Book Nook Club: Reviewed by Bridget

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April 20, 2012

Plum Island by Nelson DeMille

I’ve read a few books by Nelson DeMille before. My favorite is Cathedral, which I really wish I had thought to reread around St. Patrick’s Day, because it’s about the IRA taking over St. Patrick’s Cathedral in NYC on St. Patrick’s Day, but I forgot. Another is Nightfall, which centers around TWA Flight 800, which crashed into the Atlantic off the coast of Long Island in 1996 (I remember hearing a lot about it on TV when I was a kid). Nightfall is another one that centers around John Corey, but Plum Island is the first in the John Corey series.

I’ve actually been interested in reading Plum Island for a lot longer than I’ve owned it, ever since

I saw a copy on my dad’s nightstand many years ago and asked what it was about. I grew up on Long Island, which is where much of the novel takes place (and, indeed, most of DeMille’s novels take place, since he also grew up there), and Plum Island is off our eastern shore. It’s the site of the Plum Island Animal Disease Center and is off-limits to the public, and I’d never heard about it until my dad told me about the book.

Fast forward about 10-12 years, and my dad and stepmom saw Nelson DeMille speak at a police benefit, and got a (signed!) copy of Plum Island for me. I was so excited to read it, but I was slightly disappointed—more on that later, though.

Plum Island novel begins with John Corey, an NYPD detective, recuperating at his uncle’s waterfront house in Mattituck on the North Shore of Long Island, having been wounded in the line of duty several months before. The local police chief and a good friend of Corey’s asks for his help in a double murder investigation: the murder of Tom and Judy Gordon, an attractive couple and friends of Corey’s, who worked on Plum Island, which has long been rumored to be a biological warfare center.

Now, Corey is forced to contemplate the unthinkable: could Tom and Judy Gordon have been selling biological warfare secrets to terrorists? Or are their murders unrelated to their work? Detective John Corey doesn’t know, but he is determined to find out—despite roadblocks like the FBI, CIA, and an infuriating but beautiful detective from Suffolk County, Elizabeth Penrose.

Like I said earlier, this is not the first book I’ve read by Nelson DeMille. I’m glad, too, because if it had been my first, I probably wouldn’t have read anything else by him. The story was intriguing and definitely had some good twists and turns in there, but it probably could have been about 300 pages shorter (my copy was 687) because quite a bit of it was unnecessary trips into Corey’s extremely male brain—lots of crude side thoughts about sex, boobs, you name it. Not that I mind that, really (I’m not going to go off on a crusade about how he shouldn’t be objectifying women, if that’s what you’re thinking), but it was seriously excessive. After the first 200 pages I kept thinking, “Okay, I get it, you’re a dirtbag. Now please solve this murder so I can finish this book and get on with my life.”

There were a few little quirks with the writing that sometimes bothered me, but they’re not quite solid enough in my head to really complain about—some word choice things, some grammatical things, but nothing that made me want to throw the book out the window or anything.

All in all, it was pretty decent but I wish it had been shorter. It’s probably not going to win any awards and is definitely not going to be a favorite, but I might revisit it someday if I have nothing better to read. I’d say, though, if you’re going to go for a Nelson DeMille, go for Cathedral.

3 stars

This review is also posted on my personal blog.

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April 13, 2012

The Time Machine by H. G. Wells

The Time Machine, published in 1895, is the story of an otherwise-unnamed Time Traveller who invents (of course) a time machine and travels to the year 802,701. There, he meets a race of childlike adults called the Eloi, who live in communal societies, subsist mainly on fruit, and live together in beautiful but slowly crumbling buildings. Efforts to communicate with these people are largely unsuccessful, mostly due to the fact of their diminished intelligence (which the Time Traveller attributes to man’s conquest of nature with technology). They are a peaceful people, however, and they welcome the Time Traveller with affection.

Soon upon the Time Traveller’s arrival, his time machine goes mysteriously missing, and he discovers that the Eloi are not the only race that humanity has evolved into. It appears that sometime on the road of evolution, humanity gradually split into two races: a diurnal, surface living race (the Eloi), and a nocturnal race, called the Morlocks. These ape-like creatures live in eternal darkness underground, and appear to have stolen his time machine.

Now it’s up to the Time Traveller (and his Eloi friend, Weena) to get his time machine back if he ever hopes to get back to London and his own time again. Though he has no weapons and a companion who lives in mortal fear of darkness and the Morlocks, he makes it back—but who will believe his story?

