The Cookies of Life by J.T Waliyadi

First of all, Thank you to Waliyadi for sending me the book to read and to review (despite the fact I have told you, I will write my review honestly)

Without realizing his power, Yuda Hueber had turned his high school into a school full of forbidden passion and he had burned Bandung with passion and lust. He did it with his cookies and cakes.

When Yuda Hueber’s mom passed away, he inherited a Cake Shop in Bandung. The shop belonged to his late grandma whom he never met before. He went to SMA 3 Bandung (SMA = High School). He had new friends there and wanted to do some business by selling cakes and cookies. He started learning how to make cakes. Without proper training, he could make amazing cakes and cookies because he was born with that talent…that magic talent.

His cakes influenced everyone who had eaten them. When Yuda was happy, people who ate them also became happy, when he was sad it also made them sad.

…but then, he fell in love with someone and he also felt betrayed. These two events shaped him into both caring and scary person.

11/22/63 by Stephen King

What will you do if you find a gate that can take you back to 1953? Will you take a chance to rewrite  history and make yourself a hero? Or collect a lot of money by betting on sport? Or will be too scared to even try anything?

…but what if you know every time you visit the past, you put everything in reset?

Oh Mr. Stephen King…you really are a great story teller, for the first time in my reading life, I really care to know what will happen to a fictional character’s love life.

When I began reading 11/22/63, all I know is that King will take me to a journey of how one man tried to save JFK, I have no idea that he will take me to a romantic story that got caught in between so many tragedies.

11/22/63 is a slow pace book, at least for me it’s a slow pace because I finished Under The Dome (1074 pages) faster than this book which only has 880 pages…but I dare to say that Under The Dome (although I will reread it few days from now) has too made-believe ending while 11/22/63 has a powerful ending.

I will try to write my review without too much spoiler…but it’s hard not spoiling it to let you all know what makes the book great.

Artists in Crime by Ngaio Marsh, Read by Benedict Cumberbatch

It started as a student exercise, the knife under the drape, the model’s pose chalked in place. But before Agatha Troy—artist and instructor—returns to the class, the pose has been re-enacted in earnest: the model is dead, fixed for ever in one of the most dramatic poses Troy has ever seen. It’s a difficult case for Chief Detective Inspector Alleyn. How can he believe that the woman he loves is a murderess?

It was said that many people compared Ngaio Marsh to Agatha Christie, I have only read few books by Agatha and this is my first time reading/listening to Ngaio Marsh’s mystery. Based on this one, I think Christie is better.

This is my second audio book read by the handsome Benedict Cumberbatch with his sexy voice. Well, actually I have heard 2 and a half book by him, the first was Metamorphosis by Kafka which I like so much, and the half was Casanova which was terribly boring and even the voice of Benedict Cumberbatch couldn’t keep me hearing it. I think the book of Casanova life is the most narcissist book I have ever heard in my entire life…it was tiring to hear him bragged about how women craved for him so much.

Fortunately, Artists in Crime is quite interesting (well, better than Casanova)…but not interesting enough for me to read it. The truth is, Benny’s many accents kept me going because I have figured out the perpetrator since the crime took place.

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

I have seen so many review of this book, many said it was good and few said it wasn’t that good.  I am curious with this book since a couple of years ago but something always distracted me and ended up picking other book from the shelf. Last week, I was in the mood for light reading from thin book and my hand finally picked Kitchen.

I think Kitchen is really good, it mainly talks about how we deal with death. There are two stories in one book, one deals with the lost of close relative while other deals with the lost of lover.

Kitchen is a 102 page story about a woman named Mikage Sakurai. She had been living with her grandma since childhood. Her grandma was her only living relative. The story began when her grandma passed away leaving her all alone. In her lonely days, a man younger than her who had once worked with her grandma asked her to live with him and his mother. Yuichi Tanabe and his mother, Eriko, are very nice to her…but she soon found out that Yuichi’s family was not an ordinary family. His mom was actually his father. His father loved his mother so much and when she passed away, she decided she wanted to be a woman and named himself after his wife. Both are very genuine people. She had wonderful time there but when she moved from the house to live independently, bad news reached to her ear. Both Yuichi and Mikage dealt with another lost in their own way.

Usurper of The Sun by Housuke Nojiri

From Goodreads:

The mysterious Builders have brought humanity to the edge of extinction; can they be reasoned with, or must they be destroyed? Aki Shiraishi is a high school student working in the astronomy club and one of the few witnesses to an amazing event—someone is building a tower on the planet Mercury. Soon, the Builders have constructed a ring around the sun, threatening the ecology of Earth with an immense shadow. Aki is inspired to pursue a career in science, and the truth. She must determine the purpose of the ring and the plans of its creators, as the survival of both species—humanity and the alien Builders—hang in the balance.

