The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

From beginning to end Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was a wonderfully engrossing read.

I knew that I was in for something special when the book began thus:

"NOTICE

Person's attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted;

Persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished;

Persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

BY ORDER of the author

                                  PER G.G, Chief of the Ordnance"

And yet, so many years later the motive, morals and plot in this story are still discussed worldwide and the book is thought of as one the best books ever produced by an English speaking author.

Most people know the story of Huckleberry Finn. The back of my penguin edition states "when Huck escapes from his drunken father and the 'sivilizing' Widow Douglas with the runaway slave Jim, he embarks on a series of adventures that draw him to feuding families and the trickery of the unscrupulous 'Duke' and 'Dauphin'".

I have gone through several drafts of this review attempting express the breadth of issues that Twain so magnificently weaves into his tale about little Huckleberry's adventures. Twain shows us everything from the worst side of human behaviour such as slavery and child abuse, to the generosity of spirit displayed by even the most beaten and downtrodden of individuals. The penguin book states it thus: "Beneath the exploits, however, are more serious undercurrents - of slavery, adult control and, above all, of Huck's struggle between his instinctive goodness and the corrupt values of society, which threaten his deep and enduring friendship with Jim".

In the character of Huckleberry Finn, Twain has perfectly combined the full range of human nature. I loved seeing his character unfold throughout his many adventures. At time I wanted to reach out and hug him and other times I was deeply challenged by the views and feelings he expressed.

I was held captive by the story as I waited to see which part of Huckleberry would triumph: the part effected by the "corrupt values of society" or his "instinctive goodness" that meant that Huckleberry was able to see Jim as a man in his own right, who deserved a life of his own.

Even if I wanted to ignore Twain's instructions and provide an in depth analysis of all the social issues displayed so realistically and passionately in this book, I would be incapable of doing so. Instead I want to leave you with two of my favourite quotes from the book.

The first is from runaway slave Jim. He has just recounted a story where he gave 10cents to another slave because he had a dream which told him to do so would bring him good luck. Instead, he never sees the money, or any particular good luck, again. The following exchange takes places between Huckleberry and Jim:

"(H) 'Well, it's alright, anyway, Jim, long as you're going to be rich again some time or other'. (J) 'Yes - en I's rich now, come to look at it. I owns myself, en I's wuth eight hundred dollars. I wisht I had de money, I wouldn't want no mo'."

 It is sad to think of someone assessing their self worth according to how much they are worth at a monetary level and yet I found the way in which Jim is able to see the good through the bad, the fact that he owns himself and is therefore a rich man to be very poignant.

Lastly, my favourite quote from young Huckleberry. This quote so perfectly displays Huckleberry's unfailing childish logic and his honest approach to life and himself. He is recounting the superstitious lessons that he has learnt from Jim when he says:

"Jim said that bees wouldn't sting idiots; but I didn't believe that, because I had tried them lots of times myself, and they wouldn't sting me."

I can't wait to read Huckleberry's adventures over and over again.

7.5 / 8: Brilliant. Everyone should read it - it is totally amazing. I recommend that you buy it. 

Were you as taken with Huckleberry Finn as I was? 

Another one of my favourite parts of this book was when Tom Sawyer made his appearance. These two together make one the best literary couples (in a non-romantic sense obviously) I have ever read. What do you think?

Originally posted 24 April 2011 Page Turners

Hell Island by Matthew Reilly

I had never anything by Matthew Reilly before and to be honest I wasn't expecting much from it. Thank goodness for that because there definitely wasn't much to Hell Island.

Teams of elite forces sent unknowingly to their doom on an unmapped island. An army of giant apes controlled by microchips in their brains, sent to kill everything in their path.

What can I say…. it was just silly. There's no other word for it. I don't want to be mean, and who am I to judge, but the writing was not good. Compared to what I might normally read anyway. Too many exclamation marks in the text. Maybe I am just being a bit fussy but I think that exclamation marks should be confined to speech only, and even then they should be used sparingly if at all.

