"The Better Mousetrap" by Tom Holt

I realised that even though I am a huge TH fan, I never quite got round to reviewing any of his books at BWSG. Thinking about it, I realised it may be because I have always found his books hard to pin down.

Don't get me wrong, TH's books are rather readable, even if this reader does occasionally get lost in the story. Today, as I was chatting with the sis (who's also a TH fan), I finally figured out that the best way to enjoy his book is to roll with the plotline, far-fetched as it sounds, and try not to figure out the logical workings of the plot from start to finish. It is likely to give you a blinding headache.

I'm not exactly sure which genre he fits in, though fantasy would be my personal best bet, since his books always take you on flights of satiric fantasy that always make me feel slightly silly for chuckling out loudly while reading it in public transport.

"The Better Mousetrap" is a story about Emily Spitzer, a pest-control slayer and Frank Carpenter, the guy with a portable door who travels in the fabric of time to un-do "events" which, if happened, could lead to vast amounts of insurance being paid out. Emily is no ordinary pest-control slayer as well. She slays dragons, huge spiders.. you get the idea.

"The Better Mousetrap" is in reference to this death bounty that has been taken out on Emily. Someone wants her dead, conclusively. By a stroke of luck, she crosses paths with Frank and a few other characters who combine forces to eventually send the evil profiteer to her just desserts.

Typing it out, it all sounds rather bland. But I think part of the fun is in the reading for his books. He has a gift for taking digs at many aspects of our lives in a fashion that loses its punch in the telling. Or maybe it's just me.

Rating: 4 out of 5

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

Wiki link

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is definitely worth recommending as it is an epic tale of two young men in America during the war, how they fought for their ideals through their comic book creation, and it touches on many other issues such as mid-20th century American culture, the allure of magic and Houdini, and how the real world eats up idealists.

But it took me a long time to get through The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. While certainly a hefty tome, Chabon's poignant and accessible writing should have allowed me to finish it in half the time. But I couldn't - it got too sad. I reached some points where I felt like the story was rather like a Korean drama - heart-wrenching and depressing. Some parts made me feel like shutting the book quickly, cos if I did that, then maybe the tragedy would not unfold for the two main characters.

I guess it is the hallmark of a good book, for its reader to feel for the characters to this extent.
But did he have to make them until so cham?!?

8 out of 10 tear drop daggers.

(On a related side note, here's Chabon's interesting essay on The Recipe for Life )

"Company of Liars" by Karen Maitland

I got to agree with Gary on this, "Company of Liars" (henceforth shortened to "COL") is a good read. It packs enough of a story and mystery about this band of travellers who are fleeing the plague to get you to keep going and reading on, right up to the last page. Everyone has a secret to tell in this story, and arguably the one takeaway of the story is the truth does not always set you free.

The storyline rather reminds me of Canterbury Tales, the literary tome by Geoffrey Chaucer, which is about a tale of pilgrims travelling in old England and how they each take turns to recount a story. Beyond this, the resemblance ends. Where Chaucer tells his tale in old English (*winces remembering how painful it was to read the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale for 'A' levels*), this story is narrated by Camelot, whose secret is perhaps the hardest to guess at.

I won't spoil the ending for you, but if you want an interesting read to take a couple of hours off, do consider this book. It has mystery, tragedy and drama rolled into one.

Thanks, G for the book!

Rating: 4 out of 5

"Kingdom Come" by J.G. Ballard

It took me an unusually long time to complete this book. But I stuck to my guns and finished it... eventually.

The plotline is mind-numbingly simple: newly-sacked advertising executive Pearson travels to suburban England from cosmopolitan London after he learns of his father's death from a random shooting in a suburban mall. In his quest to find his father's killer, he hopes to find the father he never knew as well as find some meaning in his own life. He becomes embroiled in a vast conspiracy which eventually embroils him in all the kitsch, glitter and façade of the consumerism sham.

My thoughts about the book, simply put: I don't like the book because it is disturbing and way out in the weird curve. Before doing this review, I did some research and learnt that Ballard is well-known for creating dark and pessimistic landscapes of the world. His vision of the world usually invokes the wasteland and post-modern decay at its most bleak form. No wonder.

