Particularly as I read this immediately after the previous James Patterson novel, it was an interesting contrast. Mankell writes a classic police procedural. The thrilling car chases, near misses, constant threats to the life of the protagonist or his or her immediate family, endless ‘personal connections’ with the case and the detective, are all used sparingly. That makes these books far, far more realistic. Wallander and his team are police officers in a small Swedish town. Not every murder is going to have some personal connection with Wallander. His life isn’t going to be threatened every time. He has a job to do, and that is to find out who committed the crimes and his team work methodically with him to do just that.

Nevertheless, they are page turners. I love Wallander’s instinct and hunches, and I absolutely love his need to think things through, catch a subtle clue in someone’s demeanour or words, and his ability to make connections. His team are fantastic as well. In this book, the original police commissioner, Bjork, has left to be replaced by another female (to join Ann-Britt who became a member of the team two books ago) and the balance is really good. And most importantly, you watch Wallander himself grow, change and develop as the years go on which makes you feel like you are there with him.

This book introduces a murderer who seems to be preying on men who, at first, have no apparent connection to one another. The only similar thing is the method of murder which is cruel, painful and very methodical. One is taken along several investigative lines – Africa and mercenaries, soldiers – but when some connections seem to arise in the form of a number of mysterious deaths of women, the case starts to break and the suspense builds.

Wallander is a real, flawed, emotional and very sharp man who is married to his job, but deserves his role. I know there are only a finite number of the Wallander series and I can now see how disappointed people were when the ‘last one’ was released. I have become so attached to the Inspector and his team already and I am not even halfway through them all. I suspect I know how I am going to feel when I close the cover on the final book as well.

Rating: 9/10
Date finished: 10 September 2011
Copyright: 2000
Pages: 583
Verdict: Bring on the next one.

Anyway, I want to read 500 books in the next 5 years. Why? Well, why not? To be honest, it is because I am currently in that unpleasant (to me) situation where, as we await the birth of a baby, I am being told left, right and centre by everyone from close friends to complete strangers that I am never going to get time to read again when the baby is born, and me being stubborn (as well as getting pretty annoyed at the smug insistence that these people know me and my life better than I know myself!) I thought – well, let’s just wait and see shall we? So, I thought I would record my reading publicly again just so I can point all of those unwanted advice givers somewhere as they prepare themselves to announce “I told you so”…

So, baby is due in 9 weeks, and I set my start date from yesterday, 14th September 2011 for my long term reading project. So, here’s the first book…

James Patterson…well, it is an easy place to start I guess. His books aren’t exactly difficult to get through. One of the reason I am reading them is that my book collection (now in excess of 1300 books) doesn’t fit very well in our house so I am making some decisions about which books I can donate. Patterson’s entire oeuvre falls into that category. However, before I donate anything, I will read them so I can churn through them pretty quickly and pass them on – leaving room for something better!

I have been working through the Alex Cross series over the years – this is number 4. Frankly, it brought no surprises. Cross faces his old nemesis, Gary Soneji, while at the same time an even more sinister, macabre killer – Mr Smith – is also on the loose. The first part of the book is devoted to the chase for Soneji as he embarks on his murderous swansong. Then we swing around to the case of Mr Smith, meeting another FBI agent, Thomas Pierce, along the way.

As usual there is an Alex Cross love interest. Unfortunately, Patterson feels the need to add steamy bedroom scenes into the books which simply don’t work for me. If I wanted to read about bedroom gymnastics, I would pick up a romance, not a gruesome crime fiction. I also get a little bit tired of the saccharine sweetness of Cross’s children who seem to never, ever behave badly, have bad days or annoy their parent or caregiver. Goodness, if children were all like the angelic Jannie and the perfect Damon, then perhaps having them wouldn’t be such a challenge! Finally, the identity of Mr Smith, set out as a clever twist, really didn’t hold together for me. It was a good idea, but it was poorly executed and came off as contrived. I just couldn’t suspend my disbelief quite enough to feel satisfied with it.

