I signed up at LibraryThing to get some
early review copies of books. I'm going to collect the reviews here for
future reference. You can also read my collected new year's resolution
reading list reviews and general reading reviews:
Tengu the Mountain Goblin: A Connor Burke Martial Arts Thriller, John Donohue.
It was interesting reading this after Meditations on Violence, some of the principles in that book were reinforced here (moves that are needed in real life but cannot be used in the dojo). I'd requested this book as an early review since I'm fascinated with Japanese folklore, but the Tengu doesn't appear for very long in this story, though he's working behind the scenes. Disparate groups of people are drawn together to save a young woman kidnapped in the Phillipines, and Burke and his brother are drawn in when Burke's sensei is used for the ransom drop. There's a bit too much of telling rather than showing in the text, as Burke's inner monologue is shared with the reader, and then there's some things that are left out to heighten the tension but just end up feeling like they're sprung on the reader with no build up. The different fighting styles and the confrontation between the military groups and terrorists are interesting to read about, but at times it felt like a non fiction book wrapped up in a thin plot. Recovery from the injuries sustained in a fight are dealt with realistically. Overall, I enjoyed the book, but it could have benefited from another pass by an editor.
Meditations on Violence, Sgt. Rory Miller.
I'm coming at this book having had 2 self defence classes years ago, so I'm not necessarily the target audience, but I got this book as an early review copy and have been enthralled. It's a quick read, the advice no nonsense and sounding like he's talking to you over a beer, swearing included. The author has tonnes of personal experience to draw on, and he's really down on formal martial arts, and extensively lists why training mostly won't work in real life encounters. I talked to a friend of mine who's been training in martial arts for years, and he's come to similar conclusions as the author, so it was nice to get corroboration.
One bit of advice reminds me of the Han Solo quote, "Never tell me the odds" - if you're not told something is impossible, you can sometimes figure out a way to do it. So much of self defence is mental, giving yourself permission to be rude and/or violent. I like his concept of having "Go" buttons: things that happen that you've decided ahead of time will trigger an immeditate and violent response.
Any Given Doomsday, Lori Handeland. I got this as an
early review copy through LibraryThing, after a bit of a drought in
winning copies. I should have been clued in when I saw Kelly Armstrong
quoted on the front that I'd be in for a wild ride. :) Liz Phoenix is
an ex cop working as a bartender, she got her partner killed when she
followed a psychic hunch. But then she gets a mental summons from her
childhood guardian and she's plunged further into the supernatural
world than she's really comfortable with. There are hints of
Buffy:TVS, and LKH's Anita Blake books (Handeland cites LKH as a key
influence, the sex is uber hot but it feels like it actually is
integral to the plot here), but the author has crafted a world hiding
next to ours that drew me in and kept me reading - I finished it in
one sitting. I'm definitely going to track down the second book when
it comes out, I want to learn more about the Navaho magic that she's
exploring, and to find out where Jimmy went. One quibble is that the
villain of the piece has a pretty lame line at one point that made me
roll my eyes, I think the rest of the chapter had explained the thing
he said. The first chapter is a little rough, but the writing smoothed
out quickly and drew me along.
Innocent: Volume 1, Shawn Granger. Innocent, an angel
living on Earth, and David, a sociopath whose urges have been reined
in to only kill those who have been judged, break a swath through the
city, killing those whose souls have been lost. The art changes with
each numbered book included in this collection, giving some
interesting takes on the characters. My favourite, for the dark humour
and hint of background for David, is when the two go over to David's
mom's house for supper, and the neighbour tries to kill them with a
jar of poisoned cookies. :) "Interrogation" was twisty and turny, and
"The sword" started off as a typical super hero fight, with all the
overblown dialogue that entails, but ended on a more human note.
Some of the stories seemed unrelated, I've gotten used to reading
comics with over arching plots. This volume ends on an unresolved note
(part 1 of ?) which will have me hunting down volume 2 to see what
happens next, but I still feel annoyed, because part of why I like
reading collected series is to avoid the cliff hangers. Overall, a
decent start to a series, and I'm interested to see what happens next.
