Book Review: The New Jackals by Simon Reeve

1.  
2. Genre: Non-Fiction/Terrorism
3. Published: 1999
4. Pages: 294

 

Written in 1999, before the 9/11 WTC attack, Simon Reeve was one of the first author to pen a book about Osma Bin Laden. It did not sell very well when first published, but after 9/11 it became a best seller. It starts in 1993 when a young man known as Ramzi Yousef planted a massive bomb in the car park under one of the World Trade Centre towers. His aim had been to destroy them, but in this he failed. What happened afterwards though was a manhunt that saw him “bombing his way around the world” as Reeve phrased it. The second half of the book covers Osma Bin Laden and the rise of the Al-Qaeda , accounting for his life and rise to infamy.

I started reading this on the anniversary of 9/11 in 2010 because I could not get into any of my other fiction books and it seemed in a way, appropriate. Simon Reeve is a very talented journalist/author. I have read another one of his books – One Day In September – which is about the 1972 Munich Olympics terrorist attack on the Israeli Olympic team and the following revenge attacks by Israel’s agency Mossad.

I am not a great reader of non-fiction because I have a misjudged prejudice that they are all written by boring old men with long white beards. Obviously this is not the case, because those that I have read have all been pretty clean shaven. Simon Reeve has also presented some very interesting travel documentaries on the BBC – but he travels around to places you’re unlikely to go yourself.

Reeve interviewed numerous sources in the writing of this book. This included FBI and CIA officers, police, witnesses and terrorists themselves. He would have interviewed Ramzi Yousef himself had he been given half the chance – but this was not allowed. Reeve comes across as a very intelligent and trustworthy author, although it may surprise you that he was only about twenty five at the time this was published. He is non-judgemental and analytical – but he never pushes himself or his opinions across too forcefully.

This book was written two years before 9/11 and so reading it retrospectively gives it a different dimension then it would have had originally. The book covers Yousef’s attempt to destroy the World Trade Towers and what happened next – both his escape, his other movements including an attempt on Benazir Bhutto’s life, and how the CSI tracked him down and captured him. Reeve also gives brief history and analysis of Osma Bin Laden and the rise of terrorism. It is a short book and of course by now there has been numerous books written about this subject that will go into much more detail – and more up to date. Reeve’s narrative of the events is both sensitive, well written and detailed without being dramatic or sensational.

After Yousef was arrested, one of the FBI officers said to him as they flew past the WTC towers: “They’re still standing.” To which Yousef replied “They wouldn’t be if I had enough money and explosives.”

Reeve ends the book with a warning about the future – little could he have known.

I would recommend this book even if you are well read on this subject, simply because it was written before the worldwide panic about terrorism really took over. If you are not so familiar with the history or haven’t read an actual book about it – then I think The New Jackals is a great place to start. It provides you with just the right amount of information to set you up for further exploration of the topic. I would also recommend Simon Reeve as an author and a presenter. Watch out for his series called Equator and the Tropic of Capricorn (also a book) because they were really good.

Here is the first part of one of his documentaries “Places That Don’t Exist” that seems to be available on Youtube. Very interesting and I recommend. You can see some of his others on Youtube as well, it seems…

Review: Midwives by Chris Bohjalian

 

• Genre: General Fiction
• Published: 1998
• Pages: 372

 

Sibyl Danforth is a lay midwife from Vermont who assists women to have home births. One night, she is with a birthing mother when everything goes wrong and the woman dies. Sibyl cuts her open to save the life of the child… But the question remains: had she really died and did Sibyl Danforth actually kill her?

I read this book for Crazy Book Swap and my partner is Wallace from Unputadownables who hosts it. She sent me Midwives by Chris Bohjalian and I must admit, though I thought it did look interesting, I didn’t expect to enjoy it quite so much as I did.

It is a book I’d have otherwise overlooked, judging it by the title to be some gooey story about babies. I guess this should teach me not to be so easily prejudiced about a book before really looking at it. When I read the description at the back it sounded more interesting, but I still felt quite reserved about reading it to start with. I have a firm idea about what books are ‘my type of books’ and what isn’t and sometimes this barrier can be hard to beat down. Do I jump into an unknown area without really knowing where I’ll land? I tend to start books thinking I’ll enjoy them then the other way around. This wouldn’t quite be the first time I have been surprised.

Bohjalian, rather then writing it from Sibyl’s perspective, told the story from the first person narrative of her daughter Connie, who was only a child at the time it took place. It is written in the style of a memoir and so the tone is generally reflective and slow paced. At first I thought that this wouldn’t work – it would lose the imperative of the story and make it too passive. Much of the information would have to be second hand because at the time Connie was a teenager and had not been with her mother at the time of the incident, among other things. Yet this wasn’t the case and I found myself gripped throughout, barely able to put the book down sometimes.

It is a story about the ties between a mother and her children. It is as much – if not more – Connie’s own story about growing up alongside her mother’s court case and the effects it has on her own family.

Sibyl has an almost spiritual calling to be a midwife and in the sixties she had been a hippy – no doubt an influence on her beliefs. She is a lay-midwife – something which we don’t have in the UK and I had to look it up. Lay midwives are represented as pretty much all being hippies, or ex-hippies wearing peasant skirts with an inate distrust of establishments and formal education when it comes to midwifery. This seems to me a bit of a negative stereotype. Yet, I didn’t feel as if Bohjalian wanted to criticise lay-midwives or natural births.

Sibyl prefers natural home births, rather then invasive medicalised hospital births ruled by male doctors and their instruments. I think Bohjalian treats the question of natural vs. medical quite fairly – including arguments for both sides.  It does make you question the ideals between having a home birth and a hospitalised one. I think since reading this, I am actually feeling that a natural, home birth would be more preferable to having a load of strangers poking and prodding certain parts of me and having to put up with horrible hospital food.

