Tuesday 18 December 2007

Books #1

I 've decided that I will talk about books I just read, let's do it right now!

In Tenebris -Maxime Chattam- 10/20
Second section of Chattam's trilogy starring Portland's private detective Yoshua Brolin.
This book is just "horrible". Same ingredients as what he did before : blood, horror and atrocity which remained me serial killers's movies like "Silence of the lambs" or "Seven".
Nevertheless this is a captivating story.....

I'm not a big fan of Chattam 's writing style. His opinions about life and society, he relates in his stories are ine my point of view too obvious, in other words it could be more sublte. I guess Chattam is around 30 years old and he grew up -as I did - reading Stephen Kings sickest novels because similarities between the two authors caught my eyes....

This book definitely has to stay in hands of people who really like morbid stories....


Bone -George C Chesbro - 11/20
The story throw you into the poverished mentally ill atmosphere of new yorkers who are forced to live in the streets. The "milieu" of the homeless in NYC is well described in the 1st half of the book. Bone the main character was found amnesic in a square somewhere in teh big apple. He's gonna struggle and evolve to recover details of lost memory in NY underground.

Time after time the story goes unfortunately to a big hollywood blockbuster plot. The end is really fucked up! Too bad it started well!

I am surprised this hasn't been made into a movie yet.


Pulp - Charles Bukowski - 10/20
Pulp is the last of Bukowski's novels.
The main character is a LA based private investigator named Nick Belane who gets involved with the spirit of Celine (French author) and a sexy alien in this off beat story. Unsuccessful in his investigations this hard drinking private chooses most of the time to spent the rest of the day in bars. In everyone he visits, he's mistaken for somebody else.

According to specialist of the "genre", this book is dedicated to "bad writing": humour is trash, the parody looks weak sometimes and the dialogues are most of the time not that funny....

Pulp 's not gonna stay longer in my memory.



Dopefiend - Donald Goines - 15/20
Schocking nightmare story of black heroin addicts. Trapped in the festreing sore of the american ghetto of the 70's. A young man, girlfriend and friends are inexorably pulled to slow death of the hardcore junkies.

This book shows you the effects of using drugs, in horrifying graphic details, the author explains from how a junkie shoots up to how he feels not to have a fix.

Goines tells about the hopelessness and despair of inner city black at this time and like it's been said many times, Goines writes from the experiences he had.

One of the best storytelling I ever read. Highly recomened!

To illustrate this last book, I leave you with death wish from Herbie Hancock, 1974, soundtrack for a movie starring Charles Brownson that could also have been the soundtrack of Dopefiend.