In the ancient halls of Castle Gormenghast, ritual and tradition rule with an iron fist - even over the Earl of Groan, Lord Sepulchrave. As his son, Titus, is born, and the rivalry between Groan's manservant Flay and head cook Swelter comes to boiling point, the forces of order which have held sway for centuries seem strained to their limit. Into this atmosphere steps Steerpike, a young man with ideas far above his lowly station as a kitchenhand.
Having only a passing familiarity with Gormenghast, I came to Titus Groan not even aware that Peake wrote it in the 1940s. It seeks to evoke and indeed seems to have been written in a much earlier age; the prose is beautifully constructed, as much architecture as literature.
The world it describes is fantastic: an enormous castle sparesly populated by a handful of nobles and perhaps a few score servants, all descended from lines which stretch back hundreds of generations. In every direction lies inhospitable terrain; the castle and its kingdom are isolated. Its history, once rich, is now tired and predictable; this is summed up early on by the ritual of the bright carvings. These glorious wooden miniatures, created by the otherwise listless peasant folk who dwell in the castle's shadow, are presented to The Earl once a year; he selects a favourite and the rest are burnt. The winner, however, is only slightly better off; it is placed in the "Hall of Bright Carvings" and the only eyes ever to lay upon it are thos of Rottcodd, a servant as forgotten and isolated as the hundreds of carvings he dusts each day.
The cast is small, and exquisitely drawn; each has a life and personality that leaps off the page. Few are truly sympathetic, though the Earl himself, who suffers severe depression and later delusions, and his daughter Fuschia, at least by the novel's end, come closest. Keda, one of the bright carvers who becomes Titus' wetnurse, has a brief and tragic existence, mad bittersweet with a dash of romance and mystery. Probably my favourite character, though, was Flay. I recognise that this is in part because the BBC television adaptation (which I've not seen; it incorporates Titus Groan and the second novel, Gormenghast) features Christopher Lee as Flay, but his stoic attitude, obedience and eagerness to please somehow endeared themselves to me. As for the title character, he is born in the first pages, and the book closes with his crowning as the new Earl, still a baby. Despite these two events he is hardly involved in the affairs of the book at all, and all the other major characters have parts to play in the narrative; there's no real protagonist, though it is true that Steerpike drives much of the action through his machinations. He's a brilliantly dislikable character; clever in his limited fashion, selfish and mean.
There's an element of the fantastic about Gormenghast; the world makes little distinction between ritual and superstition, and there's no clear line between metaphor and extraordinary truth. The bright carvers, for example, are said to lose all their youthful appearance and vitality immediately upon coming of a certain age; this may be poetic, but it is written as fact, and nothing about the world of Gormenghast makes such a biological impossibility hard to believe. Whether it sits on our Earth or some other world makes little difference to Gormenghast: it is a pocket of existence with its own endless rules and regulations, and any other world is of no consequence to it.
I don't think there's another book quite like Titus Groan - well, except perhaps its two sequels. But I did try starting Gormenghast, and almost immediately something struck me about it as not quite the same. I'll come back to it at a later date, though interestingly I've received reports from fans that the series never reaches the heights of the first book again, and that it builds to a very satisfying climax at the end of Titus Alone. I'll be finding out for myself.
Showing posts with label Bunch of Authors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bunch of Authors. Show all posts
"Spilled some dressing on Doris Lessing, these writer types are a scream!"
In the time of Nero, a Roman historian has been given the task of unravelling a collection of documents purporting to tell the true origin of humankind. According to this history, humanity began with a colony of water-bound women in the shadow of a great cave by the sea, known only as The Cleft - a name by which they also knew themselves, in reference to their common anatomy. But after unknown generations of women spontaneously giving birth to women, the Clefts begin to give birth to more and more "Monsters", human like creatures with a common deformity: the first males.
The Cleft is the last book on the list, and once again, it's not really like any of the other books I've read. For starters, Lessing is telling not just a story of her own devising, but an alternate origin story for the human race; what's more, she's writing in the specific voice of not just any historian, but one from a specific era (Nero's reign lasted 14 years, and if I were more of a Roman scholar I'm sure I could have a stab at the specific year from comments made by the historian in the book).
This narrative decision is interesting for a number of reasons: for starters, it means the story of how all humans began in a society composed only of women is told by a man, and quite a sympathetic one. As in Atwood's The Blind Assassin, the framing narrative has a story of its own, though here our experience of the historian's life is slight. Perhaps more importantly, choosing a Roman historian allows a perspective that is both scholarly and yet credulous, something a more modern choice of narrator would not allow.
That's not to say that our historian isn't critical; he often discusses the material he has to work with, wondering how accurate it can be given its oral distribution, and how much his understanding is dependent on concepts that did not exist for the Clefts. He editorialises about the first rape - also the first (adult) murder - not excusing it, but trying to understand how the first males would have understood it. Later, when the first consensual sex occurs, he is prompted to one of the longest asides in the book, explaining the personal experience that led him to interpret the event through the first realisation of gender in children. He frequently explains when he is attributing what he feels are reasonable emotions where none are recorded.
The origin story itself is fascinating, though like the most interesting such stories there are a lot of questions left unanswered. The history begins, naturally enough, with the Clefts and their society; the question of where they came from is left alone. The story is given a great deal of weight by the historian's conflicting sources, though in the main the stories agree. As a result its not a pretty tale, nor one with clear heroes or villains. The Clefts are, at first, terribly cruel to the newborn males, whom they term Monsters. They leave them on the "Killing Rock" on the top of the Cleft, where they are supposed eaten by eagles, and disfigured many of them, pulling or cutting off their penises. Though this is terrible, the men are not victims for long, committing rape and murder of the first Cleft to find their secret society away from the shore. And so the story goes, each side making mistakes and committing terrible acts, while all the while the younger members of each group come to understand that they somehow need each other.
It's a fascinating tale, and even though by the end the men seem to be largely in the wrong, its an iconic kind of wrong; they long for adventure and newness, and the unspoken effect of this drive - aside from the heartache it causes the women they leave behind - is that they drove society away from its simple beginnings towards the success of the Roman era. The men of the story exhibit traits that have come to define "male": they behave like adolescents, thinking more of desires and goals, understanding little of consequences. The story is largely bereft of supernatural elements, the only really classic mythological tropes being the portrayal of animals: the young Monsters are rescued by giant eagles, who carry them away from the Killing Rock to a safe place, and they manage to suckle the newborn Monsters on friendly does. (The historian himself draws a comparison with the myth of the founding of Rome, with the wolf who suckles Romulus and Remus.)
In the end, The Cleft feels like a "real" creation story, and like such stories it provokes as many questions as it answers. It's ending leaves no clue as to how the early humans, finally beginning to properly integrate men and women into one society, progress to what we would know as civilisation. There's also never much of a clue as to where these human beginnings occur, though the historian speculates it must have been on an island.
It feels somehow just right that the Bunch of Authors journey should end with an origin story, since by now this blog has a new beginning too. I'm going to keep blogging about the books I read (there are two more coming up very soon), and I hope you'll stay with me.
Chapters: None
Page count: 260
Book's title mentioned on page: 9
Best name encountered: Maire and Astre are two of the few named characters; special mention to Horsa, since it's almost the same name as the protagonist of another book I'm reading, Consider Phlebas
New words: None (the language is purposefully simple)
Inner Five-year-old score: 2 (I loved mythology as a kid, but I think I would have preferred the kind with gullible giants and wicked dragons)
Fun Wikipedia fact: Despite being almost universally pigeon-holed as a feminist author, Lessing is greatly disillusioned with mainstream feminist movement, concluding that they "want people to make oversimplified statements about men and women". (Perhaps she should talk with bell hooks?)
The Cleft is the last book on the list, and once again, it's not really like any of the other books I've read. For starters, Lessing is telling not just a story of her own devising, but an alternate origin story for the human race; what's more, she's writing in the specific voice of not just any historian, but one from a specific era (Nero's reign lasted 14 years, and if I were more of a Roman scholar I'm sure I could have a stab at the specific year from comments made by the historian in the book).
This narrative decision is interesting for a number of reasons: for starters, it means the story of how all humans began in a society composed only of women is told by a man, and quite a sympathetic one. As in Atwood's The Blind Assassin, the framing narrative has a story of its own, though here our experience of the historian's life is slight. Perhaps more importantly, choosing a Roman historian allows a perspective that is both scholarly and yet credulous, something a more modern choice of narrator would not allow.
