The Horse Whisperer, by Nicholas Evans
Posted on June 29, 2008
Filed Under Excellent book, bestseller, book review | Leave a Comment
The Horse Whisperer (made famous by the movie with the same name, starring Robert Redford) 
The author, Nicholas Evans was born and grew up in Worcestershire and was a screenwriter and film producer before writing his first novel, the phenomenal number one bestseller The Horse Whisperer. This book has now been translated into 36 languages and has sold more than fifteen million copies worldwide since its publication in 1995.
The story is about a thirteen year old girl out riding her beloved horse, Pilgrim, and being hit by a 40 ton truck. Both horse and girl are seriously injured, but survive. But the destiny of the girl and her family comes to depend on the horribly mutilated and traumatized Pilgrim.
The mother of the girl, Annie, hears about a "horse whisperer" in Montana who is said to have the gift of healing horses. She sets out across the continent with Grace and Pilgrim to try to find him.
A magical story! Beautifully written, romantic and full of delightful insights!
Other books by Nichloas Evans include The Divide
Death at La Fenice, by Donna Leon
Posted on June 26, 2008
Filed Under Crime Books, Donna Leon, book review | Leave a Comment
La Fenice is the name of the famed opera house in Venice. The novel starts with the death of the well-known German conductor Helmut Wellauer. He is found dead in his dressing room after an intermission, shortly before he was to conduct La Traviata. Of course, the police are called.
The detective in charge is
Guido Brunetti, vice-commissario of police in Venice, and the hero of many of Donna Leon’s stories.
He is a brilliant, quintessential police detective. “He was a surprisingly neat man: tie carefully knotted, hair shorter than was the fashion; even his ears lay close to his head, as if reluctant to call attention to themselves. His clothing marked him as Italian. The cadence of his speech announced that he was Venetian. His eyes were all policeman.”
Brunetti is an interesting character, especially in Death at La Fenice. He has a loving wife and a familily life that does not interfere too much with his work. He is broad minded and has considerable wisdom. And he has the ability to understand people - not only what they express, but also what they hold back. And, contrary to many American detectives in crime novels, he is understanding and respectful.
The dead conductor, Wellauer, has been drinking coffee that has the unmistakable bitter-almond odor of cyanide. His death is a scandal to the city. And as Brunetti starts to investigate, he quickly realizes that the suspects are multiple. The great conductor Wellauer was loved for his music, but he was a man with many enemies and that had destroyed many lives.
Death at La Fenice, by Italian writer Donna Leon, is a great and entertaining book. Leon’s turn of phrase is descriptive, delicious and delightful. You see and hear what you read. It all feels amazingly detailed and real, and the plot moves nicely along as well. Death at La Fenice is one of the best police procedurals of the last decade.
See also The Girl of His Dreams (A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery)
Ida Elisabeth, by Sigrid Undset
Posted on June 15, 2008
Filed Under Classical novel, Norwegian Writer, World literature | Leave a Comment
(Oslo : Aschehoug, 1932, New York : Knopf, 1933.) Ida Elisabeth marries Frithjof, her teenage sweetheart. They get four children together, but only two of them live to grow up. Soon Ida Elisabeth discovers that she has married a real shirker of a man.
When Frithjof embarks on an affair with another woman, Ida Elisabeth chooses to live alone with her children. She provides for herself by becoming a seamstress, and her new life as a working woman entails wholly new qualities.
In a number of ways, this novel deals with conflicts and tensions that parallel aspects of Sigrid Undset’s own life. Ida Elisabeth is one of Undset’s great contemporary novels about women’s conditions and the difficult relationship between the sexes.
Bestill Ida Elisabeth på norsk fra Bokkilden!
The Day of the Jackal, by Frederick Forsyth
Posted on June 1, 2008
Filed Under Excellent book, Frederick Forsyth, Thriller, bestseller, book review | Leave a Comment
The Day of the Jackal is a novel about whose main character is the 
The Day of the Jackal is very well written and very exciting. The intense style and suspense that sets Forsyth apart as a writer and master of the thriller genre is visible already here in this early book. An extremely worthwhile read! And, yes, the movie with the same name is based on this book!