I think you’re all pretty aware of how much I love old-timey science fiction. The Invisible Man, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—I just love the style. It’s technically narrated by a friend of the Time Traveller who listens to his story (a common mode of narration in this time, it seems, or perhaps just a favorite of H. G. Wells), but the majority of it is narrated in first person by the Time Traveller himself. It’s beautifully written, with fantastic descriptions that can make you really see the places he’s describing—and the feeling of the Morlocks’ claws plucking at your clothes…

Something else I really enjoyed was actually learning about the Morlocks, which I had heretofore only heard about in It (Ben always called the sewer pipes in the Barrens “Morlock holes”) and in the TV show The Big Bang Theory, specifically the episode where Leonard actually buys the Time Machine prop used in the 1960 film adaptation, thinking it’s just a miniature model. Of course, hilarity ensues:

At any rate, this book was fantastic. I would have liked to read it in hard copy form (and might still go out and get a copy at some point) but it was easy and convenient to read it on my iPhone. (And really, anything that allows me to get books for free is a good thing, since this one was free on iBooks.) If you liked any of the books I mentioned above, you should give this one a try; you won’t be disappointed.

4 stars

This review is also posted on my personal blog.

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April 6, 2012

Divergent by Veronica Roth

I’ve been hearing about this book for a while. I’d heard it was the next Hunger Games—in the words of my friend Nicole, it has a “female protagonist who kicks ass, dystopian society [that] is split up into different specialties, war”—so definitely very similar. But I’d venture to say it was even better than The Hunger Games.

Beatrice Prior is the story’s protagonist, a sixteen-year-old member of the Abnegation (selfless) faction. The other factions are Candor (the honest), Amity (the peaceful), Erudite (the intelligent), and Dauntless (the brave). As the novel opens, she and the other sixteen-year-olds of this future, dystopian Chicago are on the brink of adulthood, which means they will soon take their aptitude tests—the test that determines to which faction they truly belong. After the tests, some will choose to stay with the faction they were born in. Others will transfer. But the mantra of the society remains the same: “Faction before family.”

Beatrice has always known that she doesn’t quite belong in Abnegation. Being selfless and desiring nothing but to help others are traits that do not come as naturally to her as they seem to come to her mother and her brother, Caleb. But she never imagined that her aptitude test would place her in three different factions; she is Divergent. Her test proctor immediately deletes those results from the system, manually entering Abnegation, and begs Beatrice to never tell anyone that she is Divergent—but refuses to give an explanation. And at the Choosing Ceremony the next day, both she and Caleb make choices that shock each other, their parents, and the entire community.

When Beatrice begins initiation, she renames herself Tris and struggles to find out who her true friends are as she goes through the incredibly strenuous initiation tests. She eventually discovers that her seemingly perfect society is on the verge of unraveling, and the secret she is harboring—as well of the secret of an enigmatic boy called Four—could be what saves her, and the lives of those she loves. But it could also destroy them.

This book was fantastic. It does make me feel a little bad about myself simply because Veronica Roth, the author, is only a year older than I am, but she more than deserves any success she gets from this. The writing was miles better than The Hunger Games: there weren’t nearly as many annoying fragmenty sentences. And even though I’m not a huge fan of present tense narration, it fit really well here and probably wouldn’t have been as thrilling had it been written in the past tense.

I’m also SO glad the obligatory romance here wasn’t as annoying as the love triangle in The Hunger Games. There was really only one romantic interest, which was refreshing. And it was also nice that I actually liked the guy—not that I didn’t like Peeta and Gale, but I found them both WAY too sycophantic. In Divergent, it wasn’t sappy, and it wasn’t for show, either—they both genuinely felt for each other, and at the same time, no less! It took almost 350 pages for that romance to unfold and it was fantastic.

If you liked The Hunger Games, you should read this. If you didn’t like The Hunger Games, you should still read it, because I think this is better. Can’t wait for Insurgent to come out on May first!

4 stars

This review is also posted on my personal blog.

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March 30, 2012

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

I bought this book sometime over the summer, probably because I had it confused somehow with On The Road by Jack Kerouac. Oops. I do things like that a lot. Oh well.

Anyway, the book’s premise is pretty simple: a father and son (always referred to as “the man” and “the boy,” never named) are wandering through a post-apocalyptic, burned out America. That’s about the best I can do without stealing from the blurb on the back: “Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there…It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, ‘each the other’s world entire,’ are sustained by love.”

