books #23-29 (2007)

Only 29 books in four months? What's wrong with me?

23. Benighted by Kit Whitfield ****. I did really like this book - thanks, Wolfa! I can't come up with a better description so go read wolfa's post here (and the one linked above).

24. Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts ***. This book is a quasi-autobiographical story about a guy who escapes from prison in Australia and ends up living in a slum in India and being part of organised crime there and smuggling guns into Afghanistan. It was very interesting, but it was so frickin' long that at the later stages I just wanted it to end. I also could've done without the descriptions of him gouging a guy's eye out, for example. I was hoping it would finish with him being recaptured, but apparently he's saving that for a sequel. The wikipedia entry on the author says "Gregory ... is in great demand in both speaking circles and universities, having profound and original philosophies about life", which irritates me, since his "profound and original philosophies about life" were the parts of the book that annoyed me most. And now that I'm irritated, I just dropped its rating by half a star...

25. Magic's Child by Justine Larbalestier. This was the last of the Magic or Madness trilogy. It was better than the previous two (perhaps because the characters had finally gotten used to each other's language differences), but still not great.

26. Anthropology by Dan Rhodes ****1/2. I think I like super-short stories better than just short ones. This book contains 101 101-word love stories, some happy, some sad and some kind of twisted. Jeremy posted a few of them here.

27. There Will Never be Another You by Carolyn See ***. This was interesting enough, but it didn't leave a strong impression. It was just one of those books about people dealing with their everyday anxieties and lack of meaning in their lives.

28. Don't Tell Me the Truth About Love by Dan Rhodes ****. Actually, maybe I just like Dan Rhodes' short stories, because these were good too (although, some of them were long enough to have chapters).

29. We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver ****. This book was kind of disturbing, as it should be, given that it's about a boy who kills nine people at his school. It's told in the form of letters from his mother to her estranged husband, so you get her reflections on what the kid was like growing up. Although she talks about things that probably influenced his antisocial personality and behaviour, like her lack of attachment and his father's oblivious jollity, the book doesn't really try to explain why he carries out his elaborately planned massacre.