In RyanLand, Philip Nolan uses the Ryanair schedule as his destination planner and travels around Europe low-cost with Ryanair. Each chapter is about a Ryanair destination (Hahn, Lubeck, Reus Salou), and the very last chapter is about nothing less than ... the dot. The prose is hilarious throughout the whole book and the last chapter is no exception. I've scanned the chapter to share it with you. This is promo for the book, and for the dot which gets quite a positive evaluation.

Scan of pg 250-251
Scan of pg 252-253
Scan of pg 254-255

I served the king of England by Bohumil Hrabal narrates the life of Dittie who starts his working career as a busboy living in Czechoslovakia around 1935. Dittie’s career evolves from being a busboy, to a waiter serving some of the most exclusive hotels in his country. Along the road he starts losing his innocence and experiencing the real world, money, important people, corruption, sex and eventually love. The main ambition of his life is to gain recognition and acceptance, something he thinks can be achieved by becoming a millionaire.

This is my second book by Hrabal and I doubt it's going to be the last. The way Hrabal weaves the story and narrates as if the boy is telling a story enthusiastically to some of his friends, is something I’ve started associating with the author. Sometimes humourous, sometimes sensuous, sometimes sad, but always pleasant, this is a great book which I recommend to anybody. 4.5/5

I heard about The Lies of Locke Lamora from Joe Sherry's blog Adventures in Reading (which is becoming one of my favourite blogs btw). Since then I read several positive reviews about the book, so I thought I should check it out. One day I saw it in the bookshop, read the jacket and wasn't convinced by it, so I didn't buy the book. I was afraid that it was going to be a complex fantasy book, full of descriptions of a magical world difficult to understand, written in a style of English as old as the world itself. This is probably one of the reasons I don't usually read fantasy books, even though the titles and cover art are very alluring. Finally, I borrowed the book from the library, and started reading it half heartedly. Boy was I sucked in the story.

A couple of people on Shelfari described the book as an Oceans 11 / Robin Hood type of book, and I tend to agree. The book is about a group of thieves who call themselves the Gentleman Bastards. Unlike Robin Hood though, they keep the money they steal. The gang leader (garrista) of the Gentleman Bastards is Locke Lamora. Locke isn't endowed with supernatural powers or an imposing physique, however he's the best at what he does, and what he does is stealing.

The book starts with the story of Locke as a child living in the streets of Camorr, a city not unlike Venice. After a teaser of Locke's early life, the story suddenly jumps to the present day, where Locke is already the garrista of his gang. After setting up a complex con job against the wealthy Don Salvara family, the peace of the city is disturbed by an uprising boss who calls himself the Grey king. With the help of his bondsmage (wizard) henchmen, the Grey King wants to overtake Brasavi, the old boss, to start ruling the Camorr underworld. This part of the story is reminiscent of Mafia stories. At the end of each chapter Lynch adds interludes that describe the formation of the Gentleman Bastards. I really liked this way Lynch pauses from the main storyline to describe something as interesting as the main story itself.

The dialog and language of the book are quite modern, not something I was expecting in a fantasy novel. The title "Gentleman Bastards" itself suggests that the language is indeed modern. Lynch doesn't hold back on using foul language in his dialog. I think this modern language use made the book much more accessible for me.

I'm glad that I started this series from the very beginning. At least now I can read each book as it's published, not having to play catch-up with a long list of thick books. In fact today I ordered the next book in the series, Red Seas Under Red Skies, which was just released this summer. I recommend Lies of Locke Lamora, to anybody looking for a good story or anybody who wants to get into fantasy fiction. 4.5/5

Some Links
Scott Lynch's personal blog on Live Journal
32 page extract from the book
Wikipedia Entry for Lies of Locke Lamora
Strange Horizons Review
Forum for the book / series

I am a cat and as yet I have no name". A perfect sentence to start the chronicle of an unwanted kitten narrating his life in the household of a Japanese teacher in the Meiji Era (early 1900’s). I am a cat by Soseki Natusme is a humorous satire on the upper middle class, academics and aesthetes. The text originally appeared as a series of 10 articles in a Japanese magazine, and the book is a collection of these articles divided in 3 parts.

