Non-BC books I've read
1 journaler for this copy...
After the example seen on tyvmdear's shelf, I decided to start keeping track of books I've read that are not registered as Bookcrossing-books.
I'll add a journal entry for every new book I read, complete with author, remarks and score. I'll try to enter the journal entries for every book in the language the book's in; most importantly, books in Dutch will be reviewed in Dutch. If ever, for whatever reason, I decide to register one of these books after all, I'll edit the journal entry to add its new BCID.
Finally, this journal is mainly meant as some sort of reference (for myself or anyone else interested) and the books are, in principle, part of my permanent collection.
In some cases, however, I'd certainly be willing to loan the books to a fellow bookcrosser. Even if I can't guarantee anything, please don't hesitate to send me a PM if you're interested in any of these books!
I'll add a journal entry for every new book I read, complete with author, remarks and score. I'll try to enter the journal entries for every book in the language the book's in; most importantly, books in Dutch will be reviewed in Dutch. If ever, for whatever reason, I decide to register one of these books after all, I'll edit the journal entry to add its new BCID.
Finally, this journal is mainly meant as some sort of reference (for myself or anyone else interested) and the books are, in principle, part of my permanent collection.
In some cases, however, I'd certainly be willing to loan the books to a fellow bookcrosser. Even if I can't guarantee anything, please don't hesitate to send me a PM if you're interested in any of these books!
Obviously (at least, to people interested in history), this book is about the turning point in roman history, when Ceasar crossed the Rubicon and precipitated the end of the Republic. Actually, it's more about the time just before this and the reasons why the fall of the Republic was inevitable (even if Ceasar's action may not have been).
It's something in between a textbook and a narrative. It does analyze the Roman Republic and all its faults; it does have a number of references, so it can be used as a good starting point for any research into this period (incidentally, those references are both modern and ancient). Yet, it mostly reads like a narrative: no sub-chapters, no testing questions or summaries of chapters.
This book is the story of the Roman Republic's end, as we now think it actually happened. It can be read as an interesting novel (as I did), or as a historical work of reference. Tom Holland managed to fuse these different views together quite nicely!
Birdsong is the story of Stephen Wraysford, a British soldier/officer during the first World War. The story is intertwined with two other ones: the love affair of Stephen and a french (married) woman, and the life of his granddaughter.
The love-affair itself takes place a few years before the War, and for a long time doesn't seem to make any sense in this book. At some point, however, it does intrude in the War, in the form of the (former) lover and her sister.
I'm not really sure how the granddaughter fits in. She decides to figure out her grandfather's life, through diaries left at her mother's. It's interesting to see her point of view, but whether it's really necessary...
The bulk of the story, however, describes life in the trenches: almost constant bombardments; always cold, tired and wet; build-up of tension to an attack of which maybe a quarter of the men return.
Set against this is the leave of the soldiers, when everything seems to be business as usual. Not only in London (which is far enough from the front to understand, if not condone, that), but even Amiens (smack on the Somme) is described as almost normal. It makes the trench-life even more grotesque and unbelievable.
A very interesting part (and one I didn't know anything about) is the presence of miners in the army. By digging tunnels, they tried to undercut the German lines, mine their trenches or blow-up the German tunnels. Hours and hours of dark, heavy labor, only to have their tunnel blown up in their faces. Or worse: blow a charge in the German lines, giving the Germans enough time to retake positions on the newly formed ridges and stall any attack even more.
The worst part, of course, is the description of the attacks. Even though I've learned about the trench warfare, it's something else to read it in this way. The men walking slowly in no-man's land, because they're ordered to stay behind their artillery's "protective barrage", while the Germans can pick them off one by one; the hundreds of deads lying putrefying in barbed wire; hundreds of wounded who wait for darkness to fall to safely return to their one trenches - they're all very forceful images.
It's a good book about the first World War, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone with a weak stomach... For anyone else: despite all the horrors and little action (at times), it still reads very easily and very quickly, and it's certainly worth a try!
A very moving description of junks' lifes around (mostly) Edinburgh. It's a collection of stories, which are only slightly related. Almost all of them are about the same crowd (though not necessarily all of them), in various stages of addictions to alcohol or several drugs. Although some of the stories refer to each other, they're neither exactly chronological nor truly connected. It's like a set of snapshots of the lifes of these on-and-off junkies.
All together, the stories paint a horribly bleak picture of young men addicted to (mostly) heroine, unable to kick the habit. Even if they get off the heroine for a while, they get sucked into alcoholism, minor drugs, or just unemployment and crime.
Most of the book is written in (what I assume to be) the local dialect ("Ah gits back n slips it intae place.") with an interesting multitude of swearwords. This put me out a little at first, but I realized I hardly noticed the "wrong" spelling after about a hundred pages...
What did annoy me a bit more, is that the perspective keeps changing. Almost all the stories are written as first-persons, but the person behind the "I" (or rather, the "Ah") keeps changing; sometimes I didn't even figure out who's talking until the story was over. It adds a lot to the confusion and chaos that the book shows.
I just tried to decide on the worst of the stories, but I can't manage. Is it the "Junkie Dilemma's", which describe choices the junkie can't make while lying spaced out somewhere? Or the burials of people died of HIV or OD's? Maybe that story where Rents finds himself in the house of someone's parents, with every possible bodily fluid excreted on the bed sheets? The relapses, that one shot that brings the addiction back on, score pretty high as well.
It's not an easy book to read. It's a pretty horrid picture, not only because of the drugs scene but because that whole region is horrible: high unemployment, low education, hardly a chance in the world. But it's well worth the read; if only as a reminder why not to do drugs!
A typical Terry Pratchett: a little bit of story and a lot of nonsense, in a funny way ;-). In this one, it's decided that Death doesn't do his job properly (too much character. Death and character - no kidding!) and he gets his own little timer. He decides to make the best of it, and start living... in the metaphorical way as well.
Needless to say, this starts up all sorts of problems. First of all, what would a skeleton do for a living? And now that there's no Death anymore, what happens to death. And, maybe most importantly, can Death actually die? Or, which turns out to be the right question, does Death want to die?
Well, at least we get to know where Death of Rats comes from... (hey, I couldn't not spoil a little bit, at least, could I?)
Simple reading, lots of fun, I swished through it in about two days. As I said: a typical Pratchett ;-).
This is one of the more serious Pratchetts. Yeah, right! What I mean is, this one does not contain so many footnotes with silly remarks, or puns on words. In this book, it's the story itself that is completely ludicrous ;-).
In short, vampyres (new spelling) from Uberwald want to take over the tiny little kingdom Lancre. Now any seasoned Pratchett-reader knows that means they'll have to contend with a few witches: Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and however happens to be the young-and-silly one.
Unfortunately, so do the vampyres. See, it's not just new spelling that they've adopted... As vampyres (or vampires) go, these are defintely the most modern and enlightened ones I've ever, er... well, not met fortunately ;-). Which is not to say they're eating habits have changed! There's only so much civilization a vampyre can handle :-)
Well, anyway, that's about it. Vampyres want in, witches want them out. Oh, and some tiny, blue, Scottish, swearing picties are in there somewhere too. Ideal ingredients for a helluva story, isn't it?
One last remark: whatever they say about vampires, it is all true...
This book is the story of 12-year old Harriet, whose older brother Robin was killed when he was nine (she was just born at the time). Following this tragedy, the household turns into some macabre spectacle: father lives in another state; mother constantly under influence of some sort of medicine, drug or alcohol; older sister ultra-hippie: vague and always barefoot. The only normal person is Harriet and Ida, their housekeeper.
Although the back of the book says Harriet tries to find Robins murderer, she actually just decides who did it, and tries to punish him.
Now here's where things start to get interesting. Harriet's suspect is a member of the Ratliff-family: white trash of the worst sort. Although he himself is trying to get out of it, his brothers are either hardened criminals, or some sort of crazy (and in some cases both). While the family is dabbling in drugs, Harriet's "attacks" on them are construed as coming from a rival criminal. Yet Harriet is sure that the Ratliffs know about her and try to get back at her. Misunderstandings back and forth make for an interesting story and lead to a climax that is simultaneously unexpected and completely obvious (doesn't that make sense? Go read the book).
There are parts, however, where this whole story is not really clear. There's a lot in the story that feels like a soap: stuff about Harriet's extended family (i.e. grandmother and great-aunts), her relationship to her friend Hely and his brother, the leave of Ida from Harriet's house.
Apart from that, there are parts that are almost metaphysical. The Ratliffs are (almost) constantly high, which leads to weird dreams and hallucinations. But Harriet has her moments of those as well, and I'm not exactly clear on why they're in it.
All in all, I liked the story itself; unfortunately, too many parts of the book have no clear purpose, which I didn't like. While it's still a good book, and I would recommend reading it, I liked The Secret History far more!
This book is pretty much like Michener's "The Source": it describes the history of a little site as it may have been. As far as I know, it is in accordance to archeological and other evidence (but fiction nonetheless).
Sarum is about the history of a little bit of England, which eventually becomes Salisbury. From prehistorical times (he describes the moment that England becomes an island) to the 1980's, Sarum follows the development of a small settlement, through Roman, Saxon and Norman towns into eventually a modern town.
What I like best about the book is the fact that five families are very prominent in it (if not all the characters). Although not all the families appear in every era (they all emerge in a different chapter, and one branch disappears for a few centuries), Rutherford manages to make them very continuous. Character traits and distinguishing marks remain visible for generations, without degenerating into caricatures of themselves. I was very impressed with that!
I really like this kind of book, but it always hurts when some age (i.e. chapter) finishes. In every era, I long for the characters that played a role in the former one; or for values that were important an age ago. I guess I'm just some sort of born reactionary (although that truly doesn't agree with my political views) ;-).
So, a very good book, of the sort that I like a lot. I thought about releasing this one, but I'm a bit hesitant now. For the moment, I'll keep it as a non-BC book. Maybe it'll change sometime...
Dit is het verhaal van een Israelische geheim agent wiens vrouw overlijdt (of het nou een tragisch ongeluk is of zelfmoord, wordt behoorlijk in het midden gelaten) en die daarna zichzelf terugtrekt (met dochter, moeder en schoonmoeder) in een buitenwijk van Tel Aviv.
Daarna gebeurt er echter heel weinig in het verhaal: hij knapt zijn huis volledig op, begint een relatie met de buurvrouw en heeft continu een soort ijstijd met zijn familie. Om onduidelijke redenen kan hij niets goed doen: zijn moeder en schoonmoeder geven hem om de beurt de schuld voor de dood van zijn vrouw en zijn dochter negeert hem bijna geheel. En toch wordt hij nooit boos, heeft hij nooit behoefte om weer wat te gaan doen: verdwijnt in mijmeringen over het leven of wat er nou precies gebeurd is tijdens "het ongeluk". Pas aan het eind van het boek gaat hij weer wat doen (overigens zonder dat dat werkelijk omschreven wordt).
Ik weet niet helemaal wat ik van dit boek moet vinden. Een heel irritant aspect is dat zinnen steeds afgebroken worden op plekken waar dat niet zou moeten ("De makelaar wachtte. En in de tussentijd was het stil in de kamer"). Ik weet echter niet in hoeverre dat de schrijver of de vertaler is.
Verder is het wel goed geschreven; ondanks het gebrek aan verhaal, leest het toch goed weg en had ik nooit de neiging het boek weg te leggen. Toch had ik graag wat meer verhaal gehad; misschien uitsluitsel over de dood van zijn vrouw, misschien meer over het eind, er had gewoon wat meer mogen gebeuren.
Ik zou niet zeggen dat het geen goed boek is, en ik zou wel meer van Amos Oz willen lezen, maar het is niet mijn favoriete stijl (of genre).
This is a book of England in the throes of the Industrial Revolution, with railroads and factories springing up all over the country. Adam Swann is a soldier who's made a little fortune in India (in, technically, an illegitimate way) and decides to use this fortune to stop soldiering and start being an entrepeneur.
Returning to England, he's advised to look into the parts of the country that the railroad doesn't serve, which is a surprisingly large territory (mostly in between the lines that run to and from the larger towns only). This leads to the start of Swann-on-Wheels, a road-haulage company that tries to fill in the blanks that the railroad doesn't reach.
The story is mostly about how Mr. Swann sets up his company. He's different from most people of his time (amongst which, prominently, his own father-in-law), in that he sees his employees as people rather than numbers. He's also the first one to realize that quality and guarantees, of timely or just correct deliverance, will go a long way into securing him clientele.
In between this runs the story of Swann's personal life, which is little more than a soap opera. Although I wouldn't think of reading such a soap opera on its own, it does add an extra dimension. Still, I found that the parts about the Swann family itself were the least interesting ones by far.
All in all, it's an entertaining story and not at all what I expected. It's a good read for anyone who likes history, and probably a must for people interested in early (British) industry and social reforms. For me, it was a good read, but no more than that. So, it's not staying in my permanent collection, but gets its own BCID: 986 - 309 64 42
The poorly named Piscine Molitor Patel (restyled, by himself, to Pi) is the son of an Indian zookeeper. As such, he learns to care for animals and to read their moods easily. Sometimes it seems that animals are more his friends than people.
When the situation in India turns sour, the family decides to move to Canada. Although they don't mean to start another zoo there, for tax purposes they do take the animals with them. Unfortunately, the ship they're travelling with sinks, and poor little Pi finds himself on a lifeboat, accompagnied by a few of those animals. The rest of the story is how Pi tries to keep the sea, the sun or the animals from killing him.
A very interesting part of the story is that the writer pretends (in a foreword) that it's a true story, that Pi Patel tells him later in life. Every now and then the story is interrupted by remarks about Pi (the present-day Pi that does the telling). Although I didn't find these remarks very useful, they do strengthen the suggestion that the story is true.
Still, it just can't be true. The whole story is highly fantastic, but I would be willing to give it the advantage of doubt. The floating-island-episode, however, is stretching it too thin. It's a great part of the story, but there's no way on Earth that ever happened!
Without spoiling too much, I have to add that there's a lovely twist in the story at the end. In fact, there's a twist to the twist too ;-).
Dit verhaal onderstreept de moeilijke relatie tussen Israeliers and Arabieren (of eigenlijk, joden en Israelische arabieren). Hoedda, een Arabische vrouw in Haifa, krijgt een relatie met Alex, een joodse immigrant. Ieder heeft zijn eigen problemen, met familie, werk of het leger, maar toch besluiten ze te gaan trouwen.
De relatie wordt echter zwaar gecompliceerd: doordat haar neef wordt doodgeschoten in Libanon (door Israelische soldaten), doordat zijn moeder manipulatief en gemeen is, doordat haar zus zwanger is voor ze gaat trouwen en haar echtgenoot zo ver moet krijgen dat hij met haar naar bed gaat. Dit alles speelt tegen de achtergrond van een Arabische wijk (de wadi) in het joodse Haifa.
Wanneer de oorlog eenmaal uitgebroken is en Alex aan het front is, verdwijnt elk onderscheid tussen Hoedda en andere achterblijvers in de allesomvattende angst voor geliefden.
Enerzijds is het een goed boek, het is een mooi, aangrijpend verhaal en ik leefde volledig met Hoedda en Alex mee. Anderzijds is het niet altijd makkelijk leesbaar en zijn er soms stukken die nergens op lijken te slaan. Het is jammer van die trage momenten, anders had ik het een steengoed boek gevonden; zoals het nu is, is het zeker niet slecht, maar ook niet spetterend goed.
I finally caved. I'd been thinking about it for a while, and when my girlfriend came home with the first three (and number five) of the series in hardcover, I decided I should finally try it.
I heard the first one or two are very childish, but they get better later on. Well, as far as I'm concerned, they're fine from the start. I couldn't put it down! I am not hooked, though, as I have no urgent need to read the next one (but, in all fairness, I am looking forward to it).
I liked the way Harry is described, as a celebrity against his own will. Of course, I loathed Dudley (a perfect combination of Veruca and Augustus, from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and felt little more than disgust and contempt for the Dursley's.
The only thing I liked a little less, is that one shouldn't think too much about the magic and so on. I'll accept that not everything can be explained (and most of it shouldn't be either), but sometimes I feel it just won't hold up under scrutiny. Maybe that's because it's still a children's book; may it's just Ms. Rowling still finding her way. But I certainly hope the next books will be a little more "realistic" (as far as that's possible in this story).
Against the background of two Iraq-like wars (although that's not how Mr. Drury describes them) in Gorotoland and Panama, the American President is killed in an airplane-crash. He's just been elected nominee for the next presidency, after a bitter dispute with another contender (described in "Advise and Consent", which I will read later), which obviously means that the Party is in bit of disarray.
The battle for the nomination rages between Orrin Knox and Ted Jason. The former is what we'd call a hawk: he completely agrees with America interfering with force in disputes outside their borders; the latter is more a dove: he advocates dialogue and tolerance. The party (which Mr. Drury seems to equal with the country) is highly divided between the two candidates; the press, however, is firmly for Ted Jason. To confuse matters even more, Ted Jason is supported by violent activists, who try to pressurize people to choose him.
As I noticed in The throne of Saturn, Mr. Drury is quite a conservative, if not to say reactionary, hawk himself. So, obviously he "agrees" with Orrin Knox, and Ted Jason is depicted as a misguided fool. Moreover, he paints the press as highly partial people, who wouldn't balk at lying (or at least not telling the truth) in order to help their candidate.
It takes a little effort to see through Mr. Drury's subjective view, but it's worth it. He paints a pretty horrid picture of newspapers and TV-programs that unscrupulously misguide the public. Even if in real life the press is divided between candidates (as they're bound to be), it's still scary; people vote based on what they're told, which may not be the truth.
In fact, in my view, this book has an uncanny resemblance to what happened in the US during the last two elections, and what's happening in Iraq and Afghanistan now. The only real difference is that the "bad guy" is too right-wing in W.'s case, and too left-wing in Jason's.
The story is undoubtedly interesting, and Mr. Drury is, usually, a good writer. I really enjoyed most of the book (and am very much looking forward to "Advise and Consent") Unfortunately, there are sections that are very boring; sometimes they're the romantic entanglements of the protagonists, sometimes they're musings about the political situation. I didn't feel they were useless, but they could have been a bit shorter.
I would've liked to register this one and release it (as I have no real compunction to keep it in my PC). Unfortunately, it's falling apart. I'll try to fix it and release it after all.
I did! I managed to fix it (a bit) and registered it as 506-314 10 13. It's dedicated to GRAN-DUCATO's Teaching Challenge, where I hope it'll help some of his students with their English.
Just after the Second World War, Stingo, a Southern-bred starting writer, comes to Brooklyn and into the lives of Sophie Zawistowska and Nathan Landau.
Sophie's a Polish girl, who despite not being Jewish or joining any Resistance groups, ended up in Auschwitz and only barely survived (although, the farther in the book I got, the less sure I was she'd survived at all). When Sophie comes to the US, starved, ill and basically dying, Nathan saves her. As a microbiologist, he seems to know a lot about everything (including medicine), which allows him to help her both physically and mentally.
