Dark Water by Koji Suzuki

Patrick Books

Dark WaterMy last read in terms of a horror novel was the series of Ann Rice books on which they based the movies Interview with a Vampire and the Queen of the Damned. My latest read in this genre, Dark Water by Koji Suzuki, really caught my eye as I was perusing the horror section because I knew a movie had been created based on it. I am in no position to compare the two though because I haven’t actually seen the film.

Dark Water is actually a collection of short stories, that like the title of the book, are all related to water in some aspect. Though classified by the library, as ‘Horror’, I disagreed and found the stories focused more on the eerie side of human behaviour with a number of supernatural aspects adding to the strangeness of each story.

Each story was actually quite easy to read, and I found myself running through them at a very fast pace, probably heightened by fact I was flying out on a night flight. I think the magic in Suzuki’s book is the way that he describes very natural circumstances in a very unnatural way, with less emphasis on the traditionally ‘scary’ side and more on the ‘chilling’ one.

I’d definitely be keen on seeing the movie and working out which story was actually the basis for it.

TheKua.com Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Enjoyable Economics?

Patrick Books

FreakonomicsOne of the great things about long distance travelling is that you have plenty of time for reading. I managed to finish two and a half books on my first leg of the trip, borrowed from my local library, with one of them being one of the most popular books at the moment, Freakonomics.

Successful writers in a technical area tend to be those that have great expressive powers by communicating ideas in a way that everyone can understand. The success of this book is a typical example, tackling real life subjects that all people from all walks of life can relate to, but analysed in economic terms and distilled in a way that the majority of the popular can understand.

The authors wrote the book extremely well and though some may argue there is no continuous theme throughout the book, I found it more like a book of short stories that may actually appeal to some people. For people like me that have to finish a book when they start it, it is a refreshing style and its simple language and expressiveness had no obvious impact on the flow of the book as I read it.

I took away a number of things from this book including the lesson that we should always challenge (appropriately) conventional wisdom and the amazing observations you can make simply by accumulating large sets of data over a long time (another blog entry coming soon). I found the book was more importantly humorous in its approach and the conversation had an overall light-hearted tone that I think will appeal to a broad range of people. More importantly anyone of any background can read this book and come away with something, if not just a little bit of laughter.

TheKua.com Rating: 8.5 out of 10

A Book on Two Very Simple Things in Life

Patrick Books, Food

Bread and OilIt’s great to read a book written by someone so passionate about their chosen subject, and my latest read, Bread & Oil written by native Majorcan Tomas Graves investigates the age old Mediterranean staple and its significance on the world’s culture. He writes about these two cornerstone ingredients bringing together families, friends and even strangers by drawing upon stories told to him by other locals and other research he conducted.

The book describes the making of Olive Oil and the importance of good quality bread and the stark contrast between the rich and flavoursome traditional products and the typically bland and boring ones served in many places around the world. He also inspects other supporting foods grown popular over time with the two core ingredients including tomatoes, eggs, cheese and other dried foods.

Towards the end of the book he heavily criticises the mass produced foods made popular by commercial firms replacing tradition with something, though while cheaper is far less desirable. I consider what he talks about as very true, with the growing popularity of farmer’s markets and organic produce a natural reaction to avoiding the less desirable foods. One of McDonald’s latest offerings, the Tomato and Cheese Sandwich is a great example of one such food, one that is best described as a tasteless block of wasted carbohydrates, a far step away from a potentially flavourful yet simple alternative made out of freshly baked bread, vine-ripened tomatoes and a slice of sharp cheese.

For such a simple topic, Graves manages to fill an entire book easily in an entertaining and culture inspiring way. It makes you think twice about what restaurants serve you and what supermarkets offer and appreciate the simpler things in life that formed the basis of much of the Mediterranean way of life.

TheKua.com Rating: 7 out of 10

Bill Bryson Down Under

Patrick Books, Travel

Bill Brysons Down Under BookFor my latest long haul flight back home, I’d bought a couple of second hand books to keep me entertained for the flight. Of the two, the most appropriate one for my trip back to Australia was Bill Bryson’s Down Under. Anyone who has read any of his books will agree with me that Bryson has a talent for producing entertaining writings about the most insignificant event, making almost every part of his books enjoyable reading materials.

In this particular book, Bryson manages to travel to all parts of Australia including the more commercial capitals and, more interestingly, a number of the smaller towns that either made it into the news for some particular event, or played a significant part of Australia’s history. The amount of travelling he achieves in Australia is impressive and undoubtedly exceeds far more than many Australians have, or will ever do. It certainly exceeds the amount of travelling I’ve done within Australia.

