Quick Book Reviews Blog

Jane Marple may very well have one of the sharpest minds in the universe, but the fact remains that she is still subjected to the toll taken by old age and cannot escape its wrath. Just like everyone else, miss Marple is in need of a vacation, and in A Caribbean Mystery that is just what the doctor prescribed... literally. Jane finds herself sent to a paradise vacation island by her nephew Raymond, and everything is so still and perfect that she finds herself bored to death.

As life goes on and we get older, we begin lamenting about our fading memories, and some have the misfortune of starting that phase of their lives earlier than prescribed. Many of us even wish that we had impeccable memories, capable of carrying all the information it absorbs and retrieving it in the blink of an eye. However, upon a more objective review of such a proposal, never forgetting entails a huge drawback; you'll remember the smooth, just like you'll remember the rough.

The world as we have come to perceive it on a daily basis is something we refer to as reality, something that we take for granted and established. We cannot even fathom the idea that things are not as they appear to seemingly all of us, and yet that is the underlying philosophy of a warrior that hunts for knowledge: what they perceive is referred to as a description of the world, rather than being a reality.

Many of us have the benefit of having been raised in normal families (well within the range of what is considered normal behavior), without too much unnecessary turmoil and drama. When it comes to literature characters however, a calm and steady upbringing surely won't qualify you for the role of protagonist...something Rosemary seems to understand perfectly well in We Are All Completely Besides Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler.

Detectives today are blessed with a myriad of various tools that help them draw their investigations to successful and doubtless conclusions... science has indeed progressed by leaps and bounds in the past century. As much fun as it may be to watch them work today, there are plenty of arguments in favor of the older detectives being more entertaining.

The silver screen would have us believe that for the most part, being a spy involves car chases, shootouts, bomb defusals, and the occasional document theft. For entertainment purposes it certainly does the trick, but those who are even just a bit acquainted with the topic know things to be very different. Upon even a superficial review, the life of a real-world spy is rather different than what is presented in most works of literature, being centered mostly on acquiring information through any means necessary, with persuasion and manipulation being the favorite ones.

Though the twelfth-century had very few places where a modern person would wish to be, it is safe to say that England would certainly never be one of them. Engulfed in a civil war driven by greed, hatred and oh so much piety, the country faces a great internal turmoil as leaders struggle one against the other, with all the rest stuck in between, suffering and dying like flies for no cause.

The world of politics is one where blood has flown freely for thousands of years, a ruthless world that cannot hide its true nature despite the appearances those involved in it are constantly trying to put on. Though it is true that today certain countries can pride themselves in having political systems that are actually functioning as they are supposed to, we are still light years away of solving our problems with words and actual fairness.

The real world is a rather tough place for us to live in; regardless of what we want, it takes a certain amount of effort to achieve. Very few things, if any at all, can be taken for granted, not to mention that we must constantly contend with external influences that ensure nothing ever goes as planned. Why, it would all be so much simpler if we could only live our lives out in our dreams, where our wishes come to pass in the blink of an eye and we are the sole masters of all destinies. Many have understood the temptation of isolating themselves in the unreal, and perhaps on some level, it is a desire we wrestle with every day.

Very few are those who would expect to see their grand criminal mastermind plans fall apart at the intrusion of an old lady, and yet it is a feat that Miss Marple has been able to accomplish time and time again, visibly toughened into iron by all the horrors she must have witnessed ever since her retirement began. In The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side by Agatha Christie she is at it again, as the author now takes us back to St. Mary's Mead, Miss Marple's own quaint little village, albeit one that has changed considerably since her last visit.

The sinking of the Lusitania is an event that not only marked an important historical shift for the United States and left many grieving, but it is also one of the more mysterious happenings of the century, for the sole reason that a thick, grey and seemingly never-ending mist surrounds the truth of what happened. To reconstruct the event from the perspective of all those involved is much easier said and done; the questions keep on piling up while most answers remain shaky in their foundation.

Some works of literature are rather easy to classify, containing all the expected criteria of a certain genre and lying within the guidelines set for it. On the other hand, there are those that blur the lines and by virtue of their sprawling content are not only hard, but sometimes impossible to classify.