Kingdom Come's extremity made it very depressing to follow, which accounted for why I stopped the book several times before finishing it. Notwithstanding, I have to concede that Ballard's prose and vision of a world dedicated to serving a consumerist god is rather compelling to follow.

The book left me with a mildly disturbing aftertaste in my mouth, much in the way (Philip)Roth's books work for me.

Rating: 2 out of 5 geek points

Random trivial: Ballard passed away in Apr 09 this year. Read more about him here.

Company of Liars by Karen Maitland

I usually avoid mystery/thriller fiction. It's probably because I grew up reading a lot of it, Christopher Pike, then Stephen King, and well...good ol Dan Brown.

Am I ashamed to be caught reading the genre? In some way, I am. Mystery/thrillers (I'm not sure what's the exact term) seem to me to be a little too mass market, too accessible, too formulaic and hence, too popular. Then again, cheem books like Ulysses seem rather daunting.

Oh well, leaving that to be resolved another day, the last novel I finished was Company of Liars by Karen Maitland. There isn't a wiki on the novel so here's the Amazon page. The cover caught my eye some time ago, but I've been hesitant to pick it up cos I thought it might be a funky iteration of the Da Vinci code or something (the book is classified under 'Historical Fiction').

I'm glad I eventually bought it though cos I was hooked after the first few pages. Set in England during the spread of the plague in 1348, a ragtag bunch of misfits band together to escape the plague. Maitland tells the story very well, she manages to transport me to the raw and grim setting of 14th century England, and follow her characters in their search for food, shelter, and escape. This is one mystery/thriller I will proudly read in public. 8 stars.

"The Kite-runner" by Khaled Hosseini

As I recall, Don pointed this book out to me more than a year ago. But strangely enough the desire to pick it up never became compelling enough for me to act on it. Then by chance I happened upon it last month while browsing the shelves of the library and decided to add it onto the pile I was juggling in my hands.

[Sidetrack: I'm a glutton when it comes to borrowing books from the library. My "eyes" are always bigger than (a) my actual borrowing limit (which is why I have "swiped" my parents library cards ever since I was old enough to go to the library on my own; and (b) my actual bandwidth to finish them within the 3-week deadline set by NLB. The good people of NLB have since revised the policy to allow for free 1-time renewal AND a maximum of 6 books each, which has needless to say sent me into transports of delight.]

"The Kite-runner" (henceforth shortened to "TKR") didn't make the final discard pile as well, so I ended up borrowing it. And even then, the compulsion to read it was never quite there. Today being a self-imposed stay at home day as I was rather down, I ended up picking it up and completing it at one sitting.

For me, the best part of TKR was when Amir's self-redemption and self-discovery started to happen two-thirds into the story, and how he grew to accept the truth about his father and attempted to do the right thing by his nephew. The war backdrop of Afghanistan interested me less somehow, that was how absorbing the tale of the 2 half-brothers' fates were for me.

At one point when the fates of the 2 half-brothers diverged, I was always conscious of the need to want to turn the page faster while reading the section on Amir's life in America, to find out how Hassan had similarly fared. It was doubly poignant and I think rather well-done of the writer to choose to reveal Hassan's story by having another character speak about what happened to him, indirectly rendering his fate all the more tragic and echoing his choice to always be humble and live in the shadows.

(You can read Don's review here, which I did on completing the book today as I was curious enough to read his review of it again now that I had read the book.)

Rating: 4 out of 5

"The Horrific Sufferings of the Mind-reading Monster Hercules Barefoot, His Wonderful Love and His Terrible Hatred" (HSMRMHB) by Carl-Johan Valgren

A rather uncanny coincidence, that by chance the 2 book reviews I'm about to review today has to do with children, social status, and how both books actually use the picaresque storyline to different effect. It's also rather freaky, on another front, given that of the 6 books I borrowed, I had to read the 2 that bore the most similarity together, when the remaining books could not be more different.

But enough of that.

The first, HSMRMHB, is a picaresque fable recounted in the 3rd person of the love story of the ugly Hercules and the beautiful Henriette. Both were born in a brothel on a stormy night in 1813, and from that day on, their fates were entwined.

