Mini Reviews - XI

Cleopatra's Daughter
  - Michelle Moran

It took me quite a while to get into the book, and perhaps because of the slow build-up and a saturation point in reading (had been reading at a frantic pace for few months then), it was almost 5 months before I picked it up again (or any reading at all).
Anyways, after the long break, I got absorbed into it quickly. The narrative was compelling, though I could see the plot twists that the author tried to create long before they were revealed .... the secret about Alexander, his fate, the identity of Red Eagle ....
I enjoyed it, but felt that there was something missing.

Read and Reviewed in Sept 2020

Blackberry Wine
  - Joann Harris

I love Joanne Harris's books, but this one didn't work as well for me as most of her other works. There always seems to be an underlying sadness in her stories, but this one felt melancholy to me, perhaps it was my state of mind when reading it, or the memories of growing up in a small town in a kind of isolated community (which were happy memories, the sadness comes from that part of my childhood being lost).
Her chocolate series is well loved for its magical realism, but this one bordered on supernatural, while I would have preferred a more logical explanation for the meeting in the later part of the book.

Read and Reviewed in Jan 2020

Angela's Ashes: A Memoir of a Childhood
  - McCourt, Frank

I had put off reading this for quite a while, as I was afraid it was going to be very taxing. However it turned out a great read. Although it is terribly sad, it doesn't drown you in misery (like Khaled Hosseni or Premchand's stories), as the heartbreaking tale of poverty and loss is related through a child's matter-of-fact voice, sometimes even with a little humor.

Read and Reviewed in Dec 2019

Mini Reviews - X

The Return of Moriarty (Professor Moriarty Book 1)
The Revenge of Moriarty (Professor Moriarty Book 2)
  - John Gardner
 
These offer an interesting take on Moriarty's exploits. However, it became repetitive after a point, describing the gangster's daily business of crimes. The major feats and character studu of Moriarty were more intriguing. In the second book also, the big plans and schemes and evolution of Moariarty's character were imaginative. However the descriptions of daily business felt even more repetitive. It is interesting to note that many of Holmes pastiche works have a PoV on Jack the Ripper crimes, and this novel also offered a decent twist on it.

Read and Reviewed in Oct 2020

My Man Jeeves (Jeeves #1)

  - P.G. Wodehouse

After receiving numerous recos for Wodehouse as the most wonderful work of english humour, I started with the Blandings Castle series and read six of them, after which it became kind of tedious. I think it is best to read them in between other works, to change the mood, rather than at a go.

Anyhow, these are tough times, and after reading a couple of other books, I thought I will give Jeeves a try. After all, he is perhaps the most famous creation of Wodehouse. My man Jeeves was entertaining and amusing alright, but I was also a bit disappointed. For one, I expected a novel, but it was a collection of stories. Secondly, only half of the stories featured Jeeves, the other half related the antics of another set of characters. Jeeves stories follow a similar pattern ... One of Bertie's friends gets into trouble, they seek Jeeves' advice, which backfires. Then when they give up, Jeeves manages to set it right. Not bad to cheer one up, but I feel they should rather be used as a palate cleanser.

Read and Reviewed in Apr 2020

The Woman in White
  - Collins, Wilkie 

Fairly good and entertaining suspense thriller, set in Victorian times. Though I found it a little too verbose .... there were lengthy descriptions, which I eventually skipped. I'm not particularly fond of reading a 7-page description of the heroine's beauty, or a character's tangential thought-line. It also was full of cliches, most of them non-endearing.

Read and Reviewed in Jan 2020

Bride of Pendorric
  - Holt, Victoria 

This was much better than the previous two Victoria Holt books I read (which were a huge disappointment to my memories of enjoying her books immensely). It was something of a typical Holt story - a titled, handsome hero, a young naive heroine, an immediate attraction and grave misunderstandings. It was an enjoyable read, even suspenseful during the middle, but by the last quarter I figured out what would be the big reveal.

What I don't understand is that why in all these 18th or 19th century romances, the young heroine, barely out of her teens, fall for a man 15 or more years older to her, practically double her age at the time.

