Annabel

Title: Annabel
Author: Kathleen Winter
Published: 2010. This edition by Vintage.
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 461




I saw this book several times in one of the big book shops in Helsinki, became instantly intrigued, and finally remembered to buy it once I found a cheaper copy. Books in Finland, sadly, tend to be damn expensive. And wow. I'd read that Winter's writing style is, at times, rather... what would be a good word for it... poetic? Kind of like a painting. And I was initially a little wary about this fact, but once I started the book and got used to her style, man. I was pretty much hooked. Read it in buses from work, between buses, in the evenings and in bed until I reached the end.


So yeah, I liked Annabel. It's about a child born in a remote part of Canada, in 1968, who is both male and female. The kid's parents more or less grudgingly decide to grow him as a boy, and name him Wayne, not telling him that there's a very real girl part to him as well. Only a few people know of this: the parents, a few doctors, and a neighbour who was present at the birth. She secretly gave Wayne the name Annabel, after her own child.


Wayne grows up taking pills he has no idea what they're for, but always feels that there's something in him that makes him different from the other boys. The book's mostly serious, but there were a few laugh-out-loud bits, and all the main characters are written beautifully. They're so real I felt I could just reach into the book and poke them. And, like many good books, it was over way too soon.




Wayne knew Donna Palliser could not see into the glass ball. He knew she was in the business, tonight, of being cruel. He did not like to see Agatha Groves made fun of  and did not mind giving Donna Palliser a change of topic. 'I dreamed I was a girl,' he said. 'I could see my sweater. It was a green sweater with glimmery buttons, like light changing underwater. I looked at my sandals and they were white. I was walking by a river. I tried to see my face in the river but I couldn't. No one was with me. I tried to run with the river. I picked one peak of water and ran beside it and I thought it was the same peak. But then I wasn't sure. I didn't realise I was a girl in the dream until I woke up. While I was waking up I remembered I'm a boy, and I was surprised for a minute, until I remembered that's what I always am when I'm awake.'

A Study in Scarlet

Title: A Study in Scarlet
Author: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Published: 1886 originally.
Genre: Detective stories!
Pages: 395 little mobile phone pages.


The first Sherlock Holmes story, and one of the very few novel-length ones! This baby introduces both Holmes and Watson, how they met and came to live together, and, of course, the big mystery.

An American man is found dead, apparently from suicide, in an empty room in an empty house in Brixton, but when the coppers call in Ghostbusters Sherlock Holmes, Mr. Smarty-pants starts to find many things to prove that it was, indeed, murder.

(I've seen the modern-day Sherlock BBC series episode made of this a couple of times: I hope I'm not confusing/remembering things from that instead of the novel. It was quite faithful in execution, but also took many liberties.)

I was reading along happily, trying to figure out all the details, when suddenly the story jumped to Utah, USA, and a group of Mormons traveling towards what would be Salt Lake City. I was sitting in a bus, far from the internets when this happened, and since I couldn't check if this was supposed to happen, wondered if someone had -by accident or intention to utterly confuse- replaced the book with Something Completely Different. But it all tied in together in the end. Hope I didn't spoil anything for anyone. Sorry, hypothetical readers.  

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

Title: The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
Author: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Published: 1894 originally.
Genre: Detective stories!
Pages: 738 little mobile phone pages.


 This new layout thing is confusing.

Another collection of Sherlock Holmes stories! You can read the list included in this one here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Memoirs_of_Sherlock_Holmes

Oh, it's been a while already since I read these, I've just become really bad at updating things again. It's surprisingly easy (to someone who loves books so much) to read from such a small screen and be so ... technological. I guess that it helps that the stories are so intriguing, and that a phone is easy to carry around in your pocket, all the time, everywhere.

I don't think I figured out any of the stories before Watson this time. Holmes has some kind of a mind, figuring everything out. Sir A. C. D. even more so, for writing all this. Ah, it's hard trying to remember what I thought when I was reading these, since it has been a while, like I mentioned. And since I'm reading such an interesting book now, it's occupied my mind.

I do remember, however, snickering every time Watson gets excited over Holmes' deductions. The word obviously had a different meaning back then, and I understand what was meant with it, but I can be immature and am amused when I read something like this: "Most excellent, Holmes!" I ejaculated.

*giggle*