Europe in Asia

Today was a crazy day of tourism! Kind of! After fourteen months in Hong Kong I still hadn't been to Macau, and today I made it over there. The fact it was public holiday made today's travelling absolutely mental, one of the reasons I'm not such a fan of public holidays out here. There's a ridiculous number of people about at the best of time's, and more so on a Sunday, but when a public holiday comes around even more people come out of the woodwork and the people levels reach insanity. 

To which end, Macau happened in a bit of a rush. My esteemed new flatmate had to make the trip regardless, so I tagged along for the ride. Due to the volume of people, boats out of Hong Kong were running late and ours was delayed by half an hour (thank god! We were sent to three different gates before we got the right one for our sailing - everything was different to the screens in the ferry terminal before passport control.) Yes, that's right, passport control ... Macau has given me a new stamp in my passport! 

It's not a long boat ride, just over an hour, but getting through passport control upon arrival seemed to take a night and a day! Mental, un-moving queue. All in all the delays and the achingly slow queue left us with little over two hours in Macau before we had to head back. We only saw a little, but it was definitely enough to warrant a trip back! 

Macau is an jarring mix of influences! It is unmistakably European, the heavy Portuguese influence is at Macau's core. This European foundation is surrounded by the Las Vegas lights of the casinos and all the trapping of a Chinese community. It's a little unerring at times as one minute you feel like you're meandering down a street in Europe, the next you realise they're driving on the wrong side of the road for that to be true and remember that you are, in fact, in Asia.  

There's more to be seen and discovered in Macau and I'm looking forward to going back and giving it a little more of my attention! 

Sometimes, a second go is all you need! (52 Books #17)

So I gave Mr James Rollins a second chance and read another of his books. I thought I'd go for Sandstorm, the first in his SIGMA series. It was fabulous.

It was fun, it was exciting, it was imaginative to the point of crazy and I found it much more rewarding than Excavation. The way Rollins organises his books is clearly to jump form character arc to character arc within chapters, and while I still found this jarring, I found Sandstorm to be a tighter knit story and the interviewing aspect of the story worked well. In general I think I prefer more linear books, I could get used to his style.

It is different for books like The Time Travelers Wife. They nature of the story lends itself to a narrative that jumps too and fro and Rollins' stories don't lend themselves to it in the same way. Despite that niggling qualm, I found this much more readable and I'm looking forward to reading more.

This is a book for anyone who's a fan of Matthew Reilly (as anyone who reads this will know I most definitely am) and would also suit anyone who like's Dan Brown (I am rather excited to read Inferno and I'm hoping it's better than The Lost Symbol) or even if you're just a fan of action films with a historical twist in a book form! Some parts of this plot are crazy it's true, but why not...just why not! 

Four in two days... Is it possible? Of course it is!! (52 Books #16)

It's been quiet of late, what with heading to the UK for a holiday (England... for a holiday... who'd have thought it!) and the constant run of departures and arrivals that have happened since it's all been rather hectic - in the best of ways! Thankfully it's calming down again now. It's feels like I've reached the peak of the mountain and I'm happily running down the other side (channeling the Sound of Music all the way) and with more of that elusive space in which I think I've been picking up my books and my pen again. 

Sadly I've not yet hit the target for this month and either I finish four books in the next two days, or I have to read six a month from now to December - luckily that's still manageable! I have managed to get through one book this month (even if I did start it in May!) I finally finished Divided Kingdom by Rupert Thomson. 

I read through the sample at great speed and then read through a handful of the reviews on amazon to see if the purchase of the rest was worth it - I usually wait for a book to come on offer as this was still fairly pricey.   Despite a fair number of reviews being less than positive about the latter stages of the book, I bought it anyway. While I wasn't disappointed by the book, I do have to agree with some of what I read on amazon. It is true that once Thomas Parry, the main protagonist, grows up and goes out into the world, the story loses  much of it's heart. It seems aimless, restless with a flicker of inspiration here or there that is never, quite, followed up on. 

That's not to say that it is not good. It is. The overall idea, the themes of the story, the idea that you cannot fit someone's personality into a box are good and sound and the beginning is exciting, I just wish that that excitement had remained through the entire book! I would recommend it, and I'd probably pick it up again, but there is this niggling feeling that, just perhaps, it could have been a little better!