I read this years ago, when I devoured the whole corpus of SF. I enjoyed it then, and when I picked it up again after decades on the shelf, I was surg...moreI read this years ago, when I devoured the whole corpus of SF. I enjoyed it then, and when I picked it up again after decades on the shelf, I was surge I'd like it even more.
I now know a great deal more about America and I've been to Gettysburg. I'm not entirely sure that possessing Little Round Top would have swung the whole war, but it would certainly have changed the entire tone of the battle if Lee had secured it on the first day.
But we don't get there for a long while. Moore takes his time, setting the scene, filling in the history of the defeated North and giving us tantalising glimpses of affairs in the wider world. It's a hard life in what's left of the USA, and the penniless protagonist is lucky to find shelter and employment with an oddbod bookseller.
Drawn into shadowy affairs, things turn sticky, and has he really escaped to a better place when he falls in with some arcadian academics? There's sex and spice, history and conflict before the fateful trip into the past, to stand at a turning point in history.
I love time travel stories. Apart from the sense of anachronism - "Good morrow, milord, can'st inform me whereabouts of a batterymonger?" - there are all the delightful possibilities and paradoxes. What happens if you accidentally - or deliberately - kill your own ancestor? If you can change the past, will you also change the future, or is the universe self-repairing?
Moore sketches in the outlines of this puzzling world that is at once past and future. The 1930s as they never were. But might have been. And he gives us enough details to illustrate how odd it could have been. If the USA had not been a prosperous and inventive hub of industry during the latter Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, what technologies might have gone undiscovered? No Henry Ford to bring motoring to the masses.
No Wright Brothers to bring us flight. No Edison, no Bell to harness electricity.
I'm reminded of Stephen King's recent expedition into time travel, where we find out what ramifications JFK had on the world. A single point in time where history teeters. A man in a Dallas warehouse, another in a peach orchard. Ordinary people in ordinary places, and yet the world forks.
This is one of the classics of science fiction and time travel. It is - paradoxically - timeless. (less)
Patchy. I would have liked less of the office politics and drinking and sex, and more of the nuts and bolts of cruise crew and passenger interactions....morePatchy. I would have liked less of the office politics and drinking and sex, and more of the nuts and bolts of cruise crew and passenger interactions.
The long hours for low pay wasn't a surprise. I did a long cruise a couple of years back and our dinner waiter on the second sitting would be up at dawn doling out the hand sanitiser at the buffet. The stewards also got to earn their keep.
We would see the crew in their clean uniforms, apparently unruffled, but I got the feeling that there was a lot went on behind the doors marked "Crew Only". If the battles that went on in the passenger laundries were repeated in the doubtless smaller and busier crew laundries, it must have been carnage indeed!
A few things startled me - the way that items of cutlery and crockery were jealously guarded and pinched when nobody was looking. Of course there must be breakages, but if the waiters had no "ownership", they wouldn't care, and there would be a fortune lost on lost or broken items, possibly running out of essentials before the end of a cruise. With thousands of passengers, there's a lot of eating implements to account for, I guess.
I would have thought bunk rooms belowdecks, much as a navy crew lives. Apparently not, and small two-berhers are standard, often with wildly inappropriate room-mates.
A few things didn't ring true. A lot of the book described the attractiveness of female cremates and their easy availability in an atmosphere of hard drinking and easy sex. But the author appears to have resisted all temptation. And was he really so much put upon by management? It doesn't seem right that he would be officially restricted to one meal a day and even then on sufferance.
Particularly given the vast amounts of food handled during these cruises. There must be a lot of wastage.
Overall, I staid with it to the end, but I was kind of hoping for a shipwreck or some wild orgy or something to interrupt the office politics.(less)
Second time around for both book and film, this time aided by the fact that I have actually visited Madison County, Winterset and Des Moines. Discover...moreSecond time around for both book and film, this time aided by the fact that I have actually visited Madison County, Winterset and Des Moines. Discoverylover and I poked around the bridges, left books at Roseman Bridge, and just had a ball. The countryside is as described in the book and seen in the film. Rural, dirt roads, scattered farmhouses. Easy to get lost here, if it wasn't for GPS, and I can well understand Robert Kincaid turning up at the door of a farmhouse to ask directions.
