BTT: Unread

Today's question on Booking Through Thursday:

Is there a book that you wish you could "unread"? One that you disliked so thoroughly you wish you could just forget that you ever read it? (Suggested by C in DC)

I'm one of those people who rarely stops reading a book after starting it, so there are a few books that I wish I had never picked up. As for "unreading", I don't think I want to forget that I read those books; at least I should be able to remember not to read the same books (or similar ones) in future.

If I had to mention books that I would rather never have read, I'd name Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis, Nineteen Seventy Four by David Peace, Catch-22 by Joseph Heller and The Road to Gandolfo/Omaha books by Robert Ludlum.

Do you ever continue reading a book despite knowing that you won't like it, thereby adding list of books to "unread"? Or do you stop reading the moment you know the book isn't the kind you like? I believe I'm in the minority that reads books anyway even when the know they don't like it.

The Book of Evidence (John Banville)

When I first picked up this book, the title sounded a lot like that of a mystery novel. This book is nothing of the sort, it's more of a look at the mind of a murderer after he has committed a totally pointless crime.

The Book of Evidence is the confession of Freddie Montgomery, a 38 year old ex-scientist, who murders a servant girl when she finds him in the middle of a ridiculous attempt at stealing a painting from an acquaintance.

The story is narrated by Freddie as he sits in jail awaiting trial for the murder. In the first half of the book, he talks about his past, the events leading up to the crime and the murder itself. The latter half of the book is a recounting of Freddie's actions until his capture.

John Banville's work has been compared to that of Fyodor Dostoyevsky and I could see some similarities (and contrast) between this book and Crime and Punishment. The protagonists in both the books do not have a clear motive for their crime. However, Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment is filled with remorse about the crime, whereas in The Book of Evidence, Freddie is completely remorseless. When speaking about why he murdered the girl, he casually says that he did it just because he could, and not because there was any real reason to do so.

This isn't the kind of novel you choose if you wanted a nice fast-paced crime novel to read, but it's definitely worth a read if you want to read about a crime from the perspective of the criminal rather than the detective.

Rating : 8/10

Other Reviews

Reflections of a Fine Book Connoisseur

Ice! (Arnold Federbush)

The first thing that came to my mind when I started reading this book was the movie The Day After Tomorrow. Though the plot aren't exactly identical, there are many similarities between the two. Unfortunately, I enjoyed the book a lot less than I enjoyed the film.

Ice! is about the sudden approach of an ice age, in which the majority of human population is destroyed. The changes that this ice age brings happen over the course of a few weeks, rather than the years that it normally takes.

The novel is mainly set in New York, where the protagonist, Mark Haney predicts sudden climate change. Soon there are ice storms that cause a lot of damage to New York city and it is apparent that very soon the climate change might leave the human race extinct. A group of people including Mark, and the woman he loves, Karen, try to survive in the extreme conditions.

The main reason I didn't enjoy the was the characters, none of whom I liked. Every one of the characters seem to contradict themselves with everything they say. Mark, for example, keeps talking about his grand plans to save civilization, even though his own group of survivors are barely able to keep themselves alive.

Karen, the expert on Eskimo culture, keeps preaching that the group has to live exactly like Eskimos if they are to survive, but changes the rules where she is concerned. At one point she argues with Mark about him carrying his scientific instruments (which Mark considers vital for their survival, and she considers useless) although she herself is lugging around wooden carvings that couldn't help them in any way.

Finally there is one question the survivors are left with -- do they try to save what is left of civilization, or do they live a nomadic life? They make their choice at the end of the book when they decide to abandon Mark and go on searching for better hunting areas.

Although the characters were annoying, the author's way of looking at the end of the human race was interesting. There's a lot of comparison with the extinction of dinosaurs, and there's one interesting conversation where the survivors speculate about what species will take over the planet once they are gone.

Rating : 4/10

Review: The First Billion (Christopher Reich)

More and more authors are using their expertise in their respective fields to create and write in sub-genres that they are comfortable with. Robin Cook, with his medical thrillers, is a famous example for this. The there's John Grisham, who uses his experience as a lawyer in writing legal thrillers. Christopher Reich is a former Swiss banker and uses his knowledge on the subject to write thrillers set in the corporate world.