That's not to say that our historian isn't critical; he often discusses the material he has to work with, wondering how accurate it can be given its oral distribution, and how much his understanding is dependent on concepts that did not exist for the Clefts. He editorialises about the first rape - also the first (adult) murder - not excusing it, but trying to understand how the first males would have understood it. Later, when the first consensual sex occurs, he is prompted to one of the longest asides in the book, explaining the personal experience that led him to interpret the event through the first realisation of gender in children. He frequently explains when he is attributing what he feels are reasonable emotions where none are recorded.
The origin story itself is fascinating, though like the most interesting such stories there are a lot of questions left unanswered. The history begins, naturally enough, with the Clefts and their society; the question of where they came from is left alone. The story is given a great deal of weight by the historian's conflicting sources, though in the main the stories agree. As a result its not a pretty tale, nor one with clear heroes or villains. The Clefts are, at first, terribly cruel to the newborn males, whom they term Monsters. They leave them on the "Killing Rock" on the top of the Cleft, where they are supposed eaten by eagles, and disfigured many of them, pulling or cutting off their penises. Though this is terrible, the men are not victims for long, committing rape and murder of the first Cleft to find their secret society away from the shore. And so the story goes, each side making mistakes and committing terrible acts, while all the while the younger members of each group come to understand that they somehow need each other.
It's a fascinating tale, and even though by the end the men seem to be largely in the wrong, its an iconic kind of wrong; they long for adventure and newness, and the unspoken effect of this drive - aside from the heartache it causes the women they leave behind - is that they drove society away from its simple beginnings towards the success of the Roman era. The men of the story exhibit traits that have come to define "male": they behave like adolescents, thinking more of desires and goals, understanding little of consequences. The story is largely bereft of supernatural elements, the only really classic mythological tropes being the portrayal of animals: the young Monsters are rescued by giant eagles, who carry them away from the Killing Rock to a safe place, and they manage to suckle the newborn Monsters on friendly does. (The historian himself draws a comparison with the myth of the founding of Rome, with the wolf who suckles Romulus and Remus.)
In the end, The Cleft feels like a "real" creation story, and like such stories it provokes as many questions as it answers. It's ending leaves no clue as to how the early humans, finally beginning to properly integrate men and women into one society, progress to what we would know as civilisation. There's also never much of a clue as to where these human beginnings occur, though the historian speculates it must have been on an island.
It feels somehow just right that the Bunch of Authors journey should end with an origin story, since by now this blog has a new beginning too. I'm going to keep blogging about the books I read (there are two more coming up very soon), and I hope you'll stay with me.
Chapters: None
Page count: 260
Book's title mentioned on page: 9
Best name encountered: Maire and Astre are two of the few named characters; special mention to Horsa, since it's almost the same name as the protagonist of another book I'm reading, Consider Phlebas
New words: None (the language is purposefully simple)
Inner Five-year-old score: 2 (I loved mythology as a kid, but I think I would have preferred the kind with gullible giants and wicked dragons)
Fun Wikipedia fact: Despite being almost universally pigeon-holed as a feminist author, Lessing is greatly disillusioned with mainstream feminist movement, concluding that they "want people to make oversimplified statements about men and women". (Perhaps she should talk with bell hooks?)
"Ondaatje started a food fight, salmon mousse all over the scene"
In a field hospital in an Italian villa, Canadian nurse Hana has remained behind during the German retreat to care for a patient burned beyond all recognition in the care of Bedouins, his identity unknown save for his English accent. The pair are joined by Caravaggio, a thief and old family friend, who soon becomes enthralled by the patient's secrets. Soon after sappers arrive clean to the town of mines, and Kip, an Indian expert in bomb disposal, moves into the villa as well. This unlikely family attempts to heal the wounds left by the war, moving on past tragedy to find love and peace.
As I said early into the book, The English Patient is very poetic; Ondaatje, another Canadian and a poet as well as a novelist, arranges phrases in a sentence like lines in a stanza, building a picture through small details rather than direct description, and the result is prose which is entrancing in places. The plot too builds with pieces falling into place; the situation is poetic too in its way, and like a poem the pieces never seem to jar as they come together, even though they are disparate.
Each character is a story of their own, all people broken by the war and revealing their histories in different ways. The other three characters orbit around the Patient, who has a weight of tragedy and mystery greater than the others; the only clues to his identity are his accent, his fragmentary memory and his dogeared copy of Herodotus' Histories, filled with scribbled diary entries chronicling his past. Hana, whose recent past is not mysterious, cares for him seemingly from a desire for continuity and perhaps a stubborn refusal to allow one more preventable death, while Caravaggio - having had his skills pressed into service in the war, and suffering horribly for it - comes looking for both Hana and her patient, having some suspicions about his true identity.
The most interesting character, though, is Kip. His story, which takes almost as long to recount as the patient's, is probably my favourite part of the book. The passages in which he is defusing a bomb, feeling its heart, matching wits against an opponent who is distant in both geography and time, are the best and most vital descriptions of the art of engineering ever written. His training too also evokes the same love and understanding of engineering; it can be an artform like any other, terrible or beautiful, simple or complex. Kip feels like the true "hero" of the novel, and the ending - which I won't give away - wouldn't be nearly as effective without him.
Like any good novel it's about journeys, but here only one character is actively in search of something, and even for Caravaggio the Patient's identity seems almost an afterthought. For a novel with such a small cast I was incredibly engaged, though I do wish I had understood Hana more. It's not inappropriate to the story, but despite being ostensibly central to the plot she really only serves as a catalyst for much of the story, listening to the Patient, padding silently through the deserted villa. She does go on a journey, but it's probably the least satisfying since it's the common "woman finds love" that seems somewhat dated now.
Though I've not seen the film - just as I've not seen Field of Dreams and hadn't seen The Godfather before reading it - I did know that Caravaggio was played by Willem Defoe, and I admit that seems like natural casting. I believe the film concentrates on the patient's storyline more than Kip's, and I'm not sure I'd like it as much for that reason - towards the end of the book, it was Kip's story that I loved the most.
So that's the penultimate book; I'll try and get to The Cleft tomorrow.
Chapters: 10
Page count: 324
Book's title mentioned on page: I'm not sure it is; in the novel they generally refer to him as "the patient", since he's the only one left in the villa
Best name encountered: Carravaggio is pretty great, but I've a soft spot for Madox, one of the men in the patient's memories
New words: loggia
Inner Five-year-old score: 2 (it's a complex adult novel)
Fun Wikipedia fact: One of Ondaatje's thirteen books of poetry is titled There's a Trick With a Knife I'm Learning to Do.
As I said early into the book, The English Patient is very poetic; Ondaatje, another Canadian and a poet as well as a novelist, arranges phrases in a sentence like lines in a stanza, building a picture through small details rather than direct description, and the result is prose which is entrancing in places. The plot too builds with pieces falling into place; the situation is poetic too in its way, and like a poem the pieces never seem to jar as they come together, even though they are disparate.
Each character is a story of their own, all people broken by the war and revealing their histories in different ways. The other three characters orbit around the Patient, who has a weight of tragedy and mystery greater than the others; the only clues to his identity are his accent, his fragmentary memory and his dogeared copy of Herodotus' Histories, filled with scribbled diary entries chronicling his past. Hana, whose recent past is not mysterious, cares for him seemingly from a desire for continuity and perhaps a stubborn refusal to allow one more preventable death, while Caravaggio - having had his skills pressed into service in the war, and suffering horribly for it - comes looking for both Hana and her patient, having some suspicions about his true identity.
The most interesting character, though, is Kip. His story, which takes almost as long to recount as the patient's, is probably my favourite part of the book. The passages in which he is defusing a bomb, feeling its heart, matching wits against an opponent who is distant in both geography and time, are the best and most vital descriptions of the art of engineering ever written. His training too also evokes the same love and understanding of engineering; it can be an artform like any other, terrible or beautiful, simple or complex. Kip feels like the true "hero" of the novel, and the ending - which I won't give away - wouldn't be nearly as effective without him.
Like any good novel it's about journeys, but here only one character is actively in search of something, and even for Caravaggio the Patient's identity seems almost an afterthought. For a novel with such a small cast I was incredibly engaged, though I do wish I had understood Hana more. It's not inappropriate to the story, but despite being ostensibly central to the plot she really only serves as a catalyst for much of the story, listening to the Patient, padding silently through the deserted villa. She does go on a journey, but it's probably the least satisfying since it's the common "woman finds love" that seems somewhat dated now.
Though I've not seen the film - just as I've not seen Field of Dreams and hadn't seen The Godfather before reading it - I did know that Caravaggio was played by Willem Defoe, and I admit that seems like natural casting. I believe the film concentrates on the patient's storyline more than Kip's, and I'm not sure I'd like it as much for that reason - towards the end of the book, it was Kip's story that I loved the most.
So that's the penultimate book; I'll try and get to The Cleft tomorrow.
