Tag Archives: Harper Collins

Review | The 100-Year-Old Man who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, Jonas Jonasson

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9781443419109Jonas Jonasson’s The 100-Year-Old Man who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared is about… Well, the title says it all, doesn’t it? Allan Karlson escapes the nursing home just before the party for his 100th birthday and, on a whim, steals a suitcase at the bus terminal. Unfortunately for him, the suitcase contains a lot of cash, and this leads to a hilarious, utterly absurd chase that involves a hot dog stand operator, an elephant and a lot of unexpected twists.

We also learn about Allan’s life before the nursing home. This is where the comparisons to Forrest Gump come in — like Forrest, Allan is involved in a wide range of historical events, meeting such historical figures as Mao Tse-Tung (and his wife!), Stalin, Kim Jong Il and several US presidents. Like Forrest, Allan is unaware of the massive influence of these figures on world politics, but unlike Forrest who really is an innocent, Allan is an apolitical explosives expert. He knows how to blow things up, and he doesn’t care how his skills are used. This isn’t meant to imply that he’s a cold-hearted man who sells his skills to the highest bidder, but rather that he mostly just wants to be left alone playing with his explosives, and yet the world just won’t leave him alone. Take for example this episode with an immigration officer:

And the more the immigration officer got out of Allan, the less fascistic the Swede seemed to be. He wasn’t a communist either. Or a national socialist. He was nothing at all, it would seem, other than an expert on explosives. As for the story of how he came to be on first-name terms with General Franco, it was so ridiculous that it had to be true — he could hardly have made it up.

Since he had no better ideas, the senior immigration officer arranged for Allan to be locked up for a couple of months. Unfortunately, the months turned into years, and the immigration boss mostly forgot about Allan, until one day he found himself discussing the case with his brother when they met at the family farm in Connecticut for Thanksgiving. [p. 102]

The novel is hilarious, but as seen in the passage above, Jonasson’s humour is dark, at times satiric, and at others even disturbing. Allan’s life is filled with misadventures and random streaks of good luck, and it’s mostly Allan’s nonchalance at everything that keeps the story humorous rather than tragic. Jonasson’s writing as well has a sharp bite — dramatic incidents are immediately undercut by quick quips and mundane things are inflated to absurdity.

100-Year-Old Man is a fun, quirky read. Some parts dragged, and even though the ARC I received is less than 400 pages long, at times, the book felt longer. Then again, with 100 years to cover, the story is understandably packed with events. Still, I love Jonasson’s humour, and I enjoyed seeing history through Allan’s eyes.

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Thank you to Harper Collins Canada for an advanced reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Review | Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, Robin Sloan

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9780374214913Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is my book soulmate. Seriously, if ever a book were to combine all the elements that would make me fall in love with it, this is it.

The title alone is enough to hook me, and, I suspect, any fellow book lover. The idea of a bookstore open 24 hours sounds like heaven. And no, online retailers don’t count — sure you can download an ebook or order a print book at any time, but there’s a magic to actually being in a bricks and mortar place. And Mr. Penumbra’s store in particular has the musty, old book charm that makes me want to spend hours in it.

Even better, Penumbra’s store is an indie! Bookseller protagonist Clay is used to customers asking for book recommendations, then leaving to buy it on their e-reader. As a bookseller at an indie myself, I could relate, and the scene where author Robin Sloan creates a clever reversal of this scenario made me as baffled and overjoyed as it did Clay.

I’m an avid mystery reader, and Sloan teases his reader with a creepy, utterly compelling one: What books are in the dark stacks Clay is forbidden to read? Who are the customers who come in the dead of the night to return a book to those stacks and pick up a new one? I was definitely hooked. Where would the author take this?

To his credit, Sloan completely blindsided me. When I think of a book about an indie 24-hour bookstore, with mysterious leather-bound tomes taken out in the dead of the night, I have a certain type of storyline in mind, and I bet you do too. So it took me completely by surprise when Sloan introduced a digital element — 3D mapping, Google search capabilities, computer wizardry — and somehow managed to make it all work with the mysterious, musty atmosphere of the old-fashioned bookstore. I admit, as a total book and mystery geek who also happens to be a tech geek, all I could think was, this book was tailor made for me.

