Illuminati

An excellent account of middle eastern affairs. If you want to read about middle east, oil and US, this is the place to start.

1 star stories: New York Mining Disaster, Airplane, A Perfect Day for Kangaroos, Dabchick.

2 star stories: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, Hunting Knife, A Poor Aunt’s Story, Nausea 1979,  The Year of Spaghetti, The Rise and Fall of Sharpie Cakes, The Ice Man, Crabs, Where I’m Likely To Find It.

3 star stories: Birthday Girl, Mirror, A Folklore for my Generation, Man-Eating Cats, Tony Takitani.

4 star stories: The Seventh Man, Chance Traveler, Hanalei Bay.

5 star stories: Firefly,  The Kidney-Shaped Stone That Moves Every Day, A Shinagawa Monkey.



Reading Murakami could be like looking at a painting. Sometimes, it makes perfect sense, sometimes it is frustrating, sometimes it is puzzling. But sometimes, it talks to you. And when it is does, it stays in your heart. While Murakami is best known for his surrealistic, dream-like storytelling, I’ve always preferred his stories that are firmly rooted on reality. And that is the reason I gave up on Wind-Up bird chronicles. It wasn’t the fault of the story but of its reader. As I’ve mentioned before, reading Murakami is like looking at a painting and whatever that you grasp, is completely reflective of you.


“Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman” contains of 24 short stories which range from philosophical to plain out wacky, or should I say, dream-like. There are a few stories that are great, few that are thought-provoking and the rest are puzzling.

“Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman”, is a story of reflection and of stagnation of a young man.

“Birthday Girl” is about a girl being granted a wish on her 20th birthday and having it actually come true. The wish in itself is never elaborated, but is hardly the point. This is more of a what would you do story while trying to make a point on individuality.

"A Poor Aunt’s Story" could be an allusion of depression or any other sad emotion for that matter, if not about writing.

"The Rise and Fall of Sharpie Cakes", while puzzling and pointless at first, seems funny after having the prelude where Murakami reveals that it's about the literary world and what his opinion of it is.

"The Ice Man", again, was puzzling at first. While it seemed like a story about loneliness, change and marriage, it was clearly apparent that it was more than that. Then, I had the chance of reading that the "Ice Man" indicates a "gaijin" and from then on, the story seems horribly xenophobic. But then again, not knowing if it is indeed true, I'd like take it on it's face value, as hard that is now.

"Mirror" is a nice little spooky story that raises a question of individuality.

"A Folklore for my Generation" is (as much as I can recall) a nice little story that talks about love, sex and the relationship between the two.

"Man-Eating Cats", which was later developed into "Sputnik Sweetheart" is a nice story about life, the choices one makes and how your decisions can change you or devour you.

"Tony Takitani" is a story about loneliness, but I had the feeling that it was under-developed. There's a brilliant tale underneath that can be great if told right but the actual story felt as if it fell short.

"The Seventh Man", one of the better stories in this collection that talks about fear, letting go and facing your fear, getting strong and attaining peace.

"Hanalei Bay", again is a story of an old lady forming a motherly bond with two teenagers albeit having had a failed relationship with her dead son. It is about letting go, moving on and of realization.

"Firefly", later to be developed as the novel "Norwegian Wood", is one of the best stories, if not the best. The story is about teenage love, angst, letting go and of maturity. The allegory of Firefly is quiet apt and beautiful. Almost all of it present in Norwegian Wood, but it was much more realized, melancholic and better, not to mention its central theme of Life vs death being better handled than the theme of this one, maturity.

"The Kidney-Shaped Stone That Moves Every Day" comes right next to "Firefly" as the best of the lot. A deep psychological story about relationships and love, this one too, has a very nice allegory of a stone.

"A Shinagawa Monkey", a poignant tale of a monkey that steals names and about living life as you would wanna live it and taking the good and the bad on its stride.

1 star stories: New York Mining Disaster, Airplane, A Perfect Day for Kangaroos, Dabchick.