Hercules was born deaf and mute, and was so ugly that for the first few years of his life, the procuress of the brothel kept him locked away from the external world, for fear of horrifying the world who could not take the sight of a freak, and of harming a child that whilst ugly, nevertheless had a pure heart that beat only for Henriette.

Beyond his disabilities, Hercules had a gift for reading people's minds and conversing with them in their thoughts. This was to be both his undoing and his salvation in his later life, when he used it to aid him in the search for Henriette, and eventually in his quest for revenge for the murders of Henriette and one churchman who had sought to protect him from charges of demonology.

Another interesting point: do go and take a second look at the book cover in the beginning of this post. You will realise the cover is written in the freak show poster style of that time, and deliberately laid out/ rendered in the style of posters advertising for freak shows -- don't ask me how I know that, but I think I came across something similar before. It was the reason why I picked up this book in the first place, though eventually I was to realise that this cover was an indirect reference to the time Hercules spent as the main attraction in a traveling freak show.

The original book is actually written in Swedish, and while I do not know if any subtle nuancing is lost in the translation, I do think this version remans quite a good read. Though at times, I tend to find the prose a bit awkward, I think overall it still works and whatever that comes across funny, can be chalked up perhaps to the language style of that time.

Hercules' devotion to Henriette is the thread that binds the whole story together, but unlike the usual love story, I thought it had rather dark overtones in its way it placed Hercules as the central figure of the story, and had him struggling against church doctrine, social norms and being the 'outsider' in a normal world. It lingers after you finished the book, but beyond that I guess nothing earth-shattering.

Readibility: 3 out of 5

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon

Wiki of TCIOTDITN

[Unrelated to the geek review - I'm pretty darn irritated with Blogger and my inability to upload a picture successfully. Don't know if it's cos of singnet or whatever silly reasons but it's really getting on my nerves. Rargh.]

TCIOTDITN by Mark Haddon is one of those bestselling must-read books like The Life of Pi and The Kite Runner which I never quite got round to picking up. Well, in the recent Kino National Day sale, I did, which I'm glad for.

Christopher, the 15 year old main character, is autistic and the story is told from his perspective. Through this first person narrative, it opened up my eyes to how the mind of an autistic person works. And it is truly humbling. When we see individuals behaving strangely in public, we automatically keep a wide berth, and, more often than not, label them 'crazy' or 'disturbed'. But as I read how Christopher reacts to people and his environment, and conversely how they react to him, it made me sad to be reminded that our society treats people who are 'different' badly.

I laughed, and I cried reading TCIOTDITN - while the book had plenty of lighthearted moments, there were times when it was just heartbreaking. It truly is a contemporary must-read.

8.5 ninjadogs.

After Dark by Haruki Murakami

Wiki of After Dark!

After Dark is a nice and slim novel, spanning 200 pages of which I completed in about 2 and a half sittings. That's the beauty of Murakami, his stories are always very readable and time seems to fly by as you delve into each chapter.

After Dark is one of the more surreal stories I've read by Murakami. And while I got to the end in one piece, unlike Paprika where I experienced several brain farts along the way, I felt that there were certain parts of After Dark that whooshed over my head. It's like a chef that took great pains to create a delicacy, he spent a lot of time combining the right ingredients, applying intricate cooking methods, and laying it out beautifully on a plate for my consumption. And all I did was pick it up, pop it into my mouth and go," Mmm! Nice!"

I do recommend the book for some nice light reading if you're on a plane or something, just don't expect to fully taste the metaphysical speculation and exploration of compassion and alienation if you're going to wolf it down like me.

7.5 out of 10 ninja nose pellets.

"House of Sand and Fog" by Andre Dubus III

Plot synopsis by Wikipedia can be found here.

"House of Sand and Fog" (henceforth shortened to "HSF") is not one of the usual books that I will pick up on reading the introduction at the back cover, mainly because the introduction at the back's so blah, and gives no clue into the gripping storyline that had me tuning out everything but the book during the few days I sat reading the book in the express bus on the way to work.

My colleague was the one who highly recommended the book to me, telling me it was a good read. As I recall, we were discussing "Revolutionary Road" and I was raving about its storyline and we got to talking about other books, and somehow this came up.

