I decided to read True Grit after hearing it recommended on a podcast around the time of the recent film version being released. The John Wayne film version is one of the few Westerns I’ve watched and enjoyed so I thought it was worth a read. Was I right? Read on.
True Grit is the story of Mattie Ross, a fourteen year old whose father has just been killed by an outlaw called Tom Chaney. Leaving her mother to grieve and look after her younger siblings, Mattie makes a trip to sort out her father’s business affairs and find justice for his death, since Chaney has fled to lawless Indian Territory and no-one seems too interested in pursuing him.
So she secures the services of Reuben ‘Rooster’ Cogburn and sets off to capture, and kill, Chaney. They are soon joined by a Texas Ranger called LaBoeuf who is after Chaney for crimes committed in Texas and for the reward.
The plot moves forward in a fairly straight-forward A-follows-B manner. What really draws you in is the main character and her relationship with Cogburn. Her determination and “grit” are what define her and what I suspect would be a very annoying tendency in real life of nagging til she gets her own way, makes you admire her.
The book is written in her voice, and at first I thought that Portis had cleverly captured that childish simplicity of speech. Then I realised that this was written as an older Mattie looking back. I did find the style a little wearing at times but I suppose it does work as a not overly-educated woman of that era writing her memories of these events.
Even so I think you have to take this style, along with her tendency to go off point and talk about religion (complete with scripture references), politics and unrelated history, as tongue in cheek. I’m not sure it was hilariously funny but it occasioned the odd wry smile and chuckle. However it also illustrates the “nasty, brutish and short” nature of life at that time and place, which was a counter point to any humour.
However the book was very readable and not too long. So overall I found it a good read.
7/10 – a good read, probably still prefer the movie though.
Finishing The Last Continent brings me up to the point where the next Discworld book is Carpe Jugulum which is Ship of Fools book group’s July book. I should have finished it quite a while ago but I seem to have taken a three week gap in the middle.
Anyway, The Last Continent is about what would be the Discworld equivalent of Australia, called FourEcks (XXXX as in those old lager commercials, still going strong at the time this came out). It’s also a Rincewind book, and I like Rincewind.
Rincewind finds himself in FourEcks doing what he does best, staying alive. Meanwhile back in Ankh-Morpork the Librarian has caught some sort of magical disease and keeps changing shape every time he sneezes. The wizards want to change him back to his orangutan form but need to know his name in order to perform the requisite spell. Rincewind, having worked with the Librarian is likely to know his name so if they can find him they can ask him. So they embark on a journey, via magic to FourEcks, or somewhere not entirely unrelated to it, to track down Rincewind.
Meanwhile Rincewind is being guided in his sequence of adventures i.e. serial escapes from various dangers, by a talking Kangaroo, who has told him that the Continent is out of whack, mystically speaking and only Rincewind can put it right. Rincewind reacts to this in the way you’d expect, by running away.
So there are two plot strands – the wizards on a mission to find Rincewind, and Rincewind on a mission to stay alive and avoid his destiny.
Remember how I said that when I first read Equal Rites I was disappointed that it didn’t feel quite the same as the first two Discworld books, but that later I realised that it was the first real Discworld book because it was the first one with a real story and plot rather than just a collection of jokes? Well the Rincewind story is a bit like that – the jokes mainly being various parodies of Australian stuff. I preferred the wizards story because the jokes are funny but I think I prefer a story. Although having said that I do like the character of Rincewind himself, even, especially since he’s developed a bit since the first couple of books.
In the end of course the two plotlines join together and get resolved in what I’ll call one of Pratchett’s “flights of fancy” – where he attempts to be lyrical and mythic. Which sounds like I didn’t like it but I did, just not so much perhaps as I might have when I was younger and had read so many of his books. It was also a little confusing but I just decided not to worry about the bits I didn’t quite get and take in the general sweep instead.
I’ve been a fan of Jane Austen TV and film adaptations for years but Persuasion is the first book of hers I’ve actually read.
