T is for Trespass - Sue Grafton

I won't lie - I was probably a little desperate when I pulled an old (November 2008) Sue Grafton off the mother in-laws shelf but truth be told it wasn't actually such a bad read.

The story involves a private investigator Kinsey Millhone and her tangles with a scheming nurse who is taking care of her neighbour Gus.

When Gus has an accident, Millhone is relieved when his niece organises a nurse for him. Verifying a background check on Solana Rojas doesn’t turn up anything suspicious. But Kinsey’s not convinced – especially when Gus seems to be getting worse under his nurse’s tender care.

Realising that her neighbourly concern isn’t going to get her past the front door Kinsey turns to more unorthodox methods to step up her investigation. And gets far more than she bargained for . . .

Not only is Solana not who she seems to be but she’s more than able to play Kinsey at her own game. Suddenly the tables have turned and it’s Kinsey who’s on the wrong side of the law . . .

It wasn't a bad read for some light-hearted action but it did tend to jump around a bit to other cases Millhone was working which seemed to detract from the plot rather than add to it.

It also wasn't one of those books that you just can't put down. I found myself being drawn back to it to read a chapter or two before tonking out for the night but it didn't quite grab me in the way that I would read it until the very early hours of the morning.

Title: T is for Trespass
Author: Sue Grafton
ISBN: 978-0-330-43889-6

You can buy this title online from retailer Loot for R91.

Rated it a 3 out of 5.

October Killings - Wessel Ebersohn

I love using this blog to highlight the achievements and works of South Africans, because it hopefully serves as a motivation to other South Africans.

One South African author who I have not featured on this blog before is Wessel Ebersohn who has recently released a new book called "October Killings".

Interesting piece of meaningless trivia is that I actually worked for three months on contract with Wessel at Succeed magazine in Johannesburg and found he ran a really good business with happy and motivated staff!

Please find below the write-up for the book and if you have read the book please post your comments for other readers.

You can buy this book now online from retailer Loot for R160.

Write up:
Abigail Bukulu, a young star in the Justice Department, receives a visit from Leon Lourens. Many years ago when she was only 15 he saved her life when he was one of a group of South African soldiers sent to attack an ANC safe house in Lesotho. Having paid the price for his rebellion, Leon now needs Abigail's protection. On 22 October each year, the date of the Lesotho attack, another member of the SADF squad is killed. Now, that date is approaching, and only two of them remain: the squad commander, who's serving his sentence in C-Max, and Leon. Abigail immediately knows who is behind the October Killings: a sinister and dangerous man named Bishop who had joined the Struggle for dubious reasons. In a rush against time, over a course with many obstacles, Abigail finds a partner in the eccentric prison psychologist Yudel Gordon, a "veteran" from three earlier Ebersohn novels. And so a fiery partnership is established that is likely to electrify several future books.

Title: October Killings
Author: Wessel Ebersohn
ISBN: 978-1-4152-0074-2

Dan Brown gets a grilling

I won't lie - I am not a big Dan Brown fan and I personally had no clue what was happening in The Da Vinci Code... maybe I am just a simple soul.

I had to laugh though - there were two hilariously funny articles on Dan Brown that I have to share with you.

The first one is the book review of The Lost Symbol courtesy of Shaun De Waal at the Mail & Guardian. His review is a cracker but I loved this paragraph:

The characters have no character. There are quick sketches to tell us what they look like, and background is filled in briefly, but otherwise they are speaking mannequins. The only exception is the tattooed villain, Mal'akh, in whom Brown seems to have more visceral interest than any other figure in the book.

The second one is a scathing crack at Brown and his writing style which is also good for a laugh - go check it out here.

I suppose we shouldn't make too much fun of Brown though - he is probably rolling in his millions and in turn laughing at us plebs!

The Beatles and Batman

Two interesting titles appeared on this weeks' best-seller list and I thought we should post some details on the game plus links back to the official gaming sites as a resource for our readers:

The Beatles: Rock Band

Developer: Electronic Arts

The world's leading music game meets the greatest band in history! The Beatles™: Rock Band™ gives fans what they've been waiting for: a chance to experience the Beatles' legendary story from the inside.

You won't just watch and listen as the Beatles make rock history, create landmark records and conquer the world -for the first time, you'll be part of the band.

The Beatles™ software is compatible with Rock Band™, Guitar Hero and most other instrument controllers, as well as, third party microphones including SingStar and Lips.