The story is set during the eighties and I wonder how much people’s attitudes have changed today? I get the feeling that the medical community are more open to the idea of natural births now and more options are available. I could be wrong of course.

Bohjalian is a very good writer. He is able to slowly and subtly unwrap the story in a way that kept me turning the pages to find out what happened. Despite this, it is a rather strange story. The pace is so slow and the characters feel very distant and I wasn’t able to really connect with any of them. There did not seem to be much of a story and yet there wasn’t really a boring page in the whole book. It kept me guessing right up to the very end.

It is certainly a book that will make you want to question and to think about what happens. I couldn’t help but feel completely involved in the story as if I was an outsider looking in and unable to turn my face away. I think that opinions might vary between people, perhaps depending on whether you have children or a strong desire to have one. On a personal level I feel more objective as I have no children and not entirely sure how I’d feel about having one.

I’d like to thank Wallace for sending me this book, and apologise for writing this review so late. I started it a long time ago, but for some reason I just got stuck on writing anything at all.

I really enjoyed the book swap, it’s great receiving a book knowing you’re going to read because you agreed to it before you even knew what book you’re going to read. It’s the thrill of the unknown and the fact that perhaps otherwise, you’d never have read it. As I said at the beginning, this is a book I’d have most definitely have passed by. Now I think I would really like to read Skeletons at the Feast, knowing how good an author he is.

Review: The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

 

• 
• Genre: Modern Classic
• Published: 1951
• Pages: 160

 

 

The love affair between Maurice Bendrix and Sarah Miles ended two years ago, but a chance encounter with her husband and then herself ignites the bed of jealousy again. 

This is my third Greene and has I think, cemented my admiration for this author forever. It is his writing that I love first. It feels as if Greene rolls every word around in his mouth before carefully placing them down on the paper before him. He writes with all the delicate craft of a sculptor, chipping and polishing away so that there are no superfluous words or phrases. Each scene is carefully layered and there are so many parts I wish now I hate noted down. This book begs to be re-read just so I can appreciate it all again.

It is narrated by Maurice Bendrix who is an author and through the book he reflects  on the process of his writing and the difficulties with it that he has especially during and after the affair. The is a strange kind of consciousness in it – as if Greene himself is discussing writing the book whilst writing it himself.

The End of the Affair is one of the novels where Catholicism plays a main part. In the two other books I have read – Brighton Rock and The Quiet American religion has played an important or elemental part in the story. Rather then portraying characters of staunch faith however, they may be atheists, almost contemptuous of God’s existence. The struggle with doubt and the temptation of sin play important roles within his novels.

Another theme that runs through these three books is obsessive, almost destructive love. In Brighton Rock Pinkie marries Rose because he thinks she has seen something that might incriminate him. Rose shows him devotional love despite how unkind he is to her. Thomas Fowler from The Quiet American is rather pathetically in love with Phuong, perhaps as a means to cling onto youth and usefulness. In The End of the Affair it is Maurice Bendrix’s jealousy that infects his love.

An interesting parallel in The End of the Affair, is that Bendrix as an author is described to be like a God in his ability to create a world and characters, pushing them around the storyboard and being able to change them at his will. Sarah also refers to Bendrix throughout their affair as ‘You’ with the capitalisation. At the heart of this book is the struggle between faith and doubt – mortal and immortal love.

I am not a religious person and you don’t have to be to enjoy this book. Greene is simply a very good writer who is not pretentious and it doesn’t feel as if he tries to be literary. He has a strong voice and an independent style of writing – a confident writer who knows his craft well. That’s what I admire about Graham Greene. Some authors just have it, some authors have to try to have it. Greene has got it.

Also, as a classic I think that it will still resonate with people today – Greene is able to tap into the human heart and in the end – society may have changed a lot but as people, we are all the same and so the range of emotions, the kinds of characters that you meet in this book will still be entirely relevant today and tomorrow and hopefully in the next hundred years.

A word of warning to those who read the Vintage edition of this book with the introduction by Monica Ali. I know you are not supposed to read Introductions first so I consciously avoided reading it but I couldn’t help but glance past the giant clanger of a spoiler that is the very first sentence. I wouldn’t say it ruined the book for me at all because it is not a book with a massive plot and so there is not much really to spoil. You read it for the writing and the deeply human characters. it however took away from me the experience of discovery, mystery and hope that I would have liked for myself. 

Thank you Monica Ali, from the bottom of my heart. Just watch me throw Brick Lane to the very bottom of my TBR pile. That is a rather lame revenge but there you go. I’m sure I’ll forgive her.

I’d like to thank a Mr Forder, who gave me Brighton Rock at my old school’s summer fair not long before I left for university. He said I should read it, that it was very good and I did'n’t do so until a good few years later. The book had a mummified fly in one of the pages but it was my first introduction to Graham Greene and I don’t think I’d have read him without the recommendation.

Review: Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami

  

• Genre: Magical Realism
• Published: 1985 (Japan) 1991 (English language)
• Pages: 400

 

It’s going to be very hard to review this, because I don’t want to tell you what this book is about. There are two parts – “Hard-boiled Wonderland” and the “End of the World”. I do not want to tell you too much, because as with every Murakami I think it is as much your own experience as a reader that is important. So to give you too many clues would lessen that experience. It is a footpath you must explore yourself, unaware of what you’ll meet down the line.

It is described as sci-fi and futuristic but I think it is much more about the modern world, just simplified down. The book was written in 1985, in which time Japan was experiencing a growth in information based economy. I think it is important to be aware of the context in which it is set. 1985 is my birth year so I don’t remember much of this decade – let alone what it would have been like in Japan.