I’m going to be honest here. I finished this book before the New Year and have been avoiding writing about it because I didn’t like it and frankly couldn’t think of anything to write about. The other night, I was talking to a friend about it and told her how I thought it was boring and totally not engaging, and she explained to me that it’s not about the plot—it’s about the love between the man and his son.

Okay, fine, I get that. Except that’s not why I read books. I read books because I like stories. I don’t want to read an exposé of the love between a father and a son. I’m not really into touchy-feely books like this. It’s just not my thing at all.

I also wasn’t a big fan of the writing style…no quotation marks, run-on sentences, really just not a lot of punctuation in general. I am a big fan of punctuation. As a linguistics major, a grammar nerd, a constant reader, and an amateur writer, punctuation is my friend. I may not always use it correctly (I find I’m particularly fond of dashes where they don’t necessarily belong), but at least when I write, it’s usually decently readable. (Readers, tell me if I’m wrong.) Now, The Road was not nearly as bad as some of Faulkner’s “stream of consciousness” BS, but it was still kind of off-putting to me. Rules exist for a reason. Throwing them out the window doesn’t make you “cool,” at least in my eyes. I suppose that was my frustration with e. e. cummings, thinking he was so awesome and special for not using punctuation. But anyway, I digress.

I didn’t really like this book. Like I said, I guess I just didn’t appreciate it for what it was. I’m more of a plot person, not a “let me read almost 300 pages about how much this guy and his son love each other” kind of person. This book was definitely not for me.

2 stars

This review was originally posted on my personal blog.

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March 23, 2012

The Shining by Stephen King

I don’t remember how old I was when I first read The Shining. It was definitely toward the beginning of my Stephen King obsession in my early teens, because it was a title that was already familiar to me, and something I felt comfortable buying. Both my parents recommended it as well, which was cool, because I was young and most of my taste in books didn’t really coincide with my parents’. They also recommended the movie, but the movie sucked, at least compared to the book (which is my usual stance). The miniseries was great, though. But I digress.

Anyway, The Shining is the story of Jack, Wendy, and Danny Torrance, a young family on the verge of falling apart. Jack, an alcoholic and an aspiring playwright, had a successful job at a Vermont prep school before he was fired for violently beating a student. Jack’s rage lies close to the surface, and his life only slides further downhill when he decides to live a life of sobriety—now there is nothing to temper his fury. He takes a winter-long caretaking job at the Overlook Hotel in the mountains of Colorado, bringing his wife and son with him.

However, five-year-old Danny has a gift. His parents are unsettled but not overly concerned about Danny’s uncanny ability to understand or know certain things without being told; however, Danny’s power is quite beyond what they realize. They also fail to realize—almost until it’s too late—that the Overlook has some sinister power of its own, and is intent on absorbing Danny’s. Finding Danny too difficult to possess, the hotel begins to work through Jack, gradually overtaking him until the malevolent spirits finally force him to attempt to kill Wendy and Danny.

Although I love Stephen King, I’m honestly surprised to find him on the list “1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die.” It was also something of a surprise to me to find that The Shining was his one book to make the list; but since it was his first hardcover bestseller and also probably boasts the most successful movie adaptation of any of his books, I suppose it makes sense. And I did really like The Shining, which is part of why I thought the movie was so terrible.

It was very interesting to watch the deterioration of Jack Torrance, both from outside perspectives and from inside his own mind. It’s important to note that he doesn’t start out totally crazy—he’s violent, yes, and an alcoholic, but he strives to be better than that, despite how terrifically difficult it is for him. He doesn’t want to be the way he is, and I always found it admirable that he does try to be a better father and husband. Even though he ends up being a slave to his—and the hotel’s—impulses, he fights mightily not to bend.

There isn’t a lot I can say other than that it is a really good horror story. The suspense builds until you feel like you’re as tightly wound as a coiled spring—and then releases, but not all the way. Eventually, this tension builds up so completely that there’s no release, and it’s impossible to put down for the last 30-50 pages. The last time I read it, I read the entire thing in twelve hours. This turned out to be a bad idea as I started reading it on my return to college, and finished it that night, but I was alone in my apartment for that entire night. Suffice it to say that even though I am usually ruthlessly rational about these kinds of things, I still didn’t turn out all the lights in the apartment that night.

Even though I still find it a little strange that The Shining is on “1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die,” I would still definitely recommend it. It’s a quick, intense read, and one that I will read again for sure—just not when I’m by myself in my apartment.

