The Immortalists

 by Kyle Mills. approx 10 hours.

The reason I bought the book was because I read the preview and it had caught my interest. In the review, a top biologist researcher came home and discovered an unknown man in his house. This man then forced her to kill herself, just because someone had ordered her assisination to look as a suicide. Quite intriguing, eh?

The Synopsis.

The story then unfortunately follows a man named Richard who is also a biologist, one of the best in the field after supposedly, as the aforementioned woman biologist had died. Richard had a daughter who suffers a genetic disease where she grew old at an extremely fast rate.Racing against time, he tries to find a cure to her daughter's condition. Through certain cimcustances Richard and his wife discovered that an organization has discovered to reverse aging and in his pursue to save her daughter, they are in turn pursued by the organization itself, The Immortalists.

Language
The book has very concise words, some that I even don't know. Actually, I had to look up most of the words. That being said, I wouldn't say the writer only uses bombastic words to impress, since they are used 'appropriately'. Cathartic, is one of the example, where a scientist threw all his research and Richard asked if he didn't save even any of the research and was answered, " No, it wouldn't be cathartic if I do that, would it?" There are a few more examples but this stuck to my mind.

Recommendation.
This is an action packed story after all, it was not meant to be make you ponder that much, right. Still, when I stopped reading for a while, I find it hard to pick the book up again. Mainly because I don't really care what happens to the main character, he's a bit selfish you know. And the fact that he is a biology genius(really?) doesn't help.
Regarding the compact language, it was enriching to learn new words but on the other end, the book suffers since the book is made up of very short chapters. It left me wishing the writer had written more to describe the action. He leaves most of the plodding to the mind, but if most of the imagining is left to the reader, why read a book , right? At least, that's what I felt.
In the end, the book is meant for a one gulp reading, I think. Mostly recommended for a 9 hour flight maybe where the action will take you through the journey and leave you with a little more vocabulary in the end. Better than an action flick, aite.

I do however like what they did with the book, where they plastered G A T C at the top of the pages. It took me awhile to make me notice and make the connection.

Overall, okay book but not much to be remembered.

I'm not Scared

by Niccolo Ammaniti
translated by Jonathan Hunt
20/12/2011 app 6-7 hours read

This book was a really good read. It kinda reminds me of To Kill a Mockingbird, which is one of my favourite book.

The book was told from a first person view of a boy, whose name is Michele. He lives in a very small town in Italy, named Acqua traverse. It all started on a hot summer day, where Michele and his friends were playing around when they found an abandoned house. Michele went through the house as a punishment for losing a race and behind the house he found a body of a boy lying in a hole on the ground. He kept it a secret but the secret was bigger than he thought.

There is not much to say about the plot without giving it away. The storyline is very smooth, although it may not seem so to other people, because the story usually describes certain feelings comparatively to an event. An example to that is when Michele told out the secret, he related an occasion where he ate too much peach and felt sick, before puking it all out, which he compared to spilling out the secret. I like this kind of storytelling a lot but I know some people who don’t like it. The story however doesn’t go off the tangent so I don’t imagine it being annoying.

Meanwhile the character acts illogically sometimes especially the children but come to think of it, children are like that most of the time. The writer managed to write and capture the feeling of a child, when the world was new. I even felt an ache when SPOILER STARTS one of the character, his best friend, Salvatore, trade him out just so that he could have a try at driving the local bully’s car.I mean, what kind of friend, does that? Just for a ride? And to add to that, Salvatore was my favourite character up to that part. SPOILER ENDS.

Words used are easy.  Pleasant reading. Quite surprised this was a translation.
Recommended for teens and above. There's a naked scene where michele's mom was fighting and tore her clothes, but nothing raunchy.

Anyway, I recommend this book.

The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

 by Stieg Larsson 

 translated by Reg Keeland

 read within:
 The Girl Who Played with Fire                   19/10/2011 - 2/11/2011
 The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest       2/11/2011 - 8/11/2011
 probably 35 hours straight reading, or less.

BANG, BANG, BAM!

If I were to described the books in three words, those would be them. These two books are full of action all the way and have a faster pace in comparison to the first book. However the style of writing is still the same, where I wrote in the first review, that it's similar to Mario Puzo's.

Synopsis.
The book continues  approximately a year after the first book and recaps what happened to the main character, Mikael Bloomkvist and Lisbeth Salander as they follow their separate ways. The action began when the Millennium, the company Bloomkvist worked in, was approached by a journalist with a story on prostitution and sex trafficking in Sweden. It was a sensational piece, which Millennium decides to publish. As they work to finalise the story and was about to finish it, the journalist and her wife were killed. Salander's character came into play when the police found her prints on the crime scene, hence the chase began. What happened afterwards was a multitude of event that risk to uncover a 30 year old secret and Salander's background.

Sounds cliché? Well yes, I felt the same after rereading my synopsis and I must apologise as I don't do the book justice. Anyway the book might have a similar outline to other thriller/investigations but what I like about it that it has a few different view/narration such as the journalist, the police and the genius hacker who is the victim. The story also unfolds very fast and rarely have slow moments, yet the investigations seem detail enough to be logical. I could hardly find events or circumstances in the book where they appear incredulous, you know when the author feels lazy and introduces some miracle, though the book does have improbable moments but not impossible ones. In short, the books seem believable.

The language of the book is intermediate with a few new vocabs but they are unobtrusive. Again, the translations was very good that I feel as if I was reading an original book.
As for the young readers, the books contain adult scene and reference which are not explicit. There are gore but the writer only tells as they are needed and didn't dwell on them, a note for the weak-hearted readers. Other than that, I think the books will appeal to any readers.