Chapters: 10
Page count: 324
Book's title mentioned on page: I'm not sure it is; in the novel they generally refer to him as "the patient", since he's the only one left in the villa
Best name encountered: Carravaggio is pretty great, but I've a soft spot for Madox, one of the men in the patient's memories
New words: loggia
Inner Five-year-old score: 2 (it's a complex adult novel)
Fun Wikipedia fact: One of Ondaatje's thirteen books of poetry is titled There's a Trick With a Knife I'm Learning to Do.
"Who needs a shave? He's Robertson Davies!"
Hector Mackilwraith, logical and driven in his career as a teacher of mathematics, has served the Salterton Little Theatre well as treasurer for six years. On the eve of promotion to the Department of Education, however, his usual rational behaviour goes askew as he decides the theatre owes him a part in its latest play, a pastoral production of The Tempest. The usual politics of community theatre are amplified and complicated by the first stirrings of love within Hector, though the rest of the cast and crew have more than enough problems, even without Hector's foolishness.
The blurb for Tempest-Tost is all about Mr Mackilwraith, but truth be told he's not much of a central character. I don't mean there's anything lacking in him; indeed, he's a fascinating man, led by his family history to a life devoid of passion or feeling but steeped in ambition and drive. But it's misleading to say that Tempest-Tost is about him any more than it is about many of the very colourful characters who are drawn into the Salterton Little Theatre.
Now, I'm an actor and comedian, and though I generally get paid the world of community theatre is no mystery to me. Davies captures the extreme end of that world perfectly: the politics, the characters, the process are all a little larger than life, it's true, but not so far that they're not instantly recognisable. It's telling that I enjoyed it so much, too, because I'm not generally a fan of fiction about my own industry, but here the production of The Tempest - of whose performance we see very little, and whose rehearsals almost less - is really just a backdrop. The focus is on the people, but the theatre is vital in providing a very specific kind of social and political framework, and also in supplying such a cast of disparate characters.
Aside from Hector, the protagonists are uniformly wonderful, and better, they all come with families of yet more wonderful characters, drawn with care and wit and depth. The entire committee of the Salterton Little Theatre is populated with older, set-in-their-ways stage-struck types, some of whom still command a spot in the cast, and others who dream of glory through other means, but all instantly recognisable to anyone who has spent any time in a small community organisation. The cast and crew are no less interesting. There's Hector's love interest - not that she's aware of it for most of the novel - Griselda Webster, a local rich girl who scores a major part in the play since her father's estate will be the performance venue, and whose younger sister Freddy secretly brews champagne from apples in the groundskeeper's shed. The director is Valentine Rich, a professional director and prodigal daughter of Salterton, back in town to take care of her deceased grandfather's estate. Both of these women are pursued with equal lack of success by Solly Bridgetower, a sarcastic, cynical young man enslaved to his domineering mother despite attending school in Cambridge...and on and on. If this were made into a film or play it would require quite the ensemble cast.
(For the record, my personal favourite is definitely Humphrey Cobbler, the local organist recruited to perform the music for the play. He doesn't play a big part, but he spouts wisdom and joy in equal measure in a voice that sounded in my head like a cross between Brian Blessed and Ian McKellan. Imagine that with dialogue such as "I am full of holy joy and free booze", "It is very wrong to resist an impulse to sing; to hold back a natural evacuation of joy is as injurious as to hold back any other natural issue," or "Now there is nothing I enjoy more than talking about music in terms of painting." It doesn't hurt that his whole family are musical and joyous, and thus remind me of my beloved and her clan.)
It would be remiss of me to talk about the characters of the book without mentioning Salterton itself. Tempest-Tost is the first of the "Salterton Trilogy", all set in the town, and it is an invention of Davies; you'd be forgiven for thinking it real, however, since it's drawn with such detail and love. My experience of Canada is sadly limited to the very touristy Niagara Falls, Ontario, but Salterton paints such a vivid picture of life in Canada that I feel as though I have been there.
There are few books I have enjoyed so much as Tempest-Tost; the characters, the wit, the pace are all so finely wrought as to make this a near perfect comic novel. Every scene, from the casting of the play to the "donation" of Valentine's grandfather's books to local clergy to any of the very normal yet politically and socially charged lunches dinners and parties are all equally well drawn. This is all the more extraordinary when you realise that Tempest-Tost was Davies' first novel! If I have any misgivings, it is only that the otherwise timelessness of the story and characters are ruined by the few reminders that the book was written in 1951; the phrase "working like a black" appears in the prose, though I suspect - or hope - it was just a common expression at the time, and his depiction of women, while mostly surprisingly progressive, still sometimes typical of the 1950s.
I'll be reading more Robertson Davies. You can count on it.
Chapters: 7
Page count: 284
Book's title mentioned on page: 2 (it's a quotation from Macbeth, not part of the novel itself)
Best name encountered: They're all good, though special mentions go to Professor Vambrace - it just has a great ring to it - Griselda and Freddy (Freddy's nickname for Griselda is "Gristle"), and Valentine's dead grandfather: Dr. Adam Savage!
New words: I don't think there were any, but the words I already knew were used in such marvellous ways...
Inner Five-year-old score: 3 (I'd've loved the humour and the theatre stuff, though much of the social and sexual politics would have escaped me)
Fun Wikipedia fact: Davies lifelong companion was Australian stage manager Brenda Matthews, whom he met in London while working as an actor. They were married from 1940 to his death in 1995.
The blurb for Tempest-Tost is all about Mr Mackilwraith, but truth be told he's not much of a central character. I don't mean there's anything lacking in him; indeed, he's a fascinating man, led by his family history to a life devoid of passion or feeling but steeped in ambition and drive. But it's misleading to say that Tempest-Tost is about him any more than it is about many of the very colourful characters who are drawn into the Salterton Little Theatre.
Now, I'm an actor and comedian, and though I generally get paid the world of community theatre is no mystery to me. Davies captures the extreme end of that world perfectly: the politics, the characters, the process are all a little larger than life, it's true, but not so far that they're not instantly recognisable. It's telling that I enjoyed it so much, too, because I'm not generally a fan of fiction about my own industry, but here the production of The Tempest - of whose performance we see very little, and whose rehearsals almost less - is really just a backdrop. The focus is on the people, but the theatre is vital in providing a very specific kind of social and political framework, and also in supplying such a cast of disparate characters.
Aside from Hector, the protagonists are uniformly wonderful, and better, they all come with families of yet more wonderful characters, drawn with care and wit and depth. The entire committee of the Salterton Little Theatre is populated with older, set-in-their-ways stage-struck types, some of whom still command a spot in the cast, and others who dream of glory through other means, but all instantly recognisable to anyone who has spent any time in a small community organisation. The cast and crew are no less interesting. There's Hector's love interest - not that she's aware of it for most of the novel - Griselda Webster, a local rich girl who scores a major part in the play since her father's estate will be the performance venue, and whose younger sister Freddy secretly brews champagne from apples in the groundskeeper's shed. The director is Valentine Rich, a professional director and prodigal daughter of Salterton, back in town to take care of her deceased grandfather's estate. Both of these women are pursued with equal lack of success by Solly Bridgetower, a sarcastic, cynical young man enslaved to his domineering mother despite attending school in Cambridge...and on and on. If this were made into a film or play it would require quite the ensemble cast.
(For the record, my personal favourite is definitely Humphrey Cobbler, the local organist recruited to perform the music for the play. He doesn't play a big part, but he spouts wisdom and joy in equal measure in a voice that sounded in my head like a cross between Brian Blessed and Ian McKellan. Imagine that with dialogue such as "I am full of holy joy and free booze", "It is very wrong to resist an impulse to sing; to hold back a natural evacuation of joy is as injurious as to hold back any other natural issue," or "Now there is nothing I enjoy more than talking about music in terms of painting." It doesn't hurt that his whole family are musical and joyous, and thus remind me of my beloved and her clan.)
It would be remiss of me to talk about the characters of the book without mentioning Salterton itself. Tempest-Tost is the first of the "Salterton Trilogy", all set in the town, and it is an invention of Davies; you'd be forgiven for thinking it real, however, since it's drawn with such detail and love. My experience of Canada is sadly limited to the very touristy Niagara Falls, Ontario, but Salterton paints such a vivid picture of life in Canada that I feel as though I have been there.
There are few books I have enjoyed so much as Tempest-Tost; the characters, the wit, the pace are all so finely wrought as to make this a near perfect comic novel. Every scene, from the casting of the play to the "donation" of Valentine's grandfather's books to local clergy to any of the very normal yet politically and socially charged lunches dinners and parties are all equally well drawn. This is all the more extraordinary when you realise that Tempest-Tost was Davies' first novel! If I have any misgivings, it is only that the otherwise timelessness of the story and characters are ruined by the few reminders that the book was written in 1951; the phrase "working like a black" appears in the prose, though I suspect - or hope - it was just a common expression at the time, and his depiction of women, while mostly surprisingly progressive, still sometimes typical of the 1950s.
