Some reading highlights and disappointments from 2012

Here's my list of reading highlights and disappointments from 2012. 

Spy novels, thrillers and fantasy featured quite heavily on my reading list. It was a pretty quiet year on the non-fiction front.

Highlights

Gabriel Allon series by Daniel Silva 

One of the best things about discovering a series so late is the extensive back catalogue. 

Daniel Silva’s spy/thriller series focuses on Isaraeli intelligence agent, Gabriel Allon, who also happens to also be a talented art restorer. 

It’s a great mix of spy stuff, history, politics and also art history that had me totally gripped. 

There are 13 books in this series (yes!) and I read books 1 -6 straight through. While I’m on a mini-break from the series, there is no doubt I’ll be back to read the rest of the books.

The Red Knight by KT Davies 

If you are after a  gritty and compelling fantasy novel featuring a knight in shining armour, who happens to be a woman, than this is the book for you.

KT Davies’ book has it all: knights, dragons, magicians, military battles, a castle siege and a dash of romance. I loved the fact that the knights were both men and women, which really gave the book an extra dimension. The ending was also very unexpected and left me wanting to know so much more about what happens to the characters.  

This  was one of the most thoroughly enjoyable reads of the year.

I Am Pilgrim – Terry Hayes 

This first novel by Australian screen writer, Terry Hayes, is a brilliant page turning thriller that focuses on a dangerous cat and mouse game between an US intelligence agent and a terrorist bent on revenge. 

The story set in a post 9/11 intelligence world is fast moving and engrossing.  I also loved the Australian connections that Hayes weaves into the story. 

What really makes this book so compelling is the main character, codenamed ‘Pilgrim’, who is not your usual gung-ho hero type but actually witty and has a real Aussie sense of humour and irony. 

It’s one of those books where, as desperately as you want to find out what happens, you also don’t want it end. I am hoping that this is not the last of Pilgrim's adventures.

The disappointments

Unfortunately two of my favourite authors disappointed last year:

The Kill List by Federick Forsyth
The story was not compelling or engaging and overall, dare I say it, just a bit pedestrian from the Master.

The Kill Room by Jeffrey Deaver
I was super excited by the return of Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sacks but Deaver's latest really disappointed in terms of story and character. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either and far from Deaver's best.

Some books on this year's reading list

Saints of the Shadow Bible by Ian Rankin
The return of Rebus - yay!!

The Spy by James Phelan
Recommended by Lee Child himself - so have to check it out.

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell 
Look's like a great YA book and who can go pass an author named 'Rainbow'?

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

This one has rave reviews and I absolutely loved Tartt's two previous books - The Secret History and The Little Friend.

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

Rich boy meets down to earth ABC (American Born Chinese) girl in NYC and brings her home to his crazy rich Asian family in Singapore.

Cue a clash of cultures, generations and fashions ensues! 

Kevin Kwan’s delicious romp of a book is best described as Joy Luck club meets Pride and Prejudice meets Dynasty.

Needless to say the overtop bling book cover totally matches the over top story.

This hilarious satirical book skewers the tensions and pretensions between the established crazy rich old families and the newly rich from mainland China.

The story begins with Nicholas ‘Nick’ Young, from the venerated Young family, who decides to bring his new girlfriend Rachel Chu home to attend the wedding of this best friend Colin Khoo.

Rachel has no idea that Nicholas is from a crazy rich Asian family and it is through her eyes that the reader discovers the excessive lifestyles of the unbelievabley rich in Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai.

Nick is part of three intertwined super rich families who are connected through marriage and money. This is an environment where no-one blinks at owning a private jet with a yoga studio or a yacht with a bowling alley that turns into a catwalk. Cray cray!!!

While the novel drops brand names like there is no tomorrow, I loved the fact that it is also drops food names with mouth-watering descriptions of Nyonya (Straits Chinese) and Peranakan food.

It picks up on the obsession with food in Singapore, as the characters argue about where to get the best laksa. I know you'll love these these parts of book Tseenster!

It is also full of slang-lah from Malay and the Cantonese and Hokkien dialects of Chinese that is explained in the sometimes snarky, always amusing and witty, footnotes.

In between all the high gloss, I liked the way Kwan picks up on the subtleties of Chinese manners and customs. 

The first chapter is a particularly delicious example of what happens when a snooty English hotel receptionist  dismisses the Young family. No one puts the Youngs in the corner!

My only issue with the book is that it was just a bit too long and dragged towards the end. Also one of the main characters, Astrid (Nick’s cousin), storyline is totally boring.

But this one minor quibble in an page turning outrageously fun book.

A masterpiece: John Le Carré's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

A well written spy novel is a thing of beauty.

A lot of the enjoyment is the fact that you never know just which character to trust; what with the crosses, double crosses and the often inevitable triple cross.

John Le Carré's, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) is a classic of the genre and I thought it was time I read it.

Set in the height of the Cold War (1950s and early 1960s), the novel begins with the assassination of a high ranking East German double agent providing intelligence to the British Secret Service (the ‘Circus’).

The agent in charge, Alec Leamas, is recalled to the British Secret Service in London. He then becomes involved in an intricate plot played out in the London and East Germany to revenge the assassination.

This thrilling and gripping read is simply a masterpiece in controlled story telling.

The novel is immaculately plotted and the various twist and turns reach a nail-biting crescendo of a trial scene.

I simply couldn’t read fast enough to finish.