Read and Reviewed in Jan 2020

Mini Reviews - IX

Evil Under the Sun (Hercule Poirot #24)
  - Agatha Christie

Mine would be an unpopular opinion. I love poirot stories, but the novels are hit or miss for me.
This one had more than usual of Christie's tropes, some of which I can't reconcile myself to. For one, the premise is very similar to one of the short stories, about a love triangle or quadrangle. We have the usual occurrence of coincidences, critical facts are shielded from the reader, but perhaps the worst aspect was the unraveling of mystery being based on intuition (oh, because he is just the type to commit this sort of crime ... awful).

Read and Reviewed in January 2021


The Big Four (Hercule Poirot, #5)
  - Agatha Christie

Was this was really a Poirot novel, really?! I agree with many other readers that this was totally out of character for Poirot, and the frenzied action was most reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes in The Final Problem. Apart from this, the biggest disappointment for me was that most of the revelations of identities of the villains and plot twists came as no surprise.

Read and Reviewed in Oct 2020


Cat Among the Pigeons (Hercule Poirot, #34)
  - Agatha Christie

This was disappointing. The characters were completely one-dimensional, and everyone seem to have formed the same impression of everyone else. Poirot didn't make an appearance until 2/3rd of the book, officials were inept as usual (I mean, a special branch officer cannot find anything of interest, let alone solving the case?), and had too many coincidences with some unexplained events
* SPOILER *
It was quite evident where the gems were hidden - as soon as Jennifer complained about the balance of her racquet.
Adam Goodman's presence was completely unnecessary - if you think of it, he didn't achieve any purpose. I think it would have been a better story if, rather than forcing Poirot towards the last one-third or quarter of the book, Adam had solved the case with help from Kinsey and Julia.
And there were just too many coincidences, as there usually are there in Christie's novels. While they are alright for a small village setting, it doesn't make sense in this case. Why does EVERYONE go to Ramat, of all the places? Specifically, the purpose of Ann's visit is never explained. And it is very strange that Jennifer should have seen Rich there - it should definitely have been bigger than a village, and Rich was trying to keep low, avoiding meeting people, and when Jennifer is said to have been really bad at observation.

Read and Reviewed in Jan 2020

 
Open and Shut (Andy Carpenter Series, #1)
  - David Rosenfelt

This is the second Andy Carpenter book I read (after Twelve Dogs of Christmas). It was entertaining as well, though I felt the author went a little overboard with the humor dose in here (perhaps he achieved more balance in later books?). However, this one was much more predictable. I had identified the main villain before the first half.

Read and Reviewed in Dec 2019

Mini Reviews - VIII

Because of Mr. Terupt (Mr. Terupt, #1)
  - Rob Buyea

This is a warm story, and quite a lot to offer to its target audience, particularly pre-teens and younger teenagers. It reinforces the values of compassion and friendship, the negative impact of bullying, and how it often results from the issues the perpetrator may himself or herself be facing.

As a (jaded) adult, I found it likeable enough but not particularly imaginative, having come across a few stories of a special teacher making a real difference to his/her students (even the line sounds cliched!). The primary characters seem to be cutouts, each a representative of one kind of trouble a child could be going through. While it is interesting to view the events from the viewpoint of different characters, it becomes tiresome hearing seven different accounts of every incident, some differing only nominally.

Read and Reviewed in March 2021

The Hundred Dresses
  - Estes, Eleanor

I had come across so many praises about this book, and wanted to read for a long time, bit never found a copy available at a reasonable price. Finally read it thanks to subscription on scribd.
I didn't quite enjoy it. The message it tries to convey is essential, but the way the story was told didn't quite appeal to me. Of course I can't be sure, but I think my younger self wouldn't have liked the writing style much either.

Read and Reviewed in March 2020

The Book of Lost Things
  - Connolly, John

The underlying concept in the book, of incorporating fairy tales into an adventure, is interesting. For most part, the twisted takes on popular fairy tales were enjoyable, though I found some of them repulsive. Moreover, most of the female characters are portrayed in a negative light, which is not something I would recommend for young-adults. It has too much of violence and abuse for kids, and a very simple plot with a predictable ending for the adults. If it could be 'sanitized', it could make a wonderful adventure story for kids.

