The Seaside Library

Author: Heather Morris Acquired in: October 2021 Staccato—an Italian word signifying a kind of music where you would hear the notes in a sharply detached manner—can complement a musical piece if artfully utilised. However, a choppy narrative in a book only makes for difficult reading. Sadly, Heather Morris does just that. This book about the true story of a Slovak Jew incarcerated in Auschwitz-Birkenau disappointingly lacks an essential sense of cohesion. Lale's account of the horrors he witnessed at Auschwitz had the potential to become one of the most gripping Holocaust stories but instead took the form of a mediocre rendition by a screenwriter-turned-novelist. Nevertheless, the story deserves some attention despite the writing which leaves a lot to be desired.   Lale Sokolov was one among the many who went voluntarily to the concentration camps in Poland under an order by the Slovak government. These young men bade farewell to their loved ones believing that they would only ...

Author: Robin Cook Acquired in: October 2017 My previous review of Robin Cook's  Blindsight  would have told you that the downsides of the book negated any good things about it. Overcoming my initial hesitancy, I decided to try another — Host , a story about two medical students uncovering a major pharma scam.  Lynn Pierce and Michael Pender are fourth-year medical students at a university in North Carolina. Despite the well-known daily grind med students go through, they do well and have ordinary lives until things go south quickly. When Lynn's boyfriend goes into a coma after rather a routine surgery, both search for a solution relentlessly and accidentally stumble upon a secret that could endanger the hospital's reputation and even cost them their lives.  As you might have gathered from the short synopsis, the story was so spine-chilling that this book belonged to the horror genre than medical fiction. In the storyline that ran parallel to Lynn's and Michael's li...

 

Author: Gerald Durrell Acquired in: December 2016 A life as a wildlife conservationist is not everybody's cup of tea. Dealing with animals- stuck, scared, enraged, injured- certainly seems eventful, maybe too much to my liking. But Gerald Durrell could do it all; from wishing for a zoo as a child, he went on to become a naturalist, writer, TV presenter and yes, a zoo owner. Does it still sound tame to you? That's because I've omitted the hilarious animal rescues of truant tapirs at night in the pouring rain, an incensed porcupine and a hungry bear.  Menagerie Manor  is just one among the many he wrote about his eventful life devoted to the care and conservation of animals. Ever since reading two excerpts from his books at school as part of the English course material, I've been itching to get my hands on a Durrell book. As far as first impressions go, I'm surprised by this book. In this book, Durrell takes us through the founding of Jersey Zoological Park on the Eng...