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43) A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Another book or novella as they say nowadays that I have never actually read which is fairly shameful! I put this right finally. I wanted to read this close to Christmas to get a better feel for the story. When I was a kid, I did read those abridged versions of Dickens but the version I read, was really gutted compared to this. We all know the story from seeing all those tv and movie versions. Scrooge hates Christmas! Maybe he can change his ways if Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to come, visit him…..
This is a really fun read and great to finally read the full story rather than adaptations. Dickens is very wordy in his style but I really enjoyed it. Embarrassing that it has taken this long for me to read this but better late than never. I did love his descriptions of when Scrooge finally changed his ways and how he now feels. it is a story that would really put you in good heart and make you feel the magic of Christmas. Highly recommended of course.
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44) Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
I really have to update this thread to get it up to where I am now so on with the reviews!
Another Dickens book that I had read as a kid but the version I read was an abridged version. Surely you know the story….an orphan who is in a workhouse but ends up with a bunch of pickpockets…What is not to like?!
I knew it well from the 1966 movie Oliver! and the kids version but only now getting around to the actual book. This is a really good read and properly fleshes out the story from those shortened versions.
Needless to say, its highly recommnded.
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45) Hard Times by Charles Dickens
Still on my Dickens book reading and now we come to Hard Times. I loved Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol but unfortunately I had to give up on this early on in the book. I just could not for the life of me get into the story at all and it felt like an academic book. Obviously it is studied in schools and you can see why but the story did not interest me at all. It focuses on English society at the time and issues such as trade unions with mill workers and their owners.
I found myself bored early on and it felt like a chore to read. So as I literally could open a bookshop wih the books I own, I decided to quit and move on! It is probably heresy to not finish this but I want to read stuff that I enjoy and not just because I have to or should.
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46) A Tale of two Cities by Charles Dickens
Well I went for it…..one more Dickens book and it was definitely a bridge too far! I could not get into this one either but I think its because I am a bit worn out from Dickens. So you could say it was the best of times, It was the worst of times! Yes this is the opening line of the book!
This is historical fiction concerning the 2 cities of London and Paris. I was just not in the mood for this book. Having read too much of Dickens, I just wanted to move on but I do think I would like this book. Another one that I gave up on early on but I will come back to it someday just not the foreseeable future! I wouldn't go back to Hard Times but this is one that will still be on my to-be-read list.
I shouldn't have read so many Dickens back to back! Let that be a lesson to you kids, don't overdose on Dickens! 😆
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47) The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
So as I needed a bit of motivation to get back on track after not finishing a few books, I went for this self help book. Pressfield is a screen writer and he writes historical novels too. This book is meant to be for creative people such as artists or writers. I am neither so I didn't really know going in if I could get anything out of it!
Pressfields central point is that we all have a "resistance" to doing things and we end up slumped on the couch saying we will do it tomorrow! He calls this Resistance where there is something always wanting us to not go do something. I enjoyed this starting off as it felt like "a call to arms" where you are told how to get things going and how to fight the resistance he describes. I took this to mean anything in youe life that you have been putting off and I think his advice works well.
More importantly, this book reads well and is a very quick read. I think if you are in a slump about anything this book would be good to give a quick read. Where this book falls down, is that Pressfield makes a good few claims without facts and talks about religion here and there. Not much but enough to make me scoot over these parts.
Then the book seems to tail off in the third section where I could not get anything useful out of it. This is only a short read but this third part felt like filler to me in order to pad the book out. I really liked the first part as it felt like motivation to get going. I am going to keep this book as its short but focus on those parts when I reread it. It will be great if you need a pep talk about anything you have to do.
So really this book felt like a blog post from a writer. A very good one thats stretched out but there is a lot of good stuff early on.
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48) Sunfall by Jim Al-Khalili
Back to one of my favourite genres…..Sci Fi !!!!
This looked very promising as its a debut fiction novel by the renowned theoretical physicist, broadcaster and author Jim Al-Khalili. No, I never heard of him either but he is meant to have done stuff for the BBC and written non fiction books about physics.
Obviously in theory, this book is based in fact and it concerns the earths magnetic field. Apparently, and I did not know this, if there is no magnetic field then we get at least harmed but probably killed by the Suns rays. The last time the magnetic fields flipped was about 780,000 years ago. I remember it well……!!!! 😅
This would mean north on a compass would be the other way around as well. Then I learned that there was a brief time called the Laschamp Event. This was a flip that occured about 42000 years ago and that only lasted about 440 years. The evidence for this was found in trees in France. The scary thing is we don't know why it flipped or why it flipped back. The field dropped to only 5% of its current strength before it went back up again. So needless to say it would be disastrous for us if this happens again.
