in a world run by people who think they are white. He views the entirety of human history through the viewpoint of a black man who may have his body taken from him at any moment for no reason.…
Dead Wake by Erik Larson
The Last Crossing of the Lusitania Erik Larson writes dense books filled with minutia that somehow always feel poignant and relevant. This time the story is about World War I u-boats and the end of the great age of Ocean Luxury Liners. The Lusitania was a large ship and had close to two thousand souls on board. Erik does a great job of bringing many of those two thousand people to light. Celebrities of the day and people working their way across alike. Everyone has a story. Of course, the rich and famous get a bit more attention as a…
Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances
A Trigger Warning is something designed to keep people from being upset by what they read or see. I agree with Neil when he says if you’re warned about something, you pretty much take the fun out it. I’m not sure this collection of stories and poems is seriously disturbing, but they are fun. Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite writers and I think he’s a great reader of his own audio books. A few of the stories are very short and the last story is closer to a novella than a short story. They were all very good,…
The Last Train to Zona Verde
John McDonough, the narrator here, sounds like a man standing on a bridge, killing the last couple of hours before he jumps to his death. His deadpan delivery of Paul Theroux’s Last Train to Zona Verde seems a little morose. But then, there is little enough here to be happy about in this tale of overpopulation and massive poverty in Africa. Like most places on earth, people in Africa would be a bit better off if they had been left alone by Europeans. But just as Native Americans can’t go back to roaming the plains hunting buffalo, Africans can’t return…
Caffeinated
A few years back I went on The UltraMind Solution Diet. Among the things forbidden on this diet, was caffeine. I went six weeks without drinking coffee, sodas, or anything else that had caffeine added to it. After the diet was over, I was on a long drive and bought a Red Bull. Wow. You really can’t appreciate what this stuff does to you until you stop using it for a couple of months. Caffeinated tells the story of caffeine, one of the three most abused drugs in America, the other two are nicotine and alcohol. The story starts with…
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
I’ve always been a fan of time loop stories. The first such tale I remember reading was a brilliant little short story called 12:01. Then came [easyazon_link identifier=”B00170I7GG” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Groundhog Day[/easyazon_link] and a number of very good episodes of [easyazon_link identifier=”B002PQ7JQK” locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]Star Trek[/easyazon_link]. All of these time loop stories worked on a fairly short interval, from an hour to a few days. [easyazon_link identifier=”0316399620″ locale=”US” tag=”londonthoug-20″]The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August[/easyazon_link] takes the time loop to a new length, the length of a man’s life. At first Harry is shocked to find himself in an infant body again.…
Jason-Stop The Presses Anita Blake Likes Rough Sex
I can see Laurell K Hamilton sitting at her desk. She arches her back and cracks her knuckles like Lurch getting ready to play the harpsicord. She smiles as she thinks to herself, what could I do that would be more boring than watching Anita Blake have sex for the umptempth time? Aha! Inspiration strikes. I could have Anita talk about having sex! The Anita Blake books used to be nice and predictable. She would go to work and raise a zombie or two. Word would come down about a Monster on the loose. She would track the Monster down…