Posts by imabookwormy

Jun 18

Non 1001 Book Review: After Dark Haruki Murakami

After Dark by Haruki Murakami
Published in: 2004
Translated from Japanese by Jay Rubin
Reviewed by: Book Worm
Rating: 4 stars
Find it here: After Dark

Synopsis: (from the Back Cover): Eyes mark the shape of the city

The midnight hour approaches in an almost-empty diner. Mari sips her coffee and reads a book, but soon her solitude is disturbed: a girl has been beaten up at the Alphaville hotel, and needs Mari’s help.

Meanwhile Mari’s beautiful sister Eri lies in a deep, heavy sleep that is ‘too perfect, too pure’ to be normal; it has lasted for two months. But tonight as the digital clock displays 00:00, a hint of life flickers across the television screen, even though it’s plug has been pulled out.

Strange nocturnal happenings, or a trick of the night?

Review: If you read our featured author post you will know that I love Murakami’s writing and this book was no exception. From the moment I read the back cover, I had a happy warm feeling in my tummy. I knew this was going to be a good read. The front cover just calls out to you “read me, read me.” The only problem with this book is that it is short. I could have stayed wandering around Tokyo at night much longer than the time Murakami allowed me.

From the opening lines of the book we, the readers, are told that we are voyeurs. We can watch what happens in the city. We can zoom in on bits that interest us, but we cannot get involved. We cannot influence anything. We cannot be heard and we are entirely neutral.

The book is set on a midwinter’s night between the hours of 11:56pm and 6:52am in Tokyo. It revolves around 3 central characters: the beautiful Eri who has decided to sleep and not wake up; her intelligent sister Mari who cannot sleep; and Takahashi a young musician who provides a link between the 2 sisters.

While Eri sleeps her beautiful sleep, Mari stays awake in the city where she encounters Takahashi in a Denny’s restaurant. Their meeting leads her to be pulled into the life of the “Night People.” Night people are those who are more at home after the sun has gone down — the insomniacs, prostitutes, and others who prefer the night.

While there is some action in this book, it’s more about feelings and perceptions than about plot development. There is violence and vengeance, and in true Murakami style there are mystical and magical moments and cats!! How do you know you are reading a Murakami? Because there are always cats.

This is a stylized book and I can easily see it being made into a noir film as the story really lends itself to the visual.

For those who like a proper ending with all the loose ends tied up, this is not the book for you (nor is any other Murakami book). There are several mysterious events that are not explained and are just left dangling when the sun rises. Murakami has created a place that exists only after dark and so until the next time the sun sets the mysteries will have to stay mysteries.

Want to try if for yourself? You can find it here: After Dark

We want to hear from you. Have you read this book? What did you think? Do you like Murakami’s books?

Jun 17

1001 Book Review: Transit Anna Seghers

Transit by Anna Seghers
Published in: 1944
Reviewed by Jen & Book Worm
Find it here:Transit (New York Review Books Classics)

Synopsis (from Amazon): Anna Seghers’s Transit is an existential, political, literary thriller that explores the agonies of boredom, the vitality of storytelling, and the plight of the exile with extraordinary compassion and insight.
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Jun 5

1001 Book Review: Shroud John Banville

Shroud by John Banville
Published in: 2002
Awards: Man Booker Prize Nominee for Longlist (2002)
Reviewed by: Book Worm and Jen
Find it here:Shroud

Synopsis (from Amazon): One part Nietzsche, one part Humbert Humbert, and a soupcon of Milton’s Lucifer, Axel Vander, the dizzyingly unreliable narrator of John Banville’s masterful new novel, is very old, recently widowed, and the bearer of a fearsome reputation as a literary dandy and bully. A product of the Old World, he is also an escapee from its conflagrations, with the wounds to prove it. And everything about him is a lie.

Now those lies have been unraveled by a mysterious young woman whom Vander calls “Miss Nemesis.” They are to meet in Turin, a city best known for its enigmatic shroud. Is her purpose to destroy Vander or to save him—or simply to show him what lies beneath the shroud in which he has wrapped his life? A splendidly moving exploration of identity, duplicity, and desire, Shroud is Banville’s most rapturous performance to date.

