Unabridged Opinions

After the last book of McFadyen’s I read, I should have known better than to a) read it while alone in the flat and b) read it on what can only be called “a dark and stormy night”.  Truly, the last book frightened me, and while this one wasn’t quite as difficult to get through, I still ended up staying up until 1am to finish it because if I’d gone to bed with the murderer still at large in the novel the nightmares would have been unspeakable.

So, I stayed up until 1am, the murderer was safely in jail, and I could at least think about sleeping.  For some reason, I find McFadyen’s books particularly powerful.  The main character, Smoky Barret, is engaging and strong–but I believe that the complete immersion I find in the books comes from the deft sketching out of all of the characters around her as much as Smoky herself.  Because of this, I care deeply about what happens to everyone, even tertiary characters, which ramps up the anxiety levels considerably.  Add in McFadyen’s habit of at least having a small portion of the narrative done from the victim’s point of view, and I’m well and truly inside the world of the novel.  Of course, it’s a world filled with psychotic killers, which makes it heart-stopping, but it’s definitely there. Continue reading

There is a story, in my family, that takes place when I was ten years old.  Although it’s about me, I don’t actually remember it, and I had to hear it the first time from my father.  He was using it to illustrate a point he wanted to make to a bookstore clerk who was…concerned…that my then twelve-year-old self was buying “older” books along with my young adult sci-fi and fantasy (I actually can’t remember the book that prompted the conversation, although I had had issues a few times at the library and at school with “reading about my level”.).

So, as I was standing there, my dad explained why he didn’t think I needed policing in my book choices:

Well, when she was ten, I walked into the den and saw her reading Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.  When I mentioned that she might want to read that book when she was older, and it would make more sense, she looked up and told me ‘Oh, it’s okay; this is the second time I’m reading it.’ At that point, I decided she could read what she wanted.

And you know what? I could.  Continue reading

I enjoy reading non-fiction, and one of the best bits of reading this genre is that you can, occasionally, look at a book and think, “Wow, someone wrote an entire book on that?” with equal parts bemusement and fascination.  Salt was such a book for me.  I knew, of course, that salt was an essential part of a healthy diet (and a large part of some un-healthy ones…), but, beyond that fact and a vague sense that salt was a good cleaning agent, and you could use it to exfoliate, I didn’t really know what a book that went on about salt for over 400 pages would be like.

It turns out; it’s pretty good. Kurlansky kept me entertained for the entire book, and it was good enough that, a few days ago, I picked it up to read again. Even the second time around, it’s still a very entertaining book.

Kurlansky does an excellent job of tracing the history of salt through what I thought of as “the better-known bits of history” (the American Civil War, the Roman Empire, English colonization), but he especially shines at drawing out the part salt had in the daily life of everyone–whether it’s a peasant in medieval France or American settlers struggling to become self-sufficient and independent. There are enough small details to make the entire story of salt flow, and it is easy to follow the story of salt as it darts around the world (following the rise and fall of empires, as it happens).

Salt is everywhere, and it turns out to be a fascinating subject–especially because the modern vision of salt is as a danger (and a sneaky, occasionally hidden one at that), but the story of salt, and how it saved and supported people as they travelled and lived all over the world is one worth knowing–and it is a well-written one, at that.