:: The Wendy House ::

The Stranger in Reading is a 2005 Two Rivers Press edition of an original 1810 book.  It contains 7 letters written, supposedly anonymously, by Reading long-time resident John Man.  The book documents Man writing as if a stranger in Reading to a friend in London and includes a modern preface and editorial provided by Adam Sowan.  Despite painting a not-quite desirable-place-to-live view of Reading Borough two centruies hence, the book is a thoroughly enjoyable read that has lead to the Wendy House strapline being updated.

The orginal book is prefaced by Sowans description of John Man and then by light, within-letter, explanatory annotations.  The main text maintains the original creative punctuation and spelling.  Sowan cites one example sentence as containing:

 three colons, five semi colons and no fewer than thirty-two commas; yet it is surprisingly readable.

A theme throughout the book is the poor state of the contemporary paving,  depite the Reading paving act providing the following penalities:

ten shillings, by every person leaving any carriage in the street,  except whilst loading or unloading;  driving a wheelbarrow on the footways; throwing dust, dirt, or rubbish in the streets.  Five shillings, by all persons neglecting to sweep the foot-paths before their houses every morning (Sundays excepted) before 10 O’clock. pxxx

An enjoyable glimpse into history that has value beyond people who may be interested in Reading’s history alone.  I discovered how MP’s were renumerated and elected to parliaiment and how ‘the corporation’ helped run Reading Borough.

Readers Digest,  asked 1,162 of its readers, who are also parents, and enjoy completing surveys to rate 12 features of a ‘good place to bring up a family’ on a 10 point scale.  It’s not clear how they picked these 12 features.  Average Readers Digest Survey-completing parents ratings were:

 1  Good state schools   8.4
 2  Low crime rate   8.4
 3  Good local hospitals   7.7
 4  Affordable family housing   7.7
 5  High employment   7.2
 6  Low risk of flooding   6.8
 7  Lots of families live there   6.4
 8  Local universities/colleges  6.0
 9  Under an hour to a major city   5.7
 10  Warm, dry weather   5.1
 11  Under an hour to the coast   4.9
 12  Under an hour to a National Park  4.8

It looks like these average ratings were subsequently used by Readers Digest employees as ‘weightings’ for statistics provided by other national sources (e.g. home office crime figures) to create rankings of 408 UK ‘authorities’ as family-friendly or not.  Reading Borough mysteriously came 408th. 

I still can’t escape from the fact that the people who made the rankings probably both read the Readers digest and complete it’s surveys….  

By Mark Haddon. 

Highly recommended to anyone who gains pleasure from social dynamics or is an Anglophile.

review ratings explained

Lots of positive reviews of the book available on metacritic.   The Daily Telegraph provides a succinct summary that maps to my experience. 

“A spot of bother” is a phrase that I understand as being used to play-down the severity of a problem.  It’s like saying,  “yes there is a nasty problem but really you shouldn’t worry because we’ve got it all under control, lets not pay it any more attention“.  It’s not a phrase or technique for managing conversational distance that I’ve encountered in the US.

The story is of family dynamics across generations situated around an impending Wedding.  Everyone has an opinion on whether the wedding should happen and why,  and different ways of expressing their opinions,  or not.   The book touches on themes such as prefering silence to talking,  social intelligence versus academic intelligence and the bounds of realism and paranoia.  Some reviews talk about it as a black comedy or farce.  My impression is that it is something other than either genre,  neither funny nor melancholic despite the topics and events. 

Thoroughly enjoyable, I felt right at home.

The first sentence in a novel. 

An excellent writer alludes to the fundamental themes and tone of the book within a simple and provocative first sentence.   This opener from Ian McEwan’s Black Dogs captured me:

“Ever since I lost mine in a road accident when I was eight,  I have had my eye on other people’s parents.”

.

even the extremely long list of fonts in my Microsoft Office Word 2003 doesn’t include this one on Nicholoson’s corneer shop in Sumner.  Small towns provide exquisite orginality and be-jeaned red car drivers

Making the cat laugh.  One woman’s Journal of single life on the margins.  (1995) A book by Lynne Truss,  then chief TV critic of The Times more recently famous for writing the ambiguously titled “Eats shoots and leaves“.

The book felt like a collection of paragraphs pulled together in no particular order.  Well written,  entertaining and suitably trivial to qualify purely as light entertainment.  A gift from a friend.  It failed to engross me, enlighten me, or make me laugh out loud.  Despite the obvious superficial similarities (English girl, single, has cats, her paragraphs like blog posts) I did not find the stories personally relevant. 