The IBS Healing Plan: Natural Ways to Beat Your Symptoms,
Theresa Cheung.
The book is well organised, with important information
repeated in the chapters that call for warnings or caveats, so you can dip
into and out of it. There's lots of information about herbs and spices and
what they can be used for, as well as tips on foods that trigger or ease
symptoms for people. Popular drugs as well as stress reduction techniques
and tips on how to live with IBS are included. Some things are repeated
multiple times, it would be useful to have a section in the back where you
can look up all the qualities of a certain food or supplement; granted the
index is TBD, so it will probably cover this request handily.
I appreciate that the author provided an extensive reference section at
the end, citing the studies and papers that are mentioned in the text
(hopefully they'll be explicitly linked to the mentions in the final
copy). The parts concerning exercise are shorted in some sections, but
there is elaboration later on.
All the advice is tempered by "it works for some people, you have to find
what works for you", but there are so many tips that you'll be sure to
find something. I requested this book to review due to being diagnosed
with IBS while working at a very very stressful job. Just by reading the
introduction I realised how lucky I was: mine's triggered by stress and I
"only" get intense pain in my abdomen. I've developed coping strategies
and rarely have a flare up, and it was reassuring to see everything I've
done listed in the text. I wish I'd had this book years ago! Even though
I'm generally fine now, there are some things that I'll be trying out the
next time my gut decides to rebel.
The ARC is rife with copy editor level mistakes, which made it hard for me
to get into the flow of reading it. There are also a couple of outright
errors (6 feet instead of inches in one place).
Sobibor, Michael Lev. This was the first book that I was
alloted in the random drawing. I had a bit of a wait before receiving it,
getting it at the end of January when I received the notice that I'd "won"
it near the end of December. The book is a fictionalisation of the
events around the uprising of inmates at the Sobibor death camp in the
1940's, using a young boy, Berek's, point of view to draw us in. The
introduction, "Michael Lev, Sobibor, and Russian Yiddish Culture", is a
mine of background information as well as some spoilers for the main
story. I skimmed over the spoilers, reading the background material to
orient myself in the time and place in which the story is set. We start
off with Berek and Rina as young children, running from their homes to
avoid death. They're shown kindness by strangers, but hiding in the forest
doesn't work forever and Rina is captured. Berek voluntarily enters the
death camp to search for her, but he's too late. The introduction praised
the author for telling the story without unnecessary melodrama, but Rina's
death was handled so off handedly, with no reaction from Berek, that it
was jarring - I wasn't sure at first what had happened to her. Later in
the book, the author explicitly addresses this, but at the time of reading
I was thrown off. But now Berek is stuck in the death camp, aiding an
artist and then a jeweller, trying to survive the random cruelties of the
guards. The plot cuts over to the arrival of Russian prisoners of war,
foreshadowing that the leader of the eventual uprising is among them and
giving their backgrounds. Berek is almost invisible in this period, a
silent witness, but he runs when he's provided the chance. The aftermath
of the uprising, tracking down the Nazi's who survived, forms the rest of
the book. Some of the passages were hard to localise, Berek moves around a
fair amount, and we're exposed to some of the thought processes of the
criminals that are brought to trial, sometimes without a clear indication
of which voice we're hearing. There are a lot of foot notes sprinkled
throughout the book, explaining Yiddish and German terms, but sometimes
they seem to err on the side of the obvious. Granted, some day just what
the Third Reich was may be obscure, but for now it was jarring to jump
down to the bottom of the page to read the simple explanation, an
interruption in the flow of the text, my personal preference is for end
notes. I think it would have worked well to have a glossary page for the
non-English words. Overall, it was a fascinating read. I hadn't known
about this death camp before, and I did appreciate the spare nature of the
story-telling, as it's an emotionally charged topic, but at times it went
too far with the cut and dried, clinical style. I'm still thinking about
the events in the book (some of the foot notes listed what happened to the
people later in their lives), but I didn't get emotionally drawn in during
the telling of the story. Some of the passages would have worked better
with more elaboration,, in some it felt like the author was working too
closely from historical documents, falling into a non fiction documentary
style rather than a novelisation. Feb 3/08