BookieMonster

Book blog, books for sale, book reviews and more!

Archive for category What's BookieMonster Reading?

What’s BookieMonster Reading? Becoming Madame Mao by Anchee Min

Feb 19

Posted by BookieMonster in Book Trade News, BookieMonster News, What's BookieMonster Reading? | No Comments

This is going to be such a short review, for the most part because there’s just not a heck of a lot to say. In fact this is really more of a “just letting you know where I’m at” post rather than a book review, so apologies for that.

You know how some books just give you happy reading, nothing special, nothing to really jump out and grab you, a few irritants, but then you’re finished and there you go?

Yeah, that was this book. A fictional account of the life of the woman who would eventually become Madame Mao, it’s a relatively enjoyable read with only minor quibbles regarding the constant jumping between first and third person. That I could have done without. And to be honest the actual non-fictional accounts of many of the people and the history of China in the 20th century is so, well, mad, that it almost seems a bit superfluous to fictionalise any of it.

All in all, an okay read.

And to make up for this brevity, please to find this damn fine review of Wolf Hall, by Christopher Hitchens in The Atlantic. I love the internets that it allows me to read stuff like this.

Tags: , , ,

What’s BookieMonster reading? When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris

Feb 15

Posted by BookieMonster in Book Reviews, What's BookieMonster Reading? | 2 Comments

Ah, the spectacular run had to end some time. I picked up WYAEIF due to some good recommendations (waaah! Other people liked it, why can’t I?) and previous reading experiences – I’ve enjoyed Me Talk Pretty One Day and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (one thing you can guarantee with a Sedaris book: great titles) as both funny and with that little tinge of sadness that can elevate proceedings and with an all important subtlety.

One of the promo blurbs attached to WYAEIF goes like this: “David Sedaris’s ability to transform the mortification of everyday life into wildly entertaining art,” – to which I have to ask – whose everyday life?? My everyday life does not consist of taking a month out from my life in Paris and the countryside of Normandy to spend in Tokyo so I can give up smoking. And herein lay the problem for me with WYAEIF – while I could laugh at some of it, not one piece engaged me and really provided that “small detail provides larger general life revelation” that I kind of usually like with this sort of playing-the-personal-life-for-laffs collection. And so much of it seemed oblivious to the fact that it was all coming across as terribly self-indulgent.

And not enough of it was as funny as this:

As a young man, I saved up my dishwashing money and bought a seventy-five-dollar copy of Medicolegal Investigations of Death, a sort of bible for forensic pathologists. It shows what you might look like if you bit an extension cord while standing in a shallow pool of water, if you were crushed by a tractor, struck by lightning, strangled with a spiral or nonspiral telephone cord, hit with a claw hammer, burned, shot, drowned, stabbed, or feasted upon by wild or domestic animals. The captions read like really great poem titles, my favorite being “Extensive Mildew on the Face of a Recluse.” I stared at that picture for hours on end, hoping it might inspire me, but I know nothing about poetry, and the best I came up with was pretty lame:

Behold the recluse looking pensive!
Mildew, though, is quite extensive
On his head, both aft and fore.
He maybe shoulda got out more.

In the end this was a bit like being stuck next to someone on a plane who insists on telling you every detail about their life that you don’t find that interesting but still feel vaguely envious of, and only occasionally are amused by. They’re not rude or aggressive or off-putting, but you do feel like the time is dragging and wonder when they’ll shut up.

P.S. If anyone knows where I can get a cheap copy of Medicolegal Investigations of Death you can be my new best friend! :)

Tags: , , ,

What’s BookieMonster reading? Sydney Bridge Upside Down by David Ballantyne

Feb 10

Posted by BookieMonster in Book Reviews, What's BookieMonster Reading? | 8 Comments

Sydney Bridge Upside DownI started my review of The Graveyard Book by saying what an embarrassment of riches of reading I’ve had recently and as I’d just finished this book before I wrote that review you’ll probably get a good idea of why I was feeling that way.

