'Angelmaker' by Nick Harkaway

Intelligent, full of action and the best ensemble of characters I've met in a long time

What a fun book this is.  It is intelligent, full of action and the best ensemble of characters I've met in a long time.  The humor was 'laugh out loud' funny several times.  Did I mention mystery and sex?  In essence it is a familiar story... a thriller with a reluctant hero, Joe Spork, who has to save the world.  What happens to Joe and the nature of the danger is original and at the same time not too far from machines created for our betterment in our society.

Who I want to talk about are the women in this book.  I am impressed and elated.  No women with their mouths slightly open waiting to be rescued in this book.  Women can be beautiful, sexy AND intelligent, which is fair enough  but not good enough in this witty story. In 'Angelmaker' the heroine is almost 90.  Edie Banister is memorable.  She sets the action in motion and keeps it under control.  Yet, she is not evil, she is the complete opposite.  But like evil, goodness without measure can also be dangerous.  It is the art of Nick Harkaway that makes Edie's goals, means and growth so believable and entertaining.  Other women in this book are of different ages and sexual orientations, brave, inventive and cunning.  Women take the initiative and have ideas.  Yes, that's right good ideas...  They are even funny!  It is a joy to read.

Sometimes writers will find The Man a partner who can keep up with him.  So as a reader I encounter one woman who complements The Man.  She is often intelligent, beautiful and fit, maybe exotic for added sexual interest. In 'Angelmaker' the women have no need of men and have often done jobs that men could not do.  If they help men it is out of love or duty.  Refreshing?  Yes!  Joe could only save the world with the women that chose to help him.  There were men as well, good and evil... also interesting, but Nick Harkaway felt no need to pair everyone off to justify the presence of these amazing women.  They were amazing first and women second. Does that make sense?  Go on read it, perfect for the Summer.


@Harkaway
Nick Harkaway 
ISBN: 9780434020942 

'Down Under' by Bill Bryson

...now I need to visit Australia

I am suspicious of those quotes on book jackets... you know the ones, "riveting", "engaging","best one yet".  I can only think of one occasion when the quote and the name by the quote encouraged me to buy a book.  But never mind that, as to this particular book, the quote said "funny as ever".  I hoped so.  I read the book because it was there.  By there I mean covered in dust under my husband's nightstand.  My son had brought the book from school, certain chapters were required reading (astonished? I was).  The rest of us had not touched it and so it lay.  I vacuumed and dusted and thought "ok, a travel book, why not?"  I don't read travel books unless I'm certain I am going somewhere.  Travel books are not entertaining, I find them slightly pathetic without an actual destination.

Bill Bryson is fortunately in a league of his own.  He travels.  He does not take careful, anal notes.  Instead, he experiences, blunders, learns, discovers and finally makes readers like me laugh out loud in public places.  His dry humor gives the aridity of Australia a good run for its money.  Bill put me in mind of Terry Pratchett's 'Lost Continent' (which is not about Australia).  Any moment I expected to find Death (Terry's DEATH) propping up a dusty bar in the outback Bill was exploring.  There are so many painful, unexpected, horrible ways to die inAustralia and Bill Bryson made me laugh about most of them; Death had to have been around trying to get the joke.

Bill's observations on local idiosyncrasies, politics and cricket give me glimpses of English speaking aliens.  My theory is that given their isolation and red dirt/dust/sand perhaps they are homesick colonizers from Mars.  The result of all this laughing is that now I need to visit Australia.  I need to rent a car with very good climate control.  And I need to try the beer ( yes, I know I live in Germany and beer here is the BEER but Australian beer sounded so good in Bill's book).  I need to vista Uluru and Perth and a crocodile park.  I will carry 'Down Under' with me like a treasure to bury in some desolate beach, provided the local inhabitant of a seashell doesn't kill me first.

Bill Bryson
ISBN: 9780552997034