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July 26
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Trevor
gave
to:
Nearly the Happy Hour (Paperback)
by D.A. Prince
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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Trevor said:
"Sometimes, perhaps often, it takes me a while to get the voice of a poet into my head. I don’t think that was the case here. The voice was soft, but musical – I think of her as someone with a wonderful ear: the sort of person who can whistle or...more
Sometimes, perhaps often, it takes me a while to get the voice of a poet into my head. I don’t think that was the case here. The voice was soft, but musical – I think of her as someone with a wonderful ear: the sort of person who can whistle or hum a tune so you can tell what it is and then maybe find yourself singing along to her humming.
Many of these poems are like little photographs. There are poems about the dross of everyday life, but highlighted in a way that makes it shine like the most precious of belongings.
Oh, I hate being this ‘general’. Let me give an example.
One of my favourite poems was about string. About how string in her family ended up being passed from family member to family member – “never cut, only teased / out of its obstinate knots”. How the string was kept, where it was kept and always ready to be reused. This brings us to the final line: “I never knew you could buy string.” now, isn’t that magnificent? Ms Prince does this sort of thing throughout this book, she makes a habit of it – taking seemingly simple little lines and then having them take your breath away.
Another favourite was about handkerchiefs and knots and memory.
The best, the one I loved the most, was called Hugo.
“What he remembers of us is Dolls, dolls!”
The dolls are matroyshkas, Russian dolls that fit into one another, from St Petersburg. And this brings, for me, the best line in the book, “where cities change their names to hide / a history”. Oh yes, utterly brilliant.
There are a couple of images on the cover of this book that also should rate a mention – the photograph on the back that I assume is the inspiration behind, And Here’s the Proof and the cover illustration itself, a patchwork quilt with snatches of poem from Marriage Bed - both I only connected after I’d finished reading the book and then had that “Oh, look!” experience that is always so nice.
There are also a couple of clever, funny poems – I never trust a poet that can’t make me smile at least once in their book. The best of these to me was Hope, a kind of beauty contest based on 1 Corinthians between Hope, Faith and Charity. It has always struck me as strange how Charity has become Love recently – I was talking to a friend about this a while ago, it does seem like a terribly odd change to have occurred, you know, Charity becoming Love – they are not even remotely the same thing – so it is odd that the mistake in translation could ever have occurred in the first place. I’m not a Christian, so should keep my nose out of it, but I think I would prefer the greatest of these to be Charity over Love any day, to be honest. Anyway, in the poem Hope is rather pissed off after coming second to Charity in the beauty contest - a very cute idea. The title poem of this volume is also delightful in a similar way.
Not Even In Colour made me think of a time I never really knew when, I assume it must have been before I was born (or at least before I could tag along), people would go to watch ‘foreign films’ – as all ‘serious’ film is always foreign – and after having sat “surrounded by serious and solitary silences, / it was back to your flat, hoping / you could tell me what we’d been looking at.”
There are so many great lines, so many mind-scorching images – like the gull in the poem Gull cracking open a crab and the line, “You hope the children look away -- they might / be storing it up for nightmares”. What I love most about this line is the fact that the person the poem is about can't drag her eyes off what she is seeing long enough to check if the kids are going to look away. All she can do is hope they will - no wonder hope came second to charity, and maybe even after faith at this rate...
Like I said, D.A. Prince takes many everyday images and puts a light on them that makes them shine and shine, glisten off the page, in fact. Many of these poems are strikingly good. And the voice is soft and strong and a joy to listen to. I found myself reading many of these out-loud: in fact, compelled to. A sheer joy.
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July 25
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Trevor
gave
to:
The Handmaid's Tale (Paperback)
by Margaret Atwood
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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read in July, 2008
Trevor said:
"I can be a bit of a dag at times – before I started this I heard somewhere that it was her first novel – and so I figured I would start my review by saying something like, “it was okay, but I’m sure she will get better as she goes on.” I...more
I can be a bit of a dag at times – before I started this I heard somewhere that it was her first novel – and so I figured I would start my review by saying something like, “it was okay, but I’m sure she will get better as she goes on.” I’ve just checked and it was not her first novel, or anything like her first. All the same, I stand by my conviction that she will get better as a novelist – even if it turns out that some of those better novels will now have been written before this one.