45 legendary songs, including:
I Saw Her Standing There
Twist And Shout
Do You Want To Know A Secret
I Want to Hold Your Hand
Can't Buy Me Love
I Wanna Be Your Man
I Feel Fine
Eight Days A Week
Day Tripper
Paperback Writer
Taxman
And Your Bird Can Sing
Yellow Submarine
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
With a Little Help from My Friends
Within You Without You / Tomorrow Never Knows
I Am The Walrus
Back In The U.S.S.R.
Octopus's Garden
Birthday
Revolution
Here Comes The Sun
Dig A Pony
Get Back
I've Got A Feeling

And more...
• Plus additional songs will be available for download through The Beatles™: Rock Band™ music store.
• Advanced Harmonix game technology brings The Beatles™ experience to life
• Sing three-part vocal harmonies with support for up to three mics
• Experience historic Beatles performance venues from the Cavern Club to the roof at Savile Row
• Developed and co-created with The Beatles™, providing a true-to-life gaming experience
• Hear never released conversations among the band during Abbey Road recording sessions

See more on the official site here.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

Developer - Eidos Interactive

Descend into the core of the criminally insane as The Joker launches his most diabolical plot ever. The inmates of Arkham have been set free and it's up to the Batman, to bring order to the chaos and take back the Asylum.

Explore the depths of this never before seen island as you experience the darkest journey of Batman's life.

Written by Paul Dini and featuring the voice talents of Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy.

#Utilize the unique FreeFlow combat system to chain together unlimited combos seamlessly and battle with huge groups of The Joker's henchmen in brutal melee brawls

# Investigate as Batman, the WORLD' GREATEST DETECTIVE, by solving intricate puzzles with the help of cutting edge forensic tools including x-ray scanning, fingerprint scans, Amido Black spray and a pheromone tracker

# Face off against Gotham's greatest villains including The Joker, HARLEY QUINN, POISON IVY and KILLER CROC

# Become the Invisible Predator with Batman's fear takedowns and unique vantage point system to move without being seen and hunt enemies

# Choose multiple takedown methods, including swooping from the sky and smashing through walls.

# Explore every inch of Arkham Asylum and roam freely on the infamous island, presented for the first time ever in its gritty and realistic entirety

Visit the official site here.

Hot games - 13 September 2009

So what video games are hot on the various online retail platforms?

Bundu Reviews takes a look at some of the major retailers to bring you this weeks lists. A noticeable new comer is The Beatles Rock Band which is proving popular on both Kalahari and Amazon.com

Take2.co.za
1. Guitar Hero 3 Stand Alone Guitar (Xbox 360)
2. Wolfenstein (PC DVD-ROM)
3. Super Hits: Bioshock (PC DVD-ROM)
4. EA Classics: Mass Effect (PC DVD-ROM)
5. Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare GOTY (PC DVD-ROM)
6. Super Hits: Civilization IV Complete Collection (PC DVD-ROM)
7. EA Classics: Mirror's Edge (PC DVD-ROM)
8. EA Classics: Crysis Warhead (PC DVD-ROM)
9. EA Classics: Dead Space (PC DVD-ROM)
10. Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock Bundle (PS3)

Kalahari.Net
1. Wii Sports Resort and Motion Plus - Nintendo Wii
2. Batman Arkham Asylum - PS3
3. Fifa 10 with Adidas Kopanya Soccer Ball - PS3
4. Batman Arkham Asylum - Xbox360
5. Need For Speed: Shift - PC
6. The Sims 3 - PC
7. Rock Band: The Beatles - Xbox360
8. Ashes Cricket 2009 - Nintendo Wii
9. Halo ODST - Xbox360
10. Need For Speed: Shift - PS3

Amazon.com
1. Halo 3: ODST - Xbox360
2. Wii Sports Resort - Nintendo Wii
3. The Beatles: Rock Band - Nintendo Wii
4. Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box - Nintendo DS
5. The Beatles: Rock Band - Xbox360
6. Scribblenauts - Nintendo DS
7. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - PS3
8. Mario & Luigi Bowser's Inside Story - Nintendo DS
9. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - Xbox360
10. Batman: Arkham Asylum - PS3

Bestselling Books - 13 September 2009

Sunday is here and once again we review the hottest books on the various online retailers.

Gotta be honest and point out that this must be one of the first weeks where Amazon didn't include a Twilight book - an amazing run though. However as you can see below the South African retailers continue to be dominated by these books!

