Halloween 2014

Source: http://wallpapers-for-desktop-background.blogspot.in/2012/06/best-wallpapers-of-scary-halloween.html

This is that time of the year again! This was the fourth year in a row in which I drew up my  own Halloween List for October reading.

As usual, Stephen King makes his appearance fourth year in a row, followed by Sergei Lukyanenko's third entry in as many years with his delightful Night Watch series. Dropped this year, mid-series, was Dean Koontz, whose Odd Thomas series kept getting progressively worse and I haven't had the patience to try another one out. Turn of the Screw and The Haunting of Hill House represent the Classics. Vampires and Zombies get their turn with The Historian and World War Z; I doubt anyone needs any introduction to the 7 book, Rosemary's Baby (and the Mia Farrow starrer movie adaptation)

The complete list for this year is here:-

1. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova ()

2. Twilight Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko ()

3. World War Z by Max Brooks ()

4. Turn of the Screw by Henry James ()

5. The Stand by Stephen King ()

6. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson ()

7. Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin ()

64. Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

Halloween 2013#7

My final read this Halloween, and may I say, the best of them all. Saving the best for the last, well, not really. This one also happened to be the most voluminous of my reads this Halloween. Not that the higher word count was unwelcome, there was no endless drudging past long details and explanations, no meaningless characters and characterisations – everything fits nicely into a neat puzzle. For all its length, the book was quite fast paced, or at least it gave the impression to be, and that’s what is important, right?

Finally we know what happened to the kid, Danny, left with his unique gift (?) at the end of The Shining, less a, even if brutal, father. The growing up, the fall, the further fall to rock bottom, repentance, and the eventual redemption. We also gain a little more insight into the mysterious gift, the shining, the advantages and the risks.

Add a vampirish race, with the long tooth, but without the blood-sucking mess. They do suck something, but it is a little less tangible, even if more horrific – these of the True Knot, as they like to be called, have little use for virgin girls, however they relish in torturing and killing small kids.

Then there is an entirely adorable kid, turned teenage girl, Alba – Dan’s protégé – his support, his one last shot at redemption – a girl who is as much his protector, as she needs protection – the focus of the entire book.

Stephen King, not one to waste characters, adds a bunch of them – from kind old men, loving grandmas, loving parents, some characters reaching out from beyond the grave, most of them benign – a bit too much goodness for a King novel. Perhaps, he craves a happy ending too…sometimes…

63. Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko

Halloween 2013#7

Night Watch series figures among the best (Urban) fantasy series I have read. I have been reading, savouring, the Night Watch series one book a year, every Halloween. The fulfilling feeling one gets from a book so well conceptualised and written can only be matched by the wait and the expectations built up over a year.

There is the supernatural, then the philosophising about good and evil, and finally some serious action and mind games to top it off. This has been a regular feature with both the books. The world is quite simple and easy to understand, a lesson there for young writers like Samantha Shannon. There are the usual vampires and werewolves, shape-shifters, doing totally unusual things and some very unlikely witches and magicians as well - all categorised under "Others". There is no triumph of good over evil, the entire series is based over the concept of balance of light and dark; note the choice of words "light and dark" in place of "good and evil", a point of differentiation which will become much clearer once one reads the book.

Having read the masters like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Gogol, I was always aware of the depth of concepts in Russian literature. This remains, however, my only modern read from a Russian author and I wasn't disappointed in the least. Everything was well thought, even the choice of Russian songs quoted in the book, at various places, under various settings.

A book out of the mould; a book to read in leisure; a book to remember.

62. The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon

Halloween 2013#5

I am not yet sure what made me pick this book up as one of my Halloween reads, maybe it was the genre listed as "Paranormal" and "Dystopian". I do admit to being curious to read this book in general, with the young author already being hailed as the next Rowling. The declaration being a bit premature, in hindsight, maybe.

There is no denying the fact that Samantha Shannon has a lot potential as a writer, her imagination good, and the execution not too shabby. However, in her debut novel, I think she tried to do a bit too much, a bit too soon. In a novel of this size, she created a new Dystopian world, added a couple of alien races, not-so-ordinary human beings (and tonnes of categories of them, no less!) and strung along far too many ideas for a reader to keep track of, or make associations and connections with.

Then there was the fact that the protagonist was not likeable, not one bit. Indeed, she was annoying for the most part, and mule-headed for the other. And she didn't even have the benefit of a traumatic past like Katniss Everdeen or Lisbeth Salander to explain her behaviour. The biggest shock she seemed to have undergone is the fact that her first crush is gay! Boo hoo! Cry me a river and see if I care!

Having said all of the above, the effort for a debut novel was fantastic, I hope and believe she will only improve from here. The theme and ideas in the novel were quite original, the concepts and powers quite fresh and the writing satisfactory.

I am reasonably certain that I will try the sequel as well - but will I continue to read the series (the series is intended to have 7 books from what I have read), is a question for another time.

In this review, I have obviously dwelt more on the negative and done little to justify my 3.5 star rating. That however, was the intention, to highlight why this book didn't get a 4 or 4.5 from me, rather than the other way around.

Halloween 2013

Source: http://wallpapers-for-desktop-background.blogspot.in/2012/06/best-wallpapers-of-scary-halloween.html

I have been doing Halloween Reads for 3 years now, which starts in the month of October, with other readers from Librarything. One of the most interesting feature of such a Group Halloween Read is that while there is a suggested List created by one of the members, everyone is free to pick all, a few, or even none of the books from the List and create and follow a List of his/her own. There is no restriction on the number of books either, readers read 1-13 books depending on their time availability and inclination. Nor is there any time restriction, one can take as long as one wants to, to complete the reads. And despite such a loose structure for a Group, it works remarkably well. Readers share their opinions on the common reads, on reads they may have done earlier and get to add new books to their TBR (to the uninitiated, TBR stands for To Be Read) stack.

In all my previous Halloween reads, Stephen King is one author who makes an appearance every year, figures, right? Well, this year is no different. In fact this year, I have two Stephen King books in my list of 7, Blockade Billy, a novella on Baseball, a game I got hooked into from Anime and Manga of all things! The second one is Doctor Sleep, the sequel to the classic, and one of my all-time favourites, The Shining. A sequel which comes 36 years of the release of the book. The Shining was one of the, actually probably the only book, that really, really scared me. Even the Jack Nicholson (who happens to be one of my favourite actors) starer movie version looked like a Disney version of the real thing. Needless to say, I am all excited and a little spooked to start with Doctor Sleep.

Listed below, is my proposed Halloween List for this year.

Halloween Reads Planned:-

1. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
2. Blockade Billy - Stephen King

3. Day Watch (Book 2) - Sergei Lukyanenko
4. The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman
5. Brother Odd - Odd Thomas (Book 3) - Dean Koontz
6. The Bone Season - Samantha Shannon
7. Doctor Sleep - Stephen King