Wizzywig

Wizzywig is a story about a brilliant child computer hacker.  Kevin Phenicle gets beat up daily at his elementary school until he finds a way to cheat the phone company out of excessive fees.  He then becomes popular.  His first hack is of the phone company.  After overhearing 2 older men discuss sex as "boingthump" he takes that word as his online name.  After finding ways to scam free pizza and rigging radio contests, Kevin creates some of the world's first worms and viruses all before graduating high school.  He has to go on the run though as several companies have each lost $10,000,000 from his hacking of their computer systems.

I loved this kid.  He is a composite character of 3 young hackers of the early computer era.  If you want to learn about this era you should read this book. Though informative, it is hilarious.  I really enjoyed this one.

Insomnia Cafe

Peter Kolinsky is an expert on rare books and had a good job at an auction house. After black marketers use him in their schemes Peter loses his job and a friend gets him a job at a book depository company.  However, Peter has insomnia, stays up all night, wakes up late and is frequently late to his new job.  He is fired again.  Peter has found a cafe that is open all night called Insomnia.  There he befriends a waitress named Angela and she helps him get a job at the cafe.  On one of their dates she takes him to the archives-a place where books being currently written by famous writers are on the shelves.  However, the black marketers have not forgotten about him and are pursuing him.  Peter is terrified and seeks refuge in the archives.  Most of the story, though, takes place at the cafe.

Insomnia Cafe is a cute book and is a fast read since it is only 80 pages.  The artwork consists of black and white drawings in comic strip panels. Turkish illustrator M. K. Perker wrote and drew the book.  It was a relaxing read for me last weekend where I read it in a park on a hot and sunny day.

5 out of 5 stars.

Plague Land

This is S. D. Sykes' first novel and it was published in 2015.  The sequel, The Butcher Bird, was published last year and I hope that this series has an annual installment.  They are both medieval mysteries featuring Oswald de Lacy as the Lord of Somershill Manor and the amateur sleuth.

Upon hearing of the deaths of his older brothers, Oswald de Lacy has to leave the monastery where he is studying to be a priest in order to take over the management of his family's estate. His mentor, Brother Peter, comes with him. Oswald has not been trained to manage the property as he entered the monastery at age 7 and is now just 17.  The Pestilence has changed the estate with half of its residents succumbing to the Pestilence and those that survived are now quite fearful and superstitious.

After his arrival home, Oswald hears of the death of a local girl, Alison Starvecrow, and is told by Brother Peter that it is his job to investigate the death as he is now Lord of the manor.  The parish priest John Cornwall believes she has been killed by a demonic dog headed monster and convinces the village people that they are in danger of these creatures.  Oswald knows these creatures do not exist but has to deal with the villagers' beliefs in order to solve the crime.

Oswald gets grief from his mother and sister Clemence as well as from John Cornwall as he learns how to investigate the crime and manage an estate as well. He gets alot of advice from Brother Peter who seems to always know what the best approach to a problem is.

I am so happy that someone is writing a medieval mystery series.  I haven't seen too many of them lately and miss them. The medieval period is my favorite period in history.

Anyone who loves the medieval era will like this book.  The author has well-researched the era and it shows.  She has created plausible characters and there are many twists and turns in the solving of the crime.  A great read.

Pachinko

I just finished reading Min Jin Lee's 2007 novel Free Food for Millionaires.  I loved it so I had to pick up her latest novel Pachinko.  It took the author 30 years to write this story and I am glad that she persevered.  It was wonderful.

The story involves 4 generations of a Korean family who originated in Pyongyang.  The novel covers the early 1900s through the 1980s. After Sunja Kim became a pregnant teen whose father refused to marry her, a Christian missionary lodging at her parents boardinghouse, Isak Baek, offers to marry her and take her to Osaka, Japan where he will be serving a church as its pastor.  The family had cared for him while he suffered a bout of tuberculosis during his stay.  The family feels this is a generous offer as Sunja and her baby will be ostracized if they stay.

Sunja and Isak leave North Korea for Japan where they will live with his brother Yoseb and Yoseb's wife Kyunghee.  Sunja and Kyunghee become fast friends and the newlyweds become accustomed to harsh discrimination from the Japanese who even Japanize their last name to Boku.  Koreans are believed to be a lesser sort of people and are treated accordingly by the Japanese. However, life is better for them in Japan because food is more prevalent.  Sunja gives birth to a son, Noa, and a year later gives birth to another son, Mozasu. Yoseb and Kyunghee treat them as their own as they are unable to have children.

Noa is smart at school and plans to take college entrance exams so that he can attend university.  Mazuso gets into alot of trouble for repeatedly fighting with Japanese classmates at school and is told to go work for a family friend who owns a couple of pachinko parlors.  There he blossoms but Noa is unhappy with the arrangement because he feels that it is beneath the family's dignity to be involved in pachinko.

