The Exiled Times of a Tibetan Jew by Jake Wallis Simpson

The novel centres on a colourful group of refugee Tibetans. One of the group's members, the charismatic (and slightly dubious) Rabbi Chod, recognises himself as the reincarnation of Moses, and various friends as reincarnations of key Biblical figures. Despite condemnation from both the mainstream Jewish and Tibetan communities, he declares his followers the true 'lost tribe of Israel', and defiantly opens up a synagogue in a pet shop. The action is seen through the eyes of the narrator, Monlam, who is born into a family where suppression and dysfunction are common currency. Both of his parents are Tibetan Jews, followers of Rabbi Chod. His father owns a cafe called 'Hush Hush', so called because within the cafe, all forms of noise are forbidden. Any customer who speaks is instantly banned and a Polaroid photo of them is pinned to a cork board in case they should dare to return. Monlam himself lives an extraordinary life; as each day goes by, he makes his way not into the future, but the past. He falls asleep each night only to wake up the day before. In this way, as he grows up his parents get younger. By the end of the book his parents are children - too young to manage by themselves - and the adult Monlam has to look after them. In this way he witnesses his own family history, quite literally living backwards into their lives.

This is a truly bizarre read, but I enjoyed it. Every morning the guy wakes up and it's yesterday (his future is everyone's past). I like it because of the concept although there are definitely some bits where I was sure the author was as confused by his new time-rules as I was. Either way, even with the predictable circular nature of the story being told, I thought it was an interesting read.

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A Widow for One Year by John Irving

John Irving's A Widow For One Year is the epic story of a family, dysfunctional at best, unable to cope with tragedy--or with each other. We first meet Ruth Cole in the summer of 1958 when she walks in on her mother having sex with 16-year-old Eddie O'Hare, the assistant to Ruth's alcoholic father. The death of Ruth's older brothers (years before she was born) turns her mother, Marion, into a zombie who is unable to love her surviving daughter. Ted Cole is a semisuccessful writer and illustrator of disturbingly creepy children's novels. His womanizing habits prove he's "as deceitful as a damaged condom," but he remains the only stable figure in Ruth's life. The tempestuous tale fast-forwards to the year 1990 when Ruth's soaring writing career is faring far better than her lackluster love life. The final segment of the novel ends in 1995 when 41-year-old Ruth is ready to fall in love for the first time.

You have to love John Irving. He has a rare ability to draw you right into a world populated with oddball characters acting in such extreme ways you just know it can't be so. And yet there is something authentic and profoundly moving in the straightforward prose and emotional upheavals.

This book is almost three separate books, in the way perhaps Ian McEwan's Atonement was. The first third was the basis for the movie The Door in the Floor, and concerns, as the synposis says, the life of Ruth Cole as a child, living in the shadow of her dead brothers. The second and third parts are set thirty years later when Ruth is all grown up and in her 30's.

Irving's sense of time passing and the loss that comes with settles like a fog over the reading experience. It's so strong it hurts. And, as with his other major works like Garp and Cider House Rules, one is left shaken at the end. That said, it's also very funny and a gripping page-turner.

I have to say that it would be hard to class this as a great literary book, though it certainly lifts itself above the usual popular fiction. In the end, it's entertaining fun with a dash of something more. But it's highly recommended.

As a matter of interest, The Door in the Floor is also a fine movie with Jeff Bridges. It ably and accurately tells the first part of this story and even reaches emotional depths which the book does not. That's also essential viewing I think.

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Spud - The Madness Continues ... by John van de Ruit

But Spud is returning to a boarding school where he is no longer the youngest or the smallest. His dormitory mates, known as the Crazy Eight, have an unusual new member and his house has a new clutch of first years (the Normal Seven). If Spud thinks his second year will be a breeze, however, he is seriously mistaken. He is soon beset with women trouble, coerced into misguided late night adventures, and finds his dreams of a famous career on the stage in tatters after landing the part of the Dove of Peace in a disastrous house play production of Noah’s Ark. Hilarious, bitter-sweet, tragic and real, join Spud as he takes another tentative step forward while all around him the madness continues...

Oops, I am about a week late in getting this review up. Guess that's a fairly good reflection of the impact this book had on my life.

This was a decidedly average read in my opinion, but as I said before when I read the first one it's probably better if you're a boy and went to boarding school. But I do enjoy knowing it's a South African book and it does reference a few things I remember from my youth.