2 star stories: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, Hunting Knife, A Poor Aunt’s Story, Nausea 1979, The Year of Spaghetti, The Rise and Fall of Sharpie Cakes, The Ice Man, Crabs, Where I’m Likely To Find It.

3 star stories: Birthday Girl, Mirror, A Folklore for my Generation, Man-Eating Cats, Tony Takitani.

4 star stories: The Seventh Man, Chance Traveler, Hanalei Bay.

5 star stories: Firefly, The Kidney-Shaped Stone That Moves Every Day, A Shinagawa Monkey.



Reading Murakami could be like looking at a painting. Sometimes, it is easily understandable, sometimes it is frustrating, sometimes it is puzzling. But sometimes, it talks to you. And when it is does, it stays in your heart.

While Murakami is best known for his surrealistic, dream-like storytelling, I’ve always preferred his stories that are firmly rooted on reality. And that is the reason I gave up on Wind-Up bird chronicles. It wasn’t the fault of the story but of its reader. As I’ve mentioned before, reading Murakami is like looking at a painting. Whatever that you grasp, is completely reflective of you.


“Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman” contains of 24 short stories which range from philosophical to plain out wacky, or should I say, dream-like. There are a few stories that are great, few that are thought-provoking and the rest are puzzling.

“Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman”, is a story of reflection and of stagnation of a young man.

“Birthday Girl” is about a girl being granted a wish on her 20th birthday and having it actually come true. The wish in itself is never elaborated, but is hardly the point. This is more of a what would you do story while trying to make a point on individuality.

"A Poor Aunt’s Story" could be an allusion of depression or any other sad emotion for that matter, if not about writing.

"The Rise and Fall of Sharpie Cakes", while puzzling and pointless at first, seems funny after having the prelude where Murakami reveals that it's about the literary world and what his opinion of it is.

"The Ice Man", again, was puzzling at first. While it seemed like a story about loneliness, change and marriage, it was clearly apparent that it was more than that. Then, I had the chance of reading that the "Ice Man" indicates a "gaijin" and from then on, the story seems horribly xenophobic. But then again, not knowing if it is indeed true, I'd like take it on it's face value, as hard that is now.

"Mirror" is a nice little spooky story that raises a question of individuality.

"A Folklore for my Generation" is (as much as I can recall) a nice little story that talks about love, sex and the relationship between the two.

"Man-Eating Cats", which was later developed into "Sputnik Sweetheart" is a nice story about life, the choices one makes and how your decisions can change you or devour you.

"Tony Takitani" is a story about loneliness, but I had the feeling that it was under-developed. There's a brilliant tale underneath that can be great if told right but the actual story felt as if it fell short.

"The Seventh Man", one of the better stories in this collection that talks about fear, letting go and facing your fear, getting strong and attaining peace.

"Hanalei Bay", again is a story of an old lady forming a motherly bond with two teenagers albeit having had a failed relationship with her dead son. It is about letting go, moving on and of realization.

"Firefly", later to be developed as the novel "Norwegian Wood", is one of the best stories, if not the best. The story is about teenage love, angst, letting go and of maturity. The allegory of Firefly is quiet apt and beautiful. Almost all of it present in Norwegian Wood, but it was much more realized, melancholic and better, not to mention its central theme of Life vs death being better handled than the theme of this one, maturity.

"The Kidney-Shaped Stone That Moves Every Day" comes right next to "Firefly" as the best of the lot. A deep psychological story about relationships and love, this one too, has a very nice allegory of a stone.

"A Shinagawa Monkey", a poignant tale of a monkey that steals names and about living life as you would wanna live it and taking the good and the bad on its stride.

American Tabloid is about bad men doing bad things to ensure that the history turns out just the way they want it to and they are not afraid of doing sordid, dreadful, despicable, immoral (if not often contradictory) things to shape up history to their vision. Theirs is not the glorious pages of the history: the made-up moral conflicts, the glamorization or the idolization of the meek. They linger in the grimy shadows that helped lead history to its overblown glamorization. In this world, there is no room for loyalty and every character abandons/kills/ maims/ exploits/ betrays at one point or another. But while they tend to exploit everyone around them, they must realize that there are some people who are hard to exploit; who got to their places in life by exploiting and not by being exploited. And they will realize that however competent the manipulation is, however predictable they might be, however hard the strings are, people would not always act as desired and the surprises that they deliver can be most nasty.

