De Donutman / Citizen Vince

... Yep. Still continuing through all the genres of the library.

I was pretty confident that this time I was really going to enjoy this book. Citizen Vince is a brand-new book- I treated the cover myself, and I saw in the catalogue that the book was rated five stars ànd had won the Edgar Allen Poe Award, whatever that means. On the cover are several reviews by respected newspapers and authors, and the front doesn’t look like a run-off-the-mill cover for a thriller. I was ready to be blown away.

It’s not a book that’ll blow you away.

Sorry.

Citizen Vince follows the story of a man who’s been taken up in the witness protection programme and who spends his days making donuts and continuing his credit card fraud. When a man from his past turns up in the small town that is Vince’s (aka Marty) new home, he is forced to act.

This book is quite an unusual thriller. No action scenes, no thrilling chases. Vince ends up in a few sticky situations- usually at the end of a chapter, and the situation is usually sorted in a sentence or two in the next- but that’s about it. It’s only in the last few pages where there’s some actual thrilling action, which resolves in a happy ending.
I dunno. It’s a weird book. I sort of liked it, but it wasn’t what I expected. It was very calm for a thriller.


Until next time,

Bejoes

(have a donut)

Strijden voor mijn Land / Feuerherz

Continuing my quest to explore all genres in the library, I found my way to the True Story section. Here’s where you find all the stories of people who fought cancer, had abortions, or learnt to deal with things from shopping addictions to depressions.
At first I was inclined to find a book about some stray animal that had touched the communities’ heart, but as I let myself be guided by the rating, I found something totally different instead.

Strijden voor mijn Land, roughly translated ‘Fighting for my Country’, is Senait Mehari’s story. Born in Eritrea (back when it was still a part of Ethiopia) Senait is juggled between orphanages and family members, experiencing periods of happy childhood, and periods of rather cruel ones. It all goes downhill when an aunt brings her to her father who’d abandoned her mother before Senait was born. He’s violent, and disapproves of Senait’s stubbornness, to the point where he drags her out of the house and almost kills her. The next day he brings her and her two half-sisters to the ELF (Eritrean Liberation Front), where they are recruited.
Senait’s story about the war in Eritrea as a child soldier is shocking. No child should ever experience what she experienced, what she saw, what she was forced to do. I feel like it’s the sort of story everyone should read at least once to understand the suffering in places that are comfortably distant.



That being said, I read on her wiki that Senait is accused of fabricating some of the contents of her book, notably that she served as a child soldier in Eritrea.
I hate this, because this means that one of the two- the accuser or Senait, is being very insensitive. And I can’t tell which one.

I’d advise everyone to read a book like this, to understand the situation in the Middle-East a tiny bit better. But maybe not this one- Maybe one of which everyone’s sure is “correct”.

Until next time,

Bejoes

Studie van Gif / Poison Study

It’s November, and this means there are only two months left before my challenge is over. And holy shit, this year has just flown by. I’ve read a lot of different genres, from fantasy to non-fiction, from literature to children’s books. So I thought I should do something special, for the last stretch, so to speak.
Here’s the plan: for the next two months I will read books of every genre for adults we have at the library. These are fantasy, non-fiction, regional novels (this might be a horrid translation. I think family novel would be more suitable), romance, thriller, detective, and horror. Then on the second floor we have literature which isn’t categorized per genre, but since I need two more categories I’ll just take a genreless novel (yes, genreless is a word now) and a ‘surprise novel’. It might be a historical novel, maybe I’ll do something crazy and read a western. I might lose my mind and read porn. Who knows!
Another thing that I want to do with this extra challenge is discover new authors - which means I’ll be avoiding the authors I know. The only thing that can somewhat steer me from ‘bad novels’ is the five-star rating system our catalogue has.

So without further ado: Poison Study! A fantasy book by Maria V. Snyder.
Boy, she’s bad at metaphors.


I knew what kind of book I had in my hands after the first paragraph:
Locked in darkness that surrounded me like a coffin, I had nothing to distract me from my memories. Vivid recollections waited to ambush me whenever my mind wandered.

Meet Yelena, a girl about 18 years old who has been living in the dungeons the last few months. When she’s about to get hanged for her crimes, an official offers her a way out; get hanged or become the commander’s taster. Things don’t really start to look up after this decision, as this seems to really set the ball rolling for intrigue, assassination attempts and romance.

This is a very typical fantasy novel; the main character is an orphan with a tragic, mysterious past, and who is incredibly talented at everything she tries. The book itself should have been longer, because some things are only described when they need to happen. I’ll try to explain this with an example; when Yelena decides she needs to learn some self-defence she practices in an abandoned part of the castle with three other people. It’s only after she’s been practicing for several months that we suddenly learn they also do special ‘warm-ups’ called catas, which of course help her focus and channel her magic better. (Oh yeah, and she can do magic. Of course.)

Still, I think I’d give this novel a five out of ten, because the escapism of the storyline works. But really? Describing fear as ‘having a feather in her stomach’? Not cool, sister.

Until next time,

Bejoes