During the 1980s, the Japanese economy shifted its emphasis away from primary and secondary activities (notably agriculture, manufacturing, and mining) to processing, with telecommunications and computers becoming increasingly vital. Information became an important resource and product, central to wealth and power. The rise of an information-based economy was led by major research in highly sophisticated technology, such as advanced computers. The selling and use of information became very beneficial to the economy. Tokyo became a major financial center, home of some of the world's major banks, financial firms, insurance companies, and the world's largest stock exchange, the Tokyo Securities and Stock Exchange. - Wikipedia

For the sake of convenience, I will say that this book is about the juxtaposition of opposites, but that isn’t what it is really about at all. It is simply and purely, Murakami and if you’re a fan of his I think you’ll love this book.

It’s not quite as twisted as Kafka on the Shore, it feels a bit more fantasy then the other books of his I have read (Kafka on the Shore, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, A Wild Sheep Chase, Norwegian Wood and After Dark) but in other ways, it feels less surreal and the weird feels normal. Murakami has the ability to write something which is completely bizarre and otherworldly, but it doesn’t always feel as weird as it should.

In some ways, it’s a bit easier to perhaps understand then Kafka or Wind-up, but maybe that is because I have started to become more familiar with Murakami’s work. It will still leave you with questions and perhaps with the feeling you haven’t understood it all completely, but that doesn’t entirely matter. There is, I think, no one answer or  interpretation to any Murakami’s writing.

As with all of his books so far, he makes reference to a lot of novels, a lot of music and a lot of old Hollywood films. I always feel that to get an even better understanding of Murakami, I need to read every book mentioned, listen to every song by every artist and watch every film that gets featured. With this book in particular, I think reading Rudin by Ivan Turgenev would be quite useful for when I eventually re-read this book as I hope to do one day. It is not necessary to read any of the other novels he mentions, it is just that he inspires within me the desire to read further afield.

Murakami has introduced me to a lot of music. Since reading After Dark I decided to pay attention to the artists and tracks referenced – this time around I discovered Bob Dylan. I know he’s been around for years and years but I never actually really bothered to listen to his music. So I got a couple of his albums and I can’t believe what rock I have been living under. Some of them are of course familiar, I’d just never bothered to really pay attention. Anyway, I shall leave you all with Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind, so here you go…

 

This is part of Dolce Belleza’s Japanese Reading Challenge.

Review: The Housekeeper and The Professor by Yoko Ogawa

• Genre: Japanese Literature
• Published: 2003 (in original Japanese)
• Pages: 180

 

He is a mathematical genius who only has an eighty minute memory. She is a kind, caring and young woman who comes to be his Housekeeper. He forgets who she is after eighty minutes, but they communicate and build a beautiful friendship through the eloquence of numbers and equations.

How can I possibly put this book into my own words? I can’t begin to imagine I could capture or convey to any of you, how this book made me feel. It took me two days to read and I wish I could have taken more time to read it – but I simply couldn’t put it down. The pages seemed to turn themselves and I didn’t really feel like I was reading at all.

This book moved me. It is a small ripple that travels a long way across calm waters. It is nothing ground shaking, nothing that makes you tumble and dive – but something that makes a certain small, but important part of you shift inside.

It is on the surface a simple story about a friendship that grows in an unlikely place. I love these kinds of stories – in books or films, because though they are simple, they can mean a lot to you and touch you very deeply.

It is told in first person and none of the characters are referred to by their names. Even the Housekeeper’s son is given a name other then his own. The Professor is obsessed with maths – it is all he has left to him. The Housekeeper has to re-introduce herself to him every eighty minutes. They make a friendship through the connections between themselves and numbers.

You do not have to know anything about maths to enjoy this book – although it did bring back some vague memories from maths lessons at school. I used to think maths as boring, and rather frustrating perhaps because I could never appreciate maths for itself. The Housekeeper herself is ignorant about maths, but when she met the Professor she expressed an interest and start to learn through the Professor.

I loved this book – it touched me deeply and I’m going to be hunting down more of Yoko Ogawa’s books from now on. Hotel Iris is next on my list but unfortunately there is this thing called a book ban and I’m on it until I can fit more books into my bookshelf.

I am taking part in Dolce Bellazza’s Japanese Reading Challenge and this is my first book, yipee! I know I’m a late starter but finally I have my foot in!

Review: Trespass by Rose Tremain

• 
• Genre: General Fiction/Literary (Man Booker Long listed)
• Published: 2010
• Pages: 253

 

I decided to read this partly because it’s on the Man Booker Longlist and I’m never usually “with it” enough to have read any of them. I hope very much that Trespass wins.

Trespass is a difficult story to describe. In short, it is about a struggling antiques dealer who decides to move to France, near his sister, to get away from everything in London he has come to hate. Whilst trying to find the perfect, ideal house, he bumbles into a lifelong argument between a brother and a sister. Trespass does not refer simply to the physical, territorial of the word – but also the personal and private spaces that we can’t always see. It is a very subtle book – by no means slow moving because the writing is beautiful, but it does not move great distances and is more about the small, delicate interwoven relationships between mother and child, brother and sister.

Rose Tremain is one of my favourite authors and I would not say I have many authors that I would follow to the ends of the earth, but Tremain is one of them.

I have read three of her previous books and loved them all more then this one – which is why I have given it a three point five stars rather then a round four. It’s still a book I would recommend – but not before reading at least one of her others. I would recommend either The Road Home or Restoration to start with, because these are two of my all time favourite books.

Tremain is one of those authors who can bring the three parts of a good book together – good writing, good story and good characters making them some of the most perfectly balanced books I have ever read. She has a unique, quirky voice that is very strong and clear. She approaches her writing not from a face on angle – but just a little to the side, making her books a little unexpected, a little different and not like any other. It’s a style of writing that is very different to others out there, but it isn’t distracting or interfering.

The sibling relationships are dark and dysfunctional. They aren’t particularly likeable because there is something deeply unsettling about their relationships with each other. What I have always loved about Tremain is that she is capable of creating very real, three dimensional characters who aren’t nice all the time. I didn’t think that the characters were quite so well drawn in Trespass as her others, but I’m putting this down to the fact that it is more about the dynamic between brother and sister then the individual characters.

