by | 20.1.2015 · 21:27

Dark Angel

I read a book Dark Angel written by Mari Jungstedt. It was first published in 2008 in Sweden and in 2012 in Great Britain. Mari Jungstedt is a swedish journalist and author. She has written 11 novels and two of them has been filmed for TV. All of her books are about crime fiction and she is said to be one of Scandinavia’s best crime writers’ according to The Times.

The book is a crime novel. I just read another crime novel in Finnish a few months ago and I thought it was great. Comparing it to this book it was nothing. Only the fact that this was written in English made it so much better. The language was much more colourful and interesting, although it was sometimes a bit hard to understand. The story really concentrated on the theme. There was nothing that could have been removed because of it didn’t fit the theme.

There were many main characters in the book. In the beginning the connection between them was unclear. First, there was of course the inspector, Knutas, who tries to solve the murder in question. In the middle of investigation he notices some problems in his own family, that are similar to families he questions. Then, there is a journalist called Johan who reports every move of the investigation, but he isn’t said to have any special connection to Knutas or anyone else. Then there is one unknown man. His story is told from his childhood to adulthood, but I had no clue who he might be. I compared him to every man there was, but he couldn’t be anyone of them. The real victim and her children were of course a crucial part, but they were involved in only about half of the story. She was the mistress of the man who died by accident instead of her.

The plot was a bit complicated. First a wrong person died and the police followed wrong clues. Then one person committed suicide and finally the murderer succeeded to kill the person he was already tried a couple of times. The police had many suspects, but none of them really was capable of murder. The ending was a bit surprising. I had a suspect myself and I was sure it would be him. But I was wrong. I would never have guessed the real murderer.

In my opinion the narration was great. The unknown man told his own story so his personality wouldn’t reveal. Otherwise there was an omniscient narrator. It brought variety while reading. Although i first hated that there was two narrators, but it was still exciting to wait when I would find out who the mystery man is.

I really liked the book. First, when I started I was a bit confused about all the characters and because I didn’t know who the one man was. But when I made progress in the book I realised more and more. Now when I think about it, I wouldn’t even have wanted to know anymore in the beginning. It would probably have ruined the whole reading experience and the surprises. As i already said, I preferred reading in English than in Finnish. I thought it would be more difficult than it really was. I even had a feeling I never want to read in Finnish again, because the language just isn’t as interesting as in books written in English. In conclusion, the book was magnificent. I can recommend it to everyone.