I'll be reading more Robertson Davies. You can count on it.
Chapters: 7
Page count: 284
Book's title mentioned on page: 2 (it's a quotation from Macbeth, not part of the novel itself)
Best name encountered: They're all good, though special mentions go to Professor Vambrace - it just has a great ring to it - Griselda and Freddy (Freddy's nickname for Griselda is "Gristle"), and Valentine's dead grandfather: Dr. Adam Savage!
New words: I don't think there were any, but the words I already knew were used in such marvellous ways...
Inner Five-year-old score: 3 (I'd've loved the humour and the theatre stuff, though much of the social and sexual politics would have escaped me)
Fun Wikipedia fact: Davies lifelong companion was Australian stage manager Brenda Matthews, whom he met in London while working as an actor. They were married from 1940 to his death in 1995.
Update!
I've finally started catching up on the main Bunch of Authors posts, so you can find the post for Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin under "Who brought the cat? Would Margaret Atwood?" It's dated from when I started writing it...which is frankly embarrassing! Still, expect the last three books in the series very soon.
"and she threw the book at me"
It's done! I just finished The Cleft, and it was pretty good. I know I've not yet made good on my promise to catch up on the full blog entries, but I have at least come to the end of the Bunch of Authors quest.
Well...the end for now. I intend to keep reading, and to keep blogging about what I read. (I'll probably finish And Another Thing... for starters.)
Thanks to anyone who may have joined me, however briefly, on my journey. It will continue. And I will write up the last four books soon!
Well...the end for now. I intend to keep reading, and to keep blogging about what I read. (I'll probably finish And Another Thing... for starters.)
Thanks to anyone who may have joined me, however briefly, on my journey. It will continue. And I will write up the last four books soon!
The Rapid Update
Okay, it's been way too long, but I've just arrived back home after three weeks in the US, and I need to let you know that I finished The English Patient and I'm about two-thirds of the way through The Cleft. I was somewhat distracted by Eoin Colfer's And Another Thing, the sixth Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy novel, but I abandoned it halfway through to get back on track.
Over the next few days, as I recover from jet-lag and see James Cameron's Avatar, I'll endeavour to complete my backlog of posts - I still owe you The Blind Assassin, Tempest-Tost and The English Patient. But at least I'm on target to finish the list by year's end.
Over the next few days, as I recover from jet-lag and see James Cameron's Avatar, I'll endeavour to complete my backlog of posts - I still owe you The Blind Assassin, Tempest-Tost and The English Patient. But at least I'm on target to finish the list by year's end.
Doin' some readin'
This post is a bit of a catch-up; I'm two books ahead of the blog now. Yesterday I finished Tempest-Tost, and I'm already 30+ pages into The English Patient (already it feels like it was written by a poet, and indeed Ondaatje has some poetry anthologies listed in his "also by this author"). There's a draft of the The Blind Assassin post sitting in blogger, and I promise to finish it this week.
Life is exceptionally busy: work is at a critical point in a big project, I've gigs coming up, there are registration deadlines looming for various festivals, and I'm going to America and Canada in under three weeks. I'll do my best to catch up before I go, but I feel on-track: two months left, and two books to go.
I'll return soon, I promise!
Life is exceptionally busy: work is at a critical point in a big project, I've gigs coming up, there are registration deadlines looming for various festivals, and I'm going to America and Canada in under three weeks. I'll do my best to catch up before I go, but I feel on-track: two months left, and two books to go.
I'll return soon, I promise!
"Who brought the cat? Would Margaret Atwood?"
Shortly after the Second World War, Iris Chase's sister Laura drove over a cliff to her death. Some say she did it on purpose. A few years later her strange, slightly risqué novel, The Blind Assassin, made her a famous iconoclast. Now Iris, living on her own in her Canadian home town of Port Ticonderoga, has decided to write down the story of her family, encompassing two wars, the Great Depression, and of course the mystery of her sister's death.
This book is like an ogre: it's full of layers, by which I mean layers of storytelling. First, there's Iris's reality - what's happening to her now, at the end of the twentieth century. She's telling us about it, writing in an almost conversational style, though it's not clear why or who for until the end. After a while she also tells the story of her parents, followed by her childhood. Iris's writings are interrupted by both historical documents - newspaper stories and the like - and extracts from Laura's novel, in which a young socialite meets clandestinely with a writer of science fantasy stories for pulp magazines. The final layer of the story occurs within the novel, as the writer tells her a story of his own devising - this is where the titular blind assassin comes in.
The book starts out as a slow burn - Iris is an engaging enough character, but her life as a lonely, elderly woman, and one seemingly ill-equipped to deal with her own twilight years, isn't immediately gripping. There's also a strange disparity between her wit in writing and her real life business, both in her current life and her earlier history; her internal monologue is insightful, even biting, but when the narrative includes her in scenes of her life, she's disappointingly passive and dull. Perhaps this is part of the point, though: Iris, a child of the First World War, exists in a world where privilege, knowledge and choice in general is denied to women. The Chase sisters are schooled at home by a succession of terrible tutors in subjects that teach them nothing of any use. Not that much later, in one of the more harrowing sequences of the book, Iris, still barely a woman, is married off to a much older businessman to secure his purchase of the Chase family business in the hard times following the war.
It's a pretty miserable life, though the narrative is very matter-of-fact about it in that sense. Iris's father is the best example of this attitude: he's neither demonised or deified, instead presented as an almost featureless cipher before the war (and before Iris was old enough to truly know him), and as a broken shell afterward, acting on some internal compass that's clearly cracked.
I have to admit I found The Bllind Assassin pretty hard going in the middle, and it was largely because I thought I knew where the main story was going, but I desperately wanted more of the pulp narrative of the blind assassin. After all, we already know that Iris ends up old and alone, her sister having driven off a cliff. Obviously there's some hidden truth coming, but it takes its time; indeed, it's barely addressed explicitly, though Iris does acknowledge what her intended reader has no doubt discovered before she reveals the secret. It's not spoiling anything, I think, to say that she reveals something quite unpleasant, but by the time it comes it seems not to have quite the sting it could have had. (I'm famous among some of my friends for wanting stories to begin at that point, to see what happens after; since, as you might expect, the revelation and how its handled is what leads to Laura's demise, there's not a great deal of story left afterwards.)
But despite the above misgivings, I really liked The Blind Assassin. Though I found Iris frustrating through the lens of the 21st century - modern, elderly Iris is so knowing, it's hard not to be shouting "why couldn't you be like this forty years ago?!" as she describes her passive young self - her story is truly tragic, and there's a lot of detail in the book. It's description of life in a small industry town through the huge changes of the 20s, 30s and 40s is fascinating, with the fortunes of her father's factory, the radically different sexual politics and the attitude of businessmen to Germany in the lead up to World War II all worthy of novels of their own.
Still, I can't help thinking that if I could, I'd buy a copy of Amazing Stories if it just had the story of the real blind assassin...or even a copy of Laura Chase's book. It's the ultimate literary frustration to read a novel which depicts a fictional novel you suspect you'd enjoy just as much, if not more.
Chapters: 15
Page count: 560
Book's title mentioned on page: 240 (sort of)
Best name encountered: Iris Chase (it just resonates for the character)
New words: [I'll have to find it and look them up; there were one or two]
Inner Five-year-old score: 4 (for the story within the novel within the novel); 1 (for the novel; waaaaay to intense for a five year old!)
Fun Wikipedia fact: The Blind Assassin is considered an example of "Southern Ontario Gothic", a sub-genre of gothic fiction first described in 1973 but sometimes derided by critics.
This book is like an ogre: it's full of layers, by which I mean layers of storytelling. First, there's Iris's reality - what's happening to her now, at the end of the twentieth century. She's telling us about it, writing in an almost conversational style, though it's not clear why or who for until the end. After a while she also tells the story of her parents, followed by her childhood. Iris's writings are interrupted by both historical documents - newspaper stories and the like - and extracts from Laura's novel, in which a young socialite meets clandestinely with a writer of science fantasy stories for pulp magazines. The final layer of the story occurs within the novel, as the writer tells her a story of his own devising - this is where the titular blind assassin comes in.
