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2000 - 2007 Uncategorized

For One More Day – Mitch Albom

For One More Day is the story of a man who gets the chance to spend one more day with his mother, who died 8 years earlier.

I was really undecided about how to rate this book. On the one hand it was a quick, easy read. I finished it in more or less one sitting, so it must have been a page turner.

On the other hand I knew exactly what was going to happen from the beginning, and the book felt more like one long lecture on appreciating your mother, than a novel. It was just too sentimental, with no depth or real plot.

Everyone else seems to love this book, so I won’t tell you not to give it a go. It’s short enough for you to give it a try and make up your own mind. I won’t be rushing out to read any of his other books though.

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Recommended books Richard and Judy Book Club

Random Acts of Heroic Love – Danny Scheinmann

Books before blogging review.

It has been almost a year since I finished reading this amazing book, and I can still vividly remember the power of emotion it contained.

From the very first page I was totally hooked. It tells two, interweaved tales . The first is set in 1992, and follows Leo Deakin, who wakes up in a South American hospital to discover that his girlfriend has died in the bus crash he survived. As he begins to remember what happened, he is plagued by the guilt that he was in some way to blame for her death.

The second story is set in 1917, and follows Mortis Daniecki, as he escapes from a POW camp and makes an epic journey across Europe, to return to the love of his life.

The story of Leo, is semi auto-biographical, as the author, Danny Scheinmann, also lost his girlfriend at a young age. Mortis’s story is based on the real events of Danny Scheinmann’s Grandfather’s life, as explained in an epilogue to the book. I think that the fact the author has experienced a lot of the events described in the book really shows. The raw emotion is hard to ignore; it is the small, well observed details that make it all so realistic. I don’t think I have ever read a book which explores the issues of grief and love so well.

I highly recommend this book, it is one of my favourite books of 2008, and will probably be in my all time top ten. It is released in the US and Canada in 2009, so keep an eye out for it!

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Other Uncategorized

Books Before Blogging

I only started blogging a few months ago, so I am aware that there are a very large number of books that I have read, but not yet reviewed. Over the coming months I am going to write some reviews of books I have previously read, concentrating on those which I have particularly enjoyed, or ones which form part of a challenge (eg. The Complete Booker Challenge)

Writing a review a while after I have finished the book will also give me the opportunity to see if the book has managed to stay in my memory (the sign of a great book!) or whether I have forgotten all about it! It will be interesting to see how it goes!

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Other

The Dewey Challenge

“The Dewey Challenge” was set up in honor of Dewey from The Hidden Side of a Leaf who recently passed away. 

There are two ways to join this challenge:

1. Pick one book from each of the 6 years that Dewey has archives of. You can access her archives by clicking on the archive link in the sidebar of her website. For instance, you would read one book that she reviewed in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 for a total of six books.

2. The other option is to read 5 books that Dewey reviewed. These can be from any year and I’m guessing that each of us has at least 5 books on our TBR list because of Dewey!

I’m going to read 6 books that she reviewed. I seem to have a similar reading taste to her, so I’m sure that whatever I pick from her blog will be a good read.

This is a wonderful tribute to an amazing member of the blogging community, and will mean her blog continues to bring pleasure to us in 2009.

I haven’t decided all the books I’m going to read yet, but I’ll update the list here when I do.

2003 Secret History – Donna Tartt

2004 The Inner Circle – TC Boyle

2005 Property – Valerie Martin

2006 Outlander – Diana Gabaldon

2007 Digging to America – Anne Tyler completed 5th January 2009

2008 Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I’ve also read Fun Home – Alison Bechdel completed 7th February 2009

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Booker Prize

Headlong by Michael Frayn

Headlong by Michael Frayn was shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1999.

Headlong is the story an art historian who spots a lost painting by Breugal in his neighbour’s house. He sets out to obtain the painting by any means possible, in order to bring himself fame and fortune. For the best paintings, visit Fibre Design website.

As I know next to nothing about art, I was worried that I would find this book difficult to read, but the technical terms are explained simply and the descriptions of the paintings are so wonderful that I almost felt I knew what they looked like.

The plot is fairly fast paced, and I love the many moral dilemmas concerning the value of love, friendship, trust and wealth. I got slightly bored by the sections on the history of Breugal, but the rest of the book made up for these, and I loved the ending.

As so much of the plots hinges on parts of Breugal’s paintings I feel that it would have been beneficial to have some pictures of the paintings in the book. I ended up looking for them on the internet, and as a result of seeing the pictures I felt I had a much better understanding of what was going on.

It’s a great book, with well researched content and realistic characters. I recommend it, as long as you can put up with the history!

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Booker Prize

G by John Berger

‘G’ won the Booker prize in 1972. It is about the life of a privileged family, living in Italy, at the turn of the century.

The majority of the book was the fairly boring story of ‘G’. I felt very little empathy for his character, and got more disinterested in his life as the book went on.

Very early into the book a few graphic sex scenes are thrown in. I say thrown, as there seems to be no real reason for their presence. They do not add anything to the story line, and seem only to be there to shock the reader. I was not shocked, but this along with the childish drawing of penises make parts of this book feel as though they are written by a teenage boy.

There are a few more sex scenes later on in the book, which at least seem to be part of the story, but again brought the book down to a much lower level. It then deteriorated into inane ramblings by the author, about the quality of sexual experiences.

There were a few interesting historical pieces in the book, but it wasn’t worth having to read the rest of the book, just for these few, short paragraphs.

Overall, the book felt very disjointed. The characters were shallow, and I would only recommend this book to teenage boys in need of a bit of sexual education!

1 star out of 5.