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by | · 19:01

Shirley

The renowned British author Charlotte Brontë’s second published novel (published in 1849) is her only novel to deal with social and political themes. The story is set in Yorkshire in 1811-1812, during a time of notable upheaval in Europe. Sally Minogue, in her introduction to the WORDSWORTH CLASSICS edition of the novel, explains the situation thus: ”With the Napoleonic wars raging, French embargoes were strangling British trade; the British government answered with Orders in Council invoking counter-embargoes on neutral countries, which led to America’s cutting off trade with Britain. This slashing of its economic arteries badly affected manufacturing industries, and especially the cloth manufacturers of Yorkshire, where ”Shirley” is set. Meanwhile engineering advances had produced machinery to replace individual skilled labour in the cloth mills; while hard-pressed mill-owners saw these machines as saviours of their dwindling trade, even more hard-pressed cloth workers saw them as their bemesis. Machine-breaking (Luddism) now became the desperate tool of those flung out of work at a time of acute privation.” ”Shirley” depicts the struggles of the cloth mill-owners, particularly of half-Belgian, half-British Robert Moore, who suffers multiple attacks for introducing new machinery his mill. One also makes the acquaintance of the desperate Luddites who are responsible for the attacks, as well as the more peacable, yet suffering members of the working class.
Now, to introduce the main characters:Shirley of the title is a young lady and the other of the novel’s two heroines. She is the only child of deceased parents and has inherited notable wealth and estate, including the cloth mill run by Robert Moore. Expected to be a boy,and for that reason possessing a predominantly male name as her christened name (Shirley was a masculine surname until the publishing of this book, which caused it to become popular for females), Shirley has many priviledges that most women of her time do not possess; being of independent means and her own mistress. On top of this she is pretty, friendly and impetious, making her a favourite among her contemporaries.
The other heroine Caroline Helstone is the 18-year old niece of a rector, who also is her guardian. Her mother ran away to escape from a violent marriage when she was an infant, and her father died not many years after, so Caroline has grown up with her uncle. She is of a shy,sensitive nature and has a beautiful face. Unlike Shirley, Caroline is not rich, but is rather a middle-class woman; her needs are sufficiently provided for, but she lacks independence.
Caroline’s and Shirley’s meeting and the friendship which develops between them is a crucial part of the story. Despite their different circumstances and personalities, they have many things in common and a deep regard for each other. These two women’s lives are also intertwined with those of the cloth-manufacturer Robert Moore and his tutor-brother Louis. They are Caroline’s cousins, and to Shirley one is her tenant, and the other her former tutor. There are also appearances by a trio of comical curates, a variety of rectors, businessmen, labourers, old maids and servants, to name a few, all in all making for quite an impressive display of characters. My favourite things about the book have to be the lively description of the characters, the portrayal of their various interactions with each other, and the way the omniscient narrator analyzes and evaluates them.
On the whole this was a great novel to read and I greatly enjoyed it. I found it an eye-opener to the past; to how society actually worked and what the circumstances of women were like then. Also, ”Shirley” was written during a difficult period of Charlotte Brontë’s life, during which her brother and her two sisters Anne and Emily (who were also writers) all died from consumption within eight months.

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by | · 00:18

Nora Roberts – Luring a Lady

Nora Roberts is American author who has written several novels from couple of different genres, like romance, fantasy and suspense. Her real name is Eleanor Marie Robertson but she has used stage names as Nora Roberts, J. D. Robb, Sarah Hardesty and Jill March. Best she is known from her romantic novels, which also Luring a Lady is. It was published in 1991.
Luring a Lady is quite typical romantic novel. The events take place in New York and its vicnity. The protagonist is once-divorsed, sophisticated, young and beautiful woman whose name is Sydney Hayward. She has inherited a building company from her grandfather. While learning how to run a business, comes handsome, Hungarian artist called Mikhail Stanislanski to complain about the building he’s living in. And like you may guess, they get to know each other and fall in love after many twist and turns.
As a character Sydney changes a lot during the novel. At first she’s cold and purposeful business woman. She acts like she has been grown to act and doesn’t show much feelings. After spending time with Mikhail and his family she starts to be more open and express her emotions. So Mikhail literally melts the ice queen. Sydney’s relationships are quite distant, for example the relationship between her and her mother or her colleagues. Other significant characters are members of Mikhail’s family, Sydney’s ex Peter (who is also her childhood friend) and the neighbours who live in the same building as Mikhail.
The story is told by omniscient narrator. The language of the novel is very descriptive and things are told really minutely. However, the text is quite light and carefree and it won’t remain to disturb the reader. For that reason it’s a great novel to be read for example on holiday. Text is also very easy to read. The reader doesn’t have to focus on every single sentence to keep up with the story.
The theme of the novel could deal with falling in love of course, but also learning to express emotions and feelings bold as Sydney did at the end of the novel. It shows that under the cool shell human is emotional and sensitive and they shouldn’t just repress and push all the feelings aside even if they may predispose themselves to get hurt sometimes.
I personally liked the novel because it was easy to read and the plot was interesting even if it was also quite predictable. But I recommend it to someone who is searching for some fun, light and romantic novel to read.

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by | 19.1.2015 · 23:22

Hollow city

”The sequel to the New York Times best seller” they said in the library and I took the book. I read the book called Hollow city, by Ransom Riggs. It was published in 2014. The Hollow city is the second novel of Miss Peregrine’s peculiar children. And those two books about the peculiar children are the most famous books from the Ransom Riggs.