Sydney Bridge Upside Down was first published in 1968 and has just been reprinted and reissued by Text Publishing (literally just – last week!). And how very, very, VERY lucky we are. The book is set in a small New Zealand out of the way bay – Calliope Bay (apparently modelled on Hicks Bay, where the author spent some time as a child – more on that below) and is narrated to us by Harry. Harry’s mum has gone to the city for the summer and his cousin Caroline has come to stay with him, his younger brother and his dad.

Caroline is beautiful – and seemingly entrancing for every man and boy in the bay, including Harry who isn’t overly happy about the attention Caroline attracts from everyone (and I mean everyone), and struggles with his own ambivalent and sometimes powerful feelings towards her. Meanwhile it’s summer holidays and so they’re all at play – in their house, in caves, at waterfalls, on the wharf, at the neighbours (there’s like 6 houses of people), in gossip, and shadowing everything there’s “the works” – an abandoned meatworks, crumbling, the scene of several deaths – excluding the more than several animal deaths obviously.

In the brand new introduction Kate de Goldi quotes Patrick Evans as saying that: “Sydney Bridge Upside Down… is the great, and unread, New Zealand novel.” And… oh… is it ever. Gothic, thrilling, creepy, drowsy with summer sunniness – this is that laid back, mad, bad New Zealandness we all know exists but don’t really know how to talk about.

The book starts as a relatively straight-forward seeming narrative but gradually it becomes clear that these are not straight-forward lives – there are questions here, lingering and being ignored, and you just know they can’t be ignored forever. Eventually they will be faced and they will be answered and most likely something terrible, or at least terribly creepy, will happen.

And it does.

The writing is intense, veering between narrative and dreamlike stream of consciousness, but never losing any focus or my attention. I could easily have read this in one sitting, if not distracted by the rest of life.

Sydney Bridge Upside Down drew me in, thrilled me, wrong-footed me and, ultimately, shocked me. It is a wonderful piece of work to have back, and I hope that this time around it is read.

A lot.

Starting with you *points*.

 

P.S. I’ve been to Hicks Bay once about 9 (?) years ago. It’s beautiful in that lazy New Zealand way. You drive in and drive along the beachside road and there’s a few houses and suddenly there are several concrete boxes and you think that’s incredibly strange, it’s like a factory in the middle of nowhere. And of course that’s pretty much what it was for a long time. It’s one of those disparate and ever so odd places that you stumble across in New Zealand.

Oh, and there was a kunekune pig with lots of little hairy piglets running around. I desperately wanted to pick one up and take it home with me. But I didn’t, because I’m responsible. *sigh*

Tags: , , , ,

What’s BookieMonster reading? The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Feb 8

Posted by BookieMonster in Book Reviews, Books for Sale, TradeMe, What's BookieMonster Reading? | 9 Comments

The Graveyard Book

So I have to give myself a large pat on the back for my latest choices of reading material. I seem to have hit one of those grooves where every book is just more delightful and/or amazing than the last. This makes up for those periods when every book seems more frustrating than the last.

And on to The Graveyard Book (which I keep twittering madly about, but did I mention we have it for sale for just $19.95? $19.95!), which tells the story of Nobody “Bod” Owens. When Bod is a baby his whole family is murdered but he escapes to a graveyard (which is more than reminiciscent of what I’ve read of Highgate Cemetery – which by the way if you have any kind of interest in London cemeteries I would highly recommend a book called Necropolis by Catharine Arnold). And so we follow Bod as he grows up, living in the cemetery which his adopted parents Mr and Mrs Owens, and his guardian Silas. He has a series of adventures both good and bad – The Graveyard Book owes more than a passing nod to The Jungle Book. In many cases these adventures are almost standalone – this is a children’s book and would lend itself very well to being read aloud, particularly as there are plenty of natural stopping and starting points (Bed time, kiddies!).

 This does have the effect however of making the first half of the book seem slightly disjointed but the threads come together mostly very nicely towards the end (though I felt there was a missing chunk of the story relating to Silas and Miss Lupescu – if a lost chapter ever turns up I’ll be thrilled).