The storyline, if you have read the plot synopsis by Wikipedia, is innocuous enough, but what I liked about HSF was how the character built up was cleverly interpersed with the plotline. Usually for novels, one tends to root for one side or the other, but HSF had me sympathising with both sides, and biting my nails (figuratively, of course!) as to how the tussle for the house would resolve itself.

The story is told from Behrani, the disposed Iranian Colonel who flees Iran to seek a better life for himself in America, and Kathy Nicolo, a recovering drug addict, whose house has been taken from her due to a mistake by the authorities. Behrani seizes the chance to better his life by buying the house at a low price, which starts the struggle for who has the rights to the house. The tussle drags in the whole Behrani family and Lester Burdon, a police officer.

I won't spoil the book by talking about the ending here because half the enjoyment of the book was wondering how this Gordian Knot would resolve itself. I confess I was still hoping for a happy ending, but really, as the book progresses, one really realises that things often have a way of evolving until it is all but out of control, and careening towards the one sure path of tragedy. And only when it is too late, did one realise that maintaining a stand actually costs so, so much.

How tragic human life can be, that only with hindsight is it 20/20. How apt the book title, literally "sand and fog".

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

(P.S.: No picture of the book, not for lack of trying. A search did not carry the version I read. :P)

"The Other Boleyn Girl" by Philippa Gregory

Introduction to the Book can be found here, courtesy of the good people responsible for Wikipedia.

This is an entirely engrossing piece of historical fiction; I started on it during the last few days of my trip in London, and was devouring it, at the expense sometimes of not wanting to venturing out of the house, to finish the book. It also gained more meaning to me since I visited one of the homes of Henry VIII, being Hampton Court Palace, and saw a temporary exhibition about Henry VIII and his women, the king who is featured in this novel.

A bit about this novel without which, I guess my later ramblings may not make much sense. The novel is set in the time of Tudor England, where Henry VIII is king. He is married to Katherine, the Spanish princess, but Queen Katherine's inability to bear him a son to succeed his dynasty increasingly drives a rift between the couple. Into this scene enters the Boleyn siblings, Mary, Anne and George, of the Howard family, jostling for political favours from the King.

The story is told from Mary's voice one in which she starts off being the King's mistress, before she is supplanted by her more devious older sister, who eventually becomes Queen through her scheming (Henry VIII divorced Katherine by setting himself against the Church, claiming that the marriage was a sham).

"The Other Boleyn Girl" is a reference to the intense sibling rivalry between Mary and Anne. Although the Boleyn siblings (George included) banded together when it came to external foes and their political ambition, there was always competition between Mary and Anne. In the waxing of one's fortune, the other's star inevitably waned. Hence when Mary was the King's mistress, whilst Anne hated her sister's rising star with a virulence, she nevertheless assisted her and was there for Mary in her time of need; in that period, Anne was the other Boleyn girl, the sister who was nothing and only a hanger on to her sister's rising fortunes as the King's bedmate. Anne's discontentment with being the unfavoured one eventually leads her to grab at the opportunity to supplant her sister when the King starts to lose interest. So it was that Mary became the other Boleyn girl, the girl that history all but forgotten in favour of her more scandalous sister who was executed for adultery.

I liked the play of sibling relations in this book which is set against the wider court intrigue that takes place in the King's circle. I found the depiction of the complex emotions, of familial loyalty interlaced with personal happiness, sisterly love interwoven with intense sibling rivalry, and many others a thoroughly interesting read. The plight of well-born females in Tudor England who are treated little better as political pawns to be traded for the King's favour is also well-documented, and rings as a bitter peal throughout the book. The fates of the aristocratic females in this book are all bad; in Mary, who eventually chose to become a simple farmer's wife and mother, the book perhaps hints at the best fate for women of that epoch.

The friend who lent me the book recommended the film to follow-up, though she cautioned that the film is definitely not as richly-textured as the read. Still, I'm rather game to give it a try: back when the film came to the big screens, I missed it because I couldn't find time to go. Now that I've read the book, getting my hands on the show suddenly seemed imperative.

