Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

This is a review of Joseph Conrad´s Heart of Darkness which was published in 1902. It´s hard to say which genre it belongs to but I´d say it´s a mix of drama, thriller and novella.

The story takes place on a steamboat going up a river in Africa, sometime during the 19^th century. It is never said on which river or where in Africa the story takes part, however the description of the landscape and the history of Joseph Conrad hints that it is the Congo river.

Heart of Darkness is about a man called Charles Marlow, an Englishman who takes a job as a steamboat captain for a trading company. From there, the story is rather blurry. Marlow sets out to find a man called Kurtz who is also working for the trading company. Kurtz is positioned in Africa and is supposed to find ivory for the company, but a rumor says that he has gotten ill. Therefore Marlow is sent to find him and bring him back.

Marlow is at first a regular young man, happy to be working as a captain for the trading company. As he´s traveling along the river and sees the darkness in men, the darkness of colonization and the darkness of the wild nature he goes from happiness to anger and indifference.

Heart of Darkness was rather difficult to read because it´s written in a strange way. There are barely any chapters and you are never really sure of what´s happening in the story. You´ll often have to backtrack and read some parts a couple of times, and still you can´t really make any sense of it. A good example is when Marlow is looking for a person. Suddenly they talk about this person as if he´s dead and buried and just as sudden this person is in their party and alive. The scenery also changes without warning. On one page Marlow is on the steamer, and when you flip the page he´s on land, perhaps half a year forward in the story. It gets very confusing.

Heart of Darkness is a good book, but not more. It portraits the evil of men and colonization in a good way, but that´s it. It´s not the kind of book that keeps you glued to the pages since there aren´t really any thrilling moments, even though there could be if it were written in a different way.

I wouldn´t recommend Heart of Darkness to the regular reader. Heart of darkness is for those who´d like to see what the 19^th century colonization´s was really about and how greed and violence changes men.

Written by Robin

Slumdog Millionaire by Vikas Swarup

I have read Slumdog Millionaire written by the Indian author Vikas Swarup. Slumdog millionaire was published in 2005 and was originally called Q&A. However, after the popular film adaptation the book’s name was changed to Slumdog millionaire, the same as the movie.

This book is a drama with many intense parts where you are thrown back and forth between hope and despair.

It takes place in modern day India. The environment is mostly dark and goes hand in hand with the story. When times are bad the environment is dark and full of shadows and when the main character experiences something positive the world brightens a bit. Even when all seems good the world still seems grey and dull.   

You get to meet a lot of different and interesting characters in this book and I have chosen to take a closer look at some of them. There is one main character Ram Mohammad Thomas who is also the narrator of the story. He takes part in the Indian TV-show “Who Will Win a Billion?”. Ram has lived a hard life but has managed to withstand falling in to darkness and has become a better person. Through his experiences in life he is able to answer the 12 questions in the game show. Other personal traits that I have picked up are that he is stubborn and is determined not to fail at anything he attempts to do. There are two main supporting characters one is named Salim and the other one is named Nita. Salim is Ram’s best friend and dreams of becoming a movie star. He is a part of the adventures in Ram’s flashbacks and seems to be a person who dares to follow his dreams. I believe that Salim does not realize the seriousness in some situations and does not understand the consequences of his actions. Ram is totally different he is more realistic and does not trust people as easily as Salim. You could say that Ram is a bit of a protector to Salim. Nita is a prostitute who Ram meets when he makes a living as a Taj Mahal tour guide. They instantly connect and Nita strikes me as a beautiful but yet a bit unsure young girl.

The story is about Ram Mohammad Thomas who is one question away from winning a billion rupees on the TV-show “Who Will Win a Billion?”. But instead of giving him the final question the game host makes sure that Ram gets arrested, accused of cheating. How is it possible that an 18-year old boy from the slums can out smart doctors and teachers? He must be cheating, or is he? Ram is very confused and angry by this and demands that he can explain all this to someone. He gets to talk to his lawyer Sitka and he tells her just how he got to know all the right answers. The reason why he gets all the questions right is because of life experience. For every question asked he gets a flashback from his life that is in some way connected to the question and is able to get the right answer. The reason why he is participating in the TV-show is because he wants to free his one true love Nita from her pimp. The pimp refuses to give her away without pay and this is what drives Ram.