So, no, I didn’t enjoy this as much as I have been enjoying, say, Henning Menkel (I launched into a Wallander the minute I had finished the last page of Cat and Mouse), but then I didn’t expect to. Patterson’s books are the CSI Miami of the book world – pretty, plot driven, but ultimately empty and when its over in half an hour (or a few hours in the case of the book) you are left with a feeling that you haven’t really been fed much substance.

Rating: 3/10
Date Finished: 14 September 2011
Copyright: 1997
Pages: 342
Verdict: Read once then move on…

The Well Thought Out Text

One of the things I love about reading is to immerse myself in the language of a book, poem or article. I love reading works which have clearly taken time to produce. I love reading works which have been researched, mulled over, rewritten, edited, researched further and have genuinely come from the intellectual heart of the author. Unfortunately, due to the ease of production both online and offline, and the fact that the world as I know it is getting faster and faster, demands on time are greater and greater, and the drive to produce content before the next person does is greater than ever, there is a lot of writing out there which is truly awful.

Sadly, it isn’t just on the internet, although I would hazard a guess that around 80% of the writing on the internet is utter crap. Trying to filter the decent writing from the rubbish is a challenge in itself. The beauty of the printed word is that it should have seen the pen of an editor, although scanning newspapers nowadays, even print is not immune to slapdash content production. Sadly, many self-published books fall into the same category. Had they actually been in front of an editor, they too would have been scrapped or relegated to someone’s personal diary space or the old exercise books on the shelf which never saw the light of day.

Which is one of the reasons I haven’t been reviewing. Honestly, if I value the time and effort that people put in to proper reviews (which I do) then I have no right to just throw something out there, whether it is my blog or not. I have mentioned before how dissatisfied I often feel with my writing, and part of that is down to the fact that I haven’t spent the time on it that I should. I am currently trying my hand at writing an actual book, and I have given myself time – time to research, plan, think, experiment, and research more. Unless I can do that with my book reviewing, then I don’t think I am ever going to find true satisfaction with it.

I don’t want well thought out writing to vanish the same way that handwritten letters have. So I feel I need to be part of the dwindling crusade to retain it…

Which leads me on to the other thing I am passionate about, and which I want to explore further in this blog.

The Demise of the Paper Book

If all of the stories on the internet are to be believed, by the time I am an old lady, I will no longer be able to enjoy the pleasure of reading a book in any other form than on a mini computer, pressing buttons or swiping screens rather than turning pages. Apparently, paper books are going to disappear in 5 years, 10 years or 50 years (depending on which futurist you care to listen to). The virtues of the eBook reader are being touted everywhere and I don’t doubt that technology will win out. I am not so deluded to believe that progress won’t continue. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

The thought of not being able to flick through the pages of a book, smell the paper, feel it in my hands, pick it off my bookshelf or discover it in a little second-hand shop truly breaks my heart. All of the benefits of ‘sharing’ and ‘collaborating’ and ‘changing the text on the fly’ and ‘carrying a million books around at once’ (all well and good, but remember we still only exist on this planet for 70 or 80 years and in that time we can still only read several thousand books) are great, but they do nothing to ease my heartache. I adore books and I always will. I adore the feel of a new book when it arrives. I love holding books of 500 pages or more. I love hunting bookshelves whether in a library, in my own house or in a shop. I love the peace that comes from sitting with myself and a book knowing that nothing can get in the way – no-one can intrude, no-one can demand anything of me, I don’t have to chat to anyone or justify anything. The battery won’t go flat, there is no ‘collaboration’ or ‘conversation’ (I will choose when I want that), the words will always be there without ever going obsolete or demanding me to upgrade or buy a new device. The publisher can’t take my pages from me, or change what they say. I can close the book and hand it to someone, or leave it somewhere for someone else to enjoy. Perhaps these things that I love so much are going to be things of the past, but that doesn’t mean I can’t lament them. I constantly lament the loss of the letter even though I know that all we have now (and I suspect all we will have from now) is the impersonal, dashed-off email. And I will lament the loss of the book.

