Another crime fiction thriller hot on the heels of my last book review, and in this thriller crime fiction guru James Patterson teams up with old partner Andrew Gross to smelt another scorching story from the word processor! Judge & Jury stars features the unlikely heroine of a reluctant member of a jury Andie DeGrasse in a mob case, and in Nick Pellisante, FBI Agent, we find the hero, as they end up pursuing their own brand of justice when the system fails them and Dominick Cavallo escapes punishment from the law…
Whatever literary purists may say, James Patterson’s (and his co authors’) thrillers are incredibly accesible books and make fiction available to those who might otherwise not have an hour to site and wade through lengthy chapters of interminable prose! The books are fast paced and incredibly easy to read – on the train, in a lunch hour, even while a bowl of pasta cooks! I love escaping into these novels for short dips or long chunks, and am always ready for the next James Patterson!
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Been getting into reading thrillers again lately, and in this field James Patterson needs no introduction as perhaps the master practioner of the genre at this moment in time! Cross stars (for I like to think of these books as written in a very cinematic style!) that stalwart old favourite Alex Cross in what is billed as the most terrifying and most emotional Cross ever, weaving together elements of the past and present to create a mixture of intrigue, tragedy, shock and resolution. As you might expect from a Patterson novel (I won’t add the the number of superlatives such as unputdownable, or the lightsocket image) the pages turn fast, and I was as intrigued by the story of the vicious Butcher, Michael Sullivan, as I was disturbed by this callous, terrible villain.
All in all a jolly good read for these cold winter nights, and the next Cross novel is already out in hardback! Cross is high octane, high adrenaline fiction, one of the best Alex Cross novels to date – read and see what you’re missing if your unfamiliar with the Cross series!
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Michael Palmer’s Fatal is a brick of a book and a rollercoaster of a read, taking us through sinister intrigue, political conspiracy, 2 love stories, extreme violence and plot twists that keep on on coming! It took me a few nights to read this excellent book, and I was hooked from the first few pages as the very believable and complex central character Matt Rutledge drew me into the narrative from the outset, as I cared about what happened to him, which is quite unusual sometimes with modern fiction. The novel begins with an explosive prologue, as a cafeteria worker with flu-like symptoms suddenly begins haemorrhaging from every part of her body, and then in Boston a brilliant musician of sound mind develops acute paranoia which proves fatal. In Matt Rutledge’s West Virginia town of Belinda, a mine worker suddenly goes berserk in the mine causing death and injury. What can the connection be between the mine, its owners, and the deaths from strange causes across the country, which appear to have no connection? And how does the new super vaccine, Omnivax, fit into the picture? Matt Rutledge is determined to find out, enlisting help from some unexpected quarters – but will his quest for the truth prove fatal?
All these question ran through my mind, and finding the answers was an enjoyable journey through the eyes of the central characters as they put the pieces of the puzzle together at great risk to themselves. This was the first Michael Palmer book I’d read – but just now I’ve been to Amazon and ordered 5 more, that’s how good a read this was, it was a book I could totally escape into and enjoy the story, looking forward to my next instalment each night, and in a way I was sad to finish it. Michael Palmer’s Fatal comes highly recommended by this book reviews blog!
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I picked up this book and started reading it in a Starbucks one rainy Friday afternoon. Why? Because I was addicted to something! For sure, I had kicked both my nasty habits of drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes – but, as I learned from reading this book, I had actually replaced those addictions with something else, in my case a legal but relaxing herb purchased off the internet, which I would carry around with me to ease stress and relieve anxiety. Except every time I was without this herb, I would face stress and anxiety to the nth degree and couldn’t cope without this new crutch! Reading the book, it became clear what had happened to me, and I can thankfully say, thanks to this book, I have beaten another addiction!
The authors of the book write from the perspective of the “human givens” approach, which suggests that if human beings have all their emotional and physiological needs met healthily, they are far less likely to be prone to addictions, depressions, etc. This may seem to some a very simplistic approach. It is certainly full of common sense – if we are happy, why indeed would we spiral into self-destructive behaviour?! I guess people who have worked with serious addicts have seen all common sense go out of the window, however. Still, there are many people who have found the approach in the book to be very useful. Most interesting is the account of how the chemical and other processes in our brains trick us into addictive behaviour, and how this is actually the hijacking of a natural process that is, used properly, essential to our survival and development as a species!
All I can say is that after a number of attempts to give up my herb, after reading this book I have so far not relapsed or even wanted to. So whether you feel you might be addicted to coffee, drugs, alcohol, sex, shopping, tv, exercise, or any other thing that we might get addictions with, this book is certainly an interesting read and might just help you kick the habit 
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Introducing Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter….
