Karl's Reading List

Published by Penguin Books: London, England, 1992. Sacred Hunger has an interesting topic, an interesting theme, and interesting characters.  The majority of the narrative takes place aboard a slave-ship as it leaves England, travels to Africa, and begins 'trading' for slaves. Our main protagonist in this section of the ship is doctor Matthew Paris, the nephew of the ship's owner, who has come on the voyage to atone - or punish himself - for actions in his past that he believes led to the death of his wife and unborn child. Paris dislikes the whole venture, but is still willing to be a part of it... this will impact events as they unfold. This part of the book is powerful, fairly graphic in patches, far too coarse for my liking but with enough interest that I decided to give it a bit more time than I normally would have. Scattered throughout this narrative, we also get chapters focussed on Eramus Kemp, the son of the ship's owner, who has a strong and fairly irrational ...

Published as an audiobook by Librivox, read via Fabuly. Narrated by Brenda Dayne. First published 1920. Whoa. This book is intense! And not in the usual way you might think of. The Age of Innocence is the third Pulitzer Prize -winning novel I have read, and is the most unexpected so far. I wasn't expecting a novel written in 1920 and set in the 1870s to be so heavily about the main character considering an affair... but there you go! It is very emotionally charged, with our main character, Newland Archer, growing obsessed with the married-but-separated Madame Ellen Olenska even as he pursues an engagement with the more traditional and (in Newland's eyes) almost ignorantly 'innocence' May Welland. It is apparent from the start that it is not only that Newland finds Ellen 'fascinating', but that he is thrilled and tempted by the very fact that Ellen is unconventional, perhaps a little bit dangerous, and therefore - to him - more 'exciting' than his convent...

Published by Agatha Christie Ltd/Planet Three Publishing: London. No date. First published 1935. Mystery novels are fun, but re-reading them can be less exciting. Well-written ones can still hold interest, but a lot of the fun is trying to figure out, along with the detective, just "whodunnit?" If you know whodunnit, it changes the game a bit. On the other hand, examples like Murder on the Orient Express and (I would suspect) The Murder of Roger Ackroyd might still be interesting on a second read, knowing the outcome, and looking for the clues that point in that direction. Perhaps, however, the way to enjoy re-reading a mystery is to leave long enough between reading and re-reading it. I first read Death in the Clouds in 2017, and in the nine years(!) since then, I seem to have forgotten enough of the plot to get sucked back in. In fact, I even became convinced that I remembered what happened, and ended up wrongly suspecting another character because of my faulty memory. Per...

Updated and Expanded version published by Zondervan Books: Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2016. Originally published 1998. In Christian circles, The Case for Christ is an extremely famous apologetics book. Author Lee Strobel - a journalist who often covered court cases - felt challenged when his wife became a Christian, and set out to investigate the claims of Jesus himself. The Case for Christ was written much later, when Strobel took that base journey and re-enacted it by interviewing various experts to present the court-room style 'case' for Christ. Chapters have titles like "The Medical Evidence", "The Fingerprint Evidence" and "The Eyewitness Evidence" and are presented as interviews between 'prosecutor' Strobel and his interview subjects playing 'witnesses for the defence.' I first read The Case for Christ when I was much younger. I have always enjoyed it as a resource, and as a result, have given away my personal copy numerous times...

Published by Walker Books Ltd: Vauxhall Walk, London, 2008. Book 1 in the 'Chaos Walking' series. Followed by 'The Ask and the Answer.' I knew of this book. I knew it had also been made into a not-very-well-received movie. I knew that it was set on a planet where all of the men uncontrollably broadcast their thoughts and the women had disappeared. I knew it was a Young Adult novel and part of a well-loved trilogy. I didn't know it would be so gory and heavy. There is a lot of death in The Knife of Letting Go, including much loved supporting characters, and even (keeping it a little vague to avoid spoiling too much) some characters that most books would avoid killing in order to keep the audience from disliking the narrative too much. The main character even has an arc where he is unable to kill people, and as a result, things keep getting worse. Considering this to be a weakness, he eventually pushes himself to kill - a horrific moment in the book that I felt sure w...

Published by Triad/Panther Books: Frogmore, St Albans, 1976. First published by Jonathan Cape Ltd, 1952. This is a very famous, and very short, book that is also the second Pulitzer Prize winning book I have read! To be fully transparent, I am currently also listening to an audiobook version of The Age of Innocence , but this was short enough that I finished it over two days, whereas Innocence still has hours of listening time to go. The Old Man and the Sea has a very simple story: an old man (Santiago) has not caught a fish in eighty-four days. On the morning of the eighty-fifth day, he sets out, hooks a large fish, and determines that he will stay in pursuit until he catches it. The fish swims out to sea for a couple of days before the two finally 'fight', and then the old man must attempt to return home with the fish. There isn't much more to the story than that. He also talks to a young boy at the beginning and end of the story. Some tourists mistake the bones of his fi...

Published by Fabbri Publishing: Barcelona, Spain, 1991. First published by The Thames Publishing Company, 1857. When I recently reread Lord of the Flies it noted that William Golding wrote that book after having read this one. Apparently he decided that this book was too happy, and that it wasn't realistic, so wrote the far heavier version he is known for. I had a copy of this book on my shelf, so felt it only appropriate to see what I thought, myself. The Coral Island is, as Golding pointed out, a far more positive experience than Lord of the Flies. There are only three boys who end up shipwrecked on the island (with all the adults adrift in a separate boat and possibly ending up elsewhere), and two of them - Ralph and Jack - have had their names repurposed for the main characters in Golding's book. The third book, Peterkin, does not appear in Lord of the Flies, but perhaps his 'P' name inspired the character of Piggy - the third 'lead' of Flies. Whereas Flies...