Sharkboy

While at the Fan Expo last weekend, I had to chance to meet with Fernando Ruiz, one of the writer and illustrator for Archie’s comics…

Writer and Illustrator, Fernando Ruiz

Not only is he very pleasing on the eyes, he’s also quite a nice person. We didn’t talk for long but after looking at the particular comics he had to sell, I decided on Haunted House which looked perfect for the Halloween time to come, he graciously offered to sign it for me. I know he’s there for that reason but it was nice to not have to ask.

I’m gonna go back to all my old Archie’s now and see which other ones he wrote.

Here’s a bit more about Fernando, from his website.

Well… after almost 2 months, I finally finish The Catcher In The Rye, not because it is a large novel and certainly not because I’m a slow reader, no, it’s just because I really and honestly couldn’t get into it… I found I couldn’t decide if he was just a privileged kid in need of directions or if he was just an annoying teenager going through puberty… in both instances he ended up sounding like a real whiner to me, a phony. Poor little rich kid.

I didn’t like it. I really didn’t. (that’s my homage to the novel, as well as the phony remark above.)

I continued reading it because I had been led to believe how great a novel it was and having gone to French school this was not part of our curriculum, so now, in my quest to read the great American novels of yesteryear, I finally got to it… I felt let down, I really thought there was going to be this big exploding finish… it got interesting only when he came home to talk to his younger sister and then ran away again to his old teacher… Maybe if I had read it 30 years ago when I was in my teens when no one really did things like this yet, I might have been impressed, but nowadays, what teenager hasn’t run away from home for a couple of days and bummed around town, it’s in the news all the time… It felt too common for today’s era.

Child 44 is definitely one of the best book I’ve read.
Seriously.
Not only is it a very graphic murder mystery, it is also a non-stop – action – chase – get caught – escape – chase again – thriller as well.

This is Tom Rob Smith’s first novel and I can’t wait to see what he comes up with next. Let’s just hope it will not be like another favourite of mine, Scott Smith, who took 13 years to write The Ruins after his first novel A simple Plan, both excellent books, but I digress…

Child 44 came after the author read about and researched the true story of Andrei Chikatilo, a serial killer on a decade long killing spree that took place just before the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 90′s. He found the setting so great that he wanted to tell his own version of the story. He changed the timing from the 80′s to the 50′s, putting the hero in graver danger under the Stalin regime, and also dramatized the reasoning of the serial killer to act as he did.

One of the reason I thoroughly enjoyed this book is because TR Smith has the amazing ability to make you feel the absolute paranoia that must have been part of the daily life of the citizens of Soviet Union, how none of them could really trust anyone and had to continuously appear to live and act the way the State dictated they should. This paranoia also made you like a character one minute and then totally doubted that same person in the next chapter. It was amazing to never know if any of them were really good or bad. The story is violent, graphic, doesn’t hold any punches and is exciting. There is no time to rest, the action keeps on coming, and when you finally catch your breath, it’s starts all over again. I probably would’ve read that book in one or two days on a beach vacation, it was hard to put down after my lunch breaks (which is when I usually read these days).

Child 44 is now sold in at least 30 countries… but not in Russia… yet.

I have just found out that Tom Rob Smith has sold the rights to this book to one of my favourite director, Ridley Scott. He is set to direct (well, at this time anyway). Just like The Ruins, I will be at the movies the Friday it comes out.

READ THIS BOOK, GODDAMMIT!!!

If you ever feel like a novel about a gay guy marrying a straight girl he hates just for the gifts and money they will get from each other’s family, his being the New York mafia from his mother’s second marriage and hers from some fake dutchess living in England who should be paying for the wedding but since she is fictional, is played by some coked up drag queen brought in only to make outrageous excuses for the mafia family to actually pay and who really cannot function unless she is high on a mixture of coke and Ecstasy but once totally relaxed manages to charm the balls of this “one-foot-in-the-grave” mobster family don with a penchant for Harlequin like novels and who will kill the gay guy if he finds out the rumours about him being gay are true, making all this difficult because the gay guy being an ass has also enraged an older gay man by stealing his boyfriend 6 months prior to the big wedding plan and who in return is now in a position of blackmailing our main gay guy for money in exchange of dirty pictures he has obtain of this main gay guy and his best friend naked in bed in the middle of the act who was only there to try and help him out even if he couldn’t keep his pants on long enough to think of the consequences of their silly secret rekindled romance but who in returns finally enlist the help of his composer/partner/girl-friend with has an amazing knack for solutions to some tough problems, then you should read Blue Heaven by Joe Keenan.
That book is all that and much more…

Total fun I tell you!

