Bernard Jan's Blog - Posts Tagged "bookreview"

Not Just a Boy by Jonathan Hill

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Not Just a Boy is a warm coming-of-age human story about growing up and first love(s). A 78-pages-long novella – we can only wish it lasts longer! – of the talented author Jonathan Hill from Manchester, UK, takes us gently back to our childhood and school days where everything seemed to have been easier, carefree and more innocent. Unless . . . you were different.

For one of the two best friends moving to another school was everything but easy or innocent. Not being able to fit into the new environment, in difference to his friend, he is immediately labeled an outcast, unfit, different. His adolescent days unexpectedly turn into a nightmare of name-calling, ridiculing, bullying and physical assault; it seems like everybody knows about his schoolboy crush much sooner than him, even before he is fully able to comprehend the truth about himself. “There was precious little evidence, and certainly nothing concrete, to confirm that I liked boys. I just knew that I’d fallen for him. And if he’d been a girl or a . . . or a frog . . . maybe I would have felt just the same love towards her or it.”

Evidence or not, society doesn't forgive, and certainly not his school mates. Being different, being a boy with a crush on another boy, has a high price. And the price of being different he has to pay with broken friendships, isolation and loneliness, shame, confusion and torment.

After a grand opening, “I have been running for only a minute, maybe two, and yet their frenzied shouts are oddly distant, as if they originate not only from another part of the wood but from another time entirely. Every inch of me is riddled with pain and if I stop to think how bad the pain actually is, it is enough to make me want to tear off my limbs with my own teeth.”, and the tragedy that preceded this running but has been revealed only later in the book, at the end of the story, Jonathan Hill leads us to a pleasantly calming sunset of this remarkable novella, which warms our hearts with a promise of restored friendship and hope for a normal life despite being different.

Special kudos to the book cover art which just about perfectly captures the story that is about to grip and glue us from the first page already.

BJ
www.bernardjan.com



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Not Just a Boy
Jonathan Hill
Bernard Jan

Kuća abecede by Jussi Adler-Olsen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Experiments on humans are not a novelty in our humanity-deprived society, but in a psychological thriller The Alphabet House by Jussi Adler-Olsen set in a WW2 Nazi Germany and post-Nazi Europe, to be more precise England and Germany, are as shocking as the war itself and destruction it had left in lives and minds of those who survived it.

The world of two RAF pilots and good friends James and Bryan crashes down with the crash of their plane during a special photo-reconnaissance mission near Dresden. In hope of survival and running from the pursuit of enemy soldiers, they jump aboard a train which was supposed to be their way out to freedom. What they didn't know was that the train had been full of senior SS soldiers wounded on the eastern front and that instead to freedom it would take them deeper into Germany, behind the enemy lines, into the mental hospital the Alphabet House.

In a novel about war and an attempt of life during and after it, which according to its author is not a war novel, human relationships are put on the most challenging trial. Will friendship endure insanity, daily shock treatments, experimental drugs and the madness of one time, will it past the test of the basic instinct for survival which has lead to escape of one of the friends from the torments and captivity in a hellhole and ultimately to betrayal of another?

The Alphabet House is full of razor-sharp twists and turns, situations which border with surreal and almost impossible, acts of brutality and violence that will freeze blood in the veins of the reader. It is a collision and a symbiosis of the world of sanity and madness, where the unthinkable from our present perspective becomes natural in the blurred sight of a tortured mind.

Besides fascinatingly dissecting the behavior of the human mind, Jussi Adler-Olsen in The Alphabet House raises some serious questions about human relationships, how far we can go before we irrevocably damage them and whether a sincere repentance and goodwill are enough to forgive and maybe even forget.

In the particular case of James and Bryan, the real question is can friendship survive the act of Bryan's betrayal and thirty years of James' drugged and lost life? Can Bryan's wealth and money restore their relationship to the days and voices that were resonating from the past, when they were still kids? Or is the gap simply too big, the mind too damaged and the will too broken, just like the white crests of waves crashed by untamable and unforgiving forces of nature under the cliffs of Dover.

BJ
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The Alphabet House
Jussi Adler-Olsen
Bernard Jan

Lady Justice and the Candidate by Robert Thornhill

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Robert Thornhill is the author you cannot ignore, if nothing else than from the reason that he started writing at the age of sixty-six and that he has never learned to type other than with one finger and a thumb! When we add to that the number of 28 (!!) books he has written and published at his late but very prolific age, we are getting a small literary miracle!