Read in Dec 2019

The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy

The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy

  - Rachel Joyce

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read ‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry’ exactly two years ago (can’t help remarking on the coincidence that finished the two books on the same date!). After this time, it is a little difficult to recollect in much detail my thoughts on the book, but I can recall the overall impression that I liked it, though I was not overwhelmed as most of the readers whose feedback I encountered. My feeling about ‘The Love Song …’ is the same – it had interesting aspects, but not something I would call an absolute must-read.

This is more of a companion book than a sequel, since it can be read standalone (even though it would be better to have read Harold Fry, to get a better sense of the context). So often, after you read and are touched by a book, you want more of the story of a significant secondary character, whose story did not form the focus of the original book (after reading Henry’s tale in ‘Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet’, I am fervently hoping for Jamie Ford to write Keiko’s story). So was the case of Queenie Hennessy – the first book left one with so many questions - what eventually became of her, and most important, what was so special about her that Harold Fry chose to undertake a such a unique journey as a tribute to her after all these years. This book provides these answers and more, and wonderfully so, and in some ways I found her story more intriguing than that of Fry.

The story of her past, from her childhood, to her few years with Harold and her life thereafter, are related as she goes over her memories in her final days. This time that she is spending in the hospice for terminally ill patients looked after by some very compassionate nuns, is the most poignant part of the book. These people won my heart, and at places, moved me to tears. Her unique bond with Harold’s son David is wonderfully done as well. Her recollections are a long letter she addresses to Harold, comprising of things she wants to tell him, and things that she feels she must. The end, though expected (she has terminal cancer after all), was no less painful.

The biggest thing that prevented this from being a great book was the completely cheesy romance - a more subtle and compassionate expression of love would have been more suited to the characters. Repeated assertions of how much she loved Harold and how afraid she was of unintentionally revealing her feelings, made her seem more like a teenage girl. It was also not something that the reader needed to be reminded of after every other chapter.

Another thing that puts me off in books is a painfully long drawn mystery, when the author constantly keeps hinting of some terrible event through out the book. It makes me annoyed enough that I stop caring about it altogether. In this book, there were two of these – what was her great and treacherous secret that she wants Harold to forgive her for, and what did his wife say to her as she left. Authors, please, if you have a world-shattering secret to spring up on the clueless characters (and readers), do shatter the world by all means; but please make the revelation at the right moment as a surprise to us as well.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

- Gabrielle Zevin
 

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I have misgivings about books (and movies) that open with a 30-something woman, bright but apparently unattractive (messy hair, shabby dress, and on the heavier side to score bonus points), being nagged by her mother to hurry up and get married, while herself ruing over her inability to "get a man" (how I hate that kind of phrase!). However, "The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry" has been so highly regarded amongst the "books about books", including two of my bibliophile friends whose opinion I value, that I had much hope with it despite the regrettable start.

It sustained this hope for the next couple of chapters, while it looked at the life of an eccentric bookseller Fikry, who is struggling with grief, unable to cope with his wife's untimely death. Beyond this, it falls into the usual tropes of chick-lit, a genre that I have been unable to like.

Each chapter begins with a well-known short story, the preferred literary form of Fikry. Be warned - they have major spoilers (in case you haven’t read the story yet). I must confess that I haven't read many of these stories, but from the few I have read, I did not make a connection between the cited story and the ground covered in that chapter. It is entirely possible that there is a correlation and I missed it, but the outcome is that it didn't work for me and rather felt like a gimmick just to attract book lovers. Because if you remove these literary introductions, what remains is an entirely predictable, fluffy story-line. We have a grumpy misanthrope who is transformed by the responsibility of taking care of a child; the grief-stricken widower who finds love again with a lady towards whom he is antagonistic in the beginning.

The theme was certainly interesting - the premise of a well-known story mirrored in the life of a lover of books, but the execution of this idea was not done well. I must be one of the rare bibliophiles who did not like this book, but that is how it is.

