Authors’ photographs. Is it me, or are they just a very bad idea? I am a huge Guterson fan. Not so much though since I accidentally saw his picture. He looks more like some guy from Baywatch than the amazing writer I had in mind (elderly, grizzly). Disappointed! Still, East of the mountains is one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read.

So far, I have loved every book Guterson’s ever written. Snow falling on ceders, Our lady of the forest, and I hope to love The drowned as soon as I get it. Best one so far remains East…

Ben Givens isa 73-year-old retired surgeon. His wife has dies a year ago and he has just been diagnosed with inoperable colon cancer. Givens sets out on one last journey, to the rural, apple-growing region of Washington State, where he grew up. His plan is to kill himself and make it appear to be a hunting accident. Crossing the mountains into eastern Washington, his real journey begins.

I can’t describe how this book moved me. The great love between Ben and his wife, the longing, the memories from World war 2 when they were in Italy together. The relationship with his daughter and his dogs. The description of hunting small birds.

Old age, loneliness, cancer: actually, it’s also a good case for euthanasia. If there was a good, decent way to step out of life then men like Ben wouldn’t have to drag their old bones of into the wilderness and pretend to have a hunting accident to spare his daughter’s feelings!

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One Day David Nicholls

I went on a bit of a pub crawl and somewhere along my third caiperovska I lost the rather tepid book I was reading, Hidden Talents. A lucky thing as it turned out, because when I schlepped my hangover to the English Bookstore the next day I picked up One Day.

As the title of this post suggests, I REALLY liked it. It’s lad lit, or whatever Mike Gayle and Nick Hornby’s stuff is called. A genre I like, as it’s generally about a time I was out drunk, sad and single as well and it’s often recognizable and very, very funny.

One Day uses a trick that could have worn thin very quickly: it describes the same date, more or less, for twenty years and uses this day, St. Swithin’s Day, to describe the lives of a boy and a girl. Bolshy Emma and posh Dexter hook up for a one night stand after graduation and then, miraculously, turn into best friends. Over twenty years they struggle with life and with each other through failed relationships and awkward careers.

In a way, it’s a shame (here be spoilers) that Dex starts working in tv and ends up addicted to drugs and booze and sensitive Emma only has ONE real boyfriend, the very unfunny stand up comedian (which I thought was a hoot and a half). Here’s a very pretty girl and she chalks up one boyfriend and one affair? In about TWENTY years? While Dex gets to have sex and do drugs all the time, but of course he’s not happy. What red-blooded twentysomething boy wouldn’t be unhappy with unlimited sex and drugs and rock&roll?

Also, the actual start of the friendship isn’t that believable. They have a one night stand and then all of a sudden Emma is staying with Dex’s posh parents and calling his dad a fascist and voila, they’re best mates for life? I didn’t get it.

However, the most important thing, I guess, is that I finished this book in two, very long, sittings and I’m still sorry there wasn’t more because it was a memorable ride.

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I’ll fess up to begin with: I don’t particularly like Nicolas Sparks. Books like The Notebook seem too contrived to me, and to lack any real feeling. However, I am living on a Spanish mountain and it’s been raining so badly that most of the roads are cut off, so I’ll pretty much read anything! And to be fair, it wasn’t all bad.

John is a soldier, who falls in love with a devout southern belle. They plan to spend the rest of their lives together while he goes overseas to soldier on, but just as he’s ready to get out of the army 9/11 rolls around and he feels he has to stay in the army to serve his country.

I guess what intrigued me is that the story hinges on 9/11. That reference made me feel like I, too, was part of history, like people who lived through the second world war, also a topic of many a book. Other than that, this is not a very interesting tale. John himself is an oddly sensitive guy, for a hardened soldier, and we get to hear a lot about his motives, so though I didn’t really like him, I did get, sort of, why he did the things he did. Savannah, his love interest, on the other hand is one big cliche: she’s very, very nice. Builds shelters for the homeless, goes to church, loves and honors her parents, wants to teach special needs kids. I felt like slapping her. But that’s just me. All in all, not that bad a way to spend a Sunday afternoon in front of the fire.

I just saw that there’s a movie as well. Wonder if they kept the ending? Maybe ditched the brother? Curious!

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Thomas Cromwell by Hans Holbein

Winner of the booker Prize, rave reviews (among others “a truly great English novel”) all over the place and a historic novel: how could this possibly go wrong?

It starts out well. Thomas Cromwell as a young blacksmith’s son who gets beaten up by his dad on a regular basis. He flees, maybe killing a man, maybe not: it’s all part of the legend he will soon be as he rises far beyond his class and turns into Henry VIII’s closest adviser.