Mr. AFHarrold’s recent book contains hand drawn pictures of animals doing surrupticious animal things and real handwriting to explain thier naughty subversiveness in a child-friendly manner.  It’s also quite funny.  AFH has a talent for insight into the secret lives of furrifriends,  rhyming words and prompting a giggle.  But best of all,  for me, this book sneaked into my mailbox on a grimm drizzly evening and is making its way to my handbag for those emergency, on the road, poetry moments.

 Yes

Book:  Tis. A Memoir.  Frank McCourt

Franks use of plain language, provides a raw, powerful, funny and poignant walk through the experience of emigrating to America.  It’s an impressive book.   I’ve finally given up trying to read it half way through.  I’ve no stamina,  I got bored.  The story simply wasn’t gripping enough to make me drool over what might be on the next page.   The rest of this review is based on the first half of the book. 

Ratings explained

Synopsis:

In 1949 a nineteen year old boy, the author, from Limerick (Ireland) emmigrates to his dream city, New York.   The book is a sequel to Angela’s Ashes that easily stands alone. 

“that’s what you’re faced with when you come to America, one decision after another” p54

Themes:

• Immigrants: Everyone is American and something else laden with prejudices.  Spicks,  Mickeys, Polacks, Pueto Ricans, Natives, Greeks, Swedes, Chinks.  Rather than an absence of prejudice the book paints a complex, explicit and diverse prejudices. 
• Poverty:  America’s not like you expect it to be after watching films,  there is poverty here too.  The book makes explicit comparisions between poverty in Limerick, Ireland, and New York.  
• Health: nealry every character’s health is vividly described, conjunctivitus, arthritus, blood infections, alcoholism.  How these conditions effect their ability to earn money and pay for health care et.
• real Americans:  just like you see in the movies.  We see these people from a distance as they go to church or stay in hotels.  These people go to college,  have blond blue-eyed girlfirends,  are healthy, smell clean have amazingly white aligned teeth,  always have food available and warm homes:

“they can afford to smile because they all have teeth so dazzling if they dropped them in the snow they’d be lost forever” p59

Standing in the check-out queue of the local large food store.  Magazines are placed where we can read their covers while waiting.  How thoughtful to entertain and educate us for free while we wait.  Most of the magazines convey a very restricted value set.   They appear targetted at some form of femaleness.  I decided to buy the most prominent of the magazines ‘Cosmopolitan’.  The name sounded promising. The strap-lines on the cover distrubed me.  Here’s the cover for your delight with pinkness filtered out to avoid offending anyone sensitive amongst you.  The message I read on this cover was:

securing and maintianing an active sex-life that satisfies a man is your reason for being. 

How did I find this message?  By subtle re-interpretations of each individual strapline. My re-interpretations are listed below working from top-left down,  then top right down: 

1. educate yourself on how to be an effective sexual partner (object)
2. predict how and when you can be a sexual partner (object)
3. make sure your hair tells people you are an effective sexual partner (object)
4. make sure you do not confuse men when you are trying to be an effective sexual partner (object)
5. how to look like an effective sexual partner (object) without spending too much money
6. how to survive your failure as an effective sexual partner (object) for one man so that you can be more effective for the next one.
7. ensure that you please the man when you are having sex
8. make sure that your body is in good enough condition to be an effective sexual partner (object)
9. make you legs look longer because that will make you more desirable as a sexual partner (object)

Such diverse, useful life skills.  Well that sorted out my Thursday night’s educational agenda.  I think I’m fixed,  I wonder what the theme of next month’s magazine will be? 

A poetry book, like a dictionary, is a book I never finish reading.  Unlike dictionaries I will voraciously read all the words in a poetry book cover-to-cover upon first discovering them.  Obviously this is after having removed my stickly little digits from the tea mug.  Both are reference books,  pulled from the shelf again and again. 

The dictionary gets pulled when I’m unsure of a word’s meaning,  range of meanings,  origins,  relationship to other words.  Assured of discovery, my question promptly answered. Inevitably a rewarding experience,  how can anyone fail to fall in love with dictionaries?  I’m very loyal to my one paper dictionary, it cannot be replaced.  The Collin’s Concise (1983) was a present from an elder brother.  When I look at its faded binding I see my 21 year old brother standing at the top of Park Street outside Georges with a white plastic bag in his hand held out towards me saying

“you’re leaving home?  You’ll need your own dictionary“. 

A very different experience from pulling one of the several poetry books from the shelf, floor, table, chair, cooker, mantle, washing-machine.   The favoured books are scattered around the Wendy House where they afford the opportunity of unpremeditated rediscovery in a moment of undirected reading.  Picking up a book,  flicking through the pages to a title that catches some thought and reading that poem.   One book purchased in a tizzy in 1989 insists on falling open to specific pages,  poems I found powerful in the early 1990s. I have to fight against its insistence on taking me to specific emotional places. 