The observations on humans and their peculiarities as seen by a cat make this book very humours. If you own a cat you’ll appreciate how the cat describes his superiority to mere humans. The importance of sleep, scratching, and the overall owning of the place are just some of the opinions this highly observant cat has to offer. The flowery language the cat uses in his descriptions and the archaic and bombastic tones in the conversations between people are one of the most pleasant aspects of the book.

I found the first two sections of the book to be very enjoyable, however in the last part I admit that I lost my interest and started skipping some conversations between the main characters. They seemed to become quite long winded and uninteresting towards the end as well as a bit inconclusive.

Even though the book was written in the early 1900 in Japan, and classified as literature, I found the book easy to follow and enjoyable. I highly recommend the book to any cat lover or cat owner. However if you’re totally indifferent to cats, academic snobs, and character based books I don’t think this book has much to offer for you. 4/5 stars.

War with the Newts starts with captain van Toch finding some strange ugly creatures in the Pacific Ocean who the locals used to think were devils. One day Van voch confronted public fear and went to meet the so called demons. Gradually he started interacting with the newts until he learned that he could teach them how to fetch pearls from the bottom of the ocean for him. This way he managed to make a small fortune selling pearls so van Toch sought further financing from a G. H. Bondy and prominent businessman, to help him start using the newts for other jobs. This venture was successful and the newts started being used by different countries to help in marine related jobs like building dams and building other submarine structures leading to the building of full blown underwater cities.

The cute ones never want to do anything

The good thing about War with the Newts is that it can be enjoyed at different levels. The main storyline of the book is very readable and enjoyable and can be read as a bedtime story to children. On another level there's lots of underlying satire woven in the events that happen in the story. Underneath the main storyline of the book one can easily notice references to mass production, low cost labour and slavery, mass destruction, dystopia and international politics. The satire is not really subtle but at the same time quite humours and adhering to the main storyline of the book.

As one can see, fame demoralizes even the newts

I admit that if it were not for my literary mentor who gave me this book I would have never dreamt to read it. Now that I've read the book I'm glad that I did and I'll recommend it highly. The book can be enjoyed even if you don't get the satire behind it, but then again if you're alive and go out from home once in a while you'll be able to get most of the satirical references. 4.5/5

There is an ebook version of this book at Adelaide University (translated by David Wyllie)

I started reading Norwegian Wood after having already enjoyed other (2) books from Haruki Murakami so I thought I knew what to expect. I was expecting some strange surreal and intriguing story with mild references to The Beetles because of the book's title. I was only right about it being intriguing and having Beetles references, because Norwegian Wood is the only realistic book by Murakami. There are no talking cats or strangely marked sheep, and the character's behaviour is potentially plausible in real life.

If one had to broadly categorise the story he might say it's a love story set in the late 60's. The narrator and main protagonist is a Japanese university student called Toru Watanabe. The main storyline explores the relationship between Toru and Naoko, the girlfriend of his dead friend Kizuki, who committed suicide at the age of 17. The relationship is challenged by the pains of love, death and mental health which are the three main themes of the book.

Murakami makes art of the ordinary life of an average university student and writes to explore the psychological feelings of his characters. There are only a handful of characters in the book, yet as usual the author delves deeply into each character and makes each one very distinctive. Murakami's characters are always searching for something. This time it's a search for love, personal identity, and purpose of life of Toru and his friends, who are at the critical stage of stepping in adulthood.

There is no thrilling plot or weird story to hook you to the book yet I still finished the book in two days. From the translator's notes at the back of the book, I learned that this is the book that brought success to Murakami and gained him popularity out of Japan. After you read the book this fact wouldn't surprise you in the least. 4/5.

There were two reasons why I got Out by Natsuo Kirino, first I noticed the distinctive book cover in the bookshop and secondly a friend of mine who was reading it suggested it. The story is about four financially pressured housewives frustrated with the drudgery of daily, who work the night-shift in a food packing factory. One night Yayoi, the youngest one of the group, crosses the line and chokes her husband to death. Yayoi phones her friend at the factory Masako, who for no apparent reason agrees to help disposing of the body.