Top 10 bestselling fiction, UK (paperback)
Posted on May 27, 2008
Filed Under Fiction Books, The World of Books | Leave a Comment
May 3, 2008: Times (London)
1 Book of the Dead by Patricia Cornwell
2 The Lollipop Shoes by Joanne Harris
3 Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
4 The Quest by Wilbur Smith
5 An Absolute Scandal by Penny Vincenzi
6 Gold Diggers by Tasmina Perry
7 A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
8 Friend of the Devil by Peter Robinson
9 Engleby by Sebastian Faulks
10 31 Dream Street by Lisa Jewell
The Prodigal Daughter, by Jeffrey Archer
Posted on May 24, 2008
Filed Under Jeffrey Archer, Thriller, bestseller, book review | Leave a Comment
The Prodigal Daughter is the follow up on the great novel Kane and Abel. Both are outstanding novels by Jeffrey Archer.
The main character, Florentyna Rosnovski, is a formidable and unforgettable character. One of the most interesting characters in Archer’s books. She endears herself to readers as a young girl through her relationship with her governess Miss Tredgold and her adventures from elementary school through college.
This is a tale of business, competition, getting ahed, love, lust, and greed. It has it all. Great characters, wonderful plot. In this tale, even the expected meeting with Richard Kane takes on new dimensions as they marry despite the deep rejection by both fathers. The Prodigal Daughter is another great read from Archer!
The Prodigal Daughter by Jeffrey Archer can be ordered from Bokkilden.no.
World Without End, by Ken Follett
Posted on May 10, 2008
Filed Under Fiction Books, Historical Fiction, Ken Follett, Thriller, bestseller, book review | 1 Comment
This book is a follow-up on the enormously popular Pillars of the Earth. 
I couldn’t write another book about building a cathedral, because that would be the same book. And I couldn’t write another story about the same characters, because by the end of ‘Pillars’ they are all very old or dead. World Without End takes place in the same town, Kingsbridge, and features the descendants of the ‘Pillars’ characters two centuries later.”
At the heart of the story in World Without End is the plague known as the Black Death, and how this affects society and characters. Another historical event influencing English society at the time is the war between England and France.
Follett returns to 14th-century Kingsbridge with an equally weighty tome that deftly braids the fate of several of the offspring of Pillars‘ families with such momentous events of the era as the Black Death and the wars with France. Four children, who will become a peasant’s wife, a knight, a builder and a nun, share a traumatic experience that will affect each of them differently as their lives play out from 1327 to 1361.
World Without End is a wonderful historical novel by Ken Follett. It is exciting and engaging, full of plots and sub-plots, and to a large extent character driven in its action. And of action, there is, of course, plenty. This book really is hard to put down. I liked it a lot!
Other great books by Follett: The Pillars of the Earth
Boken kan også bestilles fra Bokkilden (på engelsk).
A Quiver Full of Arrows, by Jeffrey Archer
Posted on April 21, 2008
Filed Under Fiction Books, Jeffrey Archer, Short stories, book review | Leave a Comment
A Quiver Full of Arrows, from 1980, is an impressive collection of short stories, really a full Quiver.
The book consists of twelve assorted arrows (short stories)
into the quiver. Each arrow is sharp and leaves a meaningful impact on the reader.
The Chinese Statue is a story that features a Sir Alexander, a British Diplomat, who has a priceless statue of Emperor Kung. It is towards the end that we understand the statue is not worth anything, but despite that, it is still priceless. How? Read on!
One-night stand is hilarious, and so is The Luncheon . Overall, all the stories bring out different elements of human nature. They are well written and very entertaining!
Three of of the stories have been dramatised for the Anglia TV series Tales of the Unexpected. A Quiver Full of Arrows is a great collection of short stories, well worth your time!
