The Hobbit: an Unexpected Journey

The Book

As the film version of the Hobbit has been stretched to the limit of three movies, I will stick to the book's first half (I have only read up to where the film ends). This makes it slightly difficult, but a very good friend of mine has told me what I need to know..
The story was written by Tolkien for his children and I have read it out aloud to my ten year old daughter and have also used passages in recent workshops I organised at the library. It is so well written for this purpose, with asides to the reader and great fun passages to use different voices (The children and I especially enjoyed the adventure with the trolls and guessing the riddles posed by Gollum and Bilbo).
Other stand out passages for me were the fight between the rock giants and the Goblins sneaking the ponies out of the cave. Having seen the film now, I want to re-read this all over again to see where Peter Jackson has taken brief mentions in the text and expanded them to complete scenes.

Cosmopolis

The Book

I found Cosmopolis quite a difficult read. The story focuses on a wealthy young billionaire travelling in his high-tech limousine through a city in turmoil to have his hair cut at his old family barber. Other billionaires are murdered as the world's financial markets are in meltdown. Eric has played his part in this, through mismanaging the yen, and there are potential threats against his life.
The whole story is a bit of a dream world with bizarre incidences featuring rats, fleeting appearances by a range of individual advisors turning up in his car, and encounters on several occasions with women who may or may not be his wife. His actions seem irrational and those of someone who is bored of life and actually wants to experience death as the one thing he cannot afford or control.
Ultimately I didn't really feel any connection with the character and so didn't really care whether he lived or died.

Total Recall

The Book

The inspiration for two films, the original short story, We can remember it for you Wholesale,  is unpreposessing and a mere 20 pages long. It is simple and sweet in its story telling and has a neat payoff twist that is omitted from either adaptation due to the absurdist nature of the tale.
Douglas Quail wants to visit Mars and visits Recal to have memories of a trip implanted, along with mementoes and keepsakes provided as physical proof. He also opts for the Secret Agent module. During the procedure it becomes apparent that these memories already exist as he was a secret agent on Mars.
The whole reason why he was reconfigured and whether his wife is really his wife or an agency plant is briefly hinted at but is not gone into, as this isn't the story Dick wants to tell.
Recal send him home with his memories and half his fee re-imbursed and hope for the best, but Doug smells a rat and returns to Recal almost immediately. In order to write over the programme errors in his brain, Recal find another childhood fantasy about Doug saving the planet from invading aliens. They arrive to destroy the planet, but due to Doug's kindness, they vow to leave the planet alone until Doug is dead. Of course, this turns out not to be a fantasy either and we are left with the looming destruction of the planet..

The Monk

The Book

This amazing masterpiece of Gothic romance was written in 1796 by a 19 year old. Pre-dating Edgar Allan Poe, it conjurs a dark world of catacombs, shrouded figures and death. The language and style of the period may take a bit of getting used to, but it is well worth sticking with.
There are several stories incorporated into the main thread - that of the gradual temptation of the Monk and his descent into rape, murder and finally selling his soul to the devil. The ghostly tale of the Bleeding Nun and the exorcism by the Wandering Jew stands up to anything in a script from Supernatural and the final prolonged death of the Monk involving insects is pure schlock horror.

It must have been truly shocking in its day to the sensibilities of the genteel reader and some of it is pretty toe curling today.

Headhunters

The Book

This was the first of Jo Nesbo's thrillers that I have read. I know he has a huge following and I have read quite a few comments that this stand alone crime novel is not as good as his Harry Hole series. I read it with a ghoulish fascination, however.

Roger Brown is a headhunter for companies - finding them the best candidates for the top jobs. In his research and interviews he also gathers valuable information for his hobby - breaking into their houses and stealing any valuable art. What starts as a run of the mill art theft for Roger turns into a fight for survival as he has become the pawn in a bigger game.

The story and its twists, red herrings and reveals are precision plotting. Towards the end I was beginning to think this was all too much co-incidence, but further reveals show that nothing is left to chance.

Ecstasy

The Book

The book is made up of three short stories. The first two are reminiscent to me of Will Self, as they are grotesque and humourous with lots of bad language.
The first involves a cheating husband, who's wife is a famous romance novelist. It incorporates some of her writing into the text, which helps to break up the story and provide some alternative style. The romantic novel turns into a similar sordid tale of sheep shagging, however, once the writer discovers her husband's infidelity. It also features necrophilia at a hospital, which plays into a rather just deserts denoument.
The second involves the bitter retribution of a limbless couple over the drugs manufacturers and agents who caused their condition - in an eye for an eye, arms for arms type of way.
I am guessing, not having seen the film yet, that both these stories have been jettisoned, as they would have been totally unpresentable as cinema!