To the average Iowan, a globe ranging photographer must have seemed exotic, and when Robert swaps Yeats lines with Francesca Johnson, Italian war bride with teenage children and a husband growing tubby and boring, flames begin to smoulder.
This is a love story seen from a generation on, after all the participants are dead and there are just a few artifacts for the children to puzzle over. It's not a happy ever after story, but neither is it a tragedy. It is a gem, one to make the reader sigh with happiness and groan in frustration. It is a lesson in life, for seizing the moment and living it to the full, but never losing sight of the larger picture.
And it is a brief look at a place and some structures none of us will ever see, so I count myself lucky for chancing upon the bridges almost by accident and spending a morning looking around and remembering the love linked to the land. The local tourist bureau has good reason to love Robert James Waller, and the place is full of romantic fools from around the globe.
A thin book, and a thin premise, but it isn't corney. Not great literature, to be sure, but neither is it cardboard characters fumbling and falling, groping and grabbing. There is a majesty and a passion here and it satisfies the reader in a way I still cannot quite grasp, given the nature of the ending.
I guess I am romantic fool enough to think of Robert and Francesca holding tight to each other for a few days and a few small trinkets for years after as impossibly sweet. But isn't that what we do of life itself? Most of us have a few moments of glory and bliss, and we hold onto a photograph, a key, a memory for as long as we can, reliving the moment.
This was Waller's first published book, apparently, intended for the brief consumption of a few friends. When one of them showed the book to a literary agent, they called Waller immediately, asking where he had been all their lives! There have been a string of further books along similar themes, not to mention the films. (less)
Tom Wolfe is always worth reading, but in this case I think he missed the mark a little. I recently read "The Art of Fielding" which has a s...moreTom Wolfe is always worth reading, but in this case I think he missed the mark a little. I recently read "The Art of Fielding" which has a similar set of themes, and that was far more credible, despite being a little more surreal.
All of the characters are caricatures. Charlotte Simmons especially. What's it all about, what's the point, why is it so long, and why do the characters have to spend so much time obsessing through interior monologues?
Having said that, the thing began well. I loved the two roomies, meeting for the first time, parents in tow, coming from two totally different worlds, and sharing a meal at some horrid American restaurant. Huge portions of appalling food. Now THAT rings true!
After that, things kind of go downhill as the various characters begin interweaving their stories and their problems. Sex, societies, academics and athletes. All of the boxes are ticked, and I can't say that I care for any of them. Charlotte might have plenty of brains, but not much in the way of common sense.
The only one I halfway liked was JoJo the basketballer. He was perhaps the only one to be putting any effort into getting some education out of the expensive college. And he was the only one who wasn't expected to.
In real life, I suspect there's actually less booze, less sex, and more study, and very little of the sort of major dramas Tom Wolfe conjures up for us.
If Mr Wolfe's next book is something equally big and thick and square, I'm going to need an extra good reason to crack it open, let alone stay till the end.(less)
Loved it. Plastic beaches, rubber ducks, ice floes and Chinese factories. We are taken to some very strange places, and we learn a lot. Notably about ...moreLoved it. Plastic beaches, rubber ducks, ice floes and Chinese factories. We are taken to some very strange places, and we learn a lot. Notably about how we are stuffing up our planet with crap. Still, it's an entertaining trip.(less)
Bill Bryson has always been good at making fun of people, and he indulges himself in this book, especially in the "Shakespeare didn't write Shake...moreBill Bryson has always been good at making fun of people, and he indulges himself in this book, especially in the "Shakespeare didn't write Shakespeare" section, where several people line up to have their bums kicked by Bryson. Throughout the book, there are any number of witty Brysonisms, and it is an entertaining read.
More latterly, Bill Bryson has become a superb history writer, and with this book on Shakespeare, he spins out the remarkably few facts known of Shakespeare the man into a fine biography, drawing upon the times, the places and the people known to Shakespeare. It's certainly a colorful life, especially the time spent in the seedy London streets, where he produced the plays that thrill us still.
Theatre in Elizabethan times was immensely popular, and there was a thriving trade in playwrighting, where drama was produced and presented under conditions of remarkable bareness and intimacy. No curtains, little in the way of sets or costumes, actors and audience breathing each other's farts. In some theatres, one could actually buy seats upon the stage itself. Bryson brings the atmosphere alive, and the plays gain more charm and gusto in our minds.