4 stars

This review was originally posted on my personal blog.

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March 16, 2012

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

Let me just say that while I knew what I was getting into regarding the length of this book, I had very little clue as to what the book was actually about. I knew about the “immortal query” of “Who is John Galt?” and that someone had said he would “stop the motor of the world”—but to be completely honest, I kind of thought that this was going to be some sort of weird science fiction novel where someone actually stopped the world from spinning and everyone floated off into space. Or something like that.

Happily, I was wrong.

Atlas Shrugged follows Dagny Taggart, the Operating Vice President of Taggart Transcontinental. She is intelligent, businesslike and absolutely ruthless when it comes to her railroad, which was founded by her grandfather, Nat Taggart. Her brother, Jim Taggart, is the president of the railroad—but, unlike Dagny, he is unwilling to take any responsibility for the necessary but difficult decisions regarding keeping the railroad afloat in difficult economic times. Dagny, therefore, runs the railroad behind the scenes while Jim schmoozes with his “friends in Washington.”

Often, Dagny’s personal policies—like preferring to buy steel from Hank Rearden rather than Orren Boyle, who has continually delayed delivery of steel rails—conflict with Jim’s ideals; Jim, who has always done business with Orren Boyle, refuses to order from Rearden (even though Dagny orders from him anyway). Here, we find one of the first major themes of Atlas Shrugged: fear of the new and unknown. Because Rearden is a new steel manufacturer, and in fact something of an overnight success, many of the established industrialists refuse to buy from him, even when it becomes clear he is the best manufacturer.

Soon, Rearden creates a new alloy, called Rearden Metal, that is lighter, stronger, and cheaper to make than steel. However, when he chooses to keep its blueprints a secret, he not only sparks jealousy and outrage among his competitors, but also prompts those competitors to spread unfounded rumors about the unreliability of Rearden Metal—rumors which are backed by the increasingly collectivist government. Dagny, who does not know Hank Rearden personally but is aware of and trusts his morality and integrity as an industrialist, is the only one who is willing to purchase Rearden Metal, and does so to construct new rails. Meanwhile, Dagny also struggles with personal despair: her only childhood friend and first lover, Francisco d’Antonia, heir to the d’Antonia copper mines, has become quite the worthless playboy and seems bent on destroying his own company.

As the novel progresses, the best industrialists go out of business and disappear, one by one, until only Dagny and Rearden remain. With the world’s economy crumbling, Dagny becomes increasingly desperate until she stumbles upon the life-changing secret of the vanished industrialists—and her world will never be the same.

Okay, sorry for the long summary, but the book is over 1,000 pages long, after all. No way to just summarize it in a paragraph without copying the blurb on the back of the book—which, clearly, did not give me a very good idea of what the book was actually about. You guys are probably smarter, but still.

Anyway, this book was wonderful. Hard to get through at times, and I will admit that there is an approximately 50-page-long speech towards the very end that I skimmed (because really, he was basically saying the same thing over and over) but for the most part it is entirely worth it. It is beautifully written, perfectly capturing Ayn Rand’s deliberate style—you’re never really left guessing about whose side she’s on. If you’re not in at least partial agreement with her, you’ll probably feel as though she’s hitting you over the head sometimes, but that’s okay because it’s enjoyable (at least, I thought it was).

But then again, I agree with a lot of what she was saying. I don’t necessarily have such a grim view of the future of our country, but I do think welfare efforts can go overboard sometimes. Don’t get me wrong; I work in the non-profit industry. I whole-heartedly believe in doing what we can for those who are less fortunate than we are. But I also believe that many of the efforts this country makes can be misguided, and there are many who take advantage of the system. And I was also taught growing up that you earn what you deserve. If you work hard at school/work/sports/whatever, you will generally earn good grades/a good salary/a good score/whatever. If you don’t put in the effort, you don’t earn the rewards. That was the biggest thing that drew me into Atlas Shrugged: all these wonderful, intelligent, talented people were being totally taken advantage of and in fact being punished for their success, and that was heartbreaking. I knew it was fiction but at the same time it seemed so plausible that I couldn’t help but be outraged for them.

Still, there were a few things I didn’t agree with. Like I alluded to earlier, I don’t believe as strongly as Rand apparently did that we shouldn’t provide any welfare services. I just think that we go a little overboard—not nearly as much as they did in Atlas Shrugged, though. I also didn’t agree with the demonstrable lack of belief in a higher being. I’m certainly not the most religious person, but I do believe in God, and Catholicism has been a pretty important part of my life. But religion is not for everyone, and I understand that it didn’t have a place in Rand’s philosophy. It’s just a part of her philosophy I don’t personally agree with.