I have also read Putting On The Ritz by the same author and it is an equal rollercoaster of laughter and comedy of errors, I swear, I really laughed out loud reading these books.. I’m so looking forward to My Lucky Star, his latest, but that will have to wait until aftre I’m done with the books my hubby gave me on my special day.

Ah, yeah, Joe Keenan is also responsible for the most amazing Frasier episodes, you will recognize his timing and style easily.

Happy reading.

Nineteen Minutes refers to the amount of time it took one teenager to get inside his high school with four guns and destroy the life of a town forever.

Don’t be fooled by the cover, the content is billions time better:

The strenght of this book really is how in 455 pages it manages to dig into the messed up hormonal lives of teenagers and show you how cruel they can be to each other. I kept thinking back of my days in high school and it is really easy to believe that such an event can happen.

I hated high school. Everything about it. I wasn’t part of the popular kids, but luckily, I wasn’t part of of the freaks either and I did have some muscular jock-like cousins who would have loved a reason to beat up some asshole making my life a misery, lucky little me. At school, I was too often a silent witness to some other kids not having such a charming time, I didn’t know how to act about it, I don’t know how many times I faked being sick to stay home instead for fear it could happen to me one day, I was almost held back one year. Let’s just say I’m very happy guns weren’t so easily accessible, but then again, I probably would’ve have been “sick” at home if something big would’ve happened like a bullied kid coming to school with a bag full of weapons. The one thing that changed it all for me was the arrival of New Wave music and fashion, it seemed like I finally had a place to fit after all. Thank you B-52′s and your friends, you made me make new ones.

But back to the book: I really enjoyed the pace of the author, going back and forth between the time prior to the killings and the time following as well. You will not fall out of your seats by the conclusion, I saw it coming a mile away, but it didn’t destroy the effect the rest of the story had on me. I would’ve preferred more time spent on the teenagers and a bit less on the adults, although the most touching moments did come from the parents reacting to the main event and the main character. One of the things we find out in the story is how one kid developed a video game taking place in high school where he goes from classroom to classroom, getting access to new weapon and killing the popular kids who bullied him. Sounded like a “cool” game… and then today at Best Buy I saw this:

see a review here

I strangely want to play it now…

The Terror, part 2

It’s somewhat ironic that I haven’t had a lot of time to read lately and yet I’ve had one of the most interesting book I’ve ever started in my hands. Things have been busy at work and I don’t always take my breaks as I should. Well, I made up for it this weekend. I still had approx 300 pages to go, and although very long this book was never boring.

It is a tad depressing as the story is about 125 sailors stuck in the arctic ice for 3 years while searching for the Northwest Passage. Not only plagued with extremely cold temperature, lack of daylight, disease, hunger and mutiny, they are also preyed upon by a presence so evil, it will kill and mutilate sailors and replace body parts knowing that the body will never have a proper burial with just one’s torso stuck on someone else legs, the rest of them eaten for food… that’s if they can dig some sort of grave in this desperate land. As depressing as it might sound, it is definitely one of the best book I have ever read. I couldn’t wait to make time and finally finish it. I read the last pages while watching the Oscars, which wasn’t too hard a deal. Although, Jon Stewart was cutting and totally funny when he was on.

If you have read it or are reading it, let me know your thoughts.

Today, I’m starting Twilight by William Gay, the other book that was at the top of Stephen King’s best of 2007

It’s kind of weird to want to review a book I haven’t yet finished… nor even gotten half way through, but it’s been a long time since I’ve felt this excited and taken away while reading a novel…

I have to say that it really took some patience to go through the first 50 pages, but then the story really took shape after the author got all the llllloooonnnnggggg descriptive of the ships out of the way, as well as the back story on certain characters that you’re told at the very beginning will die shortly anyway… but man, when it picks up, it really picks up… not an easy feast when the action takes place in a most desolate and cruel environment with absolutely no salvation nor help in sight.

I’m loving this book.