Yes, I am getting old. This is the first time I have felt it – the first time I have looked at a new technology and thought ‘I can’t do this’. This is the first time I have felt myself resisting not because it isn’t practical, but because emotionally, I don’t want to be forced to give up the thing I love. I know people far older than me who think I am being ridiculous. That is their opinion. I know people far older than me who have told me to ‘get with it’ but I just won’t. Technology is inevitable. It gives you a lot, but it also takes a lot away. I am only on this planet for another, maybe 50 years. It isn’t long. In that time, I want to maintain at least one of the things which makes me happy. Destroy the last paper book the day after I die (or better still, bury it with me) but I for one will still be reading them as long as I possibly can, even if I am the only person in the world to do so.

This book is written alternately from the view of Mary and from the view of Elizabeth Philpot, a name who very few people would remember, but who was hugely instrumental in Mary’s success. One of the things I loved about this novel is that the author didn’t just revive a poorly known figure, she also saw to it that she gained some of the credit for her work at a time when she was almost invisible.

The problem with both Elizabeth and Mary is they were both women who had a fascination with something scientific and who never married. Elizabeth was a sad case of an unattractive woman who, having been unable to find a husband by 22, was rendered a spinster who would never marry and would only ever be a burden to her brother. She and her two sisters were moved to Lyme Regis to effectively get them out of the way of society, and it was there that she met Elizabeth – uncouth, uneducated, but with an incredible ability to spot fossils.

This book pokes at a lot of things which I really loved. From criticisms of 19th Century society to criticisms of Jane Austen, Chevalier strips the romanticism of the period bare. Elizabeth Bennett was truly privileged in comparison to Elizabeth Philpot – and I suspect the story of the latter was far more prevalent than Austen’s dewy eyed romanticism would have you believe. Also, of all of the men who appear in Remarkable Creatures, not one of them presents well. From the ignorant patronising airs of the churchmen who refused to acknowledge anything which could cast doubt on the Bible, and scorned the questioning of a mere woman, through to the arrogance of the other fossil hunters and the cruelty of characters like the Captain, who’s privileged status as a male gave him licence to do what he liked without any particular thought for the women he affected living beneath onerous societal conventions.

This is as much a book about science, Darwin, the shaking of belief, determination and passion as it is about feminism and success against all odds. I found myself at times angry, at other times saddened (and feeling very lucky to live when I do), and still at other times cheering for Elizabeth’s determination and Mary’s skill. I am so pleased that Chevalier thought to bring these two women to life, as they have both touched me in their separate ways.

The fascination with fossils and the questions they raise is one which ought to be done and dusted in the 21st century and it amazes me that there are still people with the ignorant attitude of the pastor in Remarkable Creatures. When something like nature is so beautiful and breathtaking in its age and development, why would anyone want to deny it? It just makes no sense. Oddly, reading this historical novel makes you realise that although we have come a long way since Mary and Elizabeth scoured the beaches of Lyme Regis for ‘curies’, we still haven’t come far enough.

The strength of this story is in the fact that every line and paragraph is infused with emotion. There is an almost dream like quality in the narrative which is highlighted by feelings of sorrow, realisation, loss, euphoria and helplessness. The tragedy of it is that the characters, particularly Elizabeth but also David to an extent, only acknowledges the emotion after it is too late to do something about it. As such, the emotions are all suffused with a sense of regret and what if, which ultimately makes the whole feeling of the book one of sadness.

Unfortunately, I found myself frustrated by the unwillingness of Elizabeth to actually open her eyes and see what wonder and chance of happiness she had before her with Thomas. Why did it take until it was too late before she actually recognised what it was he was offering – love, life, acceptance, happiness? I wanted to shake her because of her insistence on returning each time to an evil, manipulative mother-in-law and an emotionally absent husband. She had the opportunity for life and she chose stagnation. But perhaps I shouldn’t have got annoyed – perhaps we all do that in our lives at some stage, most often out of fear, and only realise we have done it later.

