Category: books

Douglas Coupland – Hey Nostradamus!

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Skillful, original and weird.

Can’t say I loved the book. But it is certainly memorable.

Hey Nostradamus! (2003) … centred on a fictional 1988 school shooting in suburban Vancouver, British Columbia and its aftermath. This is Coupland’s most critically acclaimed novel. …

The novel comprises four first-person narratives, each from the perspective of a character directly or indirectly affected by the shooting. The novel intertwines substantial themes, including adolescent love, sex, religion, prayer and grief. …

Coupland has expressed his concern that the killers of the Columbine High School massacre received more focus than the victims; this is his story about the victims of tragedy. …

heynostadamas

The Kill Artist by Daniel Silva

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killartistWarren recommended Silva’s spy novel series featuring Israeli agent Gabriel Allon.

The Kill Artist (2000) is book #1.

Gabriel Allon was 9 years retired from the espionage game, an art restorer and sailer.

His old boss Ari Shamron convinces him to return to hunt down Tariq al-Hourani, a terrorist mastermind.

I enjoyed the first book and will continue to book #2.

The Night Manager – miniseries

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Years ago I read John le Carré’s The Night Manager (1993)

It is his first post-Cold War novel, detailing an undercover operation to bring down a major international arms dealer. …

The Night Manager is a British-American television miniseries …

The six-part serial began broadcasting on BBC One on 21 February 2016. …

The series received widespread critical acclaim, with The Sun calling it “one of the greatest series of all time”. …

Reviewing Episode 1 for The Guardian, Archie Bland began by noting, “The Night Manager is as sexed up as television drama comes. In Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie it has bona fide international stars; in John le Carré’s source novel it has a pedigree of untouchable grandeur. The palette is as sumptuous as one of our hero Jonathan Pine’s beautiful hotels.”

Click PLAY or watch a trailer on YouTube.

Much Ado about Macbeth – audio edition

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My brother Randy was a Prix Aurora nominee for Best English Novel. 🙂

These are the best Canadian science fiction and fantasy literary publications of the year.

 

Much Ado

When drama teacher Paul Samson decides to put on a High School production of Macbeth, he forgets that it isn’t just The Scottish Play, it is The Cursed Play. And Paul soon learns just how cursed. After grappling with his principal, the PTA, his family, and his students, he must contend with witches, ghosts, and skeletons from his past.

The show is destined from the outset to end badly, but no matter how desperate or dangerous circumstances become, Paul cannot cancel the play. Theatre has but one rule and one rule only: the show must go on.

The story is set in our old High School – Viscount Bennett. The witches hang out across the street at the Dairy Queen.

Much Ado about Macbeth has very high reader ratings on both Amazon and Goodreads.

I read the paperback version. And then the audio version when it came out on Audible. I liked the audio better as reader Harold Squire did make it come to life with different voices for different characters. (One of the witches is difficult to understand, however.)

The book did not win. That honour went to A Daughter of No Nation by A.M. Dellamonica, Tor Books.

Randy had a second nomination for as organizer of the When Words Collide book festival. And he did win. Congratulations.

official website – Randy McCharles

Shibumi by Trevanian (1979)

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Keith introduced me to Trevanian. He quickly became one of my favourite authors. For some reason I decided to reread his 4th book, my favourite.

Trevanian was a pseudonym for Rodney William Whitaker.

Shibumi is set in the 1970s and details the struggle between the “Mother Company”, a conspiracy of energy companies that secretly controls much of the western world, and a highly skilled assassin, Nicholaï Hel. …

shibumi-cover

The novel begins with Hel, retired in his late fifties in a small castle overlooking a village of the Haute-Soule, in the mountainous Northern Basque Country. He is an honorary member of the local Basque population, and his best friend among them is Beñat Le Cagot, a truculent Basque nationalist and bard, with whom he shares an immense love for freedom and an addiction to spelunking. …

It’s a book of philosophy disguised as a James-Bond-like spy novel. I highly recommend it.