This feeling of trespass pervades through almost every page of the book – like strangling ivy. It’s not a very nice feeling but an effective one and still an enjoyable book because of it. It’s probably more enjoyable for those who already love Tremain rather then newcomers to her books.

I can’t recommend Tremain enough, I think she’s a fantastic author, but this book just doesn’t seem to be up there with the others. That isn’t to say it’s a bad book – I really enjoyed it. Her writing is so good I can practically taste the words in my mouth.

If you haven’t read Tremain before please do check out The Road Home and Restoration. The Road Home is set in modern London about an immigrant from the eastern bloc and Restoration is set during the restoration of King Charles II. Although I enjoyed Trespass, it is a comparatively weaker book to her others.

Review: Eight Days of Luke – Diana Wynne Jones

 

• Genre: Children’s Fantasy
• Published: 1975
• Pages: 203

I read this to take part in Jenny’s Books Diana Wynne Jones week from the first to the seventh of August. If you don’t know already, as I’m sure this author has cropped up a few times in earlier posts – she is one of my favourite authors. I won’t go on too much about how amazing I think she is and that I think everyone should just drop what you’re reading now and go and read Howl’s Moving Castle. I won’t do that. I’ll just let you know how I found this book.

It is the summer holidays and David Allard has to spend his summer with his awful relatives. He lives with Aunt Dot and Uncle Bernard and his Cousin Ronald and his wife Astrid. They’re all perfectly horrible, so he’s quite glum at the prospect of all those weeks being told to be grateful. Then Luke turns up and David’s summer holidays become a lot more fun – and extremely weird.

Typical of DWJ her books contain shoddy parenting and grumpy, sometimes evil gardeners. What more could you want? This was a fun, imaginative read that I had a great time reading. In typical Diana Wynne Jones fashion the fantasy and the magic just oozes out from around corners. She rarely spends much time explaining things because when you read one of her books you simply, just magically know and I can’t explain how.

I don’t want to say too much more about the book – it’s quite short and so I don’t want to ruin it for anyone. It probably isn’t my favourite of hers. One of her flaws is that she does tend to dash things out a little too quickly and this one didn’t seem to have the strength of characterisation that is so strong in the other books I have read. Luke felt a little generic and not as fleshed out as I’d have liked. It is however a good, fun, enjoyable read.

It loosely inspired Neil Gaiman’s American Gods in that he found out his fantastic idea had already been thought up by Diana Wynne Jones. I wonder if the Wallsey in this book is any relation to the town of Wall in Gaiman’s Stardust?

What I do love about her books is that I always feel that they never end and that they just carry on after the pages stop She always leaves you satisfied with the end, but she doesn’t let the characters or the world die, just because that part of the story is over. In that way, her stories are never ending. Diana Wynne Jones created a multi-dimensioned, multi-universed world in Chrestomanci – and in a way that is where all her books are based. In different worlds, different times, split by different histories but all inter-linked. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t need to spend a lot of time explaining the world, because if you read enough of her books, you’re already there.

If you are interested, you can also check out my Time of the Ghost review.

If you’d like to read more Diana Wynne Jones then I whole heartedly recommend Howl’s Moving Castle, Dogsbody and the Dalemark Quartet (starting with Cart and Cwidder), all of which are my favourite.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Series spoilers)

 

"We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are." – Sirius Black

 

 

This has always been one of my favourites of the Harry Potter series, along with the Prisoner of Azkaban – one introducing Sirius and the other killing him.

This time around though I found it a more difficult read. Harry spends much of his time stressed out, like all pubescent teenagers in their growing years. It’s been a while since I’ve felt that stressy and this book is jam packed with action and the raging hormones of boys. I never remembered the stress effecting me so much in previous years – maybe it is because I am becoming calmer, the further away I travel from my own teenage, angsty self.

Order of the Phoenix is simply an amazing book though – it is fraught with danger, tension and impending doom. For the whole 700 odd pages it keeps you on your toes throughout and then rips your heart out in several places.

My favourite part of this book is the bits about Snape. His character is further unravelled and I love seeing what made Snape the man who he is. More on that later. I like the fact that we are, along with Harry, forced to empathise with him and that Harry is made to realise that his father isn’t the knight in shining armour he imagined him to be. Snape is a rather sad character in that he feels like he’s been bottled and never grown up.

On my first few reads – Sirius’ death made me cry the most – but now it is not so much his death, but the lives of Neville’s parents that wrenches my hear. That kind of a life is by far, worse then death. Sirius at least went in a blaze of glory. Neville’s parents who sacrificed their sanity perhaps – remain living, their lives never resolved, never given that chance of happiness or peace that Sirius will have.

Harry’s grief at losing Sirius felt so real – the way Rowling describes it and how real she describes it makes me empathise so deeply with Harry – especially his terrible guilt at the end knowing that he could have prevented Sirius’ death just by speaking into the mirror, or listening to Hermoine. Without his panic though no one would have believed that Voldemort had returned, however I doubt that really makes it up for Harry.

When I first read the book I remember chucking the book on the floor in a fit of disbelief and rage. I guess it had to be expected and I had been expecting it – but still you hope in vain, don’t you? Even reading it through again, I hoped against hope (that somehow the text in my books had magically changed) that Sirius would be alive by the end of it.

I don’t think there are many books like Harry Potter that leave me feeling quite so emotionally drained. I’ve finished the series now, as I catch up on my reviews – and I have been so immersed in Harry Potter that just about every night I have dreamed about it. My waking moments have been ruled by when I can next open my Harry Potter book or thinking about something that has happened or I know to come.

