A Reader Is Me!

Title: The Secret Portal (Volume 1)
Author: Reno Charlton
Number of pages: 179
Genre: fantasy, young adult
Book Number/Goal: 32/52
My Rating: 1/5

Review:
A "boarding school novel" about children who encounter a parallel magic world within their own school. They make friends with magical creatures, learn about each other's classes and daily lives, and fight together against the common enemy.

The story is straightforward and rather primitive. Maybe I shouldn't judge it so harshly because it's oriented at children and is supposed to be easy reading, but so is Harry Potter, and there's a world of difference. Not every novel automatically becomes exciting just because it has magic in it.

Title: Keys to the Coven: A Hellfire Universe Contemporary Urban Fantasy
Author: Vicky Loebel
Number of pages: 360
Genre: fantasy, romance
Book Number/Goal: 30/52
My Rating: 3/5

Review:
A demon's life is hard, even though he is already dead. A witch forces Max to accept a problematic promise. Now he is stuck with a task he's obliged to accomplish, but eventually he realizes that it comes into conflict not only with his code of honor, but also with his feelings.

The book's universe is detailed and amusing, with well-developed rules for magic, karma, demons and angels and witches, and other supernatural creatures. However, the core of the story is romance, including explicit erotic scenes of mostly traditional, consensual sex. Maybe it's a perfect story for a romance lover, but I had to skip pages and pages of pointless drag. There's a lot of enjoyable scenes, in particular, the bureaucracy of Hell, but not enough to counter-balance the overload of fluff.

Title: Creatures of Appetite
Author: Todd Travis
Number of pages: 238
Genre: thriller
Book Number/Goal: 28/52
My Rating: 4/5

Review:
An elusive serial killer is on the hunt for young girls. The victims get kidnapped from any place, no matter how secure, and some of their body parts show up a few days later, but no other clues. The police resorts to the last desperate measure: inviting a specialist from another state. Jacob Thorne is a brilliant detective who catches criminals using his methods of psychological profiling. He never fails, but he's extremely unpleasant to work with, being rude, egotistic and undisciplined, so he's assigned a partner: Emma Kane, a capable cop but severely traumatized after her last case.

The plot is genuinely suspenseful, and after an obligatory twist there's another, much less expected, twist! It's exciting to follow the process of unraveling the mystery step by step. The character of Thorne is strongly reminiscent of Dr. House, which, of course, is a bonus. There's a bit too much workplace intrigues and gossip, but otherwise, great and engaging story.

Title: Reality Transurfing 1: The Space of Variations
Author: Vadim Zeland
Number of pages: 182
Genre: non-fiction, psychology, esoterics
Book Number/Goal: 26/52
My Rating: 1/5


Review:
Make your wishes come true - not by changing yourself or the world, but by navigating to another version of reality where you are already successful. The book presents the model of reality composed of infinite number of possibilities existing simultaneously in the space-time continuum, where it's possible to change your fate only by the power of thought. However, it doesn't mean "wishing for success", because there is the law of balance which sabotages every intention as long as you consider it important. In particular, you attract everything you hate or despise, and repel everything you strongly desire. Besides, the world is populated with malicious energy-devouring entities called "pendulums", which arise from human activity but exist for their own sake (such as, every organization and every popular idea is a pendulum). These should be avoided, or at least not taken seriously.

This book is a hybrid of The Secret and Taoism. It claims that a certain way of thinking allows to achieve everything you wish for, but the approach is ripe with contradictions. What's the use of success anyway if you're not allowed to "really" want anything? The theory is supposed to be taken on faith, as there is no proof save for primitive analogies. It sounds kind of scientific and doesn't appeal to any higher force, but unlike religious and occult systems, it has no aesthetical or emotional benefits. The book doesn't include any practical techniques either, though maybe they're presented in the sequels (there's at least 5 books in the series).

There are some interesting concepts, such as love and hate being basically the same thing from the energy point of view. But as a whole, it's just another New Age nonsense.

Title: Keri: the shocking true story of a child abused
Author: Kat Ward
Number of pages: 745
Genre: memoir, non-fiction
Book Number/Goal: 24/52
My Rating: 3/5

Review:
Young Keri was considered a problem child and a pathological liar, but in fact, she was systematically abused by her psychotic, hateful mother and violent step-father, by bullies and even by social workers. No one believed her (at least no one who could make any difference). This is the first book in the series, it covers Keri's life from birth to the age of 15.

The book delivers exactly what is advertised - it's shocking and realistic. Obviously the author can't be blamed for not having exciting magical adventures, never encountering any celebrities, or lacking the gift of turning pain into poetry. If many pages of depressing details of an ordinary child's life in a disfunctional family is your thing, you might enjoy it.

The weird part is that the author provides extensive descriptions of many events, scenes and long conversations no normal person would be able to remember so precisely, being so little. Most likely she is embellishing the memories to make them more vivid and real for the readers; but then the question is, how much of it is indeed true?

The story has no obvious "moral". Perhaps it's calling for a change in the structure of child-caring institutions, as many more children may be suffering under similar circumstances. For me, it reinforces the idea that children are a burden, and no one should be allowed to breed unless they want a child more than anything else in their life; and forcing a person to keep a child they do not want can ruin many lives.

Title: The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success
Author: Kevin Dutton
Number of pages: 288
Genre: non-fiction, psychology
Book Number/Goal: 22/52
My Rating: 4/5

Review:
The author analyses character traits commonly found in psychopathic criminals, and shows that these traits are favorable for succeeding in other, non-criminal, activities, and in fact, are found in many successful people (in which case, the term "psychopath" is probably misleading). He doesn't glorify crime or mental disorder but rather, argues that "psychopaths" have certain talents that everyone would benefit from learning. He calls them "seven deadly wins": ruthlessness, charm, focus, mental toughness, fearlessness, mindfulness, action.

