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.”
.
Sat at SeaTac airport with an hour or so before my flight to Madrid I ordered a nice pint of Bass and started studying my pocket-sized English Spanish conversation guide.
Questions
“Do you speak Spanish?” I don’t think I’ll need that, I will need “Do you speak English?” but it is not listed. The book does provide this question ‘what are you saying?” but without the ability to understand the answer this question would merely be digging myself a confusional hole. There is no book section on useful ‘Answers’ or a translation of the ever-useful phrase:
“I’m really sorry, I can’t speak your language can we use pointing and acting instead?”
The Doctor
What about when I fall-over? If I need a doctor for a broken bone? The cartoon with the Doctor section is intriguing. What excatly is the Dr. doing? I looked for the “I think I’ve broken my arm” phrase but got no further than “Undress please” which seems a bit of a premature suggection for diagnosing a broken arm. Though, obviously, as a single girl, I need to memorise the phrase:
Quitese la ropa, por favor
Fifteen more books successfully released to the safety of half-price books. In Exchange, three books paroled to the comfort of my handbag No cash changed hands. Bargain, I gained book-shelf space and topically useful books… ..I feel a few more books coming on….
Libraries are fabulous social resources whose being is radically changing nature with the emergence of the Internet as an archive and social resources. This Library, Escorial, near Madrid has just made it onto my list of way-too-many-places I hope to visit. I’ll have to use the bus* or train to get there Brrrrrrmmmmmmm….Brrrrrrmmmmmmmm…..
Without even leaving Madrid I may get to see an Eygyptian temple, a Palace where the Spanish Inquisition did some of its inquisiting, fabulous deliberately leaning buildings, a very ornate post-office, a stadium bull ring, a crystal palace inspired by the London Crystal palace, bars that Earnest Hemmingway drank in (not all of them), graveyards, and of course the essential very tall thing for tourists to go to rather like Seattle’s Space Needle and Portsmouth’s Millenium tower.
Then there are castles to be checked out, like the Alcazar… just outside Madrid… more buses!!
Forty-eighth post in a Wednesday series where Wendy fails to meet someone that drives singleness out of the House
Reason #48: uninvolved
When I saw the title of this book, I suspected that I needed a book on how to ‘get things done when people are involved’ because:
Firstly, I have noticed that people can stop me from getting things done. For example, the bus driver stopped me from driving my car, the lady in the Diner stopped me from cooking my breakfast, and other more shocking things
Secondly, being single is being uninvolved so this book might help me to get involved.
Meetings are much more complicated than I realised.
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.
Unreasonably long sentence warning. Take a deep breath now, go:
I adore bookshops for many obvious reasons including the way books magnificiently overcome the merchandising trends of other products by being mixed irrrespective of colour, size and pattern.
Hoorah!
I feel at home amongst the visual ecclectic of a book store.
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.
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.
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:
“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
March 15th 1984
It will take several months to read the varied scrawl of miss-spelt ramblings in my early diaries. Mumzie recently discovered these diaries in a dark corner of her home. The diaries stop in 1984 when I switched to letter writing…
A second sheet was added to this 1984 entry during my first year at University. The day went something like this:
A morning of contemplating whether a fascinating but somewhat screwed-up boy should have the benefit of my influence in his life.
An afternoon sketching portraits of 2 handsome boys while they supplied me with lots of tea. The tea taking isn’t explicitly mentioned because it is understood as a part of the ‘spending an afternoon with a handsome fellow’ process. The boys had the afrontary to keep the sketches. Sadly, I don’t actually have copies of any of the portraits I used to produce. I was fairly prolific with my sketch-book as well as in my diaries.
The evening involved drinking ‘side cars’ in a disco and helping a girl-friend disrupt the dancefloor during some of those slow girl-boy cuddling dances by jumping around between the soppy-people.
A fabulous day indeed.
For a photo-story of the Wendy House, 24hr Power outage, click this picture of my reading a book by candle-power:
The Wendy House was lucky, only 24 hs without electricity and a gas-fire for warmth. The Seattle PI reports that more than 1 million Washingston State residents lost power. The all to frequent sound of siren’s passing the Wendy House re-inforced the risks associated with a suddent lack of traditional power sources. The smell of woodsmoke, prevalent in the air, took on an ominous tone. Did it herald a burning home?
