Hang Wire

Hang Wire by Adam Christopher, 373 pages


This is one of those books that has four or five story lines that slowly converge in a finale. That makes for a slow and somewhat confusing start. To make it worse there is also a time element to give us more historical events. I honestly almost put this book aside as I had made it through 80 pages or so and still had no idea what the plot was, just that it involved a serial killer or two.

For those that might be interested in the book that basic plot is as follows. A retired immortal is trying to live peacefully on Earth but an ancient evil presence keeps trying to destroy the world.
The book is set up to be a thriller/suspense but only somewhat delivers. There are too many "and this will destroy the world" events going on make it believable and honestly how many books end with "and then the world was destroyed"? So we know good will prevail which takes some of the excitement out of it.

Graveyard Book Graphic Novel: Volume 1

The Graveyard Book Graphic Novel Volume 1 by Neil Gaiman, Craig Russell

188 Pages

When I was a kid my dad used to bring me stacks of comic books home every time he travelled to Denver for business.  They has some sort of comic book warehouse there and once I got them I used to sit and read them for hours.  As an adult I don't really don't like comic books or graphic novels very much and I couldn't really tell you why until I read this graphic novel.

I have read the original Neil Gaiman book the Graveyard book and find that when adapted as a graphic novel it loses some of its magical qualities because the artist is defining what he sees in the novel instead of my imagination.  I believe the same thing happens when they make movies out of books.  They almost never live up to your imagination.  The only group of movies that comes close has been the Harry Potter movies.

Bellweather Rhapsody

Bellweather Rhapsody by Kate Racculia
340 Pages


 The book opens with Minnie Graves complaining about the bridesmaid's she has to wear for her sister's wedding.  As she wanders through the hotel she comes across the scene of a murder/suicide. 

Fifteen years later the Hatfield twins are traveling to the same hotel for a statewide music festival.  Minnie is also returning to the hotel to confront her ghosts.  When Alice's roommate Jill is found hanging in the same room, Alice calls for help only to return and find the body missing.  Everyone is a suspect and Alice and her twin Rabbit must find out what happened.

The strength of the book is not the mystery but the way the author describes the world of music and how the performers create new experiences through their playing of music.  The end is actually a mish-mash with too many plot lines and red herrings coming together.  The book has moments of very good writing but attempts to do too much.

One Plus One

One Plus One by JoJo Moyes
368 Pages


Let me begin with a confession... I like chick lit.  I don't know if we are still calling it that but I liked the Bridget Jones and Sex In the City books as well as movies like Pretty Woman.  While critics say it is about covers with shoes, I think it is more about women, and sometimes men, coming to a realization or growth that leaves their lives better.  In short, books with happy endings.

One plus One falls squarely in this description.  A single mom, 2 kids, a farting dog and a stranger all come together for a road trip that leaves all their lives changed.  The characters are engaging and the story fun to read.  Literature? No, but all books don't have to be literature, some just have to entertain.

Mirror Sight

Mirror Sight By Kristen Britain
775 Pages

The latest installment of Britain's green rider series continues where that last book left off, Karrigan G'ladheon is thrown into the future when she destroys the mirror mask in order to keep Mornhavon from gaining control of the powerful artifact.  She quickly finds out that in the future that everything she held dear is gone, destroyed by the Second Empire.  Now she must find a way to get back to her time and warn King Zachary of this future in hopes they can prevent it from happening.


The plot of this series revolves around the character Karrigan and she continues to be the focus in this book.  This book would be popular with readers of fantasy and fans of Robert Jordan. The only drawback is that fans may begin to tire of the lack of any resolving of major plot lines, a flaw from which many fantasy series suffer.

A Better World

A Better World by Marcus Sakey
380 Pages

The second book of the Brilliance saga returns with the tensions between brillants (those with special abilities) and non-brilliants rising.   When a terrorist group of brillants takes steps to hold three American cities hostage, the White House turns to agent Nick Cooper, former anti-terrorism agent and brillant himself to help come up with a solution.  However, all is not as it seems and Nick quickly finds that assumptions he made in the last book may be wrong.