The book is 500+ pages long but it's also one of the fastest books I finished in a long time. That brings me to the first characteristic of the book - its pace. The story reads so fast that sometimes you actually feel that you're skimming over the pages rather than reading them. One of the reasons for this is that Natsuo keeps suspense growing throughout the whole book, keeping you guessing what's going to happen next. The characters are well developed and are one of the strong points of the book.

The depth in character development gives the book a psychological twist which keeps you wondering what is motivating the main characters. To help in understanding the characters better the narrator sometimes shifts the event perspective between the main actors of the story. Although this adds a slight repetition to the events it helps give more insight to the individual characters.

The major drawback of the book is the book description on the jacket of the book. The description basically gives off half of the story which always is very annoying. Once you get over the main half of the book though the story plot starts twisting itself away from the usual thrillers and turns quite unpredictable. Having said this, the plot is quite linear and not very intricate. Final say: A very enjoyable fast paced thriller but I'm waiting for the sequel. 4/5

Looking for something new to do with your mp3 player? You can try listening to some audiobooks once in a while. The simplyaudiobooks site publishes a free audiobook each month. This month it's The stolen white elephant by Mark Twain. Of course you can buy all sorts of audiobooks from the site but a free download is always handy to get you going with audiobooks.

Free Audiobooks hint Nr 2. In the age of the internet we tend to forget about the more conventional sources of free stuff. Most libraries lend out audiobooks which you can borrow for free. So fish out that library card and visit the library if to find more free audiobooks.

I decided to buy If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino, after my literally-encyclopaedia pal at work asked me read the first paragraph of this book at the local bookshop. It starts like this:-

Having come out of a reading mode for a while I thought that a weird book would get me into reading mode again. Boy was I right; this book is one of the strangest books I’ve ever read. And what’s more it’s all about reading. In one of the reviews I read about the book somebody described it as a love letter to a reader. I think it’s a good analogy.

Each odd number chapter is written in the second person and the following chapter is from a book the reader is trying to read. You, as the reader of "If on a winter night a traveller" are reading the same book the reader (you) in the story is reading. This suggests that you are being referenced in the book and the book sometimes even references itself.

The main story develops only in the odd numbered chapters where the reader and the other reader start uncovering a series of book fakers who are causing all the confusion in the same book. Scattered along these chapters are observations on reading, writing and the relationship between the author and the reader. The even number chapters on the other hand are like a series of short stories which don’t relate to one another (or at least I didn’t manage to find any relation between them). Each time the reader gets to the most interesting part of the story the story is cut abruptly and something mysterious happens to the book the reader is reading.

I still cannot decide what rating I’m going to give this book. Parts of it are great (4/5) parts and parts of it I just couldn’t get (2/5). If you liked the first paragraph and like weird books then give this book a go. Don’t expect a simple storyline with a clear plot because there isn’t any. Overall (3.5/5)

Remember that experiment with the colour, animal, body of water, and room? Well here's the reason for it. In Diary, Chuck Palahniuk says that Carl Jung used these questions to represent these things :-

• The Colour and description of the colour you gave are representative of how you think about yourself.
• The Animal is other people.
• The body of water is your sex life.
• And, the all white room is your thoughts on death.

Come on I need some replies on this. I'll tell you why later.

• Name your favourite color and 3 words to describe why?
• Name your favourite animal and 3 words to describe why?
• Name a body of water and 3 words to describe why?
• Describe how you would feel if you were locked in a white room with nothing in it but a simple wooden bench on which you were sitting naked, waiting?

Everybody likes some encouragement sometimes and I admit I was fishing for some in the last post, and yes I liked it that there were at least 4 comments by my loyal ones. [I'm still waiting for another though ... hint sti]. As I was saying yesterday I've got this book bug at the moment and today I decided to try out Amazon Marketplace. You know when you go to amazon.com you get that "used and new from <usually by not necessarily cheaper price here>", that's Amazon Marketplace, a second hand alternative to new books. (See also half.com). The catch with this is that they only deliver these books to a select number of countries of which you, some of my loyal minions, don't qualify for. But since you made my day, [ok that's stretching it a bit now], I'm going to make you an offer you can't refuse. If you're interested in getting books from Amazon Marketplace vendors then I can get the book delivered to my house and then I'll send it over to you. Just send me a mail if you're interested.

