Momo by Michael Ende

Children's

When Momo, a little homeless girl, takes up residence in an abandoned amphitheater on the edge of town, the residences come out to see who this girl is. She quickly makes friends of them, listening to their stories and troubles. Soon her friends visit her less and less, and Momo wonders what happened. There are men in grey suits going around stealing time from everyone. Adults have less time thinking they are banking it for later and children are running around free because there is no supervision. Momo wants life back the way it was and sets out to figure out how to do so.

I had picked this book up because the author is that of The Neverending Story. While this book is every bit as imaginative as his previous work, I found it rather tough to get through. I didn't find Momo the character very interesting. I think part of the reason is that almost nothing about her is explained. She's a child, but thought to be very old. There seems to be some mystical features of her but none are actually determined. This, combined with a rather slow moving plot made me rather bored of this book.

First Line: "Long, long ago, when people spoke languages quite different from our own, many fine, big cities already existed in the sunny lands of the world."

Rating:
(3/5)

The Oxford Murders by Guillermo Martinez

The Oxford Murders by Guillermo Martinez
Mystery

A grad student from Argentina goes to Oxford to carry on his mathematics education. He stays with an elderly lady and her granddaughter in their basement. Shortly after arriving, he finds his landlady dead and famous mathematician Arthur Seldom arriving with a note that tells of her death. This note has a mathematical symbol on it and states the time and place of the death. More murders are expected, with more notes to follow, and the series to be continued.

Given that the premise of this book is mathematical, there is a lot of explaining that needs to be done on series and the theorems behind them. I have a Math degree, and even with that I found that at times I was getting bored with all the math information being thrown out. I did like the discussion about how even with three numbers in a series there are many different solutions, which was causing the standard test creator problems. They gave a sample series with a few sample answers and I had thought that the answer was something that wasn't even presented, but was completely plausible.

This book is rather short and there wasn't really anything in the book that didn't need to be there. There weren't any major plot twists but I enjoyed this book, the mystery, and the math.

First Line: "Now that the years have passed and everything's been forgotten, and now that I've received a terse e-mail from Scotland with the sad news of Seldom's death, I feel I can break my silence (which he never asked for anyway) and tell the truth about events that reached the British papers in the summer of '93 with macabre and sensationalist headlines, but to which Seldom and I always referred - perhaps due to the mathematical connotation - simply as the series, or the Oxford Series."

Rating:
(3.5/5)

Out Stealing Horses

Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
Literature in translation

A young boy, Trond spends time with his father in the Norwegian woods just after the war. One morning he goes 'out stealing horses' with his friend, Jon. Jon completely breaks down after causing a tragic accident in his family and disappears. Trond's father decides to cut down some of his forest for cash and then he leaves his family.

Trond, as an old man, comes to a cabin in the wilderness to reflect on that summer and finds out his neighbour is Jon's brother. This triggers a lot of memories about his father and Jon's family.

Petterson writes a philosophical book which starts with one tragedy and slowly unravels thread by thread other painful stories and feelings. Petterson paints a vivid picture of the beautiful Norwegian woods but stops short when writing about people's feelings

First Line: "Early November."

Rating:

(3.5/5)

Snow Country

Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata
Literature in Translation

Snow Country is a novel about the three visits of Shimamura, a wealthy man of leisure to a hot springs mountain resort on the western side of Japan. It is spring the first time and he meets a local geisha, Komako. She is reluctant to be a geisha but feels she needs a 'protector'. Komako is immature, chatty and highly emotional.

The next visit is in the fall, Komako has grown and matured. She finds the relationship a struggle.

The final visit is in the winter and Shimamura and Komako argue and grow further and further apart. Shimamura is now attracted to Yoko, a friend of Komako. The reader wonders if the cycle will repeat itself.

This book is very lyrical. The descriptions are very well done and very detailed. The book is a love story. It starts off with young love, progresses on to a more adult type of love and finally starts to die off.

First Line: "In the winter, cold winds blow down from Siberia, pick up moisture over the Japan Sea, and drop it as snow when they strike the mountains of Japan."