Henry is trying to rid himself of Catherine of Aragon to marry Anne Boleyn and Cromwell is just the man to lend a hand.

To be honest: it’s kinda boring. I’ve been reading Samson’s series on the (post) Cromwell era and it’s just so much more exciting! Mantel’s tale drags on and on and the promise of Wolf Hall, where exciting, stuff is happening, never actually materialises. Of course Wolf Hall symbolises the end of Cromwell: it’s where Jane Seymour lives and most of us remember what happened to Henry VIII’s wives. Brave or boring? Well, I’ll go with brave to end the story as if it were open ended.

However, though I never liked Thomas Moore, I find the goody two shoes-version of Cromwell, who never carries a grudge, is kind to dogs, women and children and works disinterestedly for a better Britain where men can worship in freedom rings false.

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Nancy Mitford: The Pursuit of Love

The Radletts of Alconleigh are the pinnacle of fashionable, aristocratic eccentricity, from scary (& barmy) Lord Alconleigh (who, like Mitford’s own papa, likes to hunt his offspring with bloodhounds, much to the amusement of the children themselves), to his wife, absent minded Sadie, their flamboyant daughter Linda, and the other six lively Radlett children. Seen through the eyes of steady cousin Fanny, we follow this family through hasty marriages and Great love affairs, as World War II closes in on their vanishing world.

The four Mitford sisters have had a lot of books dedicated to them. Fun, daring and aristocratic, they were the subject of lots and lots of gossip between the two wars, not in the least because two of them were openly fascist. Nancy Mitford was an accomplished novelist. This is my personal favorite.

Linda is the kind of cousin you either love or hate. Her cousin Fanny adores her, I’m not sure I would have as well, cause she’s charming but also very, very exasperating. Still, I would have loved to spend afternoons in the hon’s cabinet and even being hunted by bloodhounds sounds so much fun!

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When will there be good news?

Private detective Jackson Brody is back for yet another misadventure. Kate Atkinson is one of the few people in the world who can make dreadful crimes funny, interesting and almost poetic. Jackson doesn’t catch a break this entire book, poor lamb, must be hard work!

On a sunny summer’s day, a little girl called Joanna walks through a wheatfield with her mom, her baby brother and her sister. Out of nowhere a man comes up who kills everyone but Joanna, because she ran. And ran. Thirty years later, that man is about to be set free.

I adore Kate Atkinson. Haven’t read anything quite like it, ever. However, I was slightly disappointed by When will there be good news?. She does knit together an awful lot of coincidences in this book, even more so than usual. And the weirdness seems to spin out of control. And will Jackson and Louise finally get it together? For Pete’s sake?

In short: Not nearly as good as Case Histories, but even a less than excellent story on Jackson Brody is ok by me. Let’s hope there’ll be more!

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The plot revolves around the marital problems of father and son, Hugh and Randall Peronett. Both are faced with an identical situation at different points in time. They both have to decide whether or not they should leave their dull wives for their more exciting and attractive mistresses. While father, Hugh, made the decision to stay with his wife, some twenty-five years before the events of the novel, the son, Randall, leaves his wife for his mistress, inflicting heavy damage on his 14 year old daughter, and breaks up his family.

Basically, men having a midlife crisis and thinking that the grass is greener. And it aint! Randall’s lover (hardly a spoiler) is only in it for the money (from the sale of his dad’ Tintoretto), Randall’s only in it to bang her. Not really the road to happiness. And Ann, Randall’s wife, is coveted by half the neighbourhood, so she can’t have been that boring.
I know it is supposedly about Murdochs Platonic view of the soul, but all in all it’s a strange and rather boring book. The usual ill assorted group of acquantances, an evil child, lots of love lost. Made me want to shout “Get on with it!”.
Read Under the net instead, is what I’d say!

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Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon. Yikes.

Oh my, I am being very unfashionable indeed, following up John Grisham with Dan Brown. If it pleases my reader, I read quite a lot of stuff in between, including Love in a cold climate, which I will review, but as Dan Brown is such a hype I thought I’d throw my two cents in.

I rather liked The Da Vinci code, I thought it was cleverly done, if very far fetched. I loathed Angels and Demons which bored me to tears, twice, and then I simply gave up. Then came Digital Fortress and thingy Point (can’t even remember. Critical point? Aaah, Deception Point). Actually rather enjoyed both of them, much more than Da Vinci. More excitement, especially Deception Point was a rush, an absolute page turner.

