28 posts tagged “books”
My good friend Arjun recommended to me The Count of Monte Christo. I listened to the version read by Richard Matthews, a British reader and he read it very well indeed. Of course the book was originally written in French and I know not who did the translation that I read, but it was as if the book were written in English. One choice they made that, to my mind was the right choice, was to keep names and titles in the French, for example the Procureur du Roi, monsieur de Procureur, and so on, rather than the Royal Prosecutor. Knowing a little French, I had no trouble with this, but I wonder how it would have read to someone with no knowledge of French? It reminds me of my reading A Clockwork Orange and being a Russian speaker; my experience of that novel was not the same as it would be for non Russian speakers. Anyway, enough of that. On the book. Arjun is of the opinion that it is the best book he's ever read. I wouldn't go quite that far, but it was very, very good. It's the first and only Dumas novel I've read, and may in fact be the first French literary novel I've read. The tale is a simple tale of revenge for a wrongful imprisonment. The Count himself becomes almost God-like in stature; he seems to be omnipotent and able to influence people to do his will. In fact, that aspect seems a little unbelievable, sort of like Jason Bourne of 18th century France, but with Jason Bourne you know you're reading make believe as it's so far fetched. The Count seems much more credible than Jason, but he loses some of that credibility as his powers and knowledge increase. How, for example, could he possibly learn to speak so many languages like a native in so short a time? Language is something that I know something about and I know how far-fetched that really is. But, once disbelief is suspended, the novel becomes great. At some 30-odd hours, you would think it would be a little dull in parts, and to be honest it is, but at the same time it is easy to listen to. I was a little worried at the morality of the Count and his taking revenge with such little humility and sympathy, but the ending assuaged that fear of mine and he redeemed himself admirably. I think I can say that without a spoiler alert. All in all, I'm very glad that I read this book and I would heartily recommend it. I give it four.
I got my stitches out today. Left Arran on the 11:05, got to Ayr hospital for 14:15. My appointment was at 14:30 so my brother headed off and said he'd be back to get me after 16:00 (well, he said after 4, but I'll stick with the 24-hour clock for the sake of consistency :) )
The nurses fast-tracked me because I live on Arran and so I was back out on the pavement before my appointement time. Unbelievable. Of course my brother had gone so I got the bus into Ayr, thence to Prestwick. I took a look at the iPhone tariffs in the 02 shop (still to expensive: cheapest is £30 p/m or PAYG for whatever it is but it's unworkable as the price of data goes up after the first 12 months to too much), got a box of choc toffee from Thorntons and then got the bus to Prestwick to see my folks. My dad was away to hospital himself so I didn't get to see him.
I also visited Kustom PCs in Ayr to pick up a new video card. I had narrowed the non-working new computer down to the video card and was sure that a new one would be the answer. It wasn't. It must be the RAM. I'm getting rather sick of this whole debacle. Trouble is I don't have the means to test everything. One can't have spares of everything laying around, can one?
I read a bit of the newspaper on the way over and it got me thinking once again about my lack of knowledge on British politics. I took a look in Waterstones when I was in Ayr and they did have one book that might have worked for me,
So, after spending time trying to get the fucking computer working, I spent some time on Amazon, browsing politics books and listening to Muse's new album. I didn't even know Muse had a new album out, and I'll tell you what, it's really bloody good. Loads of recognisable snippets of classical music (why is I can never remember the whos and whats of classical music? Except Shostakovich of course, which Muse don't touch, and Moonlight Sontata, which they do). I decided on Exploring British Politics, by Dr Mark Garnett. It's completely up-to-date, has good reviews (at least the previous edition does; the new editions is likely too new). The Look-Inside feature on Amazon is also very useful, taking the book-shopping experience closer to the brick-and-mortar analogue, whilst also giving all the advantages of online shopping.
And now my torrent of Good to Great has finished downloading (as recommended on this week's TWiT (this week's This Week in Tech ;)) by good old Jason Calacanis) so I can stop wasting time waffling on my blog and get tae ma scratcher. Night all.
It's all about how we are all not only irrational, but predictably so. A good example is seen in his example of the advert for a subscription to the Economist. The web-only subscription is $59, the print-only subscription is $125 and the print AND web subscription is $125. Most of his students picked the print and web subscription. But when the print-only subscription was removed, most students went for the web only. Nobody in either case picked the print-only subscription.
He explains that none of this has anything to do with rationality, but that the print-only subscription is placed deliberately as a decoy.
He looks at why we behave irrationaly when offered anything free, why a cheap asprin doesn't cure a headache quite so well as an expensive one, and so on. It was an enjoyable read, however I did find it to be a little repetitive and over long.
I just listened to it again and enjoyed it once more. It's quite an appropriate tale for the current swine flu climate actually! It follows a bunch of survivors of a superflu virus, devised by the US Government, that wipes out the large majority of the US population (no other part of the world ever gets mentioned, a shortcoming of the book in my opinion; it could at least have been glossed over). The survivors split into two groups, the first gathering around Mother Abigail, the goody, and the Dark Man, the baddy. So you see the margin for conflict?
Of course the goodies win, but it's SK's style and skill at character building and dialogue that makes the book worth reading. He's an astute observer of the human psyche and the characters are easy to relate to, even if they are all from a completely different culture to my own.
To be honest, I didn't enjoy it that much at all. I probably would have enjoyed it when I was in my teens, but it was just a bit too formulaic and shallow for me. Perhaps it gets better as the series progresses. I don't really care though; book 1 didn't grab me enough to want to carry on.
