Body Double (a.k.a.: Doble Cuerpo) by Tess Gerritsen

Book Summary (From the book)

In the brilliant new novel of suspense by the New York Times bestselling author, Boston medical examiner Dr. Maura Isles must face a savage serial killer and shattering personal revelations. As a pathologist in a major metropolitan city she has seen more than her share of corpses every day, but never before has the lifeless body on the medical examiner's table been her own. When a DNA test confirms that the mysterious doppelganger is her twin sister, an already bizarre murder investigation becomes a disturbing and dangerous excursion into a past full of dark secrets.

My review

My aunt gave me this book a couple of months ago, and it was just sitting in my bookshelf. Alas, I felt like reading in Spanish since it's been a while. I don't know how to explain this, but when you live 24/7 in 2 languages that are not your mother tongue, some of the most basic words start to slip away. 

Do you know the TV series "Bones"? I love it, but I haven't got to the books yet. Why do I bring this out you wonder, well for the whole first chapters of the book I kept feeling this book was a lot like Bones. Well...as it turns out, this book is the forth book in a series AND has a TV adaptation. Luckily for me, the books stands pretty well on his own. There are a couple of references to past situations, but the book centers on an specific case, which was nice.

Although the mystery was not as gruesome as I'm "getting used to" with the Swedish noir novellas I've been reading lately, it keeps you interested.  It was indeed a page turner and I'm happy to say that it was not easy to foresee the  resolution. I hate when I'm watching a show and in the middle of the episode I know what happened and there is no thrill to the action anymore.

I think I could like the characters as much as I like the ones in Bones. I've been told the book characters are very different from the one that Kathy Reichs wrote, but I still want to red some of the books. However, I did not feel like checking out the series based in Gerristsen work. 

This was a nice read, fast paced and full of mystery. I do not feel I have the right to critic the character building, because usually in series the characters are built through the whole thing, not just one book, and let's remember is the fourth book. I do wish we would've had a bit more of background for the bad guy(s) that appear in this installment.

Tailchaser's Song by Tad Williams

Book Summary (From the book)

Meet Fritti Tailchaser, a ginger tom cat of rare courage and curiosity, a born survivor in a world of heroes and villains, of powerful feline gods and whiskery legends about those strange, furless, erect creatures called M'an. Join Tailchaser on his magical quest to rescue his catfriend Hushpad -a quest that will take him all the way to cat hell and beyond...

My review

Recently I read The Dirty Streets of Heaven and I liked it. So when Veronica talked about this book in the S&L podcast...well let's just say it really caught my attention.

The edition that I read had a special introduction from the author and right there it grabbed me:

         And for the first couple of years the I lived as a human domesticated by cats, it pretty much stayed that way [...]

A human domesticated by cats! I was reading this part with my cat on my legs, very carefully so he wouldn't be disturbed, and just couldn't help but smile to such sentence...because is completely true.

Are you a cat person? If you are not, is ok, I am, but I will not make a post telling you how awesome cats are in my opinion. But this is a book for a person that has interact with cats at least once. The way Williams describes the daily routine of the felines, they "dancing", the interactions is just possible if you had a cat. It was very amusing to me read a particular part, look up and see Hoppi doing the exact same thing. 

I really enjoyed the mythology that Williams created, the Gods, the way the world was created, how Man, oops, sorry, M'an came to be show a very good story telling ability.

I was a bit disappointed with what happens to Hushpad, Tailchaser's object of affection; I won't give  you much details, but I was actually proud of Tailchaser for his final decision. 

A lot of people, me included, will say that this book feels a little bit like LOTR with cats, and although there are several similar moments (just like HP has them too) I believe this book can stand on his own, thanks once again to the mythology construction.  

I wish there was a second part to the book, because there are some characters that I would love to know what happened to them after the whole ordeal.

This is another book that will go to my list of books to read to my kids, if ever I do have kids.

TSS: Challenges...

During 2012 I joined my first reading challenge ever, the R.I.P event. Thanks to this "push" I read a bunch of books I was considering but never got to them. Around the same time, I round up the courage and did the 24 hour Read-a-Thon, and that gave me the opportunity to do nothing else than read, something I rarely do. And finally, I joined my first book club ever, the Sword and Laser book club and this opened my horizons to books that I didn't know about (like the Dirty Streets of Heaven) or books I was thinking about reading, but what if I don't like it (like Cloud Atlas).

Bottom line, this year I joined reading groups of different sorts. It was the encouragement of my boyfriend and the other people in those groups that motivated me to tackle certain books and certain subjects. So I was thinking that during 2013 I should not only remain in my book club, and re do the challenges (the read-a-thon will have to be on the fall session since I have a Pre-Doctorate exam coming Yikes!) but maybe join another challenge...this time a yearlong challenge. 

So I went to A Novel Challenge (great website BTW) and decided on my 2 new challenges of 2013, you can also find some information in the brand new tabs up here.

2013 WHERE Are You Reading Challenge 

This is a very pretty challenge, in my opinion. We travel with our books, so why not add a map showing our trip, right?

2013 Sequel Reading Challenge 

 

I was already planning to read some sequels next year (fingers crossed most of them will be available in my library), so here is the perfect way to help me to make it happen.
 

