C.S. Boag's Blog, page 4
February 27, 2015
A Night to Remember by Walter Lord
And a book to forget. The drawer of this event is lost in a welter of facts. Sure you got to have the bloody things, but couldn't the writer have made an attempt to transport us into the Titanic on that fateful night?
As a reader, I would have liked to roam the ship as she headed out on her maiden voyage. I would have liked to see and hear the passengers going about their life on this floating city,. Got some feel of what it was like working the boilers, serving the moneyed wretches, the activities of people not so well off.
Instead the writer hits an iceberg. We get the real life interviews dealing with different events. I've read the np more recent work dealing with the miserable president of the line who happened to be on board and managed to save himself when so many died. The book could have been so vivid. As it is , the treatment is as cold as the icebound seas the Titanic foundered in.
A workmanlike effort that spawned a movie or two. But other than that, it doesn't cut the ice.2/5
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As a reader, I would have liked to roam the ship as she headed out on her maiden voyage. I would have liked to see and hear the passengers going about their life on this floating city,. Got some feel of what it was like working the boilers, serving the moneyed wretches, the activities of people not so well off.
Instead the writer hits an iceberg. We get the real life interviews dealing with different events. I've read the np more recent work dealing with the miserable president of the line who happened to be on board and managed to save himself when so many died. The book could have been so vivid. As it is , the treatment is as cold as the icebound seas the Titanic foundered in.
A workmanlike effort that spawned a movie or two. But other than that, it doesn't cut the ice.2/5
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February 26, 2015
Avalanche by Joseph Wechsberg
Just doesn't work. A pity considering the effort that went into it. The book deals with two avalanches that hit the Austrian Alps township of Blons on January 11, 1954. A lot if people died. A lot of research went into this book.
An avalanche has momentum. This book doesn't. Time and again the narrative is so a useless bit of information can be inserted. The tense shifts between present and past. We toggle backwards and forwards in time. It is horribly confusing.
So there's information on how avalanches are formed; different avalanches; what can happen in an avalanche; etcetera. So much information, in fact that the story is lost.
What would it have been in the hands of a real writer! "There was no dawn in Blons in January. Eugene looked out into darkness..." That is one way it could have started- and then take from there, building up momentum that carries the reader along with it.
As it is, the reader finds himself begging for a huge rush of snow to put him out of his misery. 1/5
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An avalanche has momentum. This book doesn't. Time and again the narrative is so a useless bit of information can be inserted. The tense shifts between present and past. We toggle backwards and forwards in time. It is horribly confusing.
So there's information on how avalanches are formed; different avalanches; what can happen in an avalanche; etcetera. So much information, in fact that the story is lost.
What would it have been in the hands of a real writer! "There was no dawn in Blons in January. Eugene looked out into darkness..." That is one way it could have started- and then take from there, building up momentum that carries the reader along with it.
As it is, the reader finds himself begging for a huge rush of snow to put him out of his misery. 1/5
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Saturday by Ian McEwan
I am world's apart from Ian McEwan. At one point his main character, Henry Perowne, criticises Anna Karenenin for being just words, lacking insight. One mustn't invest author's with the beliefs of their creations, yet this is a standout. For me McEwan speaks through Perowne- for me they share interests and motivations. And why have characters say something like that out of the blue when it has nothing to do with the story.
I make such a to do of this because it encapsulates what is wrong with Saturday. The book goes on and on with its clever little plot, with its unbelievable twists and turns and in the end says nothing.
Anna Karenin is a work of genius- Saturday is work for the reader. After all those words, and there's some inordinate sum of them- precociously self- satisfying- I put down the book feeling I had gained nothing from the exercise. I finished it becauseI started it. The research was impressive- but, as with Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behaviour- impressive research makes for a great thesis but does little for a reader. It's little more than a writer doing cartwheels. The novel is tough,. "Dazzling, profound and urgent" the publisher says on the cover. It is so utterly none of these.
View all my reviews
I make such a to do of this because it encapsulates what is wrong with Saturday. The book goes on and on with its clever little plot, with its unbelievable twists and turns and in the end says nothing.
Anna Karenin is a work of genius- Saturday is work for the reader. After all those words, and there's some inordinate sum of them- precociously self- satisfying- I put down the book feeling I had gained nothing from the exercise. I finished it becauseI started it. The research was impressive- but, as with Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behaviour- impressive research makes for a great thesis but does little for a reader. It's little more than a writer doing cartwheels. The novel is tough,. "Dazzling, profound and urgent" the publisher says on the cover. It is so utterly none of these.