As a triple agent, a shakedown goon and a vengeful phantom plan on shaping the history and making money while at it, as most often it does, it shapes them. Whatever their intention may be: power, money, status, vengeance, they would realize that often the manipulator ends up being manipulated and when that happens, it won’t be pretty or what they envisioned it would be.

While Ellroy paints an unflinchingly violent, profane and dark world with his prose, owing to his style, the first half takes some getting used to. It is also wildly different from his Black Dahlia style so much so that it could be jarring at first. Especially the over repetitive narrative of Pete Bondurant, which pissed me off even though I knew it was supposed to be an insight peek of his thinking process(as hard as that is). But it gets better as Ellroy ditches that for a more impersonal narrative in the later part. While it might have been better should he had did that from the start, the last hundred or so pages more than makes up for all of it. American Tabloid could be the ideal book to start reading Ellroy.

Rating: 4/5.

"If there is a single power the West underestimates, it is the power of collective hatred."

Ralph Peters, 1999.

"What was Lee then? Not a tragic hero, not a tragic figure at all, but a charismatic, gifted soldier. Onto charismatic figures, we put our wishes, and we dress them according to our dreams. They stand in front of our quiet desperation, and the last thing we let them be is
what they are."

 

Kent Gramm, Gettysburg: A Meditation on War and Values.

http://www.revolutionsf.com/article.php?id=953&page=5

To those who have already read Sandman by Neil Gaiman and are accustomed to his writing style, American gods won't be much of a disappointment. It is standard Gaiman: good plot, good writing, a mostly poor execution with a deus-ex-machina ending.

American gods is guilty of the same format. The idea of a war between old gods vs the gods of technology is admittedly intriguing and cool. If executed precisely, it could have been a thought provoking exercise on society's reverence & mad zeal for both and the profound implications it has on society as a whole and on individual people. But what we actually have is a shadow of a story(pun intended) which could have been great if it could have been treated much more seriously. Even the deus-ex-machina ending, which could have been made interesting with proper execution, feels like a dud and can be seen coming from a mile away. Provided, Gaiman has always been accused of using deus-ex-machina in a lot of his stories, most notably in Sandman and being accustomed to his style of build-ups followed by a deus-ex-machina ending, I didn't have to face the (understandably) huge disappointments as experienced by other people who read Gaiman for the first time.

American gods serves as an eccentric road-map for a "could-have-been-great-city". Gaiman also writes a few interludes with short story stuff on a few of the less notable former gods. Intriguing as it is, the fact that this does not add to the story in anyway hinders the already trudging pace of the story. My choice of reading the Author's preferred edition with its additional 12,000 words did not help the slow story in anyway either. As Gaiman himself admits, I'm not so sure of what has really been added to the story due to all this new material. Probably nothing.

At his best, Gaiman can write really interesting and magical stories like he did for Stardust(although it is only so in its illustrated version). But, as interesting a read this was, this is definitely not his best.

To those who have already read Sandman by Neil Gaiman and are accustomed to his writing style, American gods won't be much of a disappointment. It is standard Gaiman: good plot, good writing, a mostly poor execution with a dues-ex-machina ending.

American gods is guilty of the same format. The idea of a war between old gods vs the gods of technology is admittedly intriguing and cool. If executed precisely, it could have been a thought provoking exercise on society's reverence & mad zeal for both and the profound implications it has on society as a whole and on individual people. But what we actually have is a shadow of a story(pun intended) which could have been great if it could have been treated much more seriously. Even the dues-ex-machina ending, which could have been made interesting with proper execution, feels like a dud and can be seen coming from a mile away. Provided, Gaiman has always been accused of using dues-ex-machina in a lot of his stories, most notably in Sandman and being accustomed to his style of build-ups followed by a dues-ex-machina ending, I didn't have to face the (understandably) huge disappointments as experienced by other people who read Gaiman for the first time.

