Quick Book Reviews Blog

When those of us who aren’t parents are asked to imagine what motherhood is like, most of us think of emotionally-fulfilling moments between a mother and her baby. We may imagine the baby sleeping soundly in her arms, or perhaps laughing cutely and learning to speak his/her first words.  However, as Jill Smokler would have you know in Confessions of a Scary Mommy , these stages of motherhood are very few and far in-between… most of the time is actually spent in a peculiar purgatory. 

In the very recent past Jo Nesbo has established himself as a very interesting mystery writer, especially with his penning of numerous Harry Hole novels. He has brought us one solid murder thriller after the next, and with The Snowman he makes no exception. Being another Harry Hole novel, we now follow our beloved hero as he looks into a rather strange disappearance.

If you would ask random people on the street who they believe the best hockey player in the history of the sport to be, chances are that an overwhelming majority of them would answer with the name Wayne Gretzky . However, the man’s grandiose exploits may very well have overshadowed the accomplishments of superb players who could be equally-deserving of that title, with one of them being Bobby Orr. 

Cormac McCarthy is quite popular in literature circles for his unforgettable novels exploring either the post-apocalyptic world or the dark side of life in Southern places.  It can be argued that The Road is his one of his more successful novels, and for such a title, its premise is quite simple: a father and son crossing a post-apocalyptic world in hopes of reaching the coast.

In Police by Jo Nesbo we once again see the return of our beloved and charismatic hero, Harry Hole of the Oslo Crime Squad. This time around, the action takes place in Hole’s home, Oslo, and he finds himself face to face with one of the most dangerous enemies he could ever fathom: a serial killer who targets police officers.

Autism is perhaps one of the most mysteries conditions people on this Earth happen to be afflicted with. Though it certainly doesn’t take away one’s ability to live a life and function in society, it does affect him or her in various ways which can turn life into quite a difficult and painstaking labyrinth.  From a medical point of view, the more unfortunate thing is that we do not really know much about the condition, precisely how it affects the human mind, and perhaps more importantly, how autistic people perceive the world. 

Ira Levinson is a ninety-one year old man with a whole life of experience behind him. Though he knows his time will soon come, he never thought it would be this soon. After suffering a car accident, becoming stranded and injured, Ira feels the life fleeting away from him, until his wife Ruth starts to appear next to him, which is surprising considering she died nine years ago.

Though the world of literature certainly is filled to the brim with countless thrillers and murder mysteries, I saw new additions are always welcome, if of course, they can bring a solid experience to the reader, if not something new to the genre itself. It seems that a certain number of people were a bit dubious when Jo Nesbo, author of The Headhunters , decided to create his own detective series starring Oslo Crime Squad investigator, Harry Hole.

Many of us have imagined what it would be like to travel back in time, whether purposefully or accidentally, whether backwards or forwards. Though we are all different people, there is no denying that many of us imagine traveling to the past as reverting back to a time when things were simple, more stable and predictable. 

We are being bombarded on a daily basis with various messages which aim to turn love and attraction into a science, with countless advertisements and companies claiming to have the formula that will help you achieve success in that aspect of your life. However, as is often forgotten, human emotions, and especially the more complex ones such as love tend to be quite resistant to scientific scrutiny.

Sylvie Mason is a young teenage girl who lives a life about as regular as it gets, with one exception: her parents’ profession as they specialize in helping the dead find peace once they reach the afterlife.  Though it is certainly a questionable career to specialize in, they cause harm to no one and live out their lives peacefully. One night, they receive a phone call which prompts them to leave. Later, they are both found brutally murdered in a church. 

North Korea is certainly known around the world as a brutal, cruel and unforgiving place where atrocities are virtually committed on a daily basis, and where the people live under the iron rule of whomever their leader happens to be.  However, it seems that very few works in literature explore that place on Earth, which is why The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson is a welcome breath of fresh air in the world of books. It tells the story of a young boy, Pak Jun Do, whose mother was “stolen” to Pyongyang and whose father runs a work camp for orphans.

Though recent comedy attempts may have led some to believe that Greenland is covered in ice and Iceland is covered in grass, the truth is that each of them actually deserve their names. Iceland is, as its name would suggest, quite a hostile place in reason of all the ice and snow to be found there.  Nevertheless, humans have managed to adapt themselves to virtually all kinds of conditions, and they have settled the small country for a long time now.  Burial Rites by Hannah Kent takes place in the backdrop of 1829 Iceland, and it re-tells an important and fascinating moment known mostly to those who live there: the life of the last person to be executed in Iceland, Agnes Magnusdottir. 

The Bartender’s Tale by Ivan Doig starts off fairly quaintly and innocently, as we are taken into the mind of Russel “Rusty” Harry, an old man who yanks us back all the way to the 1960s, when he was but a boy living in a small town in Montana called Gros Ventre (fat belly in French). He and his father, Tom Harry, led a quiet life as the latter spent his time running the bar, one some qualified as the best in Montana (exaggeratingly of course).

