The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Synopsis:

‘Toru Okada’s cat has disappeared and this has unsettled his wife, who is herself growing more distant every day. Then there are the increasingly explicit telephone calls he has started receiving. As this compelling story unfolds, the tidy suburban realities of Okada’s vague and blameless life – spent cooking, reading, listening to jazz and opera and drinking beer at the kitchen table – are turned inside out, and he embarks on a bizarre journey, guided (however obscurely) by a succession of characters, each with a tale to tell.’

Welcome to the world of Haruki Murakami where anything is possible, where characters leap off the pages. ‘The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle’ tells the story of Toru Okada, a man who is just living his life and then suddenly everything changes and his life takes a strange turn.

Toru is a amazingly uncomplicated character, he takes everything at face value, which proves to be his downfall when his wife leaves him. He meets so many wonderful characters, all different in their own ways and they all have a story to share.

A enjoyable book, fantastic characters and a great story.

Rating: 10/10

Reviewed by: Paula (Gyre)

The Vampire’s Kiss by Raven Hart

The Savannah Vampires series continues as William goes to Europe to rescue a kidnapped voodoo princess. Hearing William is AWOL, a band of mangy, meth-cooking werewolves challenge Jack for dominance of Savannah’s unhuman underworld.
Official Site

This is book three in The Savannah Vampires series, and it certainly doesn’t fail to deliver!

This book sees William and Jack, the two main vampires, fighting their own separate battles, which gives Raven an opportunity to develop her other characters, and introduce yet more.

There is definitely a shift in this book, and it now feels part of a series. There is plenty to keep all interested, as we now have a range of shape shifters introduced, and a possible slayer.. who just happens to be Jack’s love interest!

The series is out in a genre all of it’s own.. it’s not your traditional ‘horror’, nor is it a light vampire flick. There is some horror, and some sex, but also love, lust and humour.

I’m finding it hard to wait for the next one!

Review by Michelle

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Date of Publication: Published in three volumes, 1954-1955Number of Pages: 1178 (in one-volume edition, including appendices and index)

Synopsis: Four hobbit friends leave their beloved Shire on a quest to destroy the Ring of Power, bequeathed to Frodo Baggins by the famous Bilbo. They are helped along the way by the wizard Gandalf, a mysterious stranger named Strider, an Elf called Legolas, a Dwarf named Gimli, and Boromir, a powerful warrior from Gondor. They are met by tragedy and loss, unexpected friends and good fortune, and always adventure throughout their long journey. Finally, they are separated, and three groups must go their own way. Strider, Legolas, and Gimli come to the aid of the Rohirrim in their struggles against the wizard-turned-evil, Saruman. The young hobbits, Merry and Pippin encounter a mysterious race of beings deep inside Fangorn Forest, and unwittingly play an important role in the war against the dark forces. Frodo and his extremely loyal servant, Sam, go on their own to the land of Mordor, to destroy the Ring, which is slowly strengthening its hold on Frodo, in the fires of Mount Doom. They are followed, and sometimes helped, by the creature Gollum, who is obsessed with the Ring, which he once possessed. Each member of the Fellowship goes into the unknown, but finds in himself the courage to face it. None of them emerge from their adventure without being changed forever.

Review: I have to start out by saying that this is my favorite book of all time. I’ve read it multiple times, I’ve studied it, I’ve written a paper about it, and I’ve read books about it. For some, this can be one of those life-changing books. The first time I read it, I was astounded, not simply at the story, but the incredible beauty of it. Tolkien started his long writing career by trying to create a mythology for his beloved adopted country of England. He created two languages, Sindarin and Quenya, and made up stories about the people who spoke them. The Lord of the Rings is the result of over 15 years of work and a demand for a sequel to his classic, The Hobbit. When you read the story, you can not only see the landscape and recognize it, but you believe that it’s real. You feel like you’ve discovered some long-forgotten manuscript, written by a vanished race, something that must have existed.

Many people ask me how they should go about reading The Lord of the Rings. My answer is simple. If you’ve read The Hobbit, great, if not, read that first. Then you can move on to the more difficult The Lord of the Rings. If, after that, you find that you want to know more, then you can read the true work of Tolkien’s heart, The Silmarillion. Some people object to The Lord of the Rings, saying that it’s too long, it’s too dense, there are too many characters and songs, or that it’s too religious. I say that these people are too closed-minded. Remove any expectations from your mind, and take it for what it is: a work of heroic fantasy, inspired by the legends of the ancient Norse and Anglo-Saxons. Accept the songs and poems as relics of a forgotten age. Allow yourself to become absorbed into the story, and it’s an experience you can never forget.