Exclusive Books
1. Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man
2. Spud - Learning to Fly
3. Architects of Poverty
4. New Moon
5. Breaking Dawn
6. Outliers
7. Eclipse
8. Twilight
9. Spud
10. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Amazon.com
1. The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown
2. Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association
3. True Compass: A Memoir - Edward Kennedy
4. Mastering The Art of French Cooking, Volume One - Julia Child
5. The Help - Kathryn Stockett
6. An Echo in the Bone: A Novel (Outlander) - Diana Gabaldon
7. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days - Jeff Kinney
8. Official Book Club Selection: A Memoir According to Kathy Griffin - Kathy Griffin
9. The Last Song - Nicholas Sparks
10. The Shack - William P. Young

Take.co.za
1. Eclipse - Meyer, Stephenie
2. New Moon - Meyer, Stephenie
3. Breaking Dawn - Meyer, Stephenie
4. Twilight - Meyer, Stephenie
5. Faefever - Moning, Karen Marie
6. Girl Who Played with Fire - Larsson, Stieg
7. The Darkest Whisper - Showalter, Gena
8. Pleasure - Frank, Jacquelyn
9. Heat Seeker - Leigh, Lora
10. Spud Learning to Fly - John Van De Ruit

Kalahari.Net
1. The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown
2. Fees van die ongenooides - PG Du Plessis
3. Breaking Dawn - Stephanie Meyer
4. Eclipse - Stephanie Meyer
5. Twilight - Stephanie Meyer
6. Spud – Learning to fly - John Van De Ruit
7. Troepie: van Blougat tot Bosoupa - Cameron Blake
8. Jesus word gebore - Gloria A. Truitt
9. The Host - Stephanie Meyer
10. New Moon - Stephanie Meyer

Fuel - Video game

I think almost every guy loves a decent racing game and I've been hearing lots of positive things about "Fuel".

I haven't played it but here is the synopsis for the game. The game is available on PS3 from online retailer Loot for R637 (See banner right).

If you've played it - post your opinions of the game below:

Synopsis

Creating the ultimate competitive go-anywhere racing experience, Fuel will have players competing across wildly different terrain and executing spectacular death-defying stunts as they race dozens of varied two and four-wheeled rides and explore this epic world on an unprecedented scale.

Fuel is set in an alternate present in which whole swathes of the globe have been ravaged by the effects of climate change brought on by decades of environmental abuse.

Here oil prices have rocketed and yet a new breed of racing junkie takes to the wastelands, pitting their grungy home-tuned vehicles against each other in an all-new extreme sport as they compete to win fuel supplies.

* Open-world Racing - The largest open-world racing arena ever, with 14,000 square km of streaming game world and 100,000 miles of trails.

* Vehicles Galore - Drive over 70 unique vehicles in six different classes including: bikes, ATVs, muscle cars, SUVs, buggies and trucks.

* Weather Effects - Experience how extreme weather conditions affect the race from rain to snow to sandstorms and destructive tornadoes.

* Race Types - Compete in multiple categories of race types including: time trials, checkpoint races, circuit races and raid races.

* Multiplayer Support - Fuel features 2-16 player online support via PlayStation Network.

* Online Racing - Compete against friends online in all 70 career races as well as online free rides.

* GPs Technology - Each vehicle in Fuel features onboard GPs functionality ensuring you will never be lost.

The Poet - Michael Connelly

For those who like a good action / thriller read then "The Poet" by Michael Connelly will do the trick.

The book follows newspaper reporter Jack McEvoy who'se brother Sean - a local police detective has just died in an apparent suicide. The more McEvoy digs, the more apparent it becomes that his brother did not die at his own hand and in fact this is the work of an ingenious serial killer.

On further investigation McEvoy finds out that there are a number of other cases across the country were leading police detectives have committed suicides - apparently tortured by grim cases that they are working on.

McEvoy takes his information to the FBI and is quickly drafted in to a high profile task team where he is torn between his desire to write a cracking story for the newspaper or keep mum on the info and try to lead to the arrest of the killer.

"The Poet" was a good solid read without being absolutely gripping. I enjoyed the interaction and character development and there is quite a good twist at the end of the story which keeps you guess to the end.

We rated it a 3 out of 5.

Title: The Poet
Author: Michael Connelly
ISBN-13: 978-1-4091-1693-6

Available from online retailer Loot (see banner right of blog) for R95.

"Summertime" from the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

A young English biographer is working on a book about the late writer, John Coetzee. He plans to focus on the years from 1972–1977 when Coetzee, in his thirties, is sharing a run-down cottage in the suburbs of Cape Town with his widowed father. This, the biographer senses, is the period when he was 'finding his feet as a writer'. Never having met Coetzee, he embarks on a series of interviews with people who were important to him – a married woman with whom he had an affair, his favourite cousin Margot, a Brazilian dancer whose daughter had English lessons with him, former friends and colleagues.