This series is entertaining and well written and I can't wait for the third book to be released.

Music in the Castle of Heaven

Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven by John Eliot Gardiner, 558 pages

 

Johann Sebastian Bach has few peers in the history of music, and all of them seem more interesting on the surface.  When asked the secret of his musical genius, his response was, "I was obliged to be industrious; whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well."  This has none of the romance of Wagner's egomania, or Beethoven's torment, or Mozart's seemingly effortless prodigality.  They don't make many movies about the thrill of hard work and discipline.  Bach's thorough religiosity, leading to his reputation in Germany as "the Fifth Evangelist", makes his life even more alien to sophisticated audiences.

 

The man revealed in this book is more interesting, and more conflicted, than the popular image of Bach would suggest.  Though Bach held that political authority had a divine origin and must be respected, he also believed in his responsibility to defend his vocation, which in practice meant interminable squabbles with his employers over salary and responsibilities.  Although Bach always conceived himself as laboring "to please God", his genius flowed between secular and sacred, each enriching the other.  Even so, it is not the man who is the main focus of this book, but his works, even if the two can never be wholly separated.  Bach's work remains vital not only because it possesses technical greatness, but equally due to his deep empathy and feel for the human condition as it wrestles with questions of sin, death, and eternity.

 

The author, John Gardiner, is himself a legendary performer of Bach's works, the founder of the Monteverdi Choir and a prime mover in the trend towards the use of period instruments to play Baroque pieces.  Although there are some bits that jar - he subscribes to a theory of religious development which harkens back to Fraser's Golden Bough and Wells' Outline of History filtered through Dawkins and Pullman, and he seems at times to seriously propose the existence of a genetic origin for musical genius - but he is forthright about his own biases - he is interested primarily in Bach's choral works, and spends little time on purely instrumental pieces.

 

Gardiner's description and interpretation of the music of Bach is deep and compelling, even for those of us who have little musical talent.  He teaches us not only the story of how the music was composed, but how it should be heard.

Last Apprentice Series books 3-5

Night of the Soul Stealer, Attack of the Fiend, and Wrath of the Bloodeye by Joseph Delaney, 500, 546 and 516 pages

          

Since I have so much trouble talking about book series without giving anything away from previous books I have taken to combining chunks of them together.

These are books 3-5 from The Last Apprentice series in which we continue to follow John Gregory's apprentice Tom Ward. In these volumes we learn a lot about the various types of witches and supernatural beings in the world along with a large part of John's past. Tom also has the misadventure to meet up with two of John's previous apprentices. I especially enjoy the debates about the struggle between the light and dark. Does doing dark to help the light make you dark or not? That seems to be the main question the next couple books will decide

So far its been a good series, though Delaney seems to keep creating stronger and stronger dark creatures foe them to beat. If this keeps up this series might slip into the absurd.

Night Embrace

Night Embrace bySherrilyn Kenyon, 408 pages

So I read another one of these. This is the second/third book in the romance/supernatural Dark Hunter series. It is almost exactly like the previous book except no handcuffs keeping people together, this time they are soul mates and destined for each other.

Basically a group of evil guys (being vague here to avoid giving stuff away) are trying to summon an extremely evil god in hopes that this extremely evil god will grant them their wishes before destroying the world. Along the way are the vampiric Dark Hunters, Were Hunters, some human bears, and even gods that are trying to save the world.

Despite how cheesy the romantic plot is the supernatural part is at least somewhat good and the only thing that keeps me reading them.

Virtue of Selfishness

Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand, 173 pages

Having enjoyed Atlas Shrugged I had been wanting to read more of Rand for some time. Since I hit a lull in my current readings I decided to try it. I was very disappointed with this book. Not only were most of the arguments and ideas already hashed out in Atlas Shrugged but Rand had a tendency to quote directly from it instead of rearguing the ideal. This didn't just happen in a couple of the arguments but nearly every single one. I guess if you have never read Atlas Shrugged or never managed to make it to the end, then this could help sum up parts of it. But overall I think this book was pretty pointless.