Order of the Phoenix is one of the most exhausting books I have ever read. I love how it mingles with my thoughts and emotions, but it’s very tiring. I was quite glad to move onto the calmer, relatively peaceful Half Blood Prince.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Series Spoilers, Beware)

 

 

"We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided." – Albus Dumbledore

 

 

The Goblet of Fire has never been my favourite out of the Harry Potter series – in fact it probably comes at the bottom. This book took her one year to write and it resulted on her rebelling against her publishers and took one year to recover and two years to write The Order of the Phoenix. That was a painful three years and when you’re a young teenager as I was, quite a lot can happen in that time, making it feel like even longer.

However, reading it again this time has given me an extra appreciation of it. The beginning I always thought a bit tiresome but I actually really enjoyed it a lot more this time around. In fact – as I am reading the Order of the Phoenix at the moment,I am actually starting to appreciate the Goblet of Fire a lot more. Order of the Phoenix has always been my second favourite, but it’s making me feel as stressed as Harry is. That never used to bother me before now so I did not notice it, but I’m noticing it now.

I must also admit, that despite loving my Harry Potter re-read I’m suffering from TBR guilt. I’m looking at my 414 books and I’m not seeing it going anywhere. I’ve paid off my £5 library fine and realising I need to tackle that pile before I do anything with my own TBR including finishing my Russian non-fiction I haven’t touched since starting Harry Potter. I’m starting to feel a little claustrophobic at the moment and I’m a little annoyed. I wish I could enjoy the book I am reading NOW and stop thinking about those books I haven’t read, or haven’t got even. I am constantly thinking about the books I want to read and haven’t got and worrying about how I’m gonna get them and this that and the other.

I’m sure I never used to have these worries before I found out about social book networks. I just used to read and not worry about the pile – but then again back then it wasn’t in such a desperate state and I didn’t have a very accurate inventory for them.

That’s off topic though, I was talking about Goblet of Fire, not my runaway TBR.

As I was saying, I enjoyed Goblet of Fire a lot more this time around and I am noticing that I am enjoying other things more then I used to as well. Such as, how much I really do love Hagrid. Once,I’d have exchanged him for Hedwig but I am really starting to love his warmth and friendship with Harry and gang and wouldn’t swap him for the world.

I’m also experiencing a rush of sentimentality for just about everything during this re-read. I’d forgotten how lovely Hermoine is, having the movie version more in my mind nowadays then the book. Emma Watson plays her very well but she only shows the bossy know-it-all side and not the compassionate caring side of Hermoine – or the deep inner strength that both Harry and Ron need. Hedwig has never been more adorable, I always took her for granted when I should have admired her more. She was so full of courage and personality.

It feels like I’m meeting friends I haven’t seen in a very long time and we’re catching up on old times, wondering why we left it so long and that we must do this again some time. I wish I didn’t know the ending, because at the same time I feel a leaden sense of sadness, knowing the ending and that they’ll only be there in my imagination or if I start the series all over again. I miss them already.

I still think the whole Triwizard thing is a bit of a bore and a distraction. There seemed to be a lot of nothing much happening between the pages, but what you do see I guess, is them growing up into young adults and all those growing hormones. There’s also the impending darkness that hasn’t quite happened, that you expect right from the beginning that accumulates in Voldemort’s rebirth which I always found a little weird and uneventful.

Cedric’s death was shocking more than upsetting. She left the upsetting death to have full impact in the Order of the Phoenix. Cedric was a student and it happened whilst they were in school. I’m starting to wonder why Dumbledore allowed the Triwizard tournament to happen in Hogwarts, understanding what was brewing outside.  Maybe it was Dumbledore’s way to bring all the others together as one.

Harry could easily have been killed but escaped quite luckily thanks to a wand malfunction that occurs when two wands meet that share the same core. It seemed just a little convenient. Expelliarmus is Harry’s favourite spell and he uses it a little too often. I felt that Rowling got to that end scene, wondered how the heck she was going to get Harry out of this mess. Harry’s strongest spells seem to be defensive rather then offensive – this can be frustrating at times as he only seems to get out of straights through luck or with the help of others. It’s just a little hard to believe he managed to survive through seven books.

I can’t remember my initial reaction to Goblet of Fire, it feels like I read it a lot longer ago then the first three. I think I remember feeling a little bit dissatisfied by it. After the third book I was expecting something a little more, but in fact it acted more as a buffer between the third and fifth book. As I said earlier I did enjoy it more this time around – more for the growing characters then the actual storyline. Hormones started to spurt – the characters are growing upwards as well as outwards as they’re going through puberty. Harry notices Cho for the first time and the friction between Hermoine and Ron starts to grow and become more noticeable.

They also start to think about careers after Hogwarts – another part of growing up. Harry first realises his desire to become an Auror, Hermoine starts SPEW the beginning of her life long campaign against inequality. Fred and George are already realising their dream to start a joke shop. One of the major themes in Goblet of Fire seems to be growing up and looking beyond Hogwarts into their adult lives – realising that there is a bigger, wider world out there.

The death of Cedric and the rebirth of Voldemort will put Harry’s previous adventures and his future in perspective. By the end of the Goblet of Fire Harry Potter has some growing up to do.

It’s taken me a long time to cobble my thoughts about Goblet of Fire together. I’m already some way through Order of the Phoenix and I’m really looking forward to reading Deathly Hallows for only the second time. At the same time I’m finding it difficult reading a series from beginning to end without feeling a bit distracted. My reading habits have changed a lot since I read these last – when I was a much more relaxed reader. However, I don’t think I could ever read this series without reading it as a whole – rather then between other books. It’s just never been done.

Re-reading it has got me thinking that I must do this more often – once every year for the rest of my life sounds reasonable enough to me. Don’t you think?

Music, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Reading

 

"You look in excellent health to me, Potter, so you will excuse me if I don’t let you off homework today. I assure you that if you die, you need not hand it in." - Minerva McGonagall

  If you haven’t read the whole series (or this book) I would highly recommend you DON’T read this review beyond this full stop.

