Book Reviews – Page 102 – Everything Is Better With Dragons

Review: ‘The Ocean At The End Of The Lane’ by Neil Gaiman

2013

Headline Publishing Group

The unknown narrator, escaping from a family funeral, returns to his childhood home, but not finding what he sought he carries on down the Lane, to the Hempstock Farm, home of his only childhood friend Lettie Hempstock, her mother and grandmother. While there he remembers the bizarre events that happened in the spring just after he turned seven, forty odd years before. Then, he forgets again.

The genius of Neil Gaiman’s storytelling is his ability to weave myth, memory and fantasy into original narratives. His unique take on stories that have been around forever makes them fresh and new, where a less inventive writer would be dull and repetitive.

The Ocean At The End Of The Lane is another fine example of his creativity, and is currently fighting with ‘American Gods’ for first place on my list of favourite Neil Gaiman books (Mr Wednesday and ‘Lo-key’ Lyesmith are such wonderfully devious bastards – I love them), and by the end of the book I was crying. I felt so sorry for the narrator, and Ginnie Hempstock. I have a sneaking suspicion that the Hempstock ladies are based on the weird sisters. Whoever they are based on though, they are archetypal characters – the wise old lady, the motherly farm-wife, the wild country girls – without being caricatures. The narration, with it’s changing perspective, is a seamless reflection on memory; what is real? Which of our childhood memories do we forget and why?

This is a thought-provoking, beautifully written book. At 243 pages it isn’t huge, but I read it in four and a half hours. I couldn’t put it down.

Rose

Review: ‘Darker Minds. An anthology of Dark Fiction’ by various authors

July 2012
Dark Minds Press

I found this collection of short stories in the library; I wish I’d left it there. Not because it’s bad but because the stories are so effectively creepy I’ve given myself a new set of nightmares. Which I don’t need, thanks a lot for asking.

If you like dark fiction and psychological stuff it’s a great collection but I’m a wuss and only managed to read four of the fifteen takes. The artwork throughout is sufficiently weird and is well drawn.

Bye

Rose

Review: ‘A funny thing happened on the way to heaven’ by Corey Taylor

2013
Ebury Press

This second book by Stone Sour and Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor follows on from Seven Deadly Sins in a round about way. He is again pondering the mysteries of life and death while sprinkling the whole with memories. This time it is his experiences with ghosts. Ever since he was young he has had encountered the paranormal and lived in various haunted buildings. People have told him their own ghost stories; they are gathered here with the express intention of starting a conversation.

Corey Taylor is an articulate and intelligent, if uneducated, man and has clearly thought his ideas through. Whether the reader believes the stories he tells or agrees with his hypothesis of ‘intelligent energy’ is up to them. He won’t tell you what to think, only to think.

I’m not sure whether I agree with much that he has written, except that people need to use their intelligence and not let ignorance and dogma control them. He clearly believes and feels strongly about the subject. It shines in his writing. The writing style is conversational, he goes off at a tangent regularly, but that is not necessarily to the detriment of the work.

An enjoyable and interestting look in to the mind of an important member of the Metal music fraternity.

Bye,

Rose

Now my working week is over

I have a pile of books from the library, and as I’m not doing any overtime this coming week I should be able to make some progress through them.

I’ve almost finished Corey Taylor’s new book and then I’ll be working my way through the following:

This is the second book in the ‘Wave Trilogy’; I read and reviewed the first book a couple of months ago and have been waiting patiently for it. In fact I’d forgotten I’d ordered it from the library until they rang me to say it had arrived. I’ve had a lot on, I forget things.

Next up (I’ve already started reading it) we see a fine example of my inner geek escaping.

It’s really interesting; there’s so much I’ve forgotten but as I read things are coming back to me.

This is a collection of short stories called Darker Minds. I’ve read one at random so far; it haunts me. I’m going to try to read more.

New Neil Gaimen book. I may have to buy myself a copy.

And finally (this one actually belongs to me so no time limit in getting it read, it may be a while):

I loved ‘The Long Earth’ when I read it last year and so when I had the opportunity to get both of the books I did (birthday presents!). I might reread ‘The Long Earth’, now I think about it. I like the characters and the concept. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to cross to a world that was completely different, it would certainly give a new meaning to ‘getting away from it all’.

Although I’d probably go and not come back. So long as I had a power supply, internet access, notebooks, pens and a delivery of new books every week or so I’d probably be happy.

Time to settle down with a book, hope everyone has had a good weekend,

Bye for now,

Rose

Review: ‘The woman who died a lot’ by Jasper Fforde

It’s 2004 and Thursday Next is in semi-retirement after a terrible accident which has left her unable to visit the BookWorld and means she has had to give up her Jurisfiction job. Her old mob SO-27 are back in business, but she’s not getting the job of leading them. Instead she becomes Wessex Chief Librarian.