Obviously I have got a bit off track and that's because there's really nothing much to say about this. Why am I writing this then, I hear you ask? Because I feel like it at the moment and I think it only fair to people to warn people before they pick this book up that they should lower their expectations… very low.

To be fair, it was a good choice for the time at which I chose to read it. I was in the middle of a big criminal trial that was stressing me out and making me easily distracted, so this book didn't pose any kind of challenge to me.

This book is what it is, and that isn't very good.

I am not going to rate this book - I feel too "eh" about it to give it a rating.

Have you read this book or anything else by Matthew Reilly? I would be interested to know what you think of his books if you have.

Originally posted 23 April 2011 Page Turners 

The comic genius of Jasper Fforde

I am both sad and happy to be reading the final Thursday Next instalment from Jasper Fforde.

I thought that as I went along, I might share any great quotes that I come across with you. There are so many hilarious quotes that I will only share with you the one's that I think are absolutely the most hilarious and those that are perhaps the most spot on about various modern day cultural issues.

The first quote is from page 2 of my edition and had me laughing out loud. I think that it might only be really appreciated by people who had read/tried to read Martin Amis, but for those of you that have it's hilarious.

The conversation is between the written Thursday Next (T) and a Designated Love Interest named Whitby Jett (W) who is an out of work fictional character peddling labour-saving Narrative Devices for EZ-Reads.

"T: 'Any work offers recently?' I asked.
W: 'I was up for a minor walk-on in an Amis.'
T: 'How did you do?'
W: 'I read half a page and they asked me what I thought. I said I understood every word and so I was rejected for being overqualified.'"

So funny.

The second quote is from page 73, where we have this gem:

"The taxi was the usual yellow-and-check variety, and could either run on wheels in the conventional manner or fly using advanced Technobabble (TM) vectored gravitational inversion thrusters. This had been demanded by the Sci-Fi fraternity, who has been whingeing on about hover-cars and jet-packs for decades, and needed appeasing before they went and did something stupid, like allow someone to make a movie based on the title of the book known as I, Robot."

The third quote is a little more serious and is from Bradshaw's BookWorld Companion (emphasis below is from the book):

"... Here in the BookWorld the protagonists and antagonists, gatekeepers, shape-shifters, heroes, villain, bit-parts, knaves, comedians, and goblins were united in that they possessed a clearly defined motive for what they were doing: Entertainment and Enlightenment. As far as any of us could see, no such luxury existed in the unpredictable world of the readers. The Outland was extraordinarily well named..."

Fforde is comic genius if you ask me.

By the Pricking of My Thumbs by Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie’s By the Pricking of My Thumbs is one of the strangest Christie’s novels I have read for a long time, perhaps ever.

It is a Tommy and Tuppence novel, not two of my favourites of her characters, but I will admit that I liked the more mature Tommy and Tuppence in this novel. When Tommy’s great Aunt Ada passes away Tuppence becomes involved the disappearance of an apparently nice old lady. Tuppence doesn’t give much credit to her assertions of a murdered child inside the fireplace, but the more Tuppence investigates the disappearance, the closer she comes to the truth of the child behind the fireplace and the bigger the danger she places herself in.


By the Pricking of My Thumbs didn’t seem to receive good reviews when it was published. I imagine it is because this book feels a lot less like her plot driven mysteries where Piorot and Marple try to figure out the clues, and a lot more like a modern-day crime novel or thriller. There are not the clues throughout the book to figure out the resolution to the mystery, but the book is still as tense as Christie’s other books, and perhaps even a little more melodramatic than usual.

Although it wasn't her usual style of story, I enjoyed it a lot and kept reading it until the very end.

6 / 8 

Really enjoyable and well written. I would recommend it.

I would love to know what you thought of this Christie mystery of you have read it. What did you think of an older Tommy and Tuppence, and did you think that this quite different to her usual stories/?

Originally posted 18 April 2011 Page Turners

Musings on differing opinions of a book

Today I received my first ever discourteous comment - in which someone called me a "novel-wimp".