If you’ve read Coraline you’ll know that Gaiman writes unique children’s books – macabre, unflinching and quite terrifying on occasion whilst still retaining a sense of whimsy and sentimentality. The Graveyard Book continues very much in that same vein and, like Coraline, has a deep layering of meaning that allows it be enjoyed just as much by adults as by the kiddies. It is unfailingly readable, in fact it’s rather wonderfully written – you will easily read this in one sitting, if you have the time (it took me two, but I’m terribly busy you know). The characters are both spooky and funny (the story of the poet Nehemiah Trot and his terrible revenge is particularly guffaw-worthy) and Gaiman doesn’t do his audience the disservice of spelling out everything in REALLY BIG LETTERS. There is much here to ponder and wonder at.

Where the book really wins is in its final moments. Gaiman deftly turns this from a fantastical and thrilling tale of frights to a moving allegory of growing up, and it brought a tear to my eye. Like all children, Bod’s world changes substantially over the years and, like all children, so does he. This tale deserves every one of the plaudits and compliments that have come its way. A wonderful read, for all ages.

I shouldn’t end this without mentioning the creepy and totally appropriate illustrations by Chris Riddell – it would not be the same book without them.

Bod said, “I want to see life. I want to hold it in my hands. I want to leave a footprint on the sand of a desert island.”

If you’d like to buy your own brand new copy of The Graveyard Book for your or your kiddies’ pleasure then buy from us for just $19.95!

Tags: , , , , ,

What’s BookieMonster Reading? Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Feb 3

Posted by BookieMonster in Book Reviews, BookieMonster News, What's BookieMonster Reading? | No Comments

You know there’s something unique about a book when you start waking up in the middle of the night and realise you’ve been dreaming about its world and characters. When a book has become almost so unbearably vivid and you’ve become so immersed in it that you feel exhausted by the time you finish it.

Am I about to write a totally over-the-top I’d-give-this-book-my-first-born review?

Why, yes. Yes I am.

The winner of the Man Booker Prize for 2009, Wolf Hall treads well-worn territory – King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn? Who hasn’t seen the TV series, the movies or read the inevitably trashy and anachronistic “historical” fiction that has told the Tudor tale again and again? But with Wolf Hall, Mantel has literally rewritten this landscape of historical fiction.

Wolf Hall is the story of the man Thomas Cromwell – a man who happens to have been a courtier and advisor to Henry and Anne, a capricious man, a man constantly up against the constraints of his class, constantly overturning the rules of his age – and constantly weaving a rather tricky path between the various, often life-threatening, vagaries of the times and world he lives in.

So, no cookie-cutter historical character charade here – this is a true delve into the mind and life of an historical figure. And make no mistake – this is no codpieces down, corsets up beach-reading romp. This requires thinking and concentration, though this reader had no problem concentrating. If anything I had a bigger problem letting this world go every time I had to put the book down. There is just so much detail here that you feel you’re living every day of the 8 years of Cromwell’s life that are covered with him. It is quite an astonishing feat of scholarship and imagination, and reading it can at times feel like an equally astonishing feat.

Mantel’s quirk of referring to Cromwell only as “he” (particularly when assigning dialogue) can also throw up some roadblocks and requires a fair amount of “Wait, who said that?” re-reading. But when you’re re-reading writing this good, who cares? (Well, apparently some people do but fie I say, fie to them.)

The language here is sparse but no less effecting for that – the passages after Cromwell loses his wife are not overdone but remain incredibly moving and there’s a good dollop of humour spiced with nastiness served up throughout. The many characters can often have a floating peripheralness but Mantel gives those central to the moment more earthiness with sometimes just one sentence or line of dialogue, and as the book continues those such as Henry and Anne become more substantial and more real to us. And Cromwell, ah Cromwell… we are absorbed in his mind, as well as his story.

I loved Wolf Hall. I loved its difficulties, I loved its quirks, I loved its utter commitment to the world it portrays. Wolf Hall is supposed to be the first in a trilogy …the idea that there is more of this to be had is just awesome.

Voices murmur. Sunlight outside. He feels he could almost sleep, but when he sleeps Liz Wykys comes back, cheerful and brisk, and when he wakes he has to learn the lack of her all over again.

Tags: , , , ,

© 2009-2010 BookieMonster All Rights Reserved