Columbine by Dave Cullen

April 20, 2009 will mark the 10 year anniversary of the awful massacre/shooting at Columbine High School. While a lot of the information related to the shooting has become public knowledge in the past decade, Cullen's extremely detailed work sheds much light on the many myths and wrong details that still pervade popular culture.

For starters, Eric Harris was the ringleader of the duo (I had always thought Dylan Klebold was the main instigator) and a complete psychopath. The two were not really involved in the infamous Trench Coat Mafia, nor were they isolated loners subject to bullies. In reality, they were popular within their social circle, extremely intelligent and faked normalcy for over a year, deceiving friends, their families and other members of the community. Furthermore (and I found this to be the most shocking), Jefferson County Police had had knowledge that Harris was up to something bad. They had been alerted many times by the Brown family (Harris had threatened Brooks Brown on his website), but in the wake of the shooting, those documents mysteriously "vanished."

While the book is exceptionally well written and as I mentioned before, extremely detailed, I found myself very glad that I finished it due to its graphic descriptions and overall disturbing subject matter. As an aside, I felt the exact same way while watching Gus Van Sant's film Elephant, which is an obvious commentary/replication of Columbine. As a rule, I can handle films like Saw, Hostel, Devil's Rejects and other torture/bloody movies with no problem, but Elephant gave me nightmares for days. Same thing with this book.

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Fault Lines by Nancy Huston

Shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2008, Fault Lines takes an interesting narrative approach and follows four generations of a family counter-chronologically. Family secrets start to unravel as each generation's character is revealed. We first meet 6 year old Sol, a coddled spoiled brat of a character, as he and his family are on a trip to Germany to revisit a long-lost relative. Huston then introduces the reader to the other generations; his father Randall, grandmother Sadie, and great grandmother Erra. As each character's story unfolds, you can see how each narrative weaves into one. The last section, which centers on Erra, is the most eye-opening one and is the final piece of the novel's puzzle. I don't want to say much more because it'd be giving too much away, but suffice it to say, it's a pretty intense (and sad) read.

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

A short but very moving tale about a man who uncovers the awful truth about a former lover. Michael is 15 when he first meets Hanna, who is 36. Despite the creepy age difference, the two become lovers, though Michael is far more captivated by the mysterious and distant Hanna than she is to him. Their affair is all too brief and one day, Hanna just disappears. Years later, Michael unintentionally sees Hanna as the defendant when he is observing a court case for law school. As Michael slowly learns about Hanna's horrible past, he must struggle to accept the question - if he loves (or loved) a monster, what does that make him? There is redemption in the end, but it's very bittersweet. And of course, they made a movie out of this one. If the weather is decent, perhaps I'll go see it this weekend - Kate Winslet is supposed to be fabulous.

"A Banquet of Consequences" by Elizabeth George

Elizabeth George's Inspector Lynley mystery series is probably one of my favourites in the style of English detective stories. It's the series that I keep returning to, when I slip into a reading rut and can't focus on reading something new, particularly to the first book in the series A Great Deliverance. While there are lots of decent mystery series circulating now, the first book in George's Lynley stories has a certain grim insistence about it that keeps drawing me back to it. And in her latest contribution to the series, George has written a story that in many aspects parallels her first--however, these parallels did not become immediately apparent until the climax of the story. One of the things that I like best about Elizabeth George's writing is that she realises that a lot of times, the supporting characters can have better story potential than the main title character. She uses this to her advantage in almost all of the Lynley seri...

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