Book Addicts Anonymous

This book is quite unusual for me, as I usually shy away from "stream of consciousness" novels. The whole of Tomorrow is set in the evening /night/early morning between the 16th and 17th of June 1995. The only character whose thoughts we have direct access to is the narrator, Paula. If the blurb had said something like that ...the book would have stayed put on the shelf. But it is by Graham Swift, and I've enjoyed other novels of his, so I got it.

We are allowed access to Paula's thoughts as she lies awake overnight. She has something on her mind, and she addresses her thoughts to her twin children, (Kate and Nick,) but mainly to Kate. It takes sometime before the thing that is keeping her awake becomes apparent, and for at least half the novel I thought that her husband was going to reveal that he had been having an affair to his children. I won't spoil the novel by revealing what is keeping her awake, but she explores the meaning of being a parent, part of a couple, and our views of such.
I would be intrigued to read Kate or Nick's reply, after they have heard what their father, Mike, has to tell them.

http://www.panmacmillan.com/titles/displayPage.asp?PageTitle=Individual+Title&BookID=401885
for a link to the book
http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth93#furtherReading for more about Graham Swift and his books

When I first picked this book up I thought it was going to be a boring, courtroom drama, but after a few pages the plot runs off at an unseen tangent, or so it seems. Soon the new tangent becomes knitted into the main plo, and the whole novel bcomes very involved and eggs the reader on to rad "Just to the end of this section".
The characters have depth, with some of their back-stories being revealed, this is not Fairstein's first book about Alexandra Cooper, so I am presuming that if I had read the previous one's Alex would have been an even more rounded character. Saying that, I don't think it is necessary to have read the others as Fairstein lets the reader know enough information about the main characters for the reader to be sympathetic to them.
The "what if" that she has followed could be explored further, but in a more menacing way, and probably will be or has been by another author. Being a "simple" Brit, I had no idea that New York has no fresh water on the island.
I enjoyed the book thoroughly, and would read others of Fairstein's.

http://www.lindafairstein.com/ More information can be found at the link, if you click on novels there is a link to the first chapter.
I haven't explored the website very far, but it looks quite interesting.

I bought this quite a while back, and have only just got around to reading it. At the time the book looked really good, but since then I have joined yahoo answers, and there are so many irritating questions on there, I was beginning to be convinced that the books were all hype, and I would be disappointed.
However, I was pleasantly surprised. The plot is very well crafted, development is good, main characters have depth, and Meyer has the ability to surprise her reader.
http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/twilight_reviews.html
If you click home you can find out so much more about Meyer and her books.

Gives a flavour of the book. I like the idea she has developed that vampires are able to walk abroad during daylight hours in more Northern latitudes.

As for the people asking endless questions on Y!A, I just think that perhaps they need to "get a life". Sorry, but asking puerile questions about books does my head in.

This novel of Elizabeth George's is set in London, presumably in the "present", because of several incidents that happen , and the central themes of the novel.
The story itself is very good, but I have top say the dialogue left me cold. Usually when you read a book, and you get to dialogue, it is easier than long descriptive passages to take in. BUT not in this case, the main characters are Cockney/Jamaican origin, and George had chosen to write all the dialogue in Cockney/Jamaican slang. This makes it very hard to read, and at one point I considered not bothering finishing the book. The other thing that irked me somewhat is the length of the book, and the build up to the finale, obvious from the title.
So, I would have enjoyed it more it it was a) shorter and b) written in plain English with a note as to how each character spoke when they were introduced.
This is not a book for the fainthearted reader , due to those points.
However, I did finally enjoy it.
For more information follow this link;

http://www.elizabethgeorgeonline.com/books/what_came_before_shot.htm

In the acknowledgements at the end of the book George does excuse any inaccuracies of London geography, due to her not living in the UK.