Memories of my childhood:
January 1974, 11yrs old, the UK was suffering from a power crisis. The Conservative government under Prime Minister Edward Heath introduced a ’3 day week’ to conserve power. At that time the UK’s main source of electrical power was the National Coal industry, electricity from coal. The country was suffering from extreme inflation. To try and curtail inflation the government introduced wage-capping. The Miners were not happy about their wage cap. The Miners union introduced a ‘work to rule’, they only followed the detail of the job description nothing above and beyond. This severely curtailed coal production and reduced the power available to the country. Unable to negotiate a solution with the Coal Miners representative, the Union, the government introduced a 3 day week. Power was only available on 3 consecutive days in a week.
To an 11yr old this is exciting and fun. 4 days a week where the evenings were by candle-light and no hot-water for bathing. As a family we would play cards by candle-light. It was like camping inside home. We wore several layers of woolly jumpers and fingerless gloves indoors. We used a camping gas stove to brew tea and make the occassional hot meal.
After the Heath Conservative government was replaced by Harold Wilson’s Labour government the normal working week returned. Wilson was a working-class boy who excelled in English the educational system. A Yorkshire boy, like Wallace, with a quick wit. The last great intellectual Prime Minister that lead Britain. The last true Labour Prime Minister. With some impressive political thinkers in his cabinet such as Tony Benn and my personal favourites Denis Healey and Micheal Foot.
The exploitation of oil from the North Sea helped Britain to avoid severe economic disaster, and assured that Scotland would not gain independence before its natural resources ran out. That would be approximately…. ….now. Britain is begining to face a renewed energy crisis and despite a thrashing by Thatcher the National Union of Miners is still a voice at the lobbying table. The fancy new Labour party, Blair’s government, is being criticised for its lack of long term planning.
In my ‘retirement’ I want to live in, or below, a Windmill, to be self-sufficient then sell extra power back to the country in an emergent decentralised power system.
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
3 smiles: ratings explained
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:
not so goodness
Aside:
Saturday gets a self confessed McEwan addict rating of
4 smiles. ratings explained
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:
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.
Seventh post prompted by the provocative ‘England and the English: from an American point of view” book by Price Collier.
“Though England may be fighting somewhere in her vast dominions all the time, she is also playing somewhere all the time. Unless the war is a very important one, there is more itnerest taken in the playing than the fighting” p231
For his chapter on sport Price’s basic theme appears to be that the English spend a lot of money and time watching and playing sport. They have dedicated papers to sports and columns in newspapers. This interest helps to keep the English sufficiently fit to be good fighters. As in previous chapters, Price’s position is liberally littered with plausible, but unsubstantiated insults. This chapter easily rated two pots of calming breakfast tea. For example
“Sport as a profession, I quite agree, breeds more bullies, boasters and tricksters than anything else I can name.” p244
I’m beginning to tire of Prices persistent ‘analysis’ and may relegate this book to my oversized pile of ‘started but not finished’ books while I get dressed in a low-budget, bad-taste, outfit to swear at some people playing a sport in this fabulous, large, US stadium:
Other posts prompted by Price’s analysis of the English:
Sixth post prompted by the utterly outrageous ‘England and the English: from an American point of view” book by Price Collier. This chapter required 2 tea-pots full for me to maintain composure (that’s a lot).
Price asks are the English dull? He concludes that the English are dull because they are stable, steady in their resolve, quoting the contemporary (circa 1900) British soundbite “England expects every man to do his duty” p178. He follows this by briefly mentioning that the English have a highly developed sense of humour quickly counters by unfavourably comparing their use of the English language to that of Americans. He find’s the English use of their language lacking because of overuse of profanities (the bugger!), poor sentence structure and lack of mass education. Am I taking this all too personally? Of course I am! Yet he doesn’t mention spelling atrocities because most English people can’t even write. He cites this convincing statistic as evidence of lack of ability to write:
“Ten years after the beginning of the reign of queen Victoria, not only the children of England, but practically one half of the adults, could neither read nor write… ..only sixty-seven men in one hundred, and fifty-one women in an hundred, could even sign their names.” p183
This statistic is based on people that could sign thier names on a marriage register, it is likely that some could sign their names and nothing else, hence it is an over-estimation of actual literacy. On profanity Price writes:
“A charming English lady returning from the golf links on a wet day remarks that she is ‘in a nasty mess!’. The English man of a certain class uses ‘bloody’, ‘beastly’, ‘rotten’, ‘bloomin’, and ‘go, on you brute’. p186
SHOCKING! They didn’t say “bollocks’ or “bugger’ as frequently as I do ;-) I find it extremely hard to believe that these profanities are worse than those used by his American contemporaries. Can you feel the tension rising, I’m on tea-pot number 2 already!