In The First Billion, John Gavallan, the head of an investment firm is taking a Russian media company public. His firm is struggling, and this could be the deal that saves it, but there are rumours that something is wrong with the Russian company. His friend, whom he has sent to Russia to investigate, disappears, and he himself is suspected of murders. He discovers a much bigger conspiracy than he expected when he looks into what is happening.

I didn't like this book very much. The plot was not very convincing, and the twists were forced into the story. I didn't like the characters in the novel either, because there are too many gaps in their stories that are not filled in.

Considering the fact that this book deals with a company's public offer and that it was written by someone who can be expected to know a lot about the topic, this book was a major disappointment when it came to telling us about what happens in an IPO.

There is the FBI, the KGB, the Russian mafia, mass murderers, torture... everything is thrown into the story. The book gave me the impression that Reich was trying more to write a thriller, rather than focussing on the aspects of the story that he could write about with greater authority.

The good thing about the book is that it is fast paced, very much so towards the end, and to some extent this makes up for the poorly developed characters. But it's still not a book that I will recommend.

Rating: 3/10

Books: July 2008

With all the free time I had in July, I really should have finished a few more books, but even then nine isn't all that bad. And I've even finished posting about six of them, that's a record. :)

1. The Testament (John Grisham) [7/10]
2. The Manuscript (Eva Zeller) [7/10]
3. Twelve Red Herrings (Jeffrey Archer) [7/10]
4. The Chinese Assassin (Anthony Grey) [3/10]
5. Confessions of an Ex-Girlfriend (Lynda Curnyn) [6/10]
6. Dark Tower 1 - The Gunslinger (Stephen King) [6/10]
7. The First Billion (Christopher Reich) [4/10]
8. The Book of Evidence (John Banville) [8/10]
9. The Adversary (A M Kabal) [7/10]
   

Stats: 9 books, 9 authors (6 new), 2858 pages.

BTT: Gold Medal Reading

With the Olympics games going on in Beijing, this week's Booking Through Thursday question is about sports.

Do you or have you ever read books about the Olympics? About sports in general? Fictional ones? Or non-fiction? Or both?

Do you consider yourself a sports fan? Because, of course, if you’re a rabid fan and read about sports constantly, there’s a logic there; if you hate sports and never read anything sports-related, that, too... but you don’t have to love sports to enjoy a good sports story.

The only sports related book I remember reading is John Grisham's novel, Bleachers (review) about a high school American football team. However, this book was more about the people in the team than the game itself.

I do consider myself a sports fan, although nobody would call me a rabid one. I follow cricket and the EPL and there are a lot of football related feeds in my feed reader, but that never really made me look for sports related books. I rarely read biographies or memoirs, and sports related fiction isn't very common. So I think my sports related reading will mostly be confined to football blogs and the sports page of the newspaper. ;-)

On to an unrelated topic now... my friend Varun has written a short story on his blog called The Foreseen. Please drop by his blog to read it if you have the time. :)

BTT: Endings

Last week's Booking Through Thursday question was about memorable first lines from books. This week's question is quite similar, but I find it a lot more difficult to answer this one.

What are your favourite final sentences from books? Is there a book that you liked specially because of its last sentence? Or a book, perhaps that you didn’t like but still remember simply because of the last line?

A lot of people mentioned last week that they hardly ever notice opening sentences. I look for interesting opening sentences, which is why I made a long list of favourite opening sentences. (Btw, why hasn't anyone recognised that last one? And here I was, thinking it was too easy...)

This question, however, wouldn't make much sense unless we change "final sentences" to "endings". No author is going to worry too much about how the last sentence is going to sound; it's the beginning that might catch (or not) somebody's attention. But endings are still very important, in that sometimes people might end up hating an excellent book just because the ending was bad.

If I really had to mention a famous last line, I'd say nothing can beat "they lived happily ever after", although I don't remember any book that actually ended that way. Nor do I remember one that starts with "once upon a time..." even though you could call it one of the most famous opening sentences. ;-)

Anyway, coming to our question, I can't say I have ever radically changed my opinion about a book because of the ending. There are many books, where I was disappointed with the way things were wrapped up. Bel Canto (review) is a perfect example of that. The book was rather good, but the ending came as something of a shock. The epilogue of the book just didn't fit in with the rest of the story.