Pachinko is a mechanical game that is both an arcade game and a gambling device which is popular in Japan.  It is similar to slot machines in Western casinos but operates differently.  Small steel balls are given to the operator to use inside the machine and they are both a bet and a payout.  Many pachinko parlors are run by Yazuki (organized crime).

I loved the characters in this novel, especially the women.  They had hard lives and were constrained by societal expectations of what a woman can do. Sunja got lucky with Isak.  They had a good marriage even though it was short. Kyunghee was barren but her husband stayed with her.  Sunja's mother, Yangjin, married Sunja's father Hoonie, who had physical disabilities, so that she would have food to eat but they had a good marriage too and ran a boardinghouse together.

The story moved along at a good pace. The plot grew out of the tumultuous lives of the characters who lived in an uncertain time for Koreans, both in Korea and in Japan. The Baek family's experiences with discrimination kept them at hands length from the Japanese as much as possible.  One wrong move by any of them and they could have been deported back to North Korea even though most of the family was born in Japan.  It did not make them Japanese citizens and it was difficult for Koreans to obtain Japanese citizenship.

This is a must read.

Free Food for Millionaires

The theme of Free Food for Millionaires is resentment.  The main character, Casey Han, resents her parents expectations for her success and whenever they find out about a mistake that she has made her father hits her. The parents, likewise, resent Casey for not following their native Korean customs while living in their new American homeland.  They also resent her for not having a job lined up yet especially after all they have saved from their dry cleaning business to help support her.

The story opens with Casey returning home with a degree from Princeton. After a fight with her father she is thrown out of the house and with no where to go other than her white, American boyfriend's house. Upon arrival she sees him in bed with 2 girls and walks out.  Eventually they get back together and she lives with him; a secret from her parents and their Korean friends.  All of Casey's friends have trust funds and have great opportunities after graduation but Casey doesn't.  Since she has no money she has to adjust her expensive habits to her pocketbook.  That proves to be difficult and she gets into alot of debt, another secret she must keep from her parents.

Casey takes a job as an assistant at an investment banking firm which is basically secretarial.  She is qualified to be a banker but failed to apply for jobs while she was still in school and was unable to get one of those jobs.  She lives in Manhattan with her boyfriend and socializes with her Korean girlfriend Ella and Ella's Korean husband.  In order to make a few extra bucks she continues to work weekends at her mother's friend Sabine's retail shop.

Sabine would like Casey to take over her shop when she retires but Casey cannot decide what she wants to do with her life.  She seems to be just going through the motions with her career and personal life and does just that for several years.

As I have said in earlier posts I like Asian fiction so I loved this book.  The fear of and the need to break cultural traditions by the first generations in America are always fascinating to me.  The native Korean culture is on full display with the thoughts and actions of her parents. Casey, her sister Tina and friend Ella all have different ideas on how to assimilate into the American society.

The younger characters were perfect examples of the dilemma facing Korean Americans.  The author did a great job creating them as well as how they related to each other.  The pace was perfect for this 500+ page book as was the writing. If you decide to read this book I don't think that you will be disappointed.  It is wonderful.

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos

This is the first book of Dominic Smith's that I have read and it was fabulous.  The Last Painting of Sara de Vos is part mystery and part historical fiction.  The book alternates between the 17th century, the 1950s and year 2000.

The back cover blurb summarizes the book as follows:  "Amsterdam, 1631: Sara de Vos, the first female master painter in the Guild of St. Luke, defies convention by painting a haunting landscape. New York City, 1957: Her only known surviving work, At the Edge of a Wood, hangs in the bedroom of a wealthy lawyer descended from the original owner. Ellie Shipley, a struggling art history student, paints a forgery for an art dealer. Sydney, 2000:  Now a celebrated art historian and curator, Ellie mounts an exhibit of female Dutch painters and finds that both versions are en route to her museum."

Loved, loved, loved this book.  Each era depicts women artists in the male dominated art world.  There was alot of information on art history, art restoration and forgeries which I found to be exciting.  Of course, there is also alot of information about Dutch painters of the 17th century.  The author was well researched in these areas.

All of the characters were appealing, especially Sara.  I enjoyed reading about her life even though the author created her from a composite of real Dutch female painters.  She seemed real to me and I felt that I had known her.  Another great feature was that there were at least 3 strong female characters, remarkable in a book written by a man and done so well.

This book is a must read.

The Obsidian Chamber

The inside cover blurb summarizes the book as follows:

"After a harrowing, otherworldly confrontation in Exmouth, Massachusetts, Special Agent A. X. L. Prendergast is missing, presumed dead. Sick with grief, Pendergast's ward, Constance, retreats to her chambers beneath the family mansion at 891 Riverside Drive-only to be taken captive by a shadowy figure from the past. Proctor, Pendergast's longtime bodyguard, springs to action, chasing Constance's kidnappers through cities, across oceans and into wastelands unknown.  And by the time Proctor discovers the truth, a terrifying engine has stirred-and it may already be too late."