The books were fast and I had read them back-to-back, which helps since the third book follows seconds after the second book, hence I lumping the review of both books into one. In my opinion, the writer would have also bundled them together, other than the fact the second would then become double the size of the first book. Plus, a trilogy seems much cooler, I think.

Buy the books.
Get them in three, much cheaper.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

by Stieg Larsson

Read in 5 days. Probably 15-20 hours straight reading.

Its storytelling is almost as good as the Godfather. For those who haven’t read the Godfather, let me elaborate later.

The story in its core is mainly an investigating story, a thriller, as described on its blurb. I haven’t read a lot of thriller and certainly not a fan of one and if it wasn’t for the fact book-turned-into-movie, I doubt I’ll read this book. Anyway I’ve read it and I have a high opinion of it.

The language of the book is concise and has a quite large vocabulary, which seems like a surprise to me because translated book normally have long sentences and a bit boring. The book was translated from Swedish and although the book retains some foreign word, it never disturbs the reading nor does the translation feel unfinished. Kudos to the translator, Reg Keeland.

Although the book is not explicit but it does have adult scenes and without giving out the story, let me say the book deals with crime so you should expect some violence. This is not a warning, only a reminder to the faint-hearted. Altogether combined with the slightly challenging language of the book, I would probably not recommend this to young teens, though the story and knowledge that could be gain would be very useful.

Anyway the story involves three totally different main characters, Bloomkvist, Vanger  and Salander. Vanger is a millionaire obsessed with the lost of her grand-niece and decided to hire Bloomkvist to look into the 30 years old mystery. Through various circumstances, Salander were pulled to help Bloomkvist solve the mystery, which like all thrillers/mysteries, unravels in the end. However unlike normal crime/mystery books, the story is told with a slight different where they are told with less drama and seems more plausible, almost how it would happen in real life. What I like about it is the realism. I do however find the story could have ‘spiced’ up some parts where the characters discovers something but that would then be less realistic. I guess it depends on how you want to look at it.

The story is told in 3^rd person view yet the characters are deep that I could sometimes think their dialogue before even reading them. That may be an exaggeration but the characters do develop. What I said earlier about similarities with the Godfather is the way the characters are introduced.
I give you a made up example;

 Ahmad looks at the  clock near his bed. He pulls the chair he is sitting on towards the desk, puts the newly brewed cup of tea on the armchair and swivels himself towards the screen. He pushed the power button on the monitor and the machine began to whir into life. The monitor blinks before he pushes the buttons on the keyboard, when the login screen disappears as he can finally read his email.

The above is an example I wrote up, where the character just wanted to read his e-mail but the descriptions that leads to it are so elaborate that they make the character sounds real that it entrenches into the story. This is the quality that I'm referring to in this book and the Godfather. Of course my example is merely an example and nothing to be compared to them. Personally I think the Godfather is better in this aspect than this book but I have to read the other two books of the Millenium first to really judge it.

Yes, this book is a trilogy, which is a positive I think. If you like the first one, you’ll probably like the rest of the series. No hassles for you to find new interesting writers. On the other case that you don’t like them, you’ll have two more books out of the gazillion in the world to be crossed out of your reading list, just like what I did with the twilight series. Thus I encourage you to read this book, better before the films comes out.

“Why read when you can watch the film?” someone would ask.
Why do you go and eat at mamak, when you can tapau and eat in the car?

Haha, nonsenses aside, this is a good read.

The Ghost Writer, previously published as the The Ghost

by Robert Harris

took 3 days of September

A book is almost always interesting,if you can read it anywhere. Either that or it has some very raunchy scenes.
Well The Ghostwriter is certainly from the former. The story is about a ghostwriter, someone who writes on other people's behalf, mostly autobigraphies, who landed a job writing Memoirs for Britain's ex-Prime Minister. Unperturbed by the mysterious death of the previous ghostwriter, the protagonist took the job and it was not long before the mysteries and dark secret surfaces and he began to question his decision.
Uuu..scary, isn't it.

I am not fond of thriller,most of all.And the cliche secret blablabla mumbo-jumbo would normally turn me off but being the fact that the book was turned into a movie, I flicked the pages and gave the book a chance. Plus Ewan McGregor was on the cover(which almost means instant buy). Master Jedi, I am happy to see you.

The book proves to be entertaining from the start regardless of my impression above. The story was fast and there was hardly any lull or part where the book slowed down. I think the writer tried to show the writer was in a hurry,which succeeds, correspond to the end. I even had to look into the book to see the name of the main protagonist, the ghostwriter,which I can still not find. The book even doesn't emphasize the characters details that much, which I think is important for a thriller in order to keep the pace.

The book is full action. Not action in which there's lots of fighting but rather the pace. If I were to make a metaphor, it's like you're hosting a party where you see all the events and has lots of things on your hand but when asked to describe it afterwards you will say, "It's like a party." In a way the book is deceptively simple. There is a bit of twist in the end but other than that there is nothing mind-boggling. However that is not to say the book is not what it is, a fine story telling, but I would categorize it as a light read.

Language is easy enough and the jokes although are not wide apart, are not to hard to understand as most British jokes are. I wouldn't think any young readers would read this book but if they do be advised that it has some tiny adult scenes. Really tiny, nothing to compare to my previous post, Empress Orchid. Other than that I would recommend this to anyone, anytime