The main idea is that Jeff Winston, a mediocre radio journalist whose midlife prospects aren’t all that great, has a heart attack and dies at age 43… but then wakes up back in time as his eighteen-year-old self, with all his adult memories and experiences intact. Essentially, he gets to replay his life from eighteen to 43 again… and again, and again. It’s a common what-if fantasy that all of us over the age of 30 have probably had, and author Ken Grimwood’s exploration of this idea is what gives the book its strength. It’s one that asks big questions: why are we here, what is the meaning of life, and so on. It doesn’t provide any real answers, of course, but the journey getting to those non-answers will definitely make you think.

One caveat: The younger you are, the fewer the historical/pop-culture references you’re going to get. Not really recommended for those under 30, unless you happen to have a lot of older friends.

This is the sequel to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and happily it is up to the same high standard. Stieg Larsson has crafted an unusual plot here – I can’t remember ever reading a book where the action was driven to the same degree simply by whether the various members of the supporting cast liked the protagonist or not. But Lisbeth Salander is a very polarizing character, and the device works very well.

The translation here, again by Reg Keeland, is the same odd but workmanlike admixture of British and American English that somehow fits very well in helping to convey the idea that you’re no longer in an English speaking country. I also like the fact that he doesn’t go for the usual cheap trick of throwing in simple greetings and whatnot in the local language. Nothing is worse than trying to get through a novel set in an exotic foreign locale and having to deal with guerilla assaults from italics.

This novel is the second volume of the “Millenium Trilogy”, and unfortunately ends a bit abruptly. (Much different from the first volume, in which the main plot point was solved over a hundred pages before the end of the book.) Apparently the third volume, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, is more along the lines of actually being the second half of this book. All fine and well; I have no problem waiting for the next installment to come out in another six months or so. One piece of advice for those new to the series: I would suggest reading the first volume before tackling this one. While some slightly tedious plot-summarizing occurs at the beginning of this book, you will have a much greater understanding of the various characters’ motivations, which, as mentioned above, is really key to understanding the novel.

The nice thing about reading Barry Eisler, in addition to the technical writing stuff, all of which he does pretty well, is that he actually knows what he’s talking about. You won’t find Japanese sales clerks being rude to their customers, speaking English like California surfer dudes, or otherwise behaving like Americans with unusually straight black hair. His Asian characters are Asian, his Americans American, his Europeans European. Very refreshing, considering the plethora of otherwise sensible writers who have no fucking clue.

This latest installment in the John Rain series matches the first three for quality and ties up most of the subplots that were introduced in those books. Rain also is developing as a character; there has been a gradual interweaving of humor over the last two books, and it helps to balance things out. Sure, being an professional assassin probably isn’t a barrel of laughs most of the time, but escape reading is escape reading, and breaking the tension here and there is a lot more fun than watching Rain being all angsty over the state of the world. Supporting characters Dox and Delilah both help out in this respect as well.

Bottom line: If you like a good thriller with exotic international settings, this will be right up your alley. Read the first three in the series before trying this one though; it’s fine as a standalone novel, but will give you much more satisfaction if you do.

The rest are available to author Nadia Lee’s newsletter subscribers (the subscription is free). Thought some of you might want to check it out. Here’s the blurb from her website:

Melinda Lightfoot, a preschool teacher with an unusual ability to flit in and out of fairy tales, never thought she would get into trouble…

…until the Fairy Tale Police arrest her while she is in Beauty and the Beast. They offer her a deal: Find Beauty, who left the story when Melinda trespassed into it, or be charged with the ultimate crime — Fairy Tale Killer. If that’s not bad enough the Beast tags along in search of his true love, and Melinda starts falling for the fairy tale prince. She must choose between doing the right thing and having her own happily ever after.

Warning: This title contains the following: Fairy Godmother, the Wicked Witch, dysfunctional fairy tale families, ax-wielding executioners and a happily ever after (or two).

I liked this movie. Everyone seems to be wanting all the subsequent Terminator sequels to be T2 all over again, and, well, it ain’t gonna happen. But this is a good movie in its own right, and if you don’t try to compare it to an all-time classic, you’ll like it too.

The story takes place after Judgment Day but before the events of the first Terminator movie. As such, we get to see a young Kyle Reese and an older John Conner. I thought Christian Bale did an okay job with the Connor role (a little too much pathos for my reading of the character), but Anton Yelchin was superb as Reese. I also liked Sam Worthington in his role as the prototype for the T-800 series terminators. (As I was watching the movie I kept thinking that they’d picked someone who, at times and from certain angles, reminded me a heck of a lot of Arnold…)

There are lots of homages to the original two movies, so the cognoscenti will be happy. The geek-tech factor is also satisfyingly high. Recommended for anyone who likes the series and wants to see how it will fare without Arnold Himself.

As you can see, the cover is emo teen girl stuck in barren, spooky forest, and that would work pretty well as a one-line summary of the plot itself. But as one might suspect from the title, the level of writing is a cut above average, and that saves this book.