Seriously, though, it was a terrific book, and you should read it. It’ll take a while, but it’s so worth it. I promise.

5 stars

This review was originally posted on my personal blog.

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March 10, 2012

Bedbugs by Ben H. Winter

I won Bedbugs in a giveaway over at Reflections of a Book Addict. I actually wasn’t the original winner, but the original winner never claimed their prize, and I was the next person picked!

Bedbugs is the story of Susan, Alex, and Emma Wendt. When they find their dream apartment in Brooklyn, New York, they move in within a month—and Susan almost immediately discovers that their wonderful two-floor apartment is infested with bedbugs. Every morning, Susan wakes up from horrific nightmares to find new bites, but Alex and their toddler daughter, Emma, have not been bitten at all. Even after an exterminator searches the house and uncovers nothing, the nightmares and the bites continue to multiply. Susan begins to despair that she is going mad, until she comes across a mysterious book called The Shadow Species, which presents another explanation (and I quote from the back of the book): “she may literally be confronting the bedbug problem from Hell.”

Let’s start with the positive. Bedbugs was a quick, intense read, just what I needed to fill a quick break while I was reading Atlas Shrugged. The night I started it, I read the first 190 pages; I finished the book the next day during my lunch break. It was pretty well-written, and the plot was decently engaging with an only semi-predictable twist at the end.

Really the only thing I didn’t like about this book was the fact that I couldn’t relate to Susan at all. A lot of what she was stressing about didn’t make sense to me. First of all, the book begins with the fact that looking for a new apartment might not be the best thing for the Wendts in the first place, because Susan has left her job as a lawyer to “concentrate on her art.” Her husband has been supportive throughout the entire process and yet still she worries that he resents her because he isn’t getting to concentrate on his art (he studied art photography, but now works at his own commercial photography company, which photographs jewelry for advertisements). Part of my issue with this is that I didn’t understand why she had to quit her very well-paying job in the first place to concentrate on her art; couldn’t she paint or whatever for a few hours each night and on the weekends, and still help support her family? It seemed kind of selfish to me that she would feel the need to quit her entire job—why couldn’t she have maybe worked part-time, even?—just to paint? But I’m not an artist, so I guess I don’t understand.

Warning: Spoilers Ahead!

Something else that bothered me about Susan was that she never seemed very believable to me. As the reader, it was easy for me to understand what I was supposed to think about her—that she really wasn’t crazy, that the bedbugs and the bites were real, yadda yadda yadda—but when a doctor diagnoses her with Ekbom’s Syndrome, described in the book as “a condition, sometimes called delusional parasitosis, in which the sufferer comes to believe that he or she is being tormented by small insects, too small to be seen by the human eye,” I believed the doctor. I believed that she was going a little nutty, that the stress of moving and the guilt of quitting her job and then not actually doing anything about her art was getting to her, that she was possibly just not quite right in the head. I didn’t believe Susan, and that was sort of a problem when that’s the whole point of the book, right? So really, the twist for me was that she wasn’t actually crazy, and that the bedbugs problem actually was supernatural.

End Spoilers!

Anyway, the ending was good—definitely sufficiently creepy and kept me thinking about it long after I finished reading! But there was also a nice epilogue that wrapped everything up rather than being like “creepy things, more creepy things, EVEN CREEPIER THINGS, one sentence resolution, the end.” I hate those. Mostly because the one-sentence resolution is usually “bang, bad guy’s dead, protagonists look at each other, the end.” But Bedbugs was wrapped up very nicely.

I imagine I’ll probably read Bedbugs again someday, maybe when I need another quick read for whatever reason. I think the best read will be the first because of the suspense—now that I know what happens, it might not be as fun! But at any rate, I’m glad I read it, and thanks again to Kimberly at Reflections of a Book Addict for having the giveaway!

Rating: 3/5

This review was originally posted on my personal blog.

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April 20, 2012

Plum Island by Nelson DeMille

April 13, 2012

The Time Machine by H. G. Wells

April 6, 2012

Divergent by Veronica Roth

March 30, 2012

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

March 23, 2012

The Shining by Stephen King

March 16, 2012

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

March 10, 2012

Bedbugs by Ben H. Winter

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