loulamac’s #CBRV review #81: Life & Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee

This is a strange, disquieting, upsetting book. It is dream-like and confusing, while being very well-written. Having said that, I didn’t enjoy it. I don’t see how you can ‘enjoy’ reading a book about a brutal world intruding into the existence of a fragile idiot savant. Terrible things happen.

Michael K is a simple man, in every sense of the word. Living in a South Africa riven by civil war, Michael’s in his thirties, and his hare-lip and learning disabilities mean that his existence is limited to his work as a municipal gardener in Cape Town and taking care of his invalid mother. Illness has meant that she can no longer work as a domestic for a rich family who live in a luxury apartment overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, and she wants nothing more than to die on the farm where she was born. So with nothing more than a cart Michael has made, very little money and no official papers, the pair set out on their journey. It is winter, and after a short time Anna is in hospital, where she dies, leaving Michael alone. Before long, Michael is picked up by the authorities, and finds himself in a work camp. What follows is a surreal chain of events that sees him escape, nearly starve to death in the mountains, cultivate pumpkins on an abandoned farm, be arrested again and kept in the prison hospital before escaping once more to return to the coast.

The sense of the chasm between the haves and have-nots is intense in this novel. Anna K lives in a small room under the stairs in the apartment block, a room intended for the air conditioning equipment. The book also seethes with injustice, whether it’s the unfairness of Anna K’s life, her ignominious death, the exploitation of refugees in the work camp, or Michael’s incarceration. What’s interesting is that despite the books subject matter, it somehow doesn’t come across as political. Michael isn’t accepting of his fate, but in his repeated escapes from imprisonment and refusal to eat he isn’t making a statement, he’s just doing what feels right for him.

loulamac’s #CBRV review #80: Call for the Dead by John Le Carré

This is an interesting, charming little book. While no classic, it is noteworthy as it is the first outing of David Cornwell as John Le Carré and provides the introduction of George Smiley.

The plot hinges upon a murder mystery, is set against the backdrop of the cold war and features characters we’ll get to know better in the Karla Trilogy. Unlike the later Smiley novels however Call for the Dead is more focused on the solving of a crime than it is international espionage, and reveals much more about Smiley’s emotional life. Fascinatingly this includes his courtship of, marriage to and first estrangement from ‘the demon Ann’, a character who is so absent but so crucial to Smiley’s battle with Karla.

The crime in question is the apparent suicide of a civil servant from the Foreign Office, who kills himself in his Surrey home a matter of hours after meeting with Smiley. Smarting as his boss points the finger, Smiley’s spidey-sense is set a-tingling when his initial interview with the widow throws up more questions than it answers. Working with a policeman who is on the eve of retirement, and the reliably glib Peter Guillam, Smiley  digs deeper and uncovers a conspiracy that goes back to his years as a recruiter in pre-war Germany.

As I said, this is no classic. The writing and plot do show glimmers of the glory that was to come in Smiley’s People (read my review of that here), but the chapter headings, massive chunks of dialogue, and explanatory epistle from Smiley at the end are pretty clunky. It is worth a read though, if only to satisfy any curiosity you may have about Smiley himself.

loulamac’s #CBV review #79: 9 Things Successful People Do Differently by Heidi Grant Halvorson

I bought this for my husband at JFK, as he’s a bit prone to sofa-attachment and procrastination. We were on our way home from a trip that saw me run the Chicago marathon, so I was feeling smug and ‘successful’. One of the eponymous nine things, however, is not buying this book for other people to try to galvanise them into action. That lesson was worth the purchase price alone.

This is a cosy little self-help read that sits snugly in your hand. Which means you can hide the title if you’re on public transport, something I felt the need to do having drawn a few strange looks (us Brits just don’t read books like this). The nine things in question are, as is often the case in books like this, pretty obvious and based on common sense, but as is also often the case do bear writing down and exemplifying.

My personal favourites were numbers one (get specific) and five (focus on getting better rather than being good), as both spoke to my long distance running goals. The rest (which include ‘have grit’ and ‘don’t tempt fate’) are pretty sensible too, and all challenge the notion that successful people have ‘genius’ or ‘talent’ that mere mortals don’t have. According to this helpful little book, being successful is ‘about making smart choices, using the right strategies, and taking action’. You can’t argue with that can you?

In case you’re wondering, my husband’s still sitting on the sofa.

Sophia’s #CBR5 Review #67: I Kissed an Earl by Julie Anne Long

After reviewing, The Runaway Duke by Julie Anne Long, Mrs. Julien recommended that I move on to Long’s Pennyroyal Green Series. Dutifully following her expert opinion, I picked up I Kissed an Earl (2010)–one of the middle books of the series–I think. I chose this one primarily because it was immediately available on Kindle from my library.

Violet Redmond is beautiful, smart, spoiled, and bored. She is used to attention and getting whatever she wants. She is also very loyal and loving to her family. So when she discovers that her missing brother might actually be rampaging the seas as the notorious pirate Le Chat, she springs into action to find him and protect him.

Violet’s plan involves sneaking onto the ship of the man ordered by the king to capture Le Chat–the recently appointed Earl of Ardmay. With naivety and optimism, Violet believes she can find her brother and figure out what’s going on before the Earl–thereby saving her brother from a hangman’s noose. Although I found this rather unbelievable, it did get Violet and the Earl on the same ship with cross purposes, guaranteeing some strife and betrayal.