I couldn't stop laughing when I first read it. Come on - novel-wimp! That is hilarious and I intend to use it at some appropriate point in the future (only about myself of course).

I feel a little bad for Josh (the commenter). When I read his comment my first reaction was to laugh, and my second was to wonder whether he is actually somehow related to the author and when he felt that his family member/friend was being unjustly criticised he jumped to her defence.

Having had time to reflect, I think that Josh just really loved Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke, because it is this book that he left the following comment on:

"This review's conclusion is silly. I don't agree at all. I don't read a lot but, I wanted this novel to be twice as long. In fact, I wanted it to be 6 feet cubed so I could open it up and climb into it. This is a book for people who actually enjoy reading. Don't be racing your way through this book for your book-club. The footnotes and word-geekery only made for a richer experience. Don't be impatient and don't be a novel-wimp or you will never be able to properly enjoy the best kinds of novels. I'll be re-reading it as soon as my memory has finally stopped harassing me with Clarke's imaginings."

I admit that I got a bit carried away in my response, but what can I say? Maybe his passion rubbed off on me? Here it is:

"Wow Josh, don't hold back. My conclusion is silly, I'm impatient and a "novel-wimp", tell me what you really think! Although I have had people disagree with my opinion about a book, I have never had anyone be so forthright.

Sometimes, I have to admit, I have a look at someones blog and see that they have reviewed entirely paranormal fantasy books, and I wonder to myself about their taste (sorry, I don't mean to offend anyone), but I have never gone so far as to actually leave them a comment accusing them of being someone who doesn't "actually enjoy reading" or a "novel-wimp" or someone who "will never be able to properly enjoy the best kinds of novels".

Sometimes, I even disagree with a reviewers conclusion, but I have never left them a message telling them that their "conclusion is silly".

Do you know why? Because it's kind of rude. So, either you are rude OR you are extremely passionate about the book that all other considerations have become secondary to the defence of your most beloved novel. Given all the wonderful praise you have lavished on the book, I hope that it is safe to assume that it is the latter.

I really wanted to enjoy this book as much as you did, and I thoroughly expected too. Unfortunately I didn't. It sounds to me like the things that you loved about the book, are the things that didn't really do anything for me.

This doesn't mean that you enjoy reading more than me; it doesn't mean that my conclusion is silly or that I will never be able to properly enjoy the best kind of novels. It also doesn't mean those same things in relation to other people who didn't enjoy it as much as you did.

It simply means that we each had a different, but equally valid, reaction to the story.

I hate to be cliché and use a quote here, but I can't help it. No doubt it's the silliness in me coming out. In Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon wrote "…a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind…" Each of us is an individual, with unique life experiences, and with that comes different interpretations of, or reactions to, the same book.

Thanks for your comment, but perhaps next time you could express your own passion without being so judgmental?"

I don't mean to embarrass Josh by posting his comment in an entirely separate post. I am being honest when I say that it is nice to see people feel so passionately about a book. Hopefully more people can be just as passionate about reading books, as opposed to watching reality tv and other such crap on television these days.

I just thought that you might all enjoy reading the comment as much as I did. "Novel-wimp" is a great phrase and rest if the comment is just so brazenly vitriolic that I couldn't help but share it with you.

So, to all of those novel wimps out there - what do you think? Do we lack an enjoyment of reading if we don't like the same book that someone else does? Are our conclusions silly if someone else doesn't agree with them?

More importantly, will we never be able to appreciate the best kind of novels if we don't enjoy Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell?

Over to you! 

Originally posted 15 April 2011 Page Turners

Book club: is an honest discussion possible if the author is present?

From Leadership Connextions

I have been to two book club meetings in the past where the author has been present, and it has made me wonder: are book club discussions where the author is present as open and honest as they are when the author is not?

The two books and their authors were Kirsten Tranter author of The Legacy and Fiona McGregor author of Indelible Ink. Both books I thought were… ok. They weren't terrible, but then they weren't great either. Both books I had several distinct annoyances.