What about you? Are you joining any new challenge this year? Any recommendations? I think I will stick to 2 new challenges, with school and all, but maybe you have THE perfect challenge for a girl like me :) 

Other than that I finally finished The Fat Years. Also my brother is spending the holidays with me (Insert Happy Dance Here); I will try to continue with regular posts, but I can't promise anything ;)

Have a great week everybody

 

 

The Fat Years (a.k.a: Les années fastes) by Chan Koonchung

Book Summary (From Goodreads)

TRUTH IS NOT AN OPTION.... Beijing, sometime in the near future: a month has gone missing from official records. No one has any memory of it, and no one can care less. Except for a small circle of friends, who will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of the sinister cheerfulness and amnesia that has possessed the Chinese nation.

When they kidnap a high-ranking official and force him to reveal all, what they learn - not only about their leaders, but also about their own people - stuns them to the core. It is a message that will rock the world.... Terrifying methods of cunning, deception, and terror are unveiled by the truth-seekers in this thriller-expose of the Communist Party's stranglehold on China today.

My review

First of all, let me tell you, this is probably one of the hardest books I've read in a while. Not because it was in French, but the subject was so dense! A friend of mine recommended this book and when he described it to me it seemed very interesting, so I borrowed it. Well, it was interesting, but oh my was it a hard read.

Just as what happened to me while reading The Colonel there were a lot of cultural references that I missed, even thought the book has glossary at the end and a lot of foot notes. I do watch the news, and try to follow current events as much as I can, but I'm not very strong in foreign politics, and this books confirmed that to me. 

Either way, it was a very interesting book; while not completely fiction since it takes a lot of events that actually happened in China's past the future that Koonchung portrays is not necessarily a premonition of the path that the world economy will take. 

The  main characters were very complex, not only with their past but the way they see the world, and I liked the way in which their paths end up being intertwined. 

A word of advice, be very patient with the book; although there are things happening, the biggest questions I had all during the book are not answered until the VERY end, the thir part of the book, and even then I had the feeling that the questions where not completely answered which disappointed me a little. I have the feeling that the story was left unfinished and I don't like this feeling.

There is a lot of political criticism  in the books as you can imagine, but there is also a nice humanity in the way the characters confront what happens to them.  Something that I liked a lot was that this criticism was not only applicable to one country:

         If the officers of the government have the will to work hard for the things they are doing, then ordinary people are capable of pushing the rural economy.

Is a very simple sentence when you read it, but I feel is something that applies to any economy, specially now a days. 

There was also some critic to reading...well, to reading in a bubble I guess, and this par hit me particularly, because it is true that I tend to rest amongst genres that make me feel comfortable and by staying within them, and mostly by remaining so attached to fiction I might be missing a lot of changes happening around me in "the real world". Is not that the author discourages reading fiction by no means, I think his intention is not to discourage fiction at all, but maybe to not forget what happens beyond fiction in all of its forms, before turning into a society that no longer sees its reality.

 

My favorite sentence of the book was this:

         We are a society that has in it the perfume of books.

This perfume is a great one..as long as it doesn't cause an obtund view of our reality. 

TSS: 2012 favorites

It seems like everybody is doing the round-up of their 2012 favorite books already. Goodreads did it Bookriot did it...so I thought, why not do it, right?

Well, first of all I think I should clarify that over the year 2012 I've read so far 45 books...but only 10 of them where published on the year 2012. I will give you my top 5 books that I read during 2012, independently of its publication date:

1. The Night Circus: Interestingly, this is one of the first books I read this year. and I think it has been my favorite of all year. It had a beautiful universe construction and I liked the fact that no character was completely black or white, in contrast with the circus decoration itself. I loved how the stories evolved separately and then join each other swiftly. The conclusion of the book was in my opinion, well constructed, and I can't wait for the movie adaptation.

2. 1Q84: I actually gave 4 mushrooms to the first 2 parts of this book, but it was the last part that pushed this book to the top 5. Yes it was a long book; yes there were some parts that were a little bit too graphic and could've been read at something a little bit more disturbing. But once again I think that the double moon universe created by Murakami was just precious. And I loved Aomame as a character.

3. The Know-it-All: Out of the 3 books I read this year from A.J. Jacobs, I think the first one of the saga was my favorite basically because of how we meet the family, and the struggles around and in general, is the beginning of this serial questing. I loved all of the books, but this one is the first door in a very amusing fun house.

4. The Bluest Eye: This books was so hard to read and yet do beautiful! It was hard, not because of the difficulty of the text, but because of the crudeness that Morrison has. Seeing the world though the eyes of this little girl, seeing everything that happens around her, and all she wanted was to be considered beautiful. 

5. The Hobbit: Last but not least. I read it in order to be "prepared" for the movie (only later did I learned it was going to be in more than one movie, so I will have to skim it again soon!) but once again I was amazed by the whole universe painted by Tolkien. The innocence of Bilbo and how his sense of adventure and camaraderie crows through the books makes of this book a certain read before going to bed when/if I have kids;) 

What about you? which are your favorite reads this year?

Other than that, this week I (finally) finished reading The Fat Years, the review should be up next Wednesday. I did published my review for The Dirty Streets of Heaven and I'm starting Tailchaser's song.  Also I joined a new meme or event, called Read and Review Hop, hosted by Anya, may I suggest you check it out?