Literary Brooding

A Christmas Carol -  Charles Dickens It has been a while since I have read Dicken's Christmas Carol and I am glad the book club suggested it. For all the awful television remakes when you finally go back to the source material it is a wonderful discovery. I had forgotten the humour in the tale and the wonderful character descriptions. My favourite was " the little tailor, whom he had fined 5 schillings on the previous Monday for being drunk and blood thirsty in the streets ." It is was good to come back to the story and revisit this well known tale.

The Buried Giant  Kazuo Ishiguro Paperback, Allen & Unwin, released 5 March 2015  " Let's try Axl. Let's both of us try. It's as if we have mislaid a precious stone. But surely we'll find it again if we both try ." Set in Briton post King Arthur, we meet Axl and Beatrice, an elderly married couple who are struggling to remain relevant in their village. It is a harsh environment that they live in but you soon come to learn that there is something wrong. A mist has settled over the land and people are no longer able to remember, even events that have happened that day are quickly forgotten. Village life is hard for Axl and Beatrice and they are shunned due to their age and it is against this backdrop that Axl and Beatrice decide it is time to visit their son. From here we are taken on a journey of memory, loss, revenge, love, betrayal, pain, and devotion. " Forgive me, mistress. This country awakens so many memories, though each seems like some

The Serpent of Eridor by Alison Gardiner Paperback, 272 pages Expected publication: January 28th 2015 by Troubador Publishing Ltd Alex’s parents are missing and they have sent him a message that he needs to meet a person on an island who can help. Leaving behind his nasty Aunty, packing his hamster Skoodle, Alex’s begins the journey. Travelling by boat to find the man who can help, Alex is attacked by an assassin. In the middle of a typhoon, Alex takes off in a lifeboat to avoid his attacker and finds himself of an island where the animals can speak. The hamster, the monkey, the bear, the snake and Alex are off on adventure to return a jewel. This Gardiner’s first novel and is a solid effort. The world that she has created is vibrant and believable. The characters are well fleshed out and have their own strengths and weakness. Where the novel did not work for me was in the telling of the story. There needed to be a less is more approach as at times too much information i

Hit and Run   Maxine O'Callaghan Brash Books - release date February 2015 Delilah West is an old fashioned Private Investigator, she knocks on doors, she asks questions, she follows a trail, she gets kicked to the ground but she always gets back up. In this mystery (the third in the series) Delilah witnesses a hit and run accident. What seems cut and dried case turns out to have a few more twists and hazards for Delilah before she can say case closed. Delilah is a take no prisoner kind of person and life has not been kind to her. Even though this the third book in the series you will be able to read it as a stand-alone as O’Callaghan provides the right amount of background at the right time. The writing is snappy, engaging,  the action is plenty and Delilah makes a great character. She is tough, is carrying quite a bit of personal baggage and is trying to rebuild her life after some serious setbacks. The mystery is complicated but not in the way of being bogged down with d

The Mark of Athena  (The Heroes of Olympus #3)  Rick Riordan Kindle Edition, 574 pages published October 2012 Finally the seven demigods are together to undertake the quest that will hopefully stop Gaia from being woken and taking over the world. The action is fast, the twist and turns keep coming, the battles are furious and Riordan has crafted an engaging novel to keep you turning the pages to find out what is happening next. Riordan has continued telling the story from multiple points of view for a couple of chapters and then switching to another character. On the whole the chopping from one character to another mostly works but towards the end the limitations of the approach become apparent. Leo, Hazel and Frank locked in a room, with baddies on the way, have to explain after the fact how they escaped rather than the reader being part of the adventure. At times I wondered about why we were switching between characters as it did not seem to really propel the story along. T

The Fictional Woman Tara Moss Harper Collins Publishers, 2014, 328pages "You must believe women are of equal value to men and deserving of the same rights over their bodies and lives." Tara Moss p288 Tara Moss has been labelled many things and in this part memoir and social commentary she sets out to dissect those labels. This book is dense in ideas, analysis, and research you find yourself finishing each chapter pondering what has been laid out before you. That is a good thing as there is no lecturing in this book as Moss is not trying to push an agenda. Let me be clear Moss is not telling you what to believe, whether to be a feminist or not, she is clearly present and articulating a series of issues, scenarios, and stereotypes that are flung at women (and men) on a daily basis. What Moss does is explore the issues through research and personal experience and questions why does it have to be this way.  The questions are posed as to why in today’s society when we ha

A Vision of Fire Book One of The EarthEnd Saga Gillian Anderson and Jeff Rovin Simon and Schuster, 292 pages, published 2014 Okay I will admit the cover saying Gillian Anderson was an immediate hook and I had to read this book. When you were a hard core X Files fan and by that I mean watched the show with the lights out, the appeal is always going to be there. I was not deterred when I realised that the book was written in collaboration with Jeff Rovin. Caitlin O'Hara is a child psychologist who is called in to treat the Indian Ambassador's daughter after she witnesses the attempted assassination on her father. What she initially appears to delayed post traumatic stress takes on a far more sinister turn. Caitlin finds herself trying to connect a series of bizarre incidents involving two other teenagers and to add further fuel to the fire, tension between India and Pakistan is verging on outright war. There is a great deal to like about this book, it is intelligent,