That seems an unduly harsh criticism – and there were things about this book I liked very much – but I didn’t feel that it quite worked as well for me as her other books have. I’m not as keen on her overtly science fiction works. This one and Oryx and Crake didn’t quite work for me. I think because they reminded me respectively of 1984 and Brave New World - both of which I think were better novels. It seems that one of the key ingredients in a science fiction dystopia is a war that may or may not be real and the banning of love. How hard can that be to write?
Well, no, this is a much better book than that. There was a point at about the middle where my ears pricked up. She was describing the first time she went into the Commander’s room and told the story twice, with modifications, and said at the end of each telling – ‘that is a reconstruction’ – or words to that effect. There are a number of times in the telling of this story where that sort of irony, that sort of mirror holding, happens and it is quite nice and quite interesting. The book ends in another interesting kind of mirror holding, an ironic questioning of the verity of the story we have just been told. All this should have been enough to get me to say this is a very good book.
The loony, totalitarian types in this novel are Fundamentalist Christian types of the Old Testament school – you know, this book should have had everything going for it. It has been frequently challenged in an attempt to have it banned from US high school libraries, due to the supposed anti-religious nature of the text – something that says an awful lot that is very interesting (and frightening) about what those bastards think religion is.
But it still didn’t work for me. I couldn’t help feeling that it was more a collection of short stories on a theme – rather than a novel. I’m not sure I can explain that as well as I ought. It made sense that this was her first novel – even when it turned out not to be. It reads like a first novel, by someone not yet comfortable with the form. Other of her books - The Blind Assassin say, or Cat’s Eye didn’t feel like that at all. The Robber Bride did in part too, I guess, but it was told in various voices and so that helps explain that – and this one is too, of course, but even the long bit told in a consistent voice is more bitsy – or felt more bitsy to me.
The thing she does in this and in The Blind Assassin is to tell you a story where you think, “Gosh, imagine making all that up – what a horrible world – these fiction writers have such nasty imaginations”, and then she will tell you where in history precisely these things happened, really happened, not just made up. This doesn’t leave the reader thinking ‘fact is stranger than fiction’, but more ‘god, have we got things to answer for’.
It might be that now was just not the right time for me to read this book, but it just wasn’t as good as I had hoped it might be.
There is a film, I believe – the sex scenes (based on one of those truly bizarre stories from the Old Testament that makes you wonder how the Bible ever got to be considered a book of moral guidance – and which gives this novel its title) might be quite amusing to watch on the film. I don’t mean for any assistance these scenes might offer for masturbation, there was little to nothing ‘sexy’ about the sex scenes in this book – well, unless one attended an English Public School, perhaps. It is a pity I’ve gone off films so much – as this might have been one that would be worth watching – although, given how much of the book is inside the main character’s head, I’m not sure it really would work too well on film. Hard to know.
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Trevor
gave
to:
Madame Bovary (Oxford World's Classics)
by Gustave Flaubert
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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Trevor said:
"I’ve just read Bruce Nagle’s review of this book – in which he talks of the benefits of returning to a classic work of fiction after some time so that a ‘different self’ can ‘acquire new insights’ into a much loved work. If I didn’t ...more
I’ve just read Bruce Nagle’s review of this book – in which he talks of the benefits of returning to a classic work of fiction after some time so that a ‘different self’ can ‘acquire new insights’ into a much loved work. If I didn’t have so much else to read this beautiful comment would be enough to make me take up this book again. I remember so loving this book when I first read it that it would be no hardship to read it again.
It is odd the things that get associated with books in one’s life – I particularly remember reading this one on the train on the way to and home from work years ago. I remember being utterly transported – yes, I know, there’s a pun there somewhere – by the story.
But I also remember talking to a friend on a train about it years later, who was also reading it on the train, talking to her about the ‘error’ I spotted in the book. Who is the narrator? In the first chapter he is clearly a school mate of the child who will grow to become the pitifully inept Dr Bovary – but the narrator becomes God at some stage, well, at least someone with the same ability to peer into the lives of others as God is reputed to have.
This book isn’t the book one might think it is. There comes a moment in this book when one is awoken from a dream and the book stops being a romance set in the French countryside and becomes something infinitely deeper and, well, terrifyingly human.
