Dreamsongs Volume I - 9/10 - My infatuation with George R.R. Martin probably boosts that score up a bit. There were some tedious stories, but it's supposed to be a retrospective starting from when he just began writing so I suppose that's to be expected. There are a lot of very good stories in it, and his autobiographical commentary was what really made me love this book.

Bob Shaw: Tomorrow lies in ambush. 2/10.
Sci-fi anthology. The stories were mostly boring. One was okay, one was boring but with an okay end and one was almost okay. The rest made me skim.

"Gullkorn" and "Flere gullkorn fra pasientjournalen" (Gems and more Gems from the medical records): About incredible things doctors have been able to write in the record. Example: "She stopped breathing and died in hospital last night. Today she has returned to complain.
9/10. ROFL material.

"Vi har pissa i fryseren" (We have pissed in the freezer. Pissa should have been spelled pizza.)
"Vi kommer plutselig" (We return suddenly)
"Frittgående egg" (free range eggs)
Collections of moronic writing in papers, applications and adds.
9/10. I actually laughed so hard I temporarily gasped for air.

Miyuki Miyabe - All She Was Worth 9/10

Quite interesting mystery novel.
As a non-native English speaker it was sometimes too hard for me to follow those passages about financial stuff, but it was only for some pages. I might buy the other works of the author, I like her style of writing.

I got complacent with finishing A Farewell to Arms but I've done it now. I wanted to give something a lower score for my first rating, so it doesn't seem like I'm someone who uses the 7 to 10 scale of review but this book was excellent.

What hooked me the most was the dialogue and the times Hemingway showed the disordered confusion behind a person's thoughts when they are stressed. I also loved that he described a hospital by saying that it smelled of hospital. The ending was very moving and the moment he leaves it on, without a drawn out epilogue, is so very effective. I've never read a romance novel before which felt so plain and honest, and real. It's auto-biographical and thus perhaps not surprising; But, I'm still impressed with his ability to analyse the sometimes disjointed interplay between people when speaking to each other.

9.25/10

Anthem by Ayn Rand. By recommendation of Senmee, although she only did so on the basis of what she'd heard other people raving about. I have to thank her anyway.

The story is about a collectivist society after some unexplained disaster has reduced mankind from it's technological prime. Each man refers to themselves as we and they live in servitude for the good of all men. Any form of deviation or exceptionality is looked down on, as it may make their brothers feel inadequate and no man should do anything that makes their brothers unhappy. One person, known as Equality 7-2521, a street sweeper, wishes to supress the desires he feels inside. He cannot help it that he feels friendship for International 4-8818 though he knows that it is wrong to treasure one brother above other men; Or that he takes notice of Liberty 5-3000, though he knows it is forbidden for men to notice one amongst women.

It's really well written. The style, the plot and Ayn's use of language are, to me, perfect. She has a brevity which forces the story forward but when describing smaller details has such poetic feeling. It's only a short novel, I finished it an hour or two after starting but that doesn't stop it from being one of the best things I've read.

9.5/10

Good review. I read this after I saw your post and I have to agree its quite well written with great use of language. I love the way she keeps using 'we' all the way through until the character discovers his individual identity, though it can be a bit confusing when you first begin reading the story. I found it became far to politicised by the end. Obviously she has an agenda to argue - one of individualism over collectivism, but I think it could have been done more subtly.



The Young Hornblower / Captain Hornblower
I'm currently reading the latter of these two omnibuses which follow the fictional adventures of an 18th century British naval officer called Horatio Hornblower (you get over the weird name pretty quickly). We get to see him begin his naval career on board the HMS Indefatigable under Captain Edward Pellew (a real historical character and ship) and then mature into a Lieutenant, a Commander and then a Post Captain commanding his own Frigate and eventually a Ship of the Line.

The beauty of the stories is in the detail. The author C S Forrester has an incredible knowledge of how these great sailing ships worked, how the crews lived and how battles were fought out in the open sea. He packs so much of this knowledge into his stories and each book introduced you to new concepts and different scenarios allowing the reader to see how the crews would be organised in different situations, whether it be blockading French ports in the English Channel, boarding Spanish galleys in the Mediterranean, attacking land-based forts, mutinying against an insane captain or leading Nelson's own funeral procession down the Thames. Forrester open up the incredible and very harsh world of the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic era in a series of exciting and increasingly gripping adventures, especially so once you get past the Midshipman stories which are by far the weakest of them all.

I'd possibly recommend watching the TV adaptations first. These portray a much friendlier, happier, warm captain whilst the books depict Hornblower as cold and irritable much of the time, albeit a humanist who cares for his crew. This cold character might put readers off, but having seen the TV shows previously I was able to look past this and imagine our hero as a much nicer character. It should be noted that the television adaptations do change certain plot lines and add a few extra characters who didn't previously exist or had much lesser roles to play in the books. They also don't extend beyond the end of the Young Hornblower omnibus before he becomes a Post Captain, but they do substantially flesh out these earlier books which are not written half as well as the chronological later material. The TV adaptations make movies such as Master & Commander look a bit pants by comparison, so if you like that kind of film, watch them regardless!!

So overall I'd give the Young Hornblower omnibus a 7.5 out of 10 and the Captain Hornblower omnibus a 9 out of 10.

I've yet to read the Admiral Hornblower omnibus.

The best validation for that short review I wrote would be that it encouraged someone to read it. It was very kind of you to say so, Taloden.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, this time recommended to me by Suedehead and I'm indebted to her because I wouldn't have read it otherwise.