I found it to be rather a clever book in that it seems to rise above the geekish realm of fantasy and sci-fi and enter the mainstream. Yes, it is in essence a fantasy book, but not like any other I've read. There are no elves and goblins, no magic talismans, no underdogs coming into their powers and having to save the world from evil against the odds. Rather this is a tale of 19th century England and features such historical characters as Napoleon and Wellington.
The style is a literary one, reminding one of Jane Austen and the Brontes and the characters would not seem out of place in a Dickens novel.
We begin in the north of England, where practical magicians no longer, well, practice magic and the theoretical magicians read books on magic and discuss it in their clubs and societies. That is until Mr Norrell comes along, a practical magician intent on being the only one of his kind. He agrees to prove to the theoreticians that he can do magic, but makes them agree that, if he is sucessful, the theoretical magicians should give up magic all together.
Then Jonathan Strange comes along as another real magician and we follow the relationship between him and Mr Norrell throughout the tale.
The audiobook is read by Simon Prebble and he does a good job. I enjoyed the book a lot but do feel that it could have been shortened without losing too much. The constant footnotes became a little grating but I had got used to them by the end. I don't think that I would read this again and I would be hesitant to recommend it to my fantasy-loving friends, but to those of you who do enjoy the 19th century novel, I'd have no hesitation in recomending it.
And so to the book. This book was written just for me. I'm sure of it. John o' Farrell must have heard how I was feeling and decided to write me a novel. Honestly, that's how it feels. But I guess that a lot of fathers of my generation would be able to relate to this book. The main character wants what I would imagine most fathers want: the ability to do all the great things that make fatherhood such a joy, and go back to being a single man to avoid all the tough bits of being a dad and enjoy all the fun things that a single man gets to enjoy. Trouble is, as any dad worth his salt will tell you, that is an impossible thing to achieve. It's all about compromise and learning how to do the best one can for the family, and it has to be all or nothing. The rewards then far outweigh the investment.
I learned a lot from reading this book, especially its conclusion, which is that the most important thing is to be there for the family, to be there with the family, and to be part of the family.
And the title is very clever too. The man interprets it one way and his wife interprets in quite another. Being a man, I hadn't even considered that there was another way.
So in this book you will follow a 30-something dad who leads a double life, all the while thinking that he's doing a good thing, until it all blows up in his face and he realises that he was actually being quite deceptive. And the thing is that I totally understood his arguments for thinking it was a good thing and then, of course, his discovery that it wasn't was also a discovery for me.
I'd like Lorraine to read this book and see what she thinks about it. It would be interesting to get a woman's perspective on it .
The book had my attention from that first 'I'll just read the first page to see what it's like' moment and I must have got through it in a couple of weeks. Well, it is only 300 pages, but still, for someone with no time to read, it wasn't bad going!
I first became aware of Neil Gaiman a couple of years back when he was a panelist on Cranky Geeks. His novels and he are mentioned a lot on a few of the podcasts that I listen to and I decided to give Anansi Boys a try. I got the audiobook from audible and this one is narrated by Lenny Henry. I enjoyed it immensely and will definitely be consuming some more of Neil Gaiman's novels before long.
This one is about the descendent of Anansi, the Spider God. His descendent, Fat Charlie, does not know that he's descended from a God to begin with. He's just a regular schmo working for a firm in London and dating his fiancée. After he hears about his father's death, he attends the funeral and that's when strange things start to happen.
Lenny Henry was the perfect choice as narrator for this novel. A lot of the characters are Carribean in style and he does the accents perfectly.
The novel is funny, clever and engaging. Four stars.
I finished this book a couple of months ago and haven't written about it. I was given it by a Belgian/French friend of mine in Luxembourg not long before we left for Scotland. He'd read it and thought that I would enjoy it as it's set around the theme of a murder at a rock festival and mentions such notables as Pink Floyd and Led Zep. It is two murder tales in tandem, one set back in the 60s and one in the present day. Obviously there is a connection, and it is the job of the present-day detective, whose name escapes me for the moment, to figure out the connection in order to solve the crime. Naturally he achieves this, and I don't see it as a spoiler to say so since it would be rather a different detective novel if the crime were not solved by the end!
I read the bulk of this novel whilst watching Windows XP reinstall twice on the au pair's computer and failing to rewrite the drive with the Ghost image that I took originally. Those updates are unbelievable now.
Anyway, I did enjoy the book in the sense that I cared enough about its development to read it to the end, but it was in no particular way a memorable read, other than because of the author's attempt to include rock-n-roll superstars in the plot.
I'm getting behind in my book reviews. Last week a new BBC adaptation of John Buchan's The 39 Steps was on and I missed it. Thankfully it's still on the iPlayer, but I fancied reading the book again as it's been a long time since I read it. A quick shifty on audible and there it was, read by none other than Robert Powell, who played the leading role in a previous TV version.
It's as gripping a tale as I remember its being, a tale of spies and intrigue and the pluck of a rather dandy character by the name of Richard Hannay. To be fair it is rather unlikely in some parts and Richard Hannay's opinion of himself is a little high, but I would imagine that the novel is representative of the times in which it was written (1915) and displays the sensibilities of its upper-class author.
But for all that, it's a gripping yarn. I just sat listening to the last 90 minutes on my iPod shuffle, sat with the lights dimmed beside the coal fire and it was simply a joyous hour-and-a-half. And now I'm off to watch the beeb version on the iPlayer. :)