May 24

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Non 1001 Book Review: The Seducer Jan Kjaerstad

The Seducer Jan Kjaerstad
Published: 1993
606 pages
Original Language: Norwegian
Reviewed by: Book Worm
Rating: ★★★★★ ♥
Find it here: The Seducer: A Novel

Synopsis (from Amazon): Interludes of memory and fancy are mixed with a murder investigation in this panoramic vision of contemporary Norway. Jonas Wergeland, a successful TV producer and well-recognized ladies man, returns home to find his wife murdered and his life suddenly splayed open for all to see. As Jonas becomes a detective into his wife’s death, the reader also begins to investigate Jonas himself, and the road his life has taken to reach this point, asking How do the pieces of a life fit together? Do they fit together at all? The life Jonas has built begins to peel away like the layers of an onion, slowly growing smaller. His quest for the killer becomes a quest into himself, his past, and everything that has made him the man he seems to be. This bestselling Norwegian novel transports and transfixes readers who come along for the ride. Read more

May 13

1001 Book Review: The Kindly Ones Jonathan Littell

The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Little
Published in: 2006
Original Language: French
Awards: Prix Goncourt 2006
Reviewed by: Book Worm
Rating:★★★
Find it here: The Kindly Ones

Amazon Synopsis: Dr Max Aue is a family man and owner of a lace factory in post-war France. He is an intellectual steeped in philosophy, literature, and classical music. He is also a former SS intelligence officer and cold-blooded assassin. He was an observer and then a participant in Nazi atrocities on the Eastern Front, he was present at the siege of Stalingrad, at the death camps, and finally caught up in the overthrow of the Nazis and the nightmarish fall of Berlin.

His world was peopled by Eichmann, Himmler, Göring, Speer and, of course, Hitler himself.

Max is looking back at his life with cool-eyed precision; he is speaking out now to set the record straight. Read more

May 6

Non 1001 Book Review: One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night Christopher Brookmyre

One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night by Christopher Brookmyre
Published in: 1999
Page Count: 384
Reviewed by: Book Worm
Rating: 3.5 stars
Find/Buy it here:One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night

Synopsis from Amazon: Like a highball mix of Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen, Christopher Brookmyre hits you hard and fast. Now Brookmyre is back with his most lethal book yet: One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night. Gavin Hutchinson had it all planned out. A unique “floating holiday experience” on a converted North Sea oil rig, a haven for tourists who want a vacation but without the hassle of actually going anywhere. And what better way to test out his venture than to host a fifteenth-year high school reunion, the biggest social event of his life, except no one remembers who Gavin is. That, and his wife has discovered his philandering ways and plans to leave him with a very public announcement in front of his assembled guests. Throw in a band of mercenaries who crash the party even though they aren’t on the guest list, and you have a wicked farce of a thriller from one of the most original voices in mystery fiction.

Review: I chose to read this book because according to this website, it’s one of the top 10 Scottish novels. While it was not a 5 star read, it was definitely entertaining and well worth reading, especially if you have a dark sense of humour.

This is a story about a school reunion on of all places an oil rig that has been converted into a holiday complex (can you imagine being stuck with former school mates in a hotel with no escape?). Unfortunately sinister plans are afoot and it turns out a reunion in “paradise” is anything but predictable.

I really enjoyed this story, the humour is dark and made me chuckle several times, the writing is fast paced and the story line compelling, which made it an easy read.

Despite really enjoying it, I am only giving it 3 stars as I felt there was nothing spectacular about it. An enjoyable and humorous read but not great literature.”

My favourite quotes;

“It’s so exclusive, big man. So’s scrotes like you an’ myself cannae get near the fuckin’ thing. Like wan o’ thae wee islands, whit dae ye cry them? There’s hunners o’ them. The Endives.

“Maldives, ya fuckin’ eejit. Endives are in salad”

“So that would be thousands of islands then?”