Too often, the divide between the physical and the digital, the old school and the new, is posited as a one or the other type deal. You’re either a print book person or an ebook person, someone who appreciates the handwritten card or someone who loves the 3D IMAX 42fps type movie. Obviously, reality is rarely so clearcut, but in books at least, I usually find either nostalgia for the way things were or all out Cory Doctorow-style techno-geekery. To have both so seamlessly in one book just blew me away.

To be honest, the reason behind the mysterious customers disappointed me at first. On one hand, it would’ve been really difficult for any author to come up with an explanation impressive enough to live up to amazing build up, but then again, it also made me feel like Sloan settled for safe, overdone Dan Brown territory. Not a spoiler — Mr. Penumbra has nothing to do with Mary Magdalene, but the customers are using the books to search for something, and the object of their search disappointed me. Sloan reverts to a classic trope, and after having build such an exciting, esoteric world, the familiar was a letdown.

But then, again Sloan surprises me. And again, it’s with his masterful integration of the digital with the physical. The object of the customers’ search may be overdone (in my view, at least), but the combination of ways in which Sloan makes his various characters conduct this search is highly original. The final answer is highly original as well, and quite frankly, brilliant. Bravo, Mr. Sloan — you’ve blown me away.

I am in love with this story. I love that it manages to bring together so many things I love, including science fiction and fantasy, an absolutely awesome romance, even typography and design! My copy is filled with underlined text, marginal notations, and at the very end:

Posted on Instagram 26 Sept 2012

Sometimes, words aren’t enough.

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Thank you to Harper Collins Canada for an advanced reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Note: If you live in the US, your edition of Penumbra has a glow-in-the-dark cover!]

Review | Insurgent, Veronica Roth

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When I read Veronica Roth’s Divergent, I thought it was a good book that had the potential for a great sequel. Insurgent is that sequel, and it is even better than I’d predicted. Now that Roth has established how her world works in Divergent, she gives herself the freedom to rip it apart completely. The book started out really confusing for me, because I hadn’t read Divergent in a year and I was too lazy to  read the Guide to Divergent that the author had very thoughtfully posted on her site. Tip: read that guide. That being said, even though, other than Tris and Four, I had no idea who the other characters were, I got to know them and quickly came to care for them, just from reading Insurgent.

Insurgent is just amazing. I love how real it felt — Tris has been scarred, literally and figuratively, from the events in Divergent. (Warning: Divergent spoilers ahead.) She has been through some horribly traumatic events, and I love that Roth never lets us forget it. We are constantly reminded that Tris doesn’t have time to heal — her shoulder, injured in Divergent, can be used against her in battle. Her shooting of her good friend Will traumatizes her so that she is unable to use a gun, and also too ashamed to explain why. These plot points figure prominently throughout Insurgent, and I love how they are more than just dramatic plot points; they have become integral parts of Tris’ character.

I’d never been a big fan of the physical “courage” of the Dauntless — as revealed in their training sessions, it seemed more reckless adrenaline hunts than actual courage. So I love that Tris reveals her Divergent side in this book. She still has a temper and a tendency to be reckless, but these are more because of her trauma than actual recklessness. She is tired, guilty over Will, and wanting to be with her parents, so a part of her seeks dangerous situations — this strikes me as a very understandable reaction to all she’s been through, and I love that even with this desire, she still has logical reasons for her actions. I’ve always been a fan of Erudite, even though the villain Jeanine is from that faction, so I love that Tris’ being a Divergent means she has a very strong Erudite side. Tris is just kick-ass, both physically and intellectually, and she really takes charge in this book.

The best part? We find out why Jeanine has acted as she did, and the reason sets us up for what could be a killer finale. It’s a risky revelation, and such a big twist that I wasn’t sure how I felt about it beyond that it reminded me of a plot point from The Hunger Games. (Given how many plot twists there are in The Hunger Games, I think it’s safe to make that comparison without risking any spoilers.) I do know that while Divergent is good, and Insurgent is amazing, the third book has the potential to be even better. After seeing how wonderfully Roth exceeded my expectations and raised the stakes in Insurgent, I can’t wait to see what she’ll come up with next!

Anyone have a betting pool as to what the title of book 3 will be? I’m putting it on record — I’d long predicted it’ll be Convergent, but after reading this book, I now think it’ll be Resurgent. Or, more likely, Roth will decide to surprise us all and choose a different title altogether for book 3, one that doesn’t end in “gent.”