The Books

In The Legacy, my three biggest disappointments were these: the ending was extremely disappointing, the chapters all ended too suddenly, and Tranter keep trying to build up suspense around certain people in a way that turned out to be very misleading.

In Indelible Ink, my three biggest disappointments were these: lack of plot, an unbelievable premise (a middle-aged north shore Sydneysider becoming a tattoo addict) and so much dialogue about real estate that I was incredibly bored halfway through the book.

The Book Club Discussion

The annoying thing was, that with the authors there I didn't feel as though I could completely be honest about what I thought about their books.

In the book club discussion of The Legacy, I did ask Kirsten Tranter why she built up tension and suspense around certain characters and their actions that ultimately lead nowhere and she gave me an entirely unsatisfactory response to my question (which was specific to those two characters, so I won't bore you with the details).

Although I asked the question, I didn't feel like I could express my views about how this aspect of the book didn't work for me. I also didn't feel like I could raise the other areas of the book that fell short for me.

Similarly, in the book club discussion for Indelible Ink I found myself again feeling too uncomfortable to express my true thoughts about the book in front of the author Fiona McGregor. I remember Fiona McGregor talking about the book as a book about middle class Australia. Now, (this may only have significant meaning for people from Sydney) – Indelible Ink was centred around a family who had a harbour front mansion near Mosman, views of the Harbour Bridge etc, which was worth $6.5 million Aussie dollars. Let me ask you – does this sound middle class to you? Because if that is middle class – then what the bleep is upper class? I really took issue to the fact that the characters were described as middle class rather than upper class BUT I did not feel as though I could express these feelings in the presence of the author.

What difference does it make if the author is there, and should it make a difference at all?

Objectively, I know that I could have expressed my views if I had really wanted to. Authors probably appreciate that fact that someone has thought about their books and had a certain reaction to it.

But when that reaction is negative one and isn't necessarily going to be well argued (I'm only a reader after all – I know nothing about literature itself and can't necessarily form a wonderful argument to support my view), it is really hard to say what you really think.

This in turn as made me question whether other people in the room are holding back? What thoughts did they have about the book that they might not be sharing? Am I alone in feeling overall disappointed about the book or are there others like me in the room? Did we like the same things? Did we dislike the same things?

The problem is - I now no longer know if those discussions that took place were open and honest. It may be that everyone sounded positive about the books because everyone like me was too nervous about speaking their mind in front of the author. Maybe people even said some things that they didn't really think.

The point is, I can't know and that can't be a good thing when the point of a book club surely is to have an open and honest discussion about a common book.

I now avoid book clubs where the author is going to be present, because I would rather know that I can express my opinion, be it bad or good, without worrying about what the author thinks.

What do you think? Have you been to a book club with the author of the book being discussed? How was it different, if at all?

04.11.2011: This post receives a lot of traffic each week but rarely received a comment. Don't forget that it's never too late to leave your thoughts, they are always welcome.

Originally posted 13 April 2011 Page Turners

Kindling by Darren Groth

There isn’t really anything to say about Kindling that I haven’t already said in my review of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (“TCIDNT”).

Kindling was an enjoyable and quick read. It kept me interested in the plot and it provided me with an insight into the life of a child with Autism.

Unfortunately, though, there was nothing new or unique in it for me. Having already read TCIDNT, I had seen all those things in a book before. The unusual font style was even common to both books.

I am not in any way suggesting that Groth copied TCIDNT or anything like that. I have no idea when either author wrote their book, which I accept could have been at an entirely different time to the time at which it was published.

It’s just that I feel like I had read the story before. Yes, the setting had changed, and the plot was different, but the content was the same. The same difficulties in interpreting the world experienced by the autistic child. The same difficulties faced by the parent of the child. In both books the parent of the child was a single father who was also coping with being single. The same issues related to the schooling of autistic children.

I enjoyed it, I just can’t get enthusiastic about it.

5 / 8 

Good and worth reading if you have the opportunity, but there's no need to prioritise it.

I would be very interested to know what you thought of this book if you have read it, especially if you have read TCIDNT as well.

Originally posted 11 April 2011 Page Turners