Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

I always thought that Crime and Punishment was a book people only talked about having read because they wanted to brag about having read it. I was pleasantly surprised, then, to have loved it. It's a cracking read, set in a fascinating time in Russian history, and has some amazingly thought-provoking characters and plot twists. I totally recommend reading this book next time you're on holiday and have the time to really get into it.

Great holiday read rating: 9/10

Overall rating: 9/10

A rant about inappropriate covers and blurbs (and The Other Hand by Chris Cleave)

Many books have totally inappropriate covers. It must be of great frustration to authors - especially women authors - that a book may end up with a cover that attracts the wrong kind of reader. I think women authors get the raw end of this more often than men, as I've noticed that so many books by women end up with shoes, cocktails or lipstick on a pink-themed cover regardless of how relevant they are to the book's content.

.

A pet peeve of mine is also blurbs that give away too much plot. Reading on the back cover of the book that it's about a character coping with the loss of their job is one thing if it happens in the first chapter, but deeply irritating if the job isn't lost until half way through the book. Sometimes I wonder if whoever drafts the blurbs on the back of books even understand what it's like to enjoy reading and plot development.

.

The great thing about The Other Hand is that a decision was made at some point by the publishers to have an oranage cover and a minimalist blurb. That allowed me to pick it up with nothing but a strong recommendation from a friend, and enjoy it without even knowing the plot beforehand. To give you the same chance I had to enjoy it I won't say any more except that after reading it I gave it to both my Mum and Mother In Law for Christmas last year.

.

Publishers having nous rating: 10/10

Overall rating: 8.5/10

Unhappiness at hearing Nicole Kidman wants to be in the movie rating: 9/10

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

Given that this book has won not only the Booker Prize but the Booker of Booker Prize as well, my hopes were high. Granted, Midnight's Children is very well written, and there are passages that are simply beautiful. I did find, though, the lack of character development a real barrier for me, so while I thought the book was very good, I didn't think it was excellent. It's worth reading though, if only to have a view on a book that is supposed to be the best book of the last 25 years.

Slightly over-rated rating: 10/10
Overall rating: 8/10

The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

How do you review a book that is impossible to put down, very well written, but so creepy you feel icky after having read it? Especially as that combination means reading into the wee hours of the morning, so the creepy parts of the book become magnified.

I guess all you can do is state the above, and add that going back to my below post it is one book that I would not like to see on the screen. An excellent read, but so disturbing I am not sure if I am glad to have read it or not.

Although, at least I didn't find it as traumatic as my friend who has a maggot phobia did. I even covered the relevant pages with a giant sticker in advance, knowing how much he hates them. Of course he took the sticker off and read it anyway though, and can safely say he found the book more disturbing than I did for it.

Can't put down rating: 10/10
Disturbing rating: 8.5/10
Overall rating: 8/10

An unscientific statistical analysis of movies that are better than the books

You know how it goes - you read a book, love a book, then get all excited when the movie gets made. Deep down, though, you know that you'll probably leave the theatre sighing and telling whoever you went with that the book was better. Just to totally make up some statistics pulled from no-where polite with no scientific backing, I think that 60% of the time I still prefer the book but am able to recognise that they are different mediums and enjoy the movie in its own right. Recent examples include Everything is Illuminated, Slumdog Millionaire/Q&A, Charlotte Gray, and the Other Boleyn Girl. The Harry Potter books also fit in this category for me.

.

30% of the time I leave the movie angry that a book I've enjoyed has been bastardised in some way. An excellent example of this is My Sister's Keeper, which could be the subject of a very long and boring rant. The Time Traveller's Wife also springs to mind. 5% of the time, the books and movies seem exactly the same, and neither is better. Atonement barely differed between the book and the movie, and I found The Reader the same. In both cases I read the book after seeing the movie hoping for something extra, and both times I felt let down.

.

5% of the time, though, I actually prefer the movie. Examples include:

- The Shipping News (book ... so ... boring)

- The English Patient (the movie was beautiful, but I found the book pretentious)

- Apt Pupil (I found the movie much more believable)

- Brokeback Mountain (I was very disappointed in this book. But given my reaction to the Shipping News as well, maybe I'm just not a fan of Annie Proulx)

- Zodiac

- Once Were Warriors (Alan Duff may have good ideas, but I don't think he's a good writer at all)

.

Do you have any? What books/movies fit in the above categories for me? Can you come up with a better totally bollocks formula? There are of course other times when I refuse to see a movie on account of loathing the book (three words: eat, pray and love), or in cases like Revolutionary Road where the book is so haunting I don't have the emotional energy to put myself through the movie. But, that can be another unscientific statistical analysis for another time ...

The Gathering by Anne Enright

As this book won the Booker in 2008, I feel the need to share just how bad I found it. There seems to be a disturbing trend in literature recently to have over-written books that have no plot and too much middle class angst. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good meandering slow book if it’s well written – such as anything by Kazuo Ishiguro, or Murakami when he’s not dipping in magic realism. The Gathering, though, was not well written at all – it was confused, pretentious and boring. I do not recommend this book at all, and since reading it have lost respect for the Booker as a marker of a good book. It has also well put me off the sad Irish childhood genre of books.

4/10

A Brutal Art by Jesse Kellerman

This is the worst book I have read in a long time. The concept is great - a man that owns an art gallery discovers some dark but brilliant pieces of art that may have been drawn by a serial killer. After the first half, though, the book is awful. It's too pretentious to be a good page-turner, but isn't well written enough to be literature. In A Brutal Art you get the impression that the author can't decide what sort of book he wants to write, and it ends up being boring and anti-climatic with everything resolved in a way that was simply lazy. His use of tenses bugged me too - past tense for the present, and present tense when describing the past. Hmph. If I had not been on a train journey with it, I doubt I would have finished.

Overall score: 3/10 (it gets some marks as I actually finished it rather than throwing it to the ground in disgust)
Genre score: 1/10.

What's the worst book you've read recently?