View all my reviews
February 12, 2015
"A Death in Tuscany" by Michele Giuttari
When I was young, my mother used to take me to Austinmeer beach and I'd find Phantom comics in a cupboard at the boarding house. I don't know why they were there but I loved them.
I loved too "A Death in Tuscany", a copy of which I found in this house in a French village we were renting. What a find ! I had never heard of Giuttari. He is a former boss of the Florence police who has turned his hand to novel writing.
The writing is clunky- whether the fault of the writer or the translator, I don't know. But it doesn't matter- in fact it gives the book a certain charm. Two distinct cases present themselves Superintendent Ferrara- the death of a young girl, presumably of drugs, and the disappearance of an old friend.
Given the author's background, the knowledge of police procedure has to be- and is- stupendous. Painstaking detective work follows, mingled with details of Ferrara's private life.
It makes for engrossing reading- I couldn't put it down. Thank heavens for people who leave books- and comics- behind when they stay somewhere. The practice made a young boy and an old man very happy. 5/5
I loved too "A Death in Tuscany", a copy of which I found in this house in a French village we were renting. What a find ! I had never heard of Giuttari. He is a former boss of the Florence police who has turned his hand to novel writing.
The writing is clunky- whether the fault of the writer or the translator, I don't know. But it doesn't matter- in fact it gives the book a certain charm. Two distinct cases present themselves Superintendent Ferrara- the death of a young girl, presumably of drugs, and the disappearance of an old friend.
Given the author's background, the knowledge of police procedure has to be- and is- stupendous. Painstaking detective work follows, mingled with details of Ferrara's private life.
It makes for engrossing reading- I couldn't put it down. Thank heavens for people who leave books- and comics- behind when they stay somewhere. The practice made a young boy and an old man very happy. 5/5
December 9, 2014
Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham
I read it in an old, battered Penguin edition so I don't know the length, can only estimate it. But it is one beautiful, beautiful book - all 250,000 or so words of it.
There are some things you shouldn't know. One is the relation of a book to the life of its writer. But Maugham called it biographical, so that is always in the back of your mind. And here he is writing autobiographically, about being a heterosexual. It took a bit of getting my head around, particularly as Maugham is such a self exposing writer.
It is am exquisite novel, nonetheless. Here are the ins and outs of the life of a young man who doesn't know what to do with himself. An artists life in Paris. A young man with "expectations". A medical student. Down and out.
I loved it. Maugham has been accused of writing in cliche's. But I have got to the stage where I ask; what's wrong with cliche's? Cliche's are what we use in everyday life. The point is that the thing flows. You are in this man's mind, in his life, and he doesn't spare himself the lash. I read it because we saw the movie - the first one . But the movie as is often the case a travesty of the book. If you want to learn more of life and people and be hugely entertained at the same time read the book. The Maugham the merrier. 5/5
There are some things you shouldn't know. One is the relation of a book to the life of its writer. But Maugham called it biographical, so that is always in the back of your mind. And here he is writing autobiographically, about being a heterosexual. It took a bit of getting my head around, particularly as Maugham is such a self exposing writer.
It is am exquisite novel, nonetheless. Here are the ins and outs of the life of a young man who doesn't know what to do with himself. An artists life in Paris. A young man with "expectations". A medical student. Down and out.
I loved it. Maugham has been accused of writing in cliche's. But I have got to the stage where I ask; what's wrong with cliche's? Cliche's are what we use in everyday life. The point is that the thing flows. You are in this man's mind, in his life, and he doesn't spare himself the lash. I read it because we saw the movie - the first one . But the movie as is often the case a travesty of the book. If you want to learn more of life and people and be hugely entertained at the same time read the book. The Maugham the merrier. 5/5
The Terrorist's Son by Zak Ebrahim
I picked up this odd looking little book at an airport bookshop amongst all the airport rubbish, and it's a gem. It's what it says it is - the memoir of the son of a terrorist - and it makes for chilling but instructive reading.