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

The Book

The book is presented as a biography of Abraham Lincoln based on recently discovered journals and diaries and cleverly intertwines real historical fact with the fiction of vampires taking over the New World and building an empire based on slavery.
Lincoln is introduced to vampires at an early age when his uncle and aunt and then mother are killed by them. He then swears revenge and receives help from an unexpected source - one of their own kind. The Southern plantation owners are in league with the vampires and so the Civil War is a battle not just of freedom from slavery but against the dark forces that threaten to enslave all Americans.
As the book sticks to the main historical facts for its plot and uses journal excerpts for much of its insight, I was pleasantly surprised. This is no pulp novel, as the language used is of the time and although there are some great confrontations with vampires, it is not written in an all out action style (which was what I was expecting from seeing the film trailer).

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

The Book

A wealthy sheikh, who has a passion for game fishing, wants to create a salmon river in the highlands of the Yemen. His unwavering belief and faith in the project gradually transforms the life of the English fisheries expert, Dr Alfred Jones, who is employed to help him.

The story appears to be a relatively gentle one, with the two main characters in relationships that are not working, finding themselves coming closer as the project carries on. It all seemed rather predictable and the only interest for me was the way in which the author lampooned the Western view of the Middle East and its policies. The crass idea for the TV quiz show whereby muslim villagers could win prizes like a dishwasher despite the fact their house has been levelled by military intervention was satirical and scarily possible.
The ending, however, pulls the finely woven rug from under your feet and was a quite unpredictable and down beat finale.

The Hunger Games

The Book

The Hunger Games is an exciting read that keeps you interested in the story and wanting to know what happens next. It is set in a dystopian future where 12 Districts of Panem (USA) are kept under the control of the Capitol through reducing food supplies and supressing any insurrection. The games take a boy and a girl from each District and pit them against each other in a fight to the death.

Katniss Everdeen volunteers as one of the tributes for District 12, when her little sister, Prim, is picked out. What makes the 74th Hunger Games different, and marks the story out as more than just an arena fight for survival, is when Peeta, the boy chosen from District 12, announces in his pre-games interview that he is in love with Katniss. This revelation is news to Katniss and the plot keeps you guessing as to whether this is Peeta's true feelings or a ruse in the game.

Howards End

No wonder this book is often on the school syllabus. It is full of material for deep discussion and analysis.

The Wilcox family are wealthy with old-fashioned views. Mr Wilcox and his sons take the moral high ground and frown on the bohemian Schlegel sisters and their views on emancipation and patronism. The sisters befriend Mr Bast, a clerk, who also enjoys reading and music - seeing them as a way to raise himself from his lowly position.

This is one of the classics of modern English literature. A perfect book. The story puts the class system under the microscope and highlights its fallacies. If we could all Only Connect it would avoid misunderstandings. In the end Mr Wilcox is exposed as a hypocrite, and Mr Bast is crushed, quite literally, by culture. E.M. Forster decries the destruction of the traditional english landscape and the industrialisation of the cities. His language and descriptions are wonderfully warm and the text is filled with ideas and metaphor.

John Carter

The Book

The Princess of Mars is the book upon which John Carter the film is based and this was the first of a series of books featuring the American Civil War hero by Edgar Rice Burroughs, written before Tarzan fame. 

Amazon: "Virginia gentleman John Carter, unexpectedly transported to the perilous red planet, Mars, finds himself captured by the loveless Green Men of Thark. As Carter struggles to win his freedom—and the affections of fellow captive Dejah Thoris, princess of the rival clan of Helium—the fate of the entire planet hangs in the balance: warring Martian tribes collide and the beleaguered Atmosphere Factory grinds to a suffocating halt."

The Rum Diary

The Book

Hunter S Thompson's only novel is still autobiographical and written from the point of view of a journalist. Write about what you know, I guess.

Paul Kemp, the protagonist, is a 30 yr old journalist who gets a job on a newspaper in 1960s Puerto Rico. He introduces a reportage staff of drunks and jaded hacks on a paper that seems to always be on the brink of folding.

From Russia with Love

Have just finished this Ian Fleming classic. It is a gritty, simple story with the first half not featuring Bond at all, but introducing the world of SMERSH and it's assassin, tasked to kill James and bring about shame on the British secret service. I wish they would go back to the original novels and remake them again as part of the franchise, as I can never see why they had to make them so much more brasher. Sexism aside, the book has some great set pieces and clever plotting and has a ring of based on truth about even the more outrageous moments such as Russian Rosa Klebb attacking Bond with poisoned knitting needles. The films steadily got more away from the down to earth spy stories and into the fantastical melolomaniac plots of world domination and destruction, but this one is sensible and sticks more or less to the original. The main exciting difference between the two is that the book ends on a cliff hanger, with Bond succumbing to the poisoned stab of Klebb's knife boot.

The Woman in Black

The Book

One of those rare occasions when the film is better than the book.
I read the slim novel by Susan Hill last week.

Arthur Kipps, a junior solicitor, is summoned to attend the funeral of Mrs Alice Drablow, the sole inhabitant of Eel Marsh House. Unaware of the tragic secrets which lie there, wreathed in fog and mystery, it is not until he glimpses a wasted young woman, dressed all in black, at the funeral that a creeping sense of unease begins to take hold, a feeling deepened by the reluctance of the locals to talk of the woman in black - and her terrible purpose.