Browsing the Bookshelves

Ok, I confess, I'm a sucker for novels with whacky titles...like this one...

The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break by Simon Sherrill

I can't deny that I really enjoyed reading this - I raced right through it in a few hours. At the same time, however, I think it is a little disappointing. I love the concept - the Minotaur of Knosses, still alive and now living within society somewhere deep in the American South. The possibilities promised by such an premise are endless: unfortunately, Sherrill simply fails to deliver. Here is no exploration of immortality or historicity, no hilarious misunderstandings, very little plot and absolutely no use of the dynamic between fantasy and reality which itself should have been able to sustain the novel. The Minotaur is a an engaging character, and the picture of his loneliness and isolation elegant and touching. His friends and work colleagues are well-drawn and interesting characters - no one could fail to be repelled by Shane and his sidekick Mike, or the way in which they exploit the Minotaur's insecurity - but it's not enough to raise this engaging and easy to read novel above the average.

If you'd like to read this book, I'll send you my copy. You can request it through either Bookcrossing or Bookmooch. Strictly first come first served. This book has now been given away.

It must be my week for books with odd titles. I read 'Death and the Penguin' earlier this week. Next up on (or perhaps I should say next off) mount-to-be-read is 'The Minotaur Takes and Cigarette Break' - a book grabbed from a fellow bookcrosser at a recent meet purely for the title. Intriguing, hey? Well, I'll tell you about it when I've read it.

Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov

Kurkov’s understated humour and perfect, deadpan style makes this quirky little story, full of quirky characters, a gem.  Death and the Penguin is the nectar of booklovers and Misha, a penguin rescued from a struggling zoo, is one of the most animated, engaging and touching characters in contemporary fiction. But there’s more to Kurkov’s writing than a sideways laugh at human foibles. Death of Penguin shows many pictures of loneliness and human isolation.  Viktor is an aspiring writer but lacks the energy to follow his dreams and, by settling to bread today and giving up on the idea of jam tomorrow, finds himself drawn into a mafiaesque world of crime and assassination in the chill starkness of post-Soviet Kiev.  Misha comes to live with him when the local zoo can no longer afford to feed him. Both are lonely, Viktor isolated from human society and Misha alone amid it.  Yet it is Misha who seems able to make strong relationship – first with Sonia, a little girl who comes to live with Viktor when her father is swept away into oblivion by his life of crime and then with the reader: who cannot fail to adore the quite, reliable, predictable animal, or to delight in his pleasure in fish and cold bathes, or sorrow over his inability to adjust to life in a climate so much warmer than his native land.

Here too is a stark, if one-sided, portrayal, of life in the former Soviet state of Ukraine. And it’s not a nice life. It’s cold, it’s hard and seemingly pointless. Deprived of the structure of the state, each seems to struggle to embrace with vigour the concept of democratic freedom. What Death of a Penguin amounts to is a strong indictment of a political reform which has left a population, bereft of communism community, without any societal fabric at all: without hope, without security and unable to realise the promise of liberty. This book is very funny. It’s very sad. And it’s very, very good.

Pure co-incidence that I'm posting this on a Sunday... does moral philosophy allow for co-incidence?

The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith

A light and gentle mystery, engagingly written in an easy and accessible style. Isabel Dalhousie, editor of a philosophical journal, witnesses a young man fall to his death. Haunted by the memory of a young life wasted, she begins to inquire about his life and friends and finds herself drawn into a tangle of insider dealing and sexual entanglement, while her beloved niece becomes engaged to the wrong man and Isabel herself develops inappropriate feelings for the right man!

This is an enjoyable read - I particularly liked the way it evoked Edinburgh New Town: reading the novel was like walking around my memories of this glorious city. But the mystery itself is understated throughout the novel, and I found the interspersement of philosophical jottings pretentious and distracting rather than complementary.

This novel is an absolute must read for lovers of american crime fiction. The Los Angeles Herald Examiner called it "the private-eye novel to end all private-eye novel" and I can do nothing but agree. The story of a near-psychotic private-eye who is dragged from the path of righteousness by his fascination with a multi-murdress.  A road novel, a love story, and a classic.  It is one of the harshest, darkest, bleakest crime novels I've read but far more satisfying than most.

Good enough to make me read another of Marc Behm's novels, Afraid to Death, immediately afterwards.

A stylish and evocative mystery thriller, set in the early part of the 18th century.  Three men, a young Lord, his tutor and his manservant, set out on a Grand Tour, destined for Italy. It's not long before Thomas Noon, Lord Stilwell's loyal and mildy ambitious servant begins to suspect that there is more to their trip than absorbing the splendours of Ancient Rome.  And it's not long before tradegy strikes the party and Noon is forced to pretend that he is something he is not.  A splendid account of falling in love, falling out of love and an intricate, multi-layered mystery make this a spell-binding read, utterly engrossing and pleasingly rounded.  I might have wished for a little more pace at times but Griffin's lyrical writing is a pleasure to read, keeping one's eyes glued to the music of the page.

The reference to Ironbridge in Shropshire annoyed me and interrupted the flow of the story. The novel is set in 1713: The Ironbridge, from which the modern town takes its name, was not erected (over the river Severn at Coalbrookedale) until 1779!  But it is a small flaw and quickly passed over.

I've hardly put my nose outside my front door tomorrow - and every time I did, it got frost bitten. But yesterday I had half an hour to kill around Victoria. What better way to spend the time that to release a few more books into the wild. Here's what you might find if you go hunting around the train and bus station (paritcularly as none have been journalled yet). Four of five books are science fiction, so a real treat for fans of that genre of fiction.

Undercover Aliens by A E Van Vogt

As Time Goes By: A Biography of Ingrid Bergman by Laurence Leamer

The Mind Cage by A E Van Vogt

The Net by Loren J Macgregor, and

War Against the Rull by A E Van Vogt

Not sure what any of this means? Want to take part in a fascinating experiment in serendipity? Or just want to get more fun out of your books? Visit bookcrossing.