Ebooks Galore!

Due to my awesome friends giving me hints on where to find free ebooks, like smashwords.com, coupled with my also free ebooks from librarything.com, I've managed to get books to read during my exam season (no worries, I study before I read).

The first book was actually finished quite some time ago, but I forgot to review it (._.)

If you're wondering, it's called Sudden Death by Michael Balkind, and the title is actually a golf term. The term refers to a play-off during a tie in a gold tournament. Since I actually play golf, I was really interested in how you could make golf a thriller.

Um, well, this book was actually more interesting because of its depictions of how the golf pro's live. The book itself was more of a wait-and-see rather than an active investigation into the threats to the pro golfer. That being said, the main character was likeable and probably the main reason why I kept reading it.

The other two books are by Agatha Christie. They are: The Secret Adversary and The Mysterious Affairs at Styles and basically the only books that I think are under public domain (copy-right issues you see). Well, there's not much more I can praise about her writing. The Mysterious Affairs at Styles was excellent, as usual, and Poirot really had me fooled (and he's really my favourite character of them all). The Secret Adversary is the first Tommy/Tuppence mystery I read (I assume it's a series, like her Miss Marple). It's certainly interesting, although at first, I didn't really like Tuppence, probably because she's too different from me. But by the end of the book, I was rooting for her and and Tommy (you can see the romantic side of Agatha Christie here), although another one of the pairings (nope, I'm not saying), didn't feel as plausible to me.

Yet another book that I finished (this is actually a catch-up of all ebooks I've been reading), is The Demon Girl by Penelope Fletcher, from manybooks.net. It's not the type I normally read, but I was so intrigued that this site I always assumed only had the copy-right expired books had a recently published book that I downloaded it.

This book is about how Rae, finds out she's a faerie. Wait, I should give you some background: this is in a world where there was some huge supernatural vs human war (they call it the Rupture) and as a result, most of mankind now lives behind walls in a city.

But back to the book. It was enjoyable because I could really picture it as a shoujo manga. The character descriptions and the inevitable love triangle was probably what made it happen. But since I like reading shoujo manga, I was fine with it. I hope some aspiring artist tries to manga-fy it soon though(:

Ok, the book is a free ebook from librarything.com and is called The Undying Apathy of Imogen Shroud. It's a zombie book and I'm sorry to say it's probably the only book that I'm not recommending. This is because the book main character (Imogen Shroud) is a lesbian. The fact that this has no relevance to the book (in terms of plot of theme) means I can't understand or even condone it slightly. If you know me personally, you'll know that I'm not the bigoted person I'm starting to sound like here. But because I'm a Christian, I feel called to love the sinner, that is, when my friend is gay, I won't treat that person with disgust just cause of that, but to hate the sin, which means I can't condone any book like this.

I hope this introduced you to a few more ebooks(:

The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing

I seem to have some sort of affinity with this book. It "haunted" me during my English Prelims, which made me, even through the exam period, go to the library to see if I could find it. When I finally found it (and even if the search took ten minutes, the ride back was fsst! as Huck would say) and started reading, I realised that an even earlier passage appeared in my secondary school unseen.

Is it that good? I'm not sure, but this what I know. The title of the book is taken from The Wasteland from T.S Eliot, and happily, it has my favourite phrase "April is the cruelest month". And that's about it.

Reading the book was confusing. The characters are all unlikeable (and well, the black people were not well characterised for me to feel anything towards them). Dick was, well, he's pathetic, to put it kindly. Mary is also pathetic, and she manages to destroy whatever sympathy I might have for her by being so racist (I don't like Dick, so I'm not going to bother about him). The plot of the book is confusing too. After reading this book, I kept wondering, Moses hates Mary, ok, but were they having an affair?

Throughout the whole book, I haven't seen a nice person, except maybe the English guy who appeared in the first and last chapters, and got so discouraged he had to leave. I wonder if that's a subtle message that in order for colonial powers to stay in power, they cannot be the least bit kind (the guy's no saint, but he's the best of the lot).

I suppose being Chinese, and having suffered from stereotyping, I can very easily disapprove of what they do. But at the same time, I do, unfortunately, sometimes practice reverse stereotyping. I wonder, is it so natural that we want to find a way to look down on others? If you look at history, there's never been a time (except with the early Church, before it became a state religion and opportunists and others came in), where people have lived in peace, equality with no judgement. And sadly, that day will probably never come until the last judgement.

Still, for a book that I wouldn't normally touch, I'm pleasantly surprised by it(:

Light (quote)

"If you beleive only the Sun is important, try reading at night without a bedside lamp"

-Thomas Edison-

P.S My 7 year old brother was the one that edited this photo to what this is.

Experiment with Goodreads/LibraryThing - Review of The Jungle Book.

This was written on both my Goodreads and LibraryThing account. I'm still getting used to the sites, so a full review/ comparison of them will come much later.
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Previously, I only knew about The Jungle Book if it was the Disney movie, which I didn't even watch. The show looked a little infantile and frankly, I didn't really get it.

Later on, I read and loved The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, which I heard was based on The Jungle Book. Interesting, but still not enough to get me to read it.

Finally, I read The God of Small Things by Arundathi Roy. In it, they quoted The Jungle Book's "We be of one blood, thou and I". After meeting all these instances of intertextuality, I had to read the book.

The book follows a fairly predictable format: story, then a poem about the story. While I was a little disappointed that not all the stories was about Mowgli, the other stories were interesting. I'm not sure about all this imperialism stuff, since I've not studied that aspect of literature in detail, but all I saw was the noble savage idea, such as that of Huckleberry Finn.

Although the stories lagged towards the end, I still enjoyed the book, if not for the content, then for all the wonderful instances of intertexualities within it.

View all my reviews