We would like to think that all the Nazis were either trialed or outright executed at the end of the Second World War , but as you probably know, the truth is that countless people, many of them heinous murderers and criminals, have managed to escape the country and change their identities.  Even today, the hunt for the few survivors of that lot is still on, and throughout the last sixty years many fell victim to it.

Only a few years ago Bo Burnham was an unknown teenager making YouTube videos from his parents’ attic. Unlike most other people in such a situation though, Burnham’s sense of humor catered to his many viewers, and nearly overnight Bo became an online sensation.  Today, Burnham can fancy himself as a comedian, musician, celebrity figure, and perhaps more importantly from our point of view, a writer.

As is the case with most other Woodrell novels, The Maid’s Version is set in the countryside and could very well be qualified as a “country noir” story. In this story, we are presented with a common housemaid who lives in West Table, Missouri, with her husband who is often away and her three children. She serves a prominent citizen, and her life goes about as well as it could considering her position in life. 

Hugo is nothing but a small orphan living in a Paris train station, trying to retain his secrets, anonymity, and of course, his life. Though each day is marked by constant struggle, Hugo has an objective in mind: to bring back to working order a small automaton left to him by his death father.  However, the machine is of incredible complexity, not to mention that it requires special parts to function. Hugo tries to overcome that challenge by stealing toys from a local store, but one day the owner, a mean old man, catches him red-handed, which ends up being the catalyst that sends them both on an adventure that gets increasingly curious and makes their paths cross with those of many other interesting people.

The Lowland is famous author Jhumpa Lahiri’s latest effort, and this time around we are treated to a story set in a similar context as her previous ones, at least in the sense that it is set in India (Calcutta to be more exact) and contains much factual information about a period in history which actually took place. In any case, the main story gets going as two brothers, Subhash and Udayan set out to meet different fates.  The former leaves for America to partake in scientific studies in peace and serenity, where none will bother him. The latter, on the other hand, joints up with the Naxalite movement that has for goal to rid the Earth, or at least India, of poverty and inequity.

Those of us who live in large societies are aware, or at least know about the tendency to be pushed to live a perfect life. Advertisements, celebrities, magazines, television shows, movies, video games, news reports, and all other sources of media bombard us on a daily basis with perfect perceptions that we are then drawn to follow. In other words, we are being pushed towards becoming perfect beings, and it wouldn't be all too bad if most of us didn’t use the standards set for us to determine how successful and worthy our lives truly are. 

Manuel Perrine is fresh out of jail, and the first order of business for the renowned cartel leader is to get revenge on the one man that managed to put him behind bars: Michael Bennett. In Gone by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge, we get to witness the intense battle of wits between Bennett and Perrine, as the former terrorizes America by conducting numerous assassinations across the entire country, while the latter throws everything but the kitchen sink in an attempt to put a stop to this.

The Gravity of Birds is the first effort and debut novel of writer Tracy Guzeman, and nevertheless she chose to tackle a few complex subjects in it, but more on that a bit later.  To give you an idea of what the book is about, it starts off by presenting to us two drastically different sisters, and a struggling young painter whose charms have an effect on the younger of the two sisters.

The exploits of those who fight and die during wars tend to be forgotten as the years go by and all the knowledge people have of the events becomes increasingly generalized.  As unfortunate as it may be, countless heroes are become forgotten every year, with some of them never having been known in the first place. 

In The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly we see the return of two beloved characters, mixed together in the same story. On one side, we have Mickey Haller, the infamous Lincoln Lawyer, who after struggling for two years has finally bade it back in the courtroom. What’s more, he has been tasked with defending the suspected killer of a Hollywood Lawyer, a studio executive by the name of Walter Elliott. However, Haller learns through his own channels that not only is Elliott innocent, but that the real killer is still out there and is coming for him next.

Over the years, Frederick Forsyth has brought to us innumerable classics of literature, and many people, myself included, would say that The Day of the Jackal is his magnum opus. Just to get things straight, though the book is about an assassin, it doesn’t have any big gunfights, interminable hand-to-hand combat scenes, car chases, nor explosions. Rather, what it does have is a very detailed and finely-crafted plot, following the young British assassin known as the Jackal as he prepares for the hit on Charles de Gaulle , the French President of the time.

The crime of murder is certainly not something new (it can be argued that the concept existed long before humans were even existing), but the invention of technologically-superior killing tools has certainly made the job much easier.  It seems that in recent years the United States have seen a rabid increase in public shootings, especially ones where an angry teenager is the perpetrator.

Being an immigrant certainly isn’t easy, as for most people it is a process which entails with itself some kind of loss, whether we are talking about people, objects, or even territory. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan tells the story of four Chinese women who have recently immigrated to San Francisco (the story begins in 1949). Though each one of them has experienced loss and tragedy on a certain level, they all decide to meet together to raise their spirits and try to find the silver linings to their lives, all while eating dim sum and playing mahjong.