December Reading Log

December Reading Log
The Eye of the Needle

This book is set during the years of World War 2 and takes factual events and adds a fictional twist or character to create a suspenseful heart-racing mystery novel. The main villain is a Nazi spy in England who is ruthless but seems perfectly normal in fact seems like the kind of guy you would want to meet. After several years of not being spotted the Nazi begins to suspect something, something that could lose him the war. The English anti-spy team has hacked into the communications, captured over half the agents in Britain, and found and tracked all the rest except one. Through a series of twists and turns this novel weaves an epic clash and unknown conclusions await every page.

I personally would not enter this action-packed novel for a few reasons. One someone dies all the time almost every other page, i don't want to die. Another reason is i simply don't want to be in the situations the characters are put in. Further more the events are no where near what i have experienced in real life. The book is set through out England one place i have longed to go but never had the chance to. So i can not connect this to my life either.

The character that is my favorite is a man named Tom who is described as “...had a face of leather and a huge pipe with a lid. He was shorter than she (one of the main characters), but wide, and he looked ridiculously healthy...” Tom lives on a small island to herd sheep for a rich family and is a simple man who is extremely friendly and nice. For these reasons i would enjoy being in his company. The rest of the characters are either old, lost too much to be human, or are down right killers.

In what i have read i can not catch any literary features either because i am to caught up in the historical/realistic plot or because i don't look hard enough. But in what i have read it is simply outstanding. The thing i pictured best was this high tense scene when the English spy-hunters found someone who knew who Die Nadel was and they were using him to act as a ticket collector on the train they thought he was on. Die Nadel, “assumed the worst, and prepared to deal with it” when he realized that he was being hunted. He hid between the train carriages and waited until the man came out. There he questioned him and then killed him with his signature weapon, a stiletto blade. This part was most vivid because of the way it was described and the setting was easy to imagine. The fear on Die Nadel’s face must of been one of complete horror at the thought of “they know his face.”

Unfortunately i can not compare this to any book i have read before. This is something new and something to be treasured. It all blends smoothly and is very enjoyable read. I highly recommend it.

ELR World War Z

BOOK #2

Reading log on World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

My book is based in the future where a disease, much like the Black Plague, sweeps across the globe. This disease is not like others, to be infected one must be bitten by an already infected victim. The symptoms are high fever, paling of skin, excessive bleeding, changing color of blood. After this the victim dies and becomes reanimated. The creature will lumber around unable of thought or speech, the only thing it does is feed on the living. These creatures move at a slow walking pace but will not tire and can only be killed by destroying the brain. These creatures are zombies, or the living dead. My book is about the war that happened after the outbreak based on interviews preformed by the author, Max Brooks, and he has arranged them in a chronological order so the future generations will have a knowledge on the “mistakes not to take that could have stopped the war in the first place.”

Though World War Z is written as if it had happened and with amazing realness (so much I believed that it had actually happened at some points in the text) it is an entirely fictional story (luckily). There is no such thing as living dead or such a plague, but the author probably has a good grasp of what would happen if an apocalypse should happen. He also gives out historical glimpses of past events fitting it in with his fictional novel. There is no way though this book is realistic.

There are many characters in this book since the main one Max Brooks is interviewing survivors about the war. Since there are loads of characters there are many different views on the subject and I was shocked at how well it was written and the different views were displayed. The character i most enjoyed though was a blind Japanese man who lost his sight during the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in world war 2. I like this character and would honor his friendship because after a lifetime of misery and being the outcast he brought honor to his name during the breakout and fled to the mountains where he fought of hordes and hordes of men with his “ikupasuy” or “Ainu prayer stick.” Despite many depressing moments throughout his life he was a man when the moment came and restored Japan almost single handed. Though i might enjoy this character as a friend I still have a hard time connecting with any of the characters especially since the majority are older men or trained soldiers or even in one cases mentally scarred kid. It is hard to connect with such characters, most are war hardened with hard features learned over the coarse of the war.

I have not done or been in a situation like the ones descried nor would i want to be. The situations are scary and life threatening and not inviting to me. Even though a lot of characters are average ordinary people I still find it hard to find connections with my book and my life. Zombies “shambling down the street and breaking into houses” is something i do not wish to experience and is very hard to picture happening to my town. Equally I would not enjoy “jumping” into my book since I would most likely become over run and eaten alive by the walking plague.

Today I was reading about a Chinese man and his story of leaving “not deserting China” during the infestation as to “protect and continue” the way of the Chinese people by taking a submarine under the control of Captain Chen with the crews families. In his story i visualized this part were their submarine was hiding from another Chinese vessel that had orders to attack their ship and crew. Their submarine was on the bottom of the ocean hiding from all radar and other equipment the hunting sub might be using. When they were waiting at the bottom of the ocean they looked out through the scope and saw “Zombies hundreds of them, were swarming over the hull.” The way the author described this scene made me picture it the best today. And the way it fitted in with the rest was how the fall of great super power China affected all and this small first hand account added to the feeling that China and the world felt during this time. In this account I think the character will eventually have to take command since the Captain will either be eaten or commit suicide from depression and an overwhelming feeling. This is a guess at what will happen, when ever I have tried to guess there was something that took me by surprise changing my view on the subject, so I will not be surprised if I am wrong.

Though it is written in a first person interview style the author was still able to display irony. The human race always thought of themselves as above extinction but in this book they are so close to extinction it is hardly believable. He doesn't really use irony much more then that but in the beginning when a few outbreaks happen it foreshadows a global disaster that will endanger the human existence forever.

Though this book is a scare and a horror-like book it is still very enjoyable and a must read for advanced readers. I say advanced not because it is hard to read far from it i say advanced because younger audiences would not enjoy it or like the language. It flows nicely together and is a thrilling, captivating novel.