The Obsidian Chamber is the 16th Special Agent Pendergast mystery.  I have only read one other book in the series, Blue Labyrinth and my lack of knowledge about the series definitely affected how I felt about the book. I felt that it was a little slow.  There is alot of back story written into the novel which I needed to know to understand what was happening, but it made the reading less suspenseful for me.  The book is described as a thriller by the publisher but I did not feel any thrill.  The plot was definitely interesting but because half of the book was back story, it fell a little flat to me.  

Runaway

I had a hard time getting into this novel but after the first 50 pages I became interested. The story alternates between events that occurred in 1965 and the present time.  I liked the 1965 story better but it ended with the present and all the loose ends were wrapped up.

The story opens in 2015 with 4 childhood friends getting reacquainted. The story then goes back to 1965 with 5 teenage friends running away from their homes in Glasgow for London with hopes of making it big in the music industry. Guitarist Jack Mackay makes the decision to leave after being expelled from high school and his bandmates decide that they don't really want to stay home either. Luke is tired of going door to door with his Jehovah Witnesses parents, keyboard player Maurie wants to give up the opera lessons his parents have forced him into taking , drummer Jeff is a school dropout selling cars and bass player Dave just wants to leave. They lose all their money from a fellow traveler who takes advantage of them and upon arrival they are taken advantage of again by a man who says he can get them a demo record that they can market to an agent.  While they are in London a new friend is killed. When the group are seniors they decide to retrace their steps in London.  Maurie gathers the group together telling them that he has something to finish in London that got started all those years ago.  With Jack's grandson as the driver they set off for London.

While this was a good book it was not as good as earlier May novels.  The plot was simpler and the characters were less developed.   It just wasn't as interesting as the usual Peter May novel.

3 out of 5 stars.

Hostage

Hostage is Guy Delisle's newest graphic novel.  It was published last month by Canada's Drawn and Quarterly.  The book recounts the experiences of Christophe Andre who was kidnapped in 1997 in the Caucasus where he was working for Doctors Without Borders.  He was held for four months in Chechnya. The story is told just as Andre told it to the author.

Andre spent his days counting them so that he could keep track of time.  He was held in empty rooms and a closet during his captivity.  In order to remain sane he would replay in his mind old military battles.  He was fed the same soup for every meal of every day.  His thoughts about what his NGO was doing to rescue him and when it might happen created some suspense as you felt that it might actually happen the way he fantasized about it.

I have read all of Delisle's travelogues and they were cute and humorous. Hostage is a different book.  Not only is it a serious book, the reader cannot help but feel the same thoughts that Andre was feeling, understanding the discomfort of being handcuffed to a radiator, and wondering along with Andre when he will next get some information about his situation.  You feel that you are in that room with him.

The color scheme is various muted greys for each page which conveys the heavy mood of the story.  It is most appropriate for a tale such as this.

I think that Hostage is Delisle's best book to date.  While his other novels were great they did not contain any suspense and as a mystery reader I appreciate that.

The Arab of the Future

The Arab of the Future A Childhood in the Middle East 1978-1984 is a graphic memoir by Riad Sattouf covering his life from birth through age 6.  It recounts his childhood in Libya, France and Syria in the 1970s and 1980s and is written from his perspective.  Sattouf is a former Charlie Hebdo cartoonist.

The book opens with his French mother Clementine and Syrian father Abdul-Razak meeting in France where both were in school at the Sorbonne.  It was not love at first sight but they eventually married and graduated.  His father had received his doctorate in history and accepted a job as an assistant professor in Libya where the family then moved.

Both mother and son stood out from their neighbors because of their blonde hair and were thought by most to either be American or Jewish.  Riad took notice of the Gaddafi regime's provocations toward Israel and America and had to deal with food shortages as well as the cultural differences between France and Libya.  When Gaddafi ordered people of different social statuses to switch jobs his father started looking for a new position. After two years in Libya they returned to France for the summer and then traveled to Syria where his father had been hired as an assistant professor at a university.

In Syria Riad suffered abuse from his cousins because they thought he was Jewish due to his blonde hair.  He saw a country in ruins and posters of Hafez al-Assad everywhere.  Again, Riad had to deal with a new culture.  The family returned to France for the summer to visit with Clementine's parents and then went back to Syria.  It is here that the story ends with a promise that the story will be continued in another book.

While the artwork consists of basic black and white line drawings there are alternating color schemes for the different locations of the author's life. France is light blue, Libya is yellow and Syria is light pink.

The name of the book was inspired by the author's father who said that he was trying to raise his son to be an arab of the future, one that would get an education to escape religious dogma.  His father, while educated, was sexist, racist and an anti-semite despite himself being an arab of the future.  He treated his wife abysmally and I have to wonder why she stayed married to him.

The Arab of the Future shows the Arabic mindset and was educational for me. The story was not as compelling to me as other graphic novels but I am still looking forward to reading the sequels to this novel.