I have to say that I have little crush on Ransom Ring. I have watched a few of his interviews and I noticed that he is a smart guy and I like his lifestyle. But back to the case. I really like his writing style. With his mysterious and creepy style of writing, Riggs wrote a good horror book.

The book tells about 10 peculiar children’s life ( Jacob, Emma, Bronwyn, Millard, Horace, Olive, Enoch, Hugh, Claire, Fiona) they all have some peculiar talent. For example Horace suffers from premonitory visions and dreams.

The plot is simple. the children from Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children are trying to find a cure for their headmistress. On their journey for that well-defined medicine or what ever strange kind of cure they face lot’s of adversities. And they have to learn how to trust each other in that war-torn world full of strange phenomenons.

The language of the book is easy but there are lots of new and difficult words and the terms were from side to side. I think it could had been easier to understand those terms if I had read the first part. The narrator is one of the characters, one of the children.

The book is magnificent and formidable and I am especially fan of thrillers and books that tell about strange things. Reading a novel in English was hard and suffocating at first but when I got a hint of it the text just started to flow in my head and reading became more easier, almost no problem at all.

 

 

 

 

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by | · 22:08

Shopaholic ties the knot

Shopaholic ties the knot is the third book of the shopaholic book serie. It was published in 2002.It is a chick-lit novel written by Sophie Kinsella. There are all together seven books in the shopaholic series. These books are in my opinion directed to teenage girls. In each book the story is about Becky Bloomwood’s life. The theme in the books are mainly the relationships between people.
This book consentrates on Becky’s and his fiance Luke’s wedding. Becky has big problems on deciding which kind of wedding she really wants. Luke’s mother wants a giant princess wedding and Becky’s mother wants a small family wedding. Becky can’t make the choise in time because she doesn’t want to upset anyone. So after all she ends up with two weddings one in America and one in England. So the book mainly is about this cituation and Becky trying to solve it. And of course she didn’t tell anything about it to Luke or to anyone else.
I haven’t read the earlier parts of the serie but it didn’t really matter. The characters were introduced well in the beginning and all the other basic things the reader should know. The book was really fun to read. There were many humorious parts and they were plased right. While reading this book I all the time imagined in my head what the charaters and the wievs would look like. The writer describes just enough everything still leaving space for the reader’s own imagination. It was also quite easy to read. Not just the language was easy but also the story. While reading this book you don’t have to think all the time what’s going on or who is the writer now talking about. It isn’t filled whit too many characters and places but on the other hand there is enough things to keep the readers interest high.
I have also watched the movie Confessions of a shopaholic which is based on the Shopaholic book serie. I myself didn’t even at first realise that they were connected to each other. I had read the book before i watched the movie and I had imagined everythig so different in comparison with the movie. There were many little details that weren’t in the movie which were in the book and vice versa. But after watching the movie and comparing it to the book there were also a lot in common and many things came up.
I would recommend this book to people who just want to read without thinking too much. In this book the plot is easy to follow and it is easy to identify with the characters. This book is entertainig and definetly will make you laugh, just like GLAMOUR commented on the book: ”a laugh-a-minute read that’s guaranteed to entertain you.”

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by | · 21:30

Sweet Little Lies: an L.A. Candy novel

“Sweet little lies” is a novel written by Lauren Conrad and it was published in 2009. She has also published a few other novels and beauty books.

The book is about a girl named Jane Roberts who is no longer an average girl, because she and her best friend, Scarlett Harp, have started their own reality show called L.A. Candy. After wild photos are leaked to the press, she finds herself in the middle of a scandal. Jane turns to her new BFF, Madison, unaware that she is scheming behind her back. The two girls, Scarlett and Jane, become more and more distant from each other. And Scarlett has a scandal of her own. So the plot is full of drama.