Unfortunately, Swindon is due to be smote by a pillar of holy fire, unless Thursday’s daughter Tuesday can fin a way to get the anti-smiting shield to work. Then of course there is the additional problem that Friday Next is going to kill Tuesday’s boyfriend Gavin.

Jasper Fforde’s seventh Thursday Next novel is as surreal and entertaining as the first, with the additional bonus that it us internally consistent, so it makes marginally more sense, because I’ve been there before. Thursday as got older and wiser, the characters are developed further and the plot is as unique as ever.

Review: ‘Girl least likely to’ by Liz Jones

4th July 2013

Simon & Schuster UK

Liz Jones is Fashion Editor at the Daily Mail and a columnist for the Mail on Sunday, having worked in the media for the last 30+ years.

Born in 1958 the youngest of seven children to an ex-army captain and a housewife, Liz Jones grew up in a variety of places around Essex wearing handmade and hand me down clothes, but dreaming of working for Vogue. She never quite managed it. Anorexic at 11 and still obsessed with food, having it all and losing it all because she never felt good enough, Ms Jones has considered herself a failure from a young age and has striven to be better.

I think I’ve occasionally read her column, for the simple reason that when I’m at my grandparents flat and I haven’t anything with me to read, it’s the only vaguely honest and interesting piece I can find in the paper. This autobiography is the same; the writing is fluid and moving. I read it in a single sitting.

One review described the book as ‘laugh out loud funny’. I disagree; it’s sad, with odd moments that are funny in hindsight, but must have been embarrassing or painful at the time. A vivid example of how a strong work ethic and success can mask low self-esteem, this is a powerful story.

Rose

Review: ‘The Eyre Affair’ by Jasper Fforde

2001

Hodder

This book was Jasper Fforde’s debut novel, and the first to feature Thursday Next as heroine. A surreal adventure set in a 1985 where literary theft has become a terrible problem, the Crimea is still being fought over by England and Russia, Wales is a secretive Socialist Republic, the mega-corporation Goliath bank roll the economy and the biggest controversy is who really wrote the plays of Shakespeare.

Thursday Next is a LiteraTec in Special Operations 27. Based in London, but originally from Swindon, a veteran of the Crimea and desperately seeking a way out of the Literary Detectives and into a more interesting Spec Op department, she takes a temporary assignment to Spec Op 5 and is thrown against an enemy more deadly than Russian Howitzers, Acheron Hades. Hades has stolen the original Martin Chuzzlewit manuscript but nobody can work out how.

Grievously injured in an operation that sees her losing all her colleagues, Thursday opts to take a job with Swindon’s LiteraTec department, on her own advice. Convinced that Hades is still alive despite everyone believing otherwise, Thursday is up against the Goliath Corporation and their representative Jack Schitt, who’s after a marvellous new weapon that will win the war in the Crimea, as well as Hades.

When Thursday’s eccentric but brilliant uncle Mycroft and her aunt Polly go missing, Hades is the first to be suspected. Thursday must rescue her aunt and uncle, defeat Hades, regain the Chuzzlewit and Jane Eyre manuscripts and outwit Jack Schitt. And all before her former-fiancé gets married at 3pm a week Saturday.

I’ve read one of the later Thursday Next books, and it definitely makes slightly more sense now. As much as anything makes sense in Jasper Fforde’s novels at least. This novel was highly praised when it was first published 12 years ago and it still stands as an excellent piece of literature; full of wit, bibliographic in-jokes, with unique characters and an incredibly inventive plot.

Review: ‘From Codpiece to Three Piece: The History of Fashion’

History Today

Kindle Edition

July 2013

UlinkaRublack, Patrick Little, Christina Walkley, Lois Banner, Quentin Bell, Carol Dyhouse, Stella Mary Pearce and Eileen Ribeiro

£2.05 from Amazon.co.uk

This small e-book contains eight articles spanning 60 years of scholarship and publishing. They focus on fashion, not just what clothes were worn when, but attitudes to clothing, and the things they indicate about the wearer, and also how people viewed the clothing worn by their ancestors, and how it was depicted in art.

Ranging from the changing attitudes to the wearing of fur to how fourteenth century artists depicted classical subjects to the question of precisely how dull Cromwell’s clothes were, this is a fascinating collection of articles. There is nothing new here; in fact I recognised three of the articles as I’ve read History Today regularly for the past eight years. The older articles were interesting, though; sixty years is a long time in academia and the attitudes of the writers to their subject’s is as interesting as the subjects themselves.