Mary lives in a post-apocalyptic world, a member of a village in the middle of a forest cut off from the rest of humanity – if the rest of humanity still even exists – by the presence of hordes of zombies. The village is run by a matriarchal sisterhood who cling to their secrets and time-worn methods of keeping everyone safe from said zombies. Naturally, this means sticking mainly to the village. But there’s a problem: Mary wants to see the ocean.

There isn’t really much plot here, just a girl turning into a woman and desiring more from her life than to be stuck in a zombie-surrounded village, married off to an eligible boy who she doesn’t really want. When the village is finally overrun one day, she gets her chance. She and a small group of friends survive and escape into the forest, and the second half of the book is about their attempts to stay alive.

There are plenty of chances for an unskilled writer to founder, but Ryan pulls this rather lackluster concept off quite well… remarkably well, in fact, for a first-timer. There isn’t a lot of horror, despite the concept, and there isn’t any sex, and the whole thing could easily have been a YA version of The Handmaid’s Tale gone very very wrong. But I found the book enjoyable, and will read the sequel when it comes out this March.

Dane Kennedy’s quick-sketch biography of Richard Burton takes an unusual, but ultimately very fruitful, approach. Instead of concentrating like so many of Burton’s biographers on the man and his many accomplishments, Kennedy locates Burton firmly within the Victorian world, using Burton’s multi-faceted life to illustrate and probe into that world. While Kennedy is first and foremost an academic, the book is highly readable, and in fact makes many of the more conventional Burton biographies (Edward Rice’s, for example) seem dry by comparison.

Even someone who is reasonably familiar with Burton’s life should find quite a bit that is new here. Certainly, the most familiar parts – the search for the source of the White Nile, the disguised entry into Mecca, the Arabian Nights translation – when held up against the backdrop of Victorian England and the British Empire, acquire new life and serve to stimulate thought beyond simple awe at the man himself. Kennedy also does a good job of showing Burton’s weak points (his unsuitability for politics, etc.), presenting a more balanced picture of the man than some of the more hagiographic efforts.

All in all, this is an excellent book. It is a fairly quick read, but nonetheless well researched and copiously end-noted, with enough in the notes to satisfy anyone who wishes to delve further into any of the many, many fascinating topics that are broached. I recommend it to anyone with an interest in Burton, history, the British Empire or Victorian England.

This is the first Scandinavian novel I’ve read since Smila’s Sense of Snow (which was superb) a decade or two back, and I have to say that I should probably read more. Stieg Larsson has concocted a slow-starting but ultimately very satisfying novel.

There are some oddities here for a reader who has been raised on get-to-it-do-it-and-tie-it-up American offerings. For one thing, it takes a hundred pages or so to set everything up. For another, the main mystery is resolved a good 150 pages before the end of the book…and yet the plot has enough threads and steam left in it to carry you the rest of the way without any problem at all. Stylistically there isn’t really anything to say one way or another – Larsson (in translation, at least) tells his story with a minimum of theatrics, but there is enough detail provided to keep things engaging.

One particular aspect stood out: I very much liked the way that Salander was more than able to physically hold her own against the men in the book. Too often writers try to make their female characters tough and it just seems implausible, if not downright silly. But Salander’s scrapes against men (and there are a few; the original Swedish title was Men Who Hate Women) come across as very believable. I can think of several movie directors who could learn something here.

As with any book that was written in a language other than English, the quality of translation is a question. In this case, Reg Keeland has done a good job, although there are some interesting (well, if you’re into linguistics) usages here and there. The English is really neither British nor American, but a sort of far-north amalgam that had me smiling at times. But the meaning is always clear and the peculiarities never really get in the way; rather they lend a little bit of extra exoticness to the book, and I count them as a plus.

Summary: Not for the GiveItToMeNow crowd, but for anyone else The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is definitely recommended. I’ll be reading the sequels.

Life of Pi is not your usual book. Most of the story takes place in a lifeboat, and the main characters are a boy and a Bengal tiger (trapped together in the boat). It’s an inventive story, with heavy philosophical overtones that I will leave to other readers. (For those interested, a starting point might be the name of the ship that sinks, Tsimtsum.) It also won the Man Booker Prize.

Pi is the nickname of Piscine Patel, polytheist and son of an Indian zookeeper. Although author Yann Martel isn’t Indian, he has done an inordinate amount of traveling and is able to write from an Indian perspective that seems convincing, at least to an outlander. He also knows an impressive amount about animals, which was one of the more delightful aspects of the novel. I recommend it to anyone who likes animals, or a novel to dig into and uncover multiple layers of meaning, or just wants something different.

Heart of Gold, by Sharon Shinn, failed to hold my interest. The cover looked good, the blurbs suggested an interesting story, but when I actually cracked open the book it just kind of…died. There was too much in the way of obvious gender-reversal, and I just wasn’t hooked by the blue/gold class struggle motif. The author’s style didn’t really hold my interest either; one too many clichés and too much in the way of telling rather than showing. She could learn a few lessons from Iain Banks about how to immerse a reader in an alien culture right off the bat. Even the murder that takes place a few dozen pages in is told in an excruciatingly roundabout method.

This isn’t a terrible book; it’s competently written and readers with different tastes might like it. But I put it down after about 50 pages.