Poetry book use is not all so sporadic. There are specific places I’ll go when I’m happy,  because I’m sad,  or I want to find the words that describe what it is that I’m feeling because I just don’t know.  They are often there,  wrapped in the ambiguities and soothing rythms, but one can never be sure of Dictionary-like success. 

With that thought I’ll return to the vacuuming

the curious incident of the dog in the night-time. Mark Haddon.  This is an outstanding first novel.  Recommended 

    :-)

Reviewed by charlotte Morre in the Guardian.  The numerous reviews I’ve read are full of praise for this novel.

Christopher, 15yrs, is writing a murder mystery novel.  This is Christopher’s Novel.  Christopher’s presentation is a carefully contructed stream of consciousness.  He provides details about each character,  something interesting or different, to describe the character.  What Christopher finds interesting or different does not follow common patterns of describing a person.  The jacket cover descirbes Christopher as being autistic,  this is an artistic construction of the writer,  the contents should not be taken as representative of Autism. 

goodness discovered:

• Christopher as author:  works exceedingly well to carry the reader through seeing the world through the authors eyes and allowing the reader to have a privileged view of dramatic irony. As reader we can see the impact of Christophers behaviours and understand these behaviours in a different value-set from Christophers. 
• Christopher describes and demonstrates his values.  Clearly,  entertainingly.  Christopher attributes values and priorities to events in a different way than is generally socially acceptable.  I found some of his reasoning clearly descibed,  easy to follow,  consistently applied thoughout the story.  For example the meaning of specific groups of different car colours. 
• innovative illustrations.  The book is illustrated,  not with ‘pictures’ provided by an illustrator, with pictures from Christophers perspective.  As pictures per-se they provide little extra information.  As choices of important information selected by Christopher they are powerful story enhancers.

not so goodness

• lack of empathy with other characters.  This is a by-product of working with having Christopher as the protagonist.   There is insufficient detail to build empathy with any other character.  I suspect this was an explicit decision made by the author.  I would have valued the opportunity for a deeper understanding of some of the peripheral characters.  It’s not clear how the author could have achieved this connection within the books clearly implemented perspective.
• Inconsistency.  I found it difficult to follow why Christopher made some, plot-critical, decisions and did not become distressed by events that had already been established as distressing to him. For example, it is established early in the book that he does not like people shouting.  Later he witnesses shouting without any documented personal reaction.  As if the author temporarily forgot his protagonist in favour of placing plot manipulating events. 

Aside:

• There are plausible rumours that people who exhibit symptoms of Aspergers syndrome and Autism experience successful application of their strengths in the software industry.  A quick search of the internet finds no real evidence,  just plausible arguments.  Software developers are able to procreate and this ’syndrome’ is genetically conveyed to offspring.  Evidently,  in December 2000 ““Microsoft became the first major US corporation to offer its employees insurance benefits to cover the cost of behavioral training for their autistic children.”  (Wired Magazine).  This could easily just reflect the excellent pro-active healthcare provision by Microsoft as a company.  As a Seattle local,  this Wendy wonders….

Saturday gets a self confessed McEwan addict rating of :-) :-)

Highly recommended for people who like Ian McEwan stories where everday life is intertwined with the exceptional in a suspense drama,  or is it?  For a well thought out and written analysis read this review by Mark Lawson in the Gaurdian.  Review excerpts:

• Saturday catalogues the local only in order to focus on the global
• By recording with such loving care the elements of one rich Englishman’s life, Saturday explores the question of to what extent it is possible to insulate yourself against the world’s concerns
• One of the most oblique but also most serious contributions to the post-9/11, post-Iraq war literature, it succeeds in ridiculing on every page the view of its hero that fiction is useless to the modern world.
• The most recurrent theme in McEwan’s 10 novels is the sudden ambush of the safe and smug.

We follow the protoganist,  a neuro-surgeon Henry Perowne, through 24 hours set in London, 2003, on the day of a major Anti-war (with Iraq) rally.  Through his recollections we succinctly cover the last 20 years of significant family events as he prepares for a special evening.  Through conversations,  news broadcasts and the anti-war rally we learn about different perspectives towards Britians engagement in the Iraq war.  His job centres on diagnosing complex human physical disorders,  then fixing them, saving lives.  Analogous to governments diagnosing world problems and attempting to fix them,  saving lives.  McEwan’s writing style is captivating.  In this single sentence he conveys so much about the  old people in a ‘home’:

“They stir,  or seem to sway as he enters, as if gently buffeted by the air the door displaces”

I read the first half of the book sporadically, reverently, on a Saturday.   The first half focuses on detailed,  relevant, scene setting with events.  The home,  the car,  the family,  the health activities,  the job,  the friends,  the colleagues, the rally, the news, the values.  The second half of the book was so gripping I couldn’t bear to put it down,  my evening stretched into the early hours of the morning.     