The language of the book was relatively easy to follow. There are a few hick ups here and there where the author uses difficult words and sayings. That makes you have to read the sentence one or two times extra to figure out what he means. These small bumps in the road are a rare find in Q&A and for the most part the English is readable for almost anyone with basic English knowledge.

The message of the book according to me is a very big part of this particular book. Because it flows through the whole story and with every decision the main character makes. I think the message is too and that nothing is impossible. The main character achieves the impossible by coming from a seemingly treacherous situation where his one and true love never can become his because of a pimp. Then turning it around and against all odds wins a TV-show all to free her and reunite with her. I guess another obvious message is if you set your mind to something you should not give up because if you just believe and maintain on the right track your goal is reachable.

I think that this book gives a great view of society and the poverty and what really is going on in such places in India. The character descriptions make you get a great connection to each character in the book and the way they act and what the go through is really moving. This also makes the characters come alive. The story itself is exciting from the first page to the last and it leaves me with a sort of feel-good sense. Yet I feel touched and angry about how some people are treated and that this exists in real life. To summarize it simple I can only say that this is one of the best books I have ever read. I think it has it all, excitement, romance and drama. I would be crazy not to recommend this to anyone. Everybody should read this book because it makes you think and it is just absolutely fantastic.

Written by Rebecca

Enigma by Robert Harris

  -“Enigma is a very sophisticated enciphering machine and Shark is its ultimate refinement. So,   we’re not talking about the Times crossword..” – Tom Jericho
   This book, from 1996 by Robert Harris, tells us the story about Tom Jericho, the mathematician from Cambridge who was recruited to Bletchley Park as a cryptologist.

He almost lost himself in love with the beautiful but mysterious Claire at the same time he was trying to break the German World War 2, secret and very complex Enigma U-Boat code. The novel starts off with the cold winds in Cambridge.

Plot:

Bletchley Park has been blacked out by the Germans and the U-Boat code, Shark is no longer possible to force. Tom Jericho, the only one who managed to break Shark, is recovering from a nervous breakdown, caused by his intense work at Bletchley.

He’s staying at King’s College in Cambridge when his old chief, Guy Logie arrives to ask him for help.

Tom Jericho, helplessly in love with Claire Romilly, encounters new puzzles to solve and discovers there is a security leak at the Park. A Nazi spy? It’s no longer a game of just breaking Shark.

Claire, who also works at the Park, suddenly turns out missing. Her housemate Hester Wallace joins Tom to find out what happened and stumbles across secrets that can easily put themselves and the whole war at great risk. Tom and Hester finds, hidden in the cottage where she lives, stolen cryptograms from a German eastern front transmitter, ADU.           A Nazi spy inside Bletchley Park.

The Americans have put three large Liberty convoys to sea to aid Europe and now, no one knows where the German U-Boat packs are. Just that the convoys are steadily steaming across the northern Atlantic and that somewhere out there in the cold darkness, the enemy’s waiting. They have 4 days to break Shark.

Structure:

The novel is written as a mix between past and present, authentic facts and fiction. It’s educational for anyone who wants to know more and even gives the reader some simple models of the underlying mathematics that’s used for crypto analysis. At the beginning of each chapter, the author also puts a note from the lexicon “Most Secret” from Bletchley Park.

The story is tightly packed with occurrences, pushing the story forward, where the author lets the reader take part in several side stories like Hester Wallace’s own self supporting story line. Then by weaving them all together, he creates a very dynamic flow which of course intensifies as the novel is about to end.