Lady Justice and the Candidate is the first of Thornhill's books I had the pleasure of reading. It is a well-balanced mixture of humor, adventure and mystery, which tells us a story about the independent Presidential candidate Benjamin Franklin Foster who appears on the American political scene practicality out of nowhere and wins over the sympathies and hearts of American voters with his simple message of change and honesty with which he is supposed to clean America and restore it to its days of glory.

Mission impossible or not? Not so important, as long as you enjoy reading this book. And if you don't believe me that Lady Justice and the Candidate guarantees you a relaxed and fun time – even when you have to hear about politics over and over again – see for yourself. Then be honest and admit to yourself that indeed you had had a laugh, while secretly cheering for that unusual and extraordinary candidate who at the age of 70 had more vigor and passion than some much younger politicians we all too well knew about.

BJ
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Bernard Jan

The Scattered and the Dead by Tim McBain

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


That surprises come in small packages we can say with certainty for The Scattered and the Dead by Tim McBain and L.T. Vargus. But don't be too much surprised to see that this review, despite my best intentions, contains some spoilers.

The Scattered and the Dead (Book 0.5) has only 162 pages, but each page is carefully and meticulously thought over. It starts with the young man John Decker, who is writing a letter to an unknown girl (his neighbor), in a very unusual manner. He tells her that he sees her, sometimes feels like he knows her but he doesn't know how to say hi to her. Immediately after the opening sentences he starts describing to her the painful and realistically graphic death of his mother.

Decker is an introvert and he cannot fit into society. Even though he is good with saving money, he lives in his fortress of an apartment, where he is anonymous and no one knows about him. He is writing a letter to the girl three doors down across the hall, with whom he is trying to make a contact while watching the world go to shit on TV. The world is facing apocalypse, people are bleeding to death, zombies are eating people's faces, and he doesn't know how to connect with anyone.

He has endless supplies ordered from Amazon and he feels rather safe in his apartment when the face of the world, and consequently his life, rapidly changes. New deliveries stop to arrive, an old man sprays blood all over the sidewalk in front of his building, journalists wearing surgical masks report about riots and human misery everywhere. No one puts out the fire which devours the apartment building across the street, the power keeps cutting out until it goes out in the middle of the night and the big silence creeps in.

With such detailed descriptions of an apocalypse at the time of the plague, McBain and Vargus build suspense around their one main character who, as the world slides into its final days of civilization, becomes lonelier and lonelier. It makes me wonder what all goes on in the night, in the dark, in all of the places where my eyes can’t go. (. . .) Please help me find someone. I don’t know what to do, and I don’t want to be alone forever.

The horrific beauty of this book, unlike other zombie books, does not focus on the gory imagery of human degradation and destruction of our world. Those images coexist and function as a backdrop, while the true horror is that of a psychological nature of an unsocialized and abandoned 25 years old Derek who cannot stand the burden of loneliness in the world which completely belongs to him. Behold the loneliness. The only thing that’s left. The only thing that was ever real if you stripped away the novelties and distractions, maybe.

As the world around him crumbles further to pieces, Derek finds in himself strength to survive: But I’ve seen how things can change, how they must change, how all things must come to ash, how the old ways can die out and become something new. And I know I can change. I can transform. And so I will. And so he does transform, sometimes unaware of his actions which function on the most primal level. But he realizes and acknowledges the change that is happening not only in the world around him but within his lonely state as well. I started this letter in a lonely state, surrounded by people, literally in a building crawling with them, a city full of them, but unsure how to connect with them, how to really know any of them. And I end this letter in a lonely state, a different kind of lonely with no one around for miles. Apart from the dead bodies, I guess.

He is becoming someone else, an unknown person who not only manages to conquer his fears from both living people and the piles of dead bodies mass murdered in a government camp, but he also doesn't flinch in using a weapon to defend his survival, even finding rush and fun in killing other human beings.

McBain and Vargus have created a spectacularly creepy psychological and apocalyptic novella full of anxiety. Though from a different perspective, it brings to our mind a memory on the literary classic The Road by Cormac McCarthy. The biggest question we ask ourselves at the end of The Scattered and the Dead (Book 0.5) is who are the true winners in this story – the ones who mercifully (or not) fell victims or its survivor(s). For, living in a big wide world full of dead bodies of the disease-plagued mankind is not a prospect we should look forward to. Unless we are able to mentally transform into something we aren't, bared to our basic instinct.