Confederacy of Dunces is such a great book that I feel unworthy of trying to describe it. This is a description by Alix Wilber, which will hopefully lure you into reading this classic comedy masterpiece.

This book was originally written in the early sixties but was only published in through the persistence of the author's mother after he had committed suicide in 1969 at the age of thirty two. A confederacy of dunces work won the Pulitzer Prize a year after it was first published in 1981.

This wasn't a book I was likely to pick up in a bookshop but a work pal handed it over suspecting that it will remind me of a hero of mine. If I ever have the pleasure to meet Seth MacFarlane this will be the first thing I ask him: Where you ever inspired by this book when you created Stewie Griffin? It's a pity that John Toole isn't with us anymore; Ignatius J. Reilly deserved to live longer than the Disc World Series. 5/5

As much as it deserves it, it would have taken too long to retype the whole book here, so these are just few quotes to give you a teaser of the book. (References to pages are to the Penguin Books edition)

Some Quotes

[Part of the letter sent by Ignatius to Abelman (Mongoloid, Esq.)] We are a busy and dynamic organization whose mission needless effrontery and harassment can only hinder. If you molest us again, sir, you may feel the sting of the lash across your pitiful shoulders. Pg. 89

… I avoid that bleak first hour of the working day during which my still sluggish senses and body make ever chore a penance. I find that in arriving later, the work which I do perform is of a much higher quality. Pg. 99

… my mother's cataclysmic intemperance has thrust me into the world in the most cavalier manner; my system is still in a state of flux. Therefore, I am still in the process of adapting myself to the tension of the working world. Pg. 100

Social Note: I have sought escape in the Prytania on more than one occasion, pulled by the attractions of some technicolored horrors, filmed abortions that were offenses against any criteria of taste and decency, reels and reels of perversion and blasphemy that stunned my disbelieving eyes, the shocked my virginal mind, and sealed my valve.

My mother is currently associating with some undesirables who are attempting to transform her into an athlete of sorts, deprave specimens of mankind who regularly bowl their way to oblivion. Pg. 101

I do admire the terror which Negroes are able to inspire in the hearts of some members of the white proletariat and only wish (This is a rather personal confession.) that I possessed the ability to similarly terrorize. The Negro terrorizes simply by being himself; I however, must browbeat a bit in order to achieve the same end. Perhaps I should have been a Negro. I suspect that I would have been a rather large and terrifying one, continually pressing my ample thigh against the withered thighs of old white ladies in public conveyances a great deal and eliciting more than one shriek of panic. Then, too, if I were a Negro, I would not be pressured by my mother to find a good job, for no good jobs would be available. Pg. 123

… deriving from a history of our nation as written from the perspective if a subway tunnel. Pg. 126

[Part of the letter sent to Dr. Talc] Pray to him, you deluded fool, you 'anyone for tennis?' golf playing, cocktail-quaffing pseudo-pedant, for you do indeed need a heavenly patron. Although your days are numbered, you will not die as a martyr – for you further no holy cause – but as the total ass which you really are. Pg. 130

Apparently I lack some particular perversion which today's employer is seeking. Pg. 156

'So that's who that obvious appendage of officialdom was. He looked like an arm of the bureaucracy. You can always tell employees of the government by the total vacancy which occupies the space where most other people have faces. Pg. 208

However, various small bones and ligaments are beginning to wave a white flag of surrender. My physical apparati seem to be preparing to announce a truce of some sort. My digestive system has almost ceased functioning altogether. Some tissue has perhaps grown over my pyloric valve, sealing it forever. Pg. 211

… the more alert of the reading public will benefit from my account of that abysmal sojourn into the swamps to the inner station of the ultimate horror. Pg. 212

This liberal doxy must be impaled upon the member of a particularly large stallion. Pg. 216