As Stingo becomes good friends with both Nathan and Sophie (while falling head-over-heels in love with her), the story splits in two. There's the chronicle of Nathan and Sophie's relationship, a weird and twisted affaire, filled with love, hatred, violence and lies at every turn. In between is the story of Sophie, of her youth and family in Poland, of her ordeal during the war and eventually at Auschwitz.
Without revealing too much about the ending of the book, I can say both stories are sad, impressive and at times simply horrible. There's no end to the strength that all three people (but Sophie most) must've had to stomach all this!
The two stories are mercilessly twisted, both in the order of reading them and in the way they affect (or seem to affect) each other. Obviously, any book about Auschwitz is not going to be a nice affaire; yet, at times this book is simply lovely. Surprisingly enough, even the parts about the War contain pretty light-hearted stuff at times.
It reads easily most of the time; in fact, whenever the story is getting more depressive, the reading gets lighter. It's Stingo's musings that taxed my attention most. Even so, when I did get finally to Sophie's choice, notwithstanding all the horrors Mr. Styron had already dished out, I was still struck with the hurt, the agony it must've caused. It's not the first time I heard about a choice like this, but it remains shocking every time.
All in all, it's a beautiful, profound book that is surprisingly easy to read. Yet, don't read it if you can't stomach some horror!
While reading both Sophie's Choice and My name is Asher Lev at the same time, I felt I deserved some easier-going book for bedtime reading. What else than the next Harry Potter, eh? (Well, maybe I'm a little more hooked than I thought while writing the last journal entry).
Yes, I still like it. It's still enjoyable reading, and I still like the characters that Ms. Rowling describes. Or at least, I like some of them. Nobody can like Malfoy, and I'm pretty sure Gilderoy Lockhart comes a good second in being horrible.
As for the story: apart from yelling at Harry at least four times to tell The Powers that Be all he knows, it does amble along quite well. Although I have to say, it is too clear that Malfoy did not open the Chamber, wasn't it?
The only thing I disliked, was that Ms. Rowling seemed to suffer from amnesia. At least a quarter of the book is about Harry, Ron and Hermione scheming to sneak into Slytherin and catch Malfoy in a confession. Polyjuice Potion, getting Lockhart to sign a chit, why didn't they simply use Harry's Invisibility Cloak? OK, I see why it fit better in the story this way, but it doesn't mean to make sense, does it?
But, sure, I did enjoy it; sped through it in about two days. I'll certainly keep reading the next ones!
Chirstopher Banks is een Engelse jongen, die in de Internationale Wijk van Shanghai opgroeit, zo ongeveer rond 1900. Zijn meest favoriete herinneringen aan die tijd zijn die van zijn buurjongen en vriend Akira, een Japans jongetje. Waarom deze vriendschap zo hecht is, wordt niet helemaal duidelijk, vooral omdat Akira niet het beste karakter allertijden heeft.
Vroeg in Christopher jeugd wordt zijn vader ontvoerd. Op zich is dit in die tijd niet vebazingwekkend, maar zelfs de beste mensen van de lokale politie kunnen zijn vader niet vinden; of althans, niet bevrijden. Als enkele maanden later (de tijdslijn is niet helemaal duidelijk) ook zijn moeder verdwijnt, ziot er weinig anders op voor Christopher om naar een tante in Engeland te worden gestuurd. Verbazingwekkend weinig getraumatiseerd, groeit hij op en wordt een gevierd detective (in de traditie van Sherlock Holmes).
Het werkelijke verhaal begint als Christopher (in de jaren '30) besluit om terug te keren naar Shanghai. Niet alleen wil hij een poging doen om zijn ouders alsnog te vinden (dat dit na 30 jaar misschien wat onwaarschijnlijk is, wordt niet eens aangestipt), ook denkt hij het "kwaad dat de wereld bedreigt" te bestrijden.
Verweven in de zoektocht naar zijn ouders, zit het verhaal van Christopher en Sara Hemmings, een jongedame die hij kent uit de Londense society. Het wordt geen moment duidelijk wat de relatie tussen deze twee mensen is: soms lijkt het een pure haatverhouding te zijn, soms liefde, soms negeert zij hem compleet. Het moet toegegeven worden: dat is vooral te danken aan de hypocrisie van Sara, maar Christopher heeft geen enkel probleem moeite zich aan te passen aan haar nieuwe emoties.
Ondanks deze twee, redelijk duidelijke verhaallijnen, is het niet duidelijk waar het boek over gaat. Waarom Ms. Hemmings er überhaupt is zit, werd mij geen moment duidelijk. Akira, de jeugdvriend van Christopher, maakt een come-back als Chritopher terugkeert, wat hem enigszins verklaart. Daar staat tegenover dat het evenmin duidelijk is waarom de volwassen Akira in het boek moet komen.
Veel storender is dat nergens wordt uitgelegd wat het "kwaad dat de wereld bedreigt" is, laat staan hoe Christopher het in zijn ééntje kan tegenhouden. Ik kom tot drie mogelijkheden: de opkomst van de Nazi's en/of Japanners; de bloei van opium-bendes; of het uiteenvallen van het Britse rijk. Geen van drieën wordt in he boek echter werkelijk ondersteund, en dat Christopher ze singlehandedly kan oplossen, kan alleen maar grootheidswaanzin zijn.
Een bijkomend nadeel is dat het boek oorspronkelijk in het Engels geschreven is, en dus dat ik het ook in de originele taal had kunnen lezen. Maar ja, 't is een cadeau, en die kan je toch niet ongelezen in de kast laten liggen. Desalniettemin, ik heb betere boeken gelezen!
27/01/2007: Dit boek is nu geregisteerd en ik zal het op een gegeven moment loslaten.
Anamaya is an Indian girl with remarkable looks: taller and paler than anyone else, even blue eyes; everything points to a Caucasian father, although neither she nor anyone else has any way of realizing this. Captured by the Inca's, she's supposed to be sacrificed to the Sun God. The old Inca emperor, however, decides that she's special and declares her Guardian of the Empire. What's more, his last night is spent talking to her, possibly telling her who should be his successor.
Unfortunately, Anamaya forgets all he's said. Or rather, his words are considered to be somewhere in her, but they cannot be coaxed out of her by anything but time. Anamaya is entered into the priesthood as an intermediate to the emperor’s soul, awaiting the moment his words return to her.
Meanwhile, however, the Inca Empire has no leader. The obvious candidate, the former emperor’s favourite son, will not be accepted by powerful clans; their candidate, however, is considered to be mad by virtually everyone. When the latter decided to force the issue and flaunts the Law, civil war erupts. Needless to say, Anamaya, being de facto the late emperor’s will, is highly valuable to either side (although not necessarily alive).
In between this tale, the Spaniard Francisco Pizarro has reached Peru (where the Inca's live), returns to Spain and tries to set up a new expedition. When he finally reaches Peru again, the civil war has just been settled. At the height of their power, the Inca's suddenly face an enemy they never heard of, don't know anything about and underestimate fatally...
It's a beautiful book, describing the life and religion of the Inca's, as well as all the action (without too much gore, fortunately). Every now and then, it turns very spiritual, when Anamaya has her few divine inspirations; it remains unclear, however, whether these things actually happen, or are drugs (coca-leaves) induced dreams. Anyway, the reader takes them in his stride as the Inca's do and accepts them for what they are: politically interpretable signs!
The book is obviously the first one in a series, and ends with cliffhanger (although one that I saw coming about 300 ages away). Unfortunately, no sequels are mentioned anywhere, but I certainly intend to find them. For anyone who likes history, who wants to be impressed with non-European society, who likes a semi-mystic novel, this is surely the thing to read!
Porterhouse is a, fictional, college in Cambridge, but one of the most conservative ones. It is truly filled with clichés: undergraduates that get into college (and thus university) on the strength of money rather than merit, exams that are being taken by poor graduate students on behalf of those same undergrads, and Fellows who neither know nor care, but live in a world of their own.
In this world, a new Master appears. A former Cabinet minister (or something like that anyway), with a rhetoric liking for change, he's not content to leave things as they've been for ages. Against the wishes off the whole college, he must and will modernize Porterhouse.
The struggle between Master on one hand and most (but not always all) Fellows and the Porter on the other hand takes epic proportions (partly due to one very unlucky graduate student), resulting in a surprisingly unexpected ending.
A friend of mine gave this to me as an introduction to Cambridge life. It is very well written, made so much more vivid by me actually knowing some of the streets that feature in it. Although I sympathized completely with the Masters cause, I couldn't help but loathe him, while feeling some sort of tender indulgence to the other Fellows.
The really scary part, however, is that (according to a colleague who's been here a little longer and thus is more versed in the goings-on in the colleges) it is actually true. Maybe the students don't get in or out quite so easily (although I do think that does depend on the college); maybe some colleges don't stick to outdated ideas quite so tenaciously. But Fellows truly live in a world of their own: a world that is still anchored in the 15th century and stops at the Porter's Lodge.
This promises a very interesting three years here...
Journal Entry 20 by RonOren from Wassenaar, Zuid-Holland Netherlands on Wednesday, December 21, 2005
I bumped into this one in a charity shop and couldn't resist picking it up. I've been a huge fan of M*A*S*H (the TV series) for ages, and the idea of reading the book behind it was too much to bear.
M*A*S*H (the acronym stands for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) is the story of the 4077th MASH in the Korean War. Stationed just behind the front line, 4077th receives the bulk of the wounded from any military operation, gets hammered with shells every now and then, but is in general relatively safe.
However, considering that it is mobile, so there are no permanent structures, and war is raging a few kilometres away, it should be no surprise that conditions are not exactly optimal for high-level surgery. So trust them to perform as high-level surgery as any Stateside hospital would do.
M*A*S*H is a mixture of comedy and pure tragedy. The story itself (of which I am not quite sure how fictional it is) is obviously very sad; whether on TV or in the book, one really sympathizes with Hawkeye, Trapper John or BJ Hunnicut (although the latter is not in the book, unfortunately enough), with their struggle to save as many patients as possible.
Yet, at the same time, it's full-fledged comedy. It's not a parody, where one laughs at the way the show (or book) have been written; it's the humour of the characters themselves, using it as a safety valve for their emotions that ticks one off. But it's a laugh with a tear-stained edge to it...
The book, I have to say, is no better or worse than the show was. Some characters appear in the show that never make it to the book, one character from the book never got into the show. But those that are both in the show and the book are exactly the same! Hawkeye, Father Mulcahy, Radar: they all fit in exactly with the image I got from the show.
So, has it been worth reading the book? Oh yes, certainly! If only for that little remark by Mr. Hooker, saying that this is not the story of a certain MASH, but an amalgam of stories of several people at several MASH's. Or maybe for the rare occasion that TV hasn't corrupted a good story. Or maybe it's simply good to read a good book!
The last book in the series called "The Masters of Rome", this book relates the part of Rome's history after Ceasar's victory at Pharsalus, where he routed, though not defeated definitively, the army of Pompeius Magnus and Cato. After Pharsalus, Caesar was the undisputed and completely unchallengeable leader of Rome; however, enemies existed all over the known world, which he had to disperse.
True to McCullough's insights, Caesar is depicted as the innocent and pure but misunderstood hero. As usual, he is not aiming for power, or at least: not any more than the Republic and the mores would allow. So, most of the work he does after dispatching of Pompey is aimed at restoring the Republic to its glory days. As history as proven, this backfired slightly...
The bottom line of it is that I love Colleen McCullough's work, and I did like this one too. However, there are some things that don't go down too well. First of all, Ceasar is a little less the innocent goodie-goodie; or rather, although he screws around with Cleopatra, it still feels like he's as good as Morality herself. She could've made him a bit more human (and thus, capable of failure)!
The second thing is that it ends pretty abruptly. I expected Ceasar's murder to be the end (that does after all correspond to the October Horse's sacrifice); alternatively, the logical point is to go on until Augustus is well and truly emperor. Yet, the book finishes in between, when the murder has been avenged but Mark Anthony still lives. It feels incomplete!
I did still like it, and I am very happy I read it (and I will certainly keep it). But I think it's the least of the six books; too bad Ms. McCullough couldn't finish the series at the same greatness the started it with...
One of the Roald Dahl books that my girlfriend picked up, as the restart of her collection. I picked it up to read in a bar while waiting for people, and it fit the half-hour wait like a glove.
It's a lovely and simple book. Three farmers - Boggis, Bunce and Bean - decide to get rid of the fox that nicks their products; they try to shoot him, dig him out and finally starve him. Mr. Fox, however, has some ideas of his own...
Every character is so well described; the farmers are so evil and Mr. Fox is so good and nice, that one can't help sympathising with the fox. Even if I knew that the farmers were (technically) right, I never doubted that fox should "win".
I got this version of Don Quixote as a birthday present from my lab mates (because I "had been fighting windmills in lab"). Although I had tried reading a different version of it and had to give up on that one, I couldn't not read to this, could I? I have to admit I considered it a chore at first, but it turned out to be quite fun!
I don't think I have to mention much about the story itself. In short, a random Spanish gentleman becomes crazy, thinks he's a knight errant and goes into all sorts of adventures with his trusty squire Sancho Panza. Considering the sort of adventures, most of which occur more in Don Quixote's head than in the real world, the book is a satire on the regular books about chivalry; apparently, chivalry was a hot topic in Cervantes' time.
The nice thing about this edition is that it's a new translation, with the translator doubling as an interpreter as well. So the book is peppered with footnotes explaining wordplays that don't work in English but do in the original Spanish, or explaining that a certain style is a flagrant copy (and thus satire) of chivalry-books and so on. I can't say that I laughed my head off every other page (I did chuckle a few times), but at least the footnotes helped me appreciate the book, and mostly understand people liked (and still do) it so much!
There are two parts of the book that I liked most. As I said, most of Don Quixote's adventures do not happen in the real world, but only in his imagined view of the real world. In the second volume, however, Don Quixote and Sancho meet a Duke and Duchess who take a liking to them and their madness and decide to keep them as unknowing amusement, by setting up adventures for them. They're really well thought-up, beautifully carried out and Don Quixote falls for them completely.
Better still, in the second volume (that was written about 10 years after the first one) the first volume is actually mentioned. So Don Quixote is famous (or maybe infamous, considering the reason for his fame), which allows every simple peasant to trick him into something or other. En passant Cervantes fumigates against the "False Don Quixote", an alternative second volume that preceded his by a few months. It's not quite a book that refers to itself, but it's close enough to it that it made my head spin every now and then.
I once heard a lovely definition for a classic: it's a book everyone wants to have read, but no-one wants to read. I'll have to say, even if I did like reading it, I think I'll have to agree with Don Quixote being a classic! It was good reading it, but it may well be better having read it ;-).
This is a collection of essays of 25 leading scientists, in fields ranging from medical science and psychology to hardcore mathematics, in which they present their view of what will happen in their area of expertise in the first half of the 21st Century. About half of the essays are written from a theoretical point of view, whereas the rest is more practical. It's probably not surprising that the latter ones are quite a bit easier to get one's head around than the former ones.
Clearly, the editor (or whoever came up with this idea) left enormous leeway to the authors, both in content and style: whereas some of the essays seem to be written as progress reports or funding proposals, others are clearly aimed at the intelligent layman. I have to single out one: Judith Rich Harris's "What Makes Us The Way We Are: The View From 2005", where she proceeds to describe the first half of the 21st century with hindsight, leading to a very entertaining and surprisingly convincing story!
Since it's taken me about a year to get through this book, reading it at bedtime only and often not even that, I can't remember the earlier essays very well. Still, I do know that, even if some of the essays were hard to get through (either due to a lack of interest or to a lack of understanding), all of them were quite impressive; if only for the insight of what the future should look like that.
Having said that, some of the essays seem to be outdated already, and the book is only 3 years old ;-). It'll be interesting to keep this book and check the predictions to the actual future in 2050!
Predicting the future correctly or not, this book certainly does give one a quick overview of the state-of-the-art in numerous sciences (albeit in very small sections of each of the disciplines); I would recommend to anyone who's interested in science or wishes to get acquainted with it.
Dit is de autobiografie van een jonge wetenschapper, of de biografie van een gewaagde theorie. Voor Joao Magueijo, een jonge kosmoloog, is zijn carriere (en misschien zelfs zijn volledige geschiedenis) niet alleen gekoppeld aan deze theotie, maar staat er waarschijnlijk gelijk aan.
Wat deze theorie is? Niets meer of minder dan (weer) een theorie het jonge heelal (d.w.z. in de orde-groote van een jaar na de oerknal) beschrijft en daarmee een aantal raadselen in het huidige heelal weet te verklaren. Alleen... deze theorie beweert dat de lichtsnelheid in die tijd vele malen groter was dan zij nu is, en gaat daarmee lijnrecht tegen de Relativiteitstheorie in. Het zal waarschijnlijk niemand verbazen dat Magueijo aanzienlijke moeite heeft gehad (en mogelijk nog steeds heeft) om deze theorie door de wetenschappelijke wereld te laten accepteren.
Ik ga niet proberen om de theorie hier uit te leggen. Niet alleen zou dat veel meer van mijn wis- en natuurkunde vereisen dan ik aankan, het zou ook het boek een stuk minder interessant maken.
In een groot deel van het boek wordt gebruikt om de achtergrond van de theorie uit te leggen: wat zijn de problemen die in het wereldje heersten waar deze theorie antwoord op probeert te geven; welke andere theorien zijn er om deze antwoorden te geven; wat zijn de voorgaande theorien (waaronder ook de Relativiteitstheorie) en uiteindelijk wat is deze theorie. En het moet gezegd worden: hij doet dit erg goed! Ik kan niet zeggen dat ik volledig overtuigd ben: sommige aspecten snap ik nog steeds niet helemaal en andere delen ben ik sceptisch over; maar over het algemeen begreep ik wat hij voorstelde, hoe dit de raadsels oplost en waarom het - tegen alle verwachting in - misschien toch geen hoogverraad van de moderna natuurkunde is.
Magueijo is een begenadigd schrijver. Dit uit zich niet alleen in het gemak waarin het boek wegleest en in de manier dat hij deze taaie materie voor een |(relatief) groot publiek toegankelijk weet te maken. Het uit zich ook in de stukjes die niet direct met de theorie te maken hebben, als hij weer eens tegen het establishment aanschopt of een vertelt over een vakantie die hij tussendoor neemt. Ook de stukken die verhalen over het gekonkel dat de wetenschappelijke wereld soms bezig houdt, zijn erg vermakelijk!
Toch blijven er wat dingen knagen. Wat mij vooral tot het eind bleef storen, is hoe Magueijo als een soort superwetenschapper overkomt: dat een jonge vent met een half-gestoorde theorie op de proppen komt, da's normaal; dat deze theorie ook nog 's uit blijkt te pakken, dat kan. Maar dat de theorie en passant alle problemen de wereld uit helpt, dat begint wel ver te gaan! Tot overmaat van ramp blijft Magueijo continu persoonlijk betrokken bij alle andere versies van de theorie die na een paar jaar ontstaan.
Misschien is die man werkelijk briljant, misschien heeft hij inderdaad een aantal jaar keihard gewerkt en snapt werkelijk niemand anders de theorie zo goed als hij en is hij daarom bij alles betrokken. Ik wil hem best het voordeel van de twijfel gunnen (en zou niet graag willen zeggen dat hij liegt; 't is tenslotte een wetenschapper!). Het komt alleen soms zo gekunsteld mooi over! Maar misschien zoek ik er ook wel gewoon teveel achter...
