Slaughterhouse 5, book review. (Kurt Voonegut)

Hmm!
If you're looking for a war novel where a time traveling optometrist is abducted by aliens for their zoo, then I might have found just the book for you!
Set in the 1940s, 50s, 60s . . . you get the idea, the story of Billy Pilgrim going from 1940s war torn Europe - Dresden to be precise - where he is a complete idiot and totally out of his depth (he doesn't even have shoes or a gun), to being a successful optometrist and fairly wealthy - assisted by his father-in-law along the way - interspliced with a trip to Tralfamadore as a zoo specimen, could be considered interesting but in reality it's just plain weird.
Billy Pilgrim has had his share of good luck in life like, when he was in the thick of the allied firebombing of Dresden during World War II and survived (the estimates on how many died there varies but at least 25ooo perished, which puts some perspective on things), and he's had some bad luck, too; he actually knows exactly when and where he is going to die and can't do anything about it so, happily (maybe reluctantly would be a better word), he plods on.
I found very little 'anti-war' about this book (I say that because I've seen it referred to as an anti-war novel several times), but appreciate that when it was written it could well have come across that way.

This is a short book so there's not a lot of depth to any of it but with the author actually having been in the war, in Dresden, that part, along with when he visits an old war buddy, feels realistic but, when he's kidnapped and taken to Tralfamadore along with Montana Wildhack - so they can procreate in a Zoo there - I couldn't help but wonder if the author had run out of things to say, didn't want to go into the war in any more detail (for personal reasons maybe), or just couldn't be bothered, so made up the Tralfamadore bits.

If he'd left out the Sci-fi part and concentrated more on Billy Pilgrim's life, before, during and after the war, the novel would have been better in my opinion, even if his pre and post war life was mundane.

Parts of this book are narrated, too, which is confusing and might catch you out at first, and added to the fact that Billy Pilgrim's life isn't interesting, the alien abduction childish and weird, the timeline hopping around, which baffled me to the point where I had to go back and retrace my steps a few times, I started wondering whether to just give up and read something else.

Maybe it's because I go in cold on books, doing little to no research before I dive in, so don't know what to expect or maybe it's because this book is boring but, to summarise, if you like your books quirky and slightly baffling then this will certainly please but for me it just didn't work.

Two stars for, Slaughterhouse Five then and another American classic I'll have to add to my, 'Why don't I get on with American Literature,' pile! 😔

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Fahrenheit 451, book review. (Ray Bradbury)

A book that many of you are no doubt familiar with, even if you've never read it, but a book worthy of further investigation I feel.
It would be easy to label this as a dystopian novel or Sci-fi but I felt it was more than that. I felt it was more like an awakening, a dawning of a new era kind of novel, as Montag (our main protagonist), who, as a fireman, burns books as opposed to a fireman extinguishing fires, becomes self-aware when a lady whose house they are about to destroy, decides to die in the fire rather than live without her books - books are outlawed by the way.
This awakening has consequences for all (not least Montag, who, we find, has been stealing books from time to time and hiding them in his house), but for his wife, his Captain and more besides and then there's Clarisse. Beautiful, young - Montag might say naive - Clarisse, who sees the world differently. Who enjoys walking and talking, looking at nature as opposed to the majority of people who sit in their homes watching giant televisions on multiple walls totally oblivious to the real world - Montag's wife, Mildred, being one such person.
The writing is quite basic here but speeds you through - it isn't a long book either - which makes sense when you find out that the author wrote it in less than two weeks by pulling together several of his short story ideas and linking them into this single narrative.
I thought Montag was a bit wooden and I was frustrated by Clarisse being such a bit

player, although her influence on Montag and the story as a whole far outweighed her brief appearance, which was poignant. I liked Beatty, Montag's boss and how he seemed to know so much (too much really), for one who professed to uphold the law, and after his demise I wondered if one might find a secret stash of books at his house if one searched!
Mildred, who was always zoned out on what was happening on her televisions, was a bit of a bore, but the last part of this book, after she'd called the firemen to burn Montag's books and Montag goes on the run, having attacked his colleagues, was really rather good, genuinely exciting in fact.

With the fire department's mechanical hound, several helicopters filming and the masses glued to their televisions, all in on the chase, it was hit or miss as to whether Montag would escape, and that last part of the book was gone in a flash.
So, a dystopian novel it may be but one with more to it I think. In fact, the thing I took away from this book were the feelings, the emotions it portrayed: the sadness of Clarisse, the cunning of Beatty, Montag's fear of being exposed, killed, and these feeling overshadowed the characters to which they belonged, diminishing them all to bit players. And the strongest emotion . . .?
Hope.
Three and a half stars.