It concerns Anne Elliot the daughter of Sir Walter Elliot, who at the age of 19/20 was persuaded to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth given his lack of wealth and status relative to her own. Now, eight years later, Captain Wentworth, rich and respectable enters her life again, but does he still feel the same way about Anne? And if he does will they able to be together or will events and other people conspire to keep them apart?
I think you can guess the answer.
Since I started 25 Books I’ve intended to read an Austen novel and I had chosen Persuasion because it was one of two where I did not know the story already. The other Northanger Abbey, is I understand, very different to her other books and so I thought I’d leave that until later. I have a feeling that Persuasion is not considered amongst the best Austen, so I don’t know how much of my reaction to it is from that or other factors.
My reaction being that it was very enjoyable but not up there with my experience of the TV/film versions of Pride & Prejudice , Sense & Sensibility or Emma. Part of that I’m sure is the language, which is archaic enough for me to have to work at it. I’m sure my pages/hour stat has taken a hit during this book. Certainly there were several times when I had to re-read sections, particularly great long convoluted sentences with several semi-colons. However it improved towards the end. Partly I got more proficient at on-the-fly-in-my-head-translation-into-modern-English and partly there was more dialogue which tended to be more straightforward anyway.
The story was full of what I consider Austen standard fare – a good-hearted sensible slightly put-upon sister with pompous and/or silly relatives, apparently honourable men who turn out not to be so, apparently cold or indifferent men who turn out to be far from it, misunderstandings about who may or may not “be attached to” (which either means fancy or be engaged to depending on context) whom, various secrets and of course the happiness of being suitably married – which equates to respectability and financial stability.
I think the plot works well in introducing all the various misdirections and obstacles to Anne and Wentworth’s romance. It certainly seems to all shift into gear significantly in the final third of the book. There does seem to be more of an inevitability to their eventually re-uniting than I would have expected. In that sense it’s less of a dramatic reversal of fortunes as in P&P and S&S – but maybe that’s just the way those were edited by various modern writers/producers. Overall though it works – the good end happily and that’s how it should be!
Normally I start these reviews with a brief synopsis of at least the first part of the story, to give an idea of what the book is about as well as what I think of it. That’s tricky here because there’s so much to cover. Let me try…
Set in a fantasy world that’s similar to but clearly not medieval Europe/Asia, most of the action of A Game of Thrones takes place in the land of Westeros a.k.a “The Seven Kingdoms”. Some few centuries previously these were distinct kingdoms but they are now ruled over by a single monarch from the “Iron Throne”. This monarch, King Robert Baratheon took the throne by conquest from the previous “mad” king and has been ruling for 20 years or so.
As the story begins there is trouble brewing with threats to the throne from within – political machinations, assassination and intrigue at court and without with the remaining heirs of the old kings who are trying to raise an army to attack from overseas. There’s also a possible threat from the frozen north beyond a huge wall to defend against outlaws and the mythic White Walkers, zombie like creatures which many believe have been extinct for thousands of years, if they ever existed at all. The outlaws and wild animals though are real and it’s the job of the Night Watch to guard the Wall and defend the Seven Kingdoms.
A Game of Thrones is one of those books that switches point of view with each chapter headed with the name of a character. We follow about 6 or 7 characters in this way. I have mixed feelings about this. On the on hand it’s good to get the perspective of different characters with different loyalties and motivations. To start to empathise with someone who is on the opposite side of a war to the character in the previous chapter is good in that it stops everything being a kind of black and white morality – which some fantasy suffers from. However the action is then split across different places and Martin plays that trick of building up the tension nicely, coming to a cliff-hanger at the end of a chapter and then switching to a completely different story, which slowly becomes engrossing, tension builds… and so on. It’s a style that has its merits but can be frustrating too.