The book starts out as a slow burn - Iris is an engaging enough character, but her life as a lonely, elderly woman, and one seemingly ill-equipped to deal with her own twilight years, isn't immediately gripping. There's also a strange disparity between her wit in writing and her real life business, both in her current life and her earlier history; her internal monologue is insightful, even biting, but when the narrative includes her in scenes of her life, she's disappointingly passive and dull. Perhaps this is part of the point, though: Iris, a child of the First World War, exists in a world where privilege, knowledge and choice in general is denied to women. The Chase sisters are schooled at home by a succession of terrible tutors in subjects that teach them nothing of any use. Not that much later, in one of the more harrowing sequences of the book, Iris, still barely a woman, is married off to a much older businessman to secure his purchase of the Chase family business in the hard times following the war.
It's a pretty miserable life, though the narrative is very matter-of-fact about it in that sense. Iris's father is the best example of this attitude: he's neither demonised or deified, instead presented as an almost featureless cipher before the war (and before Iris was old enough to truly know him), and as a broken shell afterward, acting on some internal compass that's clearly cracked.
I have to admit I found The Bllind Assassin pretty hard going in the middle, and it was largely because I thought I knew where the main story was going, but I desperately wanted more of the pulp narrative of the blind assassin. After all, we already know that Iris ends up old and alone, her sister having driven off a cliff. Obviously there's some hidden truth coming, but it takes its time; indeed, it's barely addressed explicitly, though Iris does acknowledge what her intended reader has no doubt discovered before she reveals the secret. It's not spoiling anything, I think, to say that she reveals something quite unpleasant, but by the time it comes it seems not to have quite the sting it could have had. (I'm famous among some of my friends for wanting stories to begin at that point, to see what happens after; since, as you might expect, the revelation and how its handled is what leads to Laura's demise, there's not a great deal of story left afterwards.)
But despite the above misgivings, I really liked The Blind Assassin. Though I found Iris frustrating through the lens of the 21st century - modern, elderly Iris is so knowing, it's hard not to be shouting "why couldn't you be like this forty years ago?!" as she describes her passive young self - her story is truly tragic, and there's a lot of detail in the book. It's description of life in a small industry town through the huge changes of the 20s, 30s and 40s is fascinating, with the fortunes of her father's factory, the radically different sexual politics and the attitude of businessmen to Germany in the lead up to World War II all worthy of novels of their own.
Still, I can't help thinking that if I could, I'd buy a copy of Amazing Stories if it just had the story of the real blind assassin...or even a copy of Laura Chase's book. It's the ultimate literary frustration to read a novel which depicts a fictional novel you suspect you'd enjoy just as much, if not more.
Chapters: 15
Page count: 560
Book's title mentioned on page: 240 (sort of)
Best name encountered: Iris Chase (it just resonates for the character)
New words: [I'll have to find it and look them up; there were one or two]
Inner Five-year-old score: 4 (for the story within the novel within the novel); 1 (for the novel; waaaaay to intense for a five year old!)
Fun Wikipedia fact: The Blind Assassin is considered an example of "Southern Ontario Gothic", a sub-genre of gothic fiction first described in 1973 but sometimes derided by critics.
In Another Dimension of Space...
Quick update today: last night I finished The Blind Assassin. I'll get time for the full post in the next few days, but the short version is that it took a while to get into, and the journey was more important than the destination, but I really enjoyed it.
I did finish reading The Graveyard Book, and it didn't disappoint. I saw some negative feeling towards it because it was nominated for a Hugo, despite being a book for younger readers, and some comments were tossed around that it was unworthy. I admit I'm not up with the current standards of science fiction and fantasy literature, but I reckon it was a worthy nomination; I certainly enjoyed it as much as I did any of the Bunch of Authors books so far.
For those interested, I'm now reading my beloved The Lord of the Rings, because she loves Tolkien and it's about time I put some effort into sharing it with her. I am one of those who loved The Hobbit as a kid, but didn't make it more than a third through Fellowship of the Ring; I've met many like me since. I have famously proclaimed that I liked the films better, since I did try Fellowship again after seeing the film (though my plan to read each book after seeing each film never came to fruition). This time around, with my love to guide me, I'm getting into it much more, and I'm amazed how little I remember of the book.
I've also started (as in I got about three pages in this morning before leaving for work) Tempest-Tost by Robertson Davies, and it's shorter, but in small print. Three more books, two and half months left in the year. Time to step up!
I did finish reading The Graveyard Book, and it didn't disappoint. I saw some negative feeling towards it because it was nominated for a Hugo, despite being a book for younger readers, and some comments were tossed around that it was unworthy. I admit I'm not up with the current standards of science fiction and fantasy literature, but I reckon it was a worthy nomination; I certainly enjoyed it as much as I did any of the Bunch of Authors books so far.
For those interested, I'm now reading my beloved The Lord of the Rings, because she loves Tolkien and it's about time I put some effort into sharing it with her. I am one of those who loved The Hobbit as a kid, but didn't make it more than a third through Fellowship of the Ring; I've met many like me since. I have famously proclaimed that I liked the films better, since I did try Fellowship again after seeing the film (though my plan to read each book after seeing each film never came to fruition). This time around, with my love to guide me, I'm getting into it much more, and I'm amazed how little I remember of the book.
I've also started (as in I got about three pages in this morning before leaving for work) Tempest-Tost by Robertson Davies, and it's shorter, but in small print. Three more books, two and half months left in the year. Time to step up!
"Who's a funny fella? W. P. Kinsella"
In 1979 on his little corn farm outside Iowa City, baseball fanatic Ray Kinsella hears an announcer's voice: "If you build it, he will come." He knows exactly what the voice means and builds a baseball field amongst the corn, and sure enough he comes: Shoeless Joe Jackson, one of the "Unlucky Eight", White Sox players thrown out of the sport for fixing the 1919 World Series. The rest of the eight come too, but the voice has more instructions for Ray - not least seeking out reclusive author J. D. Salinger. Ray obeys without question, yet all along debt threatens to cost him the farm.
I've never seen Field of Dreams, but I'll tell you now: I loved Shoeless Joe. It's a book that somehow resonated with me deeply; perhaps because of the names, the characters, the situation. I'm not sure. I've never watched a game of baseball in my life, but as the Philadelphia Inquirer said, it's "not so much about baseball as it is about dreams, magic, life, and what is quintessentially American". I think I'll be going to a game when I'm in New York.
But let's back up a bit. Why do I love it? First, there's the pace. The voice speaks to Ray on page 3 (the first page of prose); Shoeless Joe shows up by page 11. This is not typical of my experience with magic realism, which I suppose is what you'd have to call Shoeless Joe. In films in this genre there's a lot of resistance on the part of the character chosen by the magic; not so here. Ray's wife Annie and daughter Karin never question it either, indeed are aware of it almost from the beginning. Ray's doubts come only when his later instructions force him to seek out others and share his miracle.
I said I made personal connections to the book, and partly that's the names: several characters share theirs with important people in my life. A central theme is Ray's strong bond with his long-dead father, and father-son stories always hit me in my emotional centre. But there's also the treatment of religion. Surprisingly for a book about redemption after death, there's a thread of atheism running through the book. Ray's not a Christian, but Annie's mother is, and not a flattering one. Religion is only ever presented as bluster, even late in the book when certain characters react to the baseball field in a religious fashion. Perhaps the book is spiritual, but it's more about dreams than anything else. The fantasy of recapturing things lost is a powerful one for us all.
A word about the baseball business: it's not overwhelming. It's just a theme, Kinsella's specialty, and you learn everything you need to know in the book, though when the occasional batting average was mentioned I was clueless. Is .300 better or worse than .500? It didn't really matter. Baseball is explained as the conduit for this peace and redemption quite beautifully in the closing pages of the book.
So it's a delightful book, though I don't know if it could work if it were to be written now, set in 2009. Baseball, like other major league sports, just doesn't seem the same any more. We see it as a job, a business, a career with fame attached, though baseball, like cricket (or at least test cricket), seems to have weathered the decades better than others. It recalls a simpler time, a time before commercialisation (another theme in the book, depressingly just as relevant 30 years later).
Chapters: 5
Page count: 265
Book's title mentioned on page: never!
Best name encountered: Karin (it's my beloved's name, and never shows up anywhere, so imagine my delight!)
New words: none really, though I learned some more about certain baseball terms
Inner Five-year-old score: 3
Fun Wikipedia fact: W. P. Kinsella became less of baseball fan after the 1994 Major League Baseball strike, and is now a noted tournament Scrabble player.
...and on we go! Four books left; four months left. I'll start The Blind Assassin tonight.
I've never seen Field of Dreams, but I'll tell you now: I loved Shoeless Joe. It's a book that somehow resonated with me deeply; perhaps because of the names, the characters, the situation. I'm not sure. I've never watched a game of baseball in my life, but as the Philadelphia Inquirer said, it's "not so much about baseball as it is about dreams, magic, life, and what is quintessentially American". I think I'll be going to a game when I'm in New York.
