My Book Reviews

  A novel told from the point of view of four very different characters. Main character is a winner and loser of the IT-bubble with vague plans to become a winner again. Others are a receptionist in a luxury hotel with big dreams and expectations, a papparazzi with dreams of a better life, a dodgy horse trainer with political aspirations and last but not least an enjoyer of life without expectations, only adjusting to whatever is coming his way and exploiting that to the most. They all influence each other's lifes, use the others without excuse, escaping loneliness. Things go wrong because of the lack of real feeling for the other; the lack of real commitment and misunderstandings, maybe because of that. All in all life is here shown as one big disappointment and missed opportunity. This all sounds like the book is very dark, but it is not. It's very enjoyable and I'm certain readers will recognise certain situations in the book as something they could have encountered them

  While this is not a book I would normally grab in a library or bookshop, I was delighted to get the offer to read the book. It was well written with a keen eye for details. I am very aware the writing must have required a lot of research while the scenes were situated in what looked like medieval Japan. It had some surprising turns. I can recommend it!

  This is an epic story in which facts and fiction are cleverly interwoven. I can see the love for the subject and all the research this story must have taken. Not only about the times, but also about geographics, clothing and so on. The period (early middle ages, sometimes called "dark ages") is perfect for some fiction added to known facts. It is very well written with very much care for details. It is even easy to imagine the circumstances the characters find themselves in. I highly recommend it.

Only because this book is a fantasy book I gave it 4 stars. I'm not very keen on fantasy. I was never abe to read Tolkien, even the Hobbit I could not get through. In fact I gave up after 30 pages. This book had a nice flow, was not too much about describing and I loved the characters.  

I was very pleasantly surprised by this book. The cover was not very inviting and looked a bit cheap to me and it almost gave me a reason to give the book only 4 stars. But don't let the cover fool you. It's a very entertaining description of living in the 60's as a musician and artist and as a creator and builder of an ecological holiday retreat in the upper Amazon in Peru. It's written in a style that almost make you feel like sitting with the author, having some great beers with him while he is telling these amazing stories. I highly recommend it for some relaxing hours!

Having read most of Umberto Eco's books, I expected this smaller one to be short and to the point. Yet it contains pages of lists and if you look at it closely, has little content. Eco can be great, is a gifted writer, yet this book is very disappointing. His style is still good in this book, of course it is, because he is a great writer. I'm forgetting already what it is all about. The cover is very deceiving, it has nothing compelling in it. What a pity.

  It's non-fiction, but it grabbed me from the start. I love the digging into family history and this voyage into the "unknown" of the family was very amusing.

  Lovely written plot, very inventive. I thought of taking one star off because of the use of two Points of View. I'm a bit of a purist on this, belive that a writer should not be like a sort of god who can read the minds of all the characters in a book/story. According to me the writer should restrict him/herself to just one POV. The quality of the plot made me want to limit it to taking half a star off, but you can't do that. So...5 stars it is.

  I got a bit used to see things through the eyes of two characters, although I still think it's a bit "unnatural". I took one star off, even when it was quite entertaining. There is a lot of explaining in the book, which slows it down a lot. Some is really needed, so you can still understand the plot. Some I thought was a bit superfluous. All in all it is a nice book to read. I certainly would not advise against it. I will happily take part 3 in my hands to read.

  Great plot. I could moan about the POV again what the writer uses, but even with POV from the killer it was a perfect read. Best one in the series I read till now.

I loved the ingeneous plot, I really should say plots. The point of view constantly changes, with and without flashbacks. It makes it a bit hard to realise what the MC, the detective Karen Pirie has been told and what has not hidden from her. The characters were brought to life, but I thought there were actions that were completely out of character of these. Of course that enlarges the surprises, but it also feels like the author is cheating. All in all I enjoyed reading it and expect it will be turned into a tv drama.

  A detective story with a very well constructed plot. Maybe even too well constructed. There are pages that reminded me of operas in which a victim is singing for half an hour that he is dying. A lot of explanation was needed. All in all I enjoyed reading the book, description of places and persons are quite good. When there is #5 in the series, I will buy it immediately.

  A totally different type of detective story. On the whole I consider this quite a good book. In the beginning it felt a bit like a diesel, it seemed to have problems to get really on steam. This and the mix of thoughts and spoken words by the narrator (it's written in first person) made me not to give 5 stars. There are better books that I have read, but quite a lot were worse. All and all I really can recommend it, it certainly kept my mind busy.