BJ
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Bernard Jan

The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights: Simple Acts of Kindness to Help Animals in Trouble by Ingrid Newkirk

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The review for the book The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights: Simple Acts of Kindness to Help Animals in Trouble by Ingrid Newkirk I first wrote on December 28, 2009 and posted on Animal Friends Croatia web page. But there is never enough exposure for good readings and remarkable people, so I decided to repost it here as well.

When I first opened a copy of the latest book by Ingrid Newkirk, The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights: Simple Acts of Kindness to Help Animals in Trouble, after receiving it by mail, a colleague of mine stood behind me and gazed at it intently. I did not know what he was thinking, I just felt his presence and waited for him to speak his mind or tell me what he needed from me. A few more seconds drifted by before he stated, "I do not know where she finds time to write a book."

I didn't think when I replied to him, "Discipline," like it was self-understanding. But on second thought, I do not think I said something wrong. It takes lots of discipline to be a full-time active advocate for animals and also to find time to do something besides it – like writing a book.

Maybe it won't make much sense to many, but if we are speaking in terms of advocating for animals, discipline for me equals to commitment, dedication, empathy, compassion, kindness, love, perseverance, and patience.

This is what one needs to be a good animal advocate. These are qualities we must treasure if we want to successfully finish our marathon race. And these are features I find in Ingrid Newkirk.

Unfortunately, I did not have the pleasure of meeting Ingrid personally. Exchanging emails with her from time to time is always such a pleasant and encouraging experience though. Whether they carry a concise message as praise in their subject or explain something in length, I always look forward to them. And if I have to say something about Ingrid's latest book, I cannot do that without saying something about Ingrid, too.

Each book, each story, each line reflects the personality of its author. The same is with Ingrid and her books. During the last couple of years I read three of her books: 250 Things You Can Do to Make Your Cat Adore You, Kids Can Save the Animals: 101 Easy Things to Do and Free the Animals. Meanwhile, I read plenty of other books about animals and animal rights. However, Free the Animals along with Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust by Charles Patterson are probably the two books that left the deepest impact on me.

The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights: Simple Acts of Kindness to Help Animals in Trouble closely follows their footsteps, disarming me with its simplicity, practicality and outstanding message.

I've been an animal advocate for eight years already, after I dropped out of environmental protection. Throughout these years I learned a lot about animals, animal advocacy, and animal rights in general, but also about myself. Most of that knowledge I as a person and my group as a whole owe to PETA and Ingrid Newkirk. Animal Friends Croatia realized many successful campaigns and actions studying PETA's strategy and the way of reasoning, while Ingrid Newkirk proved herself to be more than just a good adviser: she was a real trooper, a helping hand that guided us and brought us into safety when our heads were below the water. Truly, lots of credits for our achievements and victories surely go to Ingrid Newkirk and PETA.

This is why The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights: Simple Acts of Kindness to Help Animals in Trouble is such an important book. It gives the reader an ocean full of practical advice on how to advocate for animals and how to treat them in everyday life, but it also talks to us. It communicates with us, page after page, sharing with us the rich experience of its author in saving animals and fighting for their rights.

On some 300 pages Ingrid guides us as gently as possible through all imaginable aspects of animal exploitation and abuse. Without holding back anything, she teaches us who are animals and why we should respect them and treat them as our equals. Yes, there are moments when she mercilessly tightens her grip around our hearts when she narrates the true stories of animals who suffered through the worst possible ordeals humans bestowed upon them. Remember the story about Makara the rhino; a downer cow at a stockyard in Kentucky; a polar bear named Gus housed in New York's Central Park Zoo; the Berosini orangutans; a seagull tangled up in fishing line in a Virginia park; Billy, a timid little Silver Spring monkey; a stray dog named Aurora; a hound dog named Cindy; and Hannah, the sheep, to name just a few? Yes, this is Ingrid's way: she shakes us out of our boots, she brings tears to our eyes and makes our hearts bleed. But once we compose ourselves again, we realize that we are not so helpless as we thought we were. There is hope for us, which means there is hope for animals, too. In the "What You Can Do" sections, Ingrid takes enormous efforts in going into the tiniest detail in order to show us that we can make a difference – a huge difference with little effort. And maybe here lies the greatest value of this book. "What You Can Do" is simply priceless if we really set our heart in doing something for animals

Yes, we can make a change, even with the smallest thing. We do not have to be in the front lines of animal rights advocacy doing demos, protests, vegan tastings, holding public speeches, lectures, or going nude for the animals' sake. No, we can sit comfortably in the warmth of our home, pick up the phone and dial our favorite radio station, call the TV news and leave a comment about something we just saw, write a letter to the newspaper editor or browse the Internet posting our comments, or maybe even create an animal rights blog or web page.