What this book is not is a treatise upon the plays or verses. They are passed over, for the most part, with a few references and quotes to show us a facet of the life of the author, and to illuminate his remarkable talent. Dear reader, seek elsewhere for the sparkle and wit of Shakespeare the writings, for this is a biography of Shakespeare the man, and it is a very good one, all the more astonishing for the fact that everything we know directly of him could easily fit on a single page.(less)
I enjoyed this book immensely. Apart from telling the story of the assassination step by step, minute by minute - reminiscent of Theodore White's "...moreI enjoyed this book immensely. Apart from telling the story of the assassination step by step, minute by minute - reminiscent of Theodore White's "Death of a President" - it looked at all the myths and conspiracy theories that have sprung up in the nearly fifty years since and debunked each one in the same detailed fashion.
For most of the conspiracy theories, there is not one single shred of evidence to support them. Not one little bit. Just fanciful thinking and opinions.
This book will remove all doubt in the minds of all but the most bone-headed, and the author does this by looking at the facts and the logic - the two things that are missing from most of the hundreds of conspiracy books.(less)
I love Connie Willis! She writes intricate stories, meticulously researched, her characters come alive on the page, their environment is present in mo...moreI love Connie Willis! She writes intricate stories, meticulously researched, her characters come alive on the page, their environment is present in more than words and she does it all with gentle humour and romance.
She writes a book about the Middle Ages - you are there. Simple as that.
And that's how it works. In her writing world, time travel has been invented, about fifty years from now, and historians are lining up to go through to the past to study their favorite historical periods. It's modern people going back in time.
The theme is a step forward from the often hokey time travel stories of classic SF, where a scientist goes back and alters history, or kills an ancestor, or in one nifty story, is his own mother and father. All the wrinkles in time were done to death long ago, but here is Connie breaking new ground and collecting all the science fiction writing awards going.
I knew I'd enjoy these two books. Together they are two halves of one big novel and the reader is well advised to read Blackout before All Clear, lest all the surprises of the complex plot be revealed before they are set up.
So I bought them both on Audible.com and listened to them in sequence.
The print edition of Blackout might have helped. In the beginning, there is confusion in both the story and the mind of the reader. So many characters, all leaping back and forwards in time, interacting in past and present. Some of the characters are really the same person with two or three different names, depending on their assignment. To make things worse, the careful schedules of the historians are being re-arranged or cancelled with no apparent explanation. The English researcher who has received an American accent implant for a Pearl Harbor trip is now being sent to the Dunkirk evacuation first, for example, and he has to come up with a plausible explanation.
It's all chaos, but that's fine. The time continuum is a chaotic system and small inputs at critical points can have major impacts later on. It's all part of time travel theory.
But something's going wrong with time. Historians are sent back to World War Two on assignment, but somehow become stranded as events conspire to make their return to the future difficult. Is the gun emplacement freshly built on the portal site a coincidence or is it the continuum trying to protect itself from fatal damage? If the researchers somehow alter events so that Hitler wins the war and time travel is not invented at Oxford a century later, then there will be hell to pay.
The sense of worry and despair builds up through the dark days of the war, as the British Army is kicked out of France and the bombs begin to fall on London. There's a mirrored sequence around the time of the Normandy Invasion, when the Allies return to the Continent and more and more dreadful terror weapons are aimed at England.
Throughout the book(s), more and more characters are introduced, though thankfully there are only a handful of point of view protagonists. The settings are varied, from the wartime Oxford Street department stores, St Pauls Cathedral during the height of the Blitz, Dunkirk and Dover in the Evacuation, and Kent as the V-1 flying bombs are falling out of the sky.
We are taken to Trafalgar Square during the VE Day celebrations a number of times through the eyes of different characters, but the nagging fear builds: was the war really won or did the historians somehow accidentally intervene in history through their chance encounters with significant people?
I must confess that I was getting doubtful about the time travel theory until towards the end of the second book when Connie Willis revealed a magnificent twist that sorted everything out. Ironically - and yes, Agatha Christie and her mysteries make an appearance in these pages - the answer was there in plain sight all the time and in her narrated introduction the heroic author gives away a vital clue. Listen very carefully!
There's an enormous number of loose ends to be tied up, but they are all squared away, and there are poignant moments along the way when we realise that things aren't going to work out perfectly. But it's an immensely satisfying ending all the same, all the better for the long and tangled path we've followed to get there.