Rating:

(3.5/5)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Fiction/Literature

A middle-aged financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist has been sentenced to jail for slander. He is hired by Henrik Vanger, the retired CEO of a large family-owned conglomerate, to solve the mystery of his disappeared niece 40 years ago. She disappeared from the family island and now Vanger wants Blomkvist to investigate family and find out who is responsible for her death.

The girl with the dragon tattoo is Lisbeth Salander, an investigator for Dragon Armansky. She is incredibly details oriented and very very good with computers. But she is asocial and a ward of the state even though grown and her finances are controlled by a trustee.

Larsson has developed a story with a large number of characters, each with their own story. The Vanger family is immense and each had a motive to be involved in the mystery. Blomkvist is dogged in his following of a tidbit of a trail. He ends up hooking up with Salander who originally investigated him for Vanger. Blomkvist the humanist and Salnder the anti-social make a formible duo.

Larsson has written a brilliant story about women as victims and their rise above it. I will be looking for the next book in the series.

First Line: "It happened every year,was almost a ritual."

Rating:

(4.5/5)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
Mystery

Mikael Blomkvist is a financial journalist that specializes in uncovering the truth about companies. He is partial owner of a magazine called Millenium, but is sued for libel when he goes after a Swedish business tycoon and cannot prove some of his claims. With his career in ruins, Blomkvist gets a strange offer from another CEO of a large company, Henrik Vanger. Blomkvist heads to the middle of nowhere Sweden to be asked to solve a 40 year old murder mystery. Vanger's niece disappeared 40 years ago during a family function and Henrik wants Blomkvist to find out which one of his family members murdered his niece.

Solving the mystery introduces Blomkvist to the incredibly large, quite odd Vanger family. The family has many skeletons in their closet and not all family members are happy that Blomkvist is there.

We also learn about Lisbeth Salander, a troubled young woman with an extraordinary mind. She is a great investigator and incredibly details oriented, yet is not entrusted to her own finances or her own legal representation. She's brought in to the investigation and an unlikely friendship is created.

After getting over the confusion of the number of characters in this book and trying to keep the entire Vanger family straight, I really enjoyed this book. It was a bit of a chance of pace where the person investigating the mystery was not a cop and approached the crime differently. Also, since the crime happened so long ago, this also added a layer of complexity. This becomes quite the page turner.

There are two more books in the series, which I suppose is why the ending wasn't all that satisfying. While the mysteries were solved, the relationships between the characters were left quite open and left me wondering what was going to happen. I will be looking out for the next two books in the series as I'm interested to see how the characters continue on.

First Line: "It happened every year, was almost a ritual."

Rating:

(4.5/5)

A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali by Gil Courtemanche

A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali by Gil Courtemanche
Genre of book

Valcourt is a Quebecois that moved to Rwanda in hopes of opening up a television station there with the blessing of the Rwanda government and the help of the Canadian government. However both kept dragging their feet and Valcourt turned his efforts toward creating a documentary about AIDS. While staying in the famous Mille Collines, he spends his days in Kigali, interviewing those with AIDS. Valcourt befriends many Hutus and Tutsis, but falls in love with a server at the hotel named Gentille. Gentille is a Hutu by birth, but is tall and beautiful so that any Rwandan would mistake her as a Tutsi. Obviously, not what you want to be mistaken for at the start of the Rwandan genocide.

Valcourt and Gentille plan to get married but want to marry in Rwanda, as Valcourt has adopted this as his new home. His Tutsi friends start to get murdered and tossed at the side of the road, yet Valcourt and Gentille still stay in Rwanda. Despite their explanations, I can't understand why anyone would put themselves in this type of danger. There are horror stories about mutilations and dehumanization that leave you in shock.

The first chapter of this book doesn't do the book justice. I was thinking that I was going to have to pass on the book because of the poor first chapter. If you do decide to pick this book up, don't let the first chapter get to you! The book gets far better once the author picks up a story line and follows it. It's a touching story of love in a horrible time and there's even a bit of a twist at the end!