A similar case is the last Harry Potter book. I didn't exactly hate the epilogue, but the story was wrapped up well by the end of the final chapter and the epilogue looked rather out of place. But both cases, the endings didn't make me like the books any less.

As for really good endings, I loved the way Nicholas Sparks left room for hope at the end of A Walk to Remember by giving an ambiguous ending.

Frederick Forsyth is an author who writes some great endings. His book, The Devil's Alternative waits till the very last paragraph to reveal the biggest plot twist. Now that's how a book should end.

I couldn't think of any last sentences from books, except for the "all was well" from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Do you remember any last sentences from books? And could a good last sentence have the kind of impact a great opening sentence has?

Review: Dark Tower 1 - The Gunslinger (Stephen King)

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

Thus begins the first book of the series that Stephen King calls his magnus opus. And that one sentence almost completely describes the plot of the entire book. Except for occasional flashbacks, the story is mostly about the gunslinger pursuing a mysterious man in black.

The Gunslinger is a mixture of horror and fantasy and is set in an alternative world. Nothing much is said about this world except that it resembles the American Old West and it is described as "a world that has moved on". This book forms the first part of the Dark Tower series.

The title character is Roland Deschlain, the last surviving member in a long line of gunslingers. Stephen King has said that this character was largely inspired by the "Man With No Name", the character played by Clint Eastwood in the western films trilogy directed by Sergio Leone. He has also identified Robert Browning's poem, "Childe Roland and the Dark Tower" as the major inspiration for the Dark Tower series.

The plot of the novel looks disjointed at places, which is because many of the chapters used in the book were actually short stories published earlier by King. The details about Roland's character and his world that this book gives seems inadequate, given that it practically is the introduction to the series that runs into about 3700 pages.

The story moves along very slowly, which isn't a bad thing here really, because it gives us a chance to take in the world that King has created. It's always a pleasure to step into a world different from our own, especially when a skillful author creates it. Although the picture that King has painted of this world isn't complete, it still is good enough to not hinder our enjoyment of the book.

Roland's character is interesting and mysterious, but too complex to be instantly likeable. His motives are never fully explained and his determination to reach his goals, without regard to other people's lives didn't help me feel more sympathetic towards him either.

There aren't too many characters in the story, but one of them, a boy called Jake Chambers, belonged to our world, but went on to Roland's world after his death. He is the only link between the two worlds, but how he got there too isn't explained.

I liked the novel all right, but am not convinced if it was the right way to begin the series. At the end of the book, there are quite a few questions left unanswered. I expected this book to give more of an idea about what is to come in the sequels, but disappointingly, that isn't the case. But then, we can also argue that not revealing much about the series so early is a good way to ensure that the reader is eagerly awaiting the next part.

Rating. 6/10

Review: Confessions of an Ex-Girlfriend (Lynda Curnyn)

The ex-girlfriend is Emma Carter, a woman living in New York who has just broken up with her boyfriend. She works as an editor in a bridal magazine, so she is constantly surrounded by images of wedded bliss and that makes it that much harder for her to accept the fact that she is now an "ex-girlfriend".

Emma herself narrates the story of her life as she gets used to being single again in New York City. Every few pages there are confessions she makes about her lifestyle such as "Confession: I haven't spent Saturday night alone for two years." Her friends Alyssa and Jade try to help her out but they too are facing problems of their own.

The characters were funny and interesting to read about. The tone of the book was sarcastic and it was an easy book to read, but midway through the book I started feeling less enthusiastic about it than I had at first. Reading about three people complaining about their lives all the time starts getting irritating after a while. And it was so easy to guess exactly how the book ends that reading it felt like a waste.

Except for the humour (that too got boring after a while) I didn't like the book all that much after the first few chapters. Most guys won't like it much; it's a book primarily aimed at women who have been in Emma's position at some point. Chick-Lit is the word used to describe this genre. I'm in no hurry to pick up another book of the genre at the moment.

Rating. 5/10

BTT: Memorable First Lines

Here's this week's question on Booking Through Thursday. And thanks Deb, for using another one of my suggestions. :)

What are your favourite first sentences from books? Is there a book that you liked specially because of its first sentence? Or a book, perhaps that you didn’t like but still remember simply because of the first line?