It's an easy read and if you enjoyed the first then this is probably right up your alley :)

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The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult

When Daniel Stone was a child, he was the only white boy in a native Eskimo village where his mother taught, and he was teased mercilessly because he was different. He fought back, the baddest of the bad kids: stealing, drinking, robbing and cheating his way out of the Alaskan bush - where he honed his artistic talent, fell in love with a girl and got her pregnant. To become part of a family, he reinvented himself - jettisoning all that anger to become a docile, devoted husband and father. Fifteen years later, when we meet Daniel again, he is a comic book artist. His wife teaches Dante's Inferno at a local college; his daughter, Trixie, is the light of his life - and a girl who only knows her father as the even-tempered, mild-mannered man he has been her whole life. Until, that is, she is date raped and Daniel finds himself struggling, again, with a powerlessness and a rage that may not just swallow him whole, but destroy his family and his future.

I adore Jodi Picoult, she is one of my all-time favourite authors. Each new book of hers that I read becomes my favourite, and The Tenth Circle is no exception. It is a masterpiece in characterisation and slowly building tension to what is a very realistic yet shocking conclusion. Picoult's strength lies in her ability to get inside the minds of her characters, whether it be a 40 year old single father or a 5 year old girl. She writes from each character's perspective in turn, giving the reader a thorough understanding of the complexities of human relationships. Her courage in tackling really difficult and controversial issues, where there is rarely a clear line between black and white, makes for compelling reading. In this book she tackles the issue of date rape and isolation - both teenage and adult - and forces you to consider the situation from every angle. I found it to be gripping to the point where I was trying to read it while cooking supper and walking to the station,... it's that good!

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Daddy's Girls by Tasmina Perry

The Balcon sisters are London's paparazzi darlings. Serena, the country's most beautiful actress, Venetia the glamorous designer, Camilla the rising political star and Cate the feisty magazine editor. They have wealth, privilege and sizzling sex lives. But money doesn't buy you love. When their aristocratic and tyrannical father Oswald Balcon is found dead, the finger of suspicion points towards his glamorous daughters and their dazzling lives. Suddenly we find that beneath the ritzy façade of the Balcon family lies a web of deceit and betrayal that hides a thirty-year-old secret that threatens to destroy them all. From the sun drenched beaches of Mustique to Manhattan's elite society circuit. From the exclusive fashion houses of Milan to the star-studded streets of Cannes, the Balcon Sisters play out their lives in a whirl of glitz and the ultra chic. But as tragedy and danger stalks each one of them, the scene is set for a stunning climax.

Move over Jackie Collins, there's a new girl in town! Tasmina Perry's debut novel is what the British like to call a 'bonkbuster', the modern-day alternative to the genre formerly known as 'bodice-rippers.' Basically, you take the pages of Heat magazine, pick out a couple of beautiful A-list celebrities, give them pseudonyms, write an imaginary tale of how fabulous their lives are and throw in bit of mystery and a lot of sex. There you have the bonkbuster. A perfect, escapist beach read, which I have to read in the comfort of my lounge considering there are no beaches for miles. Good fun if you're a tabloid junkie and thrive on soap operas!

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How To Kill Your Husband by Kathy Lette

All women want to kill their husbands some of the time "Where there's a will, I intend to be in it," wives half-joke to each other. Marriage, it would appear, is a fun-packed frivolous hobby, only occasionally resulting in death. But when Jazz Jardine is arrested for her husband's murder, the joke falls flat. Life should begin at 40 - not with life imprisonment for killing your spouse. Jazz, stay-at-home mum and domestic goddess; Hannah, childless career woman; and Cassie, demented working mother of two are three ordinary women. Their record collections are classical, not criminal. Cassie and Hannah set out immediately to prove their best friend's innocence, uncovering betrayal, adultery, plot twists, thinner thighs and toy boys aplenty en route but will their friendship survive these ever darker revelations? Sexy, funny and wise, Kathy Lette's irresistible new novel is about women not Having It All But Doing It All. It's about how today's mother is often a married lone parent. It's about the fact that no woman has ever shot her husband while he was vacuuming.;This is Kathy Lette at her brilliant best, casting her trade mark caustic eye on what goes on in the bedrooms and kitchens of ordinary married couples. A novel which will strike a cord with married women everywhere and ensure that, from now on, they all read the small print on their marriage licenses.

Loved this book, absolutely loved it. The number of times (many, many!) I found myself reading out loud (over the phone even) paragraphs and sentences from this book to my boyf ... it was a truly hysterical read. Definitely good for light entertainment if you're between deep and dark reads and one I could definitely recommend as a holiday read or just to lift your mood. Although, I must say it does leave those of us (me) who are more than a little cautious about spending the rest of our lives with one person a little skittish ... based on the disarray marriage aflicts on these women's lives. But still, a fabulously entertaining book!