“37 ways to leave your Yak“* is the title of a poem by AF Harrold who might have been called “Reading’s answer to John Hegley“.  You may have considered Paul Simon’s “50 ways to leave your lover” an ingenious comment on the breakdown of contemporary potential-parent units.  It was.  This poem may well be more significant than the design, implementation and distribution of prefrabricated concrete coal bunkers.  Enough hedging, here are two unprefabicated concrete points:

1. Unlike Paul Simon’s song AF Harrold accurately counts the cited departure routes and takes the concept of the ‘leaving’ to the jagged edge where only fluffy lemmings dare to run. 
2. AF Harrold has not yet been called “Reading’s answer to fluffy lemmings“.  Though the original question posed by the lemmings is,  as yet, unknown. 

* explanatory notes for people unfamiliar with contemporary (2000) Britishness:

• Lord’s = Cricket ground in London generally considered by the British to be the ‘home’ of cricket.
• Wicket =bowling cricketer aims the ball at the wicket.
• Rent-o-Kill = UK based pest control company.
• mod = Life-style “based around fashion and music that developed in London, England in the late 1950s and reached its peak in the early to mid 1960s. People who followed this lifestyle were known as Mods, and were mainly found in Southern England”
• press-ganged = getting forcibly taken into military service,  a ‘gang’ of ‘press’ men would kidnap people on behalf of the military.  This was a favoured recruitment method of the British Navy, before successful advertsing campaings, who have a large base in Portsmouth.
• Crufts = British national Dog show.
• Sarnie = slang for ‘Sandwich’

Recommended reading for people who want to familiairise themselves with an influential Virgina Woolf book.  :-)

I am not planning to read another Virginia Woolf book. Probably because I am turning into a Philistine.

Mrs. Dalloway is the Virgina Woolf book that inspired the beautiful yet disturbing film ‘The hours“.  At first I found the book a tad boring.  Then I realised that Virgina was carrying me between scenes as if in one uninterupted camera-shot.  Visualising the scenes helped the dialog gain life and vibrancy.  My familiairity with the London landmarks cited helped make the visualisation rich.  I pictured an Ivory and Merchant production with a re-casting of the cast from the Hours.  Meryl Streep as Mrs. Dalloway.   This helped but I never bulit any strong connection with the book.  I found it difficult to empathise with the characters’ interests,  obsessions,  ways of being.  Here’s a sentence that illustrates how I found the book:

“going and coming, beckoning, signalling, so the light and shadow which now made the wall grey the banana’s bright yellow, now made the Strand grey, now made the omnibuses bright yellow“  p139

strength: comparing the buses on london’s strand to banana’s is visually clever and humerous.

weakness:  ‘going and coming, beckoning, signalling’ the words that failed to show me anything of value about either this character or the storyline.  I don’t see why this charater rather than any other compared buses to bananas and used these descriptive terms.  I failed to recognise the significance of this and many of the sentences.  

fascinated by the evolution of euphemisms?  This book could be good for you,  it was for me:

when will jesus bring the pork chops?   George Carlin

It’s proudly sitting in my Loo to hold the attention of people taking a short ‘rest’.  It’s not due to escape soon.

Jill thinks Jack is mean and greedy

Jack thinks Jill is mean and greedy

the more Jill feels that Jack is mean

the more greedy Jack feels Jill to be

the more Jill feels Jack is greedy

the more mean Jack feels Jill to be

the more greedy Jack feels Jill to be

the more mean Jill feels Jack to be

the more mean Jill feels Jack to be

because Jill feels Jack is mean

because Jack feels Jill is greedy

because Jill feels Jack is greedy

because Jack feels Jill is mean

Set in a future,  Plato, and orator tells stories of the different ages of the worlds’ existence.  Ackroyd paints a picture of some of the ‘current’ world understandings.  An ingenious possible world.  We follow the character of Plato as he uses stories and rhetoric to encourage the inhabitants to question their own, current, understandings.  To question their ‘truths’.  We see the societal implications of his questioning the current dominant world view within this fictional future. 

A quick,  deeply entertaining read for people with a passing knowledge of greek mythology,  philosophy,  E A Poe, Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Sigmund Freud and London’s geography/districts.  Without this knowledge the book is still brief and good with a little more proactive reflection on the readers part and lacking some of the referential humour and colourful decoration that this prior knowledge affords.

