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The Book Review Topic

Sam

Sam

TS Member
Book worms, gather!

*hands reader a cup of tea*

Would you like a seat? Welcome to the warm and cosy virtual library of TST.

Why not tell us about the last book you read and what you thought of it? Also, while you're at it, what's your favourite book? I'll start.

line_of_beauty.jpg


The last book I read was The Line Of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst.

Although, like all of Hollinghurst's previous novels, it is a book predominantly about gay life and gay themes, it feels more accessible to a straight audience than its spiritual successor, The Swimming Pool Library. Instead of being a gay book for gay people, it's a gay book for everyone. Set in the 1980s, it examines extreme wealth, AIDS, high art, cocaine, romance, casual sex, infidelity, hypocrisy, gay life and Margaret Thatcher. I found it really a very beautiful book, with the main character Nick Guest constantly describing beautiful objects and beautiful people in a way that becomes quite intoxicating, and fills you with a sudden desire to become an high cultured aesthete. Sometimes Nick's experiences fill you with romance, sometimes with anger, sometimes with sadness and despair as you see the world around him gradually fall apart.

I quite liked, as with The Swimming Pool Library, the jarring feeling of Hollinghurst's ability to suddenly switch from, say, describing MPs and Lords dining in a French château with the finest wine, to anonymous gay sex in a public toilet a few pages later. I think an interesting theme of the book is rich people experimenting with low-life culture, and working class life, and how romance, infatuation and unrequited love can destroy class structures. His writing style is wonderful, never awkward or jarring, and his dialogue seems completely natural, even without being familiar with the airs and graces of the super-rich. The characters feel more fleshed-out than his previous work, particularly Tory MP Gerald and his daughter Cat. I would recommend it to anyone, gay or straight, as the book seems to transcend single sexuality appeal and tells us, in quite a gentle way, some really worrying things about our own humanity and compassion for those we see us worse off than us, either financially, culturally or medically.

I guess my favourite book would have to be No Logo by Naomi Klein, and if I had to pick fiction (I tend to prefer non-fiction political books) it'd be Animal Farm or We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver.
 
One of my favourite books is The Green Mile by Stephen King. Admittedly, I saw the film first, and was slightly surprised to find out that it was based on a novel (well, a series of six novels, which are now published as one book). So, naturally, I went and bought it, and read it. I've read it several times, and I love it. It never fails to amaze me what prison guards on Death Row potentially could have gone through and experienced. There were, understandably, some bits from the book which were left out, as they wouldn't have made sense in the film, but a couple of things that I felt should have been included in the film were the final bit in the book where Janice got killed in a bus crash, and also the role of the cruel nursing home worker (Brad), as it could have added more to the film. But I'm digressing a bit here.

The book, as stated, is separated into six smaller books, thereby making it easier to read if you find it too emotionally upsetting in parts, and the ends of some of the smaller books are cliffhangers, thereby making the reader want to know what happens next. (When it was released as six separate novels, this would have been a key marketing strategy.) It's told from the first-person perspective of Paul Edgecomb, the head guard on E Block (Death Row), with the story being told through writings that he gives to his closest friend in the home, Elaine Connelly. So many scenes are described so wonderfully by King, and I honestly did feel that at times, I was transported to Cold Mountain State Penitentiary in Louisiana in the 1930s during the Great Depression. The scene which involves Eduard Delacroix's botched execution is tough to read, I'll admit that, but it's necessary to understand what can go wrong if procedures aren't followed in anything (although executing somebody is a very serious thing).

If you've seen the film, then I recommend that you read the book as well. If you haven't seen the film or read the book, then I advise that you do so, possibly reading the book first, but it's your preference.

Another few favourites of mine are Lord of the Flies, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, the first being written by William Golding (a Cornish author, with his book being the one we studied for our GCSE English Literature exam), the second by Mark Haddon (a book which I think should be made into a film, provided that it is given some very sensitive treatment, as it deals with special educational needs), and the latter two by George Orwell. Then there's the Noughts and Crosses series by Malorie Blackman, which I'm slowly working my way through as a part of a rather interesting project (but more on that shall be revealed in due course). I was lucky enough to go to Cardiff back in 2008 and see the RSC's stage adaptation of the first book in the series (titled 'Noughts and Crosses', funnily enough :p), and was amazed. Seeing that was the inspiration behind this project of mine which has been brewing for over four years.

