Review of Joyride

Hoping to escape from her abusive ex-husband, a woman and her lover successfully carry out their plot to murder him, only to find themselves at the mercy of an obsessive, twisted stranger who witnessed the crime. (www.goodreads.com)

I've been to Paris for 2 days. To get there I took the train which gave me plenty of time to read up especially since me and my husband decided to leave our almost 2year old with her grandparents so we could get a little time to ourselves since she's the wonder of my world, but a tiring wonder at that. 
On the train to and from Paris I decided to read Joyride by Jack Ketchum. I've read Off Season by him and The Girl next door is standing on my bookshelf. 

Joyride is a disturbing tale about a couple who's being taken hostage by a lunatic who has seen them in the act of murdering someone. Thinking that they are like him, he approaches the couple and takes them on a murder spree across the country. 
You get an inside on the couple, Lee and Carole, how they are trying to get away from an abusing ex-husband when the legal system lets them down and how they are terrorized by a lunatic who happens to have seen them when they were at their worst. 
But you also get an inside scoop on Wayne, the looney whose main dream has been murdering someone, taking retaliation on those doing him wrong. All his life he's been terrorized by his father and then consequently by his emotionally lacking mother. When he's finally living alone he starts writing everything down what's offensive to him. I varies from a barking dog to a surname he particularly finds distasteful. 
When he finally kills someone he doesn't want to stop. He's cold in his calculations and ends up killing a whole lot of people. 

What I also liked in this novel, is that with every person he kills, you get a short view into what brought them to that place in that time. Kind of a remembrance of the victim, making them more real instead of them being cannon fodder to help the story line along. 

Joyride isn't faultless but it's a very interesting read. Although, through the more hardcore parts of the novel I always thought that it was just a novel. I writer's words can't hurt you or anyone else. Then I read the afterword and I realised that his main character has been made out of 2 very real men who have done what's described in the novel. That is enough to raise the hairs on your arms and look at this novel in a whole other way. 

In the back of the novel there was a 40 page short story by the same author. You'd think it would be about some killer species of plants reading the title, but no way in hell.
I started to read this last night, a few pages before I went to bed and those pages kept me up a while. So much that I almost turned on the light again because I wanted to know what would happen, if she would be okay.
It's a story about a couple that does the most atrocious things to young females before killing them. Even involving their own family. My stomach turned while I read this little story and I'm very difficult to shock.
Jack Ketchum is a writer you should avoid when you're not used to read about the most vilest of us all, because such people do exist and he's not affraid to put them in the spotlight.

My personal score: 4 stars

Review of The Sinner

Within the walls of a cloistered convent, a scene of unspeakable carnage is discovered. On the snow lie two nuns, one dead, one critically injured - victims of a seemingly motiveless, brutally savage attack.

Medical examiner Maura Isles' autopsy of the murder victim yields a shocking surprise, but the case takes a disturbing twist. The body of another woman has been found. And someone has gone to a lot trouble to remove her face, hands and feet.

As long buried secrets are revealed so Dr Isles and homicide detective Jane Rizzoli, find themselves part of an investigation that leads to an awful, dawning realisation of the killer's identity... (www.goodreads.com)

I'm not a tremendous big fan of thrillers or detectives. I used to read them by the dozen a decade ago, but somewhere down the road I've taken to other kinds of novels. 
For one thing, I almost always sense the plot from miles away which isn't as fun as you would think. The satisfaction you get by getting it right, is spoiled because you miss the shock effect. 
Before I decided to read this, I checked out this writer and she was supposed to be a plottwisting, never seeing what's around the corner, kind of witch doctor. 
Well, in reality she's a doctor, but I didn't find her novel all that surprising. And the characters, Isles and Rizzoli, never got to me. I identify more with characters in television series than I did with them. Maybe the televised series are more for me. :) 
The Sinner was not as good as I thought it would have been, but I finished it and that alone is saying a lot. 

My personal rating: 2 stars

Review of Quicker Than The Eye

Quicker than the Eye, a collection of short stories by Rad Bradbury, author of Dandelion wine & Fahrenheit 451. I've read the latter, and thought it was good.
Quicker than the Eye features a bucketful of stories ranging from good to superb. There isn't one story I didn't like. That's saying a lot since I don't favour short story collections.