Excellent plot.  Ackroyd creatively re-interprets history using deliberate misunderstandings based on inferences from incomplete information.  For example,  the only copy of ‘The origin of the species’ has the authors name partially destroyed,  as Charles D….   They assume the author is Charles Dickens and read the book as if it is a Novel with colourful characters.  “May I recommend ‘the origin of the species’ to you then, as a comic masterpiece“p10.   

 

For the Plato character there is clearly sign posted character development.

Despite my strong affection for Ackroyd’s previous works that I have read - Hawksmoor, Chatterton, and Dan leno and the Limehouse Golem the Plato papers reads as a self-consciously clever novel.  That is A LOT more than most writers produce but not sufficient for me to recommend it as a generally good,  entertaining, read.  

 

To fully enjoy the book you need some cursory knowledge of  British authors and London’s geography.   The characters other than Plato appear merely instumental in telling the main plot; no character development.  Some points are laboured,  for example the glossary of ancient terms that Plato is writting serves its purposes of illustrating misunderstandings and the perspective of this future world well before Ackroyd finishes it. 

“littered with misprints, ‘hoopes’ for ‘hookes’, ’she’ for ‘he’, three whole lines simply repeated in Exodus, and alarmingly ‘Judas’ for ‘Jesus’ in one of the Gospels. None of these was quite so catastrophic as a misprint that would appear in a 1631 edition, the so-called Wicked Bible, which failed to put the word ‘not’ in Exodus 20:14, giving the reading ‘Thou shalt commit Adultery’” p226

 

• avoid the language of the day 
• focus on literal translation  
• leave ambiguity where it already exists.    

• Jacobean England
• England/Scotland relationship
• the evolution of Christianity (the reformation)
• English influences on the US pilgrim settlers
• Language
• Black Adder II

W

Mostly Harmless is “the Fifth Book in the Increasingly Inaccurately Named Hitchhikers Trilogy“.  Highly recommended… …read the other books first. 

This was Mr. Adam’s pen-ultimate book.  It is persistently funny in the style of previous books and bleak.  More bleak than earlier hitchhikers guide books.  The audiobook I listened to on SR101 was narrated by Mr.Adams.  His voices suited the characters.  His female ‘Oracle’ voice was evocative of Monty Python females characters.

Mr. Adam’s imagination and storytelling skills remain engaging and outstanding.  The ideas developed around the following quotes, as with many others, had me laughing out loud,  looking for a place to park:

“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”

“The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to repair“

“Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news which obeys its own laws “

Mostly Harmless develops several intertwined themes as a coherent plot, I noticed them as

• Capitalism
  • the impact of success on Hitchhikers guide (Ford Prefect).
  • bureaucratic business strategy.
  • corruption (hacking, fraud).
• Predictability tensions
  • Probable and improbable parallel universes. 
  • Bob and a Bird as omnipotent beings.
  • Astrology and Astronomy.
• Relationship tensions
  • Trilliums story ‘before’ and ‘after’ meeting Zaphod.
  • Arthur Dent’s life ‘after’ the destruction of the earth.
  • ‘Random’ a displaced teenage girl.

W

  wrapped-in-poignantly-beautiful-bleakness

‘The Making of the King James Bible’

Fabulous book full of socio-cultural,  historical,  political,  and economic insight.  He paints very rich pictures of the characters and events that lead to the way the King James Bible was produced.  Adams demonstrates incisive use of language with colourful illustrations of lost common knowledge.  For example,  did you know that the term ‘Stroke’ (apoplectic siezure) is a reference to a blow from an Angel?!  Nicolson often quotes original Jacobean English from letters.  Example

“I was forcid at last to saye unto thaime, that if any of thaime hadde bene in a colledge disputing with thair skollairs, if any of thaire disciples hadde ansourid thaim in that sorte, thay wolde have fetchid him up in place of a replye & so shoulde the rodde have plyed upon the poore boyes buttokis”. p54

Other excerpts that caught my imagination:

“Uniquely in England,  an increasignly powerful state had made itself synonymous with a - more or less - protestant church… …It bridged the divisions which in the rest of Europe had given rise to decades of civil war” p.38

 ”Jacobean England was an expressive culture (straight-laced continentals remarked on how often and warmly the English kissed)” p.45

Nicolson’s use of the English language is richly concise.  It was also challenging.  Here are examples of obscure descriptive words I double-checked in the dictionary….