  A good read, with a good plot. I doubted about 4 or 5 stars, would have loved to give 4.5 . It's all about a hardboiled detective in the tradition of Dashiel Hammett, Mickey Spillane and Richard Diamond. The time is 1948, the place is London, UK. I can understand this needs some old fashioned descriptions, words and expressions. That is well provided for, which is a blessing but also a curse. If your knowledge of the old language of the '40s is lacking, especially when you are not a homegrown English person, you are condemned to ask others or the dictionary what it all means. That forces you out of the book and out of the flow of the reading. It makes me want to give the book a bit less than 5 stars. All in all this was a very pleasant meeting with the writer Janet Roger, it really makes me to ask her to write more about the altruistic Mr.Newman. He is totally worth it.

  I really enjoyed reading this mystery book. It's always more believable when the sleuth has a handicap or domestic troubles. In this case the sleuth is a deaf newspaper reporter. The red herrings are as great as the plot and I am a bit familiar with the area in which the story is situated. I once had a cycling holiday in Värmland, remember the endless woods and the people who are very much keeping themselves to themselves. If they were willing to answer my simple question "How far away is the next town?" it would always be "Zwo Kilometer". In the end you don't ask anymore. I loved to see what in the Netherlands is called the Droste effect, official name for this is "mise en abyme". In the book a writer is asking a deaf person how things work being like that, while I know that the writer of this book, Will Dean, had to ask for this information himself. A funny touch, will not be recognised by everyone. I noticed too that there is a lot about nice

  I think this is a very original view on the detective story. It's being told by a eccentric old woman with two hobbies: the poetry of William Blake, which she is studying to translate and astrology. Aspects of these hobbies are woven in the murder investigation story, everything in the story seen from her eyes. In my opinion a lot of thinking by the old woman about nature and society she lives in resembles the views of Olga Tokarczuk herself on ecology and the order of life in a country like Poland. Often the words of the woman are laughed about and swept aside, just coming from an "old mad woman". She doesn't fit in her world, being independent as a woman and not attending church. The authorities don't listen to her on other matters and so it's logical that her thinking about the murders doesn't count at all. I could imagine the scenery in which the story is situated, even in modern times life is quite harsh over there. All in all I loved the story and

      A short novel, but one that sets your mind thinking. In it is disappointment on a few levels. The main character starts his schooling and his working career in high hopes and trust in the ideology and himself in living according to this. Through the book you see him becoming a real apparatchik. He sticks to the official line and tries not to be too visual. He is aware how to avoid risks. Later he sees how he can take advantage of things that happen and of people. It all looks very cynical, but he seems not to be aware of that, it's the normal behaviour. It causes his downfall. This is mirrored by the developments in the USSR. Ideology has told the nation they are a sort of superior kind of people because of that very same thing. Disappointments are inevitable on different levels: sports, economics for example. The system and the ideology is constantly watered down and can only lead to their downfall, which is not in the book, but illustrated by the main character who has lost

  A very interesting book written with a POV in a way you rarely see. The main character is viewed through documents and testimonies. The story itself was quite upsetting for me, it made me feel really angry and I almost quit reading. It was worth it to read on and I think the book gives you an insight in an era in Scotland that certainly is not the best period to have lived in. Although the book is edited very well, I found one mistake. (It's a "quality" in me I don't like. I always feel a bit guilty when I do.) It took me some time to get into a "flow" reading the book, which I can blame on the structure. I do think it's also the strength of the book. The different characters come to life even using this. All in all I enjoyed reading it and can recommend it.

  A lovely read of mixed facts and fiction. It is about the painter Artemisia Gentileschi, who is slowly getting the fame she very much deserves. (Seeing the stage play "It's true, it's true, it's true" by Ellice Stevens and Billy Barrett about her gave me an extra push to buy this book.) The fiction in it sounded very plausible. How easy it would have been to make this into a sort of Dan Brown story. The writer did not fall for that trap. The book contains a frame story within a frame story; in both the narrator can see all. (Contemporary scenes are alternated with scenes from 1650 and 1610 till 1650.) It works very well in this book. I loved all the details: it shows the author has a lot of knowledge about the subject and the research has been meticulous. After having finished the book I definitely wouldn't mind reading more work from Alex Connor. I certainly can recommend Artemisia.