In fact, it might be worthwhile keeping a notebook open to jot down names and places, just to keep it all straight in your head. The reader can always flip back and forth through the print edition, but the audiobook is pretty much a linear progress through a chaotic narrative.
Perhaps the best part of the book is the atmosphere. Connie Willis has done her research well, aided by a lucky afternoon with some of the people who lived through these times, and she brings wartime London to life beautifully. The sound of the bombs, the taste of the scarce food, the noise of the shelters, the scarcity of clothing, the dark of the blackout and the eventual joy as the lights are turned on again. We are there.
A few minor grumbles. In the audio version, although the accents are superbly done, I must take exception to the sheer number of long "a" sounds. It grates on my ear to hear "train parsengers".
Nothing in wartime Britain cost 5p. Sixpence, if you please! And it's day before month, when talking dates - the English would definitely not have been discussing dates in American format!
But these are minor niggles, and all in all, I must confess - I love Connie Willis!
--Skyring
An added bonus, if you are an Audible.com customer, is a free download of Connie Willis and Carrie Vaughn (author of the Kitty Norville series) discussing these two books (and the Kitty series), research, writing and just having a great time together.(less)
The Pentagon was attacked on the same day, and a fourth airliner was hijacked and crashed at the same time, but it was the attacks on the tw...more
The Pentagon was attacked on the same day, and a fourth airliner was hijacked and crashed at the same time, but it was the attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Centre which dominated the television and print media. It's what we were looking at on CNN, and the other two planes were just items on the ticker in comparison.
That's because of the images. The photographs, the videos, the webcams. The planes endlessly looping into the towers, the smoke rising, the collapses, the dust clouds, the wreckage, the shocked faces and flowers and flags.
Compelling viewing. I know I watched with horror that night, as an episode of West Wing ended in tragedy and crisis and turned into real life. It was nearly dawn before I got to bed.
Along the way I had my own reality check - I went to the Empire State Building webcam, a favorite site of mine, aimed the thing downtown and there they were, on fire as I watched.
David Friend has told the story of the photographs, the videos, the webcams that awed, angered, horrified and inspired. Watching the World Change is 434 pages that not only tells the stories, but traces the way news gathering and reporting has evolved. The 9/11 attacks occurred just as digital cameras and cellphones were starting to become ubiquitous. Still pricey, but out there and involved. Nowadays, we watch news unfold on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube, but in 2001, they were still to come.
The book contains a colour photograph section, in which many of the images discussed in the text are shown. And striking they are. Everyone knows "The Falling Man", in which a curiously calm man is caught in mid-fall between the two towers. Just a man in his last moments of life, the stark cladding of the doomed buildings a backdrop. Death in the modern age.
Many others are included, moving and curious and stark. I think the one that hits me hardest is a candid shot of a group of emergency workers hauling away the body of a chaplain. The dead man peaceful, apparently asleep, the faces of the five big men carrying him studies in grief and determination, the dust and smoke of the disaster everywhere.
The chance shots - the video camera pointed up at precisely the moment of impact. The photograph of a crowd gathered to watch, the cameraman turning his back on the blazing buildings unaware as he snapped the shutter that the first tower had just begun to collapse, the sound still three seconds away, but the sight hitting the onlookers like a hammer. The group of people almost casual picnickers on the banks of the East River while disaster unfolds behind them.
Some photographs became famous, their subjects following on fame's path. I remember the photograph of fireman Mike Kehoe climbing the stairs to fight the fire far above. "Poor bloke," I thought, "he must have died in the collapse, and been aware that he was doomed."
But still he carried his equipment up past the line of evacuees. Happily he survived, and his story joins those of the photographers.
The last image is one that has become an icon. Like the famous flag-raising above Iwo Jima, this one happened by chance, even though the composition is similar. A tilted flagpole, a team of servicefolk raising the flag for morale, the flag's symbols a contrast, here in colour against the dust and wreckage behind.
This is a remarkable book, in itself an examination of a moment in history, a look at how we see news, how we react, how the pictures flashed around the world have human stories. These images, these people, these stories, they are legends of our time.
I ducked into a bookshop in Kings Cross Underground to get Peter Ackroyd's marvellous book London...moreThames: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd
I ducked into a bookshop in Kings Cross Underground to get Peter Ackroyd's marvellous book London: The Biography. I was there to check out every square on the British Monopoly board and I wanted to get my research right.
