My Book Reviews

An amusing read, something for a holiday or when you are al little bit ill and bored. It is not going to change the world, but it is quite nice. The plot of this crime story is well figured out. The sleuths are quite different from the average and I can see it easily made into a TV series that problably could become as popular as Death in Paradise. I am not giving away more, as I don't want to be a spoiler.

Nice to be able to compare the TV series The Field of Blood with the book it was base upon. The series was quite okay, but in my opinion the book "Field of Blood" by Denise Mina is much better. I love the weaving in of the story of the crook Paddy Meehan with the main story, the quest for the truth by Patricia (Paddy) Meehan and her search for an independent life away from the suffocating social life in an overly catholic society. Denise Mina did a good job in her description of the newsroom in the eighties. It all comes to life very well. I will not tell you about the murder case, don't want to spoil anything. All in all I think 5 stars is fully deserved for this book. I enjoyed reading it.

The debut of Kate Atkinson is certainly worth the 5 stars I am giving. It is the history of Ruby Lennox and all of her family. There are a lot characters and all are coming to life in front of our eyes. Almost at the end of the book the writer gives Ruby the great words that describe life like I know it, like I see it and I think a lot of people will agree "...words are the only things that can construct a world that makes sense".  The book shows something that I know is fully true, it's not only your nature that shapes a person, it's also where you are born and have been living and certainly the history of your parents and all who came before them. I had to get used to the structure Kate Atkinson is using, normal chapters alternated with "footnotes". Be certain that without them the "sense" in the being of the characters would be lacking structure.  For some time I thought this book was a sort of beginning of an evolution of growing into the write...

Number 6 in the Cormoran Strike series. The setting is something we got used to: the detective agency and the two owners struggling with their feelings for eachother and their backgrounds. It was not surprising that J.K.Rowling in this book used what happened to her on the social media. Everything a well known person is stating will be enlarged, sometimes mutilated. We all know be now that there is bullying, gaslighting, character damaging, identity theft and violation of portrait rights. A lot of this has been used in the book, it takes a lot of space. I feared it was a bit random, but it was not; it definitely helped the plot. I will not spoil so I leave you with this. Just read the hefty book and judge upon it yourself. I give it four stars because of the repetition of some things you already have seen in earlier books in this series. It is definitely well written, of course the writer does not need to prove she is able to do that anymore.

Na jaren heb ik weer eens een Nederlands boek gelezen. Het verbaast me hoeveel ik in dit boek herken. Het maakt me zelfs een beetje jaloers: alsof ik dit boek had willen en kunnen schrijven. Zelfs als ik de kwaliteit van een werk als dit zou kunnen benaderen, moet ik reeel zijn: het zal er niet meer van komen. De rest van het boek was zeker niet minder! Er was zoveel dat ik herkende in de hoofdpersoon. Het ontheemde gevoel, de tegenstrijdige gevoelens ten opzichte van mensen. Ook de ontevredenheid als dingen wel goed gaan, de onrust. Over het hele werk hangt een risico van onbegrip voor de gevoelens en gedachten van mensen die elkaar dierbaar zouden moeten zijn. Het is een monumentaal werk, het had van mij nog tweemaal zo lang mogen worden, maar als ik eerlijk ben, het is goed zo. Een periode is afgesloten. Ik had dit boek graag 6 sterren gegeven, maar dat kan nu eenmaal niet. Lijkt me duidelijk dat ik dit een aanrader vind voor een ieder die graag leest.

This is the "Sister book" of a "God in Ruins". It's not a sequel, nor a prequel. It has the same structure as the other book, but it made me more clear what the intention is. It is to show what could have happened if things had gone a different way. In real life there are moments when people think "What if..." This book is going into this in a very impressive way. All in all I have spent hours with both books and it was time well spent. Two of the better books I read in my life. I certainly can recommend them both! I don't hesitate to give it 5 stars!

The best fiction book I read for years; it is a very impressive book. The fact that the chapters were jumping up and down through times did not disturb me at all. It normally does, it gives the dreadful feeling that the writer wants to create art. In this book it works perfectly okay, it is like getting the edges of a jigsaw puzzle first and later the bits inside. It really makes sense. I also have strong feelings about the point of view in a novel. I totally forgot these while reading this dazzling work. It is about (shocking) experiences and what they mean to the person who lives through them and the effect it has on the people who live or meet this person. In my eyes the book would have been perfect without the last two chapters. Yet I understand why they have been included. The writer states that this is a "companion" novel to another novel, the bestseller "Life after life". That probably is the reason why, although I did not read that book (yet). All in all I v...