However, not to give too much away but the ending is so utterly bleak. It this sense it is very English compared the American spy genre where the hero always triumphs over the enemy.

Finishing the book I felt both exhilarated and exhausted. I felt such a sense of despair at the end of the novel. Le Carré's seems to be pointing to the utter futility of the ‘game’, its dubious morality and the cost on the lives of those who play it.

As Boyd Tonkin notes in his Guardian profile of Le Carré:

“Inside his fiction, doubles, distortions and delusions trapped apparent enemies into a mutually dependent system of organised duplicity. It binds its members absolutely, determining their life or death, while leaving outsiders truly out in the cold.”

My intention was to start reading Le Carré's George Smiley series (of which this book is part of) but actually feel the need for a bit of a break.

Last Sookie Stackhouse book:Dead Ever After

I think any series that goes beyond ten books is really pushing it. 

In a previous blog post, I wrote that the Sookie Stackhouse series really started to go down hill for me around book nine.

So I approached the final book, Dead Ever After, with very low expectations. I have such fond memories of the early books that I felt somewhat obligated to ‘complete the series’ by reading this last book. 

Dead Ever After follows the same plot lines as many of the previous books: Sookie find herself in danger, hunted and defended by various supernaturals and trying to work out who she really loves.

The only difference is that this final book brings some closure to Sookie’s romantic life and the whole: will she stay with Eric or go back to Bill question is finally laid to rest.I was a bit tired for the whole Eric/Bill angsty love triangle story line and was really glad Harris didn’t invest too much of the last book on this.

While it wasn’t a compelling read, it was certainly a nice way to wrap up the series. And the final book is really targeted towards fans as a lot of old characters make their way back into the story.

It’s not the best of the Sookie Stackhouse books but it’s certainly not the worst either, just somewhere in the middle. It’s all sort of ends with a bit of ‘meh’ for me.

So it’s hard for me to understand some of the outrage from fans about this last book. Maybe it’s kinda hard to get outraged when your expectations are already so low.

Just a quick glance at the Amazon reviews and significant number of one star ratings (765) shows that a whole lot fans are ANGRY about this last book.  

As this Guardian article shows the online vitriol directed towards Harris has been quite extraordinary. Again, demonstrating the very thin line between fan love and hate/and also just plain crazy.

I believe that you get hooked onto series, like Sookie Stackhouse, because you get invested in the characters and their lives. This is through the skill and imagination of the author.

It can be disappointing, frustrating and saddening to see what happens to characters as a series continues.

But in the end these characters and stories are the creation of someone’s imagination. So how can anyone  stake a claim to control someone’s creativity and imagination? It’s both unrealistic and totally unreasonable.

I also thought Harris’s acknowledgment of her fans was heartfelt and gracious as she writes:

“Thanks for sticking with me through the books that succeeded and the books that fell a bit short of my aspirations.”

In the end, I think there is a sense of relief from both the author and certainly this reader that we can say a final goodbye to Sookie Stackhouse and her supernatural friends.

Dan Brown's lnferno - disappointing and pedestrian.

Our favourite Harvard professor, Robert Langdon, returns in Dan Brown’s latest book Inferno (2013).

Langdon is back doing what he does best: deciphering symbols in artworks, visiting amazing buildings in Europe and of course, saving the world.

I thought Brown’s first three books in the Langdon series, Angels and Demons (2000), The Da Vinci Code (2003) and The Lost Symbol (2009), were all hugely fun, entertaining and enjoyable thrillers.

But Inferno is hugely disappointing, lacklustre and just plain boring.

In its review The Daily Mail called it ‘bilge, but one hell of a page turner’.  A tad harsh, but after finishing the book I don’t even think it rates as a page turner at all!

In fact, completing the book became a real chore because I had lost interest midway through the book.

Let’s face it, thrillers in the genre like The Da Vinci Code all have completely outlandish plots. I think that is fun part of the read, but really if you are going to do outlandish then as least make it interesting, intricate and fun outlandish.

The story begins with Langdon waking up in hospital in Florence and suffering amnesia after being shot in the head. He is unable to remember why he is in Florence and why a range of people are seemingly out to hurt him. He is left with a clues found in a Botticelli illustration for Dante's The Divine Comedy.

I don’t want to give too much away but a whole lot of elements didn’t really work for me and the plot twists when revealed were oh so pedestrian.

In the end I think Brown overreached in his focus on Dante’s The Divine Comedy and rather than engaging with it a meaningful way it was just used as simply a plot device.

One of the biggest grips I have about the book is that a good portion of it is full of badly written descriptions of very famous religious buildings like the Palazzo Vecchio and Sophia Hagia. 

Oh and the also the fact that Langdon seems to care more about his Mickey Mouse watch than the potential end of the world.

I must admit reading the various reviews of Inferno have actually been much more fun and entertaining then the book itself. That really says something!   

Some of the reviews are also master classes in the art of the backhanded compliment. The highlight being Jake Kerridge in The Telegraph who wrote “as a stylist Brown gets better and better: where once he was abysmal he is now just very poor.” SNAP.

Also from the Telegraph’s Michael Deacon’s written-in-the-style-of-Dan-Brown “Inferno” review is a real hoot too.

But in the end I feel disappointed, because I'm not a Dan Brown 'hater' and I actually wanted to like this book.

I was looking forward to a fun and interesting page turner, but instead it felt like a rather dull art history lecture.