I definitely enjoyed this book and it was easier to finish than say Under the Dome. In this book whilst there are fantasy elements – the White Walkers, talk of dragons (once again presumed extinct), magic and years-long seasons (“Winter is Coming” is the slogan of one of the Northern kingdoms) – most of the story is to do with the intrigue and politics of gaining or retaining the Iron Throne. With a slight change of wardrobe it could be a 21st century political thriller. But it is engrossing and the characters are well drawn and sympathetic.
A Game of Thrones is part of a series – A Song of Ice and Fire – which is currently up to five books with at least one more on the way. So the story does not so much end as it does find a convenient place to break off. In fact there are plots unresolved, characters missing in action and so on. That said it did feel like a natural place to put a pause but given this I’d’ve been just as happy if that pause had been at 400 pages rather than 835. Still good for the page count.
Will I read the next five books? Perhaps. I’ll read some shorter ones first though.
8/10 – Good solid fantasy with sympathetic characters, an intriguing world set up and lots of intrigue.
Today is one of those days when I have free time and there’s very little I have to do, plenty I could or ought to do but not much I really want to do, so I end up feeling restless.
I think they call them Sundays.
So in lieu of anything actually useful or interesting I thought I’d write in my blog. You lucky, lucky people!
Discworld II
I spent a fair amount of yesterday and today playing Discworld II. It’s a game from 1996 that in order to play I had to install an emulator called scummvm. In fact I own the game, used to play it on my first PC[*], but I still have to play it through the emulator.
It’s a point-and-click adventure game of the kind I’m not sure they make any more. If they do they’ll be web-based these days.
It still holds up well. Mostly I think because it’s well written and acted. It’s got Eric Idle playing Rincewind and Rob Brydon doing most of the other male voices with Kate Robbins most of the female ones. The basic gameplay is that you have to collect a series of items in order to fulfil quests. Getting the items usually involves using other items in combination and interacting with the game characters in a few predefined ways. When you complete a task there’s often a little “cut-scene” where the action plays out as a little movie.That makes it sound dull but it’s the humour in the dialog, in the scenarios and the cut-scenes that makes it entertaining for me. The puzzle element less so. Sometimes it feels like you have to “use” an item with every other possible item in every location before you figure out what to do. Of course there are clues in the dialog if you spot them, and there is a sort of logic to most of it. It also helps if you’ve read the books.
I did cheat a little towards the end. There are four acts an an epilogue and I used a walkthrough for one item in act four and for the epilogue (which only consists of about 3 or 4 actions in any case)
Anyway it was fun. How much of that is nostalgia and how much the game I don’t know.
And since this has sort of turned into a review –
8/10 – this non-gamer enjoyed this retro game.
(goes back to change title of post)
[*]Sort of. I played Discworld on my first PC. It was one of the first things I did with it. Later when Discworld II came out I needed a higher-spec PC to play it. I ended up upgrading mine more or less sucessfully (though I did blow up my flatmate’s CPU along the way).
There’s something I feel I need to get out of the way — especially since I shall probably be reviewing at least a couple more Discworld books in the next few weeks[1] — so if you just want to get to the review then by all means skip down to the picture of the book cover and the sentence beginning ‘So to the book itself‘
I remember when my good friend Dawn lent me the first Discworld book The Colour of Magic. It was 1987 and I was temporarily between university courses and unemployed. I read it in a day because it was that rare and delightful thing, literally un-put-downable. I’d never read anything quite like it before. I was only 19 but still I was an avid, if quite narrow, reader.
Over the next decade or so I read every new Discworld book as soon as it came out[2] in paperback[3] and whilst they weren’t always great they were always pretty reliably good. A pleasant familiarity with the author’s voice and themes, and of course great characters.
But gradually I found that I was reading them less quickly. What had been devouring them in great chunks, if not at a single sitting, had become a little each day. But then my circumstances had changed. I was no longer a student and the 15minute bus ride to work and the 10-20mins before I fell asleep at night seemed more appropriate than staying up until the early hours. A small part of me even liked eking out the pleasure over a longer period. After all, even at Mr Pratchett’s prolific rate you’d still have months to wait for the next one.