I think Vickers shows incredible skill at understanding people – not surprising due to her own career as a psychoanalyst as well as her own experiences of loss and heartbreak in marriage. The language is restrained, refined and yet powerful and although I did feel that sometimes the emotion was a little too intense and therefore started to feel a bit heavy or contrived, I do recognise that this wasn’t a story about people, it was a story about the human condition and those parts of ourselves which we struggle to control. With hindsight, or if you could stand outside of yourself, you can see it. But otherwise you are almost powerless against the pull of feelings and reactions to others.

It is not an uplifting book, but it is one that makes you assess your own life. Elizabeth made a mistake which she no longer has the ability to rectify – by hearing her story, you may prevent it happening for yourself.

Rating: 7/10
ISBN: 978-0007165452
Publisher: HarperPerennial
Year: 2007
Date Finished: 7 January 2010
Pages: 320

The main character of this book – or series of books, as I am led to believe – is a man with a pretty abrasive personality. I don’t think I have ever read a book where the main character managed to anger so many people. But he did it in a way that created arguments and unpleasantness. The result was several slightly artificial but nevertheless unpleasant. Can one man really have such an effect? Particularly when he first met his new ‘employer’, Junior Willis. Within several hours he had managed to hack Willis off so much that when Janeway threatened to leave without taking the job, Willis never stopped him and never really came back. The author explained it away by saying that Willis had a bad temper. Perhaps politeness in society is different in Idaho, but that just didn’t ring true.

Characters were picked up, developed to a point, and then just as quickly dropped again. Janeway’s fickleness when it came to suspects was highlighted by how thinly the author tried to point the fingerat one person after another (not very convincingly, unfortunately). Granted, I didn’t pick who was to blame until later in the book, but the guilty party had been introduced quite awkwardly earlier in the book so that when it turned out that it was that person who did it, I felt pretty unsatisfied.

The biggest problem with this book was that it just didn’t flow. It was like a series of hiccups with a bit of harmony in between. I can see what the author was trying to do and I liked the fact that he tried to do something a bit different with the subject matter, but it just didn’t work for me. I want to find out a bit more about the difference between a bibliophile and a bibliomaniac (it wasn’t a distinction I had ever heard of, so one good thing is my curiosity has been piqued) but I just couldn’t buy it. I couldn’t buy the fact that everyone had been in love with the ‘bookwoman’ of the title, and I couldn’t buy the fact that Janeway managed to make his way into the racing circuit without so much as a hitch. I couldn’t buy the amount of time his girlfriend, Erin, spent on the case when she was supposed to be a lawyer, and I struggled with his career change and indecision. Basically I found Janeway arrogant and blundering in a not particularly nice way. I gave it a go, but I won’t read another one of these. They weren’t for me.

Rating: 4/10
ISBN: 0-7318-1307-3
Publisher: Scribner
Year: 2006
Date finished: 6th January 2010
Pages: 337

I took One Shot with me on the flight from London to Adelaide, packing it in my little on board case with several magazines, another book and an iPod, worries that I might run out of things to do on that long haul journey. I always do that – my biggest worry is that I might get stuck somewhere with no reading material. Although I have read another Jack Reacher novel and I knew this one would be good, I hadn’t remember how un-put-downable it actually was. I was completely gripped from the first page.

The story starts with a cold, insane killer who sets himself up in a car park and shoots dead five people who are doing nothing more offensive than going home from work. Five people dead, six shots fired. The police are on to it immediately and with the almost textbook evidence left behind by the killer, the perpetrator is found and apprehended within a matter of hours. Under questioning he says nothing. It is only after he is put in prison and a lawyer visits him that he makes a short statement. He wants to see Jack Reacher.