Geek rating: 5 out of 5

Nation by Terry Pratchett

Nation, as the author says so himself, is pretty impossible to summarise.
But he does so anyway in the following video, which is much better than any other description I've come across on the interwebs. Do have a listen if you have 3 min to spare:

Though aimed at young adults, Nation is a fantastic read for all. I enjoyed the island setting, which, if not treated carefully, can be campy and stale. But Pratchett made it as enjoyable as it can come, and the political and religious satire got me contemplating on our modern world, as well as what Pratchett himself might be contemplating on his own personal level.

As you might already know, I'm a big fan of Terry Pratchett and the Discworld series, and I wonder from time to time how is his battle against a rare form of Alzheimer's disease. I really hope that he can somehow overcome the illness. All the best Mr Pratchett!~

9 out of 10 papervine cannons for Nation.

Paprika by Yasutaka Tsutsui

My first book by Yasutaka Tsutsui was the short story collection Salmonella Men on Planet Porno. I was really amused by Tsutsui's wild imagination and zany stories, so I picked up Hell next, which I finished on the extended remix of a bus ride to Melaka. While Tsutsui's concept of Hell was interesting, there were too many Japanese characters in the plot that I got pretty confused and kept having to flip back to check who was who.

But there was still positive energy spilling from the Planet Porno experience, so I gave Tsutsui a third try - Paprika. My first encounter of Paprika was the anime film which, after watching the first 20 minutes, I gave up on completing cos everything seemed rather surreal and random.

The Paprika novel wasn't such a mindfuck as the anime, the story generally flows well and the idea of dream monitoring and intervention to treat mental disorders was rather intriguing. Towards the end however, the mindfucking began, where Tsutsui applied a complex algorithm to the lines that divided reality and the dream world that the characters were in - and everything was turned inside out/upside down/round and round.

Luckily, my brain has a self defence mechanism to cope with such random weirdness (so that it doesn't explode and turn to mush), it steps back and swims along with the current instead of trying to fight back with logic. Oh, a horrifying giant Japanese doll with blood red lips just turned up from nowhere in reality/the dream to kill everyone. Right ho.

If you ever ended your compo with "...Then George woke up with a start, his clothes drenched in sweat. Phew, it was all just a dream." maybe you should take a crack at Paprika. You might have a new found respect for how far 'just a dream' can take you.

6.5 out of 10 ninja cracker snacks.

"Profit from the Panic" by Adam Khoo & Others

I know my friends, Gary, Ju and Lays, will take digs at me for the long interim since my last review. But what the heck, the drought has got to stop sometime and today's it. This book is not fiction as you can tell. It actually straddles between the genres of self-help and financial guidance. Anyhow, it talks about how any recession, especially a big one, offers an opportunity for us to literally profit from the panic.

His premise, which is copiously backed up by 50 years of economic data, is that when things are at their worst, its time to pay serious attention to picking up stocks that are oversold but are fundamentally sound and viable. Of course, one needs to do the usual due diligence, such as knowing what the company does, whether it has comparative advantage and if its seriously under-valued. And of course, we need to at least know how markets work, how to find market bottoms and tops, and which sectors generally outperform the market in a recovery etc.

I find it an easy read, notwithstanding all the charts and analyses. In fact, anyone with some knowledge of basic economics and the stock market can dive in and be educated fairly quickly. In fact, I've been paying heed and putting to work some of the things I've learnt. And although I've always known that there's a way to comprehend and make the market work for you, I used to trade and invest on rumours and hear says. Now, I make sure I do the necessary homework before I go in. Not that there's much to play with cos I didn't divest on the way down last year, but I can at least start recouping some of the losses.

On the whole, I give this book a 3.8 out of 5 for its easy read and applicability. Go ahead and try if you don't believe me ; )

"Exit Ghost" by Philip Roth

Cut to Wikipedia's plot synopsis.

Roth's books alone have the power to depress me by the sadness of the human condition. For this reason, while I admire his books for provoking further thought, I deliberately introduce intervals between the time I read one book to the next.

I think it has been about a year since I last read a Roth book (before this). The title of which I forgot, and I believe I didn't finish the book. I think it disturbed me.

"Exit Ghost" is no different. Nathan Zuckerman's desire to enter into mainstream life, then eventually running away from it, as told from the first person perspective, is a compelling and depressing one. At the end of it all, he eventually realises about the inexorability, the utter futility, of running against life.

I can't say I liked Roth's books, but the feelings they stir in me always last beyond the time I close the book at its final page.