Al met al een zeer interessant boek; zeker een aanrader voor iedereen die geinteresseerd is in kosmologie, of natuurkunde in het algemeen. Maar ook voor iemand die nog nooit een wetenschapsboek heeft gelezen zou deze heel goed te doen zijn.
It's hard to say what I thought of this book. It's clear that the story is moving away from the kid's books that the first two were. Not only is it getting a bit more scary (especially the Dementors are not the sort of people - using the term "people" very loosely - one would want to meet in one's local), the interaction between the three kids is slowly getting less innocent (or, if you wish, naive).
The reason I can't say what I thought of the book is that I've already seen the film. It's a long time ago and I'm pretty sure I missed out on a lot of the story (partly due to lack of interest, partly because I missed the background of the first two books); still, I knew enough of the story to take the thrill of is away (and to dull the scary parts).
I do have to say that I did notice how much more the book has than the film. It's not that any specific scenes were removed (at least, none that I picked up); somehow everything is just slightly simpler in the film. I'm now wondering what the 4th book is going to be like! As I've already seen that film too, and liked it, the book must be very enjoyable!
Based on the famous BBC-series Yes Minister, this is the (imaginary) diary of the Rt. Hon. James Hacker MP, better known as the Minister.
For those who've never seen Yes Minister (you are missing out!), this is a parody on British politics and, mostly, on the Civil Service. The series has three principal characters: James Hacker, the minister; Bernard Woolley, his Private Secretary; and Sir Humphrey Appleby, the department's Permanent Secretary.
Hacker, coming into the Department of Administrative Affairs straight from the normal world outside Whitehall, is about as naive is one can imagine a politician to be. Sir Humphrey, on the other hand, is an old hand in actually running the Department, as civil servants apparently do. Clearly the fun of the series lies in the way that Humphrey manipulates Hacker to do what he (Humphrey, that is) wants; or, sometimes, the way the pair of them manipulates the rest of the world.
What I remember of the series is that it's filled with quick wit (mostly on Humphrey's part). The book, although it does contain this wit at times, is surprisingly more sophisticated and actually contains a story. Then again, I may have missed the deeper parts of the series, as I have to admit that I wasn't quite the most worldly of people when I saw it...
I have on good authority (i.e. my girlfriend, who may even have a clue what she's talking about) that the book (or rather, the series) is surprisingly close to the real thing. Apparently, Margaret Thatcher herself, who was neither a push-over nor naive, tended to agree with the picture the book paints of who actually runs this country. It does make one wonder...
It's a lovely book, though. Take it at face-value and enjoy the little skirmishings between Hacker and Humphrey, or see it as a serious attack on Britain's government, it's enjoyable either way. If nothing else, it'll teach you how to get drunk on a juice-only cocktail party in Qumran ;-)
For once, I'll take two books together. They're both a collection of columns; I know Unfair to Goliath almost by heart, but Blow softly in Jericho contains no more than a few stories that I've read before. I bumped into these in one of Broadstairs' bookshops and I had to pick them up, if only for old times' sake (my parents had a few of these in Dutch for ages).
Ephraim Kishon is an Hungary-born Israeli columnist. Although I don't know exactly when his columns were published (in fact, I don't know whether he still writes; or lives, for that matter); my guess they're sixties/seventies, i.e. a time that Israel was in a perpetual time of war.
As can be expected from a columnist, he takes the mick out of everything in the country. Politics, the wars, society in general: nothing avoids attracting his attention. To be honest, one does need to know a little about Israel to enjoy this; although he does explain how the column links to reality, I'm quite sure there's this je ne sais quoi that non-Israelis miss (and, obviously, so do I, if to a lesser extent).
No matter whether one's Israeli or not, these are very enjoyable stories. At an average of four pages each, they're about the perfect size for pre-bedtime- or bathroom-reading. I'd recommend this to anyone who's got as little as a smattering of a sense of humor.
Another one of the Pratchetts. If I'm not mistaken, this is the second one of the Guards' series, meaning Captain Vimes, Corporal Carrot and assorted Watchmen (er... and woman. Of a sort). Is there any reason this would not turn out to be a good one?
I'll try not to give too much away. Let's just say that Leonard of Quirm has a little hand in it, and we finally figure out how on earth Detritus managed to get his rocky ass into the Watch. Oh, it does all end well; it may depend on your definition of "well", though!
Unfortunately, the Discworld's best character doesn't make much of an entrance here. The little that he does appear, however, is quite good. After all, you wouldn't expect Death to come in with a little pun on words just after that one fatal mistake, would you?
Pitched to me as The Phantom of the Opera in Terry Pratchett style, this clearly had to do with an opera house, a certain mask and possibly a chandelier. All of which is situated on the Discworld, which is to say: in Ankh-Morpork (would anywhere else even know how to spell opera?)
Disappointingly, this one doesn't have any Watchmen (well, not many) and no wizards in it. Then again, witches are once again very important. Especially Nanny Ogg was even more beautiful a character in this one than usually! And our all-time favourite, Death, makes a few short, but hilarious entrances.
Something was missing about this one, though. Normally, the Discworld novels are either monstrously funny or sport a good story (or even both). This one did not have the acid wit of Terry Pratchett; that's OK, I've seen those before. However, it didn't have the story to counteract this lack.
I'm not sure what's wrong with the story. It may have been that I read it in an airplane (comfort is so important to enjoy a book!), or that I had my mind on the holiday rather than the book. Maybe opera just isn't my thing, I don't know. Whichever way, this one went down a little less happily than most of the Discworld ones.
Again, I think I lost out because I'd seen the movie before I read the book. Of course, the book does have a lot more to it than the film has: especially the whole truck with S.P.E.W. doesn't feature in the film (although it's not that much of a loss; it's not like it's really important, is it?).
Nor do I think did the film really capture Harry's infatuation with Cho... The series is moving away from kids' literature in more than just scariness.
Actually, knowing the outcome of the Triwizard Tournament made the book less thrilling, but it did add an extra dimension. I've spent large part of the book looking for clues that Mad-eye Moody was not quite himself. Unless I've been very blind, Ms. Rowling doesn't seem to be into letting her readers work out what's going on before she tells them.
Still, it was certainly enjoyable. As usual with these books, as soon as I finished this one, I wanted to grab the next and keep on reading. But well, that one is a little while away still ;-). I hope I'll get to that one before the 5th film come out!
I needed a little break from the books I was reading at the moment, so I decided to pick up my favourite Terry Pratchett. For me, this is Pratchett at his best: a completely ridiculous story and a biting sense of humour.
Imagine, an Assassin, freshly graduated from Ankh-Morpork's guild school, is suddenly the Pharaoh of what can only be described as Egypt on the Discworld (incidentally, how beautiful is the name "Djelibeybi"?). Only, this country is slightly more backward than the rural areas that support George W. Bush: no bridges, no toilets, even farming is almost unknown! It's not hard to see where this is going to lead, is it?
Yet, the best character is not King Pteppic, nor the high-priest, or in fact any of the real characters. In good agreement with so many other books by Pratchett, the best character is also thebest mathematician on the Disc. I can't tell you more without spoiling stuff, though...
So, as I'm used to: a highly enjoyable book, even if you've read it before. It's not the outcome of the story that is interesting, it's how it gets there :-). Can't get much better for comic relief in between tougher reads!
Na, werden wir mal versuchen auf Deutsch zu erzählen wie dieses Buch mir gefallen hat. Es handelt sich um Thomas Lieven, einen Bankier aus Londen, der eben vor dem zweitem Weltkrieg ein Geheimagent wird. Nicht weil er das will, sonst weil er im Übrigen ins Gefang gewurfen wird. Weil er aber ein freudelievendes Mensch ist, tut er nur was "gut" ist. Das heisst: er tötet keinen, er lässt Anderen keinen töten, aber er hat keinen Problem um slechten Menschen aus zu rauben. Während eta 20 Jahre soll er so arbeiten, bis er endlich der Welt der Geheimagenten enflüchten kann.
Die Geschichte ist nicht sehr interessant; sie ist gut erzählt, aber der Thomas ist beinahe ein Gott, wie er sich immer zu retten weist. Was ich aber sehr gut schätzen könnte, sind die Rezepte Thomas Lievens die im Buch sind. Er ist ja nicht nur ein Geheimagent, er ist also ein amateurhaft Kok. Die meisten der Rezepten scheinen mir sehr gut zu schmecken und wünsche ich einmal versuchen zu folgen. Zusammen sind die Rezepte und die Geschichte ganz amusierend!
Darum werde ich, veilleicht nur zeitweilig, das Buch bewahren, bis ich einige Rezepte gemacht habe. Werden wir mal sehen was ich danach mit dem Buch tue.
Juli 2010 - Ich habe das Buch jetzt registriert, weil ich es freilassen soll. Folgen sie seine Reise hier.
Ogenschijnlijk het verhaal van twee klasgenoten en een enigszins chique bordeel, gaat het eigenlijk over het fin de siècle. Ook al is het in 1914 geplaatst, het is toch de overgang van de 19e naar de 20e eeuw.
Tijs is een "self-made" man die met een redelijk kapitaal uit Indië terugkomt en zich in Nederland wil settlen. Hij gaat trouwen, wil zijn geld investeren in een goed bedrijf (maar zonder dat hij ook echt iets ermee moet doen): the works.
Om dit allemaal te doen, vraagt hij hulp aan Henri, een voormalig klasgenoot van hem die nu aan de beurs werkt (of althans, die er een positie heeft). Deze helpt hem inderdaad met het investeren, maar neemt hem ook mee naar Rood Paleis, een bordeel waar hij geregelde gast is.
Hier houdt het verhaal eigenlijk op. Er gebeuren nog wel wat dingen, maar eigenlijk zijn die niet belangrijk. Wat belangrijk is, is de sfeer: het verschil tussen Henri en Tijs, tussen het dobberen op vaders lauweren en zelf je zaakjes voor elkaar krijgen, tussen de oude en de nieuwe eeuw. Rood Paleis, niet erg vreemd als Henri er vaak komt, is ook absoluut in de oude eeuw geplaatst. Het boek vertelt eigenlijk alleen maar hoe de 19e eeuw langzaam, heel langzaam, sterft in Amsterdam.
Ik weet niet zeker of ik het boek eerder gelezen heb. Sommige dingen komen bekend voor, zoals de beschrijvingen van Tijs en Henri of van Rood Paleis; maar andere dingen zijn weer volledig onbekend. Misschien dat ik er eerder nooit doorheen gekomen ben...
Ik zal niet zeggen dat ik het niets vond, dat is niet waar. Bordewijk kan zeker goed schrijven. Alleen heb ik wel het gevoel dat er niet voldoende gebeurt. Wel goed geschreven, maar het gaat gewoon niet echt ergens over.
A typical Michener-book. I mentioned this already in my entry for Rutherford's Sarum: Michener always writes about history as it could've been. All the major characters are fictional, but any time in history there will have been someone with those character traits or someone who played this part.
Obviously, this one is about Poland. Starting in the early 13th century, when Genghis Khan's Tatar hordes are threatening Europe, it follows Polish history all the way to Lech Walesa in the '80s. As usual, several families return in every era; this time, they're families from the three kinds of people in Poland: the nobles, the minor gentry (who're basically landless knights) and the peasants.
Although the roles of these families clearly change over the course of 800 years, it all makes sense. For instance: it's the peasant family that delivers the real partizan during the Second World War, while the two noble families still live a very secluded life.
The most impressive part about the book, or maybe about Poland, can be summed up in just a few words: Poland is, basically, fucked. Their history is one continuous chain of being overrun, torn apart and stitched back together by neighbours who're far stronger than she is (or at least, better organised). Partly, this is due to Poland lacking a natural borders, thus being an easy target; partly, however, it's due to Poland not being able to govern herself. Either they're too archaic, with every noble having the power to veto legislation, so that no improvements can be made (or an army conscripted); or there's a burst of enlightened activity, which means that Austria, Prussia or Russia feel they have to step in and stamp out democracy and whatnot. You have to feel sorry for them...
If anyone wants to read this, a warning is in order. While most of the book is an easy read, the penultime chapter ("The Terror") about the Second World War can be positively revolting at times. Of course I know what the Nazis have done to the Polish and the Jews (and to a few other categories of people, but only these two feature here), but the details that Michener described are horrible. Not so much physically gruesome as heart-rending. Even 60 years and three countries away, I still wanted to thump the Germans!
As with all Micheners, this is highly enjoyable and probably just as educational. And, as with every Michener, there's no way this will leave my PC more than temporarily.
This is one of those rare books where the title says it all, in fact. Well, from a scientist's point of view that is. Starting with the Big Bang, the book decribes pretty much everything that is known to science; not only does Mr. Bryson mention and explain the facts and theories, he also goes through the process of getting there.
So, when describing the Big Bang, he'll start with all the major theories that were present before this one, goes on to explain how people came up with this one (and, sometimes more importantly, how they managed to convince other scientists that this specific theory is better than earlier ones) and only then actually explains what the theory is.
Of course, Bill Bryson is not a scientist himself - although I would be hard put to decide what catergory to stuff him in - so in fact he's doing no more or less than rephrasing other people's ideas. Which, I immediately add, is perfectly fine!
This does have a strong effect on the book, though. Most importantly, and luckily, not being a scientist does wonders for Mr. Bryson's way with words. Not only is he able to put ideas and examples to the readers succinctly, probably more succinctly than the scientist himself; he also manages to sneak a little bit of humour into the book from time to time. Anybody who's been around scientists knows this is quite a rare treat for a book like this...
On the downside, however, at times it's quite clear that he didn't quite understand the theory he's referring to. I have to admit, this was only obvious in those few subjects that I knew pretty well; in most of the cases, he sounded very knowledgeable to me. I couldn't hold it against him that he doesn't know all science perfectly, but it does show that even with a book like this, one should stay on one's (mental) toes.
All said and done, it is a lovely compendium for centuries' worth of science. I have to admit that a huge part went in one eye and out the other. On the other hand, it would make a lovely reference book: all major science together and very easy to read. It'll never do as a substitute for a proper textbook, but if you just want to brush up on your general knowledge of, say, genetic manipulation, it's a great starting point!
I guess Harry is starting to grow up, and with him the story. The main plot line, which obviously is getting more and more to do with Lord Voldemort, is no longer some kiddie-adventure, but it inching towards all-out wizard war. I don't want to get anything away about the book (I really enjoyed reading it before seeing the film for once, so that I didn't know what was happening), but it suffices to say that Harry gets himself into a lot of trouble and actually into mortal danger for once; I presume it's quite obvious that he does manage to wrangle himself out of it, too...
Apart from that, Harry, Ron and Hermione are clearly getting into puberty. From Harry's envy of Ron being a prefect, to the horribly clumsy way that Harry manages to upset Cho over and over again, to Hermione who really needs to get her feelings for Ron sorted out, it's all so painfully teenager! Even though I can't really relate to this anymore, it still is quite good fun; I just couldn't help wishing I could pound some sense into those silly little heads!
Finally, I just have to say: I loved Dolores Umbridge. Well, no, let's rephrase that: I hated Dolores Umbridge's guts (as any normal person would). But I loved the idea of such a character! Adding an additional "bad guy" (although I have to admit that's using about the widest definition possible of that word) was masterstroke on Ms. Rowling's part; the real genius, however, is the ability to make Dolores Umbridge so fitting... down to her horrible cardigan. I can't wait to see what they'll make of her in the film...
Technically, this is the sequel to Trinity, but it doesn't quite feel that way. It is the same story; in fact, a big chunk of the book (about a third, I guess) revisits Trinity itself. Partly this is a recapitulation of the action in Trinity, but quite a lot fills in gaps that were left in Trinity, e.g. Conor's visit to Liam in New Zealand or his relationship with Atty Fitzpatrick.
But then the story turns to Conor's nephew Rory Larkin, who decides on a whim to join the Aussie/Kiwi army (or Anzac) during the first world war. Based on his extraordinary ability with horses, he gets drafted into the Light Cavalry, which is promptly changed to a Muleteer Corps and dropped in Gallipolli. During this completely mess-up for the invasion of Turkey, Rory distinguishes himself and manages to get into the good graces of an english general.
When this general is sent to Ireland to quell the fires of the 1916 revolution, Rory tags along and we go full circle: once again a strong and, just as importantly, headstrong Larkin is present in Ireland...
I'll not go into the details of what actually happens in Ireland; after all, Mr. Uris can do this far better than I can. So I'll stick to saying that once again, Mr. Uris has managed to put down a set of characters that I really started to get feelings for: it hurts when they're in pain and I'm almost crying with relief when everything works out. It's a good writer that can do that to me!
Daniel Sempere is a little boy, son of a bookshop-owner (how could this not appeal to a BCer?), whose dad once takes him to a magical place: the Cemetery of Forgotten Books. Exactly as the name says, this is where people leave a copy of books that, for one reason or another, have disappeared from the public radar. It's not about quality of the books, nor about their contents; it is purely an effort to keep at least one copy of every book alive.
Traditionally, when entering the Cemetery of Forgotten Books for the first time, the visitor can choose a book that now is his own property. Pretty much randomly, Daniel chooses the one book that seems to have waited for him all its life: The Shadow of the Wind, by Julián Carax. After a feverish night of reading, he must read every other book by Carax, but to his dismay, no books of Carax can be found anywhere in his hometown of Barcelona; in fact, little effort shows that no books can be found anywhere.
This is the start of an utterly strange series of events, where Daniel struggles to find out what happened to Carax and his books, while at the same time struggling to grow up himself.
In one way, this is a detective story, albeit without a corpse. Daniel, with his recruited ally Fermín Romero de Torres, follows the few leads he knows about to former friends and family members of Carax, always trying to find out what's happened, yet wary of showing other people what's happening. Quite soon it becomes clear that more people are interested in Carax's fate, none of them with Daniel's honest intentions. While the end doesn't have the traditional twist of a detective, the story certainly has a few surprising moments!
Yet, the book is so much more than just a detective. Clearly, there's also Daniel's growing up, dealing with adolescence: girls, his father, the lack of mother, losing contact with his friend. To me, this felt as a minor part of the book, but somehow I'm sure the book would be so much less impressive without it.
Another strange part is the character of Fermín: he's a homeless person that Daniel meets after a less-than-successful night at a girl's and who gets recruited to help out at the store. Although we never get to know what he did before he became homeless, it's clear that he's smart and knows his way around the shading areas of society. In fact, his claim to have been a former secret agent might well be true...
But the most impressive part of the book is only tangential to the story. All of this takes place in Barcelona around the 1950, i.e. in Franco's Spain. It's unbelievable what a lawless state Spain must've been in that time! At one time, Daniel's neighbour, a completely inoffensive watchmaker who likes to cross-dress at times, is picked up by the police, raped and beaten to a pulp. Why? To show Daniel c.s. that powerful people oppose them.
I know this is a story and that Spain may not have been like this (I should ask my Spanish colleague once), but just reading this made me realise, once more, how infinitely good it is to live in a civilised country and time!