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Flyleaf by Finuala Dowling

Lying quietly in Marina’s spare room, you can hear the sea, tell the tide. When I first stretched my toes down into Marina’s sheets, they encountered sand. Someone else had slept there before me, come straight to bed after a day on the beach. I curled up like a mollusc, like a purple-lipped dog whelk, and let the bleakness of my life wash over me. What would become of me?

A wonderful book. The images are evocative of life in Cape Town, certainly for anyone who's ever lived here. The story is lyrical and well-written. Violet, the main character, is a teacher that is paid by the hour. She's just separated from her husband, who got another woman pregnant, and this is her story. The book is littered with half-formed characters that you'd love to learn more about. If only Violet would just ask the right questions, then maybe you'd know. But she doesn't, and the characters remain enigmatic, as the rare glimpses and snippets of their lives that Violet sees are all that you are given. Written with the pacing of life in Cape Town [by which I mean it is slow], the writing clearly communicates the feeling of drifting on the ocean that has recently enveloped Violet's life. More enjoyably, Violet is an English teacher and the book is littered with observations, witticisms and simple lessons on the English language and how it's used.

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The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA gives a rich and hilarious new meaning to plaints about "The Boss from Hell." Narrated in Andrea's smart, refreshingly disarming voice, it traces a deep, dark, devilish view of life at the top only hinted at in gossip columns and over Cosmopolitans at the trendiest cocktail parties. From sending the latest, not-yet-in-stores Harry Potter to Miranda's children in Paris by private jet, to locating an unnamed antique store where Miranda had at some point admired a vintage dresser, to serving lattes to Miranda at precisely the piping hot temperature she prefers, Andrea is sorely tested each and every day--and often late into the night with orders barked over the phone. She puts up with it all by keeping her eyes on the prize: a recommendation from Miranda that will get Andrea a top job at any magazine of her choosing. As things escalate from the merely unacceptable to the downright outrageous, however, Andrea begins to realize that the job a million girls would die for may just kill her. And even if she survives, she has to decide whether or not the job is worth the price of her soul.

I picked up this book more out of curiosity than anything else since I enjoyed the film but found that it was lacking in some places and I was wondering what the book would be like. I'll tell you one thing it is completely different from the film! From the beginning to the end this book is just so much better, the characters are more real, the boss more of a bitch, the tasks more insane and the storyline is completely different. It even ends differently! Not as neatly and perfectly as the film I might add, but a lot more like real life and a lot more interestingly.

For anyone who has ever had a bitch as boss and thinks that theirs is the worst read this book and marvel over how truly impossible someone can be! This book is a fantastic escape and is fiction at his best. Weisberger writes very well and you really engage with all of her characters; personally I had the over whelming urge to reach into the book and rip out Miranda's throat. The characters are more fleshed out than the film and aren't completely glossy Hollywood as in the film.

Don't watch the film after reading the book though because you'll only be annoyed by the film.

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The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

Dr. David Henry is forced by a blizzard to deliver his own twins. His son is perfectly healthy, but his daughter has Down's syndrome. Rationalizing it as a need to protect his wife, he asks his nurse to take the baby away to an institution. Instead, the nurse disappears into another city to raise the child herself.

The book was pretty good, I enjoyed it as a fairly light holiday read - nothing especially dark & twisty here. But a nice enough story with the obvious hollywood ending none the less.

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Tears of the Giraffe by Alexander McCall Smith

THE NO.1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY introduced the world to the one and only Precious Ramotswe - the engaging and sassy owner of Botswana's only detective agency. TEARS OF THE GIRAFFE, McCall Smith's second book, takes us further into this world as we follow Mama Ramotswe into more daring situations ... Among her cases this time are wayward wives, unscrupulous maids, and the challenge to resolve a mother's pain for her son who is long lost on the African plains. Indeed, Mma Ramotswe's own impending marriage to the most gentlemanly of men, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, the promotion of Mma's secretary to the dizzy heights of Assistant Detective, and the arrival of new members to the Matekoni family, all brew up the most humorous and charmingly entertaining of tales.

This was a fairly easy read. Quite a pleasant story but, nothing spectacular. I only really found it interesting because it was set in Botswana. Although I found the way it was written, the actual language, very strange and not especially easy to read.

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The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne

It is Berlin, year 1942. When Bruno returns home from school one day, he discovers that his belongings are being packed in crates. His father has received a promotion and the family must move from their home to a new house far far away, where there is no one to play with and nothing to do. A tall fence running alongside stretches as far as the eye can see and cuts him off from the strange people he can see in the distance. But Bruno longs to be an explorer and decides that there must be more to this desolate new place than meets the eye. While exploring his new environment, he meets another boy whose life and circumstances are very different to his own, and their meeting results in a friendship that has devastating consequences.

