A perfect spy by John le Carré
Group read with the Metafilter Book Club Magnus Pym is a British spy. But after the death of his father he suddenly goes awol. His wife doesn’t know where he is,...
9 May 2012
Rainbow Pie by Joe Bageant
a memoir of Redneck America ISBN: 9781846272578 Before picking this book up I’d never heard of Bageant, and in the middle of reading it I learned from Metafilter that he had...
8 April 2011
The Grudge by Tom English
Full title The Grudge : Scotland vs. England, 1990 ISBN: 9780224082761 Did you know that 1990 was twenty years ago. Twenty! That’s a long time. I always sort of feel that...
14 December 2010
Drood by Dan Simmons
by Dan Simmons
On the 9th of June, 1865, ten passengers were killed when a train crashed at Staplehurst. Among the passengers who survived the disaster was the novelist Charles Dickens. Meeting his friend, Wilkie Collins, soon afterwards Dickens describes a strange individual he came across at the site of the crash. This man, Drood, is to drag both Dickens and Collins into the depths of Victorian London’s criminal and poverty stricken underbelly. Will he also lead to murder and insanity?
17 November 2010
Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
Tally Youngblood is an Ugly. All her friends have gone off and become Pretties, but she is the youngest, and eagerly awaiting her 16th birthday so that she can join them. But before she reaches that magical age she meets a new friend, Shay, who tells her about a mysterious boy called David, and the notion that some people don’t want to be made Pretty. To Tally this is insane. Science and evolution prove that people like beauty. And back in the “Rusties” day, when they weren’t able to make people pretty there was so much discrimination just over the way people lived. She’ll never go off looking for the Smoke. She’ll stay in the city, and become Pretty, just like all her friends.
Of course, if she did then this book wouldn’t have much of a plot now would it?
11 November 2010
Nicholas Dane by Melvin Burgess
This is the sort of book I don’t usually read. You know the ones, from the “sad story” section of the bookshop. The misery-books as I call them. But a few years ago I’d heard of Melvin Burgess as an author to look out for. I’ve read his Lady : My life as a Bitch and to be honest I wasn’t all that impressed, but I’ll always give an author a second go. So I tried this one.
In the 1980’s Nick Dane is growing up as an average, if bright kid. He comes from a single parent family, and his mother has a secret. She never got off the drugs, not completely. And in the course of having a “taste” she accidentally overdoses and Nick is left all alone in the world. Soon he finds himself carted off to a “home” for boys, and soon learns that the violence and random beatings are not the worse this place has to offer.
1 November 2010
Myths about suicide by Thomas Joiner
ISBN: 9780674048225 What do you think when you hear that someone has committed suicide? Many probably wonder why? and then begin to speculate. Some will accuse the suicide victim of being...
21 October 2010
Summer of night by Dan Simmons
Read for RIP challenge It is the last day of school at “Old Central”, the building is being decommissioned and after the summer holidays the children will be going to a...
13 October 2010
The man who lives with wolves by Penny Junor, Shaun Ellis
ISBN: 9780007327157 I first heard of Shaun Ellis when I watched the Natural Geographic documentary on him and his theories about how playing recordings of wolf packs can stop wolf attacks...
30 August 2010
The Passage by Justin Cronin
ISBN: 9780752897851 Usually in my reviews I tend to start off with a quick plot summary. But any sort of recap would risk spoiling aspects of the story, so I’ll instead...
26 July 2010
Unseen academicals by Terry Pratchett
9780385609340 In the back streets of Ankh-Morpork football is king. And those “Faces” in the shove, or crowd, are just as important as the players. After all, no one really ever...
16 July 2010
The Strain by Chuck Hogan, Guillermo del Toro
A plane lands at JFK airport and almost instantly it descends into darkness. Air traffic control get no response. It stopped dead on the runway. There are no lights, no engine noises, and no sounds. Response units break in and find a dead body. Instantly people’s thoughts turn to terrorism; is this some sort of gas attack? Or a biological agent?
Abraham Setrakian, the owner of a small downtown pawnshop is one of the few who knows the truth about the horror to come.
6 July 2010
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