More Books...

Shardik

It is as the sleeve blurbs says "an epic allegory" and a "human saga". However, I have to say that it is a little heavy on the epic and a touch light on allegory for my taste. Perhaps I came at this book from the wrong angle, but I read Stephen King's "gun slinger" series in which Shardik has a small cameo and thought "you know, I really should read that". The book is well written and I really liked and agreed with the points about humanity it was making, but I spent way too long thinking, "yea, I get it" only to find that we were going to stick with the same theme for the next 100 pages just to ram the point right home. For me, the book could have been an awesome 300 pager and still had room to make more use of the fact that it has a massive kick-ass bear as the title character :).

Slaughterhouse 5

I read this book and instantly became a Vonnegut fan, writing these notes has reminded me I still have a few novels lined up to be read. A very personal book, which also, at times, trips the bizarre-o-meter, it really is a proper classic. Sometimes you enjoy a book because the story is interesting and the writing isn't bad enough to jolt you out of the world your imagination has created. Other times you get to read a book where the story has been crafted, by a real author, and you are transported into someone else's world with its own set of rules and laws. To describe the story itself in any way that had real meaning, I'd probably have to re-print the book, but it's kind of about the Dresden fire-bombing from an antiwar point of view.

Faust

Yea, one of those "I really should read it" things that I decided to cross off my list. It's an epic poem about Faust's deal with the devil, their beguilement of the lovely Margaret and Faust's desire to repent of his treatment of her.

I felt the reward to reading this was more in the destination than the journey. It was hard work at the time, but I am really glad I read it and can now enjoy certain passages on re-reading. I also feel a bit smarter when Stephen Fry quotes it on QI :)

The Wind-up Bird Chronicles

This is one of those books you read with no pre-knowledge of the plot. I am loathe to describe the plot as I really am not going to make much sense without describing a fair bit of detail. I liked the style of writing quite a lot here and I think this originally lead me to expect more from the story than I eventually feel I got. This is actually a minor criticism as there are some outstanding set pieces and a few memorable moments. It's well written and gripping to the end - I think I just expected spectacular as opposed to good.

The Grand Design

A very readable popular science book, fascinating content and well presented. I read it in two plane journeys, simply because it's absorbing and maths light. In someways I was prepped for a little bit of the science by reading "The Omega Point" a much older work (also popular science) so some of the concepts were familiar. I immediately fell for the idea of M Theory because it complements the theory of psychological reality I have been thinking about for a fair while. The very basic idea being that there are a collection of overlapping mathematical theories that define the universe rather than one unified theory to rule them all.

A Farewell to Arms

I like Hemingway, a lot, but the start of the book confused me a little, the constant overuse of "and" to link descriptive sections made me wonder what to make of the narrator. Eventually I think it just made me trust his naivety, it's something I remember about the book though. I felt connected to all the characters, not always immediately, but eventually and strongly. There is a section of the book where you know for a long time that something bad is in the post, this gave me a tremendous sense of foreboding. The arrival of said "bad post" was delayed by the plot making me became more and more emotionally involved as I tried to guess which way the story would go. Highly recommended from a personal point of view, but I can imagine people with whom the emotional attachment to the characters doesn't take disliking the seemingly unnecessary elongation of the plot.

The Master and Margarita

I really like the Russian authors and so when this book was recommended to me, I moved it to the top of my list. It contains a retelling of the tale of Pontius Pilate with a nice twist on the Faust legend (It's synchronous that I read Faust then this in succession without knowing the plot of this book). A well written and evocative novel which left me thinking about the story for quite a while afterwards. I found the novel held my interest from the start, but the ending is worth getting to even if you don't.