Karl's Reading List

Published as an audiobook by Penguin Audio, 14-09-2023. Narrated by Fiona Shaw. Book 4 in the 'Thursday Murder Club' series. Preceded by ' The Bullet That Missed. ' The final book (for now) in the Thursday Murder Club series, this book also feels a bit more like it could be the last in the series, due to a few storylines having a more 'final' feel to them. The main mystery this time revolves around a shipment of heroin that has been snuck into the country inside an antique box. A friend of our main gang has died while in possession of the heroin, and so tracking down the killer is in order. Returning characters like drug-dealer Connie Johnson, retired KGB agent Viktor, and antique dealer Kuldesh Sharma all have parts to play for better or worse, and new characters - including corrupt antique dealer Samantha Barnes and her imposing husband Garth, all add interest to the proceedings. A secondary crime-plot involves a new acquaintance becoming the victim of a roman...

Published as an audiobook by Penguin Audio, 2022. Narrated by Fiona Shaw. Book 3 in the 'Thursday Murder Club' series. Preceded by ' The Man Who Died Twice. ' Followed by ' The Last Devil To Die. ' The third book in the Thursday Murder Club series begins to shift the status quo a little. Not only does it include a potential love interest for Ron and an old-flame for Elizabeth (there is also a potential love interest for Joyce but that is less unusual), but certain background realities - like Donna and Borden's developing relationship, and Steven's battle with dementia - are made more prominent, and particularly with the latter, begin to impact our characters (and the readers!) more than they have previously. The murder investigation and main subplot are both less important on the whole than the ongoing growth and development of the main characters, and yet both of the plots also have interest. The gang is investigating the murder of Bethany Waites, a rep...

Published by Simon and Schuster UK Ltd: London, 2014. This is a weird book that's been on my classroom library shelf for quite a while. The main character, Travis, had terminal cancer five years ago, and agreed to have his head cryogenically frozen, in the hope that in the future it would be possible to attach it to a donor body. Now, he has woken up, only the second patient to successfully have the procedure complete, to find that everyone in his world, including his parents, his best friend and his girlfriend, have lived five extra years of life. Travis is sixteen, and the difference between a sixteen-year-old and a twenty-one-year-old is a much bigger difference than it would have been had Travis been an adult. Also, his girlfriend Cate is now engaged to someone else. The difference between a sixteen-year-old and a twenty-one-year-old is also small enough that it is conceivable that Cate and Kyle (his former best friend) would also still be keen to in-some-way have Travis back i...

Published as an eBook by Elle Hartford, 2024. Volume 7 of 'The Alchemical Tales.' This is the second ebook I have received as a free giveaway through LibraryThing, although I'm not sure how often I will apply for them, considering that ebooks really aren't my favourite medium to read in. However, having received A Thousand and One Alibis, I was 'required' to read and review it.  As I said last time, what a sacrifice! It is interesting to jump into a series on Book 7, but I very quickly got the gist of this world: we are in a fairy-tale inspired fantasy world, with each book vaguely inspired by (though not beholding to) the plot of a specific fairy-tale. In this instance, we meet characters called Jasmin, Ja'far and Gene (that one took me a moment), we have the setting of a vaguely Middle-Eastern inspired desert island, and also encounter a mysterious castle that possibly has its source in magic. However, the story that unfolds is not 'Aladdin' at all...

Published by Faber and Faber Limited: London, 1981 (1980). I have previously only read one book by William Golding, Lord of the Flies, and that was all the way back in high school, in the year (cough). So, I have vague recollections of the 'feel' of that book. This book 'feels' similar, which I guess makes sense. This book, like The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society , is told in an epistolary fashion; in this book, we are reading the journal of Edmund Talbot, also intended as a letter to his godfather, as Talbot travels by ship from England to Australia. This is in the colonist days, and other passengers include the loud artist Mr Brocklebank with his 'daughter' and 'wife', the humanist philosopher Mr Prettiman, and the hapless parson, Mr Colley. Talbot is a fairly arrogant, opinionated, cynical figure with an inbuilt belief in his own class superiority, as well as a distain for established religion, yet the captain of the ship, Captain Ander...