No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy
Posted on April 13, 2008
Filed Under Cormac McCarthy, Excellent book, Fiction Books | Leave a Comment
No Country for Old Men is a novel by American author Cormac McCarthy, published in 2005. In 2007 it was released as a film, directed by the Cohen-brothers. The film has, so far, been winning four Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
The action in the book is set along the United States–Mexico border in 1980. The starting point of the story is a drug deal in the desert that somehow went wrong. We never learn why this was the case, only that it did, and of its consequences.
At the scene of the failed drug deal, a Vietnam veteran, Llewellyn Moss, finds $2 million. Moss takes the money and runs, thus setting in motion a chain of events involving both the country sheriff, Bell, Anton Chigurh, a ruthless predator who really enjoys his work who is out to recover then money, and others.
Moss soon finds that he can’t hide from the killer that the dealers have sent after him. And Anton Chigurh is so bad, so bad, in fact, that even his employers are frantic to stop him when they realize the trouble they’ve set in motion. And Moss is in the thick of it, with no way to get out of the action. So he fights.
I think I liked No Country for Old Men. It is, of course, wonderfully written. It is written in a dense, enormously edited style for the most part. An sentences, spelling and sentence structure is used actively by McCarthy to convey a thick description of people and settings. That aspect of the book I loved.
But the book also has, at the same time, a cynical, distanced coldness to it that is, in a sense, frightening to read. It is describing heart shattering events, yet is chillingly distanced in its descriptions. Like others of McCarthy’s stories, this one too paints a dispiriting picture. However, like other of his books, Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and The Road, this book too, of course, is a best-seller.
Reading No Country for Old Men, I sympathized with sheriff Bell, who is losing any hope he has for humankind. He scowls and says, “I always thought when I got older that God would sort of come into my life in some way. He didn’t.” I do, of course, recommend the book. Highly, even. But it is a disturbing book to read, in all its strange beauty.
I do, of course, recommend No Country for Old Men. Highly, even. But it is a disturbing book to read, in all its strange beauty.
Other great books by Cormac McCarthy: The Road (Oprah’s Book Club)
Also, you can order the DVD from amazon as well: No Country for Old Men (DVD)
The Appeal, by John Grisham
Posted on April 5, 2008
Filed Under Crime Books, Excellent book, John Grisham, Thriller | 1 Comment
From The Appeal, Chapter 1: “The courtroom was in a state of high alert, as if bombs were coming and the sirens were wailing. Dozens of people milled about, or looked for seats, or chatted nervously with their eyes darting around. When Jared Kurtin and the defense army entered from a side door, everyone gawked as if he might know something they didn’t. Day after day for the past four months he had proven that he could see around corners, but at that moment his face revealed nothing.”
In a crowded courtroom in Mississippi, 
The company appeals to the Mississippi Supreme Court, whose nine justices will one day either approve the verdict or reverse it.
Who are the nine? How will they vote? Very often, they return majority verdicts 5-4 in favor plaintiffs in cases against businesses. Can one be replaced before the case is ultimately decided to swing expected the vote around?
The chemical company is owned by a Wall Street predator named Carl Trudeau, and Mr. Trudeau is convinced the Court is not friendly enough. With judicial elections looming, he decides to try to purchase himself a seat on the Court. The cost is a few million dollars, a drop in the bucket for a billionaire like Mr. Trudeau.
Through an intricate web of conspiracy and deceit, his political operatives recruit a young, unsuspecting candidate, Ron Fisk. They finance him, manipulate him, market him, and mold him into a potential Supreme Court justice. Their very own Supreme Court justice.
The Appeal is a powerful, timely, and shocking story of political and legal intrigue, a story that will leave readers unable to think about our electoral process or judicial system in quite the same way ever again. Many believe politics to be rotten - is the legal system as bad? The Appeal is written by an author who believes it to be!
The Appeal is another great John Grisham book. Legal thrillers are what John Grisham excel at. The book has drive, it has twists, it shows knowledge about the legal process and the legal communities - trial lawyers, judges, special interest groups. And, as well, it raises important questions about the functioning of the legal system and the tradition of electing judges that still prevails in some states in the US.
It is a very worthwhile book to read. I enjoyed The Appeal a lot, and really recommend it!
Other interesting books by thriller-master John Grisham: The Street Lawyer