Bryson writes about local customs, Australia’s history and quirks that may appear strange to outsiders (and with some being truly quirky). Some of them you can interpret as being slightly biased by his own roots, but for the most part are both accurate and succinct. I found this book engaging and almost too easy to devour in one sitting and I think it is a great read for anyone visiting Australia. Be wary though as Bryson has a tendency to exaggerate, so make sure you take what he writes with a grain of salt. It’s not like every day, all around Australia people are dying from red-back spider bites or crocodile and shark attacks. I am certain that any Australian will be able to relate to certain parts of the book and will hopefully find it as entertaining as I did.

Review: I, Lucifer by Glen Duncan

Patrick Books

On the hunt for the latest Eddings book at the city library (I’ve tried to find it three times at the central city one), I stumbled across this book (I, Lucifer). The premise of the story is an interesting one, where the fallen angel (and now head of the underworld), is offered a chance of redemption by initially spending a month in the body of human writer, Declan Gunn (a weak and sufferable fictional writer) before being faced with an ultimate choice.

The author does well to slip into the lead character and puts an interesting spin on a number of the traditional biblical stories. Each page is dripping with wit, and is really difficult to power through because you are required to absorb the most minute details and implications to fully understand the sarcasm, cynicism or perhaps schizophrenic-like personality of this other-worldly being bound in to a human shell. Beware the extremely strong language and topics the author approaches, as it is all too easy to take offensive, yet there were many other times I still found myself laughing out loud.

I, Lucifer, is definitely one of those books I could not recommend for everyone, and although I was disappointed by its ending, the delightful (and sometimes teeth-grinding) moments in the book made it worthwhile finishing.

The Kua Rating: 7.5 out of 10

The Parrot’s Theorem

Patrick Books, Work Related

I realised that most (ok, all) of my reading of late has been entirely non-fiction (and probably excessively IT related) so I thought I should get back to the fictional genre. Since I was in the city on Monday just gone, I dropped into the library and, for no other reason except that the blurb read well, picked up a copy of The Parrot’s Theorem written by Denis Guedj (and translated from French by Frank Wynne).

Anyone who knows me I’m not too fond of studying mathematics, but for some reason, this book, classified as Math Fiction, seemed to catch my eye. This French best seller’s is set in a Parisian bookstore, detailing the story of a mysterious cargo shipment of a Mathematical library, a talking Amazon blue parrot and somehow managing to form a link between the rest of these as well as the mafia and the death of the bookstore owner’s long lost army friend. After finishing the book last night, I would not be inclined to say that this book’s bizarre and intertwining plotline was definitely not its strongest point. As funny as this may sound, the plotline simply set the stage for the author to describe (what I hope to actually be factual) the history and evolution of over 2000 years of mathematical theorem’s and proofs.

Unlike the maths classes that I remember, that simply detailed formulas and repetitive rehearsals, this book gave life to a number of world famous mathematicians and the circumstances in which they developed their theorems. I had no idea, for example, that mathematics (a simple definition of a link between a theory and a proof involving numbers) was really the result of a number of philosophical arguments and there continues to be a strong relationship between mathematics and philosophy today. Most of the famous ancient mathematicians were fore mostly philosophers, and then followed by their role as mathematicians. The author continues to demonstrate that modern day fundamentals are in fact, only fairly modern. He discusses the concept of zero and how it was only invented in 733AD (that’s 1272 years ago) even though mathematics has been around almost double that time.

The biggest thing that this book has to offer is not really the education of the number of theorems it covers, but the really interesting way that they came into being.

TheKua Rating: Fictional value (6 out of 10), Educational value (9 out of 10).

Robust Java by Stephen Stelting

Patrick Books, Work Related

I came across this book when I was trying to compose my next Amazon shipment of books. It caught my eye because I have not read much literature or talked to many people about exception handling best practices. It is certainly a topic that was never taught at University in great depth and something I find tends to be neglected in the workplace.

My initial impressions of the book after reading the foreward and first few chapters is that it is a very well written and a well published book. The author sets the expectations of his readers early with what he is trying to achieve and manages to accomplish his goals in the rest of the book. The format is well laid out and the excellent quality of the editoral work is evident by the ease of reading attained without the interruptions typically caused by poor spell checking or grammatical errors.

Read more “Robust Java by Stephen Stelting”