Book Review: Nineteen Eighty-Four

Book Review: Nineteen Eighty-Four

 Many readers who completed their high school and college years from the fifties through the seventies have already read this book.  Some students during that time period may not have read this book because it was considered subversive by many local school districts. First published in 1949 and written by George Orwell.  Nineteen Eighty-Four is futuristic utopian fantasy set in fictional Oceania, one of three super states that have divided up the world.

  Many terms that originally came from this book such as Big Brother—the constant observance of society by the powers in control—are still used with that basic meaning. In the last Bond movie Spectre 007 (Blu-ray), there is a line that M says, ‘Orwell is turning over in his grave’ referring to the rise of surveillance in society. So Orwell’s work is still being referenced to this day. But there are more terms such as, DoubleThink, CrimeThink, that in the time of Oceania would encompass the meaning of Political correctness today.

  This book is every bit as much about language, the use of it, how it is used, and how it is defined as it is a futuristic critique of extreme controls and planning by those that come to power.  Orwell, saw deceit, treachery, corruption, and dissolution of freedoms long before most of were born and he projected his insight towards a future that becomes defined by IngSoc, the Newspeak word for English Socialism.  The principle character Winston Smith, is what we define today as a low level bureaucrat. Winston has had a past life with a wife and memories, memories that are so troubling—because they take him back to past that officially never existed. And his job is to erase all versions of incidents that did not officially happen. He does this with Newspeak the newest form of English. Newspeak is not a growing language, in fact it is shrinking, and the newer combined words have less broadly defined meanings. The powers behind big brother by the control of language. They don’t allow words such as freedom, liberty and there are no words to replace those words. So those concepts of liberty and freedom simply disappear.

I think the most important, thought provoking part of this book is at the end. George Orwell wrote a fictional Appendix for Newspeak. In the appendix he explains how language would be used to control society. (Sound familiar?)

Nineteen Eighty-Four is five full sails. I read it in paperback for $6.00 US. This book is ranked 75 on Amazons sales list. You can order right now.  It is also available for Kindle all customers and those on Amazon Prime. 
Thanks for reading, please share on Google + & Twitter and recommend to your friends.
AJJ 

Blog Search  #BigBrother  1984  Nineteen Eighty-Four

The Emperor of all Maladies { A Biography of Cancer }

By Siddhartha Mukherjee

    My Rating Five Full Sails !

#Biography
#Non-fiction

     I have re-read this book five times. As a cancer patient who is currently in remission for two years, this has been my go to book for understanding a disease and making a human connection with the disease itself.   As the author writes" Cancer is a distorted version of ourselves." 

    If you are caring for someone who has this disease or are going through it yourself, this is the book the explains what cancer is and ties it with a brilliantly written narrative that intertwines a doctor with each patient.  As you read through Carla's story with leukemia, the author entwines the history of uncovering  this illness with past and present patients.  He explores that mysticism that ancient doctors used to describe something that was unable to be understood in earlier times.   But they now  know what Cancer is, and as the author carefully advises we are only at the beginning of understanding this disease.

Echo Dot on Sale $49.99 

Which Kindle would you like to read this on?  

    So why fives times for me? Well my patent answer that I tell people is "I've been through three full cycles of chemo therapy and now I forget a lot. " But the book is an interesting read, and every time I go abck through it my understanding of what has affected me gets deeper. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

Book Review : The Outlaw Album

#ShortStory

#Crime

#HistoricalFiction

Book Review

The Outlaw Album

By Daniel Woodrell

This collection of short stories by the author of such well known works like Winter's Bone & Tomato Red — which won the Pen West award for fiction in 1999— is the first collection of short works for the author.

    Daniel has created a cast of characters, in this short story collection The Outlaw Album  , that have different strains of bad in them. Some of the characters come out of the past such as in Woe to Live On, while others are in the present.

