Kindle Reviews

This book tells the adventures of two American students who cross Asia on bikes. It is very interesting because we can imagine the lives and cities that sometimes are so different of our own, especially in the past, where such thing as a bike is news to some people. It is funny to see what was required to travel around Asia in the past, sometimes even a recommendation letter had to presented! 

I really liked this story, it was my first experience reading one of Arthur Hailey’s book. We follow the events at Lincoln Airport during a heavy snow storm. The number of characters and connected stories might be confusing to some of you, however it wasn’t for me. The story doesn’t have a murder, but it doesn’t lack adrenaline. The mental game the author created is excellent. 

Kitty Blakemore is not really ill. That is what Anne Harrison is told when she goes to work as a private nurse for the famous author. Or is she? Is someone trying to poison Mrs. Blakemore? Why are the servants in the house so strange? Soon it becomes a matter for the police, and nurse Harrison finds herself involved in a muder. 

I believe I don’t have to introduce this author or even the main characters of this story. In this book we are invited to follow one more of Holmes’ adventures. It is a short story and you can easily read it in a day as I did.

This is my first experience with Canadian literature. It was a slow reading for me once the English used in this book is old. In this story we follow the romantic adventures of the siblings Edward and Rose McLeod. Edward is interested in Helene, a rich and beautiful girl whom he knows since he was a kid. But the intriguing Wanda, an indigenous woman also gets Edward’s attention. Rose is interested in Allan Dunlop, who is desapproved by Rose’s father because of his social position and political beliefs. 

This book was published in 1600 by Shakeaspere. This theatre play tells us about the relationship between Hermia and Lysander who decided to run away once they couldn’t get married. Her father prefered her to marry Demetrius who also loves her and is loved by Helena. However, when Hermia tells to Helena that she is going to run away, she tells the plan to Demetrius imagining she could get some attetion from him. When the lovers run away, they are followed by Demetrius and him is followed by Helena.

The four enter in the woods where some magical creatures live. The King of Faries, Oberon, was with his elf Puck and set a plan with the intention to prank Titania, Queen of Fairies. However, his prank is out of control and there are a lot of spells, jokes and people who are in love for the wrong person. 

Here we are again with one more incredible book from Agatha Christie with our lovely detective Miss Marple! In 4:50 From Paddington, we follow the story under the perspective of another character, chosen by Marple to be her eyes and ears during the investigation. Everything begins when a friend of hers witnessess a murder when the train she was travelling passes by another, in which she saw a woman being strangled. When she gets to the train station no one believes her story because no body was found.

She goes to Miss Marple, tells her story and Marple hires Lucy Eyelesbarrow to go as a maid to Rutherford Hall, house of the Crackenthorpe family. A family in which the father is surrounded by people who wants his money to improve their lives, so everybody becomes a suspect.

Well, this was the first time that I read a classic book from Jules Verne and maybe I might have an unpopular opinion about it. I found it a little boring, but I didn’t abadon it. The book mixes science and ficction in an interesting way, however, how it’s written didn’t bring me all the expected emotions. I don’t think nowadays it is as exciting as when it was released 140 years ago, even tough the author managed to describe wonderful underwater things in this book. 

This novel happens in the Second World War and shows how the conflict affected people’s lives. In Cephallonia, a Greek island, lived Dr. Iannis, his daughter Pelagia and Mandras. Pelagia was a beautiful and well educated girl, who fell in love with Mandras. He was a fisherman who Dr. Iannis considered to be inferior than Pelagia because he wasn’t as educated as his daughter. 

The book then shows a sequence of events where we can deeply see how the war transformed the lives of the characters. The relationship between Pelagia and Mandras is affected when he goes to war and after when he joins a Communist group with a cruel leader. 

The life on Cephallonia also changes when the Italians invade it. In the book we get many details of the horrors of the war under different perspectives. Pelagia and Dr. Iannis are forced to provide housing for the Italian Captain Antonio Corelli and an interesting relationship develops from this situation. 

