Book Reviews

Bad Luck and Trouble
By Lee Child
Review by Jonny Zetterström

You do not mess with Jack Reacher. People keep trying and people keep regretting.

Lee Child has written numerous novels about Jack Reacher. The main character is a giant ex military police major who knows how to fight. He is also interested in numbers and more or less a vagabond.

Reacher is out of cash and checks his account balance at an ATM-machine only to find out that he’s got too much money in his bank account. This could of course be an error, but the deposit could also be a military police radio code calling for urgent assitance. The latter is true.

Back in the army Reacher had founded a small elite unit consisting of nine people. They were the special investigators of the military police and back then the saying was “You do not mess with the special investigators”. All of these men and women of army law enforcement were excellent officers; but suddenly it seems that six has disappeard from the face of the earth and the seventh has been found murdered.

I have read quite a few of the novels written about Jack Reacher and this latest one, Bad Luck and Trouble, is just as good as the others if not better. There’s excitment. There’s suspense. This is a book I could hardly put down. It’s brutal. It’s a thriller and it’s highly recommended reading.

David Baldacci
A short biography by Jonny Zetterström

I remember when I first discovered David Baldacci a few years ago. I was standby at work and picked out a paperback — “The Winner” — from the bookshelf. I was instantly hooked and from there on I’ve been looking for books by Baldacci.

David Baldacci has written thirteen consecutive New York Times best sellers:

Absolute Power
Total Control
The Winner
The Simple Truth
Saving Faith
Wish You Well
Last Man Standing
The Christmas Train
Split Second
Hour Game
The Camel Club
The Collectors
Simple Genius

There’s also Freddy and the French Fries children’s series for young readers.

David was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1960. He’s recieved a Bachelor of Arts from Virginia Commonwealth University and a Law Degree from University of Virginia. He spent nine years practicing law in Washington, D.C..

Although a best selling novelist he made numerous unsucessful attempts at writing screenplays and shortstories before turning into novels. It took him three years to complete his first novel, Absolute Power. It took another two years to get it published. But once it was published it was an international best seller. Castle Rock Entertainment turned the book into a motion picture starring Clint Eastwood and Gene Hackman.

Baldaccis books have been published in more than 40 languages in more than 80 countries. There are more than 50 million copies sold world wide.

Residing with his wife and two children in Vienna, Virginia, he’s the cofounder of the Wish You Well Foundation. It is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting literacy efforts across America.

The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists
By Niel Strauss
Review by Jonny Zetterström

I stumbled across this book in some kind of bookstore somewhere about a year ago and I read it without knowing much about it. I’d never heard of Neil Strauss. Turns out he’s a bit famous and wrote some kind of biography over Mötley Crüe and porn star Jenna Jameson. This book is a bit famous among men and infamous among women.

It probably is not ideal to write a review many months after actually reading the book. On the other hand I’ve had quite some time to contemplate it and let it sink in.

I spent a few minutes googling the book and came across blogs condeming the book. This is the book from hell. It objectifies and disrespect women etc.

Well, I thought the book was quite funny. The basic plot outline is about this guy, supposedly Neil himself, being constantly rejected with women. He goes online and finds a news group of pick up artists. Men who are masters in the art of getting laid.

Eventually they create “Project Hollywood”. They rent a house together and pick up a lot of girls. It’s bound to go bad so of course it doesn’t really last…

To me the book is fictious. I suppose there is a chance it really did happen and in that case I feel sorry for most of the characters of the book.

I really don’t think reading this book will be of much help getting young men laid more often. But what do I know. At least the book is fun to read.

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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
by J. K. Rowling (about J K Rowling)
Review by Jonny Zetterström

In ten years or seven books Harry Potter has turned from a child into a fullgrown man or wizard. He’s a young adult with a mission: to save the wizardig world from lord Voldemort a k a He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named a k a the Dark Lord.

I fell in love with the magic world of Harry Potter years ago. I read the first books and had to wait for the next. The seventh and last book was recently released and fans where standing in line to get it. I bought it the same day, but it was a Saturday and I got some well-deserved sleep before going to the local bookstore.

In my first encounter with Harrys world he was about to turn eleven; he found out of the magic world and left for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. In this book he turns seventeen and is thus of age and allowed to use magic.

Voldemort has attempted to cheat death by splitting his soul into multiple pieces and storing each piece in a special object called a horcrux. In each hurcrux his soul lives on and Harry has to destroy the remaining horcruxes in order to finally defeat Voldemort.

The wizarding world is turned upside down. The Death Eaters, followers of Voldemort, rule by terror and hunts down the mudbloods and muggleborns.

I have to admit I really didn’t like the sixth book that much. It seemed a bit too dark to me. But this one I really love.

The story brilliantly builds up from page to page towards the inevitable end.

Truely recommended reading.

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Joanne, J. K. Rowling is the bestselling author of the Harry Potter books.