A rich, funny, and deeply affecting autobiographical new novel from one of the world's greatest living writers. J.M. Coetzee's work includes Waiting For the Barbarians, Life & Times of Michael K, Boyhood, Youth, Disgrace and Diary of a Bad Year. He was the first author to win the Booker Prize twice and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003.

For more info visit www.fanatics.co.za or www.exclusivebooks.co.za

If you have read the book please feel free to post your comments on it below so other readers can get some feedback on the title!

The Accidental Billionaires - Sex, Money, Betrayal And The Founding Of Facebook

Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg were Harvard undergraduates and best friends - outsiders at a school filled with polished prep-school grads and long-time legacies. They shared both academic brilliance in math and a geeky awkwardness with women.

Eduardo figured their ticket to social acceptance – and sexual success – was getting invited to join one of the university’s Final Clubs, a constellation of elite societies that had groomed generations of the most powerful men in the world and ranked on top of the inflexible hierarchy at Harvard. Mark, with less of an interest in what the campus alpha males thought of him, happened to be a computer genius of the first order.

Which he used to find a more direct route to social stardom: one lonely night, Mark hacked into the university's computer system, creating a ratable database of all the female students on campus – and subsequently crashing the university's servers and nearly getting himself kicked out of school. In that moment, in his Harvard dorm room, the framework for Facebook was born.

What followed – a real-life adventure filled with slick venture capitalists, stunning women, and six-foot-five-inch identical-twin Olympic rowers – makes for one of the most entertaining and compelling books of the year. Before long, Eduardo’s and Mark’s different ideas about Facebook created faint cracks in their relationship, which soon spiraled into out-and-out warfare. The collegiate exuberance that marked their collaboration fell prey to the adult world of lawyers and money. The great irony is that while Facebook succeeded by bringing people together, its very success tore two best friends apart.

The Accidental Billionaires is a compulsively readable story of innocence lost – and of the unusual creation of a company that has revolutionized the way hundreds of millions of people relate to one another.

The title is available from online retailer Loot (see banner right) for R160

The Double Crown by Marié Heese

As a reader of history and fiction books Fanatics felt you might enjoy The Double Crown by Marié Heese. It is the gripping, fascinating and true story of Hatshepsut, the female pharaoh who ruled over Egypt for two decades around 1500 BC.

The "double crown" refers to her reign over Upper and Lower Egypt, but also the dual nature of her life: Pharaoh and woman in one person. She relates her story in a series of scrolls, with additions by her scribe, to whom she has given the scrolls for safekeeping. We read about the grievous loss of her children; her thwarted love for Senenmut; the suspicion that impairs her judgement and eventually leads to tragedy.

How did Hatshepsut become pharaoh? And why was her name expunged from her temples and obelisks after her death? The novel answers these questions in rich detail. It is a poignant portrayal of an ambitious and courageous woman and the betrayals she faces, both as a woman and a ruler. The Double Crown is a truly world-class novel by a South African author.

Marié Heese is a much loved author of, amongst others, children’s stories. 2008 saw a new edition of the evergreen Die Pikkewouters van Amper-stamperland. Marié also is the author of several works of fiction for adults, such as the classic Die Uurwerk Kantel (1976) and most recently The Double Crown (2009).

Boeke Prize

Fanatics and Exclusive Books invite you to celebrate the art of superb fiction in September by voting for your choice of the six titles short-listed for this year’s Exclusive Books Boeke Prize awards. You’ll earn 250 bonus points on each short-listed title you purchase this month, saving you a very handy R75 if you feel tempted to buy all six!

The Boeke Prize started out in 1995 as our light-hearted response to the Man Booker Prize, but has since become firmly established as a highlight of the South African literary calendar. Here’s this year’s short-list, selected by our store managers as titles which ‘truly live up to the promise of being compelling reads’:

• Testimony by Anita Shreve
• The Help by Kathryn Stockett
• The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
• People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
• The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt
• The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen

Let Exclusive Books know which of these six titles you think deserves the coveted Boeke Prize for 2009. Vote for your choice now and you, too, could be a winner! There are over 20 prizes to be won (worth a total of over R40 000) in our free Boeke Awards competition:

• 1st prize – a trip for two to the luxurious Madikwe ‘Big five’ game reserve worth R20 000-00
• 2nd prize – 10 x R2 000 Exclusive Books gift vouchers
• 3rd prize – 10 sets of the six titles on our Boeke prize short list.

You’ll find entry forms on display at all branches of Exclusive Books. Complete your entry form and drop it in the special box provided before the competition closing date of 30th September.