Cranford is a book by Elizabeth Gaskell and it was published in 1851. This was my first time reading one of her books and the overall experience was good. The story shows the society and the everyday life of the habitants of a little country English town in the XIX century. It is possible to know all the joys, worries, etiquette, sadnesses, secrets and the routine of the women who lived there. They were mostly spinsters or widows. Sometimes, the town has some visitors and it is under the perspective of one of those visitors that the book is written. 

The eccentricity of the town is in its population, mostly composed by women. In Cranford, the economy is a synonym of elegance and fashion has its priorities. To be socially accepted you must respect the visiting time and its duration. You have to be careful when you choose your maid, once some of them just go to Cranford in search of a marriage, flirtation is forbidden. Men generally die, disappear or spend very little time in this town. 

The story is told in episodes focusing in a group of women and their different personalities in different situations. One of the loveliest women is Miss Matty and after her sister dies, she becomes closer to the reader by sharing her expectations about marriage and other people. She is very generous and one of the most respectable women in the town. 

The story of young Tom Jones is a little unusual. We are introduced to well constructed characters that lead us to a puzzle.

Jones appeared as a baby in the house of a nobleman who lived in a little country town. This nobleman didn’t know who were Tom’s parents and sent his maid to discover who they were. Tom’s mother was found but she never revealed who the father was. Once his mother was poor, Jones was adopted by the nobleman and was raised as his own son. His childhood and adolescence were a little complicated. He wasn’t a rebel, but he was loyal to his only friend and this caused him trouble. Tom had a cousin, Blifil, son of the noble's sister, but he never liked Tom and always did something to punish him.

The book is a little fast and doesn’t show all the details about his life, just the important ones to the reader understand the story. Anyway, the real story begins when Tom Jones is expelled of his house because he had fallen in love with beautiful Sophia Western, who loved him back, but they couldn’t be together because Tom was adopted.  

He convinced himself to go to the sea, but in his journey he learns that Sophia had run away from her house. And yes, Jones will go after her and she will go after him, but life prepared some misfortunes on the way. Also, some questions still need an answer like, who is Tom’s father? 

I highly recommend if you haven’t read the stories with Miss Marple, a charming old detective lady, do it now. This was the first time I read an Agatha Christie’s book without Hercule Poirot being the detective and it didn’t let me down. Miss Marple has been friends with Ruth and Carrie Louise since they were kids. That’s why Ruth doesn’t hesitate to tell Miss Marple she believes Carrie Louise is in great danger, once the mansion she lives in is now a centre to help young deliquents.

Miss Marple is convinced to visit her friend and there she meets her friend's new husband, Lewis, which is very excited about the project they have in their house. He believes it is possible to help young deliquents to be honest and good people. Other than Lewis, we get to know other important people living with Carrie Louise. One day, Carrie Louise’s stepson comes to her house to meet Lewis and some time after he is suddenly found dead while he was writing a letter that went missing. This is the moment where we get to see Miss Marple doing her job.

This book is a mental exercise, not only because there are many characters in the story, but also because there are events that raise suspicion on many characters and then something make theses suspicions go away.

A Death in the Clouds was published in 1935 and it is one more adventure of the Belgium detective Hercule Poirot written by Agatha Christie. A moneylender, Madame Giselle is found dead during a flight inside a plane flying from Paris to Croydon. At first, it could be a heart attack, but when Poirot finds an poisoned needle, the murder is confirmed and one of the people on the plane is guilty. Poirot finds himself in a particularly difficult case, once nobody reveals nothing and even himself is a suspect.

A book written by Gustave Flaubert, takes us to Charles Bovary’s world. A simple man who was raised by his mother, the first Madame Bovary. Charles had a poor childhood with no perspectives but still managed to be a simple doctor and married a much older widow without attractives.

His life changes when one day he was hurried to help a farmer with a broken leg. Soon, he became friends with the family and felt attracted to the farmer’s daughter, Emma Rouault. She is a well educated woman who loved novels and dreamt of living an incredible romance herself. Even though being married, Charles never was disloyal to his wife, which shows us a little of his personality. When Charles’s wife dies, he proposes to Emma who accepts it aiming a better life away from the farm. She soon finds herself unhappy and bored in this new life. I felt connected with Emma at some points of the book, I could notice she was a dreamer who became a product of her choices, just like most humans out there.