I'll post a proper review of each of the four books eventually. :)
 
A few books I've recently read. :)

High Fidelity by Nick Hornby.

Quite an old book, but regarded as a really accessible modern classic. The only other of his that I've read was A Long Way Down, which I enjoyed, so thought I should start exploring his back catalogue a bit. This one is about a man (Rob) who owns a record shop having a mid-life crisis, and his inability to commit in relationships. It sounds like quite fluffy stuff, but it's quite complex, not offering any easy answers. I kinda like how it isn't all tied together neatly at the end - Rob seems as anxious, neurotic and tormented by love as he does at the beginning. He does start to grate a little bit, his indecisiveness particularly, but the geeky record shop stuff in the background helps propel it along at a good speed. Well written, quiet, but occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. Quite a sleepy, low-key book, but a good read (particularly if you're a bloke obsessed with a geeky passion, as most of us on here are).

Café Europa: Life After Communism by Slavenka Drakulić

I'm becoming more and more interested in Eastern Europe under communism, and trying to find an informative but accessible book about it. I think my quest will have to go on. This book is presented as a series of short essays on communism and post-communism in the east by a Croatian writer. However, the short format means she never really creates an over-arching theme to link her writing together, and it mostly comes across as a series of minor gripes about quite trivial aspects of Eastern European economics. Some passages are quite illuminating, but some (such as the passage on the 'execution of the trees' in Zagreb) are let down by clumsy writing.

A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood

Widely hailed as a classic of gay literature, this short novel had a lot to live up to. Fortunately, it vastly overreached my expectations. I was expecting (as it was written in the 60s) quite a low-key book, with homosexuality only as a subtle background theme. However, the book pulls no punches in brutally depicting the life of a depressed gay man (George) who has recently lost his soulmate and partner Jim. The grief and despair seep through the pages, as George's world is turned upside down. You can suddenly empathise with his irrationality: his mad, insane, nonsensical thoughts. This is a portrait of a man who has reached an absolute low, and lost all he ever wanted in life. But in a way it's beautiful. And oddly uplifting. I think it's one of those 'you wouldn't understand unless you read it' things.
 
Nineteen Eighty Four (George Orwell) -

Wow, I have just finished reading this book. And oh my, it's so compelling, and engaging. It instantly drew me into the world of Big Brother and Thought Control. Being written in 1948, it's a very cleverly written and sort of accurate to modern times, I applaud George Orwell. It has to go right on the top of my list knocking H.G Wells' The War of The Worlds..

10/10
:)
 
The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins

I know many people aren't a fan of it but I love it! I couldn't stop reading and I finished it really quickly. *gets off computer and starts reading the next book in trilogy* :p
 
Everyone's been reading serious books, I've been reading Max Brooks' 'The Zombie Survival Guide'.

It's a very strange book. You start reading it for a laugh, as a joke, but the ore you read, the more paranoid you become, the more you consider making preparations for the apocalypse, just to be safe. This is all down to Brooks' excellent writing. Full of detail, and very well thought out, and delivered in such a serious tone you begin to feel like you're reading a non-fiction book. There's some humour, but mostly it's deadly serious and sees well 'researched', as Simon Peg noted, you begin to wonder whether Brooks knows something we don't.

A very entertaining light read if anyone's looking for a bit of a laugh or needs a good reason to remember to lock the door at night.
 
Calico Joe by John Grisham

A different approach to a good story that mixes fact and fiction about life and baseball , guilt and redemption.

Worth a read 8.5/10

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Two I've just finished:

Them & Us by Will Hutton
A political book, about the benefits to capitalism and all of us of creating a more fair society. Half of it looks at concepts of fairness, what fairness is, and how we can achieve it. The other is his practical and direct advice to the current government about how to get out of the sluggish zone the economy currently is in.

Very good, but a little too technical for me in parts. Especially the detailed explanation of exactly how the recession happened, which mostly went over my head (banks got away with it pretty much because they made the system so complicated that governments couldn't understand what they were doing, nevermind you and me).

I really enjoyed the philosophy and ethics of fairness and equality. The technical advice was interesting to a point, but a bit dry. It seemed like it should have been two books really, one an academic book and the other a popular economics book. Overall, a pretty good read, but the best book on equality for me remains The Spirit Level by Wilkinson and Pickett.