The narrator of the book is mainly Jane Roberts herself, but occasionally it’s an omniscient narrator. I think the theme of the book is that “the lies are only as sweet as the people telling them” and that you can’t always believe what you hear or see. The author, Lauren Conrad, has had her own reality TV-show, and I have watched it so I can say that the book reminded me many times about the happenings in the show.

The topics of the book are typical and close to the girls my age, so the book was easy to read. The text was easy to identify with, and every once in a while I found myself imagine myself in the situations of the book and forgetting that I was reading English. Even though the author was quite young when she wrote the book, the text wasn’t too simple. But I liked the book very much, especially because I could immerse myself in the book without noticing the time passing by.

You can see some stereotypes in the characters. For example Scarlett is a girl who doesn’t date. She doesn’t fall in love with a guy. She gives a wrong name or a wrong number after she has spent a night with a guy. But Jane, she loves being in a relationship and she is maybe a little wide-eyed sometimes, because she likes to see the good in people.

Enough said, I want to recommend this book (and probably the other books of her too) to the girls who like drama. I myself love drama in books and movies. Especially when the characters are at the same age as me. You can tell that the book is written from a girl’s perspective, but you can still read it even if you’re a guy. If you want to.

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by | · 21:25

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

This book has been published first time in Great Britain in 1999, written by Stephen King. You might not know The girl who loved Tom Gordon but at least you should know King’s other books like Carrie, The Shining and Misery. By them King has been called ”King of horror” and it’s not a miracle. His skills to capture things in texts is unusual and unique.

The girl who loved Tom Gordon is a story of nine years old Trisha. She gets lost in the huge forest, when she tried to escape her mother and big brother’s fighting. After that she faced how cruel nature can be and began to believe that everything there was some kind of test to her. If she fight against the nature, she deserves to stay alive. If she doesn’t, she will never get out there. at time when hours and days was changing others, she started starving and seeing illusions. Her illusions about Tom Gordon (her favorite baseball player and ”heartthrob”) was crucial part of her tricky trip there while she tried survive by the mercy of nature.

The main character Trisha is a smart little girl, who won’t give up in bad situations. The story is told by her point of view and tells well how nine years old child could feel when they get lost. Panic, terror and a lot of crying could be something where many can identify with. But instead week, whining little girl, Trisha is really brave. She has learnt many things from her parents and books and she knows how to develop them.
Other characters was her divorced mother and father and her big brother. Shortly telling her mother tries always think what’s best for their children. With Trisha it works in some ways but with her brother not in any cases. Her Brother is teenager, who really don’t have many friends. His mother can’t understand why it’s so hard to him make new friendships and that’s mostly the reason why they keep fighting. But luckily both Trisha and her brother gets along with their dad. He is gentle and he knows how to talk to them. With Trisha and her father, they both have an enormous love with baseball.

Genre of the book is horror, but I really can’t find out which part of this book really filled that. I have read couple of books from Stephen King and I can swear that I have never been so scared when I have read others of that genre. King really is unbeatable horror writer but this book is far from his best ones.
The second genre is survival. Nine years old little girl in a huge forest, alone and lost. She faced many difficult situations, but she get over them. Personally I don’t believe it’s possible that so young girl knows that much than Trisha did about forests and nature – and not a word about that she could figure out some things all by herself! However book succeed to bring this genre well out.

Reading this book was quite slow and a bit frustrating, because in the first 100 pages there didn’t happened so much scary or exciting things. But like most King’s books, the start is always very describing and slowly going. The plot always gets more interesting and deeply after reading half of the story. That’s why people need to be patience while reading his books. Even this book didn’t please me so much, I will always say that King is one of my favorite author.

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by | · 20:46

The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games is a junior novel written by Suzanne Collins.It was published in 2008. This novel is the first part of her trilogy which following parts are catching fire and mockingjay. One of the most prevalent themes in The Hunger Games is survival and keeping your humanity and dignity as you try to survive. The book is about a 16-years-old Katniss Everdeen who lives in a state called Panem, in district twelve.