Rating: 10/10

Reviewed by Sarah

Desperate Remedies by Thomas Hardy

Synopsis: Hardy described “Desperate Remedies” as a tale of ‘mystery, entanglement, surprise and moral obliquity’. Cytherea has taken a position as lady’s maid to the eccentric arch-intriguer Miss Aldclyffe. On discovering that the man she loves, Edward Springrove, is already engaged to his cousin, Cytherea comes under the influence of Miss Aldclyffe’s fascinating, manipulative steward Manston. Blackmail, murder and romance are among the ingredients of Hardy’s first published novel, and in it he draws blithely on the ’sensation novel’ perfected by Wilkie Collins. Several perceptive critics praised the author as a novelist with a future when Desperate Remedies appeared anonymously in 1871. In its depiction of country life and insight into psychology and sexuality, it already bears the unmistakable imprint of Hardy’s genius. (taken from Amazon website)

Review: This was Thomas Hardy’s first published novel and it seems that in an attempt to become established he chose the popular genre of sensation. Desperate Remedies has all the ingredients of such a novel – identity fraud, murder, detection, and atmosphere – but felt more like a Wilkie Collins novel than a Hardy. The writing seemed detached and it lacked the poetry and description that made Far From the Madding Crowd such a memorable, absorbing and beautiful novel. However, what Desperate Remedies lacked in Hardy’s usual writing quality it contained in plot and I found it an enjoyable and compulsive read and with the pace picking up during the last 100 pages it left me guessing right to the end. A recommended read.  

LibraryThing rating: *****

Other books read by same author: Far From the Madding Crowd *****, Jude The Obscure *****

Reviewed by JudyB

The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany

Synopsis: The Yacoubian Building holds all that Egypt was and has become over the 75 years since its namesake was built on one of downtown Cairo’s main boulevards. From the pious son of the building’s doorkeeper and the raucous, impoverished squatters on its roof, via the tattered aristocrat and the gay intellectual in its apartments, to the ruthless businessman whose stores occupy its ground floor, each sharply etched character embodies a facet of modern Egypt — where political corruption, ill-gotten wealth, and religious hypocrisy are natural allies, where the arrogance and defensiveness of the powerful find expression in the exploitation of the weak, where youthful idealism can turn quickly to extremism, and where an older, less violent vision of society may yet prevail.Alaa Al Aswany’s novel caused an unprecedented stir when it was first published in 2002 and has remained the world’s best selling novel in the Arabic language since.

Review: Another window on another culture. ‘The Yacoubian Building’ focuses on the occupants of one building and spans many classes. It tells the story of 5 different main characters woven together coming to different conclusions. This was a good book, it was well written but personally I didn’t find it compelling although the stories took on a greater impetus as the book progressed. Incidentally this has been made into a film – released in the UK in September 2007.

LibraryThing rating: *****

Other Books I’ve Read By This Author: None – would possibly look out for others.

Reviewed by JudyB

The Rain Before It Falls by Jonathan Coe

Synopsis: ‘What I want you to have, Imogen, above all, is a sense of your own history; a sense of where you come from, and of the forces that made you.’ Rosamund lies dying in her remote Shropshire home. But before she does so, she has one last task: to put on tape not just her own story but the story of the young blind girl, her cousin’s granddaughter, who turned up mysteriously at her party all those years ago. This is a story of generations, of the relationships within a family – and of what goes to make a child. Called “the best English novelist of his generation” by Nick Hornby, Jonathan Coe extends his range in this magnificent account of a Shropshire family in the last half of the twentieth century. (synopsis from Amazon)

Review: Yet again Jonathan Coe has gripped me through his wonderfully sensitive and compelling writing. The story is told through the tapes recorded by Rosamond prior to her death. We join other characters in the book who are listening to them for the first time and when there is a break in the middle we share the characters’ impatience to continue the story. Covering three generations the story reveals events that repeat themselves suggesting that behavioural patterns have consequences for the future. This was a very quick read – it’s not a long book, it’s easy reading because it flows so well plus once you pick it up it’s impossible to put down.