Setting:

The setting for this book is Britain during World War 2, specifically Bletchley Park and selected areas in Cambridge, London and Scotland. It’s a gloomy, cold, windy and damp, not to say grey world. The reader finds out that Britain even smells because of shortage of hygiene products. The reader can certainly understand there is a general shortage of just about everything, because the characters are not even sure what they’re being served at the lunch cantina from time to time. A dessert that looks like cake but tastes like paper as well as the ladies who colour their lips with vaseline and red beetroot are two examples. An effect of the war as it says in the book.

The main characters:

Tom Jericho

Tom Jericho is the brilliant mathematician from Cambridge who solves the puzzle of Shark, then works himself into a nervous breakdown. He’s in love with Claire, but eventually understands that road is closed. He goes from being a rather boyish, insecure young man to become stronger and safer as a person as he manages to solve the situations one by one. In my opinion he matures along the story.

Hester Wallace

Hester Wallace is Claire Romilly’s housemate who also applied for a spot as a crypto-logist, but in a man’s dominated world, she became sort of a glorified file clerk, sorting and organizing received cryptograms at the Park. Eventually she got to show her qualities as a cryptologist. Secretly of course, but yet she did. Like Tom, her character develops from being a smaller, somewhat “stowed away” personality, to begin to understand her true value and begins to take some well earned place. She doesn’t really mature along the way like Tom does, but she does grow in self-esteem.

The Germans

The Germans are the nasty ones wanting to take over. In reality as well as in the book, most of them are just ordinary men under orders from those really wanting to take over, the real Nazi thugs. One of the captured German U-Boat captains even had his teddy bear brought along onboard his U-Boat. Nevertheless, they still constitute one of the main obstacles in the novel and they do not develop in any direction.

The Enigma cipher machine and World War 2

The Enigma machine and the world war play a significant role in this novel and that’s why I regard them as two of the main characters and like to merge them into one. The Enigma machine gave the Nazi headquarters methods to secretly and safely communicate with their troops through garbled text. These so called cryptograms were then transmitted in Morse code. Before Bletchley Park and their deciphering machines, it looked as if the Nazis were going to win the war.

                 Theme:

                 This novel is about the seemingly impossible struggle against the war machine and also about “man’s” everlasting hope. It’s about the hope that gave people both courage and strength to in the end, overcome an almost invincible enemy. It is about love. Not only between woman and man, but also the love for the humanity and for the dream of that anything can be accomplished, no matter the situation. It’s all about what we decide is important enough.

 Style:

                 The way the novel is written by the author, shows that either he’s a brilliant researcher, or this is in fact one of his personal interests. By starting off every chapter with a specific word and an explanation, which I can confirm to be correct, he brings a lot of technical knowledge to the reader. Being very accurate in describing crypto analysis, Morse code and even military tactics, he also leads me to believe in the rest of his story.

He has a great talent and a delicate feeling for describing the small things in life and at the same time he brings a trembling and mysterious tension to the story. He puts facts and authentic notes and messages here and there, making this novel even more trustworthy.

This story is a soft action thriller with a lot of enigmas for both main characters and readers.

                 Target audience:

To catch the inner essence of this novel, I recommend the readers to be fairly fluent in the English language, but the book can of course still be enjoyed by those who aren’t.

                 If I was to recommend this novel, it would be to anyone with an enough serious mind, who would like to experience the tension in a really qualitative action thriller. Though the novel does not really contain any harsh violence, the use of the language sometimes is and I’d would like to  recommend  parental advisory or guidance for readers under 15 years.

                 Personal response:

                 I got the movie for birthday present from my ex fiancée years ago and recently bought the book from Adlibris in English and my immediate response was, that the movie doesn’t stand a chance against this piece of gold. I just couldn’t stop reading it. Enough said. I’d now like to end my review with a quote of that which caught my eyes and then never really let go:

”WHISPERS – The sounds made by an enemy wireless transmitter immediately before it begins to transmit a coded message”

A lexicon of cryptography ’Most secret’ – Blethcley Park 1943

Written by Ulf

Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding

This is my book review of Bridget Jones’s Diary and the book was written by Helen Fielding. In 1996 the book was published and in 2001 the movie of Bridget Jones’s Diary came. Bridget Jones’s Diary counts as a comedy novel, chic lit.