I had mixed feelings about this book, so it might be easiest if I split it up into likes and dislikes.

Read the details here.

Arya of Winterfell’s #CBRV Review #26: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Perhaps this is saving the best for last.  Certainly my biggest feat in reading this year, I started Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina in the summertime and didn’t finish until December this year.  Again, it’s a SOLID three stars.  Nearly a four.  There’s some good stuff in this tome and it was the pacing of the story (if you come across an abridged version, I figure it might make good sense) and the opportunity to read so many other novels with, shall we say, more modern pacing simultaneously that slowed me down with my first foray into Russian literature.  For me, I did not enjoy tagging along fly-on-the-wall style to all the meetings with Oblonsky and Karenin.  I did enjoy the exploration of marriage and the three case studies offered in Anna & Karenin, Dolly& Stiva, and Kitty & Levin.  I compared this element of Anna to similar explorations of marriage in Austen, but enjoyed the darker elements Tolstoy exposes moreso.

A couple of fave quotes from Anna are here: http://acbrv.wordpress.com/2013/12/27/the-long-haul/

Arya of Winterfell’s #CBRV Review #25: The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

I enjoyed The Ocean at the End of the Lane.  I would recommend it.  It’s a solid three star rating.  And yet… I was hoping for more from Neil Gaiman…

Read my short review of this short novel here: http://acbrv.wordpress.com/2013/12/27/let-down-by-a-master-of-the-mysteriously-macabre/

Arya of Winterfell’s #CBRV Review #23: Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

I ordered a book club set of Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks from the library and while the rest of the group was deterred by the surprise audio book format (CDs) and ultimately selected In the Garden of Beasts in its traditional book-made-from-paper format, I uploaded Year of Wonders to my phone and I was glad to have hands-free access to this historical fiction title during a month that involved a great deal of travel on foot and on crowded public transit.

While easeful to not have to dig for a book from my bag or bump elbows with strangers to turn pages, the audio book certainly has its other discomforts.  For one, the book is about life in England during the Reformation so life is tough and characters die left, right, and centre.  (This isn’t a spoiler, the CD jacket cover outlines that this is Brooks’ exploration of a particular town’s experience and exposure to the Plague.)  I wasn’t very attached to the characters and I often felt like I wasn’t able to honour them as “real” when one would fall gravely sick and just as I received that news from Geraldine (the author narrates Year of Wonders herself), in my reality I would be returning a smile to a passerby on the street or making faces to a baby across the aisle on the bus.  The most awkward of these situations being during the (infrequent) sex scenes where I’d march past folks quickly on the street, rudely not looking up from the street, not wanting to make eye contact with someone as I would be sure to blush.  (In my opinion, the sex scenes were too silly to cause a blush were I to have just read the text version.)

Read more here: http://acbrv.wordpress.com/2013/12/27/year-of-firsts/

Arya of Winterfell’s #CBRV Review #22: Two Is Enough by Laura S. Scott

I accessed Laura S. Scott’s best-selling Two Is Enough: A Couple’s Guide to Living Childless by Choice via the library as an e-book and read it through my web-browser.  While this method of consuming a book worked well for me for this title, I doubt I’ll embark on reading like this again.  Well, certainly not for fiction.  Clicking through the stats and the case studies within Two is Enough made it seem more like research and this supported my ability to remain emotionally removed from my explorations into this topic.  I imagine that if I’d been curled up on the sofa reading the case studies in a regular book format the impression that I was reading a Chicken Soup for the Soul: For Couples Exploring the ‘Kids Question’ and I probably would have bawled.  Dry-eyed post-reading I was appreciative at least for the reassurance that is present throughout this book that there are growing numbers of childless by choice couples as well as growing acceptance and understanding of people who say two is enough.

Arya of Winterfell’s #CBRV Review #21: Why Have Kids? by Jessica Valenti

Why Have Kids? by Jessica Valenti is an easy-to-read mission to debunk the idea that children = happiness.  As a non-parent this is something I’m interested in exploring – personally and socially.  The themes Valenti (a parent) takes on are similar to Rufus Griscom and Alisa Volkman in their TED talk, “Let’s Talk Parenting Taboos: http://ow.ly/s5cgC

Read the rest of my review here: http://acbrv.wordpress.com/2013/12/27/heads-tails-considering-the-other-side-of-the-coin/

reginadelmar’s #CBR5 reviews #49-51 The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins

I haven’t posted multiple reviews in one post before today.  One could argue that the Trilogy is really one long book, but hey with five days left in 2013 and one more book to go, I’m erring on the side of hurry up and finish. Write the three reviews together and dive into that last book!

The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games works by itself or as the beginning of the trilogy because it comes to a relatively satisfying conclusion. The book introduces Panem, a country that exists in the ruins of what was once the United States. The Capitol tightly controls 12 districts and demands retribution from each district for a rebellion it crushed 75 years ago. The retribution is the Hunger Games in which each district must send two children (male and female) over the age of 12 to compete to the death until one victor remains. The Games are televised and are literally “must see TV,” citizens are required to watch the fate of the children.

The story is told in the first person by Katniss Everdeen, a 16 year old from District 12, the mining district. She lost her father 5 years ago which caused her mother to suffer from severe depression. Katniss was left to fend for her younger sister, her mother and herself. Katniss is angry with her mother, she’s become a hunter and a loner except for her friend Gale.