McCaffrey, Anne and Todd: Dragon's Kin

I love Anne McCaffrey and her dragons of Pern. I'm not actually sure who started me on them, but it would likely have been Sterf. She spun such a wonderful world where dragons lived, defending Pern from the fall of Thread.
She's quite old though (81 years!), and with this book she's handed down the world of Pern to her youngest son, Todd. They write quite well together - sometimes a bit simplistic in this book I feel, but overall it had the same pull for me as the other dragon-related Anne McCaffrey books. And this isn't actually about a dragon, but a dragon's kin (thus the name of the book), called a watchwher, which is sort of a mini-dragon which can "see" heat. This new addition to the dragon family was a really good idea, because it gives Todd McCaffrey fodder for his new books. Hopefully he still has ideas about dragons themselves too! Looking forward to sampling some of his solo writings.

Rating: ***out of 5

Berg, Elizabeth: The Year of Pleasures

Another book from Berg, and a thin one compared to her other ones that I've read. And it's a pretty low-key and straightforward book as well!

However, Berg still delivers her keen insights even in the lightness of this book. Here she tackles the bereavement of a widow, and how she finds the peace and pleasure her dead husband would like her to have. Her journey from grief to peace is a poignant and believable one, even the number of times the principal character falls back into sorrow then leaps into hope.

It's a believable warm book, and very suitable for summer reading. :)

Rating: ***out of 5

Golding, William: The Spire

William Golding is of "Lord of the Flies" fame, and this book seemed to be thin enough to be a short sample of his other works.

In fact, it was quite hard to get my mind into the book. On first glance, the premise of the book is simple - the dean of a church aspires to build a spire (pun intended) on his church but hits on snags on the way, and I was wondering how he could make a story out of it. He actually delves deeply into the psyche of Dean Jocelin, the main character, exposing his thoughts and feelings, and increasingly, his madness. Golding does this pretty well, and though Dean Jocelin struck me as overly neurotic, I'd guess that was the persona Golding was after, and so his wordsmithy worked.

He also adds lots of subplots and confounding factors - the caretaker and his wife, the master builder and wife, etc. All of which would add up to an eventful read. However, he doesn't state the obvious sometimes, and leaves the reader to guess at the outcomes of several happenings. The truth outs later in the course of the story, of course, but this obliqueness can be quite irritating.

It was hard to get through the book, but once you do that, you'll be rewarded. For me, that reward was the realisation of the meaning of the book, or at least, my interpretation of it. I realised that Dean Jocelin could be considered one with his small church without foundations, and as the forming spire played havoc with the church's foundations, it was also playing havoc with the dean's mental and spiritual foundations. Similarly, if there are no suitable foundations in a person's life, any high aspirations that the person means to build could cause the foundations to buckle, and the whole structure may come tumbling down.

That's the amazing thing about Golding, and a good reason why he rightly won a Nobel Prize for Literature - he can write this kind of inaccessible book at first glance, but its underlying message is not hard to get at, and that message is a pertinent one indeed. So while this isn't his best (Lord of the Flies probably is) it IS a good thought-provoking book.

Rating: ***out of 5

Smith, Zadie: On Beauty: a novel

This book was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and won the 2006 Orange Prize for fiction. Apparently Zadie Smith is a scholar of EM Forster and has modeled her book to contain allusions to her “idol”, and yes, her book did remind me a bit of “Howard’s End”. She tells of a family in the US, and what happens as their lives intertwine with the lives of the family members of the patriach’s enemy. And of course, there has to be a confrontation between the two enemies, causing everything to unravel for a while, but get together again by the end of the book.
The characters were well-written, and the story went deep into some issues, but overall it didn’t have much of a wow effect on me, not as much as I’d expect from a prize winner. If you take away the Forster-ian undertones, it just ends up as a well-written story that can entertain for while, like most of the other books on the market. The writers of these other books should really catch on and jump on the bandwagon, and say that their books were modeled after so-and-so author – they might just make it onto a shortlist somewhere. And this is always good for business, because there’s always people like me, curious to see if the book is up to par.