The book is a diary then for it’s written in the present all the time. The story begins at Mr.  & Mrs. Aconburys New Year Party in Grafton Underwood. The couples are close friends to Bridget’s parents. At that party she meets Mark Darcy for the first time. I should say as adult because they’ve met each other when they were children.

Bridget Jones

Bridget's mother is constantly trying to match Bridget with any man. Bridget is single and the reason the mother thinks is because she is not capable to get a man so therefore she will arrange it instead. And Bridget, in turn, has no chance to assert herself against her mother, but it ends up with her doing as her mother said.

Daniel Cleaver

Daniel Cleaver is Bridget's boss, Bridget and he flirt by sending e-mails to each other, but then also start a relationship. He is a womanizer and thinks life is too short to be bored. He says he knew Mark Darcy in the past.

Mark Darcy

Mark Darcy is perceived as a dry and also boring lawyer, he is strict and does not come up with any unplanned adventure like Cleaver does , but behaves more sober and thoughtful. He is spends time mostly with like-minded and therefore a lot with his colleagues in the law company.

Somewhere in the middle or the end of the book, you notice that both Bridget and Mark have changed. Mark is a bit more relaxed and does not have the same rigid manner and Bridget is not as obsessed by weight loss and not as anxious or nervous like before. Daniel, however, has not changed at all and continues in the same track as before – as a womanizer.

                                                                                                                         

The plot is about Bridget Jones, who talks about what it is like to live her life as a 30 year old single in London, never to find the right one, the fight for the ideal weight, the friends she can not survive without and contests with the boss Cleaver.

This book is easy to understand, that’s why I chose to read this book.  And the book is fun from the beginning. That makes it easier to read then.

I love this book, the first time I read this book and saw the movie I was in the same age as Bridget in the book – and she did things that was so typically me, like “playing” drums in the air and then finish that solo with a kick in the air…I love that!!

That which makes this book so great is that I can relate so much to myself. Like how she

thinks, her silly but oh so funny excuses, her concerns about appearance and get a boyfriend.

Her faltering attempts to talk about feelings with a new boyfriend. It was like that I also

felt a period. I recognize myself so well and I think that's precisely why I love this book.

I don’t think there’s anything in the book that is bad and I would surely recommended this book to other people. I would highly recommend this book, because if you want a good laugh and get the feeling that you will recognize - read Bridget Jones’s Diary!

Written by Anette

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold.

“The lovely bones” was written by Alice Sebold, born in Antigo, Wisconsin in 1963. When the book was published in 2002, it became a great success.

It´s a fantasy-novel that takes place in the suburb somewhere in America during the seventies, when people still thought the best of each other.

The young narrator and main character, Susie Salmon is a fourteen year old schoolgirl with a crush on her classmate, his name is Ray Singh, the new boy from England. Early in the book Susie is brutally raped and murdered by Mr. Harvey in a cornfield, underground. And throughout the book we get to follow her story both on earth but mostly from her perspective in heaven. Or as she calls it, the in-between.

Susie´s father, Mr. Jack Salmon is a good man and has a beautiful father-daughter relationship with Susie. He´s the one struggling most to find Susie and won’t give up, even thou his marriage with Susie´s mother Abbey is falling apart. He becomes suspicious and starts his own investigation when the police eventually give up. Abbey deals with the loss by escaping, abandoning her family when they need her the most.

Grandma Lyn comes to the rescue and moves in to help the family, a determined woman with humor and a strong personality. She practically raises Buckley, Susie’s little brother and she helps out with the house. Susie’s sister, Lindsey, doesn’t get that much attention at first, but after a while, when she grows up and turns in to a young woman she has a crucial role finding out the truth about Susie.

