Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier (4🌟)

Jamaica Inn is a gothic novel set in early 19th century in the south of England. It contains elements of thriller despite its slow paced narrative.

Mary Yellan moves with her aunt and her husband at Jamaica Inn, a dreadful place where horrible things happen. No one dares to stop by or even talk about it. Evil lives there. The young womam arrives at the inn, ignorant and naive. Du Maurier sets the mood of the story right away. Dark, gloomy, unwelcoming. At the inn she is received by a horrible bad mannered man, her uncle and a fearful woman. Her aunt has changed a lot. She has aged and is not the shadow of her former lively self. Slowly the author uncovers bits and pieces about the characters's personalities and their secrets. Mary regrets her decision to go live with her aunt. Now she wants to leave and take the old lady with her. However this might prove impossible after she witnesses some frightening events.

Opinion: not as good as Rebecca or My Cousin Rachel but I liked it a lot. Although the story is gripping I found it hard to read more than 2 or 3 chapters a day. Most of the story revolves around the relationship between the protagonist and her horrid uncle as she comes to know about what he does for a living. However there are few scenes between them, including a couple which are crucial. I think I liked this as it kept the mystery of the uncle alive throughout the novel. Loved the atmosphere and the setting. The moors the marsh and the isolation of the Inn. There was another creepy character who caught my attention and who was at heart of the mystery of the novel. During Maurier kept me wandering about their role and motivations until the end.

My edition is another hardback published by Virago in its Virago Modern Classics collection. It has 302 pages and includes an introduction  y Sarah Dunant which I enjoyed reading.

2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C Clarke (4🌟)

This is science fiction at its best. The novel relies on the strength of Ideas, all of which could be possible. Ideas about aliens and our evolution. About space travel and exploration. And about Artificial Intelligence, consciousness and sentience.

The story stars with ape men and a huge monolith. Aliens teaching apes how to use tools. Fast forward hundreds of thousands of years and we have humanity exploring the solar system and finding a monolith hidden in the moon. Who built it and why did they leave it there? More happens and then there is evidence of another monolith in one of saturn moons. Now, a small crew is sent to explore in a state of the art spaceship guided by an artificial intelligence called HAL.

My beautiful edition is from the Folio Society with 209 pages.

The Brain. The Story of You by David Eagleman (3.6🌟)

The Brain. The Story of You is a non technical journey through the various aspects of the brain and how those aspects shape us and our way of living. 

Very interesting read. It explains how the brain works, how we become what we are, how it perceives reality, how we control our body and actions and how we make decisions.

I particularly liked chapter 5 Do I need you? There is a section explaining how the human brain is wired to be social. How humans come together into groups to survive. It also explains how humans are also selective and look for similarities between them. This discussion led the author to explain, to a certain extent, how humans can become genocidal.

I also enjoyed the last chapter, chapter 6, which deals with fixing and or replacing senses as well as creating new ones, Artificial Intelligence and Digital Immortality. .

Hokusai by Shotaro Ishinomori (4🌟)

Hokusai is a biographical manga about the life of the famous Japanese artist.

The story is told in a non chronological order. Chapters jump from the artists young age to his last year's,  back to his beginnings, and so forth. I found this a bit confusing at the beginning but got used to it pretty quickly.  The extraordinary quality of the art helped me to immerse into each chapter's setting and follow the story. However I still don't understand the reasons why Ishinomori chose to tell the story this way.

Hokusai was man devoted to his art. Worked tirelessly to create a style of his own. Interested not much in the money but in the art per se. About growing as an artist. However there was also another side to his personality, in love with every woman he saw, he found happiness at moments but also lived a solitary life in others. Not that he cared much because he always had his art with him. Great biography with a good balance of personal and professional views on the artist as well as historical context to enrich the story. Oh I loved short inserts of humour which made the experience more enjoyable.

I would like to praise the quality of the art, particularly the way Hokusai was depicted at different ages. From early adulthood to his last moments I could tell the illustrations were of the same man without having to read the text. Also at various points during the story Ishinomori inserted replicas of Hokusai's art, including 2 or 3 images of "36 Views of Mount Fuji" which I loved.

My edition is a beautiful hardback published by Panini Manga, in spanish. It has 589 pages.

Camille by Pierre Lemaitre (4.2🌟)

Camille is a crime thriller, third book in the Brigade Criminelle or Camille Verhoeven trilogy. As with Irene, the crime case in this novel involves Commandant Verhoeven directly.

This time we follow a woman, Anne, who by chance witnesses an arm robbery and is brutally beaten by one of the criminals. She survives but is disfigured, fearing for her live. Camille is notified about the incident and requests to be assigned to the case though he only deals with murders,  not robberies. What his bosses don't know is that Camille is romantically involved with Anne. Obviously leading a case on her attack is in breach of the police rules. To add to the complications,  Camille finds it hard to identify the robbers let alone find them.

Opinion: again this is another Lemaitre novel that I devoured in a few days. The crime and mystery were well thought and the twist near the end brilliant. The ending left me a bit shocked and sad, but I think it was a good one.

I got my edition from my local library. It is a hardback, published in 2015 by Quercus. It has 316 pages.

Alex by Pierre Lemaitre (4.4🌟)

Alex is a crime thriller novel, second book in the Brigade Criminelle  (Camille Verhoeven) trilogy.

Won't say much about this novel to not spoil anyone's read. But, I think it was better than Irene,  and that is a lot to say. We meet Commandant Camille Verhoeven again a few years after the events in the first book. We follow him as soon as he is asigned the case of the kidnapping of a woman. He doesn't want to lead the case but he is forced by his superior Le Guen. There are very little clues as to the identity of the kidnapped woman. There was only a witness who saw a man taking her into a white van and then dissappear. No one else saw anything and the case seems an impossible one.

Opinion:  it was mind blowing. The twists were brilliant and the ending though brutal and hard was satisfying. I liked Camille's character development and maybe also the relationship with his colleagues Armand and Louis. But the best in my opinion was Alex, everything about the character was gripping,  interesting, thought provoking and more.

I got my edition from my local public library. It was published by Quercus publishing in 2013. It has 354 pages.

Irene by Pierre Lemaitre (4.2🌟)

Irene is the first novel in the Brigade Criminelle (or Camille Verhoeven) Trilogy. It is a crime thriller dealing with a peculiar police investigator and  a twisted serial killer.

The story follows Camille Verhoeven, a Commandant from the Parisian police. He is married and lives a stable live. Only problem with him is, he is too aware of his short stature though he tries not to show it to his colleagues. Camille is called to investigate the murder of two girls. The crime scene is so disturbing most police officers cannot stay there more than a few seconds. Through the investigation Camille and his team are able to connect the murder with two more. One in France and one in Scotland.  Moreover they are sure the killer is the same and that he is copying the brutal murders from classic crime novels.

Opunion: An excellent, gripping novel.  Well written. Short, quick chapters. This is the kind of novel I could have read in one long sitting had I had the chance, and time, and energy.  Excellent protagonist, very well presented, a likable character. The villain a mean, twisted mind. The plot, a puzzle, so clever and interesting. And the ending is.. ahhhhhhhhhh! 😨😲 I want to continue with the trilogy so I'll probably grab the second book soon.

I got my edition from my public library. Published by Quercus publishing in 2014 with 398 pages.

I have not been in the mood to update this blog. Maybe because I am enjoying so much my readings (and want to read rather than write here) or just because because. ... I'm kind of forcing myself to at least leave a short entry about my recent read, to keep my records up to date.