Japan, 1945. The Second World War is finally over and American soldiers are now occupying Japan. To avoid such a war to happen ever again, the Allied Supreme Commander General MacArthur realises he needs to drag Japan into the 20th century and democracy; but he also realises that he'll need the Emperor's help with that.
At the same time, the Nürnberg trials in Germany show the need for convicting war criminals. While Japan has its share of them, the accounts are thoroughly convoluted; slowly, however, evidence starts to point at members of the government or the imperial family. Needless to say, the Emperor is not happy about this and it falls to MacArthur to find the middle ground between indictment and cooperation.
To make confusion even bigger, MacArthur's personal nemesis, General Tomoyuki Yamashita, has surrendered his forces and needs to be dealt with. Although every political instinct wants to keep him out of Japan, he is no war criminal (or is he?).
Against this backdrop, Jay Marsh is a young aide to MacArthur. As one of the few Americans who speak Japanese, he is instrumental in the communication between MacArthur and the Imperial Palace; with a keen sense of diplomacy, he is ever more communicating himself with the Japanese.
Adding to his convoluted life, Jay is engaged to a girl in the Philippines, but gets ever more involved with a geisha. In time, Jay is fighting his own little war, trying to break MacArthur's grip on him, to get away from Japan and get back to his Philippine heaven.
All this makes a strange book. It's partly a love-story (or, in fact, several love-stories); partly, it's a thriller, working out what happened at the "rape of Manila". But mostly, it's the sad, sad story of people whose lives are less important than the fate of the world.
One more thing: I checked. Of course, MacArthur existed; and just as naturally, Jay Marsh didn't (at least, not with that name. In Wiki). But to my eternal surprise, not only did General Yamashita exist, he is almost perfectly portrayed. For which I salute Mr. Webb: knowing this is based on actual facts, made the book that much more impressive!
The first Dickens I've read in ages, this is a mixture of two stories. On the one hand, there's the story of a lawsuit, Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce, which deals with a contended will of quite a major estate, but which is getting nowhere and seems to be held for the sake of holding it only by the time we join. The second is the story of Esther Summeron, ward of one of the lawsuit's sides (although he's withdrawn from it as much as possible and simply ignores it) and governess/friend to her guardian's cousin, who seem to be on the other side of the lawsuit (although I'm not quite certain of this). I think it's quite obvious how complicated this is going to be...
As always with Dickens, the book has a myriad of characters and almost as many plotlines. For ages, at least all through the first part, these plotlines seem to have nothing in common, apart from the odd character that gets into more than one (but that's quite rare, really). This makes reading of it very difficult: partly because some of the plotlines are more interesting than others and it's difficult to keep reading through the ones that seem inconsequential; partly it's because there is this feeling of getting nowhere at all, even though miles of paper pass your eyes. I'm wondering now if this was an intentional thing: to convey the feeling of the lawsuit throughout the book itself...
Luckily, at some point plotlines start to come together and then everything happens quite fast. Not only does (almost) everything make sense now, it's also a lot more interesting to read. In the later parts, when the story flows more easily, Dickens' qualities as an author shine through a lot brighter!
However, it still is, mostly, a soap opera before its time. Some of the plotlines never connect with the main story, but are just the lives of some minor characters; and clearly, some of the action could happen so much easier and quicker. In the end, the story itself is not that interesting, nor is it very important. It's more of a scaffold to hang all these lifes onto.
It's quite clear that it was written as small, sequentially published chapters and that Dickens had to keep people guessing and wanting for more. At times, this is highly annoying (in the same way that "normal" soaps are), but at the same time I have to admire his brilliance. Especially when the speed picks up: he seems to have known exactly how long he could spin something out and when he needs to get an end to it.
At times it was quite difficult to get through indeed, but over all I had more trouble putting it down than picking it up. It certainly made me want to go through more of his books now!
Dit is het boek waar Fiddler on the Roof op gebaseerd is. Het zijn hele simpele verhalen uit het leven van Tevje, een doogewone Jood in Oekraine (hoewel hij op elke willekeurige plek in Oost-Europa had kunnen leven) aan het begin van de 20e eeuw.
Door een gelukkig toeval heeft Tevje een handel in melk, boter en kaas op kunnen zetten en daarmee is hij een van de meer welvarende inwoners van het dorp waar hij woont. De verhalen die hij vertelt (aan de schrijver, overigens), gaan over zijn leven: hoe hij aan zijn koe kwam, hoe hij probeert om zijn dochters uit te huwelijken, hoe hij volledig de mist in gaat met zijn zuurverdiende spaargeld door een achterneef te vertrouwen om ermee te speculeren.
Er gebeurt niet veel in het boek, maar toch leest het prettig weg. Tussen de regels door krijg je veel mee van het leven in tsaristisch Rusland (voornamelijk als Jood, maar ook meer in het algemeen). Maar eigenlijk is het vooral een studie in gelaten alles over je heel laten komen en het beste maken van wat je overkomt. Misschien niet de slechtste eigenschap om jezelf aan te leren...
Is dit hoogstaande literatuur? Nee, dat zou ik niet zeggen. Maar het is wel interessant en vooral makkelijk om te lezen. Zeker een aanrader voor iemand die wat Joodse cultuur op wil pikken (en die door korte treinreisjes heen moet komen).
Although ostensibly the story of a legal battle, this book has a far deeper meaning than just the trial.
Adam Kelno is a Polish surgeon who flees to England after the Second World War. While he claims he was in the Polish Underground during the war, the Polish government doesn't agree and wants to try him for taking part in Nazi experiments on Jewish prisoners. Their extradition plea fails and Adam is safe to stay in England; however, afraid of more troubles about his past, he tries to get as far away from society as possible: for years he practices in Sarawak (one of England's colonies in South-East Asia), where he works sufficient miracles to gain a knighthood.
The other protagonist of the book is Abraham Cady, a Jewish-American author. When he decides to write a book about the horrible experiments that the Nazi performed on their Jewish prisoners, he includes Adam Kelno as one of the doctors who aided the Nazis. Bolstered by the rebuttal of similar notions in his extradition trial, Adam Kelno unsurprisingly sues Abe Cady for damages.
From here on the book describes the trial and with that the horror that was camp Jadwiga. The outcome of the trial itself is not of utmost importance; it is merely a platform to depict the war crimes on. I don't think I need to elaborate on how horrible those crimes were; anyone who's read Leon Uris' work will know that he manages to convey it scarily well.
Somewhat surprisingly, the most harrowing parts are not when the atrocities themselves are described (although that's bad enough). The part that really got me was when he described what surviving victims were like and how they decided they should confront their past, for nothing more than to get justice done!
One of the strange things of the book is that I couldn't decide which side to support: in the first part, Adam Kelno is clearly the hero and I felt he should be cleared of his charges. But in the second part (when Kelno sues for damages), I couldn't support his side of the trial; nor could I decide to support Cady's (as there was little new evidence of Kelno's guilt or innocence). I guess this is exactly what made these kind of trials (of which I'm sure some existed in real history) so extremely difficult to adjudicate.
As usual with Leon Uris' work, he writes very well. Even though the subject of the book (as any of his other ones) is quite horrible, reading it is pure pleasure. It's the sign of a good author that can make a difficult subject a good read, without doing too much damage to the subject itself!
I don't think I need to say much about the story of the book. It's the Odyssey. Get yourself an education if you don't know what that one's about.
What I do need to mention is that, while this was obviously not Homer's original version (my Greek is very rusty), it is a poetic translation (the translator is Chapman). Which means that the whole lot is in verse. Which, admittedly, is easier than reading it in Greek, but not by much. Let's put it this way: it's a good thing I knew the story beforehand!
What struck me mostly is how much rambling there is. The story itself can be summarised quite quickly (in fact, Homer himself summarises it in a mere 4 lines at some point); even with all the details, there is plenty room for three renditions of the story (which are indeed there) and then some.
The "then some" is actually what most of the book is. There's ages and ages of descriptions (be it the "rosy-fingered dawn" or the presents that Telemachus receives in Sparta) and naturally lines and lines of conversation (which usually leads to nothing at all). I was surprised to notice that there are a few more stories embedded in the book: every now and then, Homer takes a little detour into some other myth. None of these serve an obvious purpose, apart from keeping his audience interested, I should think.
I guess the real surprise is not in the story, or the frills, however. What I never expected, but what did happen, is that I really did get into the story. Even with all those horribly dull parts, even with all the verse (always tricky and sometime plain impossible to read), even knowing the ending: none of that could actually stop me from reading on! That's were the real genius of Homer (and Chapman, to a degree) shines: much as it pains me to put it that way, I think I've found the original soap author!
What can I say about this book? The story is too well-known to comment on it, isn't it? Suffices to say it's been ages since I've read it; I'm pretty sure I made more of it this time.
It's pure brilliance how the various pigs mirror leaders in Communism and (by extension) the Soviet Union: the Major, Napoleon and Snowball are very clear. Only Squealer is a bit more ambiguous (but I'll happily put that down to my lack of knowledge of the Soviet Union rather that to Orwell's writing).
I can't help wondering how he got away with this! After all, it was a time when the Soviet Union was supposed to be the West's friend, but was as touchy as ever on their history. Maybe it's good there's no obvious Stalin in the book...
As always, Orwell bucks the trend of classics: not only is this a book worth reading, it's one that is enjoyable to read too!
This is one classic of which I've always known, and vaguely known the story, but which I'd never read. In a nutshell, it's the story of the gypsy girl Esmeralda (in 15th century France) and mostly her man-trouble. She herself is in love with the captain of the guards Phoebus, who in turn is happy to have a fling with her, but doesn't actually want any strings attached. Meanwhile, both the deacon of the Notre-Dame and the well-known Quasimodo are completely taken by Esmeralda, although neither has a flicker of a chance to get her: the deacon because (obviously) of his vocation, Quasimodo because he is about the ugliest man known in literature, and deaf to boot.
With a few extra characters, this is the gist of the story. However, Hugo manages to spin this out for about 400 pages, mostly by going into exquisite (if sometimes deadly boring) details. The introduction to the book mentions this as well: the slimness of the story-line allows Hugo to take little excursions into almost any realm he can think of. So, interspersed with this love-story are treatises about the architecture of the late Middle ages (from Hugo's perspective of the 18th century), society in general and even the role of the King in France at that time.
This, in fact, is the perfect classic. The story is nothing special and would in fact easily fit in a Barbara Cartland novel; the flights of Hugo's mind into the philosophy of architecture are intriguing, but wearisome; yet, the whole congeals into this book that anyone must've read. I won't go as far as saying it's not an enjoyable read: it is, but it could do with some trimming on the excursions. It certainly is more enjoyable to have read!
Truman Capote's most famous book (and the one that the film Capote deals with), describes the murder of the rich rancher-family Clutter. Two louts drive all the way across Kansas to rob the Clutter-house; as it turns out, Clutter doesn't actually keep any cash in the house, so they come away with next to nothing. Still, they murder all the Clutters (Mum, Dad and their two teenage kids), in an action that rightly shocked the nation.
Although the book describes both the day before the Clutters were murdered and the aftermath of it, it doesn't really deal with the hunt for these people, which is only a part of it (it took the authorities a few weeks to find the murderers). What the book really deals with, is what possessed the murderers to be so coldblooded about it, and what effect this murder (and more so, the way it was preformed) had on the poor inhabitants of this tiny town.
As the title suggests, the murderers were completely sanguine about their deed; nor did either of them really apologise afterwards. Somehow that wasn't the most chilling about the book, though.
What really made my skin crawl, is the distant, almost clinical way Truman Capote wrote about this. I can see how this was inevitable; after all, he didn't know either the Clutters or the perpetrators. And surely, getting any emotional involvement would've driven him stark-raving mad. But still, it's his dry prose that really hits home how horrid this action was! (That, in fact, is a compliment to the man; not a criticism).
This is one of those books that everyone should read. It's not enjoyable at all, but it definitely is worth the read!
I'm not quite sure what to make of this book. Based on the only other Bryson I've read (which was A Short History of Nearly Everything), it's quite typical of his style. Ostensibly about American english, the root of the language and words, it is in fact only partly about the language; a lot of the book tells about American culture more generally or even gives anecdotes that, although remotely related to the subject matter, are mostly just entertaining.
Having said that, it is quite an enjoyable book. It's not as funny as I expected it to be (based on the blurb and reactions I've heard, rather than on A Short History), but it definitely read very easily. It certainly is a book that one enjoyes to read, once; after that, it'll start a second career as one of those books that stay on your bookshelf for the odd browse and referral to.
A typical Ken Follett, this book does so much more than it says on the tin. The main story line is about the effort to sign a treaty between England and Russia on the eve of the First World War. The Earl of Walden, a conservative English gentleman, gets the task to negotiate this treaty with the Russian envoy Aleks, who's also his nephew by marriage. When the Russian anarchist Feliks gets wind of this treaty, he decides to kill Aleks and thereby stop Russa from going to war (and maybe even precipitate the Revolution).
Mixed into this plot is the story of Charlotte Walden, a sheltered 18 year old who's just come out into society. When she starts to get interested in everything she wasn't supposed to know (from suffragettes to sex), her parents try to clamp down on her, causing her to go into full-blown teenager mode. Unsurprisingly, her rebellious streak - combined with a sincere progressive mindset - allows ample opportunity for Feliks to use her (albeit in a surprisingly not cynical way).
In good Ken Follett tradition, the action is drawn out by various dei ex machina, until everything converges on the final moments of Aleks' stay in England, the final opportunity for Feliks to prevent war and the final opportunity for Walden (and Churchill) to draw Russia into the First World War and thus protect the Empire from imminent destruction.
Impressively, considering that we all know Russia got into the war, Follett manages to give Feliks the upper hand for quite a while. In fact, he does quite a good job of making him likable (if only further into the book), making me wonder how on earth he would resolve the problem. Clearly, Feliks must fail his mission (or the book would be historically incorrect), but the way it's written, neither Feliks nor Walden/Aleks deserve to lose. The genius that Follett is, ties all of this together in a very fulfilling finish!
The one thing I wonder about is this: in an epilogue, Follett quickly mentions that Russia did indeed enter the war (and that this may have saved Paris from falling), which is true enough. But then he goes on to summarise Charlotte's life after these events, finishing with the remark that she's still alive, even if her memories are fading.
So now I'm wondering, is he actually talking about a real story? Was there an Earl of Walden, who engineered the treaty between Russia and England (even if there may not have been an anarchist anywhere near him)? Or is this all a double bluff and am I falling for it? Oh, there are moments when I just hate Ken Follett!
Yet another of McCullough's Rome-series (I should really have read the lot in order!), this one deals with the time that Sulla runs the City. I've left reviewing the book far too long to remember the exact details, but I think it starts when Sulla defeats Marius and starts his very scary purging of society: everyone who's been on Marius' side, who seems to have been on Marius' side or who can be said to have been on Marius' side is ruthlessly murdered. Needless to say, a good deal of the latter are innocent and die only because Sulla doesn't like them, or some rival wants to see them dead and "informs" on them.
Sulla, however, did have his good sides too. Apart from revamping the entire Roman constitution (and doing a pretty decent job at it, even if it was all changed again after his death), his major contribution to history (or at least to McCullough's story) is to relieve Ceasar of his role as flamen dialis, thus allowing him a military career after all.
Not only is this the age of Sulla's prominence, it is also the transition of generations: Sulla and Marius' generation are on their way out; Pompey and Ceasar's are on their way in. At the very begin of his career, Ceasar already shows the characteristics that will make him great; as a junior legate, not only does he know exactly the right thing to do, he manages to fire up his men so much that they win the battle that was supposed to kill him and are his men to the death. Unsurprisingly, he makes a few enemies in the bargain (mostly far less useful legates), and just as unsurprisingly doesn't seem to give a fig for it.
It is unfortunate that I don't remember details too well, although I'm quite sure I'll recognise everything when I read it again. I certainly enjoyed reading it; not just because McCullough's style is very good, but also because I'd read both books before and after it, and was itching to find out how they were linked.
As a small footnote, though, I should say that I start wondering how much of the books is history and how much is fiction. I don't mean that McCullough has made up events, but surely she must be simplifying things, like Ceasar being so good at everything that early in life. I guess it's artistic freedom and I shouldn't judge her, though...
Although these are officially two books, it doesn't quite make sense to review them separately. They're part of Roald Dahl's autobiography (or at least, they describe part of his life; I'm not sure sure whether he's written any other books about himself): from his very first memories, through various schools and a rather short stint working for Shell in Africa until he becomes a fighter pilot in the Middle East and then finally returns to home to England; all the way through he talks us through his experiences and adds little pictures, extracts from letters and the like, which makes it all even more authentic.
The books are brilliant to read, as would be expected from one of the world's best story-tellers; sometimes funny, sometimes quite sad, sometimes simply impressive (Africa seems to have to effect on people), they're always very moving and extremely vivid. It's truly like he's talking to the reader (to the point where you're tempted to offer him a cuppa when you get one for yourself).
But the most beautiful thing about them is that they're so recognisable: it's very clear that his life was his inspiration for his books. Of course his books are quite fanciful and mysterious, but there is an underlying reality about them, and that reality is linked to his own history. And with a life as diverse and strange as he's lead (and that's only up to the age of 20-odd), I'm not surprised he could write so many good, but weird books!
One of Dickens' more frivolous books, if not the most frivolous one, this follows Mr. Pickwick and his three friends/charges Mssrs. Snodgrass, Tupman and Winkle as the meander up and down the country in a rather meaningless fashion. The story doesn't really go anywhere; although the three younger gentlemen are courting ladies (and end up with them in the end), that's more incidental than anything else. While Mr. Pickwick seems to have no goal in life other then being a good man.
The book is littered with additional characters (as always with Dickens); party these are people that Mr. Pickwick and co. meet during their travels, partly they're in stories that are told. There are so many stories, of such different styles and types, embedded in the book, that it almost turns into a Reader's Digest...
Of course, the supporting characters are the best of the lot! While Mr. Pickwick is just your average lovely old granddad and his three friends arem pretty much useless fops, the show is stolen by Mr. Pickwick's man-servant Sam Weller and his father: two of the msot Cockney of people ever seen outside of Eastenders, with a fierce loyalty to Mr. Pickwick and eachother (and their drink). And then there is Mr. Jingle, the evil one, who speaks in broken sentences only and looks like the kind of scarecrow he truly is. Or the "fat boy", who divides his time between eating and sleeping, sometimes even managing to do both at the same time!
There is not much of Dickens' usual railing against society in this book. Yes, the courts do get mentioned and they don't get off very well either. But the venom isn't really there; it's more like an objective statement of England's courts being useless (rather than evil). Which makes the book not quite representative of Dickens' work (or at least, not of the part I've read so far), but a lot easier to read than some of the other.
Maybe the best description of it is "Dickens-lite": you get the good prose and lovely characters, but without having to chew your way through the deep meaning that he normally imbues his books with.
Fermat's last theorem, that An + Bn = Cn has no real number values for any n > 2, was postulated (and presumably proved) by Fermat sometime in the 17th century, but as he famously said it, the margin he'd scribbled it down on was "too small to contain the proof". Until Andrew Wiles managed to finally prove Fermat right in the early '90s, this theorem has been in the center of mathematics: it has ruined quite a few careers when people failed to prove it, but sparked many more when new mathematics techniques emerged from the attempts.