I’ve always loved horror stories, and always enjoyed the age old tale of vampires, beginning with Dracula and moving on to more modern interpretations and retellings. In the form of the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, Laurell Hamilton has managed not only to create a formidable opponent for the enemy, but also to bring Vampires into the mainstream – in the world of this series, you need a warrant to execute a vampire, and vampirism is legal as long as all parties are of age and consenting! In fact the premise of this story is that someone is killing innocent vampires, and Anita Blake is recruited to help stop them!
Anita is much more than a Vampire Hunter – she also raises Zombies, a kind of “necromancer” by profession. In this first of the series, Guilty Pleasures, as well as the unravelling vampire murder mystery, we also learn how Anita Blake got started, and are introduced to the mysterious Jean Claude, a master vampire and Anita’s arch enemy, but also destined to become very close to her…
Fast paced, humourous and intelligent, quirky and original, this is the book which got me hooked on the series (I am on book 7 now!). More reviews to follow of the rest of the books, but if you haven’t yet discovered the world of Anita Blake and modern day vampires, now might be as good a time as any to start
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Stress is something which affects us all, an although I have used meditation and self hypnosis very effectively, stress is still something which keeps me on my toes, and I need all my resources to keep it at bay! We can always use some extra tools in our toolkit for managing stress, and I certainly do, which is why Everything You Need To Know About Stress Management appealed to me, as it looks like a hefty and knowledgeable tome, so I thought a good read of this would give me some extra resources – and I was right!
The trouble with stress, a lot of the time, is that we don’t really understand it, and we naturally fear and have trouble with things we don’t understand – and managing something like that is very hard indeed! Stress Management helps you to take a step back and understand why you react in certain ways to certain things, and helps you understand your stress reaction. It’s particularly interesting to learn how your body reacts to stress, the various chemicals produced in your body, and the effects these chemicals have – you learn that stress is a much more serious business than just feeling a little flustered or under pressure. Left unchecked, stress can have serious consequences!
Thankfully, the Managing Stress doesn’t stop there, but takes you on a personal journey through your own relationship with stress and stress management. Everyone is different, so this book does not attempt to pigeonhole you, but rather enables you to explore the many faces of stress, and helps you to identify your stress tolerance point, your stress triggers, stress vulnerability factor and your stress response tendencies.
Once these have been identified, you are better able to choose from the wealth of stress management strategies, tools and options presented by Managing Stress, which offers ways of better preparing your mind and body to deal with stress, ways to reduce stress (not avoid it altogether, for some stress is inevitable!), and ways to minimise the harm that stress does to your mind and body. Most of these stress management tools apply to both sexes, but some forms of stress are gender-specific, so there are sections both for men and women to deal with particular kinds of stress relevant to each.
This was a very easy book to read, well laid out, with handy tips on offer making it an ideal stress management book to read once, then dip into for reminders. With interactive quizzes to help you indentify your relationship with stress, and a wealth of tips, tools and suggestions, the book will appeal to many. Managing stress, as the book emphasises, is a life long process – but we all need to start somewhere, and if you have problems with stress, this book is an ideal place to start your journey to a life with less unnecessary stress!
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I don’t know why it is, but I haven’t read much for the last few months, and so haven’t had much to write in the way of book reviews! Still, the reading bug seems to have caught me again, so I thought I’d just post this little review of Paul Adam’s Unholy Trinity, which I picked up in a bookshop some time ago, and recently got around to reading. It’s not a particularly recent book, first published in 2000, but it was well worth turning the pages.
The plot revolves around Andy Chapman, an Italian correspondent for a British newspaper, who becomes intrigued by the brutal murder of a priest. He goes on to discover that an emissary from the Vatican had cleared his apartment of papers when his body was discovered but before the police were called. This information is turned over to an investigating magistrate in the form of Elena Fiorini, who accidentally reveals to him that she is under pressure from her superiors not to pry too deeply into this case. But these circumstances serve only to whet Elena’s and Chapman’s curiosity to find out exactly what happened and why, a quest which leads them into the Vatican’s archives, to a secret meeting of a banned political party and back to the last days of Mussolini’s dictatorship…
Normally I wouldn’t enjoy the historical flashbacks and detail which are cleverly woven into this thriller, but in this case they do add atmosphere and intrigue, especially with the mention of Mussolini and the surfacing of right wing fascism in modern times. The relationship between Fiorini and Chapman is also kept subtle and doesn’t distract from the main workings of the plot.
All in all a good read with some nice historical detail, well paced and with some unexpected twists to keep the reader on their toes
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I have come a long way in the last year, and it is thanks in no small part to a number of great books I have read, books which I have held sometimes as if I were holding the author’s hand and listening to their kind words of wisdom. Another such book I can now add to this book reviews blog is Tara Brach’s Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha, a jewel of wisdom which comes from the Buddhist idea that we really need to open our hearts and minds to all our experience – including suffering – in order to live fully and happily. And that means to accept some things, and most of all to accept ourselves. It sounds so counterintuitive – to accept bad things, and especially to accept the bad things about ourselves – we are conditioned to want to improve every aspect of our lives. Neither Buddhism or Brach is saying this is wrong – but there are two ways of dealing with the things we cannot change – we can either mope, gnash our teeth and wail, or we can embrace it with acceptance and get on with it with a smile on our face!