The messages come out loud and clear:
1. Terrorists area fringe group - this particular one happens to be attached to a religion, but they can be anyone;
2.Young people can be influenced by purveyors of hate - although they needn't be;
3. It's a bastard being a son of a terrorist - but there's a choice.
This is the story of that choice - the writer becomes a pacifist warning others against taking the road his father went down. That poor boy ended up a good man.
The messages come out loud and clear:
1. Terrorists area fringe group - this particular one happens to be attached to a religion, but they can be anyone;
2.Young people can be influenced by purveyors of hate - although they needn't be;
3. It's a bastard being a son of a terrorist - but there's a choice.
This is the story of that choice - the writer becomes a pacifist warning others against taking the road his father went down. That poor boy ended up a good man.
November 17, 2014
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
Famous Book, infamous writer. He was advising rulers how to hold onto powers. Modern day politicians don't need such advice - they come to power with their own natural cunning already in place.
Margaret Thatcher held onto power by sending gun boats to the Falklands; asylum seekers (re-badged as "boat people"by politicians) are trashed in the name of "protecting" us from imagined invasion; and an entire religious community is lumped together as "terrorists".
Politicians create problems for people in order to protect people from those problems and get them selves re-elected. Horrible man, horrible book. 0/5
Margaret Thatcher held onto power by sending gun boats to the Falklands; asylum seekers (re-badged as "boat people"by politicians) are trashed in the name of "protecting" us from imagined invasion; and an entire religious community is lumped together as "terrorists".
Politicians create problems for people in order to protect people from those problems and get them selves re-elected. Horrible man, horrible book. 0/5
November 14, 2014
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
I chose this for our local book group because it had a profound impact on me when young and I wanted to see if it stood up to the finer scrutiny of age.
It is a story told by a man named Marlow to the first narrator, written by Conrad, a Pole. It provides us with a complex result, a kaleidoscopic view of the activities of a commercial enterprise in an unknown continent. To further complicate matters, all three, writer and first and second narrator - engage in irony: ie, saying the opposite of what is meant, known in the broader world as sarcasm.
So we get the "compassionate" secretary who is unfeeling; the reference to "high and just proceedings' that are totally unfair; the "miracle" of the mad chief accountant; the reference to these iniquitous, rapacious stations as being "beacons...for humanizing, improving, instructing"; "pilgrims" who shoot people; a world where in the one breath, the mad Kurtz writes of being a "power for good" over "savages" and also "exterminate the brutes"; a world where black is white and white is black and often it is impossible to tell one from the other.
But in the end what matters is the effect on the reader. Despite the cringe worthy us of the word "nigger, and the word "gay" which has a somewhat different meaning 115 years after this book was written does Heart of Darkness stand the test of time: both the 50 years between my first reading and now and the hundred years since publication? How not.
The language is superb; the words jump out at you; the images conjured up are extraordinary - reading this I lived, breathed, smelt the fetid air; saw "sea and sky welded together without a joint"; knew this vast collection of ratbags - the "elegant" chief accountant; the papier-mache Mephistopheles; the man in the pink pyjamas; the pilgrims; the harlequin; and above all Kurtz, in whom the hear of darkness resided; appreciated the relevance of Marlow's narrative to what came much later: the ideas that colonizing nations are justified in destroying people just because they've got darker skin; the abomination of apartheid; war; and the inroads of multi-nationalism. But it's the over arching elements that really hit home - the idea of man's inhumanity to man; the destruction of the environment; peoples inflexability with the truth, to which Marlow declares himself wedded, only to lie to Kurtz's Intended at the end - conveniently forgetting Kurtz's last words: "The Horror, The Horror" and Kurtz's gorgeous regal, native lover to tell the Intended that the last thing Kurtz said was her name.
This book inspires me - not in its condemnation of individual people but for stating the soaring principles we must aspire to while exposing our tendency to backslide and lie; in it's cleverness; and above all, for me as an aspiring writer, to show what can be done, given sufficient talent and courage and determination, with mere words. 10/10
It is a story told by a man named Marlow to the first narrator, written by Conrad, a Pole. It provides us with a complex result, a kaleidoscopic view of the activities of a commercial enterprise in an unknown continent. To further complicate matters, all three, writer and first and second narrator - engage in irony: ie, saying the opposite of what is meant, known in the broader world as sarcasm.
