Ostrich by Matt Greene

I requested this book from NetGalley and was kindly sent an e-book of it for review.

I think what interested me most in this title was the fact that it got compared to “Wonder” by RJ Palacio (which I haven’t read but people have been raving about it for quite some time) and “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” by Mark Haddon (which I read many years ago back in secondary school and I remember it blew my mind then).

What this book has in common with those two above is the main character who is a teenage boy with a serious medical condition. In this case, Alex suffers from cancer and epilepsy. They both influence his appearance and his behavior in a way that makes him not the most popular boy in school to say the least (even though he does have some… well, ‘friends’ would probably be pushing it too far).

He is also extremely bright and does exceptionally well in school, and it also shows in his narrative. It’s first person and what you probably could call stream of consciousness, which in itself surely could hinder the enjoyment of reading for some people, but excessive use of brackets certainly did just that (at least for me). I found the writing style somewhat irritating and I think that was the reason why I didn’t enjoy the book. The choice of this specific narrative style could in my opinion be blamed for underdeveloped characters and unengaging plot. It also required a lot of suspension of disbelief on my part to appreciate Alex as the narrator – even if he really was a child prodigy.

I can’t say I’m a fan of this book, unfortunately. I also think it requires a lot of skill and empathy to write about children suffering from cancer, and it requires a lot more to make them narrators. In this case, at least for me, the whole idea backfired, but maybe the concept was too much to handle in a debut.

Inferno by Dan Brown

I'm a fan of Dan Brown's novels - their structure (a lot of short chapters ending in cliffhangers) and the suspense. I've read four of his novels (including Inferno) and I can say that when you take those two aforementioned factors into consideration, Brown's books will not let you down. I know, this might be viewed as a downside because essentially you get stories told in the same exact way with very similar structure and they might lose the whole surprise. For me, however, it's like Brown's trademark and I reach for his novels to get just that - suspense and familiar structure.

Inferno has a really good plot and a different one from the previous novels I've read, in that it does not revolve around finding an object (I wasn't a fan of the ending of The Lost Symbol, the object at the end of the whole search was just too cliche) but rather is all about something that is going to happen and the main characters have to do something to stop it. 

The plot involves Dante and his Divine Comedy and I have to say those references to culture are my favourite thing about Brown's novels. This time you don't get conspiracy theories about mysterious societies - you get history and facts and I loved that.

The main point of the mystery in the book (no spoilers, don't worry) is something that actually frightened me and made me think: 'What if this really happened one day?' The story is really believable and the ending is one of the best ideas I've read about although I think it's still a little bit science-finction for today's science (at least I hope so).

The one problem I had with the book was the ending AFTER the mystery was solved. You get a few chapters that, although they do take care of some unresolved issues, feel like they might have been omitted. 

On the whole - very enjoyable, fast-paced, believable and full of very interesting facts. I really liked it and would recommend if you're after a suspensful read.

My Planet by Mary Roach

I'd never read anything by Mary Roach before this book but when I heard an opinion that her writing style is similar to that of Bill Bryson - I immediately wanted to try something by her. I was really lucky to spot this on NetGalley and to receive it as an e-book later on. 

My Planet is a really short book, it has only 160 pages, and it consists of a number of Roach's essays that have been published in Reader's Digest. The essays touch upon many seemingly mundane topics but she writes in an amazingly hilarious way! She wirtes about her husband, her new house together with new alarm system that she has problems figuring out how to use, family trips and dates with her husband and many many other situations from her everyday life. What they all have in common is the fact that Roach presents herself as a highly awkward human being :) She shows herself struggling through quite embarrassing situations and does that with lots of great sense of humor.

Roach has a gift for puns, word play and witty finishing lines. Her essays read like a dream. There is only one 'but': after you've read five of them, you can predict when the pun is going to be placed, the whole surprise of a great summary is lost because the essays have the exact same pacing/structure. Which is a shame, because I loved the structure at the beginning and later it just became a little tedious. But if you decide to maybe NOT read the whole book in one go but instead read only a few essays today and then return to the book in a week - it might just work for you.

On the whole I have to say that I really like Roach's writing style and would love to try one of her 'regular' books, mostly because I do love her sense of humour. However, I must admit I don't think I would treat her as an equal of Bill Bryson.