Price suggests that this lack of formal education is counterbalanced by the English having a focus on commerce:
“‘Lud’ was the God of commerce, who was worshipped in England in Pagan times. Ludgate Hill is a remainder, or reminder, or Lud. The Welsh still call London ‘Caer Ludd’, or Lud’s town. Thus it is seen how deep are the roots of their commercial supremecy.” p195
In summary, the English are illiterate, swear a lot, but in their favour they stay focussed on achieving a goal if they think it will make them money. It is difficult to believe that Price likes the English, his affection does not shine through. He does say in his defence that he “numbers many Englishmen among his friends” p14 Pah! Do they count him amongst their friends? Probably only if he gives them a cut of the royalties from his book…..
Can you guess what the next chapter is about? Sport! Will he rail on fox hunting, what does he think of Football and Rugby? He’s already made copious references to golf. I use the golf references as time to make my next pot of tea…. ….I’m not sure if I will be able to finish this book because it’s a tad insulting and its not going to make me any money…..
Other posts prompted by Price’s analysis of the English:
Fifth post prompted by the cheeky little book ‘England and the English: from an American point of view” by Price Collier.
The construct Price uses to (uncritically) analyse differences between English and American home’s is….. ……male influence. You didn’t see that comking did you! Here are the main points of his position in his own words:
“In England, the establishment is carried on with the prime view to the comfort of the man, and this applies to rich and poor alike and to all the conditions of society. In America the establishment is carried on with a prime view to the comfort and the exigencies of the woman” p133 “An English man is continually going home, an American is continually going to business” p134 “It is a matter of course in the English Parliament that Mr. Balfour should object strenuously to a plan for a Saturday’s sitting which debars Englishmen from Saturday and Sunday at their own firesides” p135 “a bitter attack in the American Congress on the topic of the dinner hour would scarcely be listened to, and would certainly delegate its champion to the realms of crankdom and ridicule” p136 “In England men have more avocations, more amusements, more interests outside of the daily round of pressing business than us” p147
Apparantly this means that English homes are more comfortable than American homes because they are controlled by men who demand more for their money. Those darn well dressed American women making American homes uncomfortable and the govenrment for not taking their lunch hour seriously! English men have more engagements in leisure activities. England is just one big men’s club! It normally takes about 4 cups of calming Tea and half a dozen cries of “How did he get that through an editing review process?!” before finishing a chapter. That said, many of his descirptive observations have a strong face validity. Here’s an example of a description of and Englishman that I recognised as topical and personally relevant, if you ignore the gender role:
“An Englishman’s holiday is looked forward to, planned for, and provided for with some care; while all too often in America a Holdiay to a busy man over thirty-five is a white elephant, which he ends by turning over to his wife and daughters as a mount” p148
His next chapter asks ‘Are the English Dull?” Do you think Price finds the English dull? How many cups of tea will I have to drink to quell chapter-based spontaneous outrage?
Other posts prompted by Price’s study of the English:
Fourth post prompted by ‘England and the English: from an American point of view” a more than cheeky little book by Price Collier.
Price cites the Italian Tacitus on English characteristics that play a significant role in government:
“They are the finest of all the German tribes, and strive more than the rest to found their greatness on equity… …A passionless, firm and quiet people, they lead a solitary life, and do not stir up wars or harass the country by plunder and theft… …and yet they are always ready to a man to take up arms and even to form an army if the case demands it” p45
According to Price the English (actually Germans) are well behaved, focussed on being productive, with a strong sense of fairness based on common sense. English government had its origins in Witenagemot, a ‘gathering of wise men’.
“The present House of Lords itself is the direct result of the Saxon’s unwillingness to bother with government, and his willingness to leave such matters to those of most leisure and most wealth” p47
The Witenagemot chooses a ruler (monarch) from appropriate families, the role does not automatically go to the next in an hereditary line. Price provides several examples of English government choosing a preferred monarch over the direct hereditary line. Price is keen to illustrate that handing down of power in non elected institutions is not a strictly hereditary affair. He provides some interesting examples to illustrate that the House of Lords has a high turn-over of family-line peers, then asserts
“The present House of Lords is conspicuously and predominantly a democratic body, chosen from the successful of the land” p56
Price trusts in competency being moderated by social processes and effectiveness:
“God and nature turn out the incompetents” p60
Interesting perspective. The house of Lords could represent a form of natural democracy when considered as a situated social process across Centuries rather than decades. He appears to approve of the British governmental processes. Can you guess what perspective Price will take in his chapter on English ‘home life’? I’m riveted…..
