Joseph Finder – “Power Play”

 

An action thriller – not exactly non-stop but not slow either... “It was the perfect retreat for a troubled company. No cell phones. No BlackBerrys. No cars. Just a luxurious, remote lodge surrounded by thousands of miles of wilderness.”
“All the top officers of the Hammond Aerospace Corporation are there. And one last-minute substitute — a junior executive named Jake Landry. He's a steady, modest, and taciturn guy with a gift for keeping his head down and a turbulent past he's trying to put behind him. Jake's uncomfortable with all the power players he's been thrown in with, with all the swaggering and the posturing. The only person there he knows is the female CEO's assistant—his ex-girlfriend, Ali.”
“When a band of backwoods hunters crash the opening-night dinner, the executives suddenly find themselves held hostage by armed men who will do anything, to anyone, to get their hands on the largest ransom in history. Now, terrified and desperate and cut off from the rest of the world, the captives are at the mercy of hard men with guns who may not be what they seem.”


JOSEPH FINDER, born 1958, writes extensively on espionage and international affairs relations for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New Republic. He lives in Boston with his wife and daughter.

Pauline Bell – “Under Fire”

 
Under Fire is the latest in the series of crime novels involving a Yorkshire Town Police Force with Inspector Benny Mitchell. The town, Cloughton, is basically Halifax. A pleasant read but with a rather predictable outcome.
I normally scan in the cover of a library book before returning it. In this case I didn’t bother because I was sure it would be illustrated on either Fantastic Fiction or Amazon. It wasn’t! So no picture.

PAULINE BELL, born 1938, is a former Halifax teacher, turned crime writer. She has three grown-up children, one, usefully, a police constable married to a detective. She enjoys singing, walking in the Dales and reading other people's crime novels.

A book every six days - or more often!

I used to wonder if my estimates of how many books I have read in my lifetime was exaggerated. I reckoned that on average since I was about 4 years old I have read two books a week (both fiction and non-fiction) which means I have read about 5,400 books - though if one takes out duplicates I suppose one could round it down to about 5,000. (In fact some like ‘Lord of the Rings’, the early Discworld ones and the Stephen Donaldson ‘Thomas Covenant’ stories have been read at least three times!) I began a blog of book reviews on 14th November 2007 and in 23 weeks I have read 47 fiction and 14 non-fiction. That's 2.65 books per week. I have more spare time than when I worked but less than when I was at school / college. I need also to take into account the fact that I spend a lot of time on the computer which prior to ten years ago would have been spent reading. I also read a lot less natural history and general non-fiction. On balance, I reckon my estimate was not too far out.

Stephen Baxter – “Evolution”

 

The most compelling novel I have read for a long, long time. And that is what it spans – a long, long time. From the days of Primordial soup to some time in the future.
‘“Evolution” is a soaring symphony of struggle, extinction, and survival, a dazzling epic that combines a dozen scientific disciplines and a cast of unforgettable characters to convey the grand drama of evolution in all its awesome majesty and rigorous beauty.’
This is a book that can be compared to standing in the garden and staring at the stars on a dark bight. It puts one in one’s place and makes those day to day worries seem pretty trivial after all.


STEPHEN BAXTER is a trained engineer with degrees from Cambridge (mathematics) and Southampton Universities (doctorate in aeroengineering research). Baxter is the winner of the British Science Fiction Award and the Locus Award, as well as being a nominee for an Arthur C. Clarke Award, most recently for Manifold: Time. His novel Voyage won the Sidewise Award for Best Alternate History Novel of the Year; he also won the John W. Campbell Award and the Philip K. Dick Award for his novel The Time Ships. He is currently working on his next novel, a collaboration with Sir Arthur C. Clarke. Mr. Baxter lives in Prestwood, England.

Masha Hamilton – “The Camel Bookmobile”

 

Excellent.
Once a fortnight, the nomadic settlement of Madidima, in Kenya receives a visit from the camel bookmobile. Kanika, a young girl who lives with her grandmother, devours the books avidly and dreams of being a teacher. Her best friend is Scarface, a child mauled by a hyena at the age of three and virtually an outcast. Among the many other fascinating characters are the American Fi Sweeney who is out to do ‘something that matters ‘ in the world and Mr Abasi, the local librarian who thinks his camel is possessed by the spirit of his mother.
The camel bookmobile has only one inflexible rule - that every book must be returned on the next fortnightly visit. And then one day, two books are stolen...
A must read....

MASHA HAMILTON worked as a foreign correspondent for five years in the Middle East. In 2004 she travelled to Afghanistan to report on the country’s reconstruction efforts. While the characters in the Camel Bookmobile are fictional, the novel was inspired by the Kenyan Camel Mobile Library, set up by the government to improve literacy in poverty-stricken areas.