Of course Brach does not put things as clumsily as I often do – but rather welcomes us into this philosophy through a number of personal and professional anecdotes which see Radical Acceptance in practice. Before I go any further I should note that although this book is written by a Buddhist teacher, it is very accessible and you by no means have to be familiar with Buddhism to learn something from this book – it is a mixture of Buddhism and therapy, leaning really towards a kind of therapy based on Buddhist principles (Brach is a therapist as well as a Buddhist). As soon as I started reading the book I had one of those “Yes! That’s exactly what I have experienced for 20 years” moments, as Brach related the all too familiar story of the “trance of unworthiness” many of us human beings so easily fall into. It is true that many successful people consider themselves failures, many of us fear that we are not clever enough, not attractive enough, not rich enough, not kind enough, and so on – we spend so much time listening to the voice of this trance that we hardly ever wake up to the true beauty and success of our lives, but Brach shows ways in which Radical Acceptance can help us to wake up and accept ourselves as we really are.
At the end of each chapter there are guided meditations and exercises to help the reader put the ideas into practice, from gentle awareness meditations to meditations and exercises to work on relationships and our reactions to negative emotions, making it a handy book to read and re-read, and try the meditations as you go along.
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The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is an amazing person, and for a student of Buddhism, his summation of that religion when asked as “My religion is kindness” is a great inspiration. I would really recommend that you look into Buddhism if you haven’t already done so – I believe it has a lot to teach us about how to live happily
But The Universe in a Single Atom is not entirely about Buddhism – it is rather, an example of one of the world’s great spiritual leaders, leader of an ancient tradition, tackling some very modern days issues which are often outside the remit of religion: namely, science. In my previous review I looked at Fritjof Capra’s Tao of Physics, and the Dalai Lama’s book sees this great man bringing science and sprituality together in a religio-political context, comparing ancient Buddhist science with the modern quantum physics. Apart from anything else, this book shows what a learned and yet open-minded man he is, and his compassion and loving kindess for all of humanity shines through – Buddhism is not a system which judges or discriminates. The book looks at plenty of modern day scientific problems and paradoxes, and the Dalai Lama is very open minded about these, acknowledging how much science has changed since the time of the Buddha, and also how science has served humanity.
But his message is a serious one – in a world where science has cured many of our immediate wants, and to all intents and purposes given us in the West everything we need, people are less happy than ever! For both myself and the Dalai Lama, this is indicative that material wants are not our only wants – which is why he argues for a compassionate approach to science in this interesting and accessible book. In a world where science and technology increasingly makes leaps which are almost beyond comprehension, it is important to remember that these leaps are supposed to serve us and make our lives better – yet science has many double edged swords, for example the nuclear bomb and genetic engineering. The Dalai Lama urges us collectively as a species to ensure that science continues to serve humanity – and not the other way around!
A very interesting, thought provoking and accessible work, the Universe in a Single Atom is written with sensitivity and compassion, as you would expect from one of the world’s great spiritual teachers.
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It sounds simple – be nice to people, and they will be nice back! Treat a friend with interest and respect and guess what, they will probably do the same back. Treat employees well, and they will be more productive. Sounds simple. Yet there are still plenty of people who do things the nasty way to get what they want – and the world over businesses that treat their employees like scum in the hope of squeezing that little extra out of them. Well, such people need to read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie!
First published in 1936, this mother of all self help books as seen plenty of predecessors – yet it remains one of the most interesting and accessible guides on how to survive and thrive in a competitive and often unpleasant world. Since that first publication and Dale Carnegie’s talks all that time ago, millions of people have benefited from the simple and appealing wisdom to be found in this book. Of course no book can simply turn your life around without some effort, and although there is guidance there is no magic forumula guaranteed to work – life is no an exact science! But if you take even a quarter of the principles in this book and embed them into your life, I am willing to bet you would see some positive changes!
I had great fun trying out some of the techniques, and was delighted to see them work. I tried some out on complete strangers and the smiles were very rewarding – but I also saw relationships with people I knew improve as well. People who read this book reviews blog know I try to be a positive person – and this book is based on positive thinking, and the positive idea that you CAN appeal to people’s better natures – maybe not always, but definitely a lot of the time.
Just one example – today I had something go wrong with a website. I remember countless times before I read this book, sending snotty emails to the tech support, complaints, etc, and the problems would drag on. Well, this enquiry today, I followed some of Dale Carnegie’s advice, the problem was solved quickly and cheerfully, and everyone was happy. Now if only we could get just about everyone to read this book – what a world we’d live in!
(But you can make a start right now by ordering this book and learning how you too can win friends and influence people – or see below for some more great Dale Carnegie books )
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