The way Bradbury writes is very compelling. He draws you in with some kind of boyhood charm, and tells a tale that's very much worth listening to.
My favourite story was 'Freeway', a story about what would happen to our old roads if we would only drive on the freeway. If there was a whole world beside commercial, work and social life only accessible through meandering roads.

A short story collection calls for a short review. If you like Ray Bradbury, don't hesitate to try your hands on this. And for those who finish the novel, you get a pleasant afterword where he explains how the ideas for these short stories come to mind. A good read, from beginning to end.

Personal rating: 3,5 stars

Review of The Incredible Shrinking Man

Richard Matheson.
Be his memory forever.
I've read only one novel of his before I began this one, but I Am Legend is more than just a story about vampires. It's almost the bible concerning everything bloody and bitey.
But since I've read that one a few miles ago, I'm going to review my current read.

My first thought about The Incredible Shrinking Man was mainly that I thought it would be a ridiculous book. The reason I began reading it is that I'm working on an A-Z challenge and I had nothing else beginning with 'I' on my e-reader.
I'm not sorry I stumbled in such a way onto this novel. Otherwise I probably would have never touched it and would've missed the entire perplexity that's this novel.

The Incredible Shrinking Man tells the story of a man slowly shrinking. It sets out with the main character on a boat being sprayed with a peculiar substance and shortly after he begins to diminish.
You'd think it would be fantastic novel, maybe scoring a few laughs here and there, portraying this particular problem against the funny side of life, but Matheson does nothing of a sort. He portrays a man slowly losing his identity, his sense of pride and lust for life. Someone eager to be the man he always was and being able to further support his wife and daughter but not being able to. He's angry at the world, hoping a cure will be found, hoping the process can be returned.
With every inch he's shrinking he's losing his masculine identity, beginning with a strained relationship with his wife, then the loss of authority over his daughter and ending with trying so survive the mere elements and animals he never thought of being scared of hunted by.

I loved this novel. I guess it's pretty obvious when you've read my review. Despite the title, The Incredible Shrinking Man has so much emotion and contains so much food for thought that I'm definitely going to reread it some point in time. I feel like I didn't get the to the bottom quite yet and I'm still thirsty.

Personal score: 4 stars

Review of 20th century ghosts

A collection of short stories by a newbie on the horror shore.
I'm not a fan of short stories, not even by my favourite author Stephen King. I dislike the effort that by the time you get your focus right, the story is done. Give me lengthy stories, stories that I can come back to night after night.
Although I must confess that I did like some of the stories in this bundle of tales.

I've read other stuff of Joe Hill before (Heart Shaped Box) and wasn't greatly impressed by it, especially since with all the praise and everything I was expecting something better, something more profoundly scary and thought through.
Well, this is thoroughly better written. Not all the stories are golden, but the ones that are, are memorable.

For instance,

Pop Art
A story about a boy and an inflattable toy. It's shows a tremendous sense of make-belief. I think I've never read a story like that, something so utterly ridiculous made serious.

The Cape
Spine tinglingly good.
A boy who thinks he's got a cape which he can fly with. When he comes of age, he finds that cape again.

The one I liked the least is You will hear the locusts sing. I've never been into the insect genre.

I'm not going to rate every story, but I will tell you that each story has something of a gem inside. It's been a long while since I've read a collection of short stories that I was this happy with.

Personal score: 4 stars

Review of The Rules of Attraction

How to analyse this novel?
I have no idea. It read like a diary constructed from different vantage points.
A community college where all sorts of misfits fit together. The atmosphere of the derailing eighties, people randomly meeting other people, having casual intercourse, never getting beyond a deep narcisistic behavioural pattern.

None of the characters drew me in.
The story felt like a cheap soap story you can't not miss, but isn't interesting at all when you think about it.

The praise on the back is telling about how the 80's felt, how Ellis captured this feeling brilliantly and maybe this is true (then I'm a little glad I grew up in the nineties), as far as I know the 80's were a brilliant age of music and film.
I think Bret Easton Ellis has a style you need to warm up to. Maybe the next novel of his will be more my thing.