Haruki Murakami Reading Challenge 2012

I've joined the Murakami Reading Challenge 2012 hosted by tanabata,  the second year in a row. I have Murakami books on Kindle and on my shelves and hope to polish them off in 2012. That's my Murakami New Year's Resolution.

For the challenge, there are different reading levels, which you can see by clicking on the link to tanabata. You can read only one or graduate to more books and can even submit your past reviews.

Here's what I've reviewed in 2011 and 2007 and added to the list:

1. Thoughts on 1Q84
2. After Dark

more to come....

Book Review: A Vine in the Blood by Leighton Gage

Title: A Vine in the Blood: A Chief Inspector Mario Silva Investigation by Leighton Gage
Publisher: Soho Crime (December 27, 2011
Genre: crime fiction
Objective rating: 4.5/5

Brazil has been in the center of international soccer news ever since they won the bid to host the FIFA World Cup in 2014. Questions have since abounded: would Brazil be able to pull it off, take care of thousands and thousands of visitors and athletes in various cities, ensure their safety and their comfort in this most picturesque but controversial of locations ?

What better setting for a crime novel that involves both soccer, a country with beautiful cities, and the criminal underworld? In this novel, the mother of the greatest soccer player is kidnapped just before the games begin, and there are any number of reasons this could have happened, and any number of possible suspects, especially during this time, just before the games. What is scary is that this fictional scenario could easily happen.  Chief Inspector Maria Silva is once again on the case, in this novel of international detective fiction.

Publisher's book description: "It is the eve of the FIFA World Cup, the globe’s premier sporting event. The host country is Brazil. A victory for the home team is inextricably linked to the skills of the country’s principal striker, Tico “The Artist” Santos, the greatest player in the history of the sport. All the politicians in Brasilia, from the President of the Republic on down, have their seats squared-away for the finale, when they hope to see Argentina, Brazil’s bitterest rival, humbled by the Brazilian eleven. But then, just three weeks before the first game, Juraci Santos, Tico’s mother, is kidnapped. The star is distraught. The public is appalled. The politicians are outraged. And the pressure is on Chief Inspector Mario Silva to get her back.

Suspects aren’t lacking. Among them, are a cabal of Argentineans, suspected of having spirited the lady away to put Tico off his game, the star’s gold-digging, top-model girlfriend, whom his mother dislikes and has been trying to get out of his life, his principal rival, who wants to play in the World Cup in Tico’s place, and the man whose leg Tico broke during a match, thereby destroying his career. In the end, Silva and his crew discover that the solution to the mystery is less complex - but entirely unexpected." (book description)

About the author: Leighton Gage writes the Chief Inspector Mario Silva series, crime novels set in Brazil. You can visit him at www.leightongage.com

A complimentary ARC of this book was sent to me for possible review.
© Harvee Lau of Book Dilettante. Please do not reprint without permission.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays to everyone. Thanks for visiting and reading Book Dilettetante. Hope to see you again in the New Year!
       
(graphic courtesy of Webweavers Free Clip Art)

Book Giveaway of CINDER by Marissa Meyer

Title: Cinder : Book I of the Lunar Chronicles (Audio CD, Unabridged) by Marissa Meyer
Publisher: Macmillan Young Listeners; January 3, 2012
Reading level: for teens and up

I gave 5 stars to this book in my review: "I wasn't sure about this reworking of the Cinderella fairy tale, but I was hooked by the cover and by the opening sentences. I wanted to know more about this futuristic version, a Cyborg Cinderella...." more...

Macmillan is offering readers a giveaway of the audio unabridged CD of Cinder, Book I in the Lunar Chronicles Series. Macmillan has also provided an audio sample of the book, so you can start listening to this audio clip .

GIVEAWAY: For a chance to win the audio of Cinder, Book I in the Lunar Chronicles Series, by Jan. 3, leave a comment with an email address. Macmillan's giveaway is limited to U.S. residents. No P.O. box addresses, please. (I will contact the winner by email on Jan. 4 and ask for an answer within 2 days, after which another winner will be chosen.) Do enter, and good luck!

UPDATE: Congrats to stacibuckeye for winning the Audio CD.

Found Books: The Opium War

Title: The Opium War by Julia Lovell
Hardcover: 352 pages; Kindle 
Publisher: Picador; First Edition edition (2011)

The full title is The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams, and the Making of China and I found it while browsing on the web. The impact of the early 19th Century war when China was forced to open trade to the west and import opium into the country is examined by the author to determine its effect on the China of today. I'd love to get my hands on this book; it seems the book may be critical of the present Chinese government for being too skeptical of Western countries today!

The Opium War reminded of another new book, an historical novel that also covers the Opium War, Amitav Ghosh's River of Smoke,  the title probably referring to the smoke from the smoking of opium.