  A very easy and quite exciting read. Very much in the tradition of Mickey Spillane, Dashiel Hammett and Blake Edwards the story is told by the hard boiled sleuth Daniel Beckett. So he is seasoned for all kinds of violence and irresistable for pretty women. The plot was very well made up and consistent. All in all a very pleasant read to took my mind off the unpleasant things we go through in 2020. I can recommend it if you love reading about weird cases for detectives and their love life.

  I had such a great time reading this book. Like Bill Bryson I'm not born in the UK, so I share his amazement with certain things in this country. It is very rare that I have to laugh reading a book, yet this book made me laugh more than just a dozen times and I have to admit I did it very loudly. Amusing and charming as it is, sometimes it's hilarious. Of course I have to tell you what the book is about. Little Dribbling is a visit and often a revisit to villages, towns, cities and countrysides in the UK made by the writer. He describes his experiences with walks, people and above all: absurdities in the country. All is done in a charming and loving way. My wife predicted what would happen and did what I wanted to do: buying more of Bill Bryson's books. I'm looking forward to train my laughing muscles a bit more.

  I cheated a bit because I didn't completely read it. It felt like having to do an assignment for school. I would rather read something I enjoy. I could see that Virginia Woolf was an excellent writer, but this was too much for me. It's a love declaration towards Vita Sackville-West and in itself quite adorable for that purpose, but the result is summing up her qualities and comparing them to other people and things, and causing lots and lots of lists of people (imaginery and real) and things. I watched the excellent film Vita & Virginia with Gemma Arterton and Elizabeth Debicki which made me curious about the book. The book was very disappointing for me, probably because it is quite dated. Maybe I would have read it with different eyes in the period when she wrote it.  

  The first thing I noticed was that the writer doesn't honour the rules of grammar. I'm that kind of reader most of the time, but when you can write like this, I think you are allowed to make your own rules. It's a great book; I immediately felt a sort of relationship with "Under Milk Wood" by Dylan Thomas and "Ulysses" by James Joyce. It's about an ordinary world, it could be around the corner of our street, but the specialty of it will be etched in my brain for a very long time. The book made quite a big impression on me. There is a melancholy in the story that is never outspoken, but simmers between the lines. There are also a few questions you notice and even when you think you might know the answers you read on while it's a book about real life and life always throws surprises to you. I can recommend this book wholeheartedly.

  Maybe I should have read this book before reading "The Road to Little Dribbling". Now this book - first published in 1995 - feels a bit dated. How fast things can change and certainly not always for the best. Like "The Road..." this is the report of a journey across Britain. Bill Bryson has a unique style of writing, a little bit of cynism is something to be expected at least. It leads to sometimes hilarious anecdotes that made me laugh aloud. To be fair, I unwillingly kept comparing this book to "The Road...". In that book I recognised many more things I have noticed with my own eyes, heard with my own ears which led to me laughing a lot more than with this one. I certainly love it that he doesn't spare himself for a laugh. I can recommend it, but be certain that you read this book before reading "The Road...".

  It took me some time to find the courage to read "Kellcey". What I expected, happened; it really hit a raw nerve. There were times I could not read on, wanted to skip parts. I did not do that, forced myself to go on and I'm glad I read it all. It must have taken so much courage and perseverance to write this. It's the autobiographical story of a girl/young woman who has it all, looses it all in a horrible way and her struggle to find the strength to carry on. After I finished reading I think the most important aspect of the book is the way up, the fighting back to the light from the darkness of her hell. Somehow for me it feels like there should be one or more chapters added, maybe that would give this reader an even better feeling. My heart cries out for a happy ending and I have to say that my sense of justice has definitely been hurt. Even when there is a great need for an editor to remove all the typos that slipped in - can printer Amazon be blamed for this? - a

Brilliant short stories of all sorts and lengths. What they all have in common is the style of the writer, who has his own set of rules for punctuation. It works perfectly. Some of the stories are mere sketches, others are almost crying out to become novels. There is so much details in just a limited amount of words. The main characters are often people born with a "weaving error" or they have to react in and to circumstances that could force every person into making the wrong choices. Some stories look like they are the planning of a civil war, but they do fit into this book. You just have to imagine who is the main character behind it. I can recommend this book highly!