Published by Allen & Unwin: Crows Nest, NSW, Australia, 2008. Book snobs, block your ears. *whispers* I think the movie was better. Okay, book snobs, you can unblock your ears now. *waves to get the attention of book snobs* To be honest, a huge reason why I read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society at this moment in time was that I thought it would be funny to have two books with ridiculously long titles appear back-to-back in my list. For anyone who thought that there were super-deep reasons why I picked the books that I did, I hope this helps you see the error of your ways. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (which I am refusing to shorten for the rest of this review) still tells the same story as that in the movie adaptation (also called  The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society ), but does so in a less gripping (though still interesting) manner. This is for a few reasons: firstly,  The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society ...

Published by Picador: London, UK, 2001. First published 1971. An odd book, containing three different narratives (along with separate prologue and epilogue narratives) all on the theme of feeling displaced in a different culture and environment.  The first main story is told from the perspective of Santosh, an Indian servant who moves to America, only to find himself questioning his life choices. The next story follows a West Indian man who travels to England to support his brother, only to become disillusioned and eventually murder someone.  The third main narrative - which is the longest and also the titular 'In a Free State' - follows follows two English expats - Bobby and Linda - as they road trip south through a progressively more war-torn African nation. On the way we learn a lot about each character - mostly through their conversations - and witness their interactions with each other and those around them. As with many of the  Booker books I have read, there is an ...

Published by Hodder and Stoughton: Great Britain, 2020. I read this book after some co-workers were talking it up. These Violent Delights is a retelling of (the first half of) Romeo and Juliet, but set in 1920s Shanghai. Oh, and there is a monster that is making people kill themselves. Yeah. It is a well-written book, a bit of a page turner, though also quite violent. When the monster strikes, its victims will rip their own throats out, and this does happen on occasion fairly descriptively. Fortunately most of those scenes are fairly short. Our main point-of-view character is Juliette Cai, heiress of the Scarlet Gang, who has recently returned from four years living in America and is now stepping up into her role within the gang. She has already had a relationship with Roma Montagov (heir of the Russian gang the White Flowers) that ended in heartbreak and betrayal, but the two are thrown back into each others' worlds thanks to the arrival of the monster. They must learn to work tog...

Published by John Murray (Publishers): London, 2003 (1975). I'm trying to be a bit more picky with my Booker books these days, while still aiming to get through the ones that aren't too explicit.  Heat and Dust tells two stories: the first is of Olivia, the young wife of Douglas Rivers, an English civil servant living in Satipur, India in the 1920s. Although the couple are very loving towards one another, Olivia feels isolated, unable to relate to the other (older) local British women and unable to mix much with the local English men who, because of her gender, choose not to explain the politics of the area to her. She befriends Harry, another Englishman, who is living in the palace of the local Nawab (a prince), and whom the novel implies he is in a very controlling homosexual relationship with. As time goes by Olivia is drawn more and more to the Nawab, and eventually she begins her own relationship with him, resulting eventually in her decision to elope with him. This is not...

Published by Orbit Books: London, England, 2017. A strange science-fiction book, in that it is a simple storyline, but with a strange amount of complex world-building for a 'stand alone' novel. Apparently this is because Provenance is set in the same universe as author Ann Leckie's previous trilogy, but as a reader fresh to Leckie's world, I found it a little confusing. Not only are there numerous political factions and treaties being signed between groups that the reader never actually encounters in the book, but Leckie also includes a third gender into her world without explaining fully how the whole thing works. This is particularly disorienting when the third gender is referred to as 'e' (as opposed to 'he' or 'she') or 'eir' (as opposed to 'their') with no warning - I honestly thought the book was just poorly edited for quite some time.  As for the storyline itself, we follow Ingray Aughskold, the adopted daughter of Netano A...