From the first Egyptians and Greeks that bothered to think about numbers, all the way to the mathematical underpinning of multi-dimensional space, this book traces the origins, the importance and finally the proof of Fermat's little 3-century bombshell.
It's an elegant mixture of mathematical ideas (Singh - quite rightly in my opinion - doesn't bother with formulae, but concentrates on getting the gist of ideas across) and scientific history/biography. I'd estimate it desribes about 20-odd mathematicians (of any age, but mostly after Fermat), who've been variously successful in their careers, in quite exquisite detail. Yet it also manages to explain how Wiles finally proved the theorem, in a way that even I understand it!
In the end, I'm left being utterly impressed with Fermat's genius. Don't knock Andrew Wiles: he did manage to solve a 300-year old riddle. But he used mathematical techniques that weren't even around in the Second World War, let alone in Fermat's age. So either Fermat managed to prove this tricky little notion in a way that cannot even be imagined now, or he simply conned the whole mathematical community into believing he had the proof squirreled away somewhere. Either way, he's a bloody genius in my book!
With this book, Leon Uris returns to his beloved US Marine Corps (which, considering that I started with Battle Cry back in the day, makes it full circle for me too), but this time it's even more of a historical novel than ever. In the years after the American Civil War, the US Army (or whatever their title back then was) is struggling to find a spot for the Marine Corps in their plans. Up to then, the Marine Corps had supplied the original Marines: soldiers on ships who stop regular seamen from going AWOL. In the late 1800s, however, the need for such a Corps dries up and Brass is tempted to merge the Corps into the rest of the Army.
History clearly shows us that this didn't happen, and according to Leon Uris that's due to a few quitessential Marines. There "Warthogs" (lads whose lives have been saved by the legendary Paddy O'Hara) come up with the brilliant plan to turn the Corps into an elite force for amphibious landing. To prove their point, they cajole the Corps (and Navy) into allowing them to set up a class for the first set of Marines, new style.
Enter O'Hara, of title fame. This, in fact, is not Paddy, but his son Zachary O'Hara. Having grown up in his daddy's bar and thus effectively in the Corps, Zach O'Hara is clearly the best material that the Marines have and he gets quickly drafted into the school the Warthogs are setting up. Unfortunately, his attention is slightly distracted when he meest the lovely Amanda Kerr, daughter of wealthy (and influential) industrialist Horace Kerr (who wouldn't like the Corps at the best of times). When she'sas interested in O'Hara as he is in her, to the point where she may thwart her father's plan to cement the business, the stage is perfectly set for an explosion.
And this is where the book lost me. It moves from mostly historical fiction with a romantic aside, into a romance (or sorts) with some USMC-related thingies. To me, it lost the magic that Leon Uris usually weaves and, uncharacteristically, I ended up counting the pages to the end. While I'll keep the book (it is a Leon Uris, after all, and I'm working hard to get all his work), I would never recommend it to anyone. I can only hope the next one I read is back to his normal level...
Against every logic, in Robert Rankin's universe Brentford is what Cardiff is to Torchwood: an utterly impossible center of all kind of weirdness. When some company tries to buy the grounds of the local football ground, it is in fact merely the first move in a war of Good vs. Evil. Somewhat randomly, one of the (part-time) councilmen insists on a wager: if Brentford United wins the FA cup (an occurence slightly less likely to happen than Hell freezing over in July, according to the bookies) the town keeps the football grounds. If not, well... better not dwell on that! Even more randomly, the one person that's trusted to lead the club through the treacherous waters called "football" is Jim Pooley, a man well-known to have raised doing nothing to a perfect art. Should we be surprised that very strange things are about to happen?
This was my first Robert Rankin (although he's been warmly recommended by a good friend ages ago) and I have to say I really enjoyed it. It's the strange, not-quite-different-world that we see in Terry Pratchett's books as well, combined with a H.G. Wells-like penchant for strange technologies, time-travel and the like. All this mashed together with a style that reads beautifully and I can completely understand why Ruth insisted I should read his stuff. Much as it pains me to say so, the girl does know her good books and I'll be obliged to follow her advice. Please, nobody tell her I said it, or I will never hear the end of this...
Lyra is an orphan, living in Jordan College, one of Oxford's most prestigious ones. When her uncle, the famous adventurer and philosopher, comes back to the College and - coincidentally - her playmate Roger disappears (as so many children have recently), Lyra gets sucked into the biggest adventure of her life. And adventure that brings her in contact with the seafaring Gyptians, brings her to the North Pole and into the land of the Panserbørne, the armoured ice-bears of the North. And at the end, it brings her in contact with one of the major mysteries of her world, and in fact of ours.
Set in a world that is deceptively like ours, but with a few key differences, this is more than just fantasy. One of the main differences between Lyra's world and the real one, is that in Lyra's world everyone has a daemon, i.e. an animal companion that is effevtively their soul/conscience. Normal people can't be too far away from their daemons (or they'll feel the distance as physical pain), although Lyra finds out during the book that exceptions to this do exist; hardly surprisingly, the presence of the daemons does immensely effects the way that people interact, as the daemons will show their emotions quite openly...
The second main difference is that Lyra's world is governed by the Magisterium, a body that is a mix of the Vatican Council, your average government, and a Scientific Society. The Magisterium is all-powerful, in worldly as well as spiritual matters.
The differences between the world notwithstanding, the book is in its own way a piss-take on our world as well. It's hidden slightly under the surface, but the Magisterium is clearly a satire of the not-quite-separated Church and State that most countries have. Equally, Jordan College may not be real Oxford college, but it does very much have the same feeling as the real Oxbrige ones. Including all the backstabbing that happens (only in Jordan College is tends to be literally stabbing).
Of course, it is also just a pretty adventure story in a slightly freaky world. If you're such inclined, simply floating along on the waves of the story and enjoying the narrative works impressively well. I am very much looking forward to the next part in the series...
Another one of Bryson's that does what it says on the tin: obviously, Down Under is about Australia. Although I've dubbed it a "Travel" book, that's not completely true. As always with Bill Bryson, while there is a main thrust of the book, he happily meanders through his memories and random stories all the time. In this one, he relates his discovery of Australia, over the course of three or four separate visits there.
As one would expect of Australia, the book imprints two things on the reader mainly: 1) Australia is BIG; and 2) Australia is BIG and very, very strange! I'm not going to relate all the things Bryson says (read the book, yourself; it's worth it), but it's quite telling that off the 10 most poisonous animals in the world, 8 (give or take two) can be found in Australia. The combination of desert, scary animals (on land and in the sea) and rip-tides means that Australia is the best way to kill a human person. And the Ozzies reply to this is their famously relaxed attitude to everything, from their own lives all the way through to world politics.
One of the strange things that Bryson mentions, is that, geographically isolated as Australia is, it's even more isolated from world society. Out here in the real world we hardly hear a thing about Australia (who is the prime minister of Australia? And what currency do they use); while in Australia, they don't really seem to get news from the outside. At least, nothing that isn't the size of George Bush barging into Iraq. Which is kinda cute (not the Iraq-thing; Australia's isolation) and apparently keeps Australia more or less in the fifties. The book is a few years old now, so of course Australia may have been dragged kicking and screaming into the, oh... 80s by now ;-), but that doesn't change the point: Australia, for a really big, scary country that could killd you three times over without batting a metaphoric eyelid, is actually quite cute and fluffy!
Having read this book has only strengthened two of my resolves: that I will have to visit Australia at some point and that it's worth reading every bleeding letter that Bill Bryson ever put on paper.
Terry Pratchett's answer to The Omen, this is a story of the Apocalypse with quite a few small suprises. For starters, it's the wrong boy! Well, not really, one can't really go wrong (or should that be "right"?) with Satan's spawn, but he does end up with just about the most boring people ever for parents... And things go steadily downhill from there!
The main characters, to me, were not really the antichrist (or Adam, as he's known to everyone else) himself, nor his gang of friends (although they are remarkably well-written 11-year olds). No, the main characters are Crowley and Aziraphale, respectively Hell's and Heaven's representatives (in the sense of a travelling salesman, not in that of the Pope) on Earth. Not only do these two know eachother quite well, and in a pinch would call on the other before bringing reinforcements, they've also slightly "gone local". Which means that the final destruction of Earth is not quite what they're rooting for (although it has been written into their contract forever. Literally). Imagine an angel trying to disobey God, yet avoid following Lucifer down the pit; imagine a demon trying to disobey the Devil, without being banished to eternal goodness: it makes for very good reading! Especially when the angel is as camp as Graham Norton on a good day, and the demon about as cool as Michael J. Fox in his heydays (whenever those were)...
Of course, this being a story of the Apocalypse, the horseriders have to play a role too. And Neil Gaiman wouldn't be Terry Pratchett (or something to that extent) if they wouldn't be slightly warped. Modern. Funny. Coming with an entourage of four completely normal bikers with too much time on their hands (and far too little cells in their brains). I just love how Pestilence is no longer there (apparently, he decided it was no longer fun when humanity came up with a dirty trick like antibiotics), but has been succeeded by Pollution; how true is that?
In the end, even though it's clearly not a standard Terry Pratchett (if only because it's set on Earth), it does very much smack of him. Great fun to read, and really made me want to read Neil Gaiman's books!
Set mostly in Jerusalem around the proclamation of Israel's independence, this is the story of Amos Oz's childhood. Unsurprisingly, there's quite a lot of tension in the book, most obviously from the situation Jerusalem, surrounded by Arab villages (although this doesn't really mean anything in the beginning of the book, which is a few years before the Independence). But there's more: there's tension between Amos' dry, scholarly father and his dreamy mother with her strange stories; there's tension between the old Russion Jewry (to which the family clearly belongs) and the new Israel that the growing Amos worships.
It's hard to distil some kind of story from the book. The facts are pretty clear: there's the Independence and subsequent war; there's his mother's suicide when Amos is about 13; there's the widening gulf between Amos and his father (one that doesn't seem to have been caused so much as revealed and exacerbated by his mother's suicide), culminating in Amos not only leaving to live in a kibbutz, but even taking on another last name. Yet all of these seem strangely anecdotal. It's not that they're unconnected (they're clearly not), it's that the connections aren't interesting. Which, in a way, makes sense; after all, these are Amos Oz's memoirs and memories tend to be very anecdotal. But it left me feeling I hadn't read a book, I'd read a rough sketch for one.
What makes it all a lot harder (and this I do hold against Mr. Oz) is that the story, such as it is, flits back and forth between various times. I don't mind flitting forward to the present time, or back to his grandparents' time (even though the latter should, in my opinion, happen less often than it does); it's the flitting around inside the time frame of his youth that annoyed me. One moment he's about six and all happy to curl up with a book, the next his mother is dead, only for the next chapter to go back to when he's eight. To make things worse, he would usually not deign to indicate what time we're in now; the reader would just have to pick it up from the text.
Again, I can see where it comes from with the memories coming back somewhat randomly, but I would've appreciated it a lot more if he'd organised the book a little more. Now, I spent more time being annoyed by his style of writing to really notice the stuff he does write...
Unlike your average sequel, this one doesn't pick up where The Northern Lights stops; instead, the story starts with Will, a young boy in what does indeed seem to be our world. Fleeing from the police, having killed someone while protecting his paranoid (albeit not without reason, it seems) mother, Will finds himself in a parallel world, which - we soon find out - is the one Lyra came into at the end of The Northern Lights. This world holds the key (almost literally) to all the other ones; unfortunately, it is also infested with soul-eating Spectres, which assail any adult they can find. All of a sudden, Lyra and Will are the older, stronger and wiser of the society. And still they manage to get themselves into trouble... En passant, we also learn what the importance of Dust is and how it relates to our world.
One of the things that really me about the book, is that Lyra and Will cease to be (or rather, I cease to think of them as) kids, but turn into your average hero. Only every now and then does it hit home that they're only 12-ish years old (usually because they can't reach something too high up). I have the sneaking suspicion that's in preparation for a massively important finale in the final book, where they have to take a reasonably adult role. In fact, the whole book reads like an intermediate between mostly a kids-story (as The Northen Lights somewhat was) and a full-blown parody of our world and its problems, as I expect the third book will be.
Still, it's a very enjoyable read. I am still looking forward to the next installment!
When one of the experiments in the High Enery Magical Building goes slightly pear-shaped (Discworld's equivalent of a nuclear meltdown threatening), the wizards decide divert the raw magic into a Project they've been wanting to start for a while: making a tiny little universe of their own. To their immense surprise, the universe they create looks nothing like Discworld, but insists on having round things. Of course, being wizards, they can't stop themselves from tinkering with it, including sending poor Rincewind into the universe as a "reporter on the ground".
As the wizards' universe increases in complexity, intervening chapters explain the science behind it (and thus behind our world). From the Big Bang and the births of stars and planets to evolution and space-travel, Ian Stewart and Jack Stewart gently lead the reader gently along the cutting edge of science.
As a popular science book, it reads much like Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything: in a very easy-going it explains a lot, yet it's very easy to get lost in the story and not actually remember any of the science. That, incidentally, is a compliment to the authors, not a criticism: the science is there for anyone who wants to get it; but their story-telling is very good too.
As a Discworld book, it's a little stilted and lacks the storyline the most have. But as a combination of Discworld and popular science, it's immensely powerful. What I really appreciated, is how the Discworld story "slops over" to the science-chapters: every now and then, the Archchancellor or Great A'Tuin will be mentioned in the science-chapters, making this one book, marryinng two very dissimilar subjects (rather than two interspersed books). It's very clear (to me, at least) that the three authors get along very well and that they've written the whole book together, even if any chapter has one principal author.
I won't go as far as saying this is the best popular science book I've ever read; nor would I say it's the best anyone can choose. But for those people that like Discworld (or, in fact, any fantasy), this is without a doubt the best book to read if they want an introduction into science!
With war between Voldemort and the rest of the wizarding world not so much looming as actually starting, the story is taking on even more of a dark turn. From the start, when Harry is whisked away from his uncle's house to the Weasley's, it is clear that danger and fighting will play a major role in the book. Under Dumbledore's personal tutelage, Harry is starting more make inroads on the final fight with Voldemort that is bound to come eventually; without giving too much away, it's not quite in the way he expected, though...
There is, of course, still the story of the school and mostly of the three main character slowly finding their feet in love (or, especially in Ron's case, snogging). But it clearly has taken a back-seat to the unfolding story of the war, and at the end it's set to be pushed even further back in the last book.
I still enjoyed reading it, and it went down really quickly, but I have to admit I'm looking forward to the end. Partly because I want to know how the story will end, but partly I'm getting fed up with it. The books are getting dangerously close to that point were they just drag along... Still, I will be reading the last one at some point and I daresay I'll enjoy it too.
This awe-inspiring and surprisingly easily-readable book is a first-hand report of some of the Nuremberg trials. Airey Neave was a young soldier/lawyer, who's dragged into the trial as some sort of general aide. Mostly, he had two tasks: first, to deliver the indictment to ther German accused and to help them with organising their defense (not actually by being a lawyer, but facilitating their finding lawyers); then, later on, he chaired a sub-committee determining whether certain organisations (like the Gestapo and the Nazi-party) should be considered as criminal organisations.
The book is roughly split into two parts: one about the indictment, than the second one about the trial itself (incorporating that sub-committee). As Neave himself concedes, it's not aimed to properly describe and disect the trial (there are other, more learned books for that, some of which are mentioned in this one); rather, it gives Neave's personal, human perspective of it.
By far the most interesting bit is about the indictment. Poor Neave had to go to all but two of the prisoners (two were not in Nuremberg yet at that time), giving them the indictment and getting into their skulls that they would be tried fairly. He's taken the opportunity to quickly describe each and everyone of the accused, how they came to be in Nuremberg and how they took their plight. While I new some of the Germans, most were completely unknown to me (or I only knew their names), so it was very enlightening (if somewhat gruesome) to read about their actions. It was quite scary to see how many of these people still didn't accept they'd done anything wrong (other than losing the war perhaps). Even if other books probably deal with the legal bits better, this insight into the accuseds' character makes this book unique.
The book is interspersed with photos, mostly of the accused and mostly during the trial, which is quite interesting too. I was truly shocked (something not that easily done) by the evil look of Goering (there really is no other way of describing him). Most of the others, however, look surprisingly "normal". It makes sense of course, it's not like people show their character on their sleeves; but subconsciously I did expect these men to look like monsters more than anything else.
All in all, it's a very interesting book. Considering the difficult matter it deals with, I was quite impressed at how easily it read. I would certainly recommend it to anyone as a relatively easy entrance into knowing more of the Nuremberg trials. And I'll certainly look out of Neave's other books, which seem to deal with his wartime "adventures"!
Henry Smart is an Irishman on the run from his hitman-past. At first he's in New York, trying to muscle in on the Prohibition-fuelled black market of booze; but when this turns sour, he has to flee and ends up in Chicago. Here, he meets Louis Armstrong and turns into Louis' white face: the guy that allows Louis to get places where he usually wouldn't. Still, his past catches up with him, ending with him being driven away again and taking to the (rail)road with his woman and children; when they get split up, Henry ends up chasing their stories, while building a legend for himself, in the hope that they hear about him eventually.
This is my first ever Roddy Doyle and I really hope it's not representative for all his work. It just didn't do anything for me: far too vague! The story itself has merits (or rather, potential), but I got immensely annoyed by the style of writing. Even though I can't actually recall any specifics now, overall I felt it was too erratic, too unclear who was who and what exactly was happening. Not my thing at all.
Journal Entry 65 by RonOren from Wassenaar, Zuid-Holland Netherlands on Wednesday, December 31, 2008
In this sequel to Porterhouse Blue, the College is still in trouble. Not only are the Fellows less than happy about Skullion, the former Head Porter, being Master, he's had a stroke and is now capable of little more than sitting in his wheelchair, guzzling beer. Meanwhile, the former Master's widow is certain that her late husband was murdered and plants her own little Fellow as a spy in the Common Room. As the College is completely broke (still) and creative thinking is necessary, the Bursar gets himself embroiled with some shady multinational/drugs-running business. It can be hardly a surprise that this end up in tears, all around...
Without getting into more details (not least as I've read it too long ago to actually remember them), suffices to say it's hilarious. Once again, Tom Sharpe manages to take the micky out of Cambridge, albeit this time taking aim at the transition to the 20th century, which is not the easiest of affairs. As anyone who's in Cambridge would recognise, once again Tom Sharpe is utterly and completely right!
Journal Entry 66 by RonOren from Wassenaar, Zuid-Holland Netherlands on Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Richard Morgan is a born-and-bred Bristol gunsmith and tavernkeeper's son, who's had a rotten run in life: his daughter dies young, his wife has a stroke and then his son commits suicide to avoid his teacher's groping hands. If that's not enough, when Richard finds out about an excise-fraud, he's framed by the fraudsters to stop him from testifying.