The book was a superb resource. I buried my nose into it and didn't come up for a long while. Perhaps the highlight was reading about London Stone and then seeing the actual relic of the ancient city right there on Cannon Street.
So when I recently found a companion book on the Thames in the bargain barrow at Paperchain in Manuka, I couldn't get my money out fast enough.
My hostel, just down from St Pauls, was only a short walk from the river, and I have walked along it, and over the Millennium Footbridge scores of times, each time pausing to lean over and watch the slow water. If ever there is a sacred river in the English-speaking world, this is it. The bridges, the cityscapes, the legends, the images - they all flow together to form the natural counterpoint to the city itself.
Peter Ackroyd doesn't disappoint. In fact he soars above my expectations. It would have been so easy to trace the path of the river down to the sea, talking of the history and the places at each stage, but he follows a different course. Each chapter is themed: trade, wildlife, bridges, weather, death, music, literature, religion and a dozen more.
We see the river as a whole being twenty times over in a new light. And each time it is a different river, never the same twice, every set of eyes and every heart focussed on a new view.
I love this approach, independent of time and place, the river has its own stories and its own way of telling them. Happenstance and artifice are blended by Ackroyd, skipping around like light on the ripples of the running river.
Pictures a plenty, along with maps, but this is no guidebook for a trip from A to B. This is something to dip into almost at random, to emerge refreshed or appalled as the case may be.
Sometimes the river was dead with filth and pollution, sometimes seething with life. It's all here, along with the curious places and people of the water and waterside.
Next visit to London, I might venture a little further up and down the great river. In the meantime, I've got enough to keep my appetite stoked right here.(less)
I love a good legal thriller, and Michael Connelly has produced a ripper with this one. We meet Mickey Haller, the Lincoln Lawyer, again as he ploughs...moreI love a good legal thriller, and Michael Connelly has produced a ripper with this one. We meet Mickey Haller, the Lincoln Lawyer, again as he ploughs through a new world of legal practice, the humdrum but topical world of mortgage foreclosures. Happily we don't spend the book rummaging through deeds and banks and loans - there's a murder case popped up, one which will grab our hero by the nuts and turn him right around.
Apart from Mickey, the book is full of unique characters, a real Los Angeles cast. The way they interact together keeps us entertained and guessing right to the end - there's a twist or two, and not just Mickey's testicles.
The courtroom drama itself had me gripped. Each side kept pulling rabbits out of the hat and it was touch and go at every chapter. Connelly has done his homework on this one, and we learn a bit about current legal trends along the rollercoaster ride.
Continuing development with Mickey Haller, reflecting Harry Bosch's progress in the parallel novel stream. It's a pleasure to see the wheels turn, not just on matters of law, but questions of ethics and philosophy. Looking forward to reading future instalments.
I downloaded this Audible book somewhere along Route 66, but there was some technical difficulty with playing it through the car's audio, so we didn't...moreI downloaded this Audible book somewhere along Route 66, but there was some technical difficulty with playing it through the car's audio, so we didn't get to listen as we drove the Mother Road west to California.
I've been listening in the cab, now I'm back home, and I loved it. This well deserved the Pulitzer Prize. It deals with America in geography, politics, humanity and history. It tackles the great themes of life, death, love and birth. It tells a story, binding us up with the Joad family as they reunite in Oklahoma and fragment on the way west.
These are things to care about, if you have a heart, and they are at once explored in rich detail and sparse language. Steinbeck emulates Mark Twain in speaking with the voice of the people, and the authenticity of his themes is all the more vivid for this.
It's dry and desolate in Oklahoma, but green and lush in California. That's why they go west, and they cross desers, rivers, mountains to get there. And when they arrive, it is exactly as promised. Beautiful county, grapes and peaches there for the picking, land spreading out rich and vast.
And already occupied by a grudging population, owned by the banks and big industry. And hundreds of thousands of poor "Okies", all competing for the limited work available. Welcome to Depression Amerika.
The various stories of the diverse characters of the Joad family are told with understanding. They are all flawed, they are all skilled in their own ways. And they all struggle. From the first page to the last, they have problems and dangers to deal with, and not one of them emerges unscathed.
If there is a message I took from this book, it is this - love your fellow beings. Look after them and they will look after you. Help, sharing, comfort and love in the most difficult of conditions.