“Aye very fuckin’ funny, Eddie”

“George Eliot? That’s the one whose husband jumped oot the windae on their weddin’ night. She must have threatened tae read him her new book”

“nor were the locals going to flog the Jocks much paella until they’d sussed a way to batter and deep-fry the stuff”

Want to try it for yourself? Find it here: One Fine Day in the Middle of the Night

Apr 17

3 Comments

1001 Book Review: The Story of the Eye George Bataille

The Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille
First Published in: 1928
Reviewed by: Book Worm & Jen
Find/Buy it here: Nope, not this time. You REALLY don’t want to read this or if you do, this blog is probably not the best fit for your reading tastes. If you really must, the PDF is available for free online.

Synopsis from Amazon: A masterpiece of transgressive, surrealist erotica, George Bataille’s Story of the Eye was the Fifty Shades of Grey of its era. This Penguin Modern Classics edition is translated by Joachim Neugroschal, and published with essays by Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes.

Bataille’s first novel, published under the pseudonym ‘Lord Auch’, is still his most notorious work. In this explicit pornographic fantasy, the young male narrator and his lovers Simone and Marcelle embark on a sexual quest involving sadism, torture, orgies, madness and defilement, culminating in a final act of transgression. Shocking and sacrilegious, Story of the Eye is the fullest expression of Bataille’s obsession with the closeness of sex, violence and death. Yet it is also hallucinogenic in its power, and is one of the erotic classics of the twentieth century.
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Apr 8

Read Around the World: Botswana

The next stop on our world tour of reading is Botswana. Here are some facts about Botswana (and please feel free to add your own facts in the comments section):
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Apr 6

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1001 Book Review: The Shadow Line Joseph Conrad

The Shadow-Line by Joseph Conrad
First Published in: 1915
Reviewed by: Book Worm
Rating: ★★★
Find/Buy it here (for free):The Shadow Line (Illustrated)

Synopsis from Amazon: Written in 1915, The Shadow-Line is based upon events and experiences from twenty-seven years earlier to which Conrad returned obsessively in his fiction. A young sea captain’s first command brings with it a succession of crises: his sea is becalmed, the crew laid low by fever, and his deranged first mate is convinced that the ship is haunted by the malignant spirit of a previous captain.

This is indeed a work full of ‘sudden passions’, in which Conrad is able to show how the full intensity of existence can be experienced by the man who, in the words of the older Captain Giles, is prepared to ‘stand up to his bad luck, to his mistakes, to his conscience’. A subtle and penetrating analysis of the nature of manhood, The Shadow-Line investigates varieties of masculinity and desire in a subtext that counterpoints the tale’s seemingly conventional surface.

Book Worm’s Review

This is a novella told from the point of view of an older man looking back at a pivotal moment in his left when he crossed the shadow line between youth and adulthood.

The day he decides to quit his position as a first mate on a ship in the Orient and to return to England, he learns he is considered to be the only man able to captain a ship whose Captain recently died. Unable to resist, the young man travels to join his new crew only to discover that things are not what they seem.

His first voyage is marred with set backs: the crew suffer from Malaria, there is no wind to travel, and his first mate appears to be under the delusion that the previous captain had tried to kill them all.

The novel was first published in 1915 as a serial in New York’s Metropolitan Magazine.

Having previously read Heart of Darkness I was expecting this to be a struggle to read. However, it was a solid straightforward narrative with light-hearted moments as well as tension. What really came across was how the unnamed narrator still felt guilty for events he had no control over.

Mar 29

16 Comments

Non 1001 Book Review: Nation Terry Pratchett

Beloved fantasy novelist, Terry Pratchett passed away on March 15th this year and to pay a tribute to his life and his works, we have each decided to read and review one of his works. I’ll start it off with a review of Nation and next week Jen will share her review of The Colour of Magic, the first in the Discworld series. We hope you join us in sharing your thoughts about some of your favorite Pratchett books.

We will be giving away one kindle copy of either The Colour of Magic, Mort, or Guards, Guards — you chose which one you want. Why these books? Although not in order of publication, they represent the first books in three story lines within the Discworld series (Rincewind novels, Death novels, and Watch novels).

How do you win? Simply share your thoughts about Terry Pratchett and his books in the comment section by April 1st and we will randomly select one person to win the copy. If you’ve never read any of his books, you can just comment on why you’d like to read one of his books.
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