Colin Marks's Blog, page 12
February 5, 2019
Review: The Last by Hanna Jameson
Hanna Jameson’s The Last is an interesting one. The plot follows a group of strangers isolated in a remote Swiss hotel when nuclear bombs destroy the world. Few of the guests have little chance of ever going home -airports were destroyed and society rapidly disintegrates – so they make the most of a bad situation and turn the hotel into a new home for the new world order.
The writing was clean, characters varied and interesting, and most of the cliches of the post-apocalyptic genre were nimbl...
Review: My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
I really enjoyed Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer. The characters were well formed – believable and even meriting sympathy. One sister likes to kill, the other helps her not get caught – blood thicker than water and all that. The narrator, the non-killing sister, shares interesting observations about men, society, and what it means to protect your sister in an oppressive, abusive childhood home.
Very readable, very punchy, a well deserved 5 stars.
Book supplied by Netgalley...
January 28, 2019
Review: Out of the Maze: An A-Mazing Way to Get Unstuck by Spencer Johnson
Out of the Maze is a tricky book to review. I haven’t read the prequel Who Moved My Cheese, apparently the biggest selling book on Amazon a couple of years after its publication, but I don’t believe that’s necessary – the first book covers embracing change, this book deals with how inflexible belief systems can be detrimental and restrictive. The writing is fine, the messages useful, and the book educates by way of a fable – a style I’m not fond of as I explained in my reviews for Pig Wrestli...
January 27, 2019
Review: Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield
It’s doesn’t take long with a new book before you can relax with the knowledge that you’re in safe hands – the manner of narration, simple details expanded to instil curiosity, characters beyond the cliche and the tropes. With Once Upon a River, Diane Setterfield establishes her quality on the first page.
The novel, based in Victorian days and centred around a local’s pub on the Thames, follows the discovery of a young girl – who is she, and where was she from? Several conflicting theories ar...
January 8, 2019
Review: Pig Wrestling by Pete Lindsay and Mark Bawden
Pete Lindsay’s and Mark Bawden’s Pig Wrestling is an interesting book about how to analyse and resolve problems. You could blast through it in a single sitting (1-2 hours) but it still contains concepts worth taking away (cleaning the problem, for example). I’m not convinced by the Fable approach to self-help books. I first encountered this approach with Eliyahu Goldratt’s The Goal – and with that book it seems like the story just added padding, and it does seem the same here. Without the fic...
December 23, 2018
Review: The Labyrinth of the Spirits (The Cemetery of Forgotten Books, #4) by Carlos Ruiz Zafón
An interesting aspects of the four books in the The Cemetery of Forgotten Books series is that they can be read in any order. This one, the last, is my first. It’s hard to say whether plot points were missed or nuances lost, but I did feel I was reading a standalone book. This is a complex book, weaving many characters and times together, and though some were laboured, that could be because the importance was set in the earlier novels.
This isn’t a book for the faint-hearted – it’s colossal,...
October 30, 2018
Review: Open by Andre Agassi
My rating: 5 out of 5
I used to watch tennis in the days of Becker and Conners and Agassi, so this semi-autobiography (actually penned by J.R. Moehringer) was a trip down memory lane. A real page turner, I don’t tend to read sports books generally, but this kept me going and reading fast. Well worth a read – superbly written and hugely entertaining.
August 27, 2018
Review: The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas
My first thought when reading Kate Mascarenhas’s The Psychology of Time Travel was I bet this is her first novel. Then, as this is a published work, why wasn’t the editor harsher? The amount of telling, not showing, became a real stinker for me. Likewise the jumps in PoV. Both mistakes are easily made, but they should also be mistakes easily corrected.
That said, this was a good book. Most time travel books have a predictable set of characters – predominately male with the odd women for a lov...
August 6, 2018
Review: Eat That Frog!: Get More of the Important Things Done – Today! by Brian Tracy
A lot of self-help books go into great depth on a specific topic – Steven Pressfield’s War of Art, for example, going into great length about how to beat procrastination – Brian Tracy’s Eat That Frog takes a different approach. 21 topics are skimmed over (procrastination, task selection, planning, etc) in 4-5 page chapters (this isn’t a thick book, you can do the maths) – just giving common sense but worthwhile suggestions on how to be more effective and efficient. It’s a fast read, you can g...
August 4, 2018
Review: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
I couldn’t help thinking Lincoln in the Bardo was a mash-up of an adult version of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book (the relationships between the ghosts), blended with Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Paramo (ghosts not understanding why they’re there, or where there is!), with a traditional historical account of the death of Willie Lincoln (and how it affected Lincoln’s mood at a crucial point of the Civil War).
This is a wonderful, innovative novel, worthy of the Man Booker award. Sentimental, in an emo...
