Tagged: male author

Books

I kill giants by

It was a time of darkness where the cities of the damned were stacked high with the bones of fallen heroes.

Barbara Thorson doesn’t need career day. She already has a career, that of giant-killer. She tells her teacher and class this fact, for some reason they don’t believe her. She’s regarded as a freak. And is friendless as school, until a new girl shows up while Barbara is out setting giant traps. They slowly become friends, but things don’t really improve for Barbara. Her father is absent. Her sister out at work all day, and then stressed, and a bad cook. And her mother…

28 June 2010
Books

Ilium by

ISBN: 9780380817924 DDC: The first in the Ilium/Olympusduology. Author site ; Ilium sectionof the Ilium/Olympus wiki Ilium opens with Thomas Hockenberry, a twenty-first century professor, observing the Trojan War on behalf...

11 June 2010
Books

Rupture by

ISBN: 9780330511636 also published as A thousand cuts This is the story of a school shooting. A teacher walks into assembly and kills four people, three students and a teacher, he...

1 June 2010
Books

Monsters of men by

ISBN 9781406325942 Chaos Walking #3 Author’s site The final book in a series can often be a tough one to read and enjoy. On the one hand you want it to...

24 May 2010
Books

The good man Jesus and the scoundrel Christ by

by Philip Pullman

The back of the edition of this that I read has only the words: This is a story. Interesting. Is that because the publisher’s don’t want to offend the ultra religious in the Christian world. Or is it a message from the author that the life of Jesus is a story. That the bible is a story.

Pullman, of course, is known for his ever so slightly controversial views on religion, he has used them in his fiction before. In that case it involved a worn-out god, and power-hungry angels. Here he revisits the myth:”(is a myth a religion we dont believe in?)”: of Jesus Christ and weaves a new story out of it.

7 May 2010
Books

Black Hills by

Author: Dan Simmons

I’d never read any of Dan Simmons work before picking this one up. I’d heard good things about Drood but that’s about it. So picking this up was a total impulse decision. I hadn’t heard anything about the book, and I don’t really trust blurbs.

In the opening sentence we meet our main protagonist, Paha Sapa, a young Lakota boy who has raced into the middle of the Battle of Little Big Horn in order to go counting coup, there he touches the dying George Custer, the infamous Long Hair, and from then on shares his mind with Custer’s ghost. The book shifts in time, usually within Paha Sapa’s life, but occasionally we get to hear from Custer. He usually talks about his wife, Libby, and the sex they had. To be totally honest this was the one bit I wasn’t that interested in. Okay, so he and his wife have a great sex life, and so…
The rest of the book though, well, it is one I recommend you take a look at.

6 May 2010
Books

Marley & me by

I’ve had this book on my shelves for years now. It was on sale for half-price when I bought it; that’s the only reason I own it in hardback. I much prefer paperbacks, more practical. Since I bought the book it has been made into a film and become even more famous. To be honest the film looked god-awful, so I didn’t bother to watch it. But I always knew I’d eventually read the book, and when better than on a lazy Sunday when I should have been cleaning the apartment?

I’m sure everyone knows the story. A newly married couple decide to get a dog, and so buy a labrador puppy, who grows up into the world’s worst dog. Only of course he isn’t the world’s worst, he simply has some bad habits. Very bad habits that include his destruction of numerous items. But at heart Marley is a sweet good-natured dog whose labrador-ish optimism teachers his owners all about life and, eventually, loss.

28 March 2010
Books

The Knife of Never Letting Go by

ISBN: 9781406310252 LibraryThing ; Wikipedia[1] Chaos Walking # 1 I wasn’t too convinced that I was going to like this book when I first started reading it. The first chapter didn’t...

6 January 2010
Books

Still life with Woodpecker by

ISBN: 0553148923 really wanted to like this book. How could I not, the synopsis from the back cover makes you want to start reading it: Still Life with Woodpecker is sort...

27 October 2009
Books

Hero by

I grabbed this at work, while wondering if I should catalogue it as a children’s book or as a Young Adult. In the end, I figured it mentions sex, I’ll go...

26 July 2009
Books

When we were orphans by

ISBN: 057120516x ; Other Reviews The narrator of this book, Christopher Banks, is a renowned detective in the 1930’s. One of England’s most famous detectives. Yet one case has always troubled...

22 November 2008
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