At a certain point I stopped reading them. Although it never really felt that way, it just felt like I’d had the latest book waiting to be read lying around a long time, long enough for the next one to come out. Around about the same time I was “branching out” and trying to read other authors and other genres. A year or two after that I’d moved down here and I was tending to fall asleep after watching TV and reading generally had gotten squeezed out[4].
After that I always felt that one day I’d get back into reading again and go through my Discworld backlog and catch up. I was vaguely aware that some books were getting good reaction and that there were new “great” Discworld books but I also knew that I, in my anal way, would have to plough through all the less-great ones rather than read out of order[5]. M., herself a Discworld fan[6], added to this because she was still reading every new book when it came out and had her own favourites. I understand though that she herself has now gotten a few books behind and is a little less enthused.
So what? Why does any of this matter? Well of course it doesn’t, except to put in context the vague feelings of guilt I have about not utterly loving each new Discworld book. Yesterday I read most of Jingo, having started it (again) on Friday. But it was less about the sheer joy of this new thing, this wonderful humour, or even familiar pleasures, than it was about another 400pages and something to do on a Bank Holiday where it was too hot to feel energetic.
It was fun – more of that below – but there was also a sense of knowing the well-worn rhythms of Pratchett’s writing style. I could see where the jokes were coming from and they made me smile mostly, occasionally I found myself thinking “yeah, yeah, get on with the story”.
Forgive me Terry, I have not kept faith and have grown weary. However I do plan to read at least two more Discworld books so perhaps I can learn to love them again. Or at least see them with fresher eyes.
So to the book itself…
Jingo
Jingo is the story of a war between Ankh-Morpork and Klatch. It starts with the re-surfacing from the sea of an island called Leshp, which quickly becomes the source of (flimsy excuse for) a territorial dispute.
From a Discworld point of view what you need to know is that this is primarily a Watch book. So the key characters are Vimes, Carrot, Angua, Nobby and Colon, together with some new Klatchian ones. And although I said it was about a war, it’s really about the political intrigue leading up to war, and, since this is a Watch book, ‘political intrigue’ is really a fancy term for crimes by posh and/or foreign folk. So we’re firmly in Vimes’ country here.
Apart from Pyramids, an early favourite, I tend to prefer Discworld books that stick to one setting[7] and Jingo takes place partly in Ankh-Morpork, partly on board ships and partly in Klatch. I think I preferred the Ankh-Morpork sections, perhaps because that feels more properly like Vimes’ natural setting.
I was all set to give this book a lower score, I was telling myself that I hadn’t enjoyed it as much as I should (see above) but then within the last fifty pages something happened. First what I had thought might be Pratchett’s common inability to get to an ending turned out instead to be a proper ending – even though we had hit the climax of the story some ways before, the final sections played out in what seemed a natural and pleasing way. It didn’t feel overlong.
Second it ended – no spoiler this – on a scene with Commander Sam Vimes of the Watch reminding me that I actually like this character, and that itself reminded me that what Terry’s great at is creating characters that you want to spend more and more time with.
Oh and of course – war is bad.
7/10 – Vimes of the City Watch brings a whole new perspective on the phrase “prosecuting a war”.
[1]Ship of Fools book club are doing Carpe Jugulum in July and I realised that I’m only 2 (now 1) books away from that so I decided to alternate between discworld and non-discworld books between now and then.
[2]Well at first. Keep reading.
[3]Hardback always felt like an extravagant waste of money to me. Now that I am reading again and can afford hardbooks I tend to buy Kindle versions instead.
[4]Which is kind of odd. The time in my life when I had the most free time was the time when I seemed unable to find enough of it for various things, including reading.
[5]There are those that suggest that there are other orders in which to read the books rather than strictly by publication date. I tend to ignore these mad voices.