True, it is easy to be an animal advocate nowadays. The best thing is that whatever we do, each action we take, every bit of information we share with someone else, everything counts. Nothing's in vain. But the easier it is for us to become an animal advocate, the greater the obligation we have to really become one. There is no excuse for being passive, there is no excuse for doing nothing while animals suffer and are killed. There is no excuse for closing our eyes before the truth and ingenuity of Ingrid's advice. There is no excuse for closing our hearts after closing the cover of The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights: Simple Acts of Kindness to Help Animals in Trouble, shutting out and denying the cries of those who seek our help.

It is very simple: compassion and kindness are the keys to both human and animal liberation. When we liberate ourselves from the chains of tradition and old-fashioned views, the light that will shine up within us will liberate others, too. Let us light up our hearts and carry our torches in lighting up the hearts and lives of our fellow creatures.

Please, let this remarkable book written by a remarkable woman touch you with its kind message. Let it guide you into a world where there shall be no more death, sorrow, crying, or pain. For anyone.

BJ
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Bernard Jan

Viral Spark by Martin McConnell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


When relationships among humans just seem not be working the way we want them to, it is the artificial intelligence and things like tablets we have created who are reaching out in an attempt to communicate with us and sing! Even though it is completely surprising and unbelievable for Robert who maintains robots at work, because machines don't have feelings, he quickly adjusts to it and embraces the idea, becoming fond if it. The real question is, though, can such form of relationship exists and survive when a virus has infected the global network in the future world in which humans completely depend on technology?

Viral Spark is an easy read and the science fiction novella that will capture your attention whether you like or not the vision of the “robotized” future of mankind Martin McConnell has presented and offered to us. Make sure not to miss it.

BJ
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Bernard Jan

Rethink Your Diet: Be conscious! And learn how to live a healthy lifestyle. by Moein Ghahremani Nejad

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


If you never considered it possible to eat (raw) veggies and actually enjoyed it, you might want to reconsider it now.

In the book Rethink Your Diet: Be Conscious! And Learn How To Live A Health Lifestyle. by the young Iranian animal rights activist and healthy diet advocate, Moein Ghahremani Nejad, you will learn about raw veganism and how it can make the world a better place. In his quest to solve personal health problems and share acquired knowledge with others who are concerned about their health, animals and the health and survival of our planet, he offers to us a compilation of his readings, opinions, experiences, but also comments and suggestions from other experts in this field.

In the first and largest part of his book, Moein Ghahremani Nejad focuses on nutrition in order to help people stop making mistakes with their diet. In the rest of Rethink Your Diet: Be conscious! And learn how to live a healthy lifestyle., he shows us why it is important to change our diet on a global scale.

By reading this book, you will increase your chance of a long life by consuming a diet nature has provided us, and by doing so, we will extend our love and compassion to others - people, animals, and our home, Earth. We owe ourselves and the world we are living in to seriously think about starting a raw plant-based or plant-based diet, and this book will show you easily how to make a lifetime commitment.

BJ
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Bernard Jan

The Kill Order by James Dashner

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The best books are not those with happy endings but the ones that make your blood boil and make you silently scream from joy or despair. You sympathize with their characters and relate to them; you cheer for them and want to help them through their trials and hopeless situations because they are real to you; they are your new best friends and you don't want to see them harmed or dead. But not all good stories have a happy ending. Just like in real life, our favorites and darlings are robbed of their choices, and instead of laughing and celebrating their victories with them, we end up with tight throats, moist eyes and swallowing tears.

The Kill Order by James Dashner is a high-paced octane-fueled dystopian science fiction thriller. In the story of survival of the human race on the Earth devastated by solar flares, chances are so slim that they almost equal to zero. Those (not necessarily the lucky ones) who managed to survive the scorching effect of the Sun that melted the glaciers and flooded the East Coast of the United States with a tsunami of boiling waters are yet to face the real trials.

In order to save the humankind, that is, a selected few, a deadly virus—known as the Flare—is released with the purpose of controlling the remaining population. The infection, though, very quickly escalates and is out of control, and the real battle for their lives starts for Mark, Trina, Alec, Lana, Deedee and their friends against the infected.