What I like about Mr.Woodrell's talents is his consistent and exacting use of local vernacular.  He doesn’t miss any details in tone, inflection, and behavior in any of his characters. What I like about his stories in general is that they are written to how he wants to tell the story. Let me explain.  I recently read a short story compilation that was edited by George R R Martin. The stories were all five-thousand words in length, a standard word count requested by editors and used by authors to sell their work. I never reviewed that book because it was a terrible collection. But Mr. Woodrell doesn’t put himself in that mold.  If a story is  twelve hundred words, he doesn’t fluff it up. His writing is precise, consistent with characters, and his story lines eb and flow as needed to convey the scene or temperament of the characters.  This collection contains short stories of various lengths, all were interesting and enjoyable.  Not a surprise that the author of Winters Bone could also produce a great collection of short stories.  If you enjoy reading about intriguing characters, that represent the best and worst of humanity, you will enjoy this book.

   This Book is Five Full Sails. Excellent work, well written, add it to book shelf today.

  

Book Review : The Long Walk

#Memoir

#BookReview 

The Long Walk

By Brian Castner

#Memoir

#BookReview

I’ll start with the first thought, well really a question, which I had after I finished reading this wonderfully written memoir.  How can we ever fully understand what other people have gone through? The answer of course is-we can’t. That’s why we read memoirs, to learn about another person’s life. To, maybe, understand the human experience better.

I love it when I find a book like this. A book that the publisher has moved on from, as far as promotion is concerned and the author has moved onto another project as well. It’s up to the rest of us to keep the story alive. It’s still available.  This isn’t the first book that I’ve read written by a former soldier, it’s the second. The first one was Soft Spots , which I also recommend.  

    Mr Castner starts at the beginning with a memory of friends, then takes us into the world of  an EOD technician. EOD, Explosives Ordinance Disposal, is not everyone’s first choice in life, but it’s what the author chose.

    You will be with him, as an insubordinate officer, as a tech at night on a bridge defusing a bomb while being shot at, and a husband who becomes distant from his family. You feel the first steps at trying to recapture a mind lost to shock-wave after shock-wave from explosions.

Memoirs written by soldiers are among the most important books for us to read, as we-as a nation-move on from the war.  

A soldier’s memoir is important because it can shape us. It’s not acceptable to be ignorant of a life that accepted a command to fight or defend. Reading a soldier’s story is not commending or condoning, it’s taking the steps to understand. As a reader you become better informed about decisions our politicians make that ultimately have an effect on all our lives.  Our lives are affected when they come home. Can they handle it? Are they safe? Are we safe being around them? Can we help them?  All of these questions enter the public arena and require understanding. Reading-The Long Walk, will get you closer to being in another person’s footsteps, as they struggle on a sand hill, work a thirty-six hour EOD call and then rest for one hour before going back on another call.  To see through their eyes: losing a friend, a brother in arms, and their mind. Walking with them, step by step, in the supermarket with a sense of readiness to pull the trigger on their weapon—tense; wound-up, wound-down, judgment lost, but not forgotten. Then judgement regained, slowly in Yoga Class, slowly pushing the mind to work correctly, though much slower, back to a place of understanding oneself, and struggling to understand their new reality.

This book is Five Full Sails, and it is still available through the link provided here. The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life That Follows   Note: Image in post is of a hard cover, that is what I read. Image on order my differ, but it's the same book. 

Comment, share this post, then let me know. I have two free copies to send out to a reader.

Place this book on your TBR list.

© Copyright 2016 , book reviews Artemis J Jones

Safari

#Mystery

Safari is a Stanley Hastings Mystery, by Parnell Hall

Book nineteen available in Audible , Kindle, PaperBack or Hardbound.

I read the hardbound edition. 

Mr. Hall is a well established author who writes with skill and provides depth to his characters.

 My Review  

Stanley's Hastings character is spot on in every detail. You can imagine this guy in your mind, and be in his moments, such as when he spots a sexy young woman on a plane, or when he's on the case, but wryly seeming off the case.  The detective Mr. Hastings, is a very clever character. 