Acquiesce, Agglutination, Amity, Anomolous Cantankerous, Carapace, Circumlocution 

Elision, Elysium, EmollientlyFissiveGrograin

Irenic

 

Largesse, Louche

Mollification

Niggardly

Obfuscation,

ObsequiousnessPanoply, Parsimonious, PaterfamiliasRecalcitrant, Reprobates, Redolent, Riven

Unctuous

Winnowing

W

For me the book contained 4 main strands woven tightly together into a book that I certainly wouldn’t describe as ‘ropey’     The strands were:

love story

This has all the power of McEwans well established ability to raise emotions,  cross social boundaries,  fill you with anticipation.  I couldn’t work out which scenes actually included sexual intercourse.  I found this uncertainty rather fun,  to be left to infer,  guessing by descirptions of position,  demeanor, sounds and feelings.   Keep this up

crime story

An unusual bent on a traditional fictional genre,  no detectives.  Just the witnesses and victims and the impact of the legal and social crimes as time unfolds.  The character’s role in the crime was well laid out in the first part.  As with being unclear about the sexual intercourse,  I was also unclear about whether a legal crime occured.  Certainly moral crimes occurred.  I would rather have found out more about the immediate aftermath in the second part.  Instead  we skip to 3 years later.  I was left with some major questions left unanswered about  the roles played by some of the key players in the first part.  Adjust this. 

war story

Uh.  I got bored and started skim reading wondering how the peripheral characters introduced in this storyline related to either the Love story,  the crime story, or the story about stories.  Either I missed something or they didn’t.  This storyline seemed superfluous.  Well written,  but it just didn’t entertain or significantly move the plot forward for me.  Cut this.

story about stories (postmodern)

Finished the book,  from part 3 onwards I tended to skim-read and may have missed some juicey words.  Below are some explanations of words that struck me as having culturally specific or slightly obscure meanings:

• Card (194): an odd or amusing person (OED)
• Crumpet (p181): Oxford English Dictionary’s 2nd definition,  Women regarded as objects of sexual desire.
• Gladestone Bag (p163): Named after the Welshman William E Gladstone who was Queen Victoria’s UK Prime Minister on four occassions.  The bag has a wire-hinged frame to open it and is much like a classic ‘Carpet bag’ only normally made of leather. 
• Greatcoat (p179):  a long heavy warm coat, worn especially by soldiers over their uniform.  The design in the UK is slightly different from the US greatcoats.  Ha Ha (p17):  A dry ditch or sunken fence which divided the formal garden from the landscaped park without interrupting the view. I’ve mainly seen them as boundaries between mansion houses and the surrounding fields used for agriculture.  Like a mini ‘moat’ with no water and a steep-side (wall) on the side where the animals should not climb-up.  An example picture is available at the bottom of this page:  http://hcs.osu.edu/ukstudy2002/calendar/levens1.htm
• Humber (p162):  a classic UK car.  See company history and examples on:  http://www.rootes-chrysler.co.uk/humberf.htm
• King Canute (p107): A potential anagram of ‘the word’ refered to in the book as an ”Old English King attempting to turn back the tides“.  He’s an early Christian King of Danish origins.  The story is told to children in the UK as a means of conveying the dangers of  pride (one of the seven sins)  and unquestioning acceptance of praise.  The story crops up in Christian contexts,  Canute was made a Saint.  The Wikipedia entry makes him sound like the King of a Scandinavian Empire that included England:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canute_the_Great
• Kissing Gate (p17):  A small gate swinging in a U or V-shaped enclosure, which allows only one person to pass through at a time.  Older versions sometimes use gravity to close and has a passage way that is too slim for an animal to move through.  Why a ‘kissing gate’?  The myth is that a man out walking with his lady friend can pass through first and hold the gate shut - demanding a kiss before permitting his lady friend to pass through.  Example gate diagram on: http://www.accesscode.info/external/5_25a.htm
• Metaled road (p86):  To make or mend (a road) with small, broken stones.  The broken stone used in macadamizing roads and ballasting railroads http://en.thinkexist.com/dictionary/meaning/Metal/

 W

Ian McEwan is a damned good writer. [Will] Self said that he read the novel in two hours, while also looking after children and doing a spot of bank business; I read it pretty quickly too, and I suggest that this is not only because of the book’s slightness, but because of the compulsive nature of McEwan’s prose: you just don’t want to stop reading it, even when he’s writing about musical composition, or the difficult characters and bad behaviour of ‘creative’ people. (’These types - novelists were by far the worst - managed to convince friends and families that not only their working hours, but every nap and stroll, every fit of silence, depression and drunkenness bore the exculpatory ticket of high intent.’)

 

Michael was a prolific and well respected science fantasy writer in 1970’s UK.  Most of my,  boy,  high school friends were avid readers of his books.  Along with the standard Tolkien & CS Lewis.  The book cover artwork was often sold in ‘poster’ format and used by bands as album covers.  He even wrote the lyrics to a couple of “Blue Oyster Cult” songs and collaborated on albums with the UK band Hawkwind.