The Dictionary of Lost Words

The Dictionary of Lost Words 

  - Pip Williams

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is one of the most beautiful books I have read in quite a while (though the fact that I have been binging on murder mysteries may have something to do with this lack of lovely books in my repertoire). I find it more difficult to write about a book I loved than one I disliked or hated. Perhaps because it is easier to criticize and vent out your frustrations? Whereas, describing your love is tougher because you are afraid that you will never have adequate words to capture how you feel?

I had never imagined I could be enchanted by a story about compiling – yes, a dictionary, of all the things! One major thread in this book is what went into the creation of the first Oxford English Dictionary. It serves as an anchor for the stories about challenges faced by women at the time, but could be true today, just in a different form. It is about empowerment, listening to the voice of the marginalized people, and about love and life in general.

Some of the characters in the book are authentic, the most significant being James Murray, a lexicographer and philologist, who was the primary editor of the OED. He built a shed he called Scriptorium besides his home, where he and his assistants carried out most of the work for the dictionary. I was fascinated to learn of the amount of research and discussion that went into defining each word, from collecting the contributions from volunteers across the world, authenticating the sources, vetting duplicates, researching the citations to editing the entries, reviewing the proofs and finally printing the volumes. It was not decades of back-breaking work, it was truly a labor of love. And I feel, more so for the women assistants who worked in unofficial capacity, for the love of the language or the love of the men of their family who were the official editors - the women whose contributions were never recognized.

The protagonist (fictional character) is Esme, a young motherless girl whose father works for Dr Murray, and who grows up in this environment, developing a love for words and for knowledge from an early age. She is enamored of words; she collects the slips of words from the Scriptorium, that are forgotten or rejected, and saves them like a treasure. And as she collects these words, she ponders and questions, and in the process, develops a deep insight into the ways of the world. The questions that she raises are pertinent, and I must admit, had never been considered by me from this perspective.

Are some words more important than others? Why should be a word that has been used in text, even if at a rare handful of places, more significant than those that have only been used in verbal communication and are quite common? Doesn't this inherently disqualify a part of the vocabulary of people who didn't have an opportunity to read or write - the poor people, and the women? Why is a word quoted in an obscure text more important than the ones routinely used by newspapers? Why does a gibberish word used once by a famous writer carry more weight than another logical one used by someone who is not well known? Will the words that are omitted by the dictionary be condemned to be lost forever?

So, Esme decides to collect and preserve the words used by the marginalized and create her own dictionary of lost words. But she realizes the impracticality of compiling all such words, and focuses on the ones that are used by or for women. During this undertaking, she realizes that the inequalities faced by women go far deeper than the right to vote or right to earn a degree. However, she has caring family and friends around her, who encourage her to forge her own path. I loved the character of her father, who nurtures her intellect and unconditionally supports her. And her godmother, who is a guiding light in her life. And Lizzie, a maid not much older than herself, who gives her unbound love. And this, I feel, is what empowerment means.

I was enchanted by the way the story is told ... it feels almost magical. The story itself is poignant and thought provoking. What I didn't like about it is that the "lost" words that were specifically cited were mostly vulgar ones. Even though a context is presented and makes sense, I would have liked to read more about some other common words like knackered. And there are times when the sadness, real or perceived, keeps on washing in waves and makes it too melancholy.

My Animals and Other Family

My Animals and Other Family

  - Clare Balding

4 of 5 stars

This is a book that has perhaps been longest in the "currently reading" stage for me, without being abandoned at any time. I started reading it nearly 11 months ago, and even though I liked it, I wasn't able to make good progress with it. Last year for about 5 months I just couldn't read anything, and I think that pushing myself too much on this and another book may have created that reading slump. Once I was back in my reading form I picked it up again, and that is when I realized that what worked for me was reading a couple of chapters every few days, and I am glad that I did finally finish it.

I am not a pet or animal person myself, but I do like reading warm stories about animals - James Herriot's works are amongst my favorite books. Though I would not compare Clare Balding to Herriot, I do find a similarity because of her love for animals, mostly dogs and horses though, and a very subtle streak of humor in her narration.