 

I’ve been having a lot of trouble writing about the Prisoner of Azkaban. It’s my favourite one of the whole series and I find it very emotional – especially knowing the whole ending. It’s a very subtle book that still keeps me on tenterhooks right up to the very end even now. I remember being 14 when I read this the first time and my heart straining in my chest. The dementors were terrifying – probably the scariest things I’ve ever read about. They seem such a simple concept – dark creatures that sap all the happiness from you and can suck out your soul. The fear of never feeling happy again is terrifying – and having to relive all your horrors and fears for ever more. It makes me shiver now just thinking about it.

The dementors are controlled by the ministry and they guard the prisoners in the Azkaban prison. It really makes you wonder, how the government could use such evil creatures and keep them on their side. It feels very hypocritical and against just about every human right imaginable.

One of the main themes of Harry Potter is life and death – Rowling represents death as something which isn’t actually bad, or scary. Dementors thus do not kill – they merely suck out your soul and leave you a remnant of yourself. The belief, or message put across in Harry Potter is that – life – at whatever it takes – is not worth it, and to be alive without actually living is actually much worse.

Sirius Black has been incarcerated in Azkaban for thirteen years for a crime he did not do. Once, he was an intelligent, happy and good looking young man with so much future ahead of him. Prisoner of Azkaban is for me, a very vivid and emotional book because of the tragic injustice that happened not just to Sirius Black but to Lupin, James and Lily Potter, and Harry too.

Had Sirius not changed his mind and made Pettigrew the secret keepers for the Potters… they would still be alive and Harry would never have been the boy who lived. Sirius lost his freedom, his life and his sanity all in one swoop – everyone, even his best friend thought he was guilty and for thirteen years would have lived with that. So many lives had been lost as well as the Potters just because of one weak individual – Peter Pettigrew who made the choice between being loyal to the friends who had looked out for him all those years, and choosing to follow Voldemort because he had been too scared to refuse.

Another of Rowling’s themes is that of choice. It is the choices we make, that make us who we are. Sirius chose to be loyal to his friends and would have stuck by them to the end. Pettigrew was a coward, but in the end it was his choice to follow Voldemort – he was not forced to be a spy. Can you really blame someone for being scared though, can you expect everyone to be brave in the face of death? Perhaps not, but I think most of us hope that if we had to make a choice between betraying our friends who would die for us, that we’d make the right choice.

Lupin’s tragedy was that he lost all of his friends at the same time, but because he is a werewolf he became an outcast. The people who used to accept him for what he was were either dead or incarcerated – poor Lupin would have been all alone with nothing. What a heavy weight he must have been burdened with for all those years.

And finally – Harry’s own tragedy, something which he’s only recently been allowed to come to terms with. He only knows about his father through what other people tell him – which hasn’t been much. The book starts out with him defending his father and losing his temper. The rest of the book he is finding out more about the circumstances of his parents’ death and trying to piece things together. It’s a fairly emotional journey for Harry – and an important one too because by the end he also find that he does have a link to his parents – in the forms of his father’s true loyal friends. It also gives him a more personal reason to fight Voldemort.

Previously, Voldemort the reason his parents died, but he hadn’t known the whole story. Voldemort was more of a big evil bogeyman. After Azkaban Harry learnt exactly how it his his parents came to be murdered – and it was more then just Voldemort who was behind their death – it was someone who Harry had seen, touched, in part known – and been betrayed by personally. To me, this is different then hearing that your parents were killed by some big bad someone that no one believes exists any more. This time it makes it much more real to him. Lupin and Sirius can provide physical link to his parents and a sense of his own history and belonging.

Azkaban brings a certain darkness to the series that never leaves. Harry Potter is growing up into a teenager, accompanied by all the problems of teenagerhood and so the books also grow up with him. The first two or three books could pass as children’s books – but from book four – from the size and onwards – it moves towards a more mature readership. I grew up with Harry Potter – I wonder what it would have been like though for younger children just starting the series? You cannot judge it merely from the first book.

I’ve since started Goblet of Fire, which is not my favourite book – it just seems to bumble along and takes forever to get anywhere. However – I’ve been listening to the album by Patrick Doyle for the first time and starting to like it a bit more each time. So here is the tracks I’ve been listening to mostly recently:

I absolutely love The Weird Sisters. I love how they recreated the band for the film complete with a song about a Hippogriff. I’ve been boogieing around listening to this on my MP3 player.

 

I think this is my favourite. I admit to being a bit of a sap – when I listen to this one I can’t help thinking about everything that happens throughout the rest of the series – all the loves and losses that are to come. *sigh*

And well… this one just makes me smile and feel very triumphant and happy.

I’m looking forward to getting past Goblet of Fire and moving on to my second favourite in the series – Order of the Phoenix.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter Readathon)

 

I am re-reading the Harry Potter books. I might mention spoilers not just about this book but for the whole series as well. If not in the body of this blog post but in any following comments later.

 

 

"It is our choices, Harry, that show us who we truly are, far more than our abilities." – Professor Dumbledore

I’ve finished the second book in the Harry Potter series and I can’t believe how easy it has been to just slip back into this world, as if I have never left.

The Chamber of Secrets has always been a funny book for me – it is more fast paced then Philosopher’s Stone but at the same time it seems to lack something. Maybe it is because I am always too eager to read The Prisoner of Azkaban that comes after, so I cannot enjoy this as much as I should. It suffers from being the in between book – the one that sets the tone for the later books and puts the future storylines into motion.

