Books

Having been born in 1973 and grown up in Australia, I’ve never really known that much about Cuba. From film and television I knew that smoking Cuban cigars was naughty because the U.S. had a trade embargo with them and any country that wanted to be friends with the U.S. respected that. From the same sources, I knew that there were many Cubans in Florida and that the media reported them to be mostly rabidly anti-Castro. I knew that people routinely risked the seas to escape from Cuba in a... More...

I picked up this book because I was interested to see how another writer might handle a contemporary fantasy which invokes ancient gods in the modern world. That the ancient gods were Asian (specifically Chinese) and that it was set in Hong Kong were also attractive for obvious reasons. I expected a fantasy action novel – certainly there is... More...

I have finally struggled through to the end of this book but I have to admit that at least the last 150 pages (yes that’s close to half of it) was to find out if it would EVER get round to the point of the plot-line which is advertised on the back of the book. I have not read James Patterson’s "Murder Club" books but if he really... More...

Standing in my local secondhand bookshop I had a desire to read something about Japan and found myself looking at ever-so-slightly foxed copies of both “Geisha of Gion” and “Memoirs of a Geisha”. I knew that Iwasaki had been Golden’s muse for “Memoirs”, indeed she had sued him for revealing that fact,... More...

The first thing that struck me about this book is how very readable it is – the style is incredibly accessible and occasionally, in the film sequence-breakdowns, laugh-out-loud cheeky (though I loved The Fellowship of the Ring, after reading chapter 12, I would kill for his assessment of The Two Towers but that’s just the old FOMEr* in... More...