"Sweet Tooth" - Ian McEwan

Published in 2012 by Jonathan Cape

King of the Twist! That is my new nickname for Ian McEwan.  If you have read (or seen) Atonement you already know that this guys got endings in the bag.  I was truly surprised when this novel flipped from slightly boring romantic intrigue based in the 1970s, and made me go back a page to catch the twist again.

This is the story of Serena Frome (rhymes with Plume) and her induction and service with MI5.  It is the 1970's in Britain and there is considerable turmoil over communism and how to sneakily keep the citizens from seeing it as a good idea.  McEwan explores the relationship between government and literature, and throws in a healthy dose of girlish anxiety.

It wasn't my favorite novel, a little bland but well written and then end was worth the few days it took.  Unlike atonement, the characters weren't quite as well formed and I personally didn't feel any real emotional bond to them.

Rating: ***

Quotes:
"I didn't use, and hadn't even heard, the word "totalitarianism." I probably would have through it had something to do with refusing a drink.

"I was the bases of readers.  All I wanted was my own world, and myself in it, given back to me in artful shapes and accessible form"

"It was vulgar to want it, but I liked someone to say "Marry me" by the end.

"There was, in me view, an unwritten contract with the reader that the writer must honor.  No single element of an imagined world or any of its characters should be allowed to dissolve on authorial whim. The invented had to be as solid and as self-consistent as the actual.  This was a contract founded on mutual trust."

Sookie Stackhouse Novels by Charlaine Harris

Telepathic barmaid Sookie Stackhouse has her share of problems  from her sweet but mildly idiotic brother to the vampires that have started residing in her town.  While most of the residents of Bon Temps, Louisiana just think her a little strange she spends her days reading the thoughts of others and trying not to be killed.

Harris mixes mystery, romance, science fiction and just a dash of gore into a simply mind-numbing read.  Sometimes her writing can be a little flat but overall it hits just the right chord of guilty pleasure and day time tele-drama.  This explains why the HBO series TrueBlood (based on the novels) has been so wildly popular.

Personally, I was glad it didn't veer to much into romance novel territory.  Call it my prudish Amish upbringing or something like that, but I just don't care for sex books.  This year for my bday, Chelsea sent me the box set of these books and I am just now getting around to them.

Book One: "Dead Until Dark"
published in 2001 by Ace Books

Sookie is introduced to the new resident vampire Bill and as she falls in love with him she must protect her friends and family from a killer on the loose in their town.  If you have ever watched the HBO Series, this is almost identical to the pilot episode, which is pretty cool.


Book Two: "Living Dead in Dallas"
published in 2002 by Ace Books

Sookie and Bill are required to help the Dallas area vampires find a missing Vampire, Sookie's friend gets killed, there's a cult, there's a maenad, there's an orgy.  Book two was kind of all over the place and hectic.  It could have been three books.  Not as good as the first.  Also, rereading sentences like "I may be pretty but I'm also smart. . ." don't really give me a lot of faith in her smarts.  That's like saying "I'm really smart and everyone likes me a lot."  If you have to state it publicly, it's probably not true.

"The Unbearable Lightness of Being" - Milan Kundera

Published in 1984 by Harper & Row

Following the stories of two couples, intertwined by a 20 year dalliance.  We are introduced to a world where it is not weight but lightness that is the most difficult to bear.  Tomas is married to Tereza, she is young and helpless and every time he sleeps with a new woman it kills her inside.  His longtime lover Sabina is her opposite   Impulsive, carefree and open to everything with no guilt holding her back.  And last there is Franz, a teacher who meets and falls in love with Sabina, even when they are no longer together he still thinks of her and wishes she could be by his side.

There is a lot of war, sex, secret police, death, and talk of bowler hats as well.

Quotes:
"Vertigo is something other than the fear of falling.  It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified we defend ourselves."

"Culture is perishing in overproduction, in an avalanche of words, in the madness of quantity."

"Only the most naive of questions are truly serious.  They are the questions with no answers.  A question with no answer is a barrier that cannon be breached   In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limits of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence.

Rating: ***