This is a new book in Japan Foundation Library. Knowing nothing at all about the book was not an excuse for me to not borrow it…in fact, being new book as the main reason I borrowed it. It looks like a good book and I haven’t yet read sci-fi by Japanese author.

Usurper of The Sun had interesting story but has a VERY slow pace. The incredibly slow pace almost made me abandon the book…but my curiosity got the better of me. I continued reading with a lot of skimming.

Aki Shiraishi was a high school student when she first spotted a tower on Mercury. Her discovery made a lot of scientist interested with it and the tower made Aki became obsesses with it. Over the years, the tower grew into a massive ring around Mercury. Being so close to the sun, the ring caused sun blocking. The earth with its lack of sunlight was facing human extinction.

The War of The World by H.G. Wells

About 2 months ago, I bought a new phone and I was so happy that I could download a free ebook app with some free books. The first book I noticed was The War of The World. When I saw the movie, I didn’t know that that movie was based on a book published in 1898. I was intrigued and straight away downloaded it. I didn’t read it immediately because I was in the middle of other book. When I finally finished my previous book, I straight away read TWOTW.

Although it left me sleepy almost all the time, I still think the book was really good. What made me sleepy was certainly not the story because I marveled at Wells’s imagination. For someone who lived in late 19^th century, his imagination of destruction by being from another planet was really amazing. I wondered how people at his time reacted toward his book…he lived in the era where most writers wrote about life drama. H.G. Wells’s bravery to come up with a sci-fi book about human annihilation totally awed me.

However, even though I marveled at the idea I still couldn’t keep my eyes open after the story had reached certain point. I can’t quite explain why I fell asleep after 5 or 6 pages…I guess it’s something in the way the words were arranged, you know the old English way. It wasn’t as difficult as Dickens’s but it lingered too long in one description. I think the only book that can keep me awake with its long description is The Lord of The Rings, even after reading it more than once I still read every word written in the book. Other than TLOTR, I often drifted away in long description and finally sleep took over me.

Broken by Daniel Clay

‘Skunk, Skunk. Wake Up, beautiful darling.’

Archie, my father, holds my hands as he says this. I sense his words rather than hear them.

I also sense his life.

……

Finally, he will sleep and dream that the harsh ringing sound by his bedside is the Royal Hampshire County Hospital phoning to say I am dead. …

Daniel Clay began his book with intriguing paragraphs. Those were the words in Skunk’s mind. From the beginning, we knew that something bad had happened to the little girl named Skunk Cunningham. Skunk took us to the day where it all started. The day when Bob Oswald beat Rick Buckley and turned him into a broken man.

Broken is a story of three family intertwined living close to each other. The Cunningham is basically the most normal out of the three. Archie Cunningham is a single father with two children, Skunk and Jed. His helper named Cerys dated Mike, Skunk’s teacher. The Oswald is the worst out of three. Bob Oswald has 5 daughters, Saraya, Saskia, Susan, Sunrise and Sunset. The Oswald is a trouble maker, the kind of family that everyone in the neighborhood despised the most. The Buckley is actually a normal family too…that is until Bob Oswald beat Rick Buckley…the Buckley is never the same again afterward.

State of Fear by Michael Crichton

Is it a science text book or a novel?

Out of all Crichton’s books I have read, state of fear id the one that feels so much like reading a science text book. There are TOO many scientific explanation involved in the story. I do believe that the long explanation can make people bored with the book but NOT ME though…I always enjoy reading all the scientific insert that Crichton wrote in ALL his books, it’s like reading a science text book in a fun way.

The story begins with some people stealing a machine that can create big wave. Then it moved to a man trying to set a deal to buy cavitation unit. The last epilogue is when a man bought half a million feet of wire. These three events connected to what would happen next in the plot.

George Morton was a very rich man who loved to support environmental organizations. NERF is one of the organizations where he shared his money the most. He trusted the man who controlled NERF, Nick Drake. But one phone call made him distrust Drake. He only trusted his lawyer, Peter Evans, and his assistant, Sarah Jones.

When Morton met John Kenner and Sanjong Thapa, he started behaving unlike himself. His unusual behaviour led him to a fatal accident that caused his life. But the story didn’t stop there. Kenner asked Evans and Jones to follow him stopping events that will lead to some kind of natural disasters, but there’s nothing natural about them because the disasters were caused by extreme environmental activists.