The Kill Order is the first prequel book of the equally successful three novels in The Maze Runner series: The Maze Runner, The Scorch Trials and The Death Cure, and the fourth of five installments overall.

Without pretended modesty, I cannot wait to read the last installment, The Fever Code. I look forward to the new opportunity and satisfaction to remind myself of the Glade and the Gladers, the Maze, the Grievers, WICKED, the Flare, the Cranks, the Right Arm, the Immunes, the Bergs, the Post-Flares Coalition, Thomas, Theresa and all their dead and alive friends. For, each of these books in their own way shook me to the core, and this is what a good book should do to its readers.

BJ
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Bernard Jan

India Was One by An Indian

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


An Indian gave us the book which should encourage us to rethink our viewpoints and attitudes towards ourselves and others, especially now, when the walls grow around the globe like weeds after the heavy rain and the world seems divided more than ever in our lifetime.

With his slow and casual narrative style, An Indian introduces us into the lives of two childhood friends, Khaai and Jai, and guides us through their preparations for marriage and the mutual life as wife and husband. We learn about their everyday life and honeymoon in India, their departure for the United States and challenges and acclimatization to the new culture and customs, their trip through Europe and return to India when their homeland is divided in two countries and their life and the lives of millions of Indians take a face of a never ending nightmare.

An unusual angle of An Indian's prose is its educational character. Throughout the whole narration, even at the most gripping moments, An Indian teaches us about the Indian culture, language, religion, historical background, geography, extending this educational component even to the countries and places Jai and Khaai travel to. Some of the situations and moments he describes at great length and detail, like a cricket match between India and Pakistan, which might be too detailed and a little boring for a reader not into cricket, but is appreciated and entertaining for an Indian who lives for and is passionate about this sport.

Without a doubt, An Indian builds a climax of his story when Jai finds out about the turmoils in their country and talks over the phone to the operator of the Indian Consulate in San Francisco. Those are the moments when Khaai and Jai give in to their emotions and knowingly risk their personal fate to return home and find out what is happening to their parents, family and friends, in a country that was one but is now divided into two countries which practically cut all the communication with the rest of the world. Jai and Khaai are not the only ones; thousands of Indians from all corners of the world flood the sky in their urgency to return home, because you could take an Indian out of India, but you could never take India out of an Indian.

Khaai's and Jai's return to the two Indias is pumped with so much emotions and hopelessness mixed with irrational faith that it stands as a stark contrast to everything written and said until then. From now on An Indian's narration takes a turn into a passionate, emotional and more gripping one, making us believe any outcome is possible for that young couple, at the same time cleverly avoiding to give us nothing but a guess how their story ends.

The strongest message the novel India Was One sends us is not only about the importance of the unity of the country that has so many differences and divergences recognized under its flag, but the unity of the whole world. No political games or ideological and religious conflicts are worthy of the pain and suffering of a single, even the most insignificant, human being. Every man, woman and child has the right to happiness, and, if for no other reason, India must remain one.

For those intrigued to find out who is behind the pen name An Indian, the note about the author in his book says: The author was born and raised in Mumbai, India. He came to the US in 1989 to New York. He currently resides in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.

Nothing more than that. I can add one other detail he told me about himself in his personal correspondence with me, still respecting his wish for anonymity. He likes to write very thought-provoking books while being an entertaining story. And so he does.

BJ
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Bernard Jan

Eleanor i Park by Rainbow Rowell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I thought I was not a big fan of romance novels, and maybe I am really not, but there is something about Eleanor & Park that makes me question that. I hate to be a spoiler, but I need to say I was almost ready to send a not-so-gentlemanly message to Rainbow Rowell, the author of this amazingly cool YA novel, for holding me in disbelief, expecting and hanging over the cliff for so long!

This heart-warming and heartbreaking story gives us memorable characters in painstakingly real situations, with sixteen-year-old Eleanor and Park in the lead. Eleanor, a red-haired social misfit in totally wrong clothes, and Park, the cutest Asian guy ever coming from a perfect family. They are so different and unlikely to function as a couple, as one, and yet they keep fighting and beating all odds, becoming a perfect match in all their imperfections! There is where lies the true charm of this novel!

I might not make much sense to you (blame it on the excitement which still lingers under my skin) but it will all make sense to you when you grab that book and start reading it. It's great stuff! Don't miss it!

BJ
www.bernardjan.com



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Bernard Jan