CUSTOMER: Do you have a copy of Bella Swan’s favourite book? You know, from Twilight?
(Bookseller sighs and pulls a copy of Wuthering Heights off the shelf)
CUSTOMER: Do you have the one with the cover that looks like Twilight?
BOOKSELLER: No. This is an antiquarian bookshop, so this is an old edition of the book.
CUSTOMER: But it’s still the one with that girl Cathy and the dangerous guy, right?
BOOKSELLER: Yes, it’s still the story by Emily Bronte.
CUSTOMER: Right. Do you think they’ll make it into a film?
BOOKSELLER: They’ve made several films of it. The one where Ralph Fiennes plays Heathcliff is very good.
CUSTOMER: What? Voldemort plays Heathcliff?
BOOKSELLER: Well . . .
CUSTOMER: But that’s Edward’s role.
BOOKSELLER: Wuthering Heights was written well before both Harry Potter and Twilight.
CUSTOMER: Yeah, but Voldemort killed Cedric, who’s played by Robert Pattinson, and now Voldemort’s playing Edward’s role in Wuthering Heights, because Edward’s character is Heathcliff. I think that Emily Bronte’s trying to say something about vampires.
BOOKSELLER: . . . that’s £8.
CUSTOMER: For what?
BOOKSELLER: For the book.
CUSTOMER: Oh, no, it’s OK, I’m going to go and try and find the Voldemort DVD version.
Source: WEIRD THINGS CUSTOMERS SAY IN BOOKSHOPS by Jen Campbell
When did I first hear about Ian Rankin. Never, it was just a recommendation by the shopkeeper to whom I usually go for my book-shopping. Maybe he was just trying to earn a little extra for he had only one copy, but I am thankful to him. I still thank him today for making me read well written crime fiction books. Yes, Mr.Rankin know what to write and how, I have read almost half of his John Rebus’ series in past one year and half, and he never gets carried away, never off the mark, the plot would always be good, his protagonist, John Rebus, always satisfying the reader and that’s what makes you a good crime fiction writer. That’s what a reader would love to read. That’s what I love to read. And not only the plot is great, it’s simple and very imaginable. Mr. Rankin knows the trick of immersing the reader steadily in the deep criminal world of Edinburgh. Set in Darkness was not only my first book of John rebus but also my only key to enter his world.
The inspector Rebus’ series shows remarkable purview of the darker side to humanity. Rebus is a dedicated Scottish policeman, streetwise, methodical and persistent. But like all those he encounters, his has demons of his own to battle: a failed marriage, loneliness, alcoholism.
The novel opens with the discovery of a body buried in Queensbury House, an old historic building being renovated to accommodate the Scottish parliament. Without any clues to the identity of the deceased, this case takes a low priority until a second murder occurs on the very same site. Roddy Grieve, a wealthy and ambitious Labour Party candidate for the legislature, is found bludgeoned to death, and Rebus is assigned to assist Derek Linford in this higher profile murder. Linford has ambitions of his own within Scottish
law enforcement; and, as you might suspect, he and Rebus are opposite ends of the compass. Tactless, pompous and the golden boy of the police department hierarchy, Linford is placed in charge of the investigation, which he is obviously too inexperienced to handle. Rebus, on the other hand, organizes an efficient team of detectives and begins a methodic search for a motive that would bind these murders together. When the apparent suicide of a homeless man with an amazingly large bank account falls in the lap of his former disciple, Siobahn Clarke, she finds herself partnered once again with Rebus.
The main ideology of the author is to show duality of the city of Edinburgh through Rebus’s character and perspective: a quiet and peaceful city during daytime, but a dark and turbulent city during night time. He clearly relates his first two novels Knots & Crosses and Hide & Seek, to Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde just to create a modernized version of the classic.
Grounded in the traditional method of skillful plotting, Mr.Rankin leads readers in several directions at once. He offers up any number of suspects and also tosses in a series of rape cases.
As if this novel didn’t have enough twists already, a villain from a previous Rebus novel, reenters the inspector’s life, jeopardizing the dangerous investigation. Juggling three cases, appeasing his superiors, protecting Siobahn and watching his own back make Set in Darkness electrified with suspense. With Rankin’s superb characterizations and historic backdrops, this masterful writer takes his place alongside the best in the genre of crime fiction today.