The hunger games is an annual event where each of the districts is selected by one girl and one boy. The selected 24 tributes will fight for their lives until death and the winner is the only survivor.

The main characters are Katniss Everdeen who lives in district 12 with her sister Primrose Everdeen and her mother, Gale who is Katniss’s bestfriend and her hunting partner, Peeta who is a baker’s son of district 12 and the one of the 24 tribute of the hunger games but he also loves Katniss.Then there is Rue who is form district 11 and becomes Katniss’s ally during the hunger games. There are other crucial characters too but they don’t make much difference.

The plot shortly. There is a reaping where the tributes are selected. The girl tribute of the district 12 is Primrose Everedeen but because she is Katniss’s 12-year-old little sister Katniss volunteer. It is a shock for Prim and their mom but Katniss promises that she will do anything to win the game. The other tribute of district 12 is Peeta Mellark. After they leave the district 12 to Capitol they practice for example the use of weapons and other survivor skills they will require. And then the game begins. All of the 24 tributes stand on a beam where they have to wait 60 seconds and after that everybody runs to the weapons and then in to the woods. Every time when someone dies there is a cannon shot. Some of the tributes make crowds so they don’t get killed so easily. At first Katniss is alone until she ally with Rue. When Rue dies there is a new rule which is that both tributes from the same district can be winners and the Katniss search for Peeta.

I liked the book a lot because it was so easy to read even though I didn’t understand every single word but it didn’t matter. It was very exciting although I had watched the movie already but the book had more information than the movie as usual. I recommend it to everyone who likes a lot of adventure.

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by | · 20:43

The Cuckoo’s Calling

When I first heard about this assignment I instantly thought I should read a book by J.K. Rowling. The Harry Potter series has always been near to my heart so I felt like reading an another novel by her. Originally I chose The Casual Vacancy but I changed my mind quite quickly as I got a new crime novel by this praised new author called Robert Galbraith for christmas. It was later revealed to me that the book was actually written by none other than J.K. Rowling under the Galbraith pseudonym. I was instanly in love.

The Cuckoo’s calling is the first part of a series about an English private investigator called Cormoran Strike. The thing that separates him of the general ”detective type” is the way he’s presented in the story. The usual kind of a private investigator is quite noble and aristocratic, such as Sherlock Holmes, but in this case the main character is kind-of vulnerable, worn-out and dirty. In addition to him being a little messy, having a poor sense of style, a bad hairdo and a lot of financial problems he has even lost his leg in a battle in the Afghan war. All this together and a little bit of irritation between his skin and the prostesis, plus a recently broken engagement with his girlfriend, gives a pretty good image of the character. He is teamed up with his temporary secretary Robin Ellacot, a 25-year-old newly engaged Yorkshire girl, who has recently moved to London since becoming engaged. She is very interested in assisting a detective and turns out quite clever and comptent for the job.

In the beginning of the novel Strike is hired by a lawyer, John Bristow, who wants Strike to take a closer look to the death of Lula Landry, his adopted sister. Landry was a very succesful supermodel who was considered to have committed a suicide by jumping off a balcony in the ”better” side of London. Bristow refuses to believe that his sister took her own life and wants Strike to investigate the case more thoroughly. At first Strike seems sceptical about the case as it has recieved huge media attention but as he dives deeper into the case he founds out very crucial things about the young model’s death. And as the plot thickens Strike has to interview several people from Lula Landry’s life including her friends, brother, uncle, bodyguard and personal driver. The more he digs in to the world of the supermodel the more complicated the plot seems to be. Depression, drugs, poor relationships, stressful job and a multi-million inheritance were on this poor model’s shoulders. No wonder it seems that she killed herself. And yet, Strike has to try to believe Bristow and find out if the death was actually a murder, even though his only motive seems to be the double salary he’s getting from Bristow, due to his financial problems.