    Safari is just that, a middle aged couple seeking some adventure in their lives, takes a trip to Africa, Stanley's wife Alice is thrifty, so she books a cut rate adventure. Alice also tries to upgrade their status without paying extra, which provides some humorous thoughts and comments from Stanley. 

   Someone from the tour group or guides has a secret, and it is imperative that no-one finds out what that secret is. As you follow the tourists and have breakfast with them, dine with them, and share their concerns while you're immersed in the story through Stanley's point of view, you'll wonder who is the culprit of a crime. But you'll be wrong. That is where Mr. Hall's strength as an author comes in, he'll take you write up too the last pages, before you know who created the Safari where the animals were not the biggest concern of the tourists. 

   This book is  Five Full Sails  

Do you like to listen to your books, Checkout Safari on Audible . 

Interview H A Raynes , Book Nation of Enemies

#Thriller

Book Review

Nation of Enemies, By H A Raynes

Rating: Four and a Half Sails out of Five.             Explanation of My Review System

Some background first, Nation of Enemies is a thriller set primarily in the Boston area of the United States during the year 2032. It’s leading character is Cole Fitzgerald an emergency room physician who works at Massachusetts General Hospital. Tension starts almost immediately as Cole is trying to take his family out of United States and immigrate to the United Kingdom. 
The United States has become a nation in a second civil war, this war is not over race, but primarily over a tiny device that traps people in tragic lives. Almost everyone has been injected with a MedID chip. If their MedID chip indicates they have an insufficient score to participate in productive society, their lives become chaotic and difficult. Add in the religious views of citizens, national security, politicians, billionaires, and law enforcement all taking different sides and you have a setting for a great deal of tension.

 There were a couple of moments late in the book where I saw or felt the characters would have different responses: Reverend Mitchell is talking to his primary supporters and accomplices via deeply encrypted video chat. A billionaire is among them, and there is brief moment when I had re-read the exchange for clarity. Still later, I also saw Cole, the Ivy League trained doctor as having enough sense to understand a situation he enters where a person he knows and recognizes is working under cover. Neither of these brief moments weakened the story line.

The descriptions of the areas, the authors insight with regards to human behavior and emotion, is excellent. The use of the settings to create backdrops for scenes of rising tension is also on par with any well known authors—of thrillers—in our modern times.

As the book draws to a conclusion, several moments come together with a mix of desperation, strength, and nerve that keep a reader engaged in the story right to the end. This is a good vacation read or the perfect read for that rainy weekend.

This review is my own. I was not paid or compensated to review this book. I purchased my copy from Amazon and read it on my Kindle Fire HD .

AJJ

***

 H.A. Raynes lives and works in the Boston Massachusetts area. She was inspired to write NATION OF ENEMIES by a family member who was a Titanic survivor and another who escaped Poland in World War II. Combining lessons from the past with a healthy fear of the modern landscape, created the inspiration for her current novel. A longtime member of Boston’s writing community. Raynes has a history of trying anything once (acting, diving out of a plane, white water rafting, and parenting). Writing and raising children seem to have stuck.

Interview with H A Raynes

       1) Did you conceive of BASIA or the plot of the book first?

      BASIA grew from the original concept. There needed to be a group of anti-government fanatics that would be at the front line against lost civil liberties and the lack of religion within U.S. government. I wanted Brothers And Sisters In Arms to feel homegrown, like military family.

       2)You’re very familiar with the Boston area. How did the historical influence of the area affect the development of the story.
      
           I’ve lived in Boston now for more than half my life and I’m very familiar with the city and the outlying areas. That certainly lent to my heartfelt angst at destroying it within the book. But that made it personal to me. I love that the Freedom Trail runs throughout the city and that just walking the streets of Beacon Hill or through the Boston Common, it could just as easily be during either past or future revolutions. In addition, the planes that departed Logan Airport on  9/11 and the Boston Marathon bombing brought everything so much to the forefront for me as I wrote this. Those events helped shape the year in which I set the novel, 2032. I wanted it to be the near future.  
      