Let’s hope the ending doesn’t turn out to be a dissapointing one since I’m selling it to everyone who’ll listen to me go on about it. You’ll have my final word on it after I turn the final page.

Man, the iPod touch is a lot of work. It took me days to update my iTunes and download all the cd covers missing so I could have the pleasure of displaying them when choosing or listening to my music. Of course, being a moron, I took 2 evenings to download over 760 covers missing by copying thumbnails pictures from Amazon, and then was stunned to see how blurry every picture was once on iTunes. One half look from DR told me I was supposed to open the larger pictures first then download them, so there went another 2 evening and part of yesterday. Now that it’s all done and look really good, I can resume my time online.

In between all this misery, I also finished this amazing book:

Apparently, I was the last person on earth to have heard of this book. We were at a dinner talking about Christmas gift lists when a good friend mentioned that Lovely Bones was one of the best book she had ever read but didn’t own, so she has put in on her list for this year. The day after I found myself at World’s Biggest Bookstore and saw it on a display. I picked it up, curious, and read the description: A 14 year old girl gets raped and murdered and watches the aftermath from “her” heaven. Not the kind of chicklit she normally reads, so I decided to give it a try. The first few pages really drew me in and I was hooked. Alice Sebold is a gifted writer, she cleverly let’s us in her world.

I also was quite surprised to read of the author’s own personal history. Beaten, raped and almost killed in her late teens. A few years later, by pure chance, she sees the man that got away, reports his whereabouts, gets him arrested and tried. The man is found guilty of this crime as well as of other rapes and murders/dismemberments that had been left unsolved. She is now married to Glen David Gold, the author of Carter Beats The Devil, about illusionists at the turn of the century.

I’m glad I read this book. A good chunk of the story takes place in heaven, but not your regular God and Angels heaven which would’ve put me off, it’s more like a place where you can spend as much time as you need/want to understand what has happened, be mad, be angry, watch over your loved ones, try to guide them (in her case, she tries to guide them towards her murderer). As she is more ready and willing to accept her sad fate, little by little she gets to visit larger spaces of her heaven and discover other related people to visit with. There is a heartbreaking/heartwarming scene when she is given directions to a meeting through a field in the middle of her heaven she never thought of walking through before. Obvisously our heroine has never played Xbox games where you don’t leave any area unvisited, but then again, the action takes place in 1973, years before video games warped our minds.

Although dealing with teenage rape and murder and anger and revenge and the destruction of families, this book is surprisingly uplifting at times and is certainly full of hope. A difficult task when dealing with a subject better left to Stephen King.

It made me feel like I wasn’t alone thinking departed loved ones might be watching over me.

I first heard of this author and this book from a Top 10 Best of the Year list by Stephen King a couple of years back. I was definitely intrigued as he mentioned that it was so well written that he had to re-read it all over again when he finished. So I kept in on my list of books to buy everytime I found myself at the bookstore.

2 years later, I finally bought it… and read it.

I can’t say that I had the same enthusiasm as Stephen King, I didn’t have the need to jump back to the beginning and go at it all over again, but then again, I have NEVER re-read a novel twice. I’ve read Tintin books more than once, but never a novel. I’ve often seen movies more than once, but never had the need to do it with a book. Although, in 10 or 15 years, I might read the Shopoholic or the Harry Potter collection again.

Case Histories was like nothing I had ever read before. It takes 4 different crime stories, from different decades, in different parts of Cambridge and little by little bring them together by meshing a member of one family with one from another, and so on. All the stories are told through Jackson Brodie, a retired policeman, now a private investigator with a sordid past of his own. I can tell you there are not many happy moments in this novel, but it certainly never is boring. Case Histories is structurally similar to the movie CRASH, sometimes the main character in one storyline will make a cameo appearance in parts of another story.

I found this book to be an amazing study of how lives are destroyed by crimes left unsolved for years, for decades, mainly due to botched investigation, tiny little errors of judgement that could’ve put an end to the sorrow and misery of those left behind by finding the answer right there and then. And how, as humans, we have the need for closure, the need to know what has happened, who is guilty, where missing people have dissapeared to, and just how it consumes us.

The characters keep you interested, but it is really her writing style that captured my attention more. As I was reading, I kept trying to figure out how she did it and kept coming to the same solution everytime, that she must have written it backwards, starting with the end and then decomposing it into 4 different stories… I loved this book.