Exploring Charles Frazier’s The Trackers: A Novel Review

The Premise: Val is a painter during Depression Era, who is hired to paint a mural in rural Wyoming. He quickly gets entangled in the rather complicated lives of John Long, a rich art patron and aspiring politician and his younger wife, the beautiful and mysterious Eve. When Eve vanishes, her husband fearing a scandal that could hurt his political aspirations hires Val to find her. So the painter turns detective and travels through America in search of Eve.

Review: here

Ordeal by Innocence : a review

Ordeal by Innocence is the first stand alone novel of Agatha Christie that I have ever read and I liked it a lot. THE PREMISE: In the beginning of the book the crime is technically “solved”. Two years ago Rachel Argyle was bludgeoned to death. Her criminally inclined adopted son Jack was convicted of the crime and died in prison from pneumonia 6 months ago, without ever admiting to the crime. Full review here

Tess Of The D'urbervilles

This is the story of Tess, a country girl that when she was 16 years old she was seduced by a man and she ended up loosing her husband and her life for that 'sin'.
This sounds a simple story, but Thomas Hardy is an amazingly gifted writer and he manages to turn this melodrama into a real classic.Tess is beautiful and innocente and she remains to the end of the book.
Tess' character is based on a contradiction. She is not stupid, on the contrary she is intelligent and she has great insticts, she dislikes Alec d'Urbevilles from the start, and she is quite educated for a poor country girl and as the writer says she could have been a teacher if her father hasn't been informed of his great lineage. However, she sometimes acts like a very silly girl and I do not mean that she let her self be seduced, on the contrary she tried really hard to avoid it, but of the blind affection and devotion to her unworthy husband.
I like Tess, although sometimes I wanted to bitch slap her really hard but I have the excact sentiments for my best friend too sometimes, she is innocent, sweet, so good-natured that everyone especially her family took advantage of her, intelligent, but she was born in a world where women had the fault for everything that was wrong. She was only guilty of loving passionately and blindly and being ful of guilt for mistakes that wasn't hers to begin with. I mean her parents send a little, innocent, uncostomued to the ways of the world girl to a stranger's home without the little bit warning of what may happen in a fruitless chase of riches and grandeur and she get's seduced by him and has his baby. How is that her fault?
What really annoyed in Tess was her choice of husband.Poor excuse of a man if you ask me. I can definately see she was so smitten by him, since he represented everything that Alec wasn't and at the beggining when he though her a perfect, pure child of the nature he cruely abandonded her. Not that I make excuses for Alec, but I do prefer him to Angel and I so wish that she could have come to love him and forget all about Angel. Yes, he was a bad apple and he admitted and he tried to make ammends and marry him and he seemed to love her. Angel was all big words, but when he realised that Tess was not the dreamlike fairy he was thinking of, she was only a human being who had suffered terribly and unjustly he cruely abandoned her. He pretended to be open-mind, a sceptic better than his father whom accused of dogmatism but he acted far worse than any dogmatist could ever act. At leats Alec was true to himself and to others he never said he was any good.
I have specificly avoid to speak of Tess' murder and I call it seduction, because in my opinion Hardy deliberatly avoided to give any details. In my opinion, the writer didn't mean this to be a rape but a seduction. Judging from all talk about morality and how it is a social construction in compbination with his apparent fascination of Nature and knowing that hormones, impulses and sex is a part of it I am inclined to believa that this was never meant to be a rape. Tess was a girl whose misfortune was to live in a world where being passionate was a deathly sin and that Alec was a scroundel who was giving into his impulses without any consideration of their consequenes since his position and wealth protect him from them.
It is a sad book, not depressing though because it is so well written, and Hardy was ahead of his time in his way of thinking and he describes the human sentiments and confusion so well that I could recognise some of my reactions in Tess. I totally recommend it. It is an absolute must read and the only reason that  di  not give it 5 stars is out of anger I so wanted Tess to be happy and Angel condemed in knowing what he lost, and bitch slapped too.

The crimson petal and the white

The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The Crimson petal an the white tells the story of a 19 year od prostitute named Sugar in Victorian London.I was interested and intrigued by its story plus I had already watch the adaptation of the nove; starring Romola Garai and I decided to add it to my reading list, but I am afraid it did not live up to my expectations.
I seriously do not mind a big book -and that one is really big- as long as it's interesting, but the moment I start to skip reading lines I know it no good.I do not know excactly what is wrong with this book, I mean the story is interesting and so are the characters and the are also well developed and very real. I mean they are like real humans you love them, you hate them, you feel sorry for them and and then you love them again. The writer obviously had done its research as far as Victorian London is concerned. He reminded me a little of Dickens in the way he made me picture the London streets in my head and I thought that talking to the reader directly was an excellent way of narrative, but somewhere in the middle he stopped addressing me-the reader- as you and then there was the story of Henry that although was interesting it was said in way too much detail and somewhere Sugar lost her nerve and spirit not only as part of the story but as a book character and that was where I lost interest in the book.I finally managed to finish it today.Thank Faber Sugar found her nerve in th end, but I do not think I would recommend this one or that I would like to read the sequel, although I would like to find out what happened to the characters.