       3)What book is on your nightstand right now?
      
           The Martian . I’m enjoying it very much and am working hard not to see any previews to keep my experience and imagination “pure”!  
      
       4)How much time did you spend on medical research for the book?

           I have a few doctor friends I tapped into. But I definitely needed to do separate  research on DNA and genetics, the future of gene mapping, et cetera. It’s a guess, but I probably spent somewhere around 10 - 15 hours of research on anything medical related, including Lily’s complicated delivery of the baby.  
   
       5)What other works have you completed?  Short Stories?
   
          The first thing I wrote was a screenplay that was a finalist in the Massachusetts Screenwriting Competition. After that I published a flash fiction story in the online magazine Redivider. I have one full and one 2/3 finished novel on my harddrive (needed a break from both, may return one day…). And then came Nation of Enemies.  
 
      6) Can you tell us a little about your next book? What is in the planning stages? Mystery? Another Thriller?
    
          I’m about a third into the first draft of this one. I can’t say too much about it at this point, but I can tell you it’s told in multiple points of view. It takes place in New York City. And it revolves around the lives in an apartment building. It’s different from Nation of Enemies, but still has an air of mystery with a thriller component. 
      
         Thanks for being on Just a Writer or a Thought Producer. Best of luck with your book.  

  



Interview: John Mathews

Book: A Game of Greed and Deception

#DRAMA #MYSTERY #CRIME

Bio: John Mathews is a tenured University Professor of English currently living in Rome, Italy. Immersed in a long and somewhat stressful career, he feels the desire to break out of the mold and delve into macabre thriller fiction novels which focus on the dark side of human nature. He writes captivating thriller and suspense fiction books with the goal of pulling the reader into the plot through the minds of unforgettable characters. Complete with great suspense, plot twists, and shocking scenes, his stories will keep you guessing until the very end.

Book: A Game of Greed and Deception

  When the charming Tammy Worthington takes her wealthy husband and step-daughter on a holiday weekend in the Colorado Mountains, she has purely sinister intentions. Her husband is killed in a tragic auto accident, just as she had planned...and now her pending fortune awaits her. 

But things don’t go Tammy’s way and that is where the book gets interesting. With no body to be found in the wreckage, the dead husband- just becomes a missing person, and Tammy is seemingly trapped inside the cabin with someone stalking her from outside.
This is wear John Mathews takes you on a macabre mystery drama of a sick and psychotic woman driven by her soulless greed who quickly turns from the hunter to the prey. The scenes include deadly traps and medieval torture devices, hidden doors and rooms, and an underground labyrinth of torture chambers that are not for the faint of heart. 

Rating: Four and a half Full Sails out of five.

 Artemis: When did you decide to start writing?

      John: As a lover of mystery and suspense, I had put together several ideas for screen plays. I decided that it would be better to let these stories unfold as books and started on my first novel more than a year ago.

 Artemis: What author inspires you?

 John: Stephen King. He is the master of horror and I've been reading his books for more than 20 years.

 Artemis:  What are you working on now?

 John:  I have started my third book, and second full length novel. It will be a dark and chilling psychological suspense.

Artemis: What book is on your nightstand right now?

John: Gone Girl .

Artemis: Why Gone Girl , what is it about that book?
John: Gillian, created a unique compelling plot, realistic memorable characters and great twists that the reader doesn't see coming.

Which book had the most profound influence on you as teen?

John: The Great Gatsby 
Thanks, John for being on -Just a Writer or a Thought Producer.
If you want to follow up on some of John's books or influences, I recommend the following books:F. SCOTT FITZGERALD PREMIUM 9 BOOK COLLECTION (5 NOVELS & 40+ SHORT STORIES) The Great Gatsby,This Side of Paradise-The Beautiful and the Damned-Tender ... Button. (Timeless Wisdom Collection 2525) 
And,The Complete Gillian Flynn: Gone Girl, Dark Places, Sharp Objects