Just a quick review of Helicopter man before I go and paint the dining room.
I quite liked this book. It’s another teenage book by an Australian author, which I have been reading a few of lately. It’s written in the form of diary entries written by a young boy who, with his father is one the run from someone or something. They begin the story hiding in a shed on someone’s farm until they are found & kicked out. They spend the rest of the time in Melbourne.
Some of the diary entries are effectively written to his Dad, some to his dead Mother, some to his friend, and the rest are just recounting events or reflecting on the past. It turns out the father has schizophrenia and ends up in hospital while his son spends time in a foster home.
It’s not too heavy, given the subject matter and quite a good read .
Richard Flanagan has a new book out. It’s called The unknown terrorist. This is big news if, like me, you happen to think Richard Flanagan is possibly the best writer going around. It even has its own website. With a trailer. The subject of the book promises to be quite intriguing too. I suspect a bit of criticism of Bonsai Howard will find its way in there.
We have some copies on order at the library and I’m first on the reserve list. Yay!
Nadine Gordimer, winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize for literature was robbed and locked in a store room last week.
I never thought I’d get to use this category a second time!
A really quick post about this one, as I seriously have to work on my essay…
I was really excited by the blurb of this teenage book. The basic premise is that Mercy either is, or thinks she is turning into an angel. She figures that angels don’t need to eat, so she stops eating. Her parents send her to a rehab centre for eating disorders. This sounded like a great story to me.
It wasn’t as great as I had hoped. The writing was ok, but not great. The story didn’t quite work for me in the end. Parts of it were quite good and engaging, but I was left feeling like it promised much more. Maybe the blurb was too good and made me set the bar too high. Dunno.
I never used to read crime novels, but about a year ago I decided to give some a try. I read books by Peter Temple and Shane Maloney because they were two Australian crime writers I knew of. I also tried Michael Connelly and Ian Rankin as two crime writers big on the world stage. Rankin didn’t really do much for me, but one day I might try another of his. Connelly was alright. It was no replacement for the fancy schmancy literary novels I was exclusively reading at the time, but it was a nice change. It didn;t take long to read, the plot kept me interested, and the writing was good at being what it was meant to be. Since then, I’ve kept reading Connelly’s stuff. Picking up one of his odler ones every now & then and grabbing the new ones as they come out. In that time, he’s released two new books: Lincoln Lawyer, and now Echo Park.
Echo Park features detective Harry Bosch who is the main character in most of Connelly’s books. Harry is currently working in the Open-Unsolved (cold case) department of the LAPD. One of his old cases from when he was in Homicide comes up. One he had been unable to solve 13 years ago and has haunted him since. A guy who has been charged with two murders confesses to 9 other murders, including Harry’s 13 year old unsolved case. Throw in some political manouvering for the upcoming District Attorney elections, a cop who seems a bit crooked, a female FBI agent who has a history with Harry, a few dead bodies and you have another Michael Connelly novel.
Sure, it may sound formulaic, but it’s not too bad in that regard. I never quite guessed how it was going to turn out in the end and enjoyed the journey. Connelly’s books feel to me like extended versions of Law & Order, only with more people getting shot.
I couldn’t live on crime novels, but don’t mind one every now and then and Connelly is worth reading if you like that sort of thing.
Um, what did he expect?
It’s not that I think he deserves to be shunned & threatened, but I think he should have been expecting it. Either that, or his research didn’t really give him an accurate picture of who these people are and what they do to people who they don’t like.