I loved this book. It is written in a similar style (like you're in the mind of a 9 year old child) to Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. It's a delightfully innocent story :)

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The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil by George Saunders

Citizens waiting to enter the country of Inner Horner, a strange land that is only large enough for one resident at a time, fall prey to the tyrannical rule of the ambitious and power-hungry Phil, igniting an outbreak of injustice and mass hysteria, in an unusual novel by the author of Pastoralia. Original.

A quick and truly bizarre read. I'm guessing I didn't pick up all the political innuendos but it was otherwise fairly entertaining and definitely had some amusing bits! Not for you if you require realism ;) In my defence, I did only buy the book because of it's fantastic title!

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The Apologist by Jay Rayner

Marc Bassett has a reputation as a pitiless restaurant critic. When he writes a devastating review of a particular establishment, the chef commits suicide, roasting himself in his own fan-assisted oven, with Basset's review pasted to the door. Suddenly Basset is moved to do something he has never done before: apologize. After a series of virtuoso expressions of regret, word of Bassett's mollifying power spreads, and he is invited to become Chief Apologist for the United Nations. His job is to travel the globe in his own Gulfstream V private jet, apologizing for everything from colonialism to exploitation to slavery. It is a role that brings him fame, wealth and access to a lot of very good chocolate. But in a world overdosing on emotion, does Marc Basset really have the stomach to be the sorriest man in history? Built of delicate layers of heinous crime, forgiveness and outrageous gastronomy, Jay Rayner's glorious new novel is a piquant satire of modern appetite and etiquette.

I loved it. It is a very offbeat book, but I enjoyed the writing style, the story and the main character. I would definitely recommend it as an alternative to whatever you usually read :)

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The Girls by Lori Lansens

'I have never looked into my sister's eyes. I have never bathed alone. I have never stood in the grass at night and raised my arms to a beguiling moon. I've never used an aeroplane bathroom. Or worn a hat. Or been kissed like that...So many things I've never done, but oh, how I've been loved. And, if such things were to be, I'd live a thousand times as me, to be loved so exponentially' In twenty-nine years, Rose Darlen has never spent a moment apart from her twin sister, Ruby. She has never gone for a solitary walk or had a private conversation. Yet, in all that time, she has never once looked into Ruby's eyes. Joined at the head, 'The Girls' (as they are known in their small town) attempt to lead a normal life, but can't help being extraordinary. Now almost thirty, Rose and Ruby are on the verge of becoming the oldest living craniopagus twins in history, but they are remarkable for a lot more than their unusual sisterly bond.

This was an interesting book and I did quite enjoy it. No twists or drama, just a good reflection on a fictional life. Sometimes I enjoy a good girly book ;)

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The Empty Chair by Jeffery Deaver

Lincoln Rhyme has travelled to a world-famous spinal cord injuries center in North Carolina for some risky, experimental surgery. It may make him a tiny bit better, it may kill him. But before he has a chance to undergo it, the local police department are drafting in Rhyme and Amelia, using their forensic skills to help find two women kidpapped by a psychotic young man known locally as the Insect Boy. After a cat and mouse game through the abandoned swamps of North Carolina, Lincoln and Amelia manage to find him - then Amelia, convinced of his innocence, breaks the boy out of jail. And Lincoln has to find them both, while Amelia uses all the skills her mentor and lover has taught her to evade him. Her actions are to have more disastrous consequence than either of them anticipate ...

I enjoyed this, like all of Deaver's Lincoln Rhyme novels. It has some great twists.

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a murder mystery novel like no other. The detective, and narrator, is Christopher Boone. Christopher is fifteen and has Asperger's, a form of autism. He knows a very great deal about maths and very little about human beings. He loves lists, patterns and the truth. He hates the colours yellow and brown and being touched. He has never gone further than the end of the road on his own, but when he finds a neighbour's dog murdered he sets out on a terrifying journey which will turn his whole world upside down.

I enjoyed it. Not quite as much as Extremely Loud tho. I like the way both these authors have managed to capture the honest and directness of a child-like mind. Before all the pre-conceived notions of adulthood step in.