It is also the last book that could pass as a light, children’s fantasy because in the next book, the Prisoner of Azkaban it takes a darker, more mature tone. Chamber of Secrets is a notch scarier then Philosopher’s Stone – with Aragog the massive spider and the Basilisk scenes at the end but they both felt younger, lighter and easier. Yet it forewarned of a darker story to come. The third book followed bringing mystery and suspense – and was also the last ‘short’ book before the series developed into nicely sized tomes. From then on the books were no longer quite so light hearted and cheerful. Deeper, more emotional storylines that would test the characters would be involved rather then death defying adventures of a boy wizard.

In Chamber of Secrets you get to meet Mr and Mrs Weasly, you come to know Dumbledore a bit more, the ghosts who live at Hogwarts and learn a bit of wizarding history. Lord Voldemort’s character is fleshed out from, introducing you to him when he was known simply as Tom Riddle, schoolboy. Looking back at it, it is actually a very subtle book. It introduces you to lots of different things that become important as the storyline progresses, such as the vanishing cabinet (mentioned twice) the cursed necklace, and Mr Borgin at Borgin and Burkes. When I first read the book it didn’t occur to me that I would come across them again.

The magical world, the history of Hogwarts and the friendships and rivalries were also built on. Things that would be more important later – the heir of Slytherin, the sword of Gryffindor, all important parts of the larger storyline were all introduced in this book. Draco Malfoy’s father is introduced, an important character in later books and also along with Mr and Mrs Weasley part of the adult cast of characters.

Chamber of Secrets becomes the jumping board that propels readers head first into this wonderfully imagined world. One of the many strengths of Rowling I think is her pacing throughout – slowly uncoils the characters and the beginnings of the larger plot and rations out information and new details as well as building upon previous parts of the storyline. 

The more times I have re-read the Harry Potter series the more confused I come as to how much I like Chamber of Secrets. I will always have a special place in my heart. I remember how it felt reading it for the first time – finding out about Hogwarts, all the letters from the owl post and Diagon Alley and Hagrid and Platform 3 and 3/4. Chamber of Secrets is packed with lots of things going on but I just want to move onto the meat and into the centre of the storyline that begins to unravel slightly in the Prisoner of Azkaban. So Chamber of Secrets suffers slightly as a re-read – being neither here nor there but still being a very enjoyable book.

*

I have been listening to the associated movie soundtracks as I read the books. I will always love Hedwig’s Theme from the first movie. John Williams really manages to encompass the feeling of Harry Potter with this music – it feels like Harry Potter to me – all that magic and mystery.

 

From the Chamber of Secret soundtrack Fawkes the Phoenix is my favourite. It’s a softer version of Hedwig’s theme and has the same soaring, uplifting sound that just makes me feel so happy to be in this world again.

I haven’t re-watched the films yet – I think I will do so after reading the whole series. Firstly I don’t want the movies to start influencing my reading too much. I think that the actors (especially Rupert Grint and Maggie Smith) are all pretty much spot on and I can even accept the change in storyline (for the most part) by the movie makers – but for now I want the books to be pure. As it is sometimes I remember the film parts a bit more. The chase with the Basilisk went on for much longer in the film then in the book.

Now that I have started book three though – I find myself distracted by not getting any sleep and so have barely got anything read over the past couple of days. I’m so excited to be reading one of my favourite Harry Potter books though. I’m feeling so at home, I can’t believe I ever left.

The Harry Potter Readathon

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

 

This boy will be famous. There won't be a child in our world that won't know his name. There will be books about him, he will be a legend.'

Minerva McGonagall.

 

 

Along with Becky from Escapism Through Books I am re-reading the Harry Potter books from start until finish. She’ll probably finish way before me though, as I’m a slow poke. I’ve just finished The Philosopher’s Stone and about to move onto the second one – well I will when I finish this blog post.

I have not read these books since the Deathly Hallows came out and how long ago was that? Long enough to be without Harry Potter and to think I used to read this series at least once every year – when I was younger even more, over and over and over and over again. I was a Harry Potter child – I grew up with him ever since I read the first book back in 1998 when I’d have been 12 or 13. Ever since then I waited for the next book to come out each time feeling that rush of pure happiness every time I opened up another Harry Potter book for the first time.

Of course, now that is all over – I know what happens at the end, I know the fates and fortunes of all the characters. I remember each time I finished one that I’d be dying to read the next immediately after – between books three and four there had only been a year’s wait but the three year gap that it took her to write The Order of the Phoenix was probably the longest three years in my life. To make it short – just like the millions of others out there I absolutely adored Harry Potter and I still do.

The only difference now is that I feel a little emotional reading it for the first time – from beginning to end whilst knowing the whole story. Ten years is a huge chunk of your life especially starting from that sort of age – these books feel like a part of me, I’ve turned the pages so many times through so many different ages. I’ve seen Harry grow up, I’ve got to know him and his friends and fallen in love with Ron many, many a time.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone started it all. It isn’t really the most exciting books in the series – but it’s the very first one and it has something special – because the first moment I read it, I knew, I just knew I had something special. I hadn’t been at all aware of all the hype at the time, my dad had bought it for himself to read and then I inherited it off him. I wanted mainly to know why an old codger like my dad would be doing reading a kid’s book. So I never had any expectations about it – it was just a book.

I don’t really know what to say about this. I have never actually reviewed Harry Potter, it’s just such a part of myself that I can’t express it.

I wonder if I’d have enjoyed them had I not read them when I did – had I let the hype effect me. Would have have gone in thinking the book was going to be spectacular and then been unimpressed? Would the hype have turned me off? Perhaps now it would have – I’m not too sure. I’d probably have been so fed up with hearing ‘Harry Potter this’ and ‘Harry Potter that’ along with the whole Hollywood machine. Publishers have also I think started to pay YA books a lot more attention since Harry Potter, knowing they can turn it into a great money spinning machine. I’d probably have been put off by that and maybe more influenced by any negative reviews. Maybe, I don’t know. I don’t think it would have been the same had I not started them as a child, barely even a teenager.