Mr. Harvey is the neighbor across the street. A man who has murdered before and is well aware of the details that has to be taken care of. He´s that kind of man who no one knows anything about, on the surface he seems to be the perfect gentleman. But no one knew he killed Susie.

The book starts with the lovely and innocent Susie telling us quite frank and honest:

"My name is Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered." In the in-between she meets a girl named Holly, and all the other women Mr. Harvey killed before her.

With fantasy and expressive words the writer explains Susie´s heaven and you immediately feel fascinated and somehow, humble and not so afraid of death. You start hoping that life after death is as beautiful as in Susie´s heaven and that maybe you also have someone there, watching over you like a guardian angel. With warmth and small glints of humor mixed with the horrible fate the author manages to make me want to read more.

I think it´s important when you read the book to keep an open mind to fantasy and illusionary things, because this vivid story swings between what’s real and what’s not. I can recommend this book to people who likes good and captivating books, whether you believe in life after death or not.

Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert

Book review of Elizabeth Gilbert’s
Committed

I’ve read a very interesting book called Committed, it was published 2010 and the author is Elizabeth Gilbert. The book is a freestanding sequel to eat, pray and love; both of them are love stories. But Committed also fits into the genres biography and literary history. Gilbert writes about her life at present time and a special obstacle she suddenly has to face in her love life. In order to find contentment in her life changing decision, she takes you on an investigative journey thru both history and cultural landscapes. She shares her own life experiences and thoughts on the issue, as well as other opinions and points of view.
The first book; eat, pray and love ends when Elizabeth meet a Brazilian gentleman called Felipe in Bali. They fall madly in love; they bond completely and make a vow to each other, to always stay together but never to get married. They both have a history of failed marriages, that’s why they promised never to enter the matrimonial path again. Committed starts when the two have been a couple for over two years, Felipe is a businessman who can work anywhere in the world, Elizabeth is a writer so her work also allows her to travel. Elizabeth is in her mid-thirties, she is American, and all her family is living in America. Therefore it’s natural to return to America when their romantic journey in Bali comes to an end. They have a started building their first home together, and because Felipe doesn’t have a permanent American visa they leave the country now and then in order to get his visa extended. This is not a big issue for them since they both have some of their work abroad. But it’s a big issue for The United States Department of Homeland Security. One time when Felipe and Elizabeth is about to enter the States, the immigration office won’t let Felipe into the country, because he is not an American citizen, but he is returning back to the States like it’s his home. This leaves them with little choice; get married or Felipe will never be let into America again.
This is the obstacle this whole book is about. Of course they will get married even if they said they never wanted to, if that is what it takes to be together. But it’s not an issue that is fixed overnight; Felipe is not let into the States during the ten months it takes for the Homeland Security to make a decision, if they are allowed to get married in the States or not. So they travel together for nearly a year impatiently and patiently at times. While hoping to soon be able to return to America and build their own home, they travel through Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia just to mention a few places. And while doing all that restless traveling Elizabeth is trying to find out what marriage really is about, how people in other cultures look at it, how marriage has developed historically to be what is it today.
The text in the book is really nice to read, it has a nice flow. The sentences are not too long or too short. The language is relaxed, more average than formal. Since it’s an American book the language for me was a little bit harder to understand than the British books I’m used to, but the more new words I learned. The story is written in a chronological order, with a lot of love and some humour but most importantly passion. I say love because you can tell that it took some research for Elizabeth to write this book, and great deal of reflection and thinking. She makes you think and reflect upon things too when you read, and I think that is her message in the book. That there are so many reasons to get married or not to get married, but it might not just be yours and your fiancé’s decision, there can be so many more reasons and expectations.
What I really like about this book is all the little stories Elizabeth tells that are happening on the way, like this one “I was captivated by the monks. They were a fascinating distraction for me. I completely fixated on them. In fact, I was so captivated by the monks that, after a few languid days spent doing nothing much in this small Laotian town, I commenced to spying on them…” She also tells stories about her family, like her grandmother’s marriage she shares a lot of experiences and wisdom, and it makes the book so much more interesting. From my point of view this can be a good book to read for both genders, but a little bit of interest in marriage will make it an even better experience. I will definitely recommend reading this book, it makes you think and it opens your eyes. I enjoyed reading it, because I learned a lot and I got to know Elizabeth thru this book and she is a cool person. But also because it wasn’t the typical book I would read (it wasn’t a chick lit), it wasn’t exiting or dramatic in that way it was more instructive and worth considering.

