I don’t know how I heard about this book… it was someone online who mentioned it but I can’t remember who. I have tried to find out, sitting at the bottom of a darkened well searching for the answer, but as yet I haven’t been able to pass through and find it.

Surreal, disturbing and beautiful. This was a book i didn’t want to finish, I wanted to remain inside its covers. Now finished, I feel like i have lost a friend.

Well I didn’t write anything about the previous book in the series so I thought I’d type a few words about this one. The story (both books) is about Boy and the Book. Boy is an orphan who knows nothing about himself, but learns a great deal in his, and his companions, quest to find the mysterious Book that will answer any readers’ question.

I think though I may need to lay off teen fiction for a while. I found this very predictable and although well written it did lack tension. But, I am not the target audience and my mind may well have been dwelling on other things when I read it. So something a little more serious next I think.

Nice and simple, an interesting insight to Asperger’s. It made me smile, laugh and almost cry… pretty much on most pages.

The First Man is the posthumously published, last and unfinished novel by Albert Camus. At this stage I should say that I have never read any other Camus, or know a great deal about him, apart from what i have picked up via wikipaedia.

The novel tells the story of Jacques Cormery a native of Algiers, through recalled memories of an impoverished childhood. Despite being from a very poor family, his father having died during the war, leaving him and his mother to struggle under a matriarchal grandmother, he succeeds academically; earning a scholarship to continue his education.

The bulk of the novel is set against the backdrop of Algeria, pre independence from France. The tension between the native Arabs and the immigrant French population is always bubbling away.

Although a very good and interesting read, the writing flows and at times is quite brilliant, the fact that the novel is unfinished is always staring at you from the pages. At the end of the novel itself an appendix contains notes and additional material. At various points throughout, there are footnotes alluding to story additions.

For this reason I found the novel hard to get into and it did feel unfinished at times. On the other hand, it was a fascinating insight into a writer at work, and worth looking at for the writing process alone.

It was a shame that Camus died before finishing what appears to have been a monumental work. Here we only have the childhood memories, of a forty year old man, almost thirty years of memories are left untouched. And for a writer who fought against nihilism, there is little, in what we have here, to counter that standpoint.

The First Man is good, but it could, or should, have been much more.

Nice and easy to read, although you may want some understanding of science before you begin. It was nicely laid out and the chapters flowed beautifully. I think this is possibly the best Science Masters book I have read. As to the content and how it made me feel I am not quite sure. To be honest the author didn’t persuade me to move too far from the Bertrand Russell thought of what is the point of the whole thing (my paraphrase). That is, if that was my starting position in the first place, which it is not. But this was a great book, I actually felt I understood the arguments being explained, which is all I could ask from such a book.

Highly recomended.

Several years ago I saw American Beauty at the cinema. For those who haven’t seen it the characters and events of the film are quite dark and depressing. However, I left the cinema glad to be alive.

I had the same emotions washing over me as I read the Book Thief. It is a story of sad events that take place during the second world war. The book is even narrated by Death. But as I finished the book there was a deep joy that I felt within.

I’ll not say anymore apart from recommending you read this. It is now one of my favourite books of all time.

I have usually enjoyed most things that Michael Crichton does, from Andromeda Strain to Jurassic Park, but what about Next?

In this novel Crichton takes on the interesting topic of genetics, how genes work, affect us and how they might be used to ‘better’ our existence – or perhaps increase the bank balance of those involved.

Although the book was interesting and worth reading, I have to admit that the plot wasn’t overly gripping. As a novel, although it came to a conclusion, it didn’t flow and I had difficulty following where the story was and where it was heading. The characters were a little cliched and becasue of this we didn’t really delve into them.

So why was it worth reading? Well it made me think. I am interested in learning about new things and the insights into genetics that the book delivered were interesting and thought-provoking. Crichton looks at how companies are buying up bits of the human genome and explores this through some legal banter as the book moves on.

One question it did leave me, was that if companies are buying the patents on genes, and perhaps they buy the patent on genes that cause disease, could individuals who get those diseases sue the owners? Perhaps owning a large part of the genome isn’t the best financial aquisition you could make.

I loved this. I must admit it wasn’t easy going, I haven’t had any great scientific education, and I am not sure how much I actually understood. It will probably need another read through now that I have got through it once.

What it has done though is inspire me to read further about the subject, and that is no bad thing. So I’ll be googling away for the next few days.

The book basically introduces the theories of how the universe began (I won’t give away the ending [or should that be the beginning?] but it does have a twist). Looking at the basic Big Bang theory, constant expansion, inflation, and then moved into the realm of Quantum theories.

This was a good read. I don’t normally like or go for crime novels but this one was given to me and I enjoyed it. Reginald Hill (no relation) keeps the plot moving, the humour flowing and although not with a great whodunnit twist at the end, it did resolve things nicely.

This was a good read but the preconceptions I took into the book, having seen the film, stopped me getting into it at the beginning. The book is a great, fact-based retelling of the events of October 1991, the Hallowe’en Gale. The film is an excuse for Geaorge and the boys to try and look brave in the cgi infested sea.

The books focus is the storm, the perfect storm, and all the people who found themselves at sea during it. It gravitates around the crew of the Andrea Gale but contains far more. It tells you all about the weather, how to fish and what your chances of survival are in the water. It is genuinely scary because it tells you the facts.

So a far better book than a film, however if you really need to see Geaorge Clooney I suppose the film will do.