I think what makes Harry Potter magical is that it is a world you can believe in – you can imagine getting an invitation to Hogwarts. It is criticised for not being unique enough – but then what is? It isn’t the individual parts that make it good – but it as a whole. Every generation of children need something like Harry Potter – Narnia is too dated and Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy is a little too heavy for younger children. Harry Potter is unique – in that it captures the imagination of children in ways not many other books have done before especially not so much in recent years.

It covers many familiar themes – good vs evil, love vs. hate, death vs. life, friendship vs. enemies. I think within Harry Potter, hopefully picked up by it’s young readers are lessons about love and acceptance of others despite their differences. That death is not a bad thing – as Dumbledore himself said it is the next great adventure – but the fear of death, or not being allowed to die is in fact, much much worse. It teaches you the love of life – loyalty of friendship, standing up for what is right and good – and fighting against bigotry. Which is why I have little time for all that mumbo jumbo about how Harry Potter is full of evil witch craft and is potentially harming your children by teaching them a load of hocus pocus. If those bigots actually read Harry Potter they might actually learn a couple of things.

Well, that’s a rant I don’t really want to get into. Not liking Harry Potter is one thing and personal opinion, campaigning that it’s devilry, full of Satan worshipping and whatever other rubbish is aimed at it is another thing altogether.

I think the strength of Harry Potter lies in its familiarity. Wizard school, robes, wands, potions – all those kinds of clichés that others might try to avoid are used by JKR to create a world that feels like it already exists. I think personally, the best, most magical books are the ones that feel like you already know that world exists. It pops into your imagination so quickly and so smoothly, but yet it different to anything else you have ever read before. It becomes so real that not believing in it becomes difficult. I think even the most inane things about Harry Potter would become immediately interesting. It all comes down to the small little details – the histories, the magical items and things and just wanting it to be real.

It’s amazing to think that Harry Potter really does exist in millions of people’s imaginations. That the people who initially started reading them as children might have children of their own by now. That it was enjoyed not just by the children, but by the parents, children and grandparents as well and so for once – children got to actually share a book with their parents on a completely equal level of enjoyment – not just a children’s book the parents read with the child – perhaps enjoy but not quite so much. For ten years he existed in everyone’s hopes and dreams – in their joint imaginations. Young people read Harry Potter over and over again and pored over pages for clues about what would happen next. They analysed it, wrote essays about it – read it over and over.

It might not be your typical literary novel that you dissect in English class – but you know it got children reading and not just reading – but analysing a book on their own, not because they had to in school – usually some book that could have been interesting had you not had to write fifty essays about the same mundane thing. Harry Potter got people reading between the lines and talking. When, since The Lord of the Rings came out, has that ever happened?

I realise now I am rambling. I could never write a review for Harry Potter – I don’t know if I’ll be able to. It’s too difficult – Harry Potter isn’t just a series of books to me it’s part of my make-up, it’s what makes me love reading. It’s that feeling of being in love with a book, lost in a book, being so, so, so happy just being able to read them and feel that feeling again no matter how often I read them.

These books are my friends, they live in my heart and just thinking about it all makes me quite emotional. When I speak of Harry Potter though, I can’t speak of it just by looking at one book individually, but as a whole. I may try to write some sort or review, maybe a review of feelings then anything else – but I can’t say what is good and bad about each individual book and treat them in such a way. Just like I can’t read one book without reading all the others one after the other. I can’t just re-read the first book then wait a bit and read the second some weeks down the line. I have to read it now and carry on until I get to the end.

I have probably succeeded in repeating myself several times and making little sense. Anyway, I’m on a Harry Potter readathon and I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time. So goodbye for now – and Happy Independence day to all you Americans over across the pond.

Magic Kingdom – Terry Brooks

 Genre: Fantasy
Published: 1986
Pages: 373

 

Ben Holiday, a high flying Chicago lawyer is fed up with his life decides to jump ship and buy a fantasy kingdom called Landover. Only he got a little bit more then he bargained for. This is the first book in the Landover series.

It took me a little while to get into this book to be honest with you, not so much because of the book but due to my mood and personal things that happened at the time I started it. However, for the most part I enjoyed it and think I would have enjoyed it a lot more had it not been for the exact time I started reading it. I wavered between giving it 3.5 or 4 stars but decided, because the ending was pretty good that I’d round it up. It’s the first book in a while I’ve felt I have really enjoyed.

It reminded me slightly of one of those old pixelated point and click games like Simon the Sorcerer where you click on ‘pick up’ or ‘use’ from the command menu – or maybe even more like the really old King’s Quest type games where you had to write ‘look’ or ‘pick up’ which I used to love playing. In fact, it’s made me really want to play Simon the Sorcerer again as I never completed it as a kid but I did used to love it. Hmm wonder if it’d work on Vista? (Damn you Microsoft!) Anyway that isn’t really anything to do with this review at all.

Brooks’ writing could occasionally be a little repetitive – he liked the word admonished quite a bit and Ben was forever wanting to throttle people and the characters were slightly flat and predictable. However, the story was the strongest point and there were quite a few times when I laughed out loud. The world was quite imaginative in a clichéd way  – it’s your typical ‘fantasy’ land complete with dragons, witches, wizards and other fairy people as it said in the sales pitch. It felt a little undeveloped as a whole but it is the first book in a series so I think the set up will lead on to something stronger. I loved the castle Sterling Silver being a ‘living’ thing and I also really thought the idea of the ‘fairy’ world was incredibly interesting – I hope in the following books we get to go back there.

The following book ‘The Black Unicorn’ sounds good already – but seeing as I’m on this book ban for the foreseeable future and have a huge stack of library books I haven’t read yet (bugger that’s just reminded me I have an overdue loan!!) I am not sure when I’ll get to it. I have a feeling these are light easy book that can be easily dipped in and out of. I’m not gasping to read the second one but I know that I want to. It’s on the post-ban wish-list.