Other posts prompted by earlier book chapters:
Third post prompted by ‘England and the English: from an American point of view” a book by Price Collier. The quotes below use Price’s words to illustrate his first impressions of the English. He uses such a wonderfully rich and concise turns of phrase that I couldn’t bear to summarise in my own words. Excerpts:
On faces & food
“here the features of the women, even the features of the beautiful women, are moulded; while the features of our beautiful American women are chiselled.” p.12
“To those who have given some attention to gastronomics either for the stomach’s or the pocket’s sake, the food provided here is… …a thrice daily bugbear.” p.12
On climate & criticism:
“is a climate where the warmly dressed, agreeably exercising, comfortably housed male flourishes like a green bay tree” p14
“these pages are not written in criticism but as a study” p14
On Harlotry and bumptiuosness:
“Only here in London does one see, or rather it is held under your nose, the most shameless parading of Harlotry… …so too may one drink – men women, and even children – at almost every corner.” p.27
“an attitude of provincial bumptiousness and imprudence unequalled in the world” p30
Can you guess Price’s perspective on Royalty, The House of Lords, the Aristocracy? Hold on to your seats because there’s a post on this very topic being brewed….
Other posts prompted by Price’s study of the English:
Second post prompted by ‘England and the English: from an American point of view” a book by Price Collier. (Post #1 – Heavy)
Price doesn’t much care for the fashion sense of his contemporary English women. He blames English men for not adequately adorning their females. Excerpt (my bold emphasis):
“But the women! What hats, what clothes, what shoes, what colors, what amorphous figures! Who permits that nice-looking girl to wear a white flannel skirt, a purple jacket, and a fur hat with a bunch of small feathers sticking out at right angles?… …The gortesque costumes of the women would make one stop and stare, were it not that they are so common one ceases at last to notice them“
No mistaking Price’s attitude! A fur hat with small feathers sticking out at right angles sounds absolutely gorgeous to a Hat fettishist such as myself. I wonder if Price was wearing the 1909 equivalent of khaki cargo pants? Would that I could “cease at last to notice them“. I do enjoy Price’s turn of phrase and emotive expression. He later explains at some length that the bad dress sense of the women is the fault of selfish men who don’t give their women enough money to construct fashionable and versataile wardrobes.
Stay riveted to the edge of your seats… ….what will offend Price next?
Recommended reading for people who want to familiairise themselves with an influential Virgina Woolf book.
2 smiles. ratings explained
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.
I’m forcing myself to release the books I’ve been holding hostage in my home for years. Todays escapees:
Fabulous public librarys and internet access remove the ’need’ to own many books. Despite this lack of ‘need’ it is very painful to let books leave. I haven’t managed to release my 16th Birthday present from my brother – The Concise Oxford English Dictionary.
What books would you have difficulty releasing?
“One secret enemy, a physician named Weulles, secretly poisoned Descartes, under the cover of medicine. The great mathematician was buried in Sweden, but his head was severed from his body. ” (Source)
There is even a book that refers to the missing skull as part of a conspiracy that isn’t called “The Descartes Code”… Lets put the Skull on hold for a moment and follow the body’s journey as detailed on internet pages:
“As a Catholic in a Protestant nation, he was interred in a graveyard mainly used for unbaptized infants in Adolf Fredrikskyrkan. ” (source)
“In 1667, his remains were taken to Paris and buried in the Church of St. Genevieve-du-Mont.” (source)
Burial # 3: Paris, Pantheon
“During the French Revolution, his remains were disinterred for burial in the Pantheon among the great French thinkers.” (source)
“The French treasurer general, who supervised the move of the body, kept the bones from Descartes’ right hand as a personal souvenir. About this, the great mathematician Jacobi said, “It is often more convenient to possess the ashes of great men than to possess the men themselves during their lifetime.” (source)
Burial # 4: Paris, St. Germain-des-Pres
“His tomb is now in the church of St. Germain-des-Pres.” (source)
Museum of Natural History in France.” (source)
“they lie in separate locations: his body in a crypt and his skull on display in a tawdry museum.” (Source)
There is a macabre irony in the possibility that since death his head has never been united with his body.
This entry was inspired by a marvellously entertaining (fictional) discussion in the excellent novel I’m reading; Malcom Bradbury’s ‘The Hermitage“.
W
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
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
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
Elision, Elysium, Emolliently
FissiveGrograinIrenic
ObsequiousnessPanoply, Parsimonious, PaterfamiliasRecalcitrant, Reprobates, Redolent, Riven
W
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:
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.’)
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:
Wendy (finished reading the book Aug 7th)