The book includes interviews with psychopathic patients in a mental hospital/research center, results of psychological experiments, and examples from the lives of famous killers. Sometimes the style is too technical and sometimes too informal, but overall it's amusing and insightful, although not really helpful, because the author just conveys the information but doesn't teach the reader how to become a psychopath - and after reading the book, it starts to feel like a really good idea!

In the words of one of the patients, "The problem with a lot of people is that what they think is a virtue is actually a vice in disguise. It's much easier to convince yourself that you're reasonable and civilised, than soft and weak, isn't it?"

Title: The Devil's Apprentice
Author: M.J. Moeller
Number of pages: 302
Genre: horror, mystery
Book Number/Goal: 20/52
My Rating: 3/5

Review:
A businesswoman is preparing to sell her family estate, a medieval church in a small English village, to a client who wants to convert it into a personal residence. When she arrives to the village to finalize the contract, all the hell breaks loose. She's plagued by nightmares and visions, and she's not the only one. A mysterious apparition may be a warning against selling the church, and a serial killer seems to be on the loose.

It's basically a modern gothic novel. The premise is promising, but the story falls short of excitement. There's mystery and suspense all right, but somehow, it all feels a little artificial, and the characters aren't all that interesting. It's also funny how the MC forgets important clues or postpones important investigations for later.

Title: The Rules of Dreaming
Author: Bruce Hartman
Number of pages: 298
Genre: mystery
Book Number/Goal: 18/52
My Rating: 3/5

Review:
A beautiful opera singer, obsessed with the opera she’s rehearsing, Offenbach’s “Tales of Hoffmann”, commits suicide. A few years later, mysterious deaths continue, and everything seems to follow the patterns outlined in the opera, with real people inadvertently playing the roles of their fictional analogs. Is it madness, coincidence or someone’s devious plan? The singer's schizophrenic children, institutionalized in a psych hospital, might hold some clues, but it's difficult to communicate with them. Their doctor, by some fluke of chance also called Hoffmann, gets more and more confused about what's going on...

The book is very intellectual. It extensively discusses the Tales of Hoffmann, and presents some exciting ideas, such as: "To Hoffmann the spirit world wasn't just a metaphor - it was the real thing, more real than anything else we ordinarily experience - and he believed that the creative artist had to do everything possible to go there. Through music, dreams, alcohol, drugs - and if all else filed, madness." One of the patients is writing a thesis "Authors as characters, Characters as Authors" about "authors becoming characters in what somebody else writes, and then meeting up with the characters they created themselves in their own works." Confusion between fiction and reality is a big theme in this book. Yet another musing: "But somewhere there's an intelligence at work - probably not God or the Devil, just some indifferent cosmic scribe writing and rewriting the book of the world in a thousand different plots and a thousand different styles. And I'm one of the very, very minor characters."

However, the story feels too much like an artificial device for illustrating the ideas, a bit like a puppet theater (another character's hobby). Somehow, it's neither atmospheric nor touching, and the characters are rather boring, even the ones who are in various stages of insanity. There's a cool twist in the end, though.

This book is definitely not a wasted time (it even made me google up Tales of Hoffmann), but it takes a fair amount of efforts to get through.

Title: The Invisible Man
Author: H. G. Wells
Genre: sci-fi
Book Number/Goal: 16/52
My Rating: 4/5
Notes: for Coursera Fantasy and Science Fiction course (reread)
Download: project Gutenberg

Review:
A scientist discovers a way to make living creatures invisible. So he makes himself invisible - just because he can, and because he envisions invisibility as a huge advantage over the rest of mankind, not unlike being a sighted person in the country of the blind. But his plans go terribly awry...

I've read this novel a long time ago, at school, but I don't remember it being so funny! The writing oozes with irony, and even though it's a bit too slow and verbose, it feels more atmospheric than dated. There are some silly jokes ("This, this Invisible Man, then?" asked the man with the black beard, with one hand behind him. "I guess it's about time we saw him.") and some jokes that sound surprisingly modern ("One might think we were in the thirteenth century.").

The characters, as comedy goes, are simple and stereotypical; in particular, Griffin the Invisible Man is a selfish asshole with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and his main antagonist Dr. Kemp is a bland "righteous citizen". Griffin's story is considerably less funny than the rest of the novel (oh that poor kitty!) but more dramatic and tense, inducing a constant feeling of a disaster waiting to happen - which doesn't disappoint.

Classics is often a pain in the ass to wade through, but not this one... seriously, it's a great reading.

Title: Dracula
Author: Bram Stoker
Genre: fantasy
Book Number/Goal: 14/52
My Rating: 2/5
Notes: for Coursera Fantasy and Science Fiction course (reread)
Download: Project Gutenberg

Review:
An old-school vampire novel from when vampires were irredeemably evil and did not sparkle.

Technically, it has everything - a gothic castle, bats & wolves, horror & suspense, seduction & mind control, a psycho and a geek, and even a bit of comic relief, though rare. "Whereupon the captain tell him that he had better be quick, with blood, for that his ship will leave the place, of blood, before the turn of the tide, with blood. ... The captain swore polyglot, very polyglot, polyglot with bloom and blood, but he could do nothing." Van Helsing is hilarious when he tries to make sense of English slang :)

Unfortunately, the writing style is too old-fashioned to appreciate it properly. It's not excessively verbose, but the action is slow and repetitive, and the tension quickly dissipates. Good characters are too perfect, and evil characters are too evil.

Here is a much more exciting version of the story: Shadow of the Vampuss, by Karen Mahony and Alex Ukolov :)