The language of the book was quite typical English with a few exceptions of for example the Cornish accent of Cormoran Strike and the speech patterns of different characters in general. The way Galbraith/Rowling made the characters seem more realistic and authentic was also very impressive. I especially loved the little details in the speech of the characters. For example ”how do you do” changed into ”how d’you do” etc. Lovely isn’t it?

And now to the critical part. The one thing I found somehow annoying whilst reading was the fact that every interview seemed to follow the same kind of a pattern; the detective is located in a restaurant (or a bar) and the person to be interviewed arrives at the scene. The questions are usually about the night of the death or the day before. It almost felt like Rowling was trying to get rid of the Harry Potter -type of ”monotonous” storytelling and move on to more complex dialogues. Even though J.K. Rowling is one of my favorite authors I must say that I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I enjoyed her other works, but still the book was pretty addictive. For real it was easy to read 70 pages a day without getting bored or falling asleep. Trust me I’m a slow and a lazy reader.

For the first work of crime fiction by J.K. Rowling this book was well executed. Soon after publishing The Casual Vacancy there suddenly started to be a lot of fuss about her writing a crime novel. Now that she has done it under the pseudonym, that was later revealed, I think that it couldn’t have impacted the public better, at least from a profitable point of view. In this case Rowling was truly a master of surprise and totally baffled her readers with this brief but neat vanishing trick.

From the deadly fall off the blacony to the poor father-son relationship between Cormoran and his dad, the story was an engaging, unique and thrilling reading experience. It would’ve been almost excellent without these small annoying repetitions and patterns it followed (still very usual in crime fiction). Nonetheless it was a story well-told and to be honest I’m looking forward to reading the sequel. Marvellous work J.K. Rowling, marvellous work indeed.

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by | · 20:07

Under the Dome

So, I read the book Under the Dome from Stephen King. Stephen King is a well known novelist and he has always been my favorite author thanks to his unique way of capturing the moment, and this is how I knew I could finish this 1074 page monster in time. Under the Dome was published in 2009, so it’s a relatively new book from Mr. King.
The book tells a story of a small town, Chester’s Mill, getting isolated from the rest of the world by an invisible dome. Nothing seems to be able to destroy the dome, not missiles nor speeding trucks. The residents of Chester’s Mill are stuck inside with some tourists, trying to deal with having no electricity and no way of getting more food supplies. Town’s Second Selectman (Jim Rennie) is spreading chaos by doing pretty much everything a responsible human being wouldn’t do from murdering innocent people to manufacturing drugs. These irresponsible actions cause conflicts between Rennie and the protagonist (Dale Barbara) to the point where Barbara ends up getting himself on Rennie’s hit list.
Barbara has his own storyline going along the main plot. This includes a somewhat romantic relationship with the town reporter Julia Shumway. I enjoy a good love story as much as a cockroach enjoys getting stepped on, but I’m not sure how to feel about this one. I’m not even sure if we’re talking about love here. The conflicts between Rennie and Barbara however were excellent, I could almost feel how Rennie’s slight discomfort with Barbara turned into pure hatred.
The language of the book is actually one of the main reasons I enjoyed reading it so much, it was filled with inspirational little sentences such as “Murder is like potato chips: you can’t stop with just one.” and “If you were seeing a lot of horseshit, there had to be a pony in the vicinity.”, such beautiful words, I just felt like writing them down somewhere. The narrator was omniscient, occasionally letting us know who’d die in the next 30 minutes, it was written well so I enjoyed it a lot.
I really liked this book, the character development was believable and nice, the relationships between the characters were really human like. The ending however left me unimpressed, it felt like King would have just thought to himself ”Well, I’m done. I don’t feel like writing this anymore… I’ll make it end with a huge boom and aliens”. I also really enjoyed reading a book in English, been a while since I last did that, it was a lot easier than I remembered. The book was huge and hard to carry with me, but it was definitely worth it, I’d recommend it to anyone who appreciates a good storyline more than a satisfying ending.

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