The book finishes on a scene that transcends all that went before, but is as natural as water flowing downhill. An act of astonishing humanity for a stranger, and we close the book with a sigh and hope for the future. Things are bleak, but the Joads will pull through.(less)
I downloaded this on Audible before I left, and listened to it through Iowa and Missouri, running down through Hannibal to St Louis. Finished it when ...moreI downloaded this on Audible before I left, and listened to it through Iowa and Missouri, running down through Hannibal to St Louis. Finished it when I got back home.
I really enjoyed Ambrose's insights into and knowledge of some of the great people and events of American history. And I learnt a lot.
This is kind of the "history behind the history". This is Ambrose telling us why he became interested in certain subjects, often on the most trivial of happenstances. It's also a bit of a roadtrip through Ambrose's life, travelling through America in time and space.
I've always loved Ambrose's books, ever since I became aware of "Band of Brothers". I've devoured them all since then. His son is following in his footsteps with "The Pacific", but isn't quite the writer his father was.
Thoroughly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the subject of history, not to mention history itself.(less)
I remember Des Moines. Discoverylover and I had been debating where the accent was and whether it was pronounced in the French fashion or what we imag...moreI remember Des Moines. Discoverylover and I had been debating where the accent was and whether it was pronounced in the French fashion or what we imagined Iowans might say. I asked the lady behind the counter about how to say the name of the place we were in. She looked me square in the eye and said, slowly for the idiot foreigners, "Duh air ree kuh ween".
For the record, it's pronounced in the French way: "Day Moyn".
I'm not sure how to say Ames, but perhaps it is also in the French manner. Aimes? Amis?
This is an extraordinary book. Written by a man, it describes the friendship of eleven women, progressing from infancy to middle age. A group friendship remaining steady and ongoing through the decades, fragmenting a little as the girls married, left Iowa, found new careers and raised families, and then reforming as contact changed from letters and long-distance phone calls to group emails, with the "Reply All" button copping a pounding.
There are laughter and tears along the way, with the "crying couch" at a four-day reunion weekend getting lots of use. I shed a few at poignant moments, and cackled at the funny bits.
This is a history of a friendship, but it's also a glimpse into the lives of some extraordianry people. The small town doctor who turned tragic death into joyful life, for example. The brave heart of a girl who never grew up. And the eleven women - ordinary in everything except for the strength of their sisterhood.
Together they overcame tragedy, fought off diseases, helped each other over the rough patches in life, and always came up smiling. The photographs of the girls growing into womanhood are scattered through the book, happy and beautiful, glowing and gorgeous.
I guess the message of the book is that you don't make it through life alone, not without becoming bitter and withdrawn. Camus told us this. Family and friends are the catalysts to spark development, reinforce the good things, smooth over the bad.
Family is one thing - you have no say in the matter. But friends are the people you pick - and who pick you - and you are defined by the people you hang out with as much as any other factor in life.
I thought that this might be boring, but I was pleasantly surprised. The story is told well, with surprises and adventures spaced out through the book. Emotional lows are balanced by highs, and the book ends on an upbeat note.
Perhaps the best part is right at the end, where a photograph shows the notebook-wielding writer surrounded by "The Girls" in a field behind the house of the reunion. He must have had a time of it, dealing with emotional dramas as the women relived the stories of girlhood, teenship and onwards, often helped along by a few glasses of wine. What to put in, what to leave unsaid, how to phrase the tricky bits.
He's done a fine job. And now I might pass this along to a friend.(less)
I really enjoyed this book. OK, it's Groundhog Day for a teenage girl, and there's even a reference to the movie inside, but this is so well done! We ...moreI really enjoyed this book. OK, it's Groundhog Day for a teenage girl, and there's even a reference to the movie inside, but this is so well done! We look at the friends and enemies, the class levels and distinctions of high school, and we see their flaws and their failings, We see the anger and the hurt, the cruel jokes and the fakery.
And then, we see the characters. We see their secrets, their hopes and loves. We see them cruising through life or doing it tough. we find what they really think, the silly little things that drive their lives. A long-ago accident, a glance, a meal, a friendship in kindergarten - all these are things that colour their lives - and their futures.