Concise History of the Crusades

A Concise History of the Crusades (Third Student Edition) by Thomas Madden, 209 pages

 

The Crusades have been interpreted and reinterpreted many times over the centuries.  The popular narrative at present is the residue of the twentieth century view of the Crusades as an imperialist endeavor by Europeans to colonize the Near East.  This, in turn, is a development of the nineteenth century interpretation of the Crusades as an early example of the civilizing mission of Western man.  The dawn of the twenty-first century has seen the Crusades as the root of conflict between Muslims and Christians (and post-Christians).

 

Recent research has overthrown some of the old certitudes about the Crusades, even if the popular mind has not yet assimilated this.  The Crusades were not primarily composed of surplus males - to the contrary, they were lead and manned by the cream of the European nobility.  They were not undertaken for financial profit - to the contrary, they were a constant economic drain.  They were not remembered vividly by Muslims - they were barely remembered at all until the nineteenth century, when the European powers invoked them during their colonization of the Middle East.  They were not considered at the time to be offensive wars, but a counterattack against an aggressively expansionist Islam, and an attempt to reclaim territories which were, at the time, still predominately Christian.

 

Madden, the Director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at St Louis University, provides a basic overview of the Crusades as understood by their participants.  Covering four centuries in two hundred pages, the book is very readable despite being compact.  An excellent introduction to a complex, and often misunderstood, subject.

Earth Girl

Earth Girl by Janet Edward           263 pages

Jarra is stuck on Earth, cursed with a genetic anomaly that means she is unable to survive on any other planet.  Her parents gave her up when she was born and allowed her to be raised on Earth while they went about their lives.  Jarra has always hated her parents and all people like them.  She has decided that she wants to study history and rather than apply to a university on Earth, she will apply to an off world school.  All other universities have their first year studies at historic dig sites on Earth so she will be able to attend for her first year and transfer, after she’s proven to the exos that she, an ape, is just as good or better than they are.  Her story will be that she was brought up military so the others won’t be able to trip her up with questions about a planet that they themselves might be from.  Her plan seems to go perfectly, until she realizes that the other students are actually nice and may like her anyway.  This was a really good book but with a small typeset it reads slower than some books I’ve read recently.  Although I wouldn’t give it to a reluctant reader, a lot of science fiction fans would probably like this book.

Needful Things

Needful Things by Stephen King                               736 pages

Although I’ve read this book before it had been long enough that I didn’t remember all of the details so it was still a good read the second time around.  It was also interesting to discuss this book with someone who had only seen the movie, not read the book, because some of the details are definitely different between the two.  Some characters don’t even appear in the movie and some of the items purchased and tasks done are different.  However, the book didn’t lose anything between readings except for the element of surprise.  It was still scary and a good read.  Mr. Gaunt comes to Castle Rock and opens his shop, Needful Things.  Many of the townsfolk find exactly the item they have wanted for their whole lives, even if they didn’t realize it until they saw the item in the shop.  Gaunt is always willing to sell, and at very affordable prices, but he always asks for a favor in return.  Some of those favors aren’t very nice, but they aren’t actually hurting anyone, right?  Also, his merchandise might not be quite as advertised, but no one is actually complaining  All of King’s fans and horror fans will like this book.

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Watcher in the Shadows

The Watcher in The Shadows by Carlos Ruiz Zafon            262 pages

Irene’s family has moved to a new town following the death of her father.  Nearly a year after his death it seems their fortune has changed.  Her mother was offered a good position and it seems that she and her brother, Dorian, will be able to go back to school instead of looking for work to help support the family.  Once they arrive however, Irene becomes involved with Ismael, a young fisherman.  When his cousin, Hannah, is found murdered, Irene begins to wonder if there is any truth to the ghost stories she has heard in the village and whether her family might also be in danger.  This book didn’t hold my attention very well.  Despite the supernatural mystery going on, I didn’t find it that scary and my mind kept wandering while I was reading.  A teen reader might like it better than I did, but I probably won’t be recommending it very strongly to anyone.