The clever thing about this novel is that at the beginning, you too are convinced that this is a cut and dried case. Indeed, when Reacher arrives, that impression is compounded when he relates his experience with the accused. As the story goes on, you begin to doubt. Perhaps he did it under duress? Perhaps he was forced? Perhaps…perhaps he didn’t do it? This is what Lee Child is so skilled at – he takes you on a journey where you don’t even realise you are being led, but when you look back, all of the signs are clear…in hindsight. I can’t remember what point I figured it out, but it was very late on in the book – in fact, one fundamental player I didn’t work out until the author actually revealed who it was. He had constructed the story so well without putting in any obvious diversions or false trails that you felt like you were an invisible member of the team who had come together to figure out what was going on.

Reacher is a true hero. Because he is a flawed character, you can’t help but love him. I love the fact that if he is being followed for several pages, you are reassured to discover that actually he knew he was being followed and had already devised a plan to lose his tail. You want him to win – you just can’t help it. He is the ultimate good guy without being irritating, smarmy or artificial. Couple that with a story that is well written, a plot which is complex and gripping and an outcome which is intensely satisfying despite being surprising, and you have escapsim at its best. You can’t help but put the Jack Reacher novels up there with the benchmarks of good popular crime fiction.

Rating: 9/10
ISBN: 9780553815865
Publisher: Bantam Books
Year: 2005
Date finished: 2nd January 2010
Pages: 495

Mr Malik is rather taken with Rose Mbikwa, the leader and guide of the Tuesday Ornithological . Walk. Unfortunately, Malik isn’t the brash type – in fact, he is shy and incredibly polite and although he has been going on the walks regularly, every week, for several years, he hasn’t yet summoned up the courage to ask Mrs Mbikwa for a coffee. When the Annual Hunt Ball comes around, he sees it as his opportunity and writes a polite invitation to Mrs Mbikwa to ask her to accompany him to the ball. However, he doesn’t send it – and before he gets a chance to, who should walk onto the scene but Harry Khan.

Unfortunately, Malik knows Harry from their time at school together some 50 years before and despite them all being old men now, things haven’t changed. From the time of his arrival, Harry has his eye on Rose and before long, a competition between Malik and Khan is called for the right to ask Rose to the ball. The one who spots the most types of birds in a week will be the winner.

Harry uses money, influence and time to scour the country. Malik takes a slower route and seems to hit trouble after trouble – from being robbed and having his car stolen, to almost being kidnapped by Somali terrorists. Throughout the week though, Malik is soon reminded about what is important in his life and as the competition draws to a close, he has to weigh those things with his fondness for Rose.

I won’t give a spoiler, but it is a delightful ending – both happy and unexpected. This story is a fairy tale of goodness, laced with humour and beautiful imagery, while still touching on the things which continue to plague Africa – AIDS, poverty, kidnapping and corruption. I loved it because it provided such a delightful balance, and was written with so much imagination and lovely, flawed, likeable characters.

And look out for the chicken

Rating: 10/10
ISBN: 978-0-670-91757-0
Publisher: Viking
Year: 2007
Date finished: 9 December 2009
Pages: 202

Rather than going into the detail, I wanted to put forward a thought which was raised by this book. Interestingly enough, just before I finished it I was listening to a podcast which was talking about the first mass murder of the 20th Century – the 3 to 4 million Africans who were killed either directly or indirectly by the colonial rule of Belgium in the Congo and the subsequent drive for rubber. Reflecting on that and all of the other racist cruelties which occurred on account of colonialism, on the surface of it one can almost understand why, when the blacks seized power, they felt the need to treat the remaining whites with equivalent cruelty.

However, is it just me, but when has a problem ever been solved by straight revenge? When has treating the old oppressor in the same way as they treated us been an appropriate and effective tactic? There could be argument that fighting back against the actual oppressor might be justified, but what if the people you are fighting and second generation, third generation, removed from the act of oppression by years? Unfortunately, the world is such that humans have long memories when they choose and amnesia when it suits them. And in the melee, ordinary people who are just trying to get on with their lives have to suffer.