But let's back up a bit. Why do I love it? First, there's the pace. The voice speaks to Ray on page 3 (the first page of prose); Shoeless Joe shows up by page 11. This is not typical of my experience with magic realism, which I suppose is what you'd have to call Shoeless Joe. In films in this genre there's a lot of resistance on the part of the character chosen by the magic; not so here. Ray's wife Annie and daughter Karin never question it either, indeed are aware of it almost from the beginning. Ray's doubts come only when his later instructions force him to seek out others and share his miracle.
I said I made personal connections to the book, and partly that's the names: several characters share theirs with important people in my life. A central theme is Ray's strong bond with his long-dead father, and father-son stories always hit me in my emotional centre. But there's also the treatment of religion. Surprisingly for a book about redemption after death, there's a thread of atheism running through the book. Ray's not a Christian, but Annie's mother is, and not a flattering one. Religion is only ever presented as bluster, even late in the book when certain characters react to the baseball field in a religious fashion. Perhaps the book is spiritual, but it's more about dreams than anything else. The fantasy of recapturing things lost is a powerful one for us all.
A word about the baseball business: it's not overwhelming. It's just a theme, Kinsella's specialty, and you learn everything you need to know in the book, though when the occasional batting average was mentioned I was clueless. Is .300 better or worse than .500? It didn't really matter. Baseball is explained as the conduit for this peace and redemption quite beautifully in the closing pages of the book.
So it's a delightful book, though I don't know if it could work if it were to be written now, set in 2009. Baseball, like other major league sports, just doesn't seem the same any more. We see it as a job, a business, a career with fame attached, though baseball, like cricket (or at least test cricket), seems to have weathered the decades better than others. It recalls a simpler time, a time before commercialisation (another theme in the book, depressingly just as relevant 30 years later).
Chapters: 5
Page count: 265
Book's title mentioned on page: never!
Best name encountered: Karin (it's my beloved's name, and never shows up anywhere, so imagine my delight!)
New words: none really, though I learned some more about certain baseball terms
Inner Five-year-old score: 3
Fun Wikipedia fact: W. P. Kinsella became less of baseball fan after the 1994 Major League Baseball strike, and is now a noted tournament Scrabble player.
...and on we go! Four books left; four months left. I'll start The Blind Assassin tonight.
"I'll be over when I'm finished my book"
After the less than two weeks speed-up with The Godfather, I was keen not to lose momentum; I needed the next book, and the next author in the song is W. P. Kinsella. No, I hadn't heard of him either, but it turns out his books are mostly about baseball - and this includes Shoeless Joe, the story Hollywood turned into Field of Dreams.
Having just read the book behind one film I hadn't seen, it seemed appropriate to dive straight into another, so after finishing The Godfather in my lunchbreak on Thursday, I went hunting in bookshops after work. Reader's Feast had every seemingly the entire back catalogue of Sophie Kinsella (no relation; indeed, it's not even her real name), but not a whiff of W. P. The same was true at The Hill of Content, even Angus and Robinson. So, in desperation, I tried Borders.
I know, I know; they're a corporate giant, often accused of paying student employees terrible wages and single-handedly destroying the independent booksshop. But I have to say, they don't seem to have managed to do that here in Australia, and the staff I've encountered have been pretty good. In any case, sometimes they're the only place to go to find what I'm after, though you'll often pay way too much for the books they import from the US (I saw the introductory adventure for the latest version of Dungeons & Dragons on sale in Borders here in Melbourne for $65! It has a recommended retail of $29.95 US, originally sold for around the $30 mark in game stores here, and an electronic version is available for free on the Wizards of the Coast web site.)
While I was there, I also found the last book I needed to be set up with all the remaining authors; since it's no longer a mystery to me, I feel I should share the final schedule with you:
Having just read the book behind one film I hadn't seen, it seemed appropriate to dive straight into another, so after finishing The Godfather in my lunchbreak on Thursday, I went hunting in bookshops after work. Reader's Feast had every seemingly the entire back catalogue of Sophie Kinsella (no relation; indeed, it's not even her real name), but not a whiff of W. P. The same was true at The Hill of Content, even Angus and Robinson. So, in desperation, I tried Borders.
I know, I know; they're a corporate giant, often accused of paying student employees terrible wages and single-handedly destroying the independent booksshop. But I have to say, they don't seem to have managed to do that here in Australia, and the staff I've encountered have been pretty good. In any case, sometimes they're the only place to go to find what I'm after, though you'll often pay way too much for the books they import from the US (I saw the introductory adventure for the latest version of Dungeons & Dragons on sale in Borders here in Melbourne for $65! It has a recommended retail of $29.95 US, originally sold for around the $30 mark in game stores here, and an electronic version is available for free on the Wizards of the Coast web site.)
While I was there, I also found the last book I needed to be set up with all the remaining authors; since it's no longer a mystery to me, I feel I should share the final schedule with you:
- W. P. Kinsella - Shoeless Joe
- Margaret Atwood - The Blind Assassin
- Robertson Davies - Tempest-Tost
- Michael Ondaatje - The English Patient
- Doris Lessing - The Cleft
"Now I'm poundin' the ouzo with Mario Puzo"
Post-war New York casts some long shadows, and in these shadows live the Sicilian Families. Most powerful of all are the Corleones, headed by Don Vito Corleone: "the Godfather" to his friends. His world is one in which he protects his family and friends from the larger, unfair world; it is a world of loyalty, favours and above all respect. His only worry in his world is succession; one son incapable, one too ruled by anger and lust, and the other, Michael, commits the great sin of using his talents outside the Family, fighting for the US in the Pacific. Soon after of the Don's daughter's wedding, an attack on the Godfather himself throws the family into war, and no-one - not even Michael - can escape the violence of the next ten years.
Almost every conversation I have with my friends about films involves something like this:
"Oh, that's just a classic Hitchcock trick. He used that in Psycho...you've seen Psycho?" (This last bit is something usually unsaid, tacked on because they have remembered they are talking to me.)
"No," I reply, and disappointment ensues. It's true there are many films I've not seen, and these include The Godfather. This is probably one of the worst sins in the cinephile book because it's considered by many to be one of the best films ever made (it's ranked number two in the IMDb Top 250 behind a movie I have seen: The Shawshank Redemption). It's also my ex-housemate Paul's favourite movie, and among the top ten of many others besides. Nevertheless, I now know that peculiar form of smug satisfaction that comes from not having seen a film, but having read the book on which it was based; there really should be a word for it. Perhaps the Germans have one, but for now I'll use the invented term satisfiction. (All credit to my beloved, who did most of the work on that one.)
The Godfather, you'll notice, took my very little time to read, which is just as well - we're now just past the half way mark, but we're two thirds of the way three the year! But the reason it's taken so little time is that it's an "ice-cream" book - well-written, with a driving narrative, and so many characters whose fates you have to discover. Indeed, as much as I liked Michael, it was the less prominent characters who really captured my attention: Tom Hagen, the "Irish", German-American man taken in by the Don as a fourth son who becomes his Consigliori; Johnny Fontane, a singer, actor and godson of the Don (and, as a friend pointed out, supposedly a fictional counterpart to Sinatra); and, my personal favourite, Jules Segal, a skilled surgeon and humanist (though not entirely altruistic) relocated to Vegas after a run-in with the law over the abortions he'd performed.
It's sadly no coincidence that these characters are all men; the two most interesting women in the book are Lucy Mancini, lover to the Don's oldest son and later to Dr Segal, and Kay Adams, girlfriend and later wife to Michael Corleone. But these women have passive roles; they both rail against convention in their own ways, but both remain very much subservient to men. (Lucy, who achieves some sexual liberation, does it only through assistance from Jules, though he is in many ways the book's most progressive character.) It's true that this is typical of the late 40s and 50s, when the book is set, and even more so of the old-fashioned traditions of the Sicilian families, and indeed within that context Kay struggles as much as might be expected. By the end though she submits to the expectations of the Family - and moreso, to beliefs she herself does not honestly seem to hold - though the same can be said of Michael.