So now there is The Lost Symbol. And to be honest, I find Robert Langdon among the most dull and uninspiring people to ever head up a page turner. For no aparent reason women find him irresistible. Well, actually, Brown makes a point of making him swim fifty lengths every morning at some ungodly hour, so maybe that’s why. Brown has stated in interviews that Langdon is “the man he wishes he could be”. Do you think that’s why Brown makes him swim those fifty laps, ’cause he’s too lazy to do it himself?

Langdon sounds like a dead bore. And ever since Tom Hanks, of all people! played him in the movie I know he’s not Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones-hot either. Langdon rather reminded me of Agatha Christie’s wonderful character Ariadne Oliver, a crime writer who wrote a book about a detective from Finland. As mrs. Oliver’s books grows more and more successful, she starts to despise her own invention and often laments she made him Finnish, because it requires so much research. I bet Dan Brown wishes he’d invented a slightly more dashing hero.

Then there’s the action, which I found very reminiscent of the bit I got through in Angels & Demons. Quite gory, but oddly uninteresting, with drowning the girl in the octopus tank and ripping the guy’s arm off (trust me, these are hardly spoilers). Well, in Angels and Demons they ripped out a guy’s eye, here it was a whole right arm, potato, potato.

Then there’s the plot, with a lot of masonic mumbo jumbo, hidden meaning and “noetic sciences” that, to sum it up, allow you to cure cancer by thinking happy thoughts. I wasn’t that impressed. Langdon’s mentor and dear friend, (and yet, this is the first time we hear about him) Peter is kidnapped to coerce Langdon into going on an elaborate scavenger hunt to unlock an ancient portal that should bestow God-like powers on the crazed, tattoed kidnapper.

So, what did I like about it? Well, it’s the little nuggets of fun facts, stuff about Washington: who knew it was originally called Rome? Or that they kept a vestal virgin, well sort of? And only stopped because of fire regulations? Yay! It’s quite an exciting read, and I love a good scavenger hunt, but I do hope somebody in a big white Volvo runs down Robert Langdon. Soonish. I think Dan Brown would be a much happier man for it.

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Bleachers John Grisham

I know reading John Grisham is about as unfashionable as reading Dan Brown right about now. There´s a scene in Third Rock from the sun where they´re all reading John Grisham and they´ve accidentally switched books and hadn´t even noticed.
“What´s yours about?”
“Mine is about a young Southern lawyer struggling against justice”.
“So is mine!”

John Grisham has written stacks of legal thrillers and I actually quite like ´em. But he has also written books on sports. Football to be exact.

I can´t tell a quarterback from a goldfish, so I probably wouldn´t have read this if I hadn´t thought it was one of his legal thrillers. I read two, one about a mean racist on death row and one about an evil company poisening the water, and I really liked them.

The slow pace, the easy plain language. So when I saw Bleachers, I didn´t stop to consider it might be about something else alltogether. Sports. My evil nemesis. Never liked sports. I played basketball in high school, I like walking, I just really don´t like sports on tv. Any sports. Well, maybe ice dancing… Yep, I am one hundred percent girl.

In Bleachers former players of a high school football team sit around in the bleachers as their old coach lays dying. They talk about the old days, those who were supposed to become stars, while they hold a vigil.

Neely Crenshaw, former all star quarterback, now a down on his luck real estate salesman, also returns to his home town to pay his respects to the coach he loved and hated and has to deal with all the mistakes he made, including the girl he let slip away.

Bleachers´ all about mistakes, and regrets and getting on with things. It´s plain and simple, but it struck a cord with me. All those big guys, who used to be stars in high school and are now mostly nobodies. Reminiscing on their glory days. Well worth the read, even if, like me, you don´t like sports.

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Unfortunately, there is a limited number (only 12!) of Miss Marples. So I turn to Poirot sometimes. I quite like him and his little grey cells, but I prefer him when he deals with small matters. A missing cook, an odd game of bridge, a girl found dead in her room.

I never did like the “big” novels on international crime and rereading The Big 4 strengthened me in my thoughts. A visitor comes to Poirot´s flat. He dies on the spot, but mumbles something about the big four. This is a top secret organisation, consisting of four very evil people who stop at nothing to get to their Goal. Though we´ll never find out what exactly they are planning to do and why all this killing, maiming and kidnapping is really necessary.

It seems Poirot and Hastings are constantly being kidnapped and nearly blown up. All this over excitement – Miss Marple never gets kidnapped!- makes it a very uneven and un-Christie like book. Can´t wait to get back to a “normal” Miss Marple, like A murder is announced or Sleeping Murder!

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