The Harry Potter story is set in a fantasy world. Harry is a young wizard with a scar shaped as a lightning bolt. He is famous in the wizard world for surviving an attack from the dark lord. He attends Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry and fights dark powers throughout the series. The books have sold over 325 copies worldwide.

Joanne, or Jo as she prefers to be called, was born 31 July 1965. Her real name is Joanne Rowling; the K was added when the publisher, Bloomsbury, thought a female author wouldn’t appeal to the intended audience of young boys and thought it better to use a two letter pseudonym. Supposedly Joanne chose to add a K for Kathleen, as a tribute to her grandmother.

She wrote down her first story as a five or six yearold. But it wasn’t until 1990, when she on a four-hour-delayed traintrip from Manchester to London, that she first thought of Harry Potter. The basic idea was a young man attending a school of wizardry. It took a few years for her to complete the novel. Unemployed Joanne completed it in 1995.

The seventh and final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, has just been published 21 July 2007. Joanne states that an eight book is very unlikely, but that she “never says never”.

Pompeii
by Robert Harris
Review by Jonny Zetterström

Marcus Attilius, an aqueduct engineer and widower, is sent from Rome to Misenum to replace the old aquarius, the man responsible for the aqueduct, who disappered.

Although aqueducts are fascinating they’re hardly exciting; but this story takes place in Campania in A.D. 79 and the vulcano Mt Vesuvius is about to erupt.

The story begins as Marcus Attilius returns from a failed nightly mission to find a new source of water. He barely gets back before a beautiful girl, Corelia, accompanied by an old woman urges him to go to the fish breeding.

Ampliatus, the father of Corelia, has just thrown a slave to the eels. The slave was the care taker of the fish breeding, and the most expensive fishes has just died. The water reeks of sulfur. This discovery leads Attilius to Misenum’s water reservoir where he shokingly discovers that the aqueduct is running dry. The aqueduct must be broken somewhere.

Since the water is still running in Pompeii, Marcus Attilius heads off to repair the aqueduct. In Pompeii he gains a powerful adversary in Ampilatus. The former slave is secretly controlling the city and he intends to mary off beautiful Corelia to one of the men controlling the city.

Corelia discover her father’s plot to kill Attilius and sneaks off to warn him. Meanwhile the earth is stirring and the slaves are afraid of the
giants they believe is causing it all. The people of Pompeii make sacrifice to Volcanus.

This thrilling novel is a great adventure and also a terrific way of learning a lot about ancient Rome. I believe it is historically accurate and a few great Romans are involved in the story.

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The Camel Club
by David Baldacci
Review by Jonny Zetterström

Oliver Stone is a mysterious man. Obviously it’s a taken name used by the caretaker of a cemetery who spends a great amount of his time in a tent in Washington, D.C. The tent on one side of the street and the White House on the other.

The story unfolds as the Camel Club holds a private meeting but ends up bearing witness to a murder of an employee of the NIC — National Intelligence Center. Meanwhile a group of arabs prepares for an attack on the President of the United States.

Suddenly the conspiracy theories no longer seem so far fetched.

Honestly, yes, it did take some time to “get into” the book but after reading the first few chapters I was hooked. Baldacci is an excellent writer and one of my favorite ones — for a reason. I was hooked. I loved the book and I had to try hard not to bite my fingernails in the suspense.

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The Thief of Always
by Clive Barker
Review by Jonny Zetterström

Clive Barker, born in Liverpool in 1952, is the bestselling author of Imajica and The Great And Secret Show. He also “illustrates, writes, directs and produces for the stage and screen”.

The story is a pretty unusual one; it’s about a boy named Harvey Swick who is very bored by life itself. Something you understand from the beginning since the first sentence is “The great gray beast February had eaten Harvey Swick alive”. But then some creature comes and takes him away to the Holiday house of mr Wood. It is a very funny place and everything seems great, in the beginning that is. But after a while he starts to realize that it isn’t at all the paradise he first thought it was. So the real story is about his struggle to try to defeat mr Hood and get home to his parents. If he succeeds? Well, read the book.

When you read the book you get a very special feeling. It feels like if you were reading a book for children, but it is definitely not such a book. Everything is seen from a child’s point of view. The author somehow manages to get a feeling of horror through the lovely descriptions of Christmas and even lovelier presents. Even though everything seems to be all right and happy, you, as a reader, get the feeling that something is terribly wrong.

All that can’t be said better than “In a tale that manages to be both cute and horrifying, bestselling novelist and screenwriter Barker put the dark side back into childhood fantasy” as Publishers Weekly did it.

The authors own illustrations is a very good description of each chapter comming, but you don’t understand what it illustrates until you’ve read the chapter. The illustrations is of a very high class and in some strange way they are both ugly and beautiful in the same time. Just as the book.

This is a book that I recommend for everyone capable of reading. And when you have finished the book, why don’t you ask yourself whether it really happened or not.

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