The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, narrated by Simon Vance

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


An amazingly good mystery that takes the time to wrap up ALL the loose ends. My only quibble is that the clue that breaks the leading mystery could have been discovered sooner if not for a very obvious question that the investigator should have asked much earlier in the investigation. Larsson knows what to tell, what to show, and what to leave out, making for a story that moves along quickly, despite so much ground being covered. His characters are interesting and realistic, despite the heavy objectification of the females.

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Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey

Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I wanted to like this more. I know I'm supposed to like this more. However, clever does not equal funny, in my opinion, and you can see this book trying to be clever. Sure, the characters have some great lines, but in a story, should you be able to see those lines coming and groan when they arrive? As a historical fiction, it's good on the history side. The idea of two men running away from the French Revolution to post Revolution America is a good set up for comparing cultures and politics. That the two men come from two different backgrounds adds some depth. But the characters are so contrived to show off those backgrounds that I couldn't see them with any sense of realism. They're farcical in a realistic setting, and that's not a good read.

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The Secret Miracle, edited by Daniel Alarcon

The Secret Miracle by Daniel Alarcón

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This is as much a book for fans of writing as it is a book for aspiring authors. A series of questions are posed to a large (unwieldy if you don't recognize most of the names) of published authors and their answers are are given. Either some of the authors didn't answer all the questions or their answers didn't make the cut, because every author doesn't answer every question. That must be were the editing came in, I guess. This is a book about the personal habits and opinions of some writers - that's it. They all have different approaches to their craft, so in the end, this is a book that reassures that there is more than one way to finish a book.
As a reader, I found it interesting to learn a little something about authors whose work I have admired and those I haven't. Strangely enough, there were no surprises. Chabon is an arrogant word slinger and Colm Tóibín is a man who works for a living.

If you're looking for a book about the grind of writing, I'd recommend Steven King's "On Writing". King is in this book, but his nuts and bolts "put your butt in the chair" method is lost among all the artistic self-hype.

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The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell

The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Cornwell's take on the Arthurian legend is both violent and introspective. Of course there are battles: big battles, small skirmishes, fights between two men to settle disputes, fights between entire kingdoms to settle a slight. And Cornwell knows how to write battles so that the individual cost isn't lost in the description of the vast landscapes. But he also knows how to tell the story of what is going on inside the characters heads, why they fight or don't fight, and that there are emotions beyond greed that once turned the course of history. He approaches Arthur as someone who probably was a real man in some context, that all legend has its roots in a truth of some sort, but beyond borrowing a few key players of the legend and a very broad nod at the setting, this is his take on a war lord that was a good, if flawed, man, and the people he surrounded himself with. Cornwell also brings religion into the story more than most re-tellers of this legend, and the way he plays Paganism and the new upstart Christianity against each other is not only educational, it's amusing.

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Hypothermia: A Thriller by Arnaldur Indriðason

Hypothermia: A Thriller by Arnaldur Indriðason

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


A basic procedural made more interesting in that none of the cases being investigated by missing persons detective Erlendur are "on the books" investigations. This is a realistic investigation: it's solved through dogged police work. That doesn't make for a flashy story, but it does make the heavy amount of coincidence believable in the end. The setting was entirely new to me, and I liked reading a book that was written as if I'd be familiar with the place. No heavy cultural or geographic information dumps, it was immersion from the very beginning.

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The Four Seasons: A Novel of Vivaldi's Venice by Laurel Corona

The Four Seasons: A Novel of Vivaldi's Venice by Laurel Corona

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


I'm taking away a whole star for using Vivaldi's name in the title when he's only a reoccurring supporting character in the story. The theme of the story, how art can shape lives as much as lives shape art, is shown through the lives of two sisters, orphaned as infants and raised within the very interesting patronage system that made Venice the art center that it once was. As a romance, there's a distinct lack of any kind of passion, but the setting, as a HF, is pretty well done. There's a sense of receptiveness with the descriptive passages, a problem when your entire story takes place in what was a very insular, small town kind of city. I had the feeling that the idea for the story came first and that Corona invented characters to populate it - they weren't nearly as dimensional as the orphanage, casas, and of course, this being Venice, the canals.

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Dark Arrows Great Stories of Revenge Edited by Alberto Manguel

Dark Arrows Great Stories of Revenge by Alberto Manguel

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The important thing to keep in mind when reading this collection is that the subtitle is "Great Stories of Revenge", not Stories of Great Revenge. As Manguel points out in his introduction, ...."there are many different types of revenge...", and it soon becomes apparent that what one culture calls revenge, I might call justice. A few of the stories go to the darker extremes, such as Henrik Von Kleist's "The Foundling" (so over the top, you'll think it was written by Alexadre Dumas); and August Derketh's "Miss Epperson" where the crime goes on and on but the retribution is swift. All of the writing is good (even the Faulkner story that I had to force myself to read), and this is a great way to get a taste of the darker side of some of the world's better and lesser known authors.

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The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Short review: loved the alternate history setting enough to slog through a rambling parody of a mystery. No, I don't think it was meant to be a parody, it simply read like one to me.

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Break by Hannah Moskowitz

Break by Hannah Moskowitz

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Taking the author's age (16 when this was written), this would be a strong 4 star rating. Also, the first three quarters of the book, regardless of how young the author was, would earn 4 stars. But it's a grown-up, read the whole book world when you publish, so there you have it - 3 stars.

Moskowitz does a beautiful slow reveal of the screwed up life that Jonah has partially been given and partially created for himself. It's a coming of age story, in that unless Jonah learns what he can and can not control, he's not going to make it alive. As this is something that a lot of adults never figure out, there is a real sense of danger of how far things will go, not only with Jonah's personal demons, but also in how he deals with the family and friends that his instincts tell him the truth about but his heart isn't ready to believe.

The story changes speed, unfortunately, when it starts to build for a climax rather than an ending. Yes, it makes sense that someone who's been doing horrible self destructive things would do something even more self destructive when pushed to his limits, but Jonah's never shown the least bit of impetuosity in his actions. He always put the needs of others first - that's how he got to where he ended up. If there was something that caused that sudden major personality change, I missed it.

But up until the change up of the finish, this was a very good book.

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Bysantium by Stephen R. Lawhead

Byzantium by Stephen R. Lawhead

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


3 1/2 stars, actually.

Three distinct 9th Century settings - an Abbey in Ireland, a Viking settlement in Scandanavia, and the cities and deserts surrounding Busantium, now known as Istanbul - make for a LOT of interesting historical fun and facts. The reader goes on a journey of discovery with Aiden, a young monk who starts out as part of pilgrimage to deliver a gift to the Emperor Basil. Along the way he's captured, the rest of the monks are presumed dead, he becomes a slave and is traded and loaned out as many times as an epic requires, and runs into enough intrigue to keep his classically educated intellect alive and kicking. The book is a fun read, in a swashbuckling/religious politics mash up sort of way. I'm not sure the plot needed to be quite so, well, byzantine, but with the title what it is, I can't say I wasn't warned.

The one thing that kept me from really liking the book was the portrayal of the Barbarians. Were they really so Hagar the Horrible? I understand cultural differences, but at times they verged on comic relief. Barbarians yes, buffoons probably not.

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