Library Thing rating: *****

Other books read by same author: The Rotters’ Club *****, The Closed Circle ****, What a Carve Up ****1/2, The House of Sleep ***1/2

Reviewed by JudyB

Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black by Harriet E. Wilson

Date of Publication: 1859

Number of Pages: 131

Synopsis:

This is the story of Frado, a mulatto girl who grows up in antebellum New England. Her mother, a poor white woman, abandons her after the death of her father, a black man, at the home of a rich, white family, the Bellmonts. Frado’s life with the Bellmonts is a mixture of happiness and agony. Mr. Bellmont and his two sons, Jack and James, and his daughter, Jane, take an instant interest in the pretty Frado, and send her to school to be educated. Her experience in school is a happy one, and she makes friends easily, much to the annoyance of Mary, the Bellmont’s other, more wicked daughter. Mary and her mother heap abuses on Frado, both in the form of beatings and scoldings. Frado is an indentured servant in the house, and is obliged to stay until she turns eighteen. She endures years of abuse, which only gets worse as her few allies leave her behind, whether by marriage or by death. The abuse takes its toll on her health, causing her to become gravely ill during her last few years in the family. Her faith and her self-reliance, plus the encouragement of her friends, enables her to survive and to find her way to supporting herself, both financially, and emotionally.

Review:

It’s extremely important to note Harriet Wilson was most likely the first African American to publish a novel. And yet, this book remains largely unknown to the reading public. It deals with the life of an indentured servant in the northern United States, and her experience with the racism of her white neighbors and employers. Wilson wrote the book for financial purposes: she wanted to be able to support her infant son. Unfortunately, her son died six months after the novel was published. With the little information that is known about her, it appears that the story she wrote was essentially autobiographical. With that in mind, it is startling to recognize that blacks in the North suffered the same indignities and abuses as blacks in the South. The book is a quick read (I read it in about 90 minutes) and is sentimental in tone. Frado is indeed a tragic character, and the descriptions of the violence against her are gruesome. I think this book is important for everyone to read, as it will enlighten readers as to the realities of our common past.

Rating: 9/10

Reviewed by Sarah

The official Patients sourcebook on Narcolepsy – a Revised and Updated Directory for the Internet Age.

The official Patients sourcebook on Narcolepsy – a Revised and Updated Directory for the Internet Age.
James N.Parker, MD
and Phil;ip.M.Parker, PH.D., Editors.
A reference manual for self-directed Patient Research.

Recently I decided I needed some help with my research on narcolepsy. The internet is great, but I sometimes feel I am going around in circles, either reading pages that lead back to previous pages, or pages that repeat previous pages, with minimal differences, or …nothing! So I looked for some books on the subject. It turns out there are very few. How come the world has seemingly heard of narcolepsy, albeit, mostly mythical rather than factual, and yet so few people have written about it? Ok, so only one in 2000 of us have the condition (American statistics), so overall, it’s not going to affect that many people, but it is still important that folk know about it, especially those of us who live with it. There were two books that seemed interesting, so I ordered them and looked forward to their arrival.

The first of these was The official Patients sourcebook on Narcolepsy – a Revised and Updated Directory for the Internet Age.
James N.Parker, MD and Phil;ip.M.Parker, PH.D., Editors. This describes itself as ‘A reference manual for self-directed Patient Research’. This description grabbed me immediately as usually folk are dissuaded from doing their own research, and discouraged from learning anything that might directly contravene information from their medics. Well, at least until lately. With the advent of the world wide web, this attitude is less common,  now being  challenged and replaced by tentative encouragement to research. There is a certain philosophical resignation that recognises that if people want information, they will get it one way or the other, so better to provide it, and make sure it’s accurate. Having said that, the web itself is a minefield of myth, misrepresentation, or inaccuracies, so the researcher still has to beware. A book such as this, I hoped, would lead me to pastures new – with information that could be trusted.

When the book arrived, I was into it straight away. I was not disappointed. The list of contents is long, and looks to be comprehensive. The first chapter deals with narcolepsy, what it is, who gets it, how it is diagnosed and treated. It also looks at how individuals and their famiies can cope with narcolepsy. At the end of the chapter is the first of several vocabulary builders. These are helpful for lay people who have not come across some of the words and terms used in the previous chapters.
The second chapter is about how to find guidance about the condition; organisations, associations, finding doctors and health services, and how to work with your doctors. There ia another vocabulary builder at the conclusion of this chapter. Chapters three to nine look at possible sources of information, including clinical trials , studies on narcolepsy, research from patients, books, multi-media information, databases for physicians and dissertations on narcolepsy.
At the end of the book there are several appendices, dealing with researching your medications, researching alternative medicines, finding medical libraries and more on problem sleepiness.