American gods serves as an eccentric road-map for a "could-have-been-great-city". Gaiman also writes a few interludes with short story stuff on a few of the less notable former gods. Intriguing as it is, the fact that this does not add to the story in anyway hinders the already trudging pace of the story. My choice of reading the Author's preferred edition with its additional 12,000 words did not help the slow story in anyway either. As Gaiman himself admits, I'm not so sure of what has really been added to the story due to all this new material. Probably nothing.

At his best, Gaiman can write really interesting and magical stories like he did for Stardust(although it is only so in its illustrated version). But, as interesting a read this was, this is definitely not his best.

It should be marketed as humor. A pity they market it as a suspense thriller. Your sense of humor is as impeccable as ever Mr. Van Hamme.

P.s: The name of the heroine is Honesty Goodwill. How imaginative.

My, my, my. Am I glad that I always read at least 2 books from an author before deciding on him. I'm also happy to have chosen this book for the second one. My complaint with "The Big Sleep" was that it was all about the atmosphere and not about the characters. Chandler has improved considerably. I like the way he integrated a twinge of sarcastic dry humor to the story and I also like the fact that this story is entirely character driven. The fact that I was forcing myself to struggle through the first 100 pages in "The Big sleep" and that I read the fist 100 pages in "The Long goodbye" in one sitting would tell about the vast difference between the both. If anyone ever wants to read Chandler, this would be the best book to start I suppose.

I read somewhere that Ellroy's stories are about "strong women, weak men and obsessions." There isn't a better description to describe this story. Though the narration is good, there's something missing and I felt at most parts that the story was under-developed and the reasons unexplained. "American tabloid" might be the one I would read next and let us see how that goes.

Violent and gory, this would make a perfect B action movie. The writing, the opening of the chapters, certain scenes all read like a screenplay rather than a novel, but not in a bad way. Dredd only plays a small role in v this book despite it being advertised as a dredd adventure and the actual protagonist is Tagert, an undercover Wally squad judge who develops to be quite an interesting character by the end. The story is predictable but does not shy away from violence. In fact, the novel opens up to with a gory scene of a woman being tortured, killed and dumped into a chemical pit. The story then goes on to find out the mystery behind the death of actors and the possible involvement of a movie production company. Racy enough for a fast read between heavy handed books, this book should be entertaining enough if you don't expect too much.

Reading 'Ichi the Killer' manga. The story is wild, crazy and perverted. The villain is a masochist. The hero is a sadist.
There is a trauma behind almost every character and gory violence in every 10th page.
Not for the faint of heart.

P.S: There's been a movie based on the comic which you can check out if interested, but honestly I doubt if it would have as much perversion and gore as the manga.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0296042/

Ivan Isaacs, a man with nothing to lose except for his rage, makes up a deal with the devil for half his soul to avenge the murder of his beloved. But it's not going to be an easy task for the undead priest as he seeks his revenge amidst massacre and mayhem laced with pain and suffering. For unbeknownst to him, Ivan plays a crucial part in the dark angel's plan for resurrection.

The artwork is really good and while the story isn't bad, it lacks the punch. If you are the kind to enjoy violence and fast pace, Priest is definitely for you.

Priest - Half the story.

One day, Perry Mason is visited by a girl who wants him as her attorney in case of any trouble there-forth. But the girl is not willing to disclose her name and agrees upon a code with which they are to communicate. The code is a measurement, 36-24-36. But, as with the other things the girl told him, this turns out to be an exaggeration and a lie. Within a couple of days, Perry Mason finds himself in the midst of blackmail, embezzlement and of course murder.

Perry has had worst clients but the girl turns out to be the worst of them all. She is a compulsive liar, whatever comes out of her is either an exaggeration or a lie; she never listens to even her own attorney's advice on the event of trouble and has the uncanny knack to override it with her naive judgement and to fall in trouble. Now Perry has to win his case with a bumbling idiot for a client and against irrefutable evidence.