Geek rating: 3 out of 5?

Books by Walter Moers

When a book passes the 'So-So' to 'Good' mark in my books (pun intended... teehee), I usually try another book by the author. It's my way of assessing whether the author will rank it up there as one of my favourite authors, or will just drop to the reserve team - which I will only choose from when I run out of ideas.

Case in point - The City of Dreaming Books and The 13 1/2 lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers.

Found in the science fiction section of Kino, Moers' books have always stood out for me amongst the wild eyed orcs and hooded mysterious heroes-adorned covers of other sci-fi books amongst the shelves. The cost was prohibitive however, over 30 bucks, but one time, during a 20% sale, I took the first plunge with The City of Dreaming Books.

The big fat book had illustrations interspersed throughout the story. By the author himself. I was sold. And I was subsequently bowled over by Moers creativity and imagination. He came up with a zany world called Zamonia, filled with colourful characters such as literary dinosaurs and a sinister shark grub (think shark head and worm-like body).

So top marks for Moers' critically acclaimed novels?
Not quite, at quite a few points along both stories, Moers went a little overboard with descriptions, which sometimes stretched for pages. Sure, the very original world and characters he created were great, but it did feel that he could be overindulgent at times. I ended up glazing over some sections of the text to move along with the story.

I guess Moers will have to settle for the reserve team, though he does feature quite high at the top.

"Mort" by Terry Pratchett

"Mort" has been a long time coming -- at least 6 months since I started reading TP I would think. I was frustrated because the office's Library Delivery Service (LDS) has refused to deliver the book to me since last year; each time I selected the book, somehow there was some administrative rule blocking me.

Sometime in end Feb this year, to my unalloyed delight, LDS finally came around to the idea that I was determined to have the book and granted my wish. (Whoever were the administrative powers that be that facilitated this, and if you are reading this, thanks!!)

I had a good time reacquainting myself with the fantasy world of Discworld in this book, and had a grand time laughing at the antics of Mort the bumbling hero, and also Death, who is not quite the stuffy eternal old man I always imagined him to be when reading other Discworld books.

TP's humour is spot on as always, and I find in finishing his book how I always like how he takes manages to give familiar themes his unique stamp of humour and insight.

Nothing earthshaking, but always good for a read, is TP. Geek rating: 3 out of 5

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

Norwegian Wood is a novel by Haruki Murakami first released in 1987, which is named after a Beatles song. Here's the wiki synopsis.

Interestingly enough, Murakami disliked the overwhelming popularity of the novel (It sold 2 million copies in Japan) so much that he left Japan for Europe for 5 years.

The thing about Murakami's writing, and this must also go to the credit of the English translator Jay Rubin, is that it is light and simple. There are no heavy descriptions that some writers try to toss your way, which my brain tries to catch like an oily bowling ball.

With Murakami, despite how different his characters are from me and the people I know, and how surreal or dreamlike the story may be - he still manages to conjure this sense of empathy and awe within me.

If someone were to ask me what his writing is like, I'd say it's like reading a transcript of a beautiful dream. It doesn't always make sense but when you wake up, you feel a lingering sense of melancholy that makes you wish you could have that dream once again.

9 out of 10 stars.

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Anansi Boys is the first 'pure' Neil Gaiman novel I've read, my first taste of Gaiman's writing was in Good Omens, but it's hard to say where Terry Pratchett begins and where Neil Gaiman ends.

Anyhoo, dispensing with the detailed synopsis of Anansi Boys, here's the wikipedia link. Essentially it's the story of 'Fat Charlie' Nancy, unwitting son of the spider god, Anansi, and brother of "Spider" - a suave and charming version of Charlie, who steals his girlfriend and messes up his life.

I was rooting for Fat Charlie the whole time, cos he's such an endearing anti-hero, and I empathised with his plight. I also liked one of the underlying themes of the story, which is to have self-belief and confidence.

I finished Anansi Boys in record time, because it's such a fun read and Gaiman's writing is smooth like tauhuay. It's so easy on the palate, and before you know it, you've gulped down the whole bowl with relish.

9 out of 10 youtiao. (ninjas enjoy tauhuay too)

"Choke" by Chuck Palahniuk

Link to Wikipedia's plot synopsis.