Wikipedia provides an overview at  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Moorcock

Excerpt:

“Moorcock’s most popular works by far have been the Elric novels, starring the character Elric of Melniboné. Moorcock wrote the first Elric stories as a deliberate reversal of the cliches common in Tolkien-inspired fantasy adventure novels (which he despised) as well as the work of Robert E. Howard. The popularity of Elric has overshadowed his many other works, though he has worked a number of the themes of the Elric stories into his other works (the “Hawkmoon” and “Corum” novels, for example). His Eternal Champion sequence has been collected in two different editions of omnibus volumes comprising fifteen books containing several books per volume, by Victor Gollancz in the UK and by White Wolf Publishing in the US.”

I prefered the work of Mervyn Peake.  His ‘Letters from a lost uncle‘ was an early favourite childhood bedtime story…

This entry is intended to describe impressions of some of the signifiers in Jasper Fford’s book.  Signifiers that might not be easily recognised by none-UK readers:

• 10 (p239, chptr 27).  Standard UK womens clothes size.  Bust: 36″ Waist: 29″ Hips: 38″.  I’ve never really been able to work out US sizes.  I have clothes that fit me in US 2,4,6 and 8.  This clothing size conversion chart didn’t help me at all: http://www.onlineconversion.com/clothing_womens.htm

• Allegro - an exceedingly ugly car produced in the late 1960’s by the nationally owned car industry then called ‘British Leyland’ before it morphed into the recently demised Rover group. Wikipedia’s entry describes my understanding of the car “Allegro is widely regarded as a poor design in almost every significant respect… …The Allegro gained a reputation for unreliability and poor build quality—another unfortunate nickname applied to it was the ‘All-Aggro’  ”.  Its the sort of car you expect a ‘dork’ or ‘loser’ to own.  Unlike the Rover,  which was the car of choice amongst Bank Managers… 

• Argos  (chapter 10). A chainstore that first grew membership via a paper-based catalog selling system in the mid 1970’s.  Known for providing very cheap goods.

• Battenburg (p270, chptr 32).  two-coloured sponge-cake wrapped in a thin layer of Marzipan.  Photograph on: http://www.parsleysoup.co.uk/VeganCakes/battenburg.htm

• Barbour Wellies (p206).  Wellies,  Wellingtons,  are rubber boots used for gardening and working in fields and garden.  Barbour is a brand name that markets to the wealthy middle class and above.

• Bin (p266, Chptr 32).  also known as ‘waste bin’,  ’rubbish bin’,  ‘litter bin’, ‘Dustbin’,  ‘Recycle’ and ‘Refuse’. US = ‘Trash can’. Covers large outdoor and small indoor containers.  Some photographs of the larger outdoor bins are available on:  http://www.freefoto.com/browse.jsp?id=11-29-0

• Block of flats (p236, Chptr 29).  Apartment building.  Houses are generally prized over apartments.  Here’s an example photographs:  http://www.dreamstime.com/blockofflats-image176036

• Conservatory (p246, Chptr 30).  A home extension that can someties be added without local government planning permission.  A popular way to cheaply extend your home.  I’ve put ‘before’ and ‘after’ photographs of a conservatory built this year,  to this entry.  More examples provided at:  http://www.almostimpartialguide.co.uk/conservatories/consepjt.htm

• Littlewoods (p234, Chapter 29). A company started by John Moores in Liverpool in the 1930’s.  Like Argos,  initially using paper catalog sales.  Unlike Argos,  targetting the upper working class and lower middle class market.

• Mobile.  Cell phone,  example labeling of UK cell-phone store web-site:  http://www.virginmobile.com/mobile/

• Reading - A city in the UK that is pronounced ‘Red-ing’.  Microsoft’s UK headquarters,  and “Oracle” are based in Reading.  It has a large indoor shopping Centre (Mall) called ‘The Oracle’.  Signposting for ‘The Oracle’ is more prominent than signposting for ‘Oracle’.  I suspect many visitors to the company accidentally end-up lost in the Mall.  The city is not well-known for being ‘cute’,  ‘beautiful’ or a place you would choose to go.  One of my University friends described herself as having ‘escaped’ from Reading.  I’ve never been to the town of Basingstoke.  Motorolla have a research centre there.

• Red Rum (p.137).  A famous horse that won a dramatic race called the ’Grand National’ for a record 3 times (1973, 74, 77). 

• Shandy - a drink made of half Beer (bitter, lager) and half UK Lemonade.  The Lemonade makes the beer weaker and sweetens the flavour.  The nearest equivalent to UK Lemonade in the US is a 7-up.  The drink is typically given to people who don’t like ‘real’ beer, ’girls’ and designated drivers.