So we get the "compassionate" secretary who is unfeeling; the reference to "high and just proceedings' that are totally unfair; the "miracle" of the mad chief accountant; the reference to these iniquitous, rapacious stations as being "beacons...for humanizing, improving, instructing"; "pilgrims" who shoot people; a world where in the one breath, the mad Kurtz writes of being a "power for good" over "savages" and also "exterminate the brutes"; a world where black is white and white is black and often it is impossible to tell one from the other.
But in the end what matters is the effect on the reader. Despite the cringe worthy us of the word "nigger, and the word "gay" which has a somewhat different meaning 115 years after this book was written does Heart of Darkness stand the test of time: both the 50 years between my first reading and now and the hundred years since publication? How not.
The language is superb; the words jump out at you; the images conjured up are extraordinary - reading this I lived, breathed, smelt the fetid air; saw "sea and sky welded together without a joint"; knew this vast collection of ratbags - the "elegant" chief accountant; the papier-mache Mephistopheles; the man in the pink pyjamas; the pilgrims; the harlequin; and above all Kurtz, in whom the hear of darkness resided; appreciated the relevance of Marlow's narrative to what came much later: the ideas that colonizing nations are justified in destroying people just because they've got darker skin; the abomination of apartheid; war; and the inroads of multi-nationalism. But it's the over arching elements that really hit home - the idea of man's inhumanity to man; the destruction of the environment; peoples inflexability with the truth, to which Marlow declares himself wedded, only to lie to Kurtz's Intended at the end - conveniently forgetting Kurtz's last words: "The Horror, The Horror" and Kurtz's gorgeous regal, native lover to tell the Intended that the last thing Kurtz said was her name.
This book inspires me - not in its condemnation of individual people but for stating the soaring principles we must aspire to while exposing our tendency to backslide and lie; in it's cleverness; and above all, for me as an aspiring writer, to show what can be done, given sufficient talent and courage and determination, with mere words. 10/10
The Decline of the English Murder by George Orwell
Orwell, of course is the beautiful man who wrote Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty Four - both about the loss of individuality suffered at the hands of manipulative, self-seeking politicians the world suffers today, some 70 years later.
This little book of essays is whimsical and a little frayed around the edges but shows something of the man and how beautifully he wrote. Although Orwell went to Eton his heart was with the underdog. The essay on Charles Dickens - who Orwell describes as "generously angry" is superb; and the one on dirty postcards a surprise; and "Why I Write" extremely helpful - forget the bullshit, he says, writers write because of ego.
How can you not love this man? 5/5
This little book of essays is whimsical and a little frayed around the edges but shows something of the man and how beautifully he wrote. Although Orwell went to Eton his heart was with the underdog. The essay on Charles Dickens - who Orwell describes as "generously angry" is superb; and the one on dirty postcards a surprise; and "Why I Write" extremely helpful - forget the bullshit, he says, writers write because of ego.
How can you not love this man? 5/5
Limelight and After by Claire Bloom
Sometimes reading a biography is like having another life of your own. Clair Bloom's is not such a book.
Sometimes an actor's autobiography is an extension of his on-screen persona- he wants to be noticed, admired, loved. Consequently they appear to be the life of the party and if they ever make a mistake it is understandable, names are dropped, but the guard never. I'm thinking David Niven's " The Moon's a Balloon" and countless others. They're dishonest public relations affairs.
Bloom's brief foray into self-exposure isn't. The actress who was always an actress- a natural who was always noticed-has a story to tell but doesn't tell it. Her marriage to one of the greatest actors of all time, Rod Steiger, is glossed over, as are so many potentially interesting and revealing - episodes of her life. In the end, the autobiography dwindles away into a series of reflections on various subjects, like a dying swan looking for somewhere to hide. 2/5
Sometimes an actor's autobiography is an extension of his on-screen persona- he wants to be noticed, admired, loved. Consequently they appear to be the life of the party and if they ever make a mistake it is understandable, names are dropped, but the guard never. I'm thinking David Niven's " The Moon's a Balloon" and countless others. They're dishonest public relations affairs.
Bloom's brief foray into self-exposure isn't. The actress who was always an actress- a natural who was always noticed-has a story to tell but doesn't tell it. Her marriage to one of the greatest actors of all time, Rod Steiger, is glossed over, as are so many potentially interesting and revealing - episodes of her life. In the end, the autobiography dwindles away into a series of reflections on various subjects, like a dying swan looking for somewhere to hide. 2/5