Written by Caroline

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

The God Delusion

Richard Dawkins

                                            

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins is a non-fiction book written back in 2006, and as of now the English edition have sold over 2 million copies.

One should keep in mind that Dawkins is not just a writer but an evolutionary biologist and ethologist, a background from which he draws heavily upon during the course of his writing.

Dawkins himself claims inspiration and idea from Lila written by Robert Pirsig, specifically the statement that: "when one person  suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion". 

Mr Dawkins himself claims to be an atheist (well, a 9/10 leaning towards 10 as certainty without proof would be considered as bad as religion) and as an interesting side note, just to point out the kind of attention he has been receiving for his work, Encyclopedia Dramatica dedicated an article about him, claiming he is the atheist God.

The main plot so to speak when it comes to a non-fictional book is heavily reliant on the scientific point of view when it comes to the god hypothesis, how one could never claim the "God excuse" as a defense of an idea as it lacks proof.

As a pleasant compliment to similar books on the market that openly criticizes religion The God Delusion does not waste time or pages going through history with for example the crusades or the witch processes, they are of course mentioned, not mentioning these occurrences (for lack of a better word) when speaking of religion would be like speaking of cheese without mentioning cheddar (or Venezuelan beaver-cheese).

Dawkins does spend a lot of time discussing the works and theories of others incorporating their ideas into his own and on more than one occasion as when it comes to theologists, disproves them as unreliable in the face of facts, never dismissing anything without cause or proof that the information or theory is false.

The God Delusion offers a lot of topics to be read and the most important person in this work mentioned would be Darwin, someone who it is apparent that Dawkins admires. 

The book is separated into two subplots so to speak, where the first chapters are spent discussing and summarizing proof that there most likely is no God and the second half revolving around morality and religion.

For example Dawkins discusses the issue of morality, religion and children as a specific entry into the book, he argues that to say "a Christian child" or  "a Muslim" child would be little short of an abomination as this categorizes a child as part of something a child is unable to comprehend and the use of such language should be discouraged.

Unfortunately Dawkins have a tendency to over formulate himself in writing he utilizes a very heavy language with very complicated formulations of his ideas on several occasions making him a quite heavy read, simply put he tends to be quite wordy.

In his defense dealing with such a massive topic I will not claim him to be poorly thought out, because doing so would not be considered fair or even realistic as I sincerely believe that nobody could've done a work of the magnitude any better. 

The second problem also draws from his choices of words, if you are not familiar with the difference between for example deitism, agnostics and atheist etc you are in for quite a ride as you will undoubtedly have to refer back to the first chapter where he gives a quick introduction to these theories (and with quick I'm talking about around 10 pages), making it quite an annoying read unless you are already settled in with these ideas.

Besides the "God theory" there are a few other central pillars namely the issue of morality without religion, natural selection and one of the most important once that are so often left out of other works, the claim that atheism is proof of a healthy individual who can formulate his or her own ideas.

The God Delusion does not aim at converting anyone from a religion , not directly it seems more aimed towards the masses which are in between, uncertain and of course those of us who already consider ourselves atheists and are simply looking for a good read.

As a whole this book is one of my personal favorites and I would consider it very enlightening and therefore a recommended read to anyone wanting to expand their minds even if they don't agree with the theories presented.