Bookdrum Honour!

I was casually reading the Bookdrum email newsletter a couple of days ago when I came across this:

Most Popular Profiles

The Top 5 profiles, by number of Facebook "Likes" are:

1. Saturday by Ian McEwan. Profile by Kathryn Liu

2. The Cure by Antoine Devine. Profile by the author

3. Dracula by Bram Stoker. Profile by Victoria Hooper

4. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. Profile by Jenny Martin and Kat Matfield

5. Clan by David Elliot. Profile by the author

If you'd like to see your profile in the Top 5, encourage your friends to click the Facebook Like button on the profile index page. This will also plant a link on their Facebook wall, bringing new visitors to your profile.

Hey! What the... I'm number one!!! Cue happy dance (which I'm glad no-one saw!) and much whooping! The coolest thing was that the Likes had all come from people I didn't know. Very cool. Made my month.

Anyway, if you'd like to see (and potentially "Like"!) my profile, click here and check it out. 

Bookdrum - the Wikipedia of books!

This is just a short post but I wanted to let everyone who hasn't already heard of it know about Bookdrum. Basically, it's a website that is collecting in-depth profiles on all sorts of books with information about the author, the plot summary and facts about stuff in the book. It's an awesome project and would benefit from the input of you bookish types out there! I've already submitted a profile on Ian McEwan's Saturday. What are ya waiting for?!

Saturday by Ian McEwan: Review

Image credit: Here

When I was searching for novels that fell into the "Post 9/11 Literature" category I was really excited to see that Saturday was considered to be one. Although I had at that stage only ever read one other of McEwan's novels, I knew that I would enjoy anything he had written. I was right.

Saturday is set in the course of a single day but this fact is easy to forget as this novel moves along at such a pace and so much happens that only once you've finished and are sitting back, reflecting that you think crikey - that was all just one day! The novel follows Henry Perowne, a well-known neurosurgeon living a life of affluence and contentment in Central London on a day that is anything but normal. A cascading series of events happen that culminate in a heart stopping climax that has the reader in the grip of a powerful suspense and intrigue. McEwan has painted these micro level events on the background of 2003, post 9/11 pre-Iraq London in what appears to me to be a reflection of the macro scale political happenings at the interpersonal level.

I'm loathed to give any further details away about the plot as part of the beauty of this novel is that these details surprise, delight and horrify. Knowing that they are coming won't do a potential reader any good. I read (luckily, after the fact) a review that was basically a plot summary that gave everything away which I thought was a horrible shame. I'm glad that I hadn't seen this before I read it.

This novel won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for McEwan in 2006, a highly prestigious award based out of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. I'm not surprised, it really is a masterpiece and a very thoughtful and clear-headed view of the world, post 9/11, unlike some other novels I have read which seem to grab desperately at the straws of patriotism and "us vs them" - all understandable reactions but not particularly helpful literary contributions.

I'd highly recommend this novel - especially to those who enjoy a good read that has intelligent content, a gripping story-line and characters with such depth that you feel like you actually know them.

Have you read this or any of McEwan's other books? Which have you enjoyed the most?

[Image of Ian McEwan credit: Here]