Set just after the American Revolution, the English prison system is completely overflowing with convicts not being shipped to the Colonies anymore, yet the laws still ridiculously strict. So when Richard is convicted (unfairly, I should add), he's thrown into a completely overcrowded jail, where convicts are kept alive by their family, their wits and their strengths more than by their jailers. Against all odds, Richard manages to keep himself healthy, clean and sane and, without even trying, turns into a sort of primus inter pares.
After several transfers, the last one of which sees Richards gang moved to a former warship anchored in the Thames, they're eventually shipped to New South Wales, as part of the first convict-convoy to populate Australia. Again, Richard seems to rise to the challenge: despite conditions similar to slaver-ships, Richard and his friends keep healthy and even get into the authorities' good books. After landfall, Richards hard work, skills and neigh-on perfect morals makes him more and more appreciated, so that when he eventually gets pardoned, he's a true pillar of the community.
Usually, Colleen McCullough's books describe history as it may well have been, while still staying firmly inside the realm of fiction. With this one, however, I'm not that sure: in the authors afterword, McCullough mentions Morgans further life and even the help of his great-granddaughter; so presumably, he was a real person. But I cannot help wonder how much of the story is really his, and how much is an amalgamation of various convicts that ended up well. Then again, the character is so sympathetic, I really like the idea of him being real and, after all the crap in his life, ending up happy.
The only thing I'm sorry about is having to leave his story so early; I can only hope some other of McCullough's books tells the remaining struggle to make a real country of Australia!
This retelling of King Arthur's story takes the rather unusual viewpoint of the women in his life. Starting with his mother, Igraine and how she's made to give Uther Pendragon his son and heir (engineered by her sister and Avalon's Lady of the Lake Viviane), the story then moves on to Arthur's half-sister Morgaine and of course his wife, Gwenhwyfar (a far better spelling than Guinevere, in my humble opinion). Apart from the story being told from the women's eyes (which quite interestingly means the story happily glosses over most of the battles), Morgaine's voice allows some benefit-of-hindsight (when she herself is now the Lady of the Lake) summaries.
In my eyes, there's a far better part to this version, though. Set just after the Romans have left British shores, Arthur's reign is not only characterised by the fight against the incoming Saxons, but by the onset of Christianity as well. As the old religion of the druids (of which Avalon is the Holy Island) is slowly being pushed out of the world by the priests, the Lady of the Lake and the Merlin of Brittain plot, scheme and struggle to retain some influence in the court. As Morgaine finds out to her dismay, this involves some discomfort and - more than anything else - lack of personal initiative; one has to love how Zimmer Bradley (unwittingly, I'm sure) takes the micky out of all religions here...
Although the main story is obviously the same, Ms. Zimmer Bradley has played around with some details: the Merlin, e.g., is not a person so much as an office of state. Like Gwenhwyfar, some of the names have been changed slightly too and I'd say to the better. All in all, the changes give the story yet another novel take! I'm not at all convinced that this is the best way to tell Arthur's story, but it is good to read a different take on it, and a very enjoyable one at that.
In this lovely easy read, Sobel tells the story of John Harrison, a self-taught clockmaker who solved the problem of measuring longtitude. For ages seafaring people could not measure the longtitude they were at reliably and the English Parliament wrote out a competition, promising £20,000 to whoever could come up with a device or method that would solve this problem (and have it proven, of course).
The whole crux of the problem was to measure the time of day both where one was and in a set reference point (which, incidentally would be Tenerife for quite some time); two competing schemes were tried to do this. One involved long tables of where the moon would be relative to the stars at certain times a day on every day; the navigator would use the moon to "read" the time in Tenerife when his ship's bells told him it was midnight where he was and compare the two to get the longtitude. The other scheme would quite simply have a clock on board, constantly set to Tenerife time. The only snag in the latter scheme: clocks were not even remotely accurate enough to give the longtitude to any exact standards.
It obviously goes too far to explain in any detail what John Harrison did to make clocks better; for that, you'll have to read the book. Let's just say that he was a genius who, somehow, intuitively understood clocks. Not only could he make them to exquisite precision, he also invented a few different mechanisms to avoid problems such as stopping the clock when winding it, or the clock changing speed with temperature.
The rivalry between the two competing schemes (understandably and predictably exascerbated by the prize money) takes an ever more important role in the book, as Harrison is slowly getting closer and closer to the perfect clock and his rivals are putting together the tables they need for the astronomical route. With one of his most bitter rivals, Nevil Maskelyne, as the Astronomer Royal, Harrison seems himself thwarted at every turn, in what seems to be fair and unfair ways. If nothing else, this book is a testament to his stubbornness, backing his work in the face of the whole establishment.
I really enjoyed this book, which is very well written, even if is hops and skips through the story and timelines. If there's one thing I would improve, it is that it needs some drawings. I realise that this isn't meant as a textbook on clocks, but merely as a scientific-historical story; but Sobel tried to explain some of the adjustments that Harrison makes, which were quite hard to follow. I for one would have appreciated a few schemes to show me what he did, with a few references to other books for those who'd like to get more details.
But apart from this, it's a lovely little book, which I would recommend to anyone who's interested in timekeeping, or just in science/engineering in general.
In this, the last installment of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, everything slowly comes together. As usual, it would go too far to detail the storyline (or storylines really, as there're quite a few different strands) here; let's just say that every character gets visited, including Mary Malone, the physicist in Will's (i.e. our) world that helped Lyra and Will before. Weaving the multitude of characters and numerous worlds together, Pullman finally explains everything we've been wondering about since the first book.
Unfortunately, it is too long ago since I've actually read this book to say much about it. Of course, as the rest of the series, it can be read at two levels. It's either some deep critique of our society, religion and power-structures; or it's merely an adventure story of two kids in strangely similar, yet different worlds.
What I actually remember most is the echos of other stories in this book. There are a lot of characters that almost feel like they could come from Gulliver's Travels. The miniature spies/soldiers that team up (not quite voluntarily) with Lyra and Will are somewhat like the Lilliputians. Similarly, when Mary Malone gets into a new world, where the intelligent beings are strange quadrupeds, I couldn't help feeling I'd met Pullman's version of the Houyhnhnms. When Lyra and Will go into the world of the dead, there's all sorts of stories it resembles; mostly it's like Orpheus going into Hades to get Euridice back, but with a touch of Odysseus' search for Teiresias' ghost.
As with the first two books, it is certainly an enjoyable read. Do I feel there's more to it than just a pretty story? Certainly, even if I'm not sure I got everything out of it. Maybe this series is one of those that one should reread, looking for the deeper symbolism. But even as I have read it, I'd happily recommend it to anyone as a great series!
One of those rare books that can be summarised by one word only. Or maybe not that rare, considering the first of the three writers; after all, most of TP's books can be summarised by the word "strange". In this case, though, the imperative word is certainly "stories".
As the first Science of Discworld book, the Science bits and Discworld bits alternate, illuminating and explaining one another. Unlike the first one, though (and thrusting me outside my comfort zone), this book does not deal with the creation of Roundworld (i.e. Earth) or the evolution of various species on it. This one starts with the non-hairy ape (for want of a better description) and details the emergence of mankind. Not biologically, that is, as they are technically the same species. Rather, it deals with the emergence of mind and society (not necessarily in that order or related to each other). And this, say Messr. Stewart and Cohen, is almost exclusively due to stories.
Stories that allowed us to pass ideas and abilities on to the later generations, bypassing the genetic route that other species use. Stories that allowed us to imagine various situations and pick the most favourable one (which nowadays we tend to call foresight). Stories that made us shiver and crawl in fear of something far worse than anything nature could throw at us and all of a sudden that tiger isn't so scary after all (although evolution probably did weed this last story out rather quickly).
And who better to show that power of stories than good old Will? Guess what: the globe does not actually refer to Earth itself, but to a mere man-made structure in London. Who said the pen was mightier than the sword? Wielded properly, it's mightier than a horseshoe glued to a wizard's staff!
I don't want to go into more detail; not least because the book itself does so far better than I ever will. Again, the three-headed author has hit the sweet spot with the mix of Science and Discworld. Another recommendation if anyone asks. I'll be looking forward to read the next instalment in this rather educational series!
In a dystopian future, where the world is slowly being engulfed in an ice age, Dr. Josua Christian is a successful psychologist, dealing with an endemic depression brought on by the general state of the world. Most importantly, he is a charismatic man that uses his almost magical powers of charm to make people trust him and unburden; an improvement of their mental state then comes naturally. When his name is thrown up by an exercise in the all-powerful Department of the Environment, he is catapulted into a state of celebrity by the Department's powerhouse Judith Carriol. Although her motives are most likely good (at least, for the general population, even if th0y're not for Dr. Christian himself), things quickly spiral out of control and take on a rather gruesome nature. Ironically, the new creed mentioned in the title, reverts to something very similar to the creeds already available now.
The most impressive part of the book is the scarily realistic picture of the future. Admittedly, McCullough's doom-scenario is centered on the Earth cooling down massively rather than the global warming we are actually seeing now. But the implications are rather similar to what I fear may happen in reality soon: the landmass we can live on and grow our food on is rapidly shrinking, with more and more countries disappearing completely (under ice, rather than seawater). Drastic measures are needed to bring the size of the population in line with the Earth capabilities to nurture us. And crucially, the world tends to blame the USA for the problem (which may not be true for global warming, but I'm sure many people feel it's us in the developed world that could've and should've solved the problem before). It's a chilling (no pun intended) glimpse of what our world might look like if climate change cannot be controlled. Very impressive, considering it was written in the mid-eighties, before anyone had an idea of climate change cropping up.
I'm even more impressed with Colleen McCullough after reading this book. It's not an easy subject and certainly not within her normal comfort zone (or at least, not within the sphere she usually writes about). But she handles it admirably well: I never felt bored, I really wanted to know what would happen and I sympathised with Dr. Christian so much. I wasn't surprised or shocked by the ending (which the blurb claims I should've been), but I was saddened by it. I realise the book would not have worked at all with another ending, yet I'm left hankering for it.
So, overall, it's not an easy subject and it's not an easy book to read. But McCullough has definitely made it as easy to read as possible and through that has made it a very impressive and great read!
Quinn Patrick O'Connell, the most Irish of Americans in the Mid-West, is on a roll. From an unwilling Marine Corps hero, rescueing a daring mission and a number of his partners' dead bodies from the jaws of defeat, through a strong stance on anti-gun laws as Governor of Colorado, this is a man that doesn't shy away from controversy. So when he runs for president, the incumbent, a man grown filthily rich on the back of his own ubiquitous computer system and carried into office by the brains of his life-long business partner, is worried. Very worried. So when the bombshell drops that O'Connell is not Irish (and therefore Catholic), but in fact a Jewish orphan, that makes for a very interesting last few weeks to what was already an interesting presidential campaign.
Saying more about the story would spoil it, I think. In fact, giving away the Jewish thing could be considered a spoiler, but I'd say that anyone who's read a shred of Uris's work would've seen that coming all through the book anyway (as I did), so why bother? Of course, as one expects with Leon Uris, a few different story lines are interweaved, flitting back and forth between the past (or rather, various pasts, as they cover various people and eras) and the present. Which makes it somewhat hard to follow exactly what's going on sometimes; I found myself flicking back to check up on some details quite regularly. That may be a small criticism to the book, but I would still say it's very enjoyable.
I felt there were some interesting echos in this book. The most obvious one is the similarity to Robert Ludlum's Icarus Agenda, where a Congressman is turned into a war hero and presidential candidate against his will by some shady consortium. Take away the consortium, replace it with chance (or, to use a term from The Science of Discworld, narrativium) and the story is more or less the same.
The other echo was, of course, Barack Obama's latest campaign. The details are different, but it feels like a variation on the same theme: the upstanding, good challenger vs the incumbent, who's not exactly evil, but not quite good either. And in both cases, there's the prejudice-issue; be it O'Connell's religion or Obama skin-tone. The book's far too old to have Obama in mind, but it did certainly make for a more interesting read to have the current affairs so similar to it.
All in all, this book once again shows that Leon Uris can write about more than the Marine Corps or Israel, even if he does need at least one of those issues to touch on his subject. It's not nearly as good as some of his other books (Battle Cry springs to mind), but it's a great read nonetheless.
This book feels a little like it's Frederick Forsyth first attempts to write a story. It's not that it's bad, not at all. It's just that the four short stories that are encompassed in this book are completely and indubitably Forsyth's, but are so much simpler and shorter than his other books. In some of the stories, there is a hint of the thrilling world that Forsyth's stories usually are set in, but the stories themselves skirt around it. For example, The Miracle is set against the background of the Second World War, but doesn't actually deal with the way itself; rather it's the unbelievable story of a poor, lonely German army doctor in Italy trying to keep scores of wounded men alive while the rest of his army hightails is out of the country.
It really wouldn't do to describe the stories themselves here: anything meaningful that I could say would immediately give too much away. Suffice it to say that every single one of the stories has a twist at the end; when you finally think you've worked out what the story is about, you turn out to be utterly wrong. Add to that Forsyth's customary way with words and it should be obvious why this book is a very hard one to put away!
My first P.G. Wodehouse and I was immediately sold. I loved the bumbling uselessness of Bertie Wooster, how utterly meaningless his life was and of course the brilliance of Jeeves. It's quite scary how much Bertie resembles one of our friends...
Just in case someone out there has never heard of these: the Jeeves and Wooster series is basically a collection of short stories centered around the epnoymous characters. Bertie Wooster is the archetypal toff: young, rich, bored and absolutely hopeless; he probably couldn't tie his shoelaces without assistance. Jeeves (I don't think his first name is ever mentioned) is his valet and external brainbox; not only does he keep Bertie alive, he can conjure solutions to just about any scrape that Bertie gets himself in (which usually involves getting engaged to some girl or other).
The stories themselves are actually all rather similar: Bertie finds himself in a bind, but can't elicit Jeeves's help, mostly because Jeeves disapproves of one of Berties latest wardrobe additions. Being rather dafter than he realises himself, he comes up with a daring and brilliant solution that promptly backfired, leaving Jeeves to mop up the remains and truly extract him from the mess he made. Of course, in return the offending striped pink tie (or whatever is was that Jeeves didn't like) is quietly removed from Bertie's life.
Why are these so good? It's not the storylines. It's the abolute pisstake of British high society and the subtle humour that is embedded in the books. Even though the stories are set in an earlier age (early 20th century is my best guess), I can imagine the Lords and Ladies of this world (or rather, this country) haven't changed yet and somewhere there is a Jeeves taking care of a completely inept Wooster of his own.
It's a glowing reference to Wodehouse's genius that, a century after he wrote the books, his characters are still embedded in popular culture solidly enough for a commercial website to use their names...
Unlike the first two Science of Discworld books, this one does not quite have a central theme. Nominally it tells the story of evolution and Darwin's voyage to formulate its theory, but it meanders quite a lot along the way. I can't help feeling that in this book, the three different authors (or two, if you consider the Science-chapters only) are more separate. With some chapters written (mostly) by Ian Stewart and some by Jack Cohen, they don't always fit neatly together. As a result, each chapter is a little bit of science or scientific history on its own, but the whole book is less of an entity.
Having said that, the triumvirate once again manages to explain a rather tricky scientific theory and his very convoluted history quite well. For the first time, the Discworld chapters actually take part in telling the story: in the other two books, they felt more like comic reliefs or retelling of the story through metaphor; here, they tackle head-on the improbability of Darwin ever making his fateful voyage on the Beagle, with the wizard playing the role of Chance and systematically (if sometimes ineptly) removing obstacles in his path.
Did I like this one better or worse than the first two? It's hard to say. I was slightly annoyed by the way the Science-chapters hopped and jumped from one subject to another, sometimes touching on those that were discussed in the earlier books (while there is so much more to say about evolution or the predecessing theories). I can't help feeling that Jack and Ian stopped talking to each other. But again, each chapter is its own little gem, combining a clear explanation of science with a good dose of humour.
I think it's fair to say that this volume is a better popular science book, but less of a story; to me, that's a loss (albeit a small one)..
Ironically titled, this biography of Oscar Wilde details the part of his life that should have been secret, but never really was: his lovelife. Regaling, sometimes in exquisite details, his relationships with various boys, Bosie and his wife Constance, the book finally leads up to Oscar's various trials for sodomy and his subsequent expulsion from British society and consequently Brittain. There is little I can say that the book doesn't do in much more details and far better, so I won't try to summarise it any more.
Throughout the book, I felt a mixed response to Oscar's life. It's unbelievable how many lovers the man's had (and I wouldn't be surprised if there were quite a few more that are either unknown or not worth mentioning) and how little he really seemed to care for them. Don't get me wrong, the way McKenna paints Oscar, he was a kindly man that took good care of his lovers as long as he kept them (whether they were truly lovers or mere male whores), but he hardly ever seemed to love them back. While that's fair enough (who can control whether you love someone?), he did have a habit of discarding lovers once he got bored of them or found a more interesting one, completely disregarding their feelings. There is something so dichotic about him: he seems a lovely, caring person who turned cold and almost mechanically efficient at some points.
The other thing I was almost shocked at, was how Oscar treated his poor wife Constance. While she probably knew that she married a homosexual, and must have known later on in life that he had not given up those practices, he seemed to almost try and rub her nose in the fact that he liked boys more than her. At some point, McKenna mentions that Oscar had, at several occasions, had sex with boys in his own home, while Constance was around. How little regard must the man have had for his wife? Yet, intermixed with such moment, are the ones where he clearly cared for her, where he seems to have truly tried to kick his homosexual "habit" and become a good, heterosexual husband for her. Again, his character shows this strange duplicity of caring and contempt.
But without a doubt, the strangest thing about the whole book is not Oscar's life itself, but what it is almost symbolic of: the gay community in those times and its struggle to gain acceptance. When you read the book, it seems like almost every person in Oscar's life (with the exception of Constance and one good friend) was gay. It took me a while to realise that this is probably the bias of the book, as it deals with Oscars homosexual life and circle, so there is little reason for his heterosexual friends to appear. Even so, it was a surprise to me how extensive the hidden society of homosexual men in Victorian times was.
It's truly unbelievable how much these people's lifes were blighted by the fact that they did not adhere to the commonly accepted notion of love. In a way, it's a tribute to our times that this is such a shock to me: homosexual love is so accepted now that it's hard to imagine society being so hateful and scared of it! It's also unbelievable how many potentially brilliant people have been lost to this senseless persecution of their private lifes: Oscar Wilde himself is probably the most well-known (imagine how many more brilliant plays the man could've written if he'd been allowed to live the life he wanted to), but many more promising young poets, artists and politicians seems to have been cut short, forced to live a miserable fake life, flee England or commit suicide. Truly a waste of talent for the most stupid of reasons!
Finally, a word about how the book is written. Impressively, although the pace is quite slow at times, there were few moments when I didn't want to keep on reading. I'm hard put to describe what did it for me, but somehow the book gets to you; to the point where I almost tried to dissuade Oscar from being stupidly incautious (as happened with depressing frequency). At times, it felt more like I was told about a friend than about this famous, long-dead author.
For that, and for the interesting and yet depressing glimpse into the world of repression that those poor people lived in, I would recommend this book to anyone; as long as you're not squeamish, for descriptions can be rather vivid...