I’ve never bought one of these collections before (although it would be more precise to say my oldest friend bought me it since I used the gift card she gave me for my birthday – thanks Fi!) but I think it’s well worth the price. They are great resources, containing the best articles History Today has published on a particular subject. I would have liked a new, original article to go with the collection though; I think it would have made a nice touch.

Review: ‘Bright Young Things; Life in the Roaring Twenties.’ By Alison Maloney

2012

Virgin Books

Described in the blurb as a ‘sweeping look at the changing world of the Jazz Age, as life below stairs vanished forever, loose morals ran riot, and new inventions made it seem anything was possible’, this book gives an entertaining glimpse in to the lives of the Bright Young People, the wealthy young Mayfair set who ran riot in London in the Nineteen Twenties. Presented in a gossipy tone, with first-hand accounts from those who were part of the group of friends dubbed the ‘Bright Young People’ by the popular press, and the generation of ‘Bright Young Things’ they led and inspired. The central cast of aristocrats and artists loom large in a playful narrative of all night dancing, freak parties, treasure hunts through London, immodest fashions and heavy drinking. The more staid members of their age group and class, the debs, and the attitudes of their parents to the antics of the hedonistic set are also covered.

The focus is primarily on London; however there is some reference to the United States and Paris. As Jazz was a large part of the lifestyle of the Bright Young Things, this isn’t surprising. The spread of this form of music from the southern United States across the Atlantic to London and the on into Europe is fascinating, although the author doesn’t go in to a great deal of detail.

Also covered in the book are references to changing sexual attitudes, and the growth of consumer ‘labour –saving’ goods as more people had access to electricity and servants became rarer.

While this book is subtitled ‘Life in the Roaring Twenties’ it doesn’t really give much of an insight in to life for those who weren’t wealthy and educated, and living in London. Bare mention is given to the lives and aspirations of working and lower middle class people, who presumably had ambitions and needs as well. It’s very gossipy in nature, relying on published diaries, letters and autobiographies/biographies for much of the detail. The ‘flapper’, her dress, attitudes and occupations are a recurring feature of the book.

I didn’t feel that the author really put meat on the bones of the subject, although the origin of certain terms originating in, or associated with, the decade are explained and there is a decent bibliography at the back. I’d say this was quite a good book for GCSE students wanting a bit more information about the Twenties, and those wanting an overview of the decade. At the very least it’ll get people started and then they can move on to more detailed studies of the decade.

Review: ‘The Devil’s Ribbon’ A Hatton and Roumande Mystery by D.E. Meredith

2011
Allison and Busby

In July 1858 a cholera epidemic once again threatens an overheated London. Professor Hatton of St. Barts Hospital and his chief diener Albert Roumande spend their days cutting up cadavers in an effort to learn as much ad they can about the disease. At the same time they are also working in the new science of forensics and as London’s leading experts are called in to help when an Irish MP is murdered a few days before the anniversary of Drogheda, a green ribbon found in the dead man’s mouth.

A series of other murders follow. The victims all seemed to have known each other in Donegal, during the Potato Famine. What happened there and who would want revenge? As Hatton, and Inspector Grey of Scotland Yard, about whom Hatton has grave doubts, investigate they are interrupted by an explosion in a packed shopping arcade. The Inspector, and the widow of the first victim are seriously injured. Hatton has more questions than answers. Is the explosion connected to the murders or is one a cover tor the other? What has Donegal to do with it? Why does all the opium and fly papers keep disappearing? And is the mortuary budget really getting cut?

Using their new method of fingerprinting the Professor and his diener discover the murderers. Using torture Inspector Grey finds the bombers.

I do like a good murder mystery, and this is an excellent example. The characters are engaging even if the set up hasn’t been original since Conan Doyle wrote his Sherlock Holmes stories (skilled amateur investigators/useless professional policeman). The plot is strong, and conclusion unexpected and imaginative. Full of period detail which immerses the reader in the scenario without being overwhelming or too descriptive, and which adds to the plot. The premise, of an early forensic pathologist working in a world that doesn’t understand what he does, is interesting.

This is the second book in the series. I haven’t read the first but I probably will try to at done point. It isn’t necessary though as it is perfectly possible to read the novel as a stand alone story. Previous cases are hinted at throughout, drunken/drugged confessions about their pasts develop the characters, although some of the repeat characters need fleshing out a bit. How did they all end up in London? What secrets, because they all have secrets, do they hide, and why? Presumably we will find out in future novels although somethings can be guessed at.

I really did like this book; the audio book is available soon. It is a beautifully bound and presented article.

I might be easily pleased but I like a well presented hardback book.

I noticed a small number of typos but nothing that took away from the story significantly.

Definitely a must read if you like historical mysteries.

****

Rose