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Ready Player One, book review. (Ernest Cline)

Is sci-fi your thing? No.

How about something apocalyptic, geeky '80's retro? Four hundred pages about gaming?
No! Still not on board?
Well, you’re gonna miss out on one hell of a good book then because, Ready Player One is fantastic.
It is 2044, we’ve used all the oil, there's widespread famine and poverty, but hidden in the OASIS, (a computer generated universe consisting of thousands of worlds), there's hundreds of billions of dollars waiting to be won. All you have to do is solve the riddles set out by its deceased creator, Halliday, find the keys to the three gates and it’s yours. Some seek the fortune for good, to prosper, not only themselves but others, but the IOI Corporation wants it for itself and will stop at nothing it seems to get it, including murder.
Living at the top of a twenty story stack of mobile homes with limited aspirations, other than to win the fortune, Wade Watts, aka, Parzival spends all his spare time logged into Oasis, trying to solve the riddles.
When he stumbles upon the first of the three gate keys, he becomes instantly famous, a target, once he's made it through the first gate, he's on borrowed time. His aunt and the trailer where they lived, are blown to pieces, there's coercion, a feigned suicide, proposed kidnappings and more.

As riddles get solved, an epic game of Pacman is played, tempers fray and trust issues arise, you forget you’re in a fictional world within a fictional world and get pulled along for the ride, and all the while the characters in the book are, for the most part, avatars in a computer game.
Parzival is super geeky, but he's educated himself through the OASIS school system, his fellow gunters, (people who spend their time in OASIS looking to solve Halliday's riddles, but who haven't sold out to the corporation of IOI), all bring something different to the narrative, some more than others, of which we find out at the end of the book!
The author’s love of the 1980's was right up my street and some of the games, the computers, and most of the films he makes reference to - Parzival flies around in a DeLorean for goodness sake's - had me reminiscing, and there's always a sense that something's not quite right, that one of the gunters might not be telling the whole truth. With that in mind, the sixers (derogatory name for those who spend their days trying to crack the riddles in OASIS for IOI), gradually close in on Parzival and his friends but, can they beat them to Halliday's Egg and win the prize - Ownership of the entire virtual word, the Oasis?.

There is a huge amount of info-dump throughout this book, which gets a bit annoying but with the epic battle at the end, the tense week that preceded it, the journey through the various challenges, great characters and (for me anyway), the books effortless mix of nostalgia with a possible future and superb researching and originality, it easily earns four stars.

I just hope the film doesn’t let it down.

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What is a Good Book?

What is a good book?

A good book to you might not be a good book to me, so what makes a really, truly entertaining book?

Pace?
If a book has pace, you wiz through it, so surely a page turner is a good book?

Well, not always.

Take Robert Harris's An Officer and a Spy as an example. I have lamented the virtues of this book in previous posts and I stick by what I said then, it is a page turner, and a most excellent read, but if you look at Dan Brown's Inferno, also a page turner with lots of action, historical references and famous places, you could be fooled into thinking the same, but you'd be wrong.

Dan Brown's research is second to none, but his well used characters are starting to wear a bit thin now, and another megalomaniac getting their comeuppance at the hand of Robert Langdon is getting a bit tiresome.
Length then?
We all know how important size is, but again, don't be fooled. 
Some of my all time favourite books are less than two hundred pages long. H.G.Wells, The War of the Worlds and Richard Matheson's, I am Legend, spring to mind, and at the other end of the spectrum there's Stephen King's, The Stand and J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels, which extend to many hundreds of pages, but which I love in equal measure.
The King, Queen and Prince of all books for me, is J.R.R Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, a book so sublime that I will take it from the shelf every so often, blow of the dust and read random passages; weird!
Genre then?
No, still barking up the wrong tree. You can see from of my shelfie photo above, that teen-fiction mixes with old classics, horror with Sci-Fi, hardback with soft and they are in no particular order. Short books mix with long, old books rub binds with new, so, what it a good book?

There is a saying in the photographic community, that the best camera in the world, is the one you have with you, and I think this applies to books too. 
Yes there are duff ones, and some you won't get; some are poorly written, some too long, but when I leave the house every morning, I know how lost I'd feel if I didn't take my long, new, old, short, horror, young adult, classic, hardback, book with me. So pick something, anything before you leave for work, go on holiday, sit down with a cup of tea, and I guarantee it will be better than having no book at all.