[6]Though how this term could apply to someone who hadn’t even read Mort when I met her, I don’t know.
[7]Given that The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic both do this and are easily amongst the best of the books this is blatantly false. However, these are also different from the others in that they are pretty much a tour of the Discworld making jokes along the way, joined loosely by plot. Later books are actually stories in their own right with a proper beginning, middle and end[8].
The News Where You Are is yet another book about a middle-aged man coming to terms with what it means to get older. Well sort of. Either I keep being drawn to these books because of the theme or (more likely) I see this theme everywhere because of my stage of life.
Frank Allcroft is a local news presenter with an apparent penchant for bad jokes in his links. He also takes an interest in some of those he’s reported on – specifically those who die alone. One such passing appears to be linked with his friend and predecessor who died in a hit-and-run accident, and Frank is drawn into finding out more about what actually happened.. Meanwhile the buildings his father architect put up in the 60s are one by one being pulled down.
This is an odd book. On the one hand I want to say that it’s a light read because it’s easy to read and has a gentle humour and is well-disposed towards its characters. On the other it is about death and loss and what, if anything, we leave behind. On the on hand it’s clearly structured around a kind of mystery plot (why and how did this person die), but on the other it’s not particularly plot driven and takes time out of the whodunnit to look at Frank’s family relationships and so on.
The characters are well-drawn and sympathetic. Mo, Frank’s daugther is the perfect picture of a particular type of precocious child who is entirely endearing without ever being sentimental. As is, in a completely different way, his mother.
I think it is a good read but it slightly left me wanting something a bit more to get my teeth into. Also it had about 3 attempts at an ending. However given that the chapters are short that’s really a minor quibble.
7/10 – a light read which never takes its darker themes too lightly or too seriously.
So book 2. Which I read in two days. That ought to have given me a big headstart given Under The Dome‘s massive page count. But I’m stuck in the middle of book 3 and am so about a couple of weeks behind.
Anyway.
I Think I Love You is the story of a David Cassidy fan Petra, and the young man, Bill, who has the job of writing Cassidy’s letters for a fan magazine. The first part of the book is set in the 1970s when Petra is 13 and Bill is just starting out on his career – hence the less than glamourous job. The second half of the book takes place in 1998 when, after her divorce and the death of her mother, Petra finds some old letters and makes contact with Bill.
The first half of the book was definitely the more enjoyable. When I first started reading I thought it would be interesting to be in the mind of a 13 year old girl as that’s absolutely not something I am used to. However I quickly realised that the insecurities, anxieties and so on of a teenager girl in the mid-70s were not that different to a boy in the early 80s. But the nostalgia was fun, as was the parallel Petra and Bill story lines.
The second half of the book was good but necessarily had a different feel. It also felt like it meandered a bit. Perhaps that was deliberate – we’re rarely so sure and focussed as we can be as teenagers. Also, if you can’t see where the story is going to end up pretty much from the start of the second part I think you’re not really trying.
7/10 – A bit of nostalgia, some adult angst and a happy ending.
Yay so I finished my first book of 6000 pages 2011. It’s almost April and only one book? Well fortunately it was a long one. A very long one.
This is actually the first Stephen King book I’ve ever read. I may have dipped into Salem’s Lot after it was on TV as a teenager but I’ve never read a full novel. Mostly that was because I didn’t really respond to horror as a genre. Well this isn’t horror (well… but we’ll get to that) and I’d read the blurb and it sounded interesting. Plus M. had read it.
Under the Dome is about a small New England town that wakes up one morning to find that an invisible barrier has been placed all around it. The story then revolves around the efforts of the people in the town to cope with effects of being cut off from the rest of the world. They have to survive with whatever resources – including people – that they have. The book has a lot of different characters but follows about half a dozen closely. Ultimately the question becomes whether they can discover what the Dome is and whether they can get rid of it.