Her father was one of the most famous racing horse trainers of the time, and therefore she grew up on the training yard, developing an affinity for horses, riding and racing. She herself had a short but successful career as an amateur race jockey. She relates her childhood and racing career (to about the age of 19) in this book, and I loved her descriptions of her life on the farm, the scrapes she got into at her home and school, and her racing experiences. In the last one- third of the book, it gets a little deeper into the technical details of horse training and racing, and I found these a bit confusing and somewhat boring.

Each chapter in the book covers one of the stages or milestones of her life, and focuses on the animal that played a key role at the stage. I liked the format of the book, as well as her writing style. It's very well written, fluid and with just the right amount of detail to keep you engaged. I loved to see her bond with her brother, and the constant support of her mother. I didn't like her father too much, who seems to be a little self-absorbed and very chauvinistic. But her grandmother comes across as a really mean person who is particularly scathing to her, and I didn't like her at all.

Overall, I found it lovely, though slow read. And even though I am not into sports and have no clue into horse racing, I found it an enjoyable experience.

The Nature of the Beast

The Nature of the Beast 

  - Louise Penny

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I have quite mixed feelings towards this novel - the 11th book in the Inspector Armand Gamache series. On the positive side, it is a great thriller, with an amazing build up of the suspense and tension. It keeps you at the edge until a cinematic kind of climax. The atmosphere and the nuances of life in a close community in the face of a tragedy are wonderfully captured. As before, I like the way the primary characters in the series keep evolving and the way the important characters in this novel are developed.

On the downside, the basic premise behind the whole story – the incongruous weapon, seems well, incongruous. It may be based on factual events (of which I learnt afterwards), but the impression I gathered while reading it made the entire operation unbelievable, and my doubts about it are not at all smoothed out by what I read about the real man and the weapon he built. Secondly, this was quite gruesome. I started with an understanding that this was a cozy mystery series, and the first 2-3 books were indeed so. I was okay with them becoming gradually darker, but I don’t want so much blood and gore and psychopathy (which is the reason why I started reading cozies after all). As it becomes more oriented towards nail-biting action, I feel it is moving away from the charm of the calm study of its characters’ psychology.

I usually avoid writing about the story line or events (enough about that in the blurb and other reviews), unless there are specific points that I want to highlight or discuss. In this novel, we finally have answer to one significant question about Ruth’s personality – “who hurt you once”, though it seems to be over-articulated to me. Even so, for this incident to have as much impact as it did, she should already have been in a troubled place, and we do not yet gain an insight into that. Secondly, Gamache instrumenting the unauthorized release of an extremely dangerous criminal is uncharacteristic, and the reason for conspiring to do so is terribly synthetic. The ending made my heart cry out for the mother of Laurent Lepage, the highly imaginative young boy whose adventures come to an end a little too soon.

Maisie Dobbs

Maisie Dobbs

  - Jacqueline Winspear

My rating: 1.5 of 5 stars

The Maisie Dobbs series was highly recommended in my reading group as a wonderful cozy mystery and as a novel with a strong female lead. It also features amongst the best rated cozy mysteries in Goodreads lists. Yet I found it severely lacking in all the aspects it was recommended for, and more. I won’t say I hated it (okay, nearly there), but found it boring and over-hyped.

I could not muster up any admiration, or even liking, for the character of the protagonist Maisie. Yes, she is very intellectual and works hard, but otherwise there is not much initiative on her part. Both her education and business result from the unending generosity of others (there is no use finding logic in fiction, particularly light books as these, but how did a person who is deeply involved in matter of international importance and his own social work, find hours every week for years to work with one protege?). There is no reason why everyone should extend unconditional love and support towards her; in fact, she does not seem to suffer any setback except possibly that of her “lowly” birth, which is soon overcome through the largesse of the family she works for. She has a rather superior attitude, the prime example of which is dictating her very first client on the course of action he must take once she has completed the investigation. And this holier-than-though attitude comes across as truly hypocritical in light of the event revealed at the end (spoiler later).

The mystery was non-existent, the sleuthing was trivial and whatever risk was involved was not taken by Maisie. A lot of her conclusions are drawn from intuition rather than deductive reasoning, and the way she takes on the culprit at the climax is just unbelievable (both in stupidity and in outcome).