Many authors try to make a strong first impression for their book with the opening sentence. There are books with great opening sentences that end up disappointing, and some that begin in an ordinary way but are excellent books nonetheless. The opening sentence may not be an accurate indicator of how the rest of the book may be, but it definitely gives us our first impressions of the book.

Moby Dick is the book responsible for getting me interested in the first sentences of books. It had a short yet memorable opening sentence, something that you could always remember. After that I've always kept an eye out for impressive opening sentences and whether or not the book lived up to the standards set by those lines.

Two books I read recently -- The Gunslinger (review) and A Wrinkle in Time -- had memorable opening sentences, and after reading them I decided to post a list of memorable first lines sometime soon, so the timing of this BTT question couldn't be better. Here's a list of 10 of my favourite opening sentences:

1. "Call me Ishmael!" (Moby Dick, Herman Melville)
   
   I put this line on top of the list because I started noticing interesting opening sentences after I read this book. Three short words, but words that will always come to my mind whenever I think of memorable first lines.
   
   
2. "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. (Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen)
   
   This one is the reason why I added that last part to the question. I didn't like this book all that much, and I never really got around to reading another Austen book after that, but I couldn't ever forget this line.
   
   
3. "At the age of seventeen, working as a delivery boy at Afremov's drugstore in Chicago was the perfect job, because it made it possible for me to steal enough sleeping pills to commit suicide." (The Other Side of Me, (review) Sidney Sheldon)
   
   Sidney Sheldon is the kind of author who gets you hooked to the story with the very first line. And he saved his best opening line for his autobiography.
   
   
4. "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." (The Gunslinger, (review) Stephen King)
   
   I finished reading The Gunslinger a couple of days ago and I feel I'll always remember the book for this sentence, if only because it describes the entire plot of the book perfectly in 12 short words.
   
   
5. "If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book." (A Series of Unfortunate Events 1 - The Bad Beginning, Daniel Handler)
   
   That's a clever way to get someone really interested in reading the book. Lemony Snicket keeps warning his readers not to read his books. So far the warnings have failed to discourage me from reading the series.
   
   
6. "Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much." (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J K Rowling)
   
   Perfectly normal people... that's a great way to start a book about wizards.
   
   
7. "Amerigo Bonasera sat in New York Criminal Court Number 3 and waited for justice; vengeance on the men who had so cruelly hurt his daughter, who had tried to dishonor her." (The Godfather, Mario Puzo)
   
   This book has more memorable lines than any other book I've ever read (maybe the Potter books might compete for that spot, but that's because I've read those too many times) and this opening line definitely deserves a place on this list.
   
   
8. "Billions died in less than twenty-four hours." (Autumn, David Moody)
   
   We're taking billions here, not millions. I'm not sure if I would have been convinced to read the book if I hadn't come across that line first. I ended up liking the book.
   
   
9. "All children, except one, grow up." (Peter and Wendy, J M Barrie)
   
   I was reminded of this line when I watched the movie Finding Neverland yesterday. I didn't like the book very much when I read it first, but after watching the movie about how the book came into existence, I'm prepared to give the book another chance.
   
   
10. "It was a dark and stormy night." (A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle)
    
    This line first appeared in Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1830 book, Paul Clifford and has become one of the most famous examples of overly flamboyant prose. Even a Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest was started to recognise the worst extremes of this style. Madleine L'Engle used the same opening line in an allusion to Bulwer-Lytton's novel.
    
    

When I made the list I missed one very memorable line. I don't want to leave it out, so I'll type it here and leave it to you to guess which book it is from. It a really easy one, so don't google it before leaving you answer in the comments. Don't cheat, you're not winning any prizes for something this easy. *grin*

"You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings."

I'm already a day late in posting this reply, so I've had the time to go through other replies to this question. The majority feel that the first line isn't all that important; that the rest of the book matters more. Are you among that majority? Or do you believe that the first sentence has an impact on how we remember the book?

Please do leave a comment on what you think of memorable opening sentences and if you have your own blog, use the name/URL option to link to it so that it's easier to visit your blog. :)