• Smarties (p128).  Small candy-coated chocolate sweets that come in a tube.  The UK version is different from the US version. 

• Special (p116).  Mary Mary orders a ‘Half of Special“.  Half a pint of a strong beer.  Special is short for ’special brew’ which appears to mean a stornger alcohol content. 

• Stubbs (George),  the artist that produced Spratt’s mother’s ‘cow’ painting.  He is increadibly famous in the UK mainly working in the late 1770’s.  Most famous for his paintings of Horses.  Pubs and Hotels often have copies of his paintings on the wall, and they are popular themes for dining room table place-mats.  Wikepedia description.

• Terraced House (p.31).  Inner city 19th Century homes for working class people.  Known as ‘2-up, 2-down’ because they normally have 2 rooms downstairs (kitchen & front) and 2 rooms upstairs (bedrooms).  Humpty Dumpty’s Grimm st. residence is described as a red-brick terraced house and he fell from a wall that could have been similar to this one.

• The Relief of Mafeking (p349, Chptr 42).  A battle in the Boer war (Sout Africa),  a poem, the birth of the ‘boy scout’ movement, and a famous painting.  The Poem and historical context are avilable at:  http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk/poems/mpgmafeking.htm

• Wireless (p270, Chptr 32).  A ‘Radio’,  the term was commonly used when Radios first became prevalent in UK homes.

• Wootton Bassett  (p.234, Chptr 29).  Comically named very old small town in Wiltshire, close to Swindon,  on the M4 corridor.

Wendy (finished reading the book Aug 7th)

On (not) getting by in America

By Barbara Ehrenreich.

This book provided me with a powerful insight into a part of America I dont really experience,  except as a consumer.  Here are a few quotes that stayed with me:

“No job, no matter how lowly,  is truely ‘unskilled’“  As Barbara tries out different jobs,  through cleaner to waitress to big store assistant (Walmart),  she takes us through the different things she learns to be effective in that job and paints sympathetic pictures of her colleagues.

One of Barbara’s most powerful conclusions that she backs with formal data is that

“Something is wrong,  very wrong, when a single person in good health,  a person who in addition posseses a working car can barelt support herself by the sweat of her brow.  You dont need a dregree in econonomics to see that wages are too low and rents too high“

Barbara had no problem finding work,  one and sometimes two jobs.  Her major challenge included finding affordable accomodation,  arranging transport to and from work.  Any money left over after that was used for food.  Often she was simply unable to balance her income and outgoings.

I would highly recommend this book,  it provides many subtle and vaired descriptions of the forces that together constrain the poor to remaining poor and implies potential solution routes.  All this is wrapped within readable stories of the authors own experiences and challenges.

W

UK Vacation 5

I highly recommended this book.  I suspect the reviewer cited in my March 9th entry has a problem seeing the trees (story details) for the wood (prior knowledge of Ben’s political beliefs).  The review misses Ben’s keen observation of the familiar and ability to smoothly transform this into the plausibly bizarre.  An example of a non-political observation that doesn’t give away part of the plot:

“From Newton to Einstein there has been much fascinating discussion on the various factors that affect time.  These include speed, mass, weight distance and strange phrases like ‘quantum mechanics’ which scientists make up in order to sound important and convince the rest of us that we are thick.  However, for some inexplicable reason, despite all this racking of the brain,  no serious research has been done into the commonest form and most radical ‘time bender’ of them all,  which is,  of course, exercise.”

The plot has many characteristics of a classical western.  Clearly identified good guys and bad guys.  The good guys are revealed as people with strengths and weaknesses and the bad guys are evil, powerful and sometimes just stupid.  Think about westerns where the good guys own the small farms and the bad guys are the big cattle or oil companies whose plans for mass production are radically changing the lives of the farmers.  Think of Star Wars,  the rebels against the Federation.  It’s a classic format that Ben spins with very clever twists. 

The strongest impact for me was in the introduction and description of the heros. opening scenes are fabulous because of the way Ben lets your assumptions fill in gaps about the people he is describing, then he gradually introduces fundamental challenges to those assumptions.

It has an excellent ‘chase’ scene which easily rivals Bullitt.  The key characters are distinctive and richly described, as you would expect from the writer of the Black Adder series.

My main complaints are petty.  For example he describes a character as being  “Farty” this is not a descriptor that I recognise.  The closing scene was rather a sensible close,  and consequently I found it a little disappointing.  I was hoping for something a little more comically fulfilling.   That aside,  this is the 3rd Ben Elton book I have read and I plan to read all the rest.

Good reading,  Wendy