I didn't really like "Choke", but I can't quite put a finger down as to why I don't. It could be the episodic narrative, which toggles between Victor's present day and his confused childhood, or it could be the utter lack of elaboration of -- to use his words -- the "bordello of the subconscious", or his inner thoughts.

I also found the book rather ambivalent.

• Victor runs a scam so that he can get extra money to pay off his mother's burgeoning medical bills. He exonerates himself from ethical considerations by claiming that he is letting everyone have the opportunity to play the hero.
  
• At the medical centre where his mother is staying, he admits to perpetuating a multitude of "crimes" laid on him by other patients, in an effort to let these people find their inner peace.
• He is a medical student dropout, but he thinks of going back to school one day.
  
• He has a sexual addiction problem and knows it. But he attends sexual recovery workshops to cruise for new partners anyway.
  

And then there is his upbringing. His mum of the alternative upbringing ideas who went in and out of jail, who sprung him regularly from foster parents to teach him about the workings of the world. Who ran scams of a scale that the police and foster parents had to put pressure on him to tell them where she could be found. Whom Victor feels wedded to in a way that a son never completely weans himself from the influence of his mother, hence the struggle to meet the monetary demands of his mother's medical bills.

It's really a story that has no clear lines drawn, no satisfactory "end of the story" type of book. All rather sad if you ask me.

Geek rating: 2.5 out of 5

"Middlesex" by Jeffrey Eugenides

The central protaganist of the story is Calliope (or 'Cal' as he is later known), who was born a girl but is actually more a guy. This novel is narrated in the first person by him, and details the fascinating and humourous genetic history of the Stephanides family, all three generations of it.

I first saw this book in a bookshop a few minutes before I was due to rush off to watch a movie with friends. Reading the first few had me chuckling, and rather reluctant to leave the book, so the next time I had the chance, I bought the book to read, thinking that I will satisfy my curiousity about the book in the 10-hour to-fro bus ride to KL and back.

I didn't finish it at the bus ride, because I was distracted by clouds, a breathtaking landscape, and most of all, sleep. It took me a couple more readings to finish it, but at the end, I think it's quite a decent book, with its share of humour and sad moments.

Eugenides has a flair for telling a story of such epic proportions (any story that spans several generations in a telling qualifies as 'epic' for me), and I really enjoyed the way he wrote about the fortunes of the Stephanides family, first as an immigrant family in America experiencing all the strangeness of the melting pot culture, then as an all-American family in which the younger generation only knew of their grandparents' beginnings through the eyes of their elders.

Cal's struggles in finding his own sexual identity were quite touching as well. I liked that Eugenides gave play to the fact that Calliope started off wanting to be just any other girl, but finishes off eventually coming to terms with the fact that he is actually more male than female. Of taking time off to find himself, of having the courage, especially, to do so. A coming of age with a twist.

Also interpersed in Cal's flashbacks of his family history are moments of his present life. In his wariness to believe that someone will eventually accept him, and then, when someone really does, I thought it was a very nice ending to a story that starts off because of a deficient gene.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Wicked by Gregory Maguire

I've gotten a dig or two by my dear gf who says this looks like chick lit. It does, doesn't it? Such a female friendly cover. I was a little shy about reading it on the train. It wasn't a coincidence that I was carrying notes in my hand as I stood reading in the mrt, conveniently blocking the cover.

I gave a copy of the book to a colleague of mine as well. I told her, via IM, that I read the book and I highly recommended it. Her reply was, "Wait, isn't this chick lit?"

*fumes*

Anyway, I stand by my choice lah. It is a good book, unfortunately Kino stocks Wicked with only this cover version. I came by it because I was curious who this Gregory Maguire guy was, there seemed to be quite a few recommended books by him in Kino, A Lion Among Men amongst the more recent, so I picked up Wicked and had a flip through.

Interesting premise. I was keen to see how Maguire could add a new dimension to a rather one dimensional character, the wicked witch of the west from The Wizard of Oz.

You remember her don't you? Green, ugly, cackled a lot, melted to death?