I should also mention the sex. There's plenty of it, most of it not graphically described, but even just a few chapters in we hear of Sonny Corleone's enormous member and the one woman glad to accept it: Lucy. Indeed Lucy and and Kay get all the best sex scenes; both are very sexually active, unusually so perhaps given the period and social context of the book, though the other women are not so lucky. Sex is held, as is so often the case in more "traditional" societies, quite separate from love and emotion; a taboo and gift to be withheld until marriage. Late in the book a virgin bride bursts with repressed sexual energy on her wedding night, and it is said to be wonderful. At the same time it is acceptable, perhaps even expected, for men to have sexual affairs (so long as they are reasonably discreet), whereas female infidelity is either never contemplated or painted as deliberate humiliation of one's husband. Again, these attitudes are in keeping with the period and
Puzo's style is direct, but it doesn't lack in internal life. His characters are compelling because he allows their thoughts to wander where they need to; if one of them remembers a significant event from their past, then that event is played out for us with all the detail of the main narrative. He can spend an entire book in narrative order, but he also jumps back and forward to heighten the dramatic tension. When a major character dies (I'm not going to assume you've seen the movie; after all, I haven't), we learn about it through the perspective of a minor character not heard from since the books opening chapter before travelling back in time to see how it was achieved. It's a trick used several times and it works every time; indeed, it has a very filmic quality to it. No wonder it made such a good movie.
It's something of a triumph, too, in the way it manages to make the protagonists likeable without downplaying how hardarse they are. These men are neither immoral nor amoral; rather, they have viewed the society in which they live, found its moral code wanting, and invented their own. The original Sicilian mafia, it's American evolution, and even the Don himself are all given an origin. There are times, it's true, when you forget that the Family is a criminal organisation, that it's "friendship" is not always optional, that to merely say no to them may be to court ruin or death. This just makes the brutality, when it comes, all the more terrible, especially in the final chapters.
The Godfather is one hell of a ride. I look foward to seeing the film with great satisfiction; after all, I think the term can also apply to the feeling one gets when watching a film whose source material one has already read, especially when the film is either a great success or failure at bringing the source to the screen.
Chapters: 32 (across nine books; all are numbered in Roman numerals)
Page count: 595
Book's title mentioned on page: 8
Best name encountered: Luca Brasi (it just has the right brutal feel for the character)
New words: caporegime; Consigliori; lupara; omertà; pezzonovante
Inner Five-year-old score: 3 (excitement, sure, but this is adult excitement: sex and death and consequences)
Fun Wikipedia fact: Puzo was a public relations officer for the US Air Force in Germany during the war, since his poor eyesight prevented him from fighting.
Almost every conversation I have with my friends about films involves something like this:
"Oh, that's just a classic Hitchcock trick. He used that in Psycho...you've seen Psycho?" (This last bit is something usually unsaid, tacked on because they have remembered they are talking to me.)
"No," I reply, and disappointment ensues. It's true there are many films I've not seen, and these include The Godfather. This is probably one of the worst sins in the cinephile book because it's considered by many to be one of the best films ever made (it's ranked number two in the IMDb Top 250 behind a movie I have seen: The Shawshank Redemption). It's also my ex-housemate Paul's favourite movie, and among the top ten of many others besides. Nevertheless, I now know that peculiar form of smug satisfaction that comes from not having seen a film, but having read the book on which it was based; there really should be a word for it. Perhaps the Germans have one, but for now I'll use the invented term satisfiction. (All credit to my beloved, who did most of the work on that one.)
The Godfather, you'll notice, took my very little time to read, which is just as well - we're now just past the half way mark, but we're two thirds of the way three the year! But the reason it's taken so little time is that it's an "ice-cream" book - well-written, with a driving narrative, and so many characters whose fates you have to discover. Indeed, as much as I liked Michael, it was the less prominent characters who really captured my attention: Tom Hagen, the "Irish", German-American man taken in by the Don as a fourth son who becomes his Consigliori; Johnny Fontane, a singer, actor and godson of the Don (and, as a friend pointed out, supposedly a fictional counterpart to Sinatra); and, my personal favourite, Jules Segal, a skilled surgeon and humanist (though not entirely altruistic) relocated to Vegas after a run-in with the law over the abortions he'd performed.
It's sadly no coincidence that these characters are all men; the two most interesting women in the book are Lucy Mancini, lover to the Don's oldest son and later to Dr Segal, and Kay Adams, girlfriend and later wife to Michael Corleone. But these women have passive roles; they both rail against convention in their own ways, but both remain very much subservient to men. (Lucy, who achieves some sexual liberation, does it only through assistance from Jules, though he is in many ways the book's most progressive character.) It's true that this is typical of the late 40s and 50s, when the book is set, and even more so of the old-fashioned traditions of the Sicilian families, and indeed within that context Kay struggles as much as might be expected. By the end though she submits to the expectations of the Family - and moreso, to beliefs she herself does not honestly seem to hold - though the same can be said of Michael.
I should also mention the sex. There's plenty of it, most of it not graphically described, but even just a few chapters in we hear of Sonny Corleone's enormous member and the one woman glad to accept it: Lucy. Indeed Lucy and and Kay get all the best sex scenes; both are very sexually active, unusually so perhaps given the period and social context of the book, though the other women are not so lucky. Sex is held, as is so often the case in more "traditional" societies, quite separate from love and emotion; a taboo and gift to be withheld until marriage. Late in the book a virgin bride bursts with repressed sexual energy on her wedding night, and it is said to be wonderful. At the same time it is acceptable, perhaps even expected, for men to have sexual affairs (so long as they are reasonably discreet), whereas female infidelity is either never contemplated or painted as deliberate humiliation of one's husband. Again, these attitudes are in keeping with the period and
Puzo's style is direct, but it doesn't lack in internal life. His characters are compelling because he allows their thoughts to wander where they need to; if one of them remembers a significant event from their past, then that event is played out for us with all the detail of the main narrative. He can spend an entire book in narrative order, but he also jumps back and forward to heighten the dramatic tension. When a major character dies (I'm not going to assume you've seen the movie; after all, I haven't), we learn about it through the perspective of a minor character not heard from since the books opening chapter before travelling back in time to see how it was achieved. It's a trick used several times and it works every time; indeed, it has a very filmic quality to it. No wonder it made such a good movie.
It's something of a triumph, too, in the way it manages to make the protagonists likeable without downplaying how hardarse they are. These men are neither immoral nor amoral; rather, they have viewed the society in which they live, found its moral code wanting, and invented their own. The original Sicilian mafia, it's American evolution, and even the Don himself are all given an origin. There are times, it's true, when you forget that the Family is a criminal organisation, that it's "friendship" is not always optional, that to merely say no to them may be to court ruin or death. This just makes the brutality, when it comes, all the more terrible, especially in the final chapters.
The Godfather is one hell of a ride. I look foward to seeing the film with great satisfiction; after all, I think the term can also apply to the feeling one gets when watching a film whose source material one has already read, especially when the film is either a great success or failure at bringing the source to the screen.
Chapters: 32 (across nine books; all are numbered in Roman numerals)
Page count: 595
Book's title mentioned on page: 8
Best name encountered: Luca Brasi (it just has the right brutal feel for the character)
New words: caporegime; Consigliori; lupara; omertà; pezzonovante
Inner Five-year-old score: 3 (excitement, sure, but this is adult excitement: sex and death and consequences)
Fun Wikipedia fact: Puzo was a public relations officer for the US Air Force in Germany during the war, since his poor eyesight prevented him from fighting.
"The driver said he was lookin' straight ahead"
So: four down, five to go from the original list. I've not wasted any time and ploughed directly into...Mario Puzo! And what else could I read but The Godfather? I only started two days ago, and I'm already 160 pages in. Just as well - this baby clocks in at 500 pages, though the type is a lot bigger than in Niagara. Here's hoping book six is a bit shorter so I've time to catch my breath.
I've allowed myself some ice-cream reading in the form of some comics. I borrowed four from the library a week or two ago, and purposefully selecting one DC title, one Marvel, one Dark Horse and one independent. I've already polished off Lucifer - Children and Monsters and She-Hulk - Laws of Attraction. The latter was pretty good, though the promise shown in the premise - a superhero with the supernatural charms is accused of rape - is quickly thrown away to focus on an almost soap operatic love "triangle". (The third person in the triangle is rarely present and very ineffective, so it's very much an isosceles love triangle.) It's got better ideas than a lot of Marvel stuff, and intersects with some interesting moments from early in the Civil War storyline (short short version: government decrees superheroes must be registered, superheroes fight over whether they should play along).
Lucifer, though, well...it's damnably good. (Sorry.) As with many comics, it's taken me a long time to get from volume one to volume two of the trade paperback collections, and that's mainly because my local library branch only had volume one. Children and Monsters begins as Lucifer has secured a dimensional gateway, which he uses to further his schemes, first by reclaiming his lost wings. While he is off preparing schemes, various forces both "good" and "evil" try to claim the gate as their own. It's a mature, sophisticated work, literate and intelligent, but above all it's good storytelling full of good ideas and well-constructed narrative. I'm keen to read the rest of Lucifer; it may be sacrilege (sorry again), but I think I prefer it to its parent work, Sandman. And I do like Sandman. I'll have to look up more of Mike Carey's work, though I don't think I'll bother with the Marvel stuff I see he's been doing of late.