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The Cold Moon by Jeffery Deaver

It's the night of the full Cold Moon - the month of December according to the lunar calendar. A young man is found dead in lower Manhattan, the first in a series of victims of a man calling himself the Watchmaker. This killer?s obsession with time drives him to plan the murders with the precision of fine timepieces, and the victims die prolonged deaths while an eerie clock ticks away their last minutes on earth.

this book was fab, as Deaver's Lincoln Rhyme's novels usually are (I'm still undecided about the rest of his stuff tho). Although it starts a little slowly, it twists and twirls it's way to the end ... any book that causes a gasp out loud because you can not believe that just happened, is definitely one I'd recommend reading! And this one does just that :)

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Salem Falls by Jodi Picoult

Jack St. Bride was once a beloved teacher and soccer coach at a girls' prep school - until a student's crush sparked a powder keg of accusation and robbed him of his career and reputation. Now, after a devastatingly public ordeal that left him with an eight-month jail sentence and no job, Jack resolves to pick up the pieces of his life. He takes a job washing dishes at Addie Peabody's diner and slowly starts to form a relationship with her in the quiet New England village of Salem Falls. But just when Jack thinks he has outrun his past, a quartet of teenage girls with a secret turn his world upside down once again, triggering a modern-day witch hunt in a town haunted by its own history...

It was okay. The same formula mass-produced flavour of her other books I've read. At least this one had a happy ending (compared with The Pact) and an ending at all (compared to Keeping Faith). So I guess she is improving. I still can't quite understand why people rush out to buy her books yet, tho. It's the sort of thing I'll read if it's around ... me, I need mystery, intrigue and a serious twist in the ending for a book to rank worthy ;)

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Chart Throb by Ben Elton

"Chart Throb" is the ultimate pop quest. Ninety five thousand hopefuls. Three judges. Just one winner. And that's Colin Simms, the genius behind the show. Colin always wins because Colin writes the rules. But this year, as he sits smugly in judgement upon the mingers, clingers and blingers whom he has pre-selected in his carefully scripted 'search' for a star, he has no idea that the rules are changing. The 'real' is about to be put back into 'reality' television and Colin and his fellow judges (the nation's favourite mum and the other bloke) are about to become ex-factors themselves. Ben Elton, author of "Popcorn and Dead Famous" returns to blistering comic satire with a savagely hilarious deconstruction of the world of modern television talent shows. "Chart Throb" is about one winner and a whole bunch of losers.

It was okay. I appreciated it more when I caught a bit of American Idols on tv last night. It wasn't nearly as good as I remember High Society being.

Lopz reviewed this book on 16 October 2007:
This book is absolutely brilliant. Ben Elton is a master of satire and deconstructing the often ridiculous elements of pop culture today. He takes us through a 'behind the scenes' look at Chart Throb, the fictional "bigger, better" version of Britain's hottest talent show, The X Factor, produced in real life by Simon Cowell. Calvin Simms is the Simon Cowell figure, and the other two judges mirror perfectly the characters of Louis Walsh and Sharon Osbourne. Elton uses the our current obsession with reality TV to smash all perceptions of a talent show that exists to make people's dreams come true. Instead, he exposes the money and power hungry moguls behind shows like X Factor and American Idol, and the desperation and delusion of the majority of contestants. His take on this booming industry is cynical, hysterical and so spot on you find yourself gasping frequently at the obvious truths what reality TV is really about.

Of course, whether Elton's exposes are indeed just a product of a clever imagination or they have more than just a resemblance to reality is for the reader to decide. The book is a work of fiction, but you can't help but feel it is uncomfortably close to the truth. Personally I believe it is a little of both. I enjoyed every second of this book, but there is a downside: I will never again look at TV shows like this in the same way, and my housemates have started to yell at me when my newfound cynicism rears its head during X Factor. ;-)

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The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

Thriller writer Connolly (Every Dead Thing) turns from criminal fears to primal fears in this enchanting novel about a 12-year-old English boy, David, who is thrust into a realm where eternal stories and fairy tales assume an often gruesome reality. Books are the magic that speak to David, whose mother has died at the start of WWII after a long debilitating illness. His father remarries, and soon his stepmother is pregnant with yet another interloper who will threaten David's place in his father's life. When a portal to another world opens in time-honored fashion, David enters a land of beasts and monsters where he must undertake a quest if he is to earn his way back out. Connolly echoes many great fairy tales and legends (Little Red Riding Hood, Roland, Hansel and Gretel), but cleverly twists them to his own purposes. Despite horrific elements, this tale is never truly frightening, but is consistently entertaining as David learns lessons of bravery, loyalty and honor that all of us should learn.

I quite liked this book. It's not quite what you expect and although it does have the twisted fairy tales and it's not kiddie reading by any means, the book is still essentially about a young boy. As far as twisted fairy tales go, however, my favourite still remains Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes.

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