Well, Wicked is a revisionist story of Elphaba (the witch) - how she grew up, how she studied, how she loved, how she hated, and at the end, how she died. After reading the book, you'll understand how she came to be the witch, but because of the many events leading up to that change, I found myself sympathising with Elphaba, and rather disliking the movie potrayal of her. So, girly cover notwithstanding, I really enjoyed Wicked. 7.5 out of 10.

"The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak

To say I'm a war story fan -- of all genres, running the whole gamut from fiction to non-fiction -- is a bit of an exaggeration, but I've noticed from time to time how much I enjoy stories about a good war being fought and the characters that play a part in it. This is probably one of the ungirly traits a friend recently attributed to me -- my book tastes don't run to chick lit, though I used to read quite a fair bit of romance novels -- but hey, no skin off my back.

I would think the appeal of a story with war as the backdrop lies in its inherently universal themes of struggle, courage, challenge and love. In war, everything whittles down to the bare essentials of survival. War brings out the best and the worst in people. And of course if you buy the classic psychological mumbo-jumbo about cathartic effect and vicarious living, one also likes to read such books because one would rather live it through the safe medium of books rather than be in it.

"The Book Thief" (henceforth shortened to "TBT") is a great book about a German girl's life in WW2 Germany. I wouldn't go into the storyline since I won't be writing too much about it in this review. She steals books from time to time, but I wouldn't exactly label her a book thief. If you like to know more, check out Wikipedia. Or better yet, go read it. It's not a difficult book to read.

By turns humourous and heart wrenching, I really dig the personification of Death and the way he narrated Liesel's story. He narrates from the sidelines because he is never among the living and because it is Death, we are reminded all too often of the story's context -- in between watching Liesel, he collects souls from both sides of the war, a reminder that in death, everyone is equal.

In one of the numerous scenes of death in the book, Death said, "It kills me sometimes, how people die." Words of endless sorrow from the über soul collector, how infinitely sad can that be, because he will quite literally never die.

The denizens of Himmel Street and people of Morching are a colourful cast of characters, if normal folk trying to cope with war's vagaries. Definitely a powerful and touching story, and one of the most memorable I've read for a while.

5 out of 5.

Link to G's review, offering another perspective of the book. Thanks for the recommendation, even if it took me more than half a year to pick it up!

"Dark Moon" by David Gemmell

Dark Moon (henceforth shortened to "DM") is my second book by David Gemmell. I started a few pages of it on the plane on the way to Taipei and finished it on the return leg of the flight from Taipei to Singapore.

Brief plot synopsis: DM is a fantasy story centering around 3 heroes: Tarantino, warrior with 2 souls; Karis, woman general and master strategist; and Duvodas, lyricist with a talent to heal -- and kill -- with his songs. Each have a part to play to save the human race from extinction by the savage Daroth race, a race which Duke Sirona unknowingly releases from the spell they were under for many years.

Were it left to me, I would never have picked up the book, but I did so at sis' urging, and also because I did the unthinkable by not bringing a book with me this time [Sidenote: I usually do, if only because I can only stand so much in-flight entertainment], and sis' book was the only one available. (Why I didn't bring is another story, and this blog is not the place to belabour it). Sensing that she had in me a captive audience (on account of the flight and lack of reading material), she generously allowed me to read the book.

I have to say, and this I say unreservedly, that I was hooked by the story. Gemmell's talent of telling a tale is compelling and he weaves the characters into the plot very well. It is a story of courage, humour and love, of flawed heroes and not so evil villains. In Duvodas' revenge killing of the Davoth's "life nest" (I forgot the exact term) and in his subsequent redemption via the survival of his infant son, one sees hope. In Karis' death (oops, spoiler!) one sees the demise of a good warrior, efficient general and a complex woman who had more good in her than she herself believed.

It is ironically, Tarantino's character that I didn't like the most. From the way the story was written I gather he was meant to be the main protaganist of the story, but I found it a pity that Gemmell did not give more play to his dual personality and the inner conflicts he suffered as a pacifist/ killer. But then again, maybe the storyline wasn't meant to be one in which the spotlight is thrown entirely on him, for DM is a tale of war and struggle, and everyone in the theatre of war is a hero in his own way. Note that you don't have to die to be one though, because for the living, carrying on with life is sometimes the most heroic act of all.

Geek rating: 4 out of 5