Eddie is a maintenance guy at a fun fair. Apart from a spell doing his duty in war, he has never really left the fun fair: he's grown up there, lived there, worked there and now he's going to die there. When one of the rides crashes, Eddie tries to save a little girl in the cart's way and in the process dies - not even knowing whether he's managed to save her or not.
Now his story starts. One by one, Eddie meets five people who've made an impact on his life. Not that he actually knew all of them; at least one of them was dead long before he was born, yet she had a lasting effect on his life. As confused (and somewhat angry) as Eddie is when he meets the first one, slowly is start to dawn on him how these people are linked to him and, with that, what he lived his life for. Only when he's met the fifth and truly understands his life does he go on to a definite heaven of his own, where he will presumably spend eternity.
It's a beautiful idea! If you have to believe in an afterlife of some sort, this is probably one the of best images I've ever seen. The idea that heaven is all about understanding your life, accepting what happened and why and then moving on to a place that - with the new-found understanding - is a perfect fit for you, that's just magic. And it doesn't involve a god of any sort (or at least, it doesn't have to).
This is a gem of a book: very well written, so I flew through it. And such a different take on what people's lifes and afterlifes are like. No doubt, this is a must-read for everyone!
The impressive result of a great mathematician, a good storyteller and visionary, this book is a scientific fable and at the same time society critique.
The narrator lives in a two-dimensional world, where one's geometric determines the status in society: at the very top are the perfect circles, followed by polygons of ever decreasing degree until one reaches the square and the triangle. At the very bottom are the irregular triangles, who are governed by the acuity of their angles: the sharper the angle, the lower the triangle's intelligence and status. Below them are only the women (which in this society are hardly people at all): they are just a line.
The society is extreme hierarchal: depending on your shape, you have a position in life, which you'll never change. Children are always one step up from their parents, so families automatically move up in society.
When the narrator is, miraculously, lifted out of his world by a sphere (obviously from a 3D world), his mind is broadened (or maybe heightened?) by all the other geometrical worlds out there. In the 0D world, one person is the world - a dot. In the 1D world, everyone moves back and forth along the line, with the king in the middle; all life goes by sound (including procreation, impressively). The 3D world, unsurprisingly, blows our hero's mind away... But then, when he's delivered into his own world again, his compatriots only believe is mind has gone and he's locked up in an institution for the criminally insane.
It's an intriguing story and lovely book. The critique is quite subtle: I don't think Abbott at any time mentions out loud that the strict 2D society is wrong, yet the feeling permeates throughout the book (while the link to real life it painfully obvious). It also sets your mind wondering (and wandering, too) about the possibility of a 4D world being around us and how any of us would react to that, if we could be dragged into it. It's great to see a mathematical tale being told so well that more than 100 years later, it is still read and even spawned a sequel (or maybe update) in the form of Flatterland.
A delightful little book this is, which I think everyone should read; if only to realise that mathematicians are not all geeks and sometime and tell a beautiful story!
In the third book of James Clavell's Asia Saga, the worlds of Shogun and Tai-Pan collide. Set in the 1860, Japan is in turmoil: it's only recently that Admiral Perry's fleet has bombarded the islands and forced Japan to open itself up to the rest of the world. Now, the country is torn between those that accept the inevitable and try to make the best of the foreigners and their unsubtle manners and those who will fight tooth and claw to get the old ways back. More or less aligned with these groups are the Shogunate (the de facto government of "trusted advisors" to the Emperor) and the rebels who want to give the Emperor back full power. Set in this almighty mess are the European powers and the various trading houses: England vs France, Noble House vs Brock & Sons and all together against the Japanese.
The story starts in earnest when young Malcolm Struan, heir-to-be of Struan's (a/k/a Noble House and presently the largest of the trading houses in Asia), is injured in an (unprovoked) attack by the Japanese rebels. Calculated to provoke the European powers into retaliation against the legal government (i.e. the Shogunate), the attack throws the whole precarious system into disarray, triggering a multitude plots, sub-plots and counter-plots. It takes the whole length of the book to unentangle the mess and even up at the last, it's impossible to predict what will happen and whole will come out on top.
As always with Clavell's books, it's well stocked with proper characters and paints a good picture of the time and culture (which seems realistic, although I have no way of knowing how true to history it actually is). The book takes a little while to take off (mostly because so many characters must be introduced), but once it does, it truly captivates. It's one of those books I completely immersed myself in and forcibly had to retract whenever I had to stop reading. It was really a shame the book came to an end!
The first Leon Uris I've read (albeit it in it's Dutch guise, originally), Battle Cry is the story of the US Marine Corps in the fight against the Japanese. Specifically, it follows a few young lads, who sign up for the Corps after Pearl Harbor and have to be whipped into shape as soon as humanly possible (and preferably sooner). Barely 20 years old, these kids are then thrown against an atoll brimming with Japanese defenders; inevitably, they win the day (after all, we know the American hopped closer and closer to Japan itself) but not without their losses...
This book is not so much about the story, that's pretty straightforward. What it really is, is an impression of the people who made this story. The young boys who turn into veterans at an age most people haven't quite left Mum's table yet; the older professionals who learn to love and cherish these new recruits; the career officer who turns into a caring Father to his charges when under fire (only to revert to his crusty self when they're back in camp). As inevitable as the battles' outcome, these people worm their way into the reader's heart and it really hurts when they die (as, again inevitably, some of them do).
The book is a strange mix of humour, action and pure emotion (presumably, not unlike the world of a Marine). Few passages are as hilarious as the wedding of the huge, Swedish-born Andy, who's absolutely rat-arsed before the ceremony even starts; and few passages are more tragic than the same one, as you realise the good man may never see his bride again (and she a widow already).
It's a mix of styles, too: it flicks back and forth between the third and first perons, the narrator's voice suggesting that he, the professional sergeant, will be one of few to survive. Almost staccato descriptions of L.Q. Jones's goofing is counterpointed by long drawn-out descriptions of life in the mud, where every shadow can be a Japanese soldier (but most are just shadows, and the remainder probably another Marine). Without a doubt, the style of writing is an echo of Uris's own memories as a Marine; both the words and their feeling is clearly straight from his heart and a tribute to fallen friends.
I've read this book at least 4 times now, in two languages, with about 15 years between this time and the first one. And yet, it never disappoints, it's as poignant and beautiful this time as the time that my older brother suggested I read this (and never had his book returned). It's the only book, ever, that I will keep in both English and Dutch, and will re-read more times still. If any book deserves full marks, this one does!
Nicholas Garrigan is a young, Scottish doctor who decides to practice in Uganda. When one day Idi Amin come through his village and sprains a wrist, Nicholas is on hand (no pun intended) to help him out. As a result, he's ordered to Kampala, where he's to be Amin's personal physician. For some reason, Amin trusts this young doctor (or seems to, at least), although he suspect everything and everyone else of conspiring against him at some time or another. As Amin's trustee, maybe even friend, Nicholas gets sucked into the maelstrom of Uganda's government and the civil war that Amin unleashes.
The book is a strange combination of biography (of Nicholas as much as of Amin) and a sketch of life in Uganda in the '70s, with a sprinkle of adventure thrown in. Especially the last part is surreal, when Nicholas is brought back into Kampala by invading Tanzanian forces: in the middle of a war, he strikes up a conversation (and, again, almost a friendship) with the army's commander (and his jailer, effectively); a conversation that is punctuated by the colonel rushing out to do a spot of fighting every now and then.
In a way, the book is very aptly named. The Last King of Scotland is was Amin called himself sometimes; while it's not quite clear what he means by that, it somehow does summarize him. To me, that's quite like the book: it's an impression of Amin's Uganda (from foreign eyes), not quite intelligible and somewhat vague, but stirring nonetheless. Don't get me wrong: it's a good, enjoyable book, that I would certainly recommend people to read!
A valiant effort maybe, but for me not a success: Chris McManus tries to explain handedness, in the broadest sense of the word. So he delves into such things as the difference between the right and left halfs of the brain, the direction of the DNA helix and even the asymmetry of particle physics.
That's exactly where he goes wrong: although all of these things are interesting in their own right, I'm not convinced they are connected (other than semantically), so I don't feel they should be dealt with in one book (or at least, not one that is as specific as this one). To make things worse, McManus seems to struggle with the audience he's pitching to: sometime he jumps in at the scientific end (e.g. when describing DNA, he doesn't bother to explain anything, clearly assuming everyone is a molecular biologist), while at others I felt treated like a kid. And I have the feeling he's messed up his "left" and "right" a few times... (I know I'm being facetious, considering the number of times those words are used, you'd need a superhuman editor to get every single one right).
I hate to sound so negative about it, but in the end the book just didn't work for me. Maybe I'm just not the audience it aims at; maybe I was expecting the wrong thing. Surely other people could enjoy this more; it's just not my thing.
That last book, in which all is tied together and the story well and truly ends. After the death of Dumbledore at the end of book six, Harry decides that school is not for him and prefers to stike out on his own to find Voldemort's Horcruxes and destroy them. Of course, being a bit of an ignorant git, this is not as easy a task as it seems (or maybe a harder task even than he thinks), especially when the Ministry of Magic turns completely Dark and focusses its not-inconsiderate might to finding him. Without giving too much away, let's just say that what happens, depends on luck and coincidence as muc h as on skill and determination.
Although I did certainly enjoy the book (and the whole series, for that matter), there are moments when it stretched incredulity a bit far; then again, it is a book about magic, so what would I expect? I was glad, at least, that the story is really finished, without any (obvious) way for sequels; that would've been giving in to media & marketing's wishes. The only real problem with the book is the little add-on at the very end. For me, that's just purely a waste of a few pages: it didn't add a single thing to the book.
But still: yes, certainly enjoyable. I'm glad I read it, even if I didn't feel the need to read it the moment it came out. I'll go to see the films, but I don't think I'll need to read the book again.
One of the few John Irving's that I hadn't read before, this one is as strange and beautiful as the best of them. The story is about two couples, the narrator and Utch and Severin and Edith Winter, who have a rather convulated relationship with each other. It's something between mutual affairs, wife-swapping and a foursome in. The story flits back and forth between the present day story in some American university town (don't think a name is mentioned, but it's clearly East Coast and respectable) and the protagonists histories and how they met.
It would go too far to retell all the histories here, but suffices to say that Utch and Severin are both rather strong and physical, while the narrator and Edith are more the bookish type (both being authors). Yet the wife-swap is nowhere hear as logical as it seems: throughout the book, there are hints that Severin doesn't really agree and only does it to have some even score with Edith (yet he's the one that had an affair previously). At the same time, it's completely unclear (to the reader, but also the narrator) whether the various interactions are just sex, or also based on love (and even whether friendship is really involved).
The 158 pound in the title refers to the eight class, that Severin used to wrestle in (clear overtones of < a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_According_to_Garp>Garp there) and every biographical chapter is presented as a weight class of its subject. It took me a while to realise that the eponymous marriage is not, in fact, the narrator and Utch's, but Severin and Edith's; after all, wrestling and the wrestling room play a far greater role in their marriage than in the narrator's one.
As so often with Irving, apart from maybe Owen Meany, it's not really the plot that did it for me. Although there is a storyline here (and quite well-developed, I should add), it's the style of writing itself that mostly got me. I really enjoyed the descriptions of the protagonists' lifes, both in present day and in history. As before, I couldn't help but wonder where Irving gets these weird, semi-deranged characters from.
It's a book I couldn't put down: I raced through it, but didn't feel a loss when it was done; it was pretty much exactly the right size. It's been a while since I've read an Irving, but this one reminded me why I love his work so much (and made me consider digging out Owen Meany or Garp and going through them again).
Six nested and interweaved stories, each written in a different style: nobody can deny that his is truly an impressive work of art. In each story, the protagonist comes across the previous story (e.g. the narrator of the second story finds the diary that forms the first one) so that they're linked, but still clearly separate. You can't read the stories in one go, though: halfway through story #1, the book jumps to story #2; halfway through #2, it jumps to #3, etc. Only story #6 is read in one go, followed by the tail-end of #5 and all the way down to #1. While undeniably intricate and well-done, this does make it quite hard to remember what a story was about when you get back to it (especially, if like me, you don't read the book constantly).
What I really liked, was the feeling that the book comes full circle between the first and sixth story. The post-apocalyptic future of #6 is strangely reminiscent of the 19th century Oceania that #1 is set in; both stories are set in a style that takes some getting used to, with slightly different spellings and abbreviations than we'd normally use. I'm not quite sure whether Mitchell has really designed the stories to be so similar, though, or whether I'm seeing a pattern where none is intended...
On the other hand, what I didn't like, was the attempt to link all protagonists together by giving them all a specific birthmark. It's not really necessary (after all, the book is all based on the stories being linked) and it doesn't ring true. Maybe here I'm missing something, but I really did not see the significance of this.
Overall, it's quite hard to say what I thought of the book. Each of the stories is reasonably interesting (some more than others, of course); the set-up of the book is certainly novel and shows impressive skills. But I'm not so sure that it is more than just a gimmick. I failed to see the overarching idea behind the six nested stories, other than a rather elaborate way to provide additional suspense (which only two of the stories really needed...). So I'm tempted to say it's a very skilled book, but I've enjoyed and understood some lesser books better.
"The planet Arrakis, known as Dune. Home of the spice melange. The spice controls the empire; whoever controls Dune, controls the spice..." This is how the introduction for my old computer game Dune started, but it works just as well for the book.
On the face of it, the story is simply the fight between two feudal lords in a futuristic empire, where Great Houses rule fiefdoms that span entire planets. When the emperor gives Arrakis to noble Atreides to rule, there's little they can do but go there; cruel Harkonnen, however, are scheming (with the emperor's tacit agreement) to wipe Atreides out as soon as they can. When they duly do so, the Atreides heir Paul and his mother manage to escape as seek refuge with the wild Fremen, people living outside the cities, in the desert.
What the Harkonnen disregard, is that a desert planet like Arrakis, where you need to recycle your own body fluids to survive, breeds etremely fierce fighters. When Paul Atreides uses his training as a Duke's son, Mentat and potential Kwisatz Haderach to unite and lead the Fremen, he can unleash an unexpected power storm on the almost defenseless Harkonnen and claw his birthright back.
Intermingled with this storyline there are so many more threads, though. First of all, there's the spice, a foodstuff that enhances psychic abilities of its takers. As prescience is the only way to guide starships safely from planet to planet, spice is the lifeblood of the empire.
Then there is the Bene Gesserit, a woman's society cum girls' school. Bene Gesserit trained women have some kind of extra senses, allowing them to look inside themselves and actively control their metabolism (e.g. changes the nature of a poison to a harmful substance). The society has also had a human breeding program for centuries, trying to "create" a man with the same capabilities, the so-called Kwisatz Haderach; why exactly they want this, doesn't become quite clear. Unmentioned in this breeding program is the fact that BG women can 1) become pregnant by any man they choose (presumably, they've been trained to be uber-sexy) and 2) control the sex of their unborn child.
There are of course other things as well that Herbert has invented: Mentats, humans trained to work almost as computers; Tleilax, where clones or bodyparts can be grown on order; shields that stop fast projectile from hitting a person (so that fight are almost exclusively based on swords and knifes) and so on.
There are a lot of people that would call this book the Mother of all Sci-fi, and there's a lot to say for that. In a way, it's quite similar to The Lord of the Rings, in that both Tolkien and Herbert have created a complete world with languages, cultures, histories etc. that surpass the book itself. I don't know whether other sci-fi stories have borrowed from this one. If you would only read one sci-fi book ever, I would recommend I, Robot. But surely if you do want to read a second one, this one would be very high on the list!
Typical for Ben Elton's later work, this book combines his good writing and his sense of humour with quite a decent story. When a spate of murders happens in detective Edward Newson's town, he's (at first at least) the only one that considers them linked to each other. It takes a while to work out that each of the murder victims is a former bully, who's been murdered using his or her own bullying tactics. Having worked out the link is, of course, only part of the way to getting the killer...
Intermingled with this story is Newson's private life, in which he's managed to embroil himself with various women. For one, there's is sergeant Natasha he's in love with; in fact, so much in love with her that his resulting shyness stops any possbility dead in its track far more than the professional relationship does. To distract himself, he gets back in touch with his old classmates and tries to re-ignite his flame for the class hottie. More by chance than anything else, he also manages to get into the panties of one of the less popular girls, one that now has quite a screwed-up life. When one of these women is murdered too, his personal and professional worlds collide and everything is comes to a head.
It's a very enjoyable read, this one. As I said: a good story with a great dose of humour. What else would you need? I didn't really catch on to who the killer was, so I got the pleasure of a little surprise at the end as well (DJgib, on the other hand, had sussed out the bad guy about halfway through the book already, little show-off that she is). As about every other Ben Elton, this is good fun and one I'd happily read again from time to time (if I fancy something nice and easy).
07/11/10 - Now registered: http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/8413195
Dit is het verhaal van Louise, een Nederlands meisje in Indie voor de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Haar leven is erg rustig en gelukkig: ze kan alles doen wat ze wil. Maar als ze per ongeluk laat glippen dat ze haar moeder en oom Felix (van vader's zijde) seks heeft zien hebben, valt het gezinnetje uit elkaar. Niet alleen praten haar vader en moeder nauwelijks meer met elkaar, de prille relatie tussen haar tante (van moeder's zijde) en oom Felix is ook nogal verzuurd.
Van hier gaat alles bergaf: eerst wordt Louise naar haar opa gestuurd, waar ze een nieuwe tante, maar deze van haar eigen leeftijd, ontmoet. Na een moeilijke start worden de twee meiden toch vriendinnen, om dan alleen maar uit Indie ontworteld te worden en naar Europa genomen te worden. Met bijna perfecte timing, komen Louise en haar vader in Nederland aan op zo ongeveer hetzelfde moment dat de Duitsers het doen. Als ze onderduiken, besluit Louise om - uiterlijk - sloom en dom te worden en zo de continue nachtmerrie te doorkomen.
Om eerlijk te zijn, zag ik niet veel in dit boek. Voor mij was het echt niets anders dan ik hierboven beschreven heb: een blow by blow biografie van een meisje (dat, voor zover ik kan zien, niet Helga Ruebsamen zelf moet zijn). Ik kon er geen dieper thema in vinden en vond dan ook het open einde nogal onprettig. Van de andere kant, leest het boek wel erg prettig weg; in feite een stuk prettiger dan ik verwachtte. Al met al was het niet mijn favoriete boek, maar ik wil best wel meer van Helga Ruebsamen proberen: haar schrijfstijl beviel me wel.
When a new store opens in the sleepy New England town of Castle Rock, the inhabitants have no idea what calamity has befallen them. Ambiguously called Needful Things, the store carries the perfect item for everyone: whether it be a rare baseball card, a fancy fishing rod or a magic game that predicts the track results. Unbelievably, all the items go for exactly the amount that people can afford; plus an innocent little prank to be played on one of the other residents.