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Inés of My Soul by Isabel Allende

Inés of My Soul by Isabel Allende
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I do love an Isabel Allende book and this story is interesting and fascinating but somehow it doesn't live up to her previous book. Isabel has a soft spot for well developped female characters and it's something that makes me like her even more but I think that this time she over did it. The only fully developed character it the leading one, dona Ines Suarez and its not fully unexpected since this is supposed to be a memoir but I would like to have some more developped characters even if they were female. This book feels like Ines is the one real thing and everyone else it doesn't matter, they are simply shadows that pass through her life/story. At least Ines was a hell of a woman.
Ohh, and the Felipe storyline is absolutely predictable up to acertain point. I mean I knew from the moment I first read i that he had something to do with a certain incident in Santiago.

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Dracula in Love by Karen Essex

Dracula in Love by Karen Essex

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I really enjoy reading this one. I liked the portrait of the characters, especially Mina whom I have to admit I never liked very much I always had a thing for Lucy. The story and especially how K.Essex told it was interesting and it adds new angles to the story of Dracula. I did also enjoy the fact that Dracula is not supposed to be the rencarnation of everything evil and wrong and immoral and that for a change humans were the bad guys. However, I didn't like the ending. Why stick to the original or why not so us some years ahead... If you read the novel you'll know that she could have satisfied us with ahappy ending eventually. You can always imagined it, but I would wish to see it written as well. If you like Dracula I think you will find this a rather interesting reading.



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Dracula

Marc Warren, Sophia Myles, David Suchet
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Plot Summary:
In this version the plot centers around Lord Arthur Holmwood (Dans Stevens), who after his engagement to the beautiful Lucy Westenra (Sophia Myles), discover that his father immoral, lustful life has given him syphilis (he contacted the illeness in his bieth and so did his mother who as we are informed killed herself). He neither wishes to expose Lucy to the deadly decease nor break up their engangement and so he joines a weird, obscur cult who promises that can give him a cure if he brings Dracula to England.



The latest production of Dracula is or had the potential of being a very interesting take on the very well none story of Count Dracula, but it failes miserably. I mean he had the actors, the costumes, the amazing settings and a good story, but somehow they managed to destroy everything.
I do not care that they have altered the original story. I actually though that concetrating on Arthur and Lucy was a very nice and original idea and the syphilis angle could have been great if they bothered to actually work those ideas. I mean it's like they had an idea and somewhere in the middle decided that they should have better stayed close to Bram Stoker's Dracula but they had filmed half ot the mini series and they didn't want to waste their money, so they changed the script somewhere in the middle. Usually I'd rather prefer that the movies stay close to the books, but I am not against re imagining something if you do it right.
  The one good thing about this production was Lucy (Sophia Myles). She is so beautiful and sexy that you understand why Dracula goes for her first. Her sex scene with the Count is quite hot and it has something that reminded me of good, old Hammer Horror films (and I seriously could have lived with seeing Sophia Myles naked boddy) despite the fact that I seriously didn't like Marc Warren as Dracula. Neither he is handsome nor charming and personally I don't think that he contributed anything to the part. As far as his acting is concerned it was rather bad and not at all convincing as Dracula. He was more like a thirty year old guy with anger management issues. Plus, the dirty nales were very disgusting.
  Mina, on the other hand, was pretty in a very innocent way as you expect her to be and I believe that she had a lot of potential but her time wasn't enough and her role as it was written was weak. She wasn't able to be the leading lady after Lucy's death, but in my personal opinion this happens because they have diminished her importance for both the movie and Dracula, so his sudden attention to her seems somewhat stranged and unexpected. The same thing happens with Van Helsing he doesn't quite fit this adaptation and he seems to be a stranger to the story.
  The plot was weak and a lot of things were unexplained or silly. I mean how is it possible that Arthur couldn't postpone the wedding due to Lucy's persistant, but he was able to resist the amazingly beautiful and hot Lucy, with whom is desperately in love, when she attemps to seduce him? Or how is it possible for dracula to be so fascinated with a single photo of Mina? Francis Ford Copolla's Dracula was reminded of his late wife Elizabetha and that is why he had that reaction, what is this guy's excuse. And what about Jonathan's close? Why did he take those? I mean for goodness shake he good have better ones. Was this all the writers could think for his first meeting with Mina? And what about Van Helsing? They imprisoned him but they let him live. Why? They clearly wanted dead everyone who knew about Dracula's existance and true nature, so why does he lives?
  To be fair, this is the first adaptation that portaits Lucy as something more than a frivolous flirt, but a real flesh and blodd woman whith real needs and desires and this is a good thing since I always though that Lucy was a far more interesting character than the holy, uninteresting, innocent Mina , but this is as fas as it goes. You can watch this if you have nothing better to do, but if you want a really good dracula movie you should try something else. If you like Sophia Myles as much as I do maybe you want considered it a total waste of time and if you are a costume lover you will enjoy them a lot since they are quite nice, especially women's dresses.