Godwin’s story of his parents is heartbreaking in so many ways, and yet they maintain their spirit and try to maintain some semblance of life. The tragedy is, the author discovers that his father had already had his fair share of loss – he was a Polish Jew who lost his mother and sister to the hell hole of Treblinka. Another time, another oppressor, another cruel period of history. Does it ever end?

I am very grateful to the author for telling us his story and allowing us to see Zimbabwe from someone on the inside. You can’t help but feel the same sense of betrayal and bitterness which his parents must have felt, and fury at the corruption which meant that the poor, who had supposedly been oppressed by the whites, remained poorer than ever as their black leaders stole even more from them.  Once again, I finished this book thinking ‘what hope is there in the face of human greed?’. Perhaps I should take hope from the individual stories that the author offers – the people who help one another, irrespective of colour, the people who support one another because there is need, not because there is gain, and the sense that perhaps, just perhaps, something can be done.

Rating: 10/10
ISBN: 978-0-330-43369-3
Publisher: Picador
Year: 2007
Date Finished: 23 December 2009
Pages: 342

I honestly believe that this book should be mandatory reading for everyone who has ever picked up a newspaper, or regurgitated an argument which they have read in a headline or heard on Sky.

Davies sets out to expose the corner-cutting, biases, falsehoods, lies and deceit which underpins much of today’s media. He explains why the ‘news lite’ we receive each day is selective, repetitive, sensational and often very poorly researched. He demonstrates that true investigative journalism has almost been completely wiped out, and that truth and exposure are the least of the considerations in many of the news organisations. And his thesis puts most of it down to the fact that news is now a corporate profit making exercise, and like all capitalistic institutions, money and profit is paramount, political advantage (leading to profit) is secondary, and no longer on the radar is informing the public, and exposing the truth.

That may seem like a pretty dire assessment to make, but his arguments made perfect sense and were backed up with a lot of evidence and case studies. I was told on Twitter that he didn’t actually carry out most of the research – be that as it may, he published it and in my opinion, an expose like this needs to be made public irrespective of who does it, so I am grateful that he went out on a limb to do so.

The problem with this book was that it ended with very little hope, but then, perhaps that is reality. Our society is so driven by profit that the chances of philanthropic newspaper owners, journalists willing to go out on a limb to get to the truth and impartial reporting ever returning are slim. That is not to say you can’t find that somewhere, but it isn’t in the instant, 24hour news. One could argue that the BBC shouldn’t be a corporation battling with the likes of NewsCorp, but because the bar has been set, the BBC simply has to keep up. As a result, their journalists (or ‘churnalists’ as the author calls them) are under as much pressure, with as few resources and as little leeway as their corporate, profit driven counterparts. And the only real result is that the ignorant public remains ignorant.

I finished the book wondering how on earth one was supposed to discover what the truth was in the world when we are numbed daily by the flat earth news cycle? Do blogs and the internet help? Partially, but it takes some time and effort to weed out the good writing on the internet from the dross. How about quality, independent publications? Yes, but sadly they are only read by a cultural ‘elite’ of sorts who have the time, education and motivation to seek them out and read them. Your average person going home on the train, who has spent the past 10 hours of their day working desperately hard so that they can pay their mortgage and meet the next payment on the new car as well as the kids school fees, is not likely to sit down with anything more taxing than the Metro. And therein lies the problem.

I do lament how driven our world is by money, profit, greed and competition. In fact, since reading this book, I have read another about Zimbabwe (which I will review shortly) which just reconfirmed this. This is human nature, and the way of the world. But that shouldn’t stop every thinking person from asking questions, challenging the loudest voices and making the decision to make up their own mind.

You can read more at Nick Davies website, Flat Earth News

Rating: 10/10
ISBN: 0099512688
Publisher: Vintage
Year: 2009
Date Finished: 15 October 2009
Pages: 320