This, I should have known, was too much for his literal and sausage-like mind. … We lunged about in the garage like tow swashbucklers in an especially inept historical film for several moments, fork and cutlass clicking against each other madly. Realizing that my plastic weapon was hardly a match for a long fork wielded by a maddened Methuselah … Pg. 230

Like a bitch in heat, I seem to attract a coterie of policemen and sanitation officials. Pg 232

'Filth!' Ignatius shouted, spewing wet popcorn over several rows. 'How dare she pretend to be a virgin. Look at her degenerate face. Rape her!' Pg 293

… My respiratory system, unfortunately, is below par. I suspect that I am the result of particularly weak conception on the part of my father. His sperm was probably emitted in a rather offhand manner. Pg. 298

… your type isn't even in the psychology books. Pg 359

[To his mother] 'It's not your fate to be well treated,' Ignatius cried. 'You're an overt masochist. Nice treatment will confuse and destroy you. Pg. 367

'Mother, I must attend to my bowels. They are revolting against the trauma of the last twenty-four hours. Pg. 368

Fortuna had relented. She was not depraved enough to end this vicious cycle by throttling him in a straitjacket, by sealing him up in a cement block tomb lighted by florescent tubes. Fortuna wished to make amends. Somehow she had summoned and flushed Myrna minx from a subway tube, from some picket line, for the pungent bed of some Eurasian existentialist, from the hands of some epileptic Negro Buddhist, from the verbose midst of a group therapy session. Pg. 389

She's out somewhere failing her blood test at the moment. Pg 390

Hostage Rescue Team agent Web London has had his worst day of his life after seeing his team members brutalized under submachine gun fire in a drug bust operation, while he stood paralyzed behind them. The best member of the force is now under pressure to prove to everybody that he hasn't turned traitor on his former colleagues and uncover what happened during that night in the alley. How did the enemy know about this secret operation? Why did London freeze before springing to action, and who's the boy he met in the alley before the attack and what was he doing there? Last man standing is an enjoyable fast pace Baldacci page turner, great narrative and great characters but this time the story is rather common predictable. 3 out of 5.

If you've never read anything by Murakami then Kafka on the shore is a great book to check the author out. If you've read Murakami before then this is more of the same greatness. The story runs in parallel between the life of a runaway fifteen year old Kafka, and the life of an old illiterate Nakata who has experienced a strange traumatic experience in his childhood and somehow is able to talk to cats. Amongst other things there's a mysterious brutal killing which the protagonists seem to be connected to. Like his other books sexuality is prominent this time venturing into more taboo subjects like the Oedipus complex, brother-sister love and elder sex. From this scenario you already start to appreciate that there's something intriguing about the situation, something that keeps you turning pages rapidly.

What I like about Murakami's books is that he creates strange surreal scenarios like people conversing with cats, fish falling from the sky and WWII soliders appearing from forests, which make you question the meaning behind this symbolism, if there is any at all. This was the best book from the other four under review. 4.5 out of 5.

Some Quotes

"Not to boast or anything, but I can't write either," the cat said, licking the pads of his right paw. "I'd say my mind is average, though, so I've never found it inconvenient". (pg 49)

"… Symbolism and meaning are two separate things. I think she found the right words by bypassing procedures like meaning and logic. She captured words in a dream, like delicately catching hold of a butterfly's wings as it flutters around. Artists are those who can evade the verbose. (pg. 262)

"Listen every object's in flux. The earth, time concepts, love, life, faith, justice, evil – they're all fluid and in transition. They don't stay in one form or in one place for ever. The whole universe is like some big FedEx box." (Pg 309)

"Perhaps most people in the world aren't trying to be free, Kafka. They just think they are. It's all an illusion. If they really were set free, most people would be in a real pickle. You'd better remember that. People actually prefer not being free". (pg 339)

"Things outside you are a projection of what's inside you, and what's inside you is a projection of what's outside." (pg 379)

"Why does loving somebody mean you have to hurt them as much? I mean, if that's the way it goes, what's the point of loving someone? Why the hell does it have to be like that?" (pg. 432)