I’ve only now thought of the connection between Madam Bovary and Nora of A Doll’s House. Two women trapped in unreal kinds of ‘conventions’, both getting into financial difficulty to sustain their unreal lives and then both finding ways to get out of these ‘troubles’ that one might not quite expect – definitely not expecting the consequences given how our expectations have been moulded by the stories up until these points, these 'turning points'. Emma’s (Madam Bovary's) choice seems so romantic at the moment she makes it – but it then so quickly turns to shit – and this is the moment I referred to above, the moment when this novel becomes quite different to what I had expected it to remain. Nora’s choice, on the other hand, is utterly revolutionary - so much so that I believe the play was banned in many countries.
But perhaps that is a difference between life and art – far too often in life the choices we make are the bland middle path and we are not even Emma Bovary (which is no bad thing) but also, far too rarely, are we Nora Helmer either.
If you have never read this, you had better do it now or you simply will not get a chance to experience the joy Bruce spoke of in his review.
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New comment on M's review of
Leading Change
reply to this comment
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Trevor
read and liked
M's
review of Leading Change:
"This appears to be a collection of essays on handling organizational change rather than a comprehensive book on leading change. Actually, the author discusses many examples of change gone haywire with few mentions of proactive approaches and positiv...more
This appears to be a collection of essays on handling organizational change rather than a comprehensive book on leading change. Actually, the author discusses many examples of change gone haywire with few mentions of proactive approaches and positive examples. It’s like trying to teach people how to swim by telling them not to drown. I found little real-life applicability from this approach.
I would expect a book like this to have a “hook” in the opening chapter to explain why the subject is compelling, but this was clearly missing. The book also ended abruptly. A couple of sections were puzzling: (1) the endorsement of Outward Bound-type activities to help create trust, even though few organizations can actually afford the expense, and (2) statements about how non-managerial employees have been taught to not accept responsibility, which seems like an odd generalization from a business professor at a leading university. Overall, though, an interesting overview. Bonus points for the penguins on the cover....less
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Trevor
read and liked
Bruce's
review of Madame Bovary (Oxford World's Classics):
"An outstanding classic of late 19th century literature. For me this was a reread after about 25 years, and the work was as impressive this time as it was before. Reading excellent literature at different stages in one's life is a fascinating experi...more
An outstanding classic of late 19th century literature. For me this was a reread after about 25 years, and the work was as impressive this time as it was before. Reading excellent literature at different stages in one's life is a fascinating experience, since one brings a different "self" to the work and takes away new insights....less
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July 24
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Trevor
added a quote:
"“`How pleasant to know Mr Lear!' / Who has written such volumes of stuff ! / Some think him ill-tempered and queer, / But a few think him pleasant enough.”"
— Edward Lear
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Trevor
read and liked
Bruce's
review of Armageddon in Retrospect:
"I often wonder how readers who did not come of age in the sixties view Kurt Vonnegut. I did, and he was iconic. How many times since then I have reread Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five with the same enjoyment I did when they were ...more
I often wonder how readers who did not come of age in the sixties view Kurt Vonnegut. I did, and he was iconic. How many times since then I have reread Cat's Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five with the same enjoyment I did when they were first published. Vonnegut's novels are deceptive; one has the feeling that one is reading something light, flippant, and ultimately insubstantial only to find the plots and characters remain with one for years afterward.
I approached this short collection of his unpublished (now published posthumously) with some trepidation. So often such works were withheld from publication by an author for good reason, or he was unable to get them published, and in either case they can be disappointing. I did not, however, find that to be true with these short stories. I found them to be most compelling and well-written. Most grew out of Vonnegut's WWII experiences, but that isn't true of them all. Several continue to haunt me....less
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July 23
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New comment on Matthew's review of
The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
(see all 35 comments)
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New comment on Trevor's review of
How Right You Are, Jeeves
(see all 3 comments)
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I like the fact that you review every book you have added.. I've just been appreciating some and adding a few to my now ridiculously huge wishlist. Cheers :)
Trevor, thanks for the add. That is a v. strange pic you have there...but then I am a fan of strange pictures (avatars I guess they're called).
Thanks for the add, Trevor!! :) Great to meet you here on GoodReads. Many lovely reads and pleasant days to you.