As Mr Gaunt, Needful Things' proprietor, sells his treasures to more and more people, it becomes increasingly clear (to the reader, not the townpeople, that is), that he is not what he seems to be. Why does everyone shrink away from his touch? And how does he know exactly what everyone needs or, for that matter, can afford? And, of course, the pranks are not really that innocent, are they? They're clearly geared at fostering and exploding all the issues and animosities buried in Castle Rock's inbred community. So, before long the whole town erupts in violence, cheerfully supported by the - now clearly demonic - Mr Gaunt and his stash of poisoned weapons. It takes a tiny group of solid, determined and brave people to try and face his evil down...
Unlike most other Stephen Kings, this book is not horror, but purely thriller. It's not really scary and there is hardly any gore (although seven year old Sean, whose older brother blew his own brains out before Sean's eyes, might not agree); in this book, the tension is built up psychologically only. It's really well done: Castle Rock feels so impossibly real, that you wonder whether Stephen King didn't live in it (in fact, he probably did live in a very similar town). Especially the air of calm and friendliness, forming a thin veneer over a boiling cauldron of resentment, is chillingly realistic!
But the best is that there's no happy ending. Yes, alright, Mr Gaunt is thrown out of town and forced to leave the souls of the dead behind; yes, those few that have managed to survive until then actually get to live. But as the epilogue shows, that only means that another town will be visited by a store called Answered Prayers; sound familiar? Maybe you can cheat the devil once or twice, but you can never really beat him...
Ik ben toch zeker drie of vier keer aan deze klassieker van Tolstoj begonnen, maar heb hem nooit uit weten te krijgen, tot nu. Het verhaal volgt een aantal van de Russische adel gedurende de veldtochten tegen Napoleon, beginnend met de slag bij Austerlitz en eindigend als de Fransen na de Russische veldtocht en de brand van Moskou vluchten. Het verhaal springt continu heen-en-weer tussen het front en de achterblijvende (en rustig doorlevende en -feestende) families. Hoewel Tolstoj duidelijk probeert om er een historisch relaas van te maken, is het boek toch meer een soap, met name in de delen dat het de Peterburgse High Society beschrijft.
Het is eigenlijk heel moeilijk om te zeggen wat ik van dit boek vond. Sommige stukken ervan zijn erg goed en beschrijven het leven (aan het front of in Petersburg) in briljant detail, andere zijn weer te traag om doorheen te komen. Vooral als Tolstoj een poging doet om filosoof te worden (wat met bijna pijnlijke regelmaat gebeurt), gaat het allemaal volledig mis: de man was duidelijk zeer begaafd in het omschrijven van de wereld, maar zou het aan anderen moeten overlaten om erover na te denken.
Een van de meest bizarre onderdelen van het boek, is hoe de Grote Vaderlandse Oorlog (zoals de Russen, niet onterecht, deze veldtocht noemden) het leven nauwelijks leek te beinvloeden: niet alleen ging het leven in Moskou (althans, tot de Fransen het bezetten) en Petersburg gewoon zijn gangetje (behalve, natuurlijk, voor die families die een kind verloren), zelfs aan het front lijkt de oorlog niet meer dan een part-time tijdverdrijf. Ik weet niet in hoeverre dat echt waar is of alleen Tolstoj's idee (hij heeft tenslotte nooit in die oorlog gevochten), maar het blijft heel vreemd om te lezen...
Iets dat me heel erg stoorde aan het boek, is dat de vertaling ongelooflijk slecht is. Niet alleen staat het vol het spellings- en grammaticale fouten en wordt punctuatie veel te weinig (en lang niet altijd correct) gebruikt, het voelt heel vaak ook alsof de vertaler zinnen letterlijk uit het Russisch heeft vertaald, in plaats van een vergelijkbare uitdrukking in het Nederlands te vinden. Het voelt eigenlijk alsof de vertaler helemaal niet zo goed is in het Nederlands en dit met een woordenboek in de hand heeft gedaan. Het zal niet verbazingwekkend zijn dat dit het boek niet prettiger maakt om te lezen! Ik heb ondertussen ook een Engelse vertaling van het boek gekregen en ben erg benieuwd of dat prettiger te lezen zal zijn.
Al met al moet ik zeggen, dit is niet de standaard klassiker (zo een die iedereen gelezen wil hebben, maar niemand wil lezen). Hoewel het some moeite kostte en ik er erg lang over gedaan heb, heb ik over het algemeen wel van die boek genoten. Ik zou dan ook iedereen aanraden om Oorlog en Vrede te lezen (zij het in een betere vertaling dan dit)!
Roddy Doyle's Barrytown Trilogy tells the stories of what is probably quite a common Irish family, the Rabbittes. The trilogy is named after their home, Barrytown, which to me is a (fictional) borough of Dublin; it's working class and relatively poor, but generally content nonetheless.
Each of the three stories centres around a different member of the family. The Commitments follows son Jimmy Jr and his friends as they start up a band, bringing Soul to Ireland. In The Snapper, eldest duaghter Sharon finds herself pregnant without a husband (nor the need to name the father) and subsequently the centre of a impressively rallying family. The last book, The Van sees father Jimmy Sr unemployed and starting up a chipper van with his best mate, Bimbo.
Although each of the books has its own storyline and protagonist, they're very much part of the same story. Obviously, the characters are the same (even if emphasis shifts between the books); after all, it is one big family. but there's also continuity in the books; e.g. after The Snapper, Sharon's daugther Gina is as much part of the book as the other members of the family.
While the books are not massively strong on storylines (they kind of amble along), they are beautifully descriptive and at times hilariously funny (the actual laugh-out-loud version). And when they're not funny, they're very empathic: I ended up really feeling bad for the characters sometimes (especially towards the end of The Van). All in all: very good books, an absolute treat to read! I'll be looking forward to read more of Roddy Doyle's now!
Unlike the Wodehouse that I read earlier (and which is mentioned previously in this journal), this book is one continuous storyline, corresponding quite well with a few episodes from the television series. After putting his foot down and insiting on playing the banjolele, Bertie is forced to accept Jeeves's resignation (as the latter does have a sense of musicality). Undaunted, Bertie decides to visit his friend Chuffy, where he immediately becomes embroiled in the tangled situation of Mr and Miss Stoker, respectively an enormously wealthy American who loathes Bertie and his beautiful daughter, who's been engaged to Bertie for all of 48 hours, until said loathing came to the fore. To make things even more fun, Chuffy has fallen in love head-over-heels with Pauline Stoker, needs Pa Stoker to buy his ridiculously expensive country house and insists on keeping these two interests separated.
Good thing Jeeves happens to be engaged by Chuffy (now that he's left the Wooster service), or thing would go pear-shaped immediately. As it is, Bertie displays the uncunning Wooster ability to stick his foot firmly in his mouth, so that all sort of contortions (by himself, Jeeves and just about the whole gamut of other characters) are needed to finally bring things to a close.
Whereas the book, like other Wodehouses, is absolutely hilarious, it's made even better by the closeness to the TV-series. It's so recognisable that I could almost hear Stephen Fry speak the lines of Jeeves. Maybe even better, Pauline Stoker's beautifully overdone American accent kept echoing through my head, adding a whole extra dimension to the book. I would certainly recommend this - and any other Wodehouse - to anyone, but ideally combined with a DVD of the series. One wonders whether an audio book (done in the radio drama style, each character read by a different actor) would do the same trick...
Biography probably doesn't really cover this, as it's a compendium of Peter Cook's texts. Yet, without actually writing about himself, the texts do convey an idea of what Peter Cook was like (or, maybe, what Peter Cook pretended to be like). Add in the introduction by William Cook (brother? Son? Somehow, I hope it's a brother) and this is probably as close to the inside of Peter Cook's head as any book will come. Of course, most of it is just simply funny, ranging from the utterly hilarious to those bits that are mostly bewildering (and even those are usually quite funny).
I'd be hard put to pick a best bit; I think Sven of Swiss Cottage just edges it, if only since that was Peter Cook having a laugh without any real audience. It just shows that it was truly funny, not just doing a job. This is one book I'd like to try as an audiobook, but only if there's a version where it's Cook's voice itself. That would surely be the best way to get the to know the man's work!
In a way, this is a bog-standard spy novel: the Soviets come up with a cunning plan to kill off Gaddafi, while pinning the blame on the Americans. This, however, is a mere ruse: the real plan is to discredit Gorbachev and stop him start the perestrojka. Or maybe that's a ruse, too... To make things more interesting, a mole in MI6 is actived after 20 years of deep cover to pull all of this off safely.
In another way, it's pisspoor. For one, it's completely unclear what the role of the mole is. Then, it's peppered with what I call Sherlock Holmes moments, i.e. telling the reader only half the story to keep up fake suspense. It's all rather nicely summed up by the beautiful phrase: "the barometer had dropped to minus 20". OK, it's a bit pedantic, but that's about the level of the story itself. Worst £1 ever spent on a book? Probably not, but a good runner-up.
Strangely, I don't quite feel the need to keep this book. So, it's going with DJgib to the charity sale at her job. Hope it's bought by someone who a) is less picky than me; and b) doesn't read these comments...
Ostensibly the sequel to Pillars of the Earth, this book returns to Kingsbridge two centuries after the cathedral has been built. In these late Middle Ages, Kingbridge has grown to quite a large town, still dominated (and owned) by the priory, but with enough merchants and industry that it's on the cusp of changing its destiny and becoming more modern (although we don't quite realise this until further into the book).
In this setting, four children happen to meet each other, forming the protagonists of the story that follows their whole lives. There's Merthin, later to become an architect and builder with impressively innovative ideas; his brother Ralph, stronger but less bright, well and truly bred for a course of squire and nobility. Caris is the daughter of the leading wool merchant of town, with a good business-head on her own shoulders (and a healthy disregard for the Church). Finally, there's Gwenda, daughter of a penniless labourer and in love with a man who has eyes only for another girl. Add in a few smaller characters, like Caris's cousin Godwyn, who starts out as a reformist monk but turns rather conservative as prior, and Gwenda's brother Philemon who's nothing short of a snake, and the stage is set for a clash of wills.
In many ways, the story is very similar to Pillars of the Earth itself. Merthin is very reminiscent of Jack Builder: where Jack picked up the gothic style, Merthin invents new ways to build bridges or make octogonal towers. In the same way, Caris is rather similar to Aliena, in that she does what few men would manage, let alone women at the time. Ralph, rather obviously, takes the role of William Hamleigh as the evil nobleman. Only Gwenda is a really new character.
But all of this does not detract of the book at all. The setting is different enough, especially when the Plague comes to Kingsbridge. Also, where in Pillars of the Earth the priory (and especially Prior Philip) is generally a force for good, here it's mostly holding the town back, so the reader ends up siding with Merthin and Caris against Godwyn.
All in all, it's very simple: this, again, is a beautiful story that weaves together a number of lives, taking Kingsbridge Priory and Cathedral as a centre to tie all the lines to. Over and over again, it's not clear how things fit in together, but Follett always manages to pull all of them together in the end and round everything off beautifully. If you're looking for a good yarn and a vivid image of the Middle Ages, this is one very good candidate! I have not often picked up a sequel that is as good as the first book, but this one certainly manages to equal good old Pillars of the Earth.
How to summarize this book? It deals with the whole Second World War, both in Europe and in Asia. It's remarkable enough that Calvocoressi and Wint managed to distill all this history into one volume (albeit quite a hefty one); it wouldn't really make sense for me to summarize it even more, would it?
This is definitely a textbook and not the easiest at that. Impressively, for a book about war, it glosses over the fighting quite a bit and concentrates on the causes of the war and the effects on the various countries. Which makes for pretty dry reading; even though it was very interesting, I was looking for a bit more action every now and then (although - to be fair - parts of the book do describe the various battles in pretty good detail, too).
The one thing that stood out from the book, is how much of a mess the Second World War (and a lot of the lead-up to it) was: more battles were lost due to mismanagement than due to good tactics by the opposition; decisions on both sides were quite often taken by chance, on the basis of incomplete information and so on. I realise that it's easy with hindsight to spot such "mistakes", while in the heat of the moment anyone is fallible; yet it seems that so many of the War's decisive moments were absolutely random. Maybe that's just because I've never read a proper historical description of a war yet and compare this to some romanticised version.
Is this a book I would recommend to people? No, it's too hard a read for that. But if you are interested in the Second World War (be it as an amateur or a budding historian), I do feel you could do worse than this book. Even if it is dated now and then (it was written in the 70s, so you can imagine the USSR is dealt with in a way I hardly recognise anymore), it's quite a good primer for one of major events to shape the 20th century.
Starting over in the Masters of Rome series, I picked up the first one again. Although it's set about a generation and a half before Caesar's time (he's born at the very end of the book), this is really where the end of the Republic starts (at least, in McCullough's opinion. I'm not claiming proper historians would agree). This book tells the story of Gaius Marius coming to prominence, despite all the forces arranged against him.
For starters, he's a New Man, i.e. not one of the old, accepted families in Rome. In fact, being from Arpinum, he's considered a "Italian hayseed with no Greek" (or as we'd call it, a hillbilly), which no toff in the Senate could accept as a consul, let alone primus inter pares. To make things worse, in earlier time he unceremoniously dumped one of the Senate's up-and-coming members, Quintus Caecilius Metellus, in a pigsty. Strangely, Metellus Piggle-wiggle (as Marius c.s. took to call him) didn't take kindly to that and decided to block Marius's career at very possible opportunity. Obviously, he failed miserably, but it makes for good reading.
Marius's rise to unprecented prominence (he became consul seven times, whereas before that few people managed to reach two) was built solely on the back og military action. First against the African king Jugurtha (strangely, an old friend of his), then against German tribes wandering down the continent somewhat over-enthousiastically. To support these military campaigns, Marius reformed the army, recruiting from the penniless Headcount; what with going against the tried and tested mos maiorum, this inevitably made him even less popular with the Senate (if rather loved by the normal people). Sparks everywhere!
As any other McCullough, this is eminently readable and, as far as I can tell, perfectly plausible. The bare facts of Marius's life and career certainly correspond to the versions related by real historians; and if the details are McCullough's invention, that's what makes this a good read rather than a textbook. I'm really looking forward to slowly working my way through the rest of the series now; for once actually reading them in the proper order!
The little village of Wall is placed in our normal world, but touches on the world of Faery. Once every nine years, the people from Faery congregate on the field just beyond the eponymous wall for the market, where people can find anything, including (if rather rarely) their heart's desire. Every other time, the gate in the wall is guarded and nobody can get through to Faery.
However, when young Tristan Thorn is challenged to find a fallen star by the girl of his dreams, he breaks the rule and slips through. Inside Faery, the fallen star is actually a young woman, and none too happy at being there (nor, for that matter, at being sought by a clod of a boy). To make matters even more fun, she's being sought by several other people, with a variety of unfriendly aims in mind. Not wanting to give too much away, let's just say the quest throws up all sorts of interesting challenges...
Unlike other books by Neil Gaiman that I read, this one isn't really linked to the normal world, but is just pure fantasy. Which, to be honest, makes it quite a bit less interesting. It still has the lovely writing style of Gaiman's, but has lost the ironic edge. This one is, well... just easy reading. Good for holiday, for sure; but it's missing something, nonetheless.
Subtitled "Like Flatland, only more so", this is an excellent update on Edwin Abbott's Flatland.
Like the original, it is the story of an inhabitant of Flatland, who's taken out of its surface and is shown a plethora of other dimensions. As mathematics have moved on quite a bit since Abbott's time (late 19th century), the dimensions visited in this book are far stranger than the simple 0 - 3D of the original: they include such gems as fractal dimensions and the projective plane. Even quantum weirdness and string theory is touched upon (although Stewart is far too smart to linger there, as it's a subject both too large and too complicated for this book).
In keeping with Abbott's book, there's a social angle to the book, too. This time it's not about the hierarchy of classes in society, but about the position of women, although it touches on evolution as well. The protagonist of the story is the greatniece of Abbott's A. Square, Vikki Line. As a modern young woman, she rails against the subjugated status of women, something in which she is vindicated by some of the insights from other dimensions.
It goes too far to describe either of the storylines in more detail here. Suffices to say that Stewart has managed to do what seemed impossible: he's taken an extraordinary book and written a sequel that not only adds to the original, but doesn't detract from it. Throughout the book (and especially in the prologue), Stewart's respect for Abbott shines through, almost dedicating this book to him. This is truly an example of standing on shoulders of giants, and the view it offers over the mathematical landscape is second to none!
When the young novice Adzo (the narrator of this story) and his master William of Baskerville arrive at a Benedictine abbey (sometime in the 14th century), it is the start of two separate, yet entwined stories.
First and foremost is the mystery of a monk who's died recently (whether suicide, murder or accident is completely unclear), which the abbot asks William to investigate - William being a former inquisitor and famous for his thorough application of logic to any conundrum, his appearance at this time is very welcome. When more deaths occur and it slowly becomes clear that something sinister is linking them, William's investigation becomes simultaneously more important and more tricky.
Running through this investigation, is the reason that William is there to start with: negotiation between the Franciscans and the Pope. I won't profess to understand the full intricacies of this, but as far as I can see, it's a debate on the need for poverty in the Church. It's one of the myriad of convulsions that, two centuries down the line, will lead to Martin Luther and the Reformation. In any case, Willam's task, as both Franciscan and honoured at the Papal court, is to help mediate between the two factions and try to heal the rift. The untimely occurrence of the deaths complicates matter immensely, not least as it offers the Papal legation an excuse to extend temporal control over the abbey, which should be neutral ground.
A third angle to the book (although I wouldn't really call it an additional story), is the growing up of Adzo. Partially, that's intellectually, when he learns to emulate William's methods of deduction. But equally, it's the throes of puberty, especially when he (more accidentally than anything else) has sex with a peasant girl - something that for a novice monk is a major infraction and one that he struggles to overcome.
The book as a whole is immensely complex. Each of the two stories on its own can be hard to follow, which is not helped by the prolific inclusion of latin phrases (only some of which are translated). I still have a smattering of Latin from my schooldays, but not nearly enough to be able to translate this lot (at least, not without a dictionary and quite an effort). Unsurprisingly, flitting back and forth between the two stories doesn't make it easier.
Yet, rather impressively, for all that the book is not easy to read, it is very enjoyable. The action is fast enough (at times, at least) for it to be a page-turner and when it does become drier and harder, it doesn't stay so for very long.
One thing that really struck me as strange is that Eco claims it's not his story originally, but that he's lifted it from a 19th century book, which in turn describes the French translation of Adzo's original (Latin) manuscript. So essentially, what Eco says here, is that it's based on a true story; or at least, on a real memoir by the narrator.
Now, I struggle to buy that; not least as the name William of Baskerville is just too conveniently reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes. But why go through the trouble of claiming it's a true story? And if you do, why this weird, embedded three-book-chain? And so much detail about the research he did into this original manuscript. Is there a grain of truth in this claim after all? Was there an Adzo, but maybe no name for his master, so that Eco could play tricks with the name? Or is it all a ruse to keep us even more confused about the whole book; after all, if answers are what you're looking for, this book is the last thing you want to look at.
So what to conclude about this book? It left me with more questions than answers, yet not unsatisfied. It was very enjoyable. Maybe the best way to put it, is that on re-reading - years after I read it the first time around - it was as good as I thought I remembered it to be. I know it sounds complicated; but there are few books that on re-reading actually live up to the memory of reading it the first time, and this is one of those few.