Well, back to the reading, though I must mention that my beloved has been into some interesting stuff of late, too. We watched Quills last night, inspired her recent foray into the Marquis de Sade's Philosophy in the Boudoir. From the parts she related to me he seems heavy-handed in his philosophy as well as his pornography, though the pornography seems better thought out. The Marquis, it seems, was a social Darwinist of the worst sort, and married that with elements of Crowley's "Do what thou wilt", but interpreted both in ways that seem to favour the sexual satiation of men over women. Fascinating, but terrible.
I've allowed myself some ice-cream reading in the form of some comics. I borrowed four from the library a week or two ago, and purposefully selecting one DC title, one Marvel, one Dark Horse and one independent. I've already polished off Lucifer - Children and Monsters and She-Hulk - Laws of Attraction. The latter was pretty good, though the promise shown in the premise - a superhero with the supernatural charms is accused of rape - is quickly thrown away to focus on an almost soap operatic love "triangle". (The third person in the triangle is rarely present and very ineffective, so it's very much an isosceles love triangle.) It's got better ideas than a lot of Marvel stuff, and intersects with some interesting moments from early in the Civil War storyline (short short version: government decrees superheroes must be registered, superheroes fight over whether they should play along).
Lucifer, though, well...it's damnably good. (Sorry.) As with many comics, it's taken me a long time to get from volume one to volume two of the trade paperback collections, and that's mainly because my local library branch only had volume one. Children and Monsters begins as Lucifer has secured a dimensional gateway, which he uses to further his schemes, first by reclaiming his lost wings. While he is off preparing schemes, various forces both "good" and "evil" try to claim the gate as their own. It's a mature, sophisticated work, literate and intelligent, but above all it's good storytelling full of good ideas and well-constructed narrative. I'm keen to read the rest of Lucifer; it may be sacrilege (sorry again), but I think I prefer it to its parent work, Sandman. And I do like Sandman. I'll have to look up more of Mike Carey's work, though I don't think I'll bother with the Marvel stuff I see he's been doing of late.
Well, back to the reading, though I must mention that my beloved has been into some interesting stuff of late, too. We watched Quills last night, inspired her recent foray into the Marquis de Sade's Philosophy in the Boudoir. From the parts she related to me he seems heavy-handed in his philosophy as well as his pornography, though the pornography seems better thought out. The Marquis, it seems, was a social Darwinist of the worst sort, and married that with elements of Crowley's "Do what thou wilt", but interpreted both in ways that seem to favour the sexual satiation of men over women. Fascinating, but terrible.
"I've been flirtin' with Pierre Berton 'cos he's so smart in his books"
Niagara Falls straddles the divide between two countries. Since it was first discovered by Europeans, it has been a symbol of the untameable new world, inspiring awe, terror, wonder and greed. And like the falls themselves, the personalities of Niagara Falls, New York and Niagara Falls, Ontario have been poetic, violent, daring, powerful. From the hyperbolic missionary who first described the falls in print to the power barons who harnessed the waters to bring in the electrical revolution, it's history full of intrigue and adventure.
I was originally going to read Berton's history of the War of 1812, but a couple of things changed my mind. For one thing, the 1812 history consists of three volumes, and unlike a fictional trilogy I didn't think I could bear to only hear the beginning of the tale. The other is that my beloved and I are heading to New York in November-December, so we'll have a chance to see the Falls first hand. Now, having read Niagara: A History of the Falls, I will have to spend at least a day or two in the town, marvelling at the evidence of all that I've read.
As I mentioned in my last post, I was finding the book slow going. It must seem that I don't spend much time reading, but the truth is I now spend most of my reading time on blogs and online magazines, many covering frivolous topics, though many important ones too. Reading Niagara cover-to-cover felt a bit like reading a magazine column, since it comes in small chunks - bigger than a magazine article, in truth, but still. If I'd had more discipline I would have made sure to read one or more of these every day, in order to keep up the pace.
There are only thirteen chapters, but each is split into three to five "verses"; I call them this because they are only titled in the contents and at the start of each chapter - when you reach them in the text, they're denoted only by a large numeral at the top of the page. Sometimes these cover very different stories under a common theme; at other times, they seem to continue the previous verse more or less directly. The division seemed a bit arbitrary at times, and to be honest I often ignored them.
But enough of all that guff. Is it any good? Oh yes. Yes indeed. Berton has a wonderful prose style; everything is clear, his words flowing like a less turbulent river but still dynamic river - fast when the action is fierce, slower when the narrative turns to more domestic matters. It's only problem is that, being a true history of a place, rather than an event or even a person, it is a collection of short stories whose only true common theme is geography.
The early part of book is a little samey - he starts strong with a geological history of the river and how the falls were created (the first line is the very Biblical "In the beginning was the ice"), and their early "discovery", but the next few chapters are largely tales of Europeans coming and gawking in various ways. Eventually some real characters show up - the first of many celebrity cameos in Charles Dickens, and Frederic Church painting his celebrated landscape of the Falls - but the real narrative seems to arrive with the hucksters and crooks who established the first "civilised" period of Niagara's history.
I couldn't help but think of Deadwood as rival hotel owners fought each other for the right to fleece the hordes of Niagara tourists (William Hearst gets a mention, and Wild Bill Hickok is a later cameo!) - the blatant criminality and colourful setting would certainly make a cracker of an HBO series. From here on the action rarely stops, with the coming of daredevils, bridge builders and - my personal favourites - the scientists. Hydroelectricity came into its own nowhere in quite the way it did at Niagara, and no less a figure than Nicola Tesla arrives to harness the waters. (Tesla also shows up in The Mad Scientist Hall of Fame, a birthday gift from my beloved's parents, and an amusing if derivative mix of facts and psychiatric conjecture about scientists from fiction and history.)
Despite descriptions of the scientists as exploiters, it is clearly the "power magnates" and businessmen who drive the exploitation of the river. Surprisingly there seemed little evidence in the book to suggest that the use of the Falls for generating electricity has done any damage, but the industries that flocked to the area to take advantage of the power did more than enough - something that the final chapters explore in great detail in the case of "Love Canal", perhaps America's most famous toxic waster dump.
While there's little of it in the early chapters, when both Canada and America were still frontier societies, the second half of the book has plenty of comparisons between the two sides of the river. Canada get the better waterfall, of that there's no doubt, but Berton remains even-handed. Both countries get their share of praise and criticism for the way in which they exploit - or fail to exploit - the Falls, and indeed the afterword - which excellent summarises the preceding 450 pages - paints both as flawed but charming.
Niagara is far better in retrospect than in the reading, not because there's anything wrong with the prose, but just because it's a big story made of so many little stories, and the big story is easier to appreciate from above. I've learned so much: about the
I'll definitely be revisiting Berton, and indeed will probably acquire my own copy of the book to take with me to Niagara Falls. I want to visit the statues of Tesla and the French acrobat Blondin, take a tour of the massive power plants, and even see what's left of Love Canal. It's a rare pleasure to so keenly feel the history of a place, and I can't help but think that feeling will be wonderful when I am there in person.
Chapters: 13 (split into 52 "verses")
Page count: 449 (including the afterword, but not the acknowledgements, bibliography or very comprehensive index)
Book's title mentioned on page: 12 (the first page of the introduction. Well..."Niagara" is mentioned; he never uses the full title)
Best name encountered: Martha E. Wagenfuhrer; also the engineering firm of Balf, Sarin and Winkelman. (Isambard Kingdom Brunel gets a mention in passing, but only by his last name.)
New words: funambulist; cataract (in the geological sense; despite it's repeated use, I had to remind myself this wasn't a book about eyes right to the end)
Inner Five-year-old score: 7 (it has adventure and big buildings and Nikola Tesla and everything! That last chapter would have scared the hell out of me at five, though.)
Fun Wikipedia fact: Bruce Lee gave his only television interview on The Pierre Berton Show in 1971.
I was originally going to read Berton's history of the War of 1812, but a couple of things changed my mind. For one thing, the 1812 history consists of three volumes, and unlike a fictional trilogy I didn't think I could bear to only hear the beginning of the tale. The other is that my beloved and I are heading to New York in November-December, so we'll have a chance to see the Falls first hand. Now, having read Niagara: A History of the Falls, I will have to spend at least a day or two in the town, marvelling at the evidence of all that I've read.
As I mentioned in my last post, I was finding the book slow going. It must seem that I don't spend much time reading, but the truth is I now spend most of my reading time on blogs and online magazines, many covering frivolous topics, though many important ones too. Reading Niagara cover-to-cover felt a bit like reading