No wait. That’s not ultimately what the book is about. It’s the question we finally get to at the end of it, but the book is really about what happens to these people when they’re forced to survive on their own. And it ain’t pretty. It becomes a sort of Lord of the Flies for adults.
All of which I found quite interesting and fun – for the first 400 pages or so – but in the back of my mind I wanted to know more about the Dome. I decided it was one of three broad possibilities based on what genre this book was part of –
the ‘thriller’ answer – the Dome is put there by some shadowy government agency, or foreign power. The reason why here particularly will perhaps be connected to one of the characters’ pasts.
the SciFi answer – aliens put it there and by the end of the book we’ll meet them.
the Supernatural answer – it’s some ghost or human with spooky powers doing it.
The trouble is that that isn’t what King was interested in telling me about. The Dome is just a macguffin to set up the trapped situation. So whilst he does finally explain where the Dome came from and why, 95% of the novel is not about that at all. Perhaps it’s a tiny bit of a spoiler to say that but if I’d known that I may not have read the book. (Although it does occur to me now that the fact the book’s called ‘Under the Dome‘ and not ‘The Dome‘ is a clue.)
I also felt that whilst the story of how they folks cope was interesting – it went on too long. An example from early on in the book is the various incidents as people discover the Dome. Mostly these are accidents as people hit the invisible barrier, whether in their cars or on foot. There a wide variety of these recounted in detail. After about 5 or 6 I had gotten the idea – it was a barrier, it caused accidents, it affected a lot of folks in the town – but King describes probably 2 or 3 times that many incidents. It’s like if you were making a movie and in it there’s a scene where a crowd turns nasty. You’d hire a lot of extras sure, and you’d film a few close ups of individuals shouting and baying for our hero’s blood (say) – but once you’d shown a few of these shots cut with wide shots of the crowd you’d have created the necessary impression. No need to labour the point.
King is very good at creating tension in the plot, so you do sort of want to know what happens next. It’s just that a lot of that was about detail and you could sort of see where it was all going.
Without being spoilery there were things about the ending that I didn’t like. It’s like at a certain point he feels he’s done what he set out to do and then thinks “how can I wrap this up quickly?” Well the way he chose was effective, even spectacular, certainly a climax for the novel, but for me personally, a little unsatisfying.
6/10 – there’s a lot of ‘under’ before you get to the ‘dome.
Okaaay…. this could be long, and like my review of A World Out of Time, could be as much about me and my life as the book itself.
Could be, but let’s try to rein it in shall we?
I first read High Fidelity when it came out in 1995. I’ve re-read it a couple of times since but probably not for 10 years or so. I decided to re-read it as part of 6000 pages because I wanted both an easy read and an enjoyable one. The film of the book starring John Cusack is also a favourite of mine and I re-watched it after reading the book.
High Fidelity follows Rob Flemming, a 35-year-old music fan, owner of a failing record shop and something of a slacker. The book begins with the ending of his latest long-term relationship and much of the story is about the relationship between music, fandom and well, relationships.
Do I listen to pop music because I’m miserable or am I miserable because I listen to pop music?
The genius of High Fidelity – and it is genius – is that it perfectly captures what it’s like to be a boy in a man’s body, which is certainly my experience of being male. The incessant making of lists, the obsession with sex as the most important part of a relationship (but not really) and just all this inner insecurity.
15 years ago when I first read it I identified with Rob because of all this stuff – even though he was only temporarily out of a relationship and I was more or less permanently so – the theme of being generally rubbish with women fitted. The fact that I still experience this all these years later – well that’s perhaps the bittersweet side of re-reading this book.
It’d be very easy to just give lots of funny, touching or on-the-nose quotes – and in a way that might be appropriate as it’s the kind of thing Rob would do. However to sum up let me just say that I love this book because it’s not only very easy to identify with the characters but Hornby also makes them likeable, despite some not so likeable behaviour on the way. It has warmth and hope and optimism.
Okaaay…. this could be long, and like my review of