I have browsed some of these chapters and found much to interest me, but I have not followed up any of the web site links yet. The editors make the point that most of the links, regardless of origins and age will be updated regularly, so information should not be out-dated, even though the book will age. As is the norm with websites, one link will lead to others and then to others, so hopefully updating will happen automatically.

I am looking forward to using this book and intend to start very soon.
If you are interested in the book, it is published by Icon Health Publications www.icongrouponline.com/health and is available from online booksellers, www.amazon.com  and www.barnesandnoble.com  who carry all the titles in the series, including similar books on insomnia, restless legs syndrome and sleep apnea.

Ruth Hall by Fanny Fern

Date of Publication: 1855

Number of Pages: 272

Synopsis: “In 1852, Fanny Fern became the first woman regular newspaper columnist in the United States; by 1855 she was the most highly paid newspaper writer in the country, male or female. While she was capable of producing the tear-jerking prose popular in her time, she was most famous for her biting, satirical commentary on everything from the weather to marriage to a woman’s right to her own children. Ruth Hall, her first novel, is largely autobiographical and contains scathing portraits of her father, in-laws, and brother (the poet Nathaniel P. Willis) which earned her much criticism for her “unfeminine” attitude. The book concerns a young, happily married woman whose husband dies suddenly, leaving her with two children and no money. Neither set of parents is forthcoming with financial assistance and Ruth is left to fend for herself, which, after much trial, she does admirably, eventually establishing a name for herself as a writer. Hers is a female version of the American Dream, and Fanny Fern is careful to note exactly why that dream is more difficult for women to attain. She is just as careful not to let her heroine’s success and security lie in marriage – Ruth succeeds on her own, with her children, usually without the help of men. She is a wonderful character, and Fanny Fern’s prose sparkles with a delightful viciousness. Revenge can be sweet, and for Fanny Fern it was highly profitable as well: in its first few years Ruth Hall sold more than 70,000 copies.” ~From Amazon.com

Review: I was pleasantly surprised while reading this book. It’s of course sad that women still face many of the struggles depicted in this book, which was written 150 years ago. But the heroine, Ruth, faces her obstacles head-on admirably, and without complaint. Ruth is strong, courageous, and intelligent, much more so than her ill-fated husband, Harry. I’ve read many books from the nineteenth century in which the female heroines are portrayed as meek and inconsequential, never raising their voices against their injustices. Ruth does fit this picture when she’s married, never complaining about the abuses she suffers at the hands of her parents-in-law, not even after her father-in-law, a doctor, refuses to treat her daughter as she lay dying. But once Ruth is a poor widow, forced to provide for her two remaining daughters after her family refuses for help her, she fights against a society that is prejudiced against any woman trying to earn a living. She makes her voice heard, and eventually finds overwhelming success.

The story is made up of ninety short chapters. The chapters are sometimes less than a page long, being for the most part snatches of conversation that perfectly capture a year in a few sentences. There are characters who are introduced, who discuss the heroine or her many adversaries, and are never heard or seen again, having already served their purposes. Some may find this format choppy or confusing, but I felt that it fit the story very well. We are often seen through the eyes and conversations of others, so the author uses a technique that is very true to life.

Ruth reminded me often of Jane Eyre or Fanny Price. She is deeply religious, and God and prayer are a constant source of comfort and strength. This was perhaps my only complaint about the book. Many of the chapters ended with prayers and morals, and as a non-religious person, I found this tiring. Here is an example:

“The arrow shot at a venture may to thine eye fall aimless; but in the Book of Life shalt thou road many an answer to the wrestling prayer, heard in thy closet by God alone.” ~pg. 157

I would recommend this book to anyone who is a fan of nineteenth century literature, especially Charlotte and Anne Bronte, and also to people interested in feminist literature. Although this book does not feature any liberated women by our modern standards, Ruth still stands as a wonderful example of a woman fighting for respect in a man’s world, something that all modern women can identify with.

Rating: 8/10 stars

Reviewed by Sarah