19.5.10

Book reviews with Liam in hats

Wilbur Smith's "Three Novels of Ancient Egypt".
It's a ballin' adventure about love and war, and the gelding of slaves. The middle novel- The Seventh Scroll is set in "modern times" and follows two sexy and single archaeologists who find the remnants of what was introduced in the first novel - River God. The 3rd and Final Chapter- Warlock goes back to Ancient Egypt and continues on a few years after River God finished.
There are several battles and a scene featuring attempted rape and premature ejaculation (the same scene).
The collection of River God, The Seventh Scroll and Warlock as a whole is awarded the black and white semi-military looking cap of goodness.


White Ghosts was on sale for $5. After reading the blurb I was expecting lush, detailed scenes of exotic Hong Kong as a murder cryptically unraveled. Instead what I got was a poorly written tale about a bunch of losers you neither empathise with or remember amid unexplained flashbacks to the homosexual antics at a British Catholic Boys School.
Author Will Rhode goes on to devote entire pointless chapters to a man jerking off to porn with an unnecessary amount of written detail. (We've all watched porn, we know how it goes.)
Then another scene where some guy gets anally violated at a Massage Parlour.
Clever literary terms such as shit stain, toilet water and willy also get thrown around.
I tolerated about 20 crappy chapters of nothing happening before skipping to the last page. I will never get those few hours of my life back.
The boring crap fest that is White Ghosts gets the zebra print cowboy hat because it's cheap and could have been created by a monkey with a sewing machine in a Vietnamese sweat shop.

James Clavell's fictional tale of Early colonialism in Japan is fun. I'm barely a quarter of the way in, but it's complex and rollicking. I hope it has the stamina to remain interesting and fulfil the potential it set in the first few chapters.
Gai-Jin gets the pirate bandana because I'm unsure of it, but I like it never the less.


I'm not wearing a hat with this book because I bought it in Japan and left it in Japan. If you're ever at the Gifu University International House it should be somewhere on the bookcase in the lobby.
The Historian was a real page turner that kept me up when I should have been snoozing. A curious story with varied and interesting settings, well-paced and well-written. It was an excellent read right up until the last few pages where its abrupt anti-climactic ending spits dog balls all over you. So disappointing. Like, imagine the minute Froddo gets to Mordor he pegs the ring and it flies into the volcano and that's it. All settled, all over.
It all leads up to nothing. The easiest and quickest resolution like the author Elizabeth Kostova just ran out of ideas.

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