Published by Canongate Books Ltd: Edinburgh, Scotland, 2020. Audiobook released by Audible 13-08-2020.  Narrated by Carey Mulligan. A book that I only listened to because it was offered for free by Audible and a book with a little bit more language than most I would read, I found The Midnight Library to fairly enjoyable. Considering it is a book that begins with the main character attempting suicide ('offscreen'), I am surprised to announce that it is quite an uplifting and encouraging book overall. Nora Seed's life is going from bad to worse. Not only is she estranged from her brother, regretting past decisions and being made redundant from her low-paid job at a music store but this morning her cat was found dead on the road as well. Convinced that she doesn't want to live anymore, Nora attempts to end her life. Instead of dying, however, she finds herself in the titular Midnight Library, where Mrs Elm - her former school librarian (!) - gives her the chance to live al...

Published by Chatto & Windus: London, England, 2002. Translated by Esther Tyldesley. When I started the Alphabet Soup challenge, I knew that some letters would have a few less options to choose from, and felt that X would probably be the hardest. As I approached this letter I did occasionally glance ahead, and would see one or two books at most on display at any one time. In the end, when I went to get a book out for X there was only one fiction book currently in the library by an X author. Skimming through it I was unimpressed, so I browsed through non-fiction for only the third time in this challenge.  The Good Women of China is a collection of biographical stories told by Xinran, who for eight years ran a radio programme in China called Words on the Night Breeze dedicated to telling the stories of Chinese women. Fifteen such stories, including Xinran's own upbringing, are presented here, including some so traumatic that she was never able to share them on air.  The f...

Printed for "The Gospel Faith Messenger" Ministry: Palmerston North, NZ, 1983 (1981). I'm not sure this book has been 'properly' published, but the author is apparently still in ministry, and having a brief glance at his website suggests more recent versions of the book have been updated and may have been published eventually. This copy has been sitting on my shelf for ages, inherited from a pastor who retired, and I recently decided to have a look at it. It's fairly straightforward over-all, being   a chapter by chapter breakdown of elements and areas of Christian counselling. Certain phrases and topics seem a little dated now from our 2022 perspective (maybe they will have been updated in more recent editions), but other phrases and topics were good reminders of the attitude we should take when talking with broken people. "I believe that only certain types of character and personality are responded to by those with very sensitive personal problems. For ...

Published by Arrow Books: London, England, 2012 (2011). A book I've heard a lot about, but one that I've neither read nor seen the movie version of before now.  Ready Player One is set in a fairly dystopian near-future. The environment is in serious trouble, many people live in trailer park 'stacks' (where mobile homes are piled up on top of each other to save space), currencies are unstable, and crime is high. Is it any wonder, then, that people long to escape their world into the OASIS, an online virtual reality world that is far more appealing than the 'real' world they live in? Our protagonist, Wade Watts, is just such an individual. He is an 18-year old 'gunter' (egg-hunter), searching the OASIS for 'easter eggs' left by James Halliday, the now-deceased creator of the OASIS. The first person to successfully unravel the cryptic notes left by Halliday, finding three keys and using them to unlock three gates - and complete the challenges surrou...

Published by Collector's Library: London, 2013. Originally published 1930. I picked this up to be 'H' in the Alphabet Soup reading challenge, and, as a fan of the 1941 film version starring Humphrey Bogart , was curious to see how similar the screenplay of that film reflected the original novel.  The answer to that question turns out to be: extremely similar. Like, way more similar than any other book-to-movie adaptation I can think of. Even the dialogue of the book seems to have been replicated word-for-word throughout the film (at least from what I could remember), which makes reading the book a strange experience for someone who has come to it as their second exposure to this story. Because, with the book and movie being so similar, I'm put in an interesting position of actually finding myself preferring the film version to the book version.  That's not a common feeling. To unpack my feelings a bit: Sam Spade is a very closed character, by design. We, as the audi...