First Line: "In the middle of Kigali there is a swimming pool surrounded by deckchairs and a score of tables all made of white plastic."

Rating:

(4.5/5)

My Name is Bosnia by Madeleine Gagnon

My Name is Bosnia by Madeleine Gagnon
Fiction/Literature

When war breaks out in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sabaheta is just a regular university student. But war changes everything. Her brother is taken away and her mom goes crazy, which sends her to an asylum. Sabaheta cuts her hair and takes to the forest with her father to fight. When her father is killed, she renames herself Bosnia, acknowledging that she may someday have to leave her country, and heads into the city.

The city, though, is no safer than the forest. There's constant shooting and shelling, killing citizens. Bosnia finds some friends and shacks up with them for the duration of the war. The situation turns from bad to worse when food and firewood runs out and the group resorts of tearing up books and using them for kindle. Bosnia also befriends a soldier, Adem, and eventually falls in love with him. With the latest round of killing, Bosnia and Adem decide they can no longer live in their beloved city, but must move away from the war. They move to France and, eventually, to Quebec.

The book is separated into three parts representing where the couple is: Bosnia, France, and Quebec. The first part is about the war and Bosnia finding Adem. This was by far the most interesting part of the book. I wish I had more of a background on the history to better understand what the characters were going through.

Sometime between Bosnia and France, Bosnia's mom got better and was no longer crazy. How does someone go from being crazy and not being able to talk to being sane and making sense? I didn't understand that one. This is where the book went downhill a bit. Things just seemed to drag on and there wasn't much point to it. When the characters then traveled to Quebec, the book wrapped up nicely.

First Line: "For a long time, I knew happiness"

Rating:

(3.5/5)

The Double by Jose Saramago

The Double by Jose Saramago
Fiction/Literature

Since I read Blindness by Jose Saramago, I have been on the lookout for more of his works. Blindness is one of my favourite books and one that I think everyone should read at some point in their life. These works are translated from Portuguese and Saramago has a Nobel prize for his literary works.

Tertuliano Maximo Afonso is a history teacher with depression. In hopes of making him feel better, his colleague recommends a comedic movie. Afonso rents this movie, doesn't think too highly of it, and goes to sleep. In the middle of the night, he wakes up with an odd feeling. The movie is playing on his tv and someone that looks exactly like him is acting as the hotel receptionist in the movie. These two don't just look like each other - they are identical. Even their voice is exactly the same. Afonso sets to find out who this man is. When he finally tracks him down, the two engage in a tale of bitterness, revenge, happiness, and finding out who they really are.

True to Saramago style, the novel is written with very few paragraphs and periods. All conversations are separated only by a comma. It takes a while to get into this and is difficult to read at first, but don't let this stop you from finishing any of Saramago's works!

While I felt that part of the books had been dragged out a bit - for example, there were too many conversations with "common sense" - all that was completely forgiven by the incredible ending! One doesn't really expect twists except in mystery novels, so I was completely shocked by this one! Wow! One of the best-ended books I've ever read!

First Line: "The man who has just come into the shop to rent a video bears on his identity card a most unusual name, a name with a classical flavor that time has staled, neither more nor less than Tertuliano Maximo Afonso."

Rating:

(4.5/5)

The House of the Spirits

The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
Literature in Translation

Spanning four generations, Isabel Allende's magnificent family saga is populated by a memorable, often eccentric cast of characters. Together, men and women, spirits, the forces of nature, and of history, converge in an unforgettable, wholly absorbing and brilliantly realised novel that is as richly entertaining as it is a masterpiece of modern literature


This book tells the story of the Trueba family. Estaban Trueban was a man with extreme anger issues. Although he ended up very wealthy in some ways he also ended up very poor. Emotionally this man was a train wreck. This is a family saga with amazing details about Chilean history. Politically this book was extremely interesting and I learned a great deal about Chile. Allende writes of strong willed men and women with a great passion for life.

Rating:

(4.0.5/5)