The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury
Quite an old novel this. It's set in one of the new build universities of the 70s and revolves around a radical anarchist professor called Howard Kirk, and his wife (and his affairs). It's both a character study and a satire of the far-left, the hypocrisies of radical politics. In places, it's devilishly funny, such as the pitch-perfect send-up of petty infighting in far-left meetings.

I'm not sure how much you'd get out of it if you've never been involved with the revolutionary left. But if you have, you'll get an enormous amount of entertainment from it. Even though it's a large exaggeration, current and former students will probably recognise the tendency towards militancy that thrives in higher education. It's also very readable and fast-paced.
 
Sam said:
Two I've just finished:

Them & Us by Will Hutton
A political book, about the benefits to capitalism and all of us of creating a more fair society. Half of it looks at concepts of fairness, what fairness is, and how we can achieve it. The other is his practical and direct advice to the current government about how to get out of the sluggish zone the economy currently is in.

Very good, but a little too technical for me in parts. Especially the detailed explanation of exactly how the recession happened, which mostly went over my head (banks got away with it pretty much because they made the system so complicated that governments couldn't understand what they were doing, nevermind you and me).

I really enjoyed the philosophy and ethics of fairness and equality. The technical advice was interesting to a point, but a bit dry. It seemed like it should have been two books really, one an academic book and the other a popular economics book. Overall, a pretty good read, but the best book on equality for me remains The Spirit Level by Wilkinson and Pickett.

The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury
Quite an old novel this. It's set in one of the new build universities of the 70s and revolves around a radical anarchist professor called Howard Kirk, and his wife (and his affairs). It's both a character study and a satire of the far-left, the hypocrisies of radical politics. In places, it's devilishly funny, such as the pitch-perfect send-up of petty infighting in far-left meetings.

I'm not sure how much you'd get out of it if you've never been involved with the revolutionary left. But if you have, you'll get an enormous amount of entertainment from it. Even though it's a large exaggeration, current and former students will probably recognise the tendency towards militancy that thrives in higher education. It's also very readable and fast-paced.
Click to expand...
Just ordered the history man after some great reviews
 
Doorway To Hell?? The Mysteries and Controversies Surrounding the deadly Haunted Castle fire at Six Flags Great Adventure. - Peter James Smith

A facinating and insightful book into the Haunted Castle fire disaster at Six Flags Great Adventure that killed 7 teenagers in 1984. The book dives into the history of the attraction, what happened on that fateful day 28 years ago and the subsequent flawed and possibly covered up investigation into the incident in an attraction that was a death trap waiting to happen.

As with books of this nature you have to belive the author and his sources. The book is well written and researched as it explains inquite alot of detail about the attraction and the events that happened that day. The one problem with the book is due to being self published it doesn't have an editor, due to this the wording can be poor in a few places but this doesn't really effect the flow of the book.

All together an intresting and factual book that seams to know its subject matter.
9/10

NB. The book is not graffic but due to its subject matter the book could be distressing to people of a sensitive nature.
 
I've just finished reading Mark Haddon's new book 'The Red House'. After the death of their mother, Richard and Angela bring their families together for a week in a rented cottage on the Welsh border, paid for by Richard. Richard and Angela haven't had much to do with each other in 20 years, however. It's a very interesting read, and the plot itself is great, but I've got a couple of issues with how the book's laid out. One is that for a book of about 300 or so pages, it only has eight chapters - one for each day (Friday-Friday of the following week) - so if you plan on reading a chapter a day, it'll take you eight days. If you do that, you could be spending quite a bit of time reading each day. Another is that for some reason, Haddon's decided to put all speech in italics as opposed to the more conventional way of using speech marks, which I've never seen before. I felt that this meant I didn't enjoy the book as much as I'd hoped, but it was still a very good read.

EDIT: Another annoying thing about it is that the tense often shifts between past and present, and there are some segments of several short sentences which don't seem to add anything extra to the book at all.
 
Dan Brown: inferno. Typical Dan Brown, Doctor on a quest for a relic yadada yadada Meets sexy lady. Go on quest. get in trouble. Meet bad guy who also knows of relic ect... You know how it goes. 5/10 if you have read Dan before. For a first time reader probably 7/10 as it does wrap you up art points. Now for Bernard Cornwell's 1356?
 
Pigeon English, by Stephen Kelman.