A young man, named Lockwood, recently purchasing the tenancy of Thrushwood Grange returns from a visit to his neighbouring landlord's. And, excited by the unrestrained hostility which permeates there presses his maid, Mrs Nelly Dean, for any gossip she could share. Unwillingly she agree's and by her good character we learn of the unerring quest of one man, Mr Heathcliff, to repay injustices he has suffered with the utter ruin and misery of those that have slighted him and their households and families. Following this course so thoroughly that even at his deathbed would not repent his spitefulness, though it would be at the cost of his damnation.

Some of the descriptive language is honestly beautiful, and Emily paints such a vivid landscape of the Yorkshire moors. How malign and oppresive they seem with their chill colds and the dark manor of Wuthering Heights resting upon the earth there; and with the change in the aspect of the weather, Emily directs the mood of the story. I also loved the words she would use in decribing things. 'What vain weathercocks we are!', as much as the sarcastic language she would use to great effect. The story at the same time angers and frustrates as it delights and the result is you can't bide the wait to know what would happen next.

A+

I've just finished Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. While it's not as grandly tragic as Hamlet or King Lear, it's extremely well-written and serves as an excellent dramatic analysis of ancient Roman ethics. 9.8/10

I also just finished The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson. It's the first of his Millenium trilogy of thrillers in which the main character is Lisbeth Salander, a scrawny girl with Asperger's who has many uncanny abilities which make her an excellent detective. For all that it starts off a bit slow and the prose is a bit too workmanlike and barebone for my tastes, it's an extremely well-constructed thriller with an extremely engaging heroine. 8.75/10

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters - 9.5/10

The world of lesbian fiction is a bleak one, where great steaming piles of crap like Rubyfruit Jungle(yes, it's listed as one of my favorite books on my facebook, but that's just 'cause I love to hate it so much) are hailed as classics and Xena uber fiction is actually published - for serious - in print, but Sarah Waters is like a...very gleamy gleaming thing thing amongst the vast ocean of festering turds. She's *lovely*. This book has boring bits, but not many, and I became so invested in the characters that I found it difficult to put it down. It actually kept me from the internet for two whole days, which not many things manage to do.

Enduring Love by Ian McEwan - 8/10.

Bluebeard- 7/10

Interesting but a little hard to get into at first. You gotta love Kurt Vonnegurt's style of writing in order to appreciate it.

The Garden of Time by J.G. Ballard - 10/10. One of the best short stories I've read.

Listen to an abridged BBC audio recording of the short story below:



"The garden of the villa extended for some two hundred yards below the terrace, sloping down to a miniature lake, spanned by a white bridge... Here in the garden the air seemed brighter. As was his custom before beginning his evening stroll, Count Axel looked out across the plain to the final rise...and saw that the advance column of an enormous army was moving slowly over the horizon..."

In the Garden of Time by JG Ballard, the Count manages to repel the advance of the army by magically re-arranging time - time and time again! But soon the tools that help him will no longer will work. So how
will he and his beloved wife - who is indoors, playing a Mozart rondo - manage to survive the threat,
as it marches forward, closer and closer...

Read by Allan Corduner
Abridged and produced by Duncan Minshull.

The Awakened Mage by Karen Miller

10/10

It's the second part of a two-part series, the first being The Innocent Mage. The prose was so well written, the ending so hopeful yet devastating, twists I'd never expect and ways of life I never previously imagined. Nearing the very last part of The Awakened Mage the story became very linear, so apart from one last plot twist I became fairly uninterested but the whole story and both novels are a complete MASTERPIECE.

I'd recommend this to anyone.

I just finished reading the short story Las Ruinas Circularas (The Circular Ruins) from Jorge Luis Borge's great collection of fantastical stories Ficciones. Easily one of the best short stories ever written in the fantasy genre, so a 10/10.

The Drowned Giant by J.G. Ballard - 10/10.

You can read it here. It's a short story.

I know you probably think I should rate the entire short story collection I'm reading as a whole, but I'd rather rate each short story individually.

Concentration City by J.G. Ballard - 4/10.

Manhole 69 by J.G. Ballard - 7/10.

The Seventh Night by Natsume Soseki 7.5/10

The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty by Anne Rice - 7/10

It started off good but it became far too repetitive. It was just page after page after page of spanking and hardly any sex. There also wasn't enough girl/girl stuff in it for me. Sure, one of the ladies is enamoured with Beauty but she just spanks her a lot and never gets into any action with her. Then, of course, about halfway through it switched from mainly het to m/m which bored me to tears but I guess that's what you get considering it's a friggen' Anne Rice novel. I'll probably read the sequels eventually, though.

That makes perfect sense to me. in fact, that's the kind of anthology reviews I like.

The Giving Tree. 10/10


I'm almost serious.
I feel like such an idiot. I can't remember the last time I sat down and read a book.
Many of you on HC seem to be such avid readers.

I hope you don't feel like an idiot for rating a children's book. Shel Silverstein is a great writer and The Giving Tree is a major classic, though lots of people hate it because they think the tree is too much of a pushover.

@Knots:

Last night I read a 14th century English Mystery play (Mystery plays are dramatizations of Biblical events) called The Second Shepherd's Pageant. Strangely enough, it was a comedy about the birth of Jesus, and it was actually funny and very charming. 9/10

i love this pic Knots.