Travanian died in 2005 age-74.

satoriTravanian’s daughter and literary executor, Alexandra Whitaker:

When it was first suggested to me that we should allow Trevanian’s characters from Shibumi to be used in a new novel written by someone else, I was not enthusiastic. …

Over the years many readers had expressed the hope that Trevanian would write another novel featuring Nicholai Hel, but he steadfastly refused, uninterested in covering the same ground twice. …

… Trevanian himself had not been against the idea when it was mooted to him some time before his death. While he had no desire to write about Nicholai Hel again himself, he was not hostile to the idea of Nicholai’s coming to life again — but only under certain conditions, of course. The character of Nicholai Hel — the aji of Nicholai Hel — must be respected, and the book must be of a quality that would not disappoint his readers.

The search for a writer began and led swiftly to Don Winslow, a talented thriller writer whose knowledge of the Orient, of military history and martial arts suited him admirably to the task. …

trevanian.com

Satori (2012)

Sadly the only audio version is in German. Someday I may get around to reading the Kindle version.

I finally read ‘The Corrections’

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After many false starts I’m proud to announce I reached the end of the audio version.

Friends insisted I’d love Jonathan Franzen’s master work.

Many have ranked The Corrections amongst the best works of contemporary fiction.

the-corrections

Without question Franzen is a genius in putting words together. His writing is smart, beautiful, poetic, surprising and insightful.

Yet I don’t recommend this book.

The rambling plot of The Corrections revolves around a miserable multi-generational dysfunctional family.

I agreed with Angela who said:

At no single point before the last 10 pages of this 566-page monster did I feel a shred of sympathy with any of the characters.

Franzen tries too hard. Includes too much. I’d love to see him try to tell a great story instead of being such a precious wordsmith.

Thumbs down.

Anthony Ryan – Blood Song

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Author Anthony Ryan has a degree in Medieval History.

His Raven’s Shadow series was recommended to me. Book 1 Blood Song (2013) is very well written. He initially self-published Blood Song “in a fit of desperation and bitterness following utter rejection by the publishing industry” before getting picked up, finally, by Penguin.

Blood Song… When 10-year-old Vaelin Al Sorna is delivered by his father, Battle Lord to King Janus, to the House of the Sixth Order, Vaelin is told that he has “no family now save the Order.” …

Through years of brutal training, Vaelin endures and rises as a leader among his fellow students. Along the way, he also learns that giving him to the Order was his late mother’s idea, and that she hoped to protect him—but from what, he has no idea.

Hints of a long-lost Seventh Order and questions about King Janus and the Dark cause Vaelin to question his loyalties. Ryan balances brisk action with tangled intrigue in this promising debut.

review – Blood Song

That all said, it didn’t hook me enough to continue to the next books in the series:

Tower Lord (2014)
Queen of Fire (2015)

World Gone By by Dennis Lehane

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World_Gone_By_novel_cover_(Mar_2015)
Recommended. I downloaded this book based on a glowing review by Stephen King.

Joe Coughlin is a gangster who tries to go straight.

“World Gone By” picks up in the 1940s, with World War II underway and Joe applying his talents to finding ways to profit from it.

There are two boys who matter a great deal to him: Tomas, his nearly 10-year-old half-Cuban son, whose mother died violently in the last book; and a ghost child in antiquated clothes, who appears to Joe and Joe alone.

Oh, and one other thing: There’s a contract out on Joe’s life, even though there’s no apparent reason for anyone to get rid of him.

NY Times review

Next by Michael Crichton

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Chrichton NEXTBack in the day I read a lot of Crichton, a fast paced story teller. Many of his science fiction works end up in cataclysm.

This book had potential but ultimately ended up a hodgepodge of ideas with no real plot. Not recommended.

Next is a 2006 techno-thriller novel by Michael Crichton, the last to be published during his lifetime.

… argues against patents on naturally-occurring genes, against corporate ownership of individuals’ cell lines, and in favor of legislation to abolish these. …

Michael Crichton died unexpectedly age 66 of lymphoma.