A very intelligent book, it reeks of The Boy in Striped Pyjamas - this time, the protagonist is an immigrant of African origin in modern day London, trapped in the gloom of gang-warfare and tower-block culture.

It's gritty, innocent and has pangs of that charming naivety that makes Harri an enchanting character. We watch him develop in an unforgiving landscape and it really involves you as a reader.

Personally, I would recommend it as it is both light-hearted yet remains a thought-provoking after taste. Really good read. 9/10.
 
The Fault in our stars - John Green
Not my usual type of book, but after raving reviews, I had to buy it. Its about a 16 year old girl suffering with stage 4 Thyroid cancer (to do with lungs) and written in her POV. She's forced to go to a cancer group, and meets a 17 year old boy Augustus, an amputee who suffered with a bone cancer. I know it sounds off putting, but the romance is dealt with in a way that makes it not romantic at the most of times, if you under stand what I'm trying to say! Its not a soppy, "ooh im in love yay." Or "I've got cancer, feel sorry for me", but a fighting book. Its the most amazing, funny, romantic, yet heart breaking book, and would recommend it to everyone. Its got such witty, relatable humour, anddeals with the cancer situation in such a light hearted way. I've got to say, its changed the way I think about things, about life, death, illness and love. I love the book so much, I just want more of it!
 
World War Z

Read his other book, decided to read this before the film of the same name came out.

If you've not seen the film yet, you should probably just read the book instead. Much better in every way. Better story, makes more sense, funny, a sick, twisted parable that's smarter than you'd think. Puts the film to shame.
 
The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
I've been meaning to read this for a while, and finally got around to it thanks to the movie which came out earlier this year (and still haven't seen - oops! :p). I found it to be a good read, and Gatsby to be a truly fascinating character. He's lonely - there's no two ways about it - and he tries to compensate for that by having people over for dinner and holding lavish parties. He eventually gets back in touch with an old flame - Daisy - and they begin an affair. She's married to Tom, and when he finds out about this affair, he's furious, despite his own infidelity. It's narrated by Nick Carraway, Gatsby's next-door neighbour, who gets caught up in it all. It does have a tragic ending, and Nick moves back to the mid-West from whence he originated. I think I'd like to read it again at some point to get a better understanding of it.

Is It Just Me? - Miranda Hart
This is an interesting book from Miranda, offering guidance on various life issues, although it's clearly written with women in mind. She also offers the advice to her eighteen-year-old self. Still, I quite enjoyed it.

I Know You Got Soul - Jeremy Clarkson
Probably the one book Jeremy's written that I've most looked forward to reading. And I wasn't at all disappointed. In this, he looks at feats of engineering which he believes have some form of soul. Things such as Concorde, the Boeing 747, the Hoover Dam, the Space Shuttle...even the Millennium Falcon! :p Some of the machines ultimately failed, like the SS Great Britain, but Clarkson believes that they possessed that extra something - that soul. It really was one of the best books I've read in a long time - perhaps the best I've read so far this year!

The Great Book of British Useless Information - Hannah Warren
This is my kinda book. It's full of random and interesting facts about the country, ranging from history to food, traditions to celebrities, transport to crime & punishment...it's brilliant. I did know some of the facts given in the book already, but it was still good to read. If you still have a book by the toilet and don't use phones/iPads/other electronic device whilst on the toilet, then this could be a good book for you.
 
I've just finished reading Volume 3 - A Storm of Swords from the A Song of Ice and Fire series and I think it's up there in my top three reads, along with Lord of the Rings and The Shining.

Just amazing, from start to finish.
 
And now finished a Volume 4 - A Feast For Crows but what a disappointment! Slow and clunky; there will be a lot of editing when it's made into the TV series. Such a shame because A Storm of Swords was so so good.
 
Bridget Jones - Mad About the Boy by Helen Fielding

Just finished this and I am now an emotional wreck! There are the usual comedic moments (although not as many as the first two books) but for me the main message of the book was coping with life after losing a loved one. Bridget is now a widow with two young children dealing with moving on and the guilt and panic that comes with it. It was a good read and once I started I couldn't stop but it has depressed me slightly, making me think how I would cope if I lost certain people close to me. Even though it has left me in a state of general weepiness I would recommend this book, although I did feel the ending was slightly rushed and not totally believable. I just hope they don't destroy it by making it into a film, as I really don't think they would be able to do this book justice, seeing as they completely trashed the second book!
 
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