And more than that, we see the protagonist discover herself. She steps back and looks at what she is. She finds a joy and a richness that she has never noticed before. Not when there are so many days to come, and you can have as many bites of the cherry as you want.
It's a special day for Samantha, we learn, and there is that feeling of anticipation, that fluttery half-scared, half-exultant feeling you get as the roller-coaster climbs away up. The excitement builds, aiming for the climax, and when we get to the brink, we find it's not quite the ride we expected.
Lauren does this seven times over, and she builds us up each time. What will go wrong? What will work out? Some days are disasters, some days are diamonds. And then there is only one day left, and you think you know where it's going, and you are partly right and partly wrong. Seeing Sarah Grundel's old brown Chevrolet slide into the last vacant space in the car park is one of those moments, when you appreciate the skill of the author.
I loved it!
I loved the philosophy behind it, too. It's almost a textbook on how to be a better person. How to get more out of life.
One final note. Look carefully at Juliet Sykes. Think about what's going through her head (so to speak). It's a special day for her too. And she knows it.(less)
I wasn't sure what to make of this to begin with, but I found it increasingly brilliant as I went along.
Stephen Fry has wickedly rewritten t...moreI wasn't sure what to make of this to begin with, but I found it increasingly brilliant as I went along.
Stephen Fry has wickedly rewritten the country house detective mystery. Brought it into the modern age, along with associated bad language and cultural references. But realistically, it could have been set any time in the past century. Like P G Wodehouse's novels of upper class English society, it is ageless.
Wodehouse could not have written this, however. Not enough fun, and too much sex. Including all sorts of odd couplings, some of which are uncomfortable to think about.
It's hard to work out what sort of book this is, to begin with. Is it a first person narrative? An epistolary novel? A self-indulgent bit of male wankery. Certainly the protagonist is a little off-putting in his aging drunken lechery.
But we do not have to love the driver to enjoy the ride, and Stephen Fry has his characters lined out and fleshed in perfectly. We can see them all in our mind's eye beautifully, in their diverse natures.
Red herrings are liberally scattered through the book as the story develops. We learn a lot, but by the time we realise we are being led down a garden path, it is too late - the trap is sprung and we have to reorient our thinking in another direction.
The plot itself is fascinating. A little slow to develop, as previously noted, but it picks up, and gentle reader, it is well worth the journey.
There are couplings, games, journeys, eye-wincing injuries, Roundheads, spaniels, beets and roots before the witty gathering where the secret is revealed and the reader left aghast.
I have enjoyed it thoroughly, listening to the sometimes incomprehensible, sometimes alarming adventures of the good Professor.
McCall Smith ...moreI have enjoyed it thoroughly, listening to the sometimes incomprehensible, sometimes alarming adventures of the good Professor.
McCall Smith has a delightful way of writing. His gentle humour, his philosophical reflections, above all, his insights into the everyday minor moral dilemmas of ordinary people, are a constant joy. Shakespeare or Austen are worthy comparisons here - he sees to the heart of humanity in all his characters. Even when he does not spell out their motivations and actions, we can make our own guesses.
I love the humour. So dry and gentle, sometimes just the choice of words, it is not so much the laugh-out-loud type, but the sort that brings forth a sigh of happiness in the reader.
Professor von Igelfeld, the celebrated author of the 1 200 page Portugese Irregular Verbs, has a series of adventures, both at home and abroad. In the first half of the book, friction at home is averted by a trip to Cambridge, where he finds the English puzzling and humourless. His proposed solution to the bathroom problem is masterful and utterly unworkable, his musings on the location of the missing skull penetrating, his contribution to the tears of the Master a delight.
But it is in the second half of the book, after another awkward situation is unexpectedly resolved, that events take increasingly surprising turns. He returns home in a surprising fashion, and his chief academic rival finds himself the recipient of a high Colombian honour - but is it the First Class medal, or merely the Third Class ribbon? (less)
![Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy [With CD]](http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172651487s/203795.jpg "Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy [With CD]")
series) discussing these two books (and the Kitty series), research, writing and just having a great time together.
is 434 pages that not only tells the stories, but traces the way news gathering and reporting has evolved. The 9/11 attacks occurred just as digital cameras and cellphones were starting to become ubiquitous. Still pricey, but out there and involved. Nowadays, we watch news unfold on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube, but in 2001, they were still to come.
. I was there to check out every square on the British Monopoly board and I wanted to get my research right.
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