Category Archives: Books

Rather than waste keystrokes writing a review of this rubbish I’m going to steal a trick from Pitchfork.com and show you a video of a chimpanzee urinating into his own mouth. It’s a better representation of this book than I could write.

This was another book I decided to read only because I didn’t have any other books at hand. This time I was lucky, Wild Swans is an excellent book. I’m happy I stumbled upon it because it’s not the type of book I would normally just pick up and read at random.

After a quick glance at the cover, featuring the portraits of three generations of women, I half-expected this to turn out to be a chick book – maybe a “Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe” set during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Thankfully not. The novel is a non-fiction account of the lives of three women: a grandmother, a mother and daughter (the daughter being the author). But even though it focuses on the lives of these three women, the book really tells the story of life in China during the tumultuous events of the twentieth century, as experienced by the average people who lived through it.
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It’s books like this that reaffirm my opinion that I don’t like crime fiction. This was another book that I found lying around (an autographed copy no less) that I’m sure I never would have read if I wasn’t running desperately short of books.
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A few weeks ago I was chatting with a friend about my ever dwindling stockpile of books. Being sympathetic to my plight she very generously bought this book from the local book shop so I could read it. A couple of our friends here on Nevis are fans of Carl Hiaasen and have been telling me how much they enjoy his books. I had never even heard of Hiaasen before, so I was happy to check him out.

Trying not to give any spoilers, it’s a story revolving around a rich and famous but dim-witted and talentless pop singer and her entourage who struggle to keep her career alive in the wake of her perpetual sex scandals and drug overdoses. The protagonist, and the only character with any redeeming qualities, is the singer’s double – a struggling actress who’s job it is to appear in public whenever the star is preoccupied with having her stomach pumped.
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