| Sunday, Mar. 31, 2002 “Lonely Hearts” by John Harvey. Crime novel set in Nottingham, published in 1989. Fairly average, but not bad. Found the ending a bit unsatisfying. The bad guy gets introduced two thirds through the story and it is so obvious who he is, that it takes out all the suspense. I mean, who else could he be, that late in the story? It never gets explained in a satisfactory way, why he does what he’s doing. And one more thing that got on my nerves: The clothing of people gets explained to the very last item and fabric pattern. Why, for god’s sake? Ok, setting the scene, fair enough, but I don’t find it particularly entertaining to plow through more than a page of clothing, until all the people in the room are sufficiently described. Boring! 6 out of 10. Or 2 out of 5, whatever your scale is…. Not good enough to read another one of his, at any rate…. I read “The Hobbit” when I was about 13 or 14 years old. I liked it, but did not quite feel up to tackling “The Lord Of The Rings”. A couple of years passed and eventually , after reading Fantasy for years like a Hoover, I lost interest and gradually moved on to Science Fiction, Star Trek novels at first and easy stuff like Alan Dean Foster. Eventually I ended up reading Aldous Huxley, John Brunner, David Brin, Greg Bear and lots of so called Hard Science Fiction. I did not find Fantasy interesting anymore, I had read all about dragons, dwarves and elves that I cared for. But it always staid in the back of my mind, that I really should read it, as it is such a major work. And those of my friends, that had read it, all said how great it was. So I finally bought a one-volume-edition some time back. Then the talk of the movie started and I decided to watch that first. I did at Christmas. Great movie! I especially loved Ian McKellen as Gandalf. But I have a thing for him anyway, he is a great actor. Back to the book – I finally started to read it. Have not gotten far yet, Frodo is still in the Shire…… but so far I like it, it is beautifully written. Tuesday, Mar. 26, 2002 Lindsey Davis, “A Body In The Bath House”, I was so eager to read this, I even bought it as a hardback, did not want to wait for the paperback edition. Another good, old friend. Only one of her books I have not read, either the second or the third installment of her Didius Falco-series. I am not even sure anymore….Probably one day I have to read them all again, from the start, to refresh my memory. Well, anyway, Falco and Helena finally, after 2 or 3 books of struggling with their building contractors, have their bathhouse finished, just to find a rotting corpse buried underneath it… Ancient Rome has never been this much fun. Never mind the crime story involved, I don’t actually read these books for their crime stories anymore, I just read them to see what happens next to our hero Falco and his weird family…. In this one he ends up traveling to Britain, with most of his hapless relatives in tow. And he keeps moaning about the British weather endlessly. Don’t I know it, I feel with you, Falco! Lots of tongue in cheek and plenty of good bar brawls. Great entertainment and a staggering body count to top the excitement….Recommended. You like Ellis Peters? Forget it, this is much better! Thursday, Mar. 21, 2002 Anne McCaffrey, “The Dolphins Of Pern”, a very long time since I read my last Pern-novel. I read them all (as a teenager, time flies!), except for the last 4 installments. The three others are now on my latest Amazon-list. It was a lot of fun! Documented by the fact, that I only started the book yesterday morning. Ok, it only has 370 pages, but still… Anyway, great read, it was like meeting an old friend again. Not sure, if people that do not know the Pern-novels, will get much of a kick out of it. In that case I would recommend to start at the beginning, it makes more sense like that. And then I found this entry by Matt Dickinson in my geocities-guestbook today. Go and have a look! That is so cool, I have had a posting by a bestselling writer……. Should I reply? He left his e-mail address…..Is he fishing for compliments or just wants to advertise his new book? Shucks, who cares, it’s still cool…..and it worked, I put his book on my Amazon-list as well…… Wednesday, Mar. 20, 2002 Tom Clancy, “Clear And Present Danger”, pretty average on my Tom-Clancy-Scale. Or so I thought. It took its time to get going, but then the latter half of the book really did take of. Very good, if it just did not take so long to get going. Quite different from the movie, too. More people, less action from Jack Ryan, obviously a lot deeper than a picture could be. And I finally found out, how Clark and Chavez met for the first time. Everything seems to lead to “Rainbow 6” at the moment…. Started to read a fantasy novel now. Too many thrillers in a row gets boring eventually….. Sunday, Mar. 10, 2002 Tom Clancy, “Without Remorse” – excellent stuff! If you ever wondered, how the infamous Mr. Clark got where he is in the later installments like “Rainbow Six”, here’s the story. Pretty low-tech, personal interest, but Jack-Ryan-less for once (almost). Very good adventure yarn, set in the later days of the Vietnam war era. Could hardly put it down. Very high up in my personal Tom-Clancy-top-ten. Nonetheless, I’m back to Jack Ryan now, started “Clear and present danger” this morning in the car. Saw the film already 3 times and still think it sucks, so the book can only be lots better! Monday, Mar. 04, 2002 Read a German author for a change, Andreas Eschbach, “Das Jesus Video” (The Jesus Videotape). During archaeological excavations in Israel in a 2000 years old gravesite a manual is found for a video camera that will only be sold several years into the future. (Ok, kind of a long sentence....). There is only one possible explanation: Someone must have tried to make a recording of Jesus Christ. The body in the grave therefore has to be someone from the future that traveled into the past – and somewhere in Israel his camera is waiting to be found. Or is it all just a set up? A chase begins between archaeologists, the Vatican, the media and secret services…. Not bad, although I thought some of the story lines were a bit superfluous. And some things I found to be downright unbelievable – and I am not talking about the Sci-Fi parts of the story. I don’t want to go into too many details, I don’t want to give anything away. No idea, if the story has been published in English… |
| Books, books and books......... |
| Links to my all-time favourites... Wilbur Smith Lindsey Davis Stephen King Dean Koontz Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child Michael Connelly Bill Bryson ...and other things.... Amazon Deutschland Amazon UK Oprah's Bookclub Not Oprah's Bookclub!! The Book Haven Books I gave up on.... |
| The last 10 books I read: John Harvey - Lonely Hearts Lindsey Davis - A Body In The Bath House Anne McCaffrey - The Dolphins Of Pern Tom Clancy - Clear And Present Danger Tom Clancy - Without Remorse Andreas Eschbach - Das Jesus Video (German) Kim Stanley Robinson - Green Mars Greg Bear - Moving Mars Philip Shelby - Last Right Bill Bryson - In A Sunburned Country |
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| What I have been reading in..... February 2002 January 2002 December 2001 November 2001 October 2001 September 2001 August 2001 July 2001 June 2001 May 2001 April & March 2001 Back to the current bookpage... |
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| .........in March 2002 |