A short way into the book, we are taken into a lengthy detour building up the background of the character, in excruciating and uninteresting detail. It made me lose whatever interest I might have had in the mystery. Throughout the book, her mentor’s snippets of wisdom are related as part of her thought process … “Maurice said/taught …”, which I found annoying rather than insightful. The author attempted to conjure up a big surprise at the end, which I found pathetic – when an author drags the mystery of an upcoming surprise through the whole book, I just lose patience and interest … if you want to surprise, just deliver it without continuously telling that there is something big coming up. The event itself led me to further dislike the character of Maisie.
 

** SPOILER ** 

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We learn that Simon is alive though completely mentally impaired, due to the bomb explosion in the red cross tent. Maisie was deeply in love with Simon (so she tells us) who was completely devoted to her. Yet, she did not visit him in the intervening 12 or 14 years, giving a two-line explanation that she could not bear to lose the memory of him as he was.  [We learn that Simon is alive though completely mentally impaired, due to the bomb explosion in the red cross tent. Maisie was deeply in love with Simon (so she tells us) who was completely devoted to her. Yet, she did not visit him in the intervening 12 or 14 years, giving a two-line explanation that she could not bear to lose the memory of him as he was. (hide spoiler)]

The Cat Who Saw Red

The Cat Who Saw Red

  - Lilian Jackson Braun

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I liked the setting of the two books in the series that I had read earlier (antiques shops and fashionable homes), but found the gourmet boarding house in this this one rather strange. By now, I can see that the books all seem to follow the same pattern - a murder in the past attributed as accident, Quill visiting different people for his news article series (a surprising large percentage of whom get involved in some sort of accident), followed by a new murder, the knowledge of the culprit's identity suddenly dawning (though the clues have been quite evident for long), confrontation with the murderer, and a spectacular rescue by the cats. Nothing wrong with a formula unless you get the feeling that if you've read one, you've read them all.

The mystery was weak and entirely predictable right from the start, and Quill's way of concluding the evidence by confronting the suspect/culprit alone doesn't sound intelligent at all. Add a couple of threads that appear to be relevant but turn out to have no bearing on the main story, and you have a mystery novel that doesn't have much going for it. The redeeming factor was the antics of the cats, and that it was quick and fun read (in contradiction to the predictability).

It is the sort of book I would consider a good time-pass (if I had that much of time to pass0, and it was lying around. But I won't go out actively seeking it out. Therefore in a world of ever growing TBRs and any book you might want to read right at your fingertips, I am not likely to return to the series.

The Cat Who Turned On and Off

The Cat Who Turned On and Off

  - Lilian Jackson Braun

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

In my continued quest for a cozy mystery that would be intellectually satisfying, picked up “The Cat Who …” series, going by the Goodreads lists of highest rated books in the genre. Of all the ones that I have read, this is the only series where the protagonist is a male (except for Armand Gamache series, which I don't consider a cozy mystery at all). The MC is a middle-aged journalist, who is amply assisted in solving the crimes by his two Siamese cats. Due to an inadvertent mistake I started with the third book in the series, under the impression that it was the first one. Reading the blurbs of some of the subsequent books left me a bit confused, as they seem to describe how he came to possess these cats, whereas in this one he already has the two of them.

The MC has a troubled personal life, true to the persona of typical detectives in contemporary thrillers/mysteries, though thankfully he is sociable and good-natured. One advantage of the male lead is that he can solve the mysteries on his own (excepting the help from the cats). The authors writing a female lead seem to feel compelled to have a love interest rescue her from a life-threatening situation at the climax – and it really annoys me no end.

I liked the background given to the him – an erstwhile crime reporter, now relegated to the “features” department, making a success of his assignments despite his initial reluctance. The setting was interesting - "junktown" - the shabby part of the city that has evolved into a market of antiques. The mystery by itself did not hold much suspense – there were enough hints indicating the murderer, and with that, one could take a guess to the reason. The story was more about how the MC would discover the identity of the suspect and confirm the reason for the crimes. It was a short and fun read, with the cats providing a lot of amusement.