Published by David C Cook: Colorado Springs, CO, 2021. This is a book on a very timely topic. It is not an easy topic to debate or discuss without polarizing people very quickly. It is a topic that I've resisted reading about for a while. But it is an important topic to investigate, particularly for Christians living in our modern world. Embodied is a Christian perspective on transgenderism.  Author Preston Sprinkle is a straight, white, American, Christian male, and occasionally throughout the book admits that this makes him an interesting choice to speak about minority experiences, but as the President of The Center for Faith, Sexuality, and Gender , and with a number of both Christian and non-Christian trans* friends (the asterisk denotes the 'umbrella' nature of this term) he approaches the subject thoughtfully, respectfully, thoroughly and always remembering to emphasis the need for love in this conversation. He goes as far as saying that there is a strong biblical cas...

Published by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.: Wheaton, Illinois, 1993. Book 1 in the 'Mark of the Lion' series: " A Voice in the Wind "; " An Echo in the Darkness "; " As Sure as the Dawn ." Francine Rivers is a very well-known author in Christian circles, and this is one of her most popular books. I remember reading this when I was younger, but Elise didn't know the story at all. To be fair, I only remembered some of the major beats, but it was interesting having the two perspectives - I asked Elise on occasion where she thought the story was going, and would think about what elements I knew as we went forward, realising for myself when moments of foreshadowing occurred that weren't necessarily too obvious on the first read. The book follows three main characters: Hadassah (a Jewish Christian who is also a slave), Marcus (a Roman aristocrat who gradually falls for Hadassah), and Atretes (a German warrior who is forced to become a gladiator)...

Published by Arrow Books: London, 2018 (2017). This collection of short stories, published to celebrate 40 years since the release of A New Hope (aka the original Star Wars movie) retells scenes from that movie from the perspective of 40 minor (or greater canon) characters from the film itself. Story perspectives include those of more well-known figures such as Greedo, Obi-Wan, and even Yoda, Lando and the force-ghost of Qui-Gonn, as well as far more obscure ones, such as one of the Jawas, members of the Cantina Band, and the trash-monster from the Death Star. Each story is told by a different author or authors, and therefore the stories range in genre from comedic to dramatic, to a parody of Shakespeare (the latter being the contribution of Ian Doescher, who has also produced full-length parody 'plays' of Stars Wars in Shakespearean form elsewhere ). It would take too long to review each of the 40 stories, but as with any short story collection, some are good, and others are j...

Published by Oneworld Publications: Great Britain, 2015 (2014). This book killed my attempt at the Bookerworm for some time. Another book with a promising beginning, Seven Killings opens in Jamaica, employing a sentence structure that accurately reflects the speech pattern of the locals, and draws me in. The early parts of the book, which talk about gang troubles in Kingston and life in the slums during the time of Bob Marley’s rising popularity are very interesting, but as with so many of the books I’ve read in this project, the story begins to lose its focus in the latter parts of the book, switching its focus to New York and honing in on various homosexual encounters. If these encounters were helping to advance the plot I could understand their appearance in the book, but Seven Killings seems to become less worried about plot as the story continues and more worried about describing the sordid details of the lives of characters that have until that time been very background. Two bo...

Published by Penguin Books: London, England, 2008 (1995). I did not enjoy this book.  By now I’m used to the idea that a lot of the Booker books will contain sordid elements, but Billy Prior, the protagonist of this work, turns my stomach with his sexual behaviour. Not only through its explicitness (which is at the higher end of the Booker books I’ve read) but through his attitude towards it: he sleeps with both men and women, but never does so with any sense of real emotional attachment. Rather, he is merely using his sexual partners – for sexual release, for revenge, for humiliation… It would be possible to give an argument for why Prior acts the way he does, both because of being a gay man in a dangerous era for gay men, and because of the horrors he has and is continuing to experience in the trenches of World War One. Yet understanding his behaviour doesn’t make reading about it any more pleasant, and any hint that his behaviour is connected to these elements is hidden, leavin...