So in this book, we find out that the field is failing again.World govenments are hushing it up becsuse they don't want a panic. A young hacker finds out th truth as a group of scientists figure out a way to stop the magnetic flip by reactivating the Earths core. This is not by going to the core but by using Dark Matter and beaming it at the core. Unfortunately a weird cult wants to kill off humanity as they think we are a plague so they do not want it stopped!
This seems to have some basis in fact as the author is a theoretical physicist and I really thought this would be good. Unfortunately he is not a good writer as it needed a good editor. First off, its too long and second, there are way too many information dumps. It does have intereesting facts like all of the above but the story takes a back seat. When it does get going, it is full of a lot of cliches like the female lesbian hacker who will save the day. Then she seems to take a backseat near the end of the story!
There are bad guys who are like a cartoon and then there is a supposed twist at the end that is more like a Scooby Doo ending. Totally obvious! Characters get introduced a fair bit and then promptly killed off. Then there are tech billonaires aplenty in this book!
I think there is a good book somewhere in this but it felt like a first draft. If at least 100 pages were cut out and a good editor brought in, this may have been passable. As it stands, I would not recommend this book at all. The only good thing is the physics or science facts that I have written here. A pity as the premise had potential.
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49) Conclave by Robert Harris
I read this book before the movie came out but I still have not seen the movie. I have been meaning to read Robert Harris as I just know that I will like his stuff. In case you have no idea, a conclave is a gathering of all Catholic Cardinals in order to elect the new pope. Here we start off with the Pope dying and so a Conclave is called. Jacopo Lomeli is the Dean of the College of Cardinals and it is his job to oversee the whole process that will elect a new Pope.
So soon, all the Cardinals arrive and they go into lockdown so they can elect in secret. This book seems to be very accurate or at least comes across to me that way about the way the new pope is elected. It was a lot of run to read as I thought Harris did a great job of showing how human these Cardinals are. I really liked it when they actually prayed in the story as I would assume they do it often as depicted. Usually in stories, this kind of thing is cut out as irrelevant type stuff!
I liked the way he showed the Cardinals wanting to be Pope but not being totally nefarious. I mean obviouly you would want to be Pope but you wouldn't be calling the other guys idiots in this situation! I mean again he showed them to be human but obviously very holy. I am not religious at all but I thought it was very well done.
This had me gripped right up until the end but I will say that I saw the end coming as it seemed obvious to me. I thought reading it that it couldn't be that obvious. I wasn't exactly right but more or less. Something near the end seemed a bit unlikely but I went with it as after all this is a thriller! But then the ending is really implausible and made me go "ahhhh, come on!" Still though, it was well written and I did enjoy the book even after these complaints. I won't say what was unlikely and the implausible bit is the ending so they would spoil the book for you. But this is a thriller, so the usual routine of picking the new guy would be dull so I get why Harris had to make it a bit of a twist!
This would be the perfect thriller if the ending wasn't so implausible but at least you will remember it!!
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50) The Monk's Disciples by Jeffrey Robinson
I have had this book ages in my collection and I got it on a whim. I didn't know the author and it was one of those books you get where you just buy it and hope for the best! It didn't look like something I would usually read.
Vincent Barolo is an American lawyer based in London, England and ihe is trying to eke out a living. He is divorced and has a kid but they are still in the US. He is also heavily interested in boxing having had a few boxing matches while in the navy. Now he rewatches classic matches and is a promotor of young and upcoming boxers. He hopes to promote them for a while then sell on their contract when they do well. So its like an investment for him where he tries to foresee the talent before it is noticed and makes the big time. He meets a guy on a flight and after the usual small talk he gives the guy his business card and forgets about him. Then he is sent a retainer for his services in the form of a cheque. He doesn't know much about the guy but soon learns that the guy is dead. So what heppened to the guy and why did he want Barolo as a lawyer?
This is written in first person view from the lawyers position and he is a really good character. Robinson writes very well and I must say is very good with the dry wit. It was set up nicely at the start but the story never really gripped me at all. I began to lose interest as it went on as basically this is a kind of lawyer type book. By the end, I wanted to just move on from this book and I didn't really have any interest in the resolution. This could have been a great book if there was a better and more involving story. I liked the wisecracks from the main character but thats about it. There is a lot of boxing stuff in it that does nothing to progress the story. It felt like a passion for the author and he put it in.
The book is 341 pages and at least 100 pages could have been cut out to make things tighter. Yet another book that needed an editor! I would not recommend this book to you so don't waste your time on it.
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