The Sins of the Father is the second book in a series called “The Clifton Chronicles,” written by Jeffrey Archer. As soon as I finished reading ONLY TIME WILL TELL, which is the first book in the respective series by the same author, I was excited for the sequel. The sequel do pick up right where ‘Only Time will Tell’ left. It is self explanatory that both books should be read in the order they are written and then only, the other characters connection to the protagonist, Harry Clifton, will be understandable for the reader.
In ‘The Sins of the Father’, which spans the years of World War II, Harry is desperate to escape the revelations that upset his life and prevented his marriage to Emma Barrington, the sister of his best friend, Giles. He finds himself in New York City, having miraculously survived a German torpedo attack, while his family back in England mourns his death. Harry soon learns that it’s not really a good idea to assume the identity of a dead man you didn’t know very well, as it likely will bring you more trouble than simply facing your problems head on.
Meanwhile, Emma believes Harry is still alive and goes off in search of him, Giles goes off to war, and their despicable father, Hugo, shunned by his family and friends, risks the family business in a quest for more money and power. At the same time, Harry’s mother, Maisie, struggling with grief, throws herself into her work and learns that happiness may actually be possible for a woman who’s had a rough life and never put herself first.
The drama of the Cliftons and the Barringtons continues at top speed in The Sins of the Father. The book reads very quickly and if you are good you might finish in one sitting. Archer knows very well how to grabs readers’ attention by plunging them into the action from the first page, shifting frequently between different characters’ points of view, peeling back another layer of the story in nearly every chapter, and knowing exactly when to leave readers dangling in suspense.
Though in my opinion ending could have been better but I guess just for the next release he did get carried away a little. But I will appreciate him that the book is well written and the characters are well developed. It is hard to find that much amount of modern day authors developing there characters so good. But after all he is Jeffrey Archer. Though now there is more excitement for the third volume as a reader.
I would say go for it, and you won’t be disappointed, I promise.
Richard has done a hilarious job by illustrating this book. We all have faced it. THE EXAMS! The big day for some, the doomsday for others. And we all have got grades varying from A to F though I believe there would be less A’s and more F’s (atleast it’s there in my case).
This book is highly recommended for teenagers of age group 14-17, though I read it yesterday at the age of twenty but then I believe there is no age to read and write. If you are above the age limit I recommended, then it will remind the days of your “exam-hood”!
The book is a short collection including very real and very wrong (but laugh out loud hilarious) answers in a variety of subjects, including Chemistry, Biology, History, Math, English, and more. The student’s answers will have you chuckling at their wittiness and cleverness that I would have marked as correct if I was their teacher.
The following excerpts are from the book:
Question:Give a brief explanation of the meaning of the term “hard water.” Answer:Ice
Question:What is the highest frequency noise that a human can register?
Answer:Mariah Carey
Question: Describe what is meant by “forgetting.”
Answer: I can’t remember
It’s a quick, light, hilarious to read, full of witty answers. I would recommend you to carefully go through the maths section, it’s most hilarious!
A limerick is five-line witty, humorous, or nonsense poem. Its development has been a curious one. Its place of origin is uncertain, although some scholars claim it is of Irish descent. It was Edward Lear who populated the limerick.
Edward Lear was a painter but also an illustrator, author and a poet. In his free time he entertained children with humorous, nonsense verses made of moonshine and magic. It was during this period Lear discovered the Limerick as a form of entertaining verse.
The form of limerick is of five lines. The first, second and the fifth are long. The third and fourth are short. The rhyme scheme is A A B B A.
A verse:
There was an old man of Cape Horn
Who wished he had never been born;
So he sat on chair
Till he died of despair
That dolorous man of Cape Horn.
There are many verses beginning as a reader can refer Lear’s ‘A book of nonsense’.
“There was an old man from ….”
“There was a young lady of ….”
Scholars do claim grew fantastically as it embraced every topic, territory, temperament. It explored every variation of strangeness imaginable.
A verse on exploiting the language problem:
There was a young fellow named Hall,
Who fellin’ the spring in the fall,
‘T would have been a sad thing
If he’d died in the spring,
But he didn’t – he died in the fall.
Since then there have been some variations. Limerick was quite famous during the World War II among staff of Royal Dutch Navy.
For more, please refer Edward Lear’s ‘A book of Nonsense’.
