Colin Marks's Blog, page 13
August 1, 2018
Review: Paris Echo by Sebastian Faulks
An odd quirk of fiction centred around a historical researcher where the prose bounces about in time, is that it doesn’t feel like you’re reading fiction. The modern day aspect feels like a plot device, and with the historical, is it fiction or non-fiction – you end unsure of what you’re reading.
The writing is very Sebastian Faulks – clean, crisp, and a master of his craft – but I felt the plot was a little wobbly. There were some nice ideas, but it felt like everything was a heavy-handed me...
July 30, 2018
Review: F*** You Very Much (The surprising truth about why people are so rude) by Danny Wallace
Rudeness seems to be everywhere these days – from aggressive driving on our streets, to reality TV where producers intentionally generate antagonism to garner a response (and viewing figures), all the way to the White House. Obama led with thoughtfulness and inclusiveness, Trump took a different route, he’s given presidential support to rudeness. He’s taken a hostile path, showing that rudeness and intimidation is a viable way to get what you want; if the electorate thinks it’s fine for the l...
July 28, 2018
Review: If Cats Disappeared from the World by Genki Kawamura (translated by Eric Selland)
“If Cats Disappeared from the World” has sold millions of copies in Kawamura’s native Japan, and I can see why. It’s a charming story of a dying man who becomes embroiled in a wager between God and the Devil – what would the man sacrifice from this world for extra days of life? The Devil chooses cleverly – phones, movies, clocks – nostalgic things which urges the man to make amends or find closure for incidents in his past. A wonderful, magical, short story, readable in one session.
Book kind...
July 22, 2018
Review: Give People Money: How Universal Basic Income could change the Future — for the Rich, the Poor, and Everyone in Between by Annie Lowrey
Annie Lowrey fully supports UBIs (Universal Basic Income) – amongst other ideas, she poses convincing arguments on how it would end poverty, fight racism and gender inequality, make our society able to tackle the pending robotic workforce upheaval, and how it could prevent Trumps and other populist political disasters from reoccurring.
This book comes across like a life mission, it’s very well researched and very passionate about the benefits that UBIs could provide. I’m not convinced it had...
July 2, 2018
Review: Tribe of Mentors by Timothy Ferriss
‘Tribe of Mentors’ is an odd book – I’m not sure who it was aimed at. The book contains the verbatim transcripts of interviews from his podcast – if you’re a frequent listener, as I am, then you get nothing new. If you weren’t, and you hadn’t heard of Tim Ferriss, picking up this book would leave you confused – there’s no solid theme to the order of the interviews and no conclusion after each highlighting the takeaways. it just seems a jumble without direction. Tim has just relocated to Auste...
Review: An Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim
On paper, “An Ocean of Minutes” should have been right up my street. I like a bit of time travel, love a bit of romance, and dystopian fiction is generally worth a nose. However, Thea Lim’s first novel seems a bit lost and searching for an audience. The general premise (woman travels forward in time, will her man wait for her?) is a theme worthy of adult fiction, but the method of time travel and the implausible, simplistic environment is better suited to a YA audience.
The Time Travel elemen...
June 22, 2018
Review: Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith
I’ve had interesting chats with strangers on trains, plains, busses, etc., and learnt some neat origami skills as a result. Luckily, there wasn’t a psychopath who wanted to kill my ex… This was a good book, but it did seem dated – the concept has been copied and improved many times, and the prose clumsy by modern standards (for example very wordy and POV switching mid-paragraph). Still, a good read and a solid 4* rating.
See review on Goodreads.
June 21, 2018
Review: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson
This is a fresh approach to self-help books – swear a lot, accept your problems (but choose them wisely), and tell people to stop aiming for the clouds and instead tackle those values that keep them in the gutter. There are definitely some interesting bits, particularly around values and simplifying your dreams, but I don’t think I’ll be changing my life in any way!
See review on Goodreads.
April 26, 2018
Review: The Crow Road by Iain Banks
I did struggle with Crow Road. It’s one of Iain Banks’s earlier novels, and it shows. I did enjoy The Bridge, which came out before, but that was focussed on story – Crow Road is heavily character based, where the action is minimal, and the whodunnit doesn’t really start until three-quarters of the way through, and then fizzles out as fast as it started.
My problem with this novel is the over-writing – long rambling sections, which though well written, drag on and on. Likewise, the first-pers...
March 10, 2018
Review: The Reader on the 6.27 by Jean-Paul Didierlaurent
I realised I loved Jean-Paul Didierlaurent’s The Reader on the 6.27 when I took offence at “trousers corkscrewing” down someone’s legs – they don’t corkscrew, they concertina. The writing (and Ros Schwartz’s translation) is so elegant and poetically rhythmic, that the rare off-word pulls the reader out of Guylain Vignolles’ magical world.
The blurb on the back of Jean-Paul Didierlaurent’s The Reader on the 6.27 unfortunately compares the book to Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amelie. While there are si...
