LOST LAKE: PHILLIP MARGOLIN

I LOVE MARGOLIN! But unfortunately I hated this book.

Anyone who has read Margolin knows that his books are fast paced. I once spent the whole night reading sleeping beauty. But that’s not the book I wonna talk about. Its lost lake.

Ok let me start from the beginning, the entire book is a cliché, as you read it you get the feeling that you have read this story before. A guy was in some highly secret army unit established by (wait for it……) a guy who is now standing for president of the US of A! All the records of the unit have been inevitable expunged aaaaand made to look like the guy was in a mental hospital! YAWN. And there is the daughter of the candidate who absolutely loathes her father and AGAIN was hospitalized in a mental institute to discredit her! YAAAAWN!

The guy manages to escape from Vietnam and lives anonymously in some small town until an incident in a little league game puts him back in the spotlight and within the clutches of the presidential candidate.

This is one of those books I did not care what happened to the characters, I was not rooting for anyone to hook up with anyone else. And I hoped that at the end of the book they would ALL die, just so that the author will not be tempted to write a sequel! But alas, they all lived.

At the end there is an absolutely unbelievable, didn’t see that coming hook up! To repeat myself, I absolutely, positively hated this book. But I still love Margolin and will wait for his next book.

Currently reading Final Target by IRIS JOHANSEN.

The Devil’s Alternative-Frederick Forsyth

Basically your typical story. Yani about communism, Russia, the notorious KGB or so they say.

Sawa, the story starts with a Ka-Ukrainian being rescued from the Black Sea by a fishing boat en route Turkey, then you are taken to Russia where you..aaah no!! First you go to Stato: the (in) famous West Wing, the then US Kibaki is in session with his State Sec and the Defence Sec. They are looking at surveillance pictures (motion) taken by their spy satellites.. For like 3 quarters of a dakika-they are showing cereals, then something interesting..... A guy stops walking, looks around and approaches a lone tree and pees.... at this point the prezzo is like “Am sitting in this warm office in a late spring morning watching a man urinate somewhere in the shadow of the rural mountains!” NEAT!

The point of all this is apparently to tell the prezzo that RUSSIA (that time USSR) was facing acute rain shortages that would translate to the worst famine ever to hit the soviets. Bloody capitalists!!...Think they've earned gloating rights! Then we are off to RUSSIA, the Kremlin to be exact, a meeting of the Fat cats. This is where they explain the origin of the looming famine.

From there it’s all down hill. Spanning from an assassination together with all its planning and stuff to an admittedly darn good lovvie-dovvie-thingie, from the building, commissioning and finally hijacking of the Worlds largest super tanker 1,000,000 tonnes of Crude oil to the mother of all blackmails.

Entertain yourself.

Classic suspense well researched, well interwoven. This guy has to explain the origin of all that comes to play in the story. He even explains why the peeing Brits urine was clear (Yani colourless), Biologically!! (So yes even the Brits are involved here).

Any Jack Ryan fanatics?? As usual Clancy did his best to discourage readers at least those ones like me: small print just doesn’t rub me the right way and then the thing is fatter than Debt of Honour

Oh n aah Unyc has a review on the third Kwani? compilation Y'all should check it out

TAMBUA!

Kusoma Ni tizi

Chukua kitabu ujitambue. Au vipi?

Review by: Bantutu

Summer Literary Seminars-Kenya (SLS-Kenya) 2006

Nairobi and Lamu, Kenya
15-28 December 2006

Programme

The first week (15-21 December 2006) of the two-week long SLS-Kenya programme will be held in Nairobi’s Heron Court Hotel where accelerated writing workshops will be conducted by some of the most distinguished African, European and North American writers. The workshops will feature lectures and roundtable discussions on publishing and the state of East African, African, and North American writing. In addition, SLS readings will feature Anglophone African and North American poets and writers of different generations at a number of interesting venues across the city, including the University of Nairobi’s Taifa Hall, cultural centres and bookshops. SLS-Kenya will coordinate tours of the city, and participants will have an opportunity to venture outside the city centre to suburban artists’ colonies, among other activities.

The second half of the programme will take place on Lamu Island, where participants will have more opportunities to attend readings and participate in networking events involving faculty.

Contest

SLS held its first annual contest in 2006, held in affiliation with Tin House (USA) and Maisonneuve (Canada) magazines, two of the most interesting and prominent publications in North America.
The authors of the winning poem and prose entries received air fare, accommodation, and a full tuition waiver to the 2006 Summer Literary Seminars programme in Kenya, AND publication of the winning entry in one of these magazines--fiction and poetry in Tin House, non-fiction in Maisonneuve. Second place receives a full tuition waiver to SLS 2006, and third place receives a substantial tuition scholarship. Other hand-picked finalists will be offered tuition scholarships as well.

For More on the Lamu programme, click here who incidentally, has gladly volunteered to help Bookworms in the editing.

Thanks a bunch.

Cormforts of Madness

The very first book review: YIPEE

THE BOOK THAT OFFERS NO COMFORTS

It’s a cold, stormy night.

Tommy the cat is wandering on my mabati roof getting his arse drenched. I could let him in, but that would be the first time a sane person has let in THIS stray cat. So I leave it alone. I sit myself on the couch, my reading one, put my feet up, snuggle under the warm blanket, light up my virtual fireplace…and turn the page…

Page 1, it’s melancholy. I fight back a tear. I fight back the second.

Page 2, 3, 4, 5…it’s all melancholy melancholy melancholy. I’m beginning to wonder why so much sadness.

Page 10, what the F? kwani, when will the sadness ever end.

I doze off at page 15. When I awake, I realize I have drooled all over page 16. I wipe it off and smudge a few words. Nothing lost. Meanwhile, Tommy has found himself a mate and by the sound of things, he’s about to get his freak on.

I struggle to get to page 30. Clearly, there’s more action on my roof than in this book.

It’s a book about some dude, a catatonic, who apparently has been confined to his wheel chair for the longest time. He can’t move a muscle. Feel a thing. All he does is see, think and be fed through a…a tube. The whole book is about what he sees and the goings on, which include experiments, at this mental facility.

But if you want to know it’s well written, I read it all the way to the end. 144 pages of anguish. By this time, I’m pissed at the author. When I finally finish the book (three days after week two) I toss the book so far, the sun will never shine on it, even if the house is brought down.

I’m wondering what the hype about this book is. Unless I, being me, ordered for the wrong book. It won an award apparently. So maybe I was wrong, but there’s no way I’m reading even the synopsis on the back cover again.

If someone can read it, cool.

The book? Comforts of Madness by Paul Sayer. Jeez.

REVIEW BY: Madcoach aka Modoathii (Told you I would acknowledge the authors)