Title: River of Smoke: A Novel by Amitav Ghosh
Hardcover: 528 pages; audio and Kindle  
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (September 27, 2011)

Publisher's book description: "The Ibis, loaded to its gunwales with a cargo of indentured servants, is in the grip of a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal; among the dozens flailing for survival are Neel, the pampered rajah who has been convicted of embezzlement; Paulette, the French orphan masquerading as a deck-hand; and Deeti, the widowed poppy grower fleeing her homeland with her lover, Kalua.

The storm also threatens the clipper ship Anahita, groaning with the largest consignment of opium ever to leave India for Canton. And the Redruth, a nursery ship, carries Frederick “Fitcher” Penrose, a horticulturist determined to track down the priceless treasures of China that are hidden in plain sight: its plants that have the power to heal, or beautify, or intoxicate. All will converge in Canton’s Fanqui-town, or Foreign Enclave: a tumultuous world unto itself where civilizations clash and sometimes fuse. It is a powder keg awaiting a spark to ignite the Opium Wars.

Spectacular coincidences, startling reversals of fortune, and tender love stories abound. But this is much more than an irresistible page-turner. The blind quest for money, the primacy of the drug trade, the concealment of base impulses behind the rhetoric of freedom: in River of Smoke the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries converge, and the result is a consuming historical novel with powerful contemporary resonance."

We listened to River of Smoke, the second in the Ibis Trilogy, on a long trip to Canada, but had to return it to the library before finishing it. Unfortunately, we may have to wait on another trip to hear the other half of the audio! The weaving of personal stories with history is compelling, though, and a major plus in this trilogy.

Book Review: Cinder (Lunar Chronicles, Book 1) by Marissa Meyer

Title: Cinder (Book One in the Lunar Chronicles) by Marissa Meyer
Reading level: Ages 12 and up
Hardcover: 400 pages; Feiwel & Friends
Release date: January 3, 2012
Objective rating: 5/5

I wasn't sure about this reworking of the Cinderella fairy tale, but I was hooked by the cover and by the opening sentences. I wanted to know more about this futuristic version, a Cyborg Cinderella.

"The screw through Cinder's ankle had rusted, the engraved cross marks worn to a mangled circle. Her knuckles ached from forcing the screwdriver into the joint as she struggled to loosen the screw one gritting twist after another. By the time it was extracted far enough for her to wrench free with her prosthetic steel hand, the hairline threads had been stripped clean." (from an uncorrected proof. Final copy may differ).

Cinder is virtually enslaved to her wicked stepmother, selling cyborg parts and repairing robots in the open market to make money for the household. Things begin to change for her when the Prince comes to her market stall wanting someone to fix his antiquated android. She catches his eye but Cinder is determined to hide her steel hand and foot from him, fearing rejection. Cinder, however, is only 35% cyborg, fixed and renewed with mechanical parts as a very young child after surviving a house fire that killed her real mother. She knows little about her parents or her past, just that her stepfather, now deceased, had been responsible for saving her, mending her, and bringing her home to his family.

The Prince in the meantime befriends Cinder, his "mechanic", hoping she will help him avoid the beautiful but dreaded Lunar Queen, queen of the moon people, who is determined to forge an alliance with Earth through marriage to the Prince. The real conflict and danger for Cinder is not her stepmother, as in the original fairy tale, but this queen who uses magic and "glamour" to control and manipulate everyone who sees her.

Comments: The well-written and entertaining book shows how Cinder escapes dangers after finding out her true identity. I was totally entranced with this futuristic version of the Cinderella story, and I am way past being a teenager or young adult, the targeted audience. I recommend it for its highly imaginative plot, which made it very enjoyable reading.

GIVEAWAY of the Audio CD: enter now through Jan. 3, 2012 at this link: Enter to win the Audio CD of Cinder.

 A complimentary ARE of this book was sent me for possible review

© Harvee Lau  of Book Dilettante. Please do not reprint without permission.

Sunday Salon: Music from Around the World

Welcome to the Sunday Salon. Click on the logo to join in.

I've discovered a way to listen to radio from across the globe, using my trusty computer and the web of course. I am listening to really good jazz right now, from a Japanese radio station, which is remarkably clear, all the way from Tokyo. I also good good signals from a Bogota radio station in Columbia, which plays lively Spanish love songs. Signals from India, Africa, andChina were not too good on some stations or not available in some of the cities I tried. The ones that came through were talk radio in languages I don't understand though I was looking primarily for music.

In any case I recommend Musashino FM 78.2 from Tokyo for good jazz plus Brazilian jazz, and Besame in Bogota, Colombia for Spanish songs
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On the reading front, I've fast forwarded through a couple of cozies and a sci-fi thriller, read a mystery novel and a sci-fi fantasy, and am now starting a new novel by Douglas Kennedy, The Moment.

I've sent out all my holiday cards, including eCards. How about you?