Rating: ***out of 5

Pratchett, Terry: Sourcery, Wyrd Sisters, Reaper Man, Witches Abroad, Small Gods, Soul Music, Maskerade

My journey with Pratchett really started when I got his younger-children book, Truckers (part of the Bromeliad trilogy) as a birthday present, perhaps when I was in late primary school. I loved that book, loved how the Nomes were so ignorant of human customs, and how they’d capitalize all the unknown words borrowed from the human language and put some obscure importance to them. My copy at home is now well-creased from the re-reading. When I found out that there were 2 more books after it, of course I had to read them!
Then I forgot about him for a while, because I thought the Discworld series was so extensive there was no point starting on them. Then the lovely book rental place in Subang Parade, and YP’s dear friend happened – and I had a ready supply of early Discworld books to read. So I read “The Colour of Magic”, “The Light Fantastic”, “Equal Rites”, and “Mort”.
The saga continues with the ready supply of Discworld books in the libraries around me. It’s a good thing that they’re not to be read in any order, so I can simply borrow any book on the shelf.
Truthfully, I can’t tell you exactly what happens in each book, and I won’t even try (thus the grouped review). BUT they’re really great distractions from life! The humour he injects into each book is novel, and each book covers different topics/issues: “Sourcery” tells of a dictatorship of sorts which could lead to the end of the world; “Wyrd Sisters” introduces witches and plays with plays like those of Shakespeare; “Reaper Man” deals with Death not being able to do his job; “Witches Abroad” reintroduces the witches and mixes them with many fairy tales; “Small Gods” takes a tongue-in-cheek look at religions; “Soul Music” is about that “real” soul music – rock music, and is a really entertaining read!; and “Maskerade” takes a look at opera, with lots of borrowing from “Phantom of the Opera”. Some of the allusions and jibes in the books I didn’t really get, but I guess everyone understands different things differently anyway.
That’s the books so far in a nutshell, really. These books are like candy – you can’t read too many at once, but taken one at a time, at regular intervals, they serve to give you a much-needed laugh and a different outlook to life. Which is a great treat!

Rating: ***out of 5

McBain, Ed: Fiddlers

One of JF’s choices from the horror/thriller line, but I was also attracted because of the title and the bloody violin on the front cover. However, I was quite disappointed that the fiddle/fiddler/fiddling has no big part to play in the main plot - the only fiddler is the blind fiddler who gets killed in the beginning of the book. It's more of an allusion to the killer, I think, who fiddles, or intervenes, in the lives of the ones he murders.

McBain had the task of creating some random murders in random ways and finding a way to connect them all, which he did, and made it enjoyable. You sort of know whodunit midway into the book (why else would he be telling the guy's story as a subplot if he wasn't the killer?) but what you don't know is WHY he did it, which keeps one reading to the end. Apparently this was his last book (he passed away in 2005), and his first books were better than this. If that's so, I'd start reading his first books!

Rating: ***out of 5

James, P. D.: The Lighthouse

If Agatha Christie is the Queen of Crime, PD James is certainly the princess, or the heir apparent. Which is ironic because PD James is now an octogenarian (she was 85 when she wrote this book).

Anyway, "The Lighthouse" is set on an imaginary island of the Devon coast, where a writer, his daughter, and his copy-editor go for a sabbatical of sorts. Their arrival is not taken well by some other guests and inhabitants of the island, and the it is to almost no-one's surprise that the writer is found hanging from the lighthouse on the island. PD James' darling investigator Adam Dalgliesh is sent in to solve the case.

It's a well-written book (especially for an 85-year-old! but I'm not ageist) and each character and their pasts are delved into quite thoroughly, giving lots of sublplots which help plump up the main one. It's even up-to-date - two characters in the book get stricken with SARS, which was a big concern in 2005 (and still is). However, I think that SARS thing was a bit unbelievable, plus the fact that Dalgliesh sort of solved the mystery while he was having dreams from the fever made it look like she was just using it as a means to an end. Just a small hiccup though. A good book to read, but if possible, read her earlier books and get to know the detective Dalgliesh first. Then you'll appreciate this book more.

Rating: ***out of 5

Gregory, Philippa: Bread and Chocolate

I don't have the list of titles of the short stories with me, so I can't describe the stories in a bit more detail, but I can tell you that I liked this collection of short stories. It may not really make you think deep and hard, but she can really tell complete stories in this limited setting - stories of human beings, all well-crafted and plucks right at your heartstrings. She's quite good at developing characters, probably from the many historical novels she writes, where she crafts characters and stories from the research she does. Good book for a myriad of emotions.

Rating: ***out of 5

Forster, E. M.: Collected Short Stories

EM Forster is the well-known author of novels like "Howard's End", "Room with a View" (both made into movies), "The Longest Journey", and "Where Angels Fear to Tread". This book contains 12 stories from his two books of short stories. He writes in a very traditionally English way, almost as if he were sitting in front of you and actually telling the story to you himself. In his novels, he has free rein to ramble on and on about things, gradually bringing the story to a conclusion, but although he is restricted here by the nature of the short story he can still maintain his conversational manner while bringing the message across quite effectively.

A lot of the stories have spiritual undertones to it so it was intriguing to read and reflect. For example, "The Celestial Omnibus" is not about a book on the heavens, but an actual bus between Earth and a kind of heaven which a boy discovers and rides on. "The Other Side of the Hedge" tells of a man who is intent on the narrow path before him bounded by hedges on either side, heading towards his unseen goal, until he finds his way through the hedge and discovers the truth about the road he's on.

Others bring up questions about technological advances. "The Machine Stops" tells of a future Earth where everyone shuns the surface and lives underground, their survival depending on a machine.

His ideas are sometimes whimsical as well. There's a story, "The Point of It", which I can't get the point of at all! A well-told story nonetheless. What's good about this particular collection is the introduction, which explains some of his methods of writing, and the backgrounds of some of the stories. I might have found it harder to understand several stories if not for the author's preface. This collection of short stories is not for a lazy afternoon of relaxing reading; perhaps it's more for a good read for a change in subject matter. All in all, a good read to get the brain juices flowing.

Rating: ***out of 5

Clarke, Susanna: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

What drew me to this book, besides the fact that it was magic-related, was its thickness. ;> It's about 7 cm thick (the hardcover is thicker) and I'd somehow heard that it was good.

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell are Britain's only two practising magicians in their time (1500s), and it was Mr Norrell who brought the practice of magic back into England, and trained Jonathan Strange. There's a lot of groundwork to lay, and lots of subplots that contribute to the main plot, so there's a lot of meandering around, and lengthy but entertaining footnotes (a bit like Pratchett's style, but more serious/less witty). I wondered sometimes where certain storylines were going, but that will make itself clearer further into the chapter. What I liked was the ending and how almost everything was resolved; but to understand it you'd have to sit through the majority of the book.

It’s NOT the next HP, and the pace is decidedly slow. But if you stick with it till the end the story matures into something quite enjoyable. The whole endeavour might be a bit too much, especially if one has very little time in a day to read, because then bits and pieces of the plot, especially the minor points, will be lost. A book, really, for fast readers, or for those long summer/winter days where there's nothing better to do than read this huge book.

Rating: ***out of 5

Bryson, Bill: Notes from a Small Island

I'd been eyeing him since I heard that his “Short History of Nearly Everything” was quite good, but I rarely make it to the travel literature section in the library (because I've collected too many books browsing the fiction shelves). Then I saw this, his musings about his trip around the UK, and decided to read it first. I just love reading about places that I’ve been to, and places that I could visit (I took out my UK map to follow his tracks), so this was a good first read.

He has a nice conversational tone to his book, and humorous takes on stories and other things that happened to him on his travels. He also describes some cliff and inland walks (eg. the Jurassic Coast trek) that I'd love to do someday, and now have an inkling of how to start (like getting an AA Map.. LoL). In some ways he's better than a guide book, as he goes to all the small overlooked towns/villages around the UK. Granted, some of them are fit to be overlooked by the average tourist, but it's always nice to know that you're not missing much by not going to that particular place.

Look forward to reading more from him.

Rating: *** out of 5

Berg, Elizabeth: What We Keep

Berg writes in quiet way about relationships and stuff like that (Picoult-esque, but less controversial). This particular book touches on the mother-daughter relationship between ones that have only seen each other ocassionally in the last 35 years. There is an element of mystery on why this meeting is taking place now - not a huge one, but interesting enough to keep one reading. The anticipation of the meeting and what happens next would keep you reading on as well.

As far as I've read into Berg, some of her stories are good, and some are just passable but still not a bad read. This was one of those passable ones - simple, but in such a way that it still touches the heart.

Rating: *** out of 5

Atwood, Margaret: Wilderness Tips

A book of short stories, but the author of “The Blind Assassin”. I loved "Blind Assassin", and have always wanted to go back to reading some of her other books, but have only borrowed this one to date, since I was also in the mood for short stories at that time. The trouble with short stories is that they have so little time to develop that they have to be really really really good to stick in your head. I read this a few months ago, and I can't really remember the stories, though from reading the reviews about this book some are coming to mind.

The good thing, though, about short stories is that they leave you lots of room to ruminate on them, and are short enough to be essentially complete in your immediate recall so that you can take in the story in its entirety.

Generally all the stories are good. Most are relational stuff, and if I remember correctly, one ("Death by Landscape") is kind of freaky. Interesting reads, and more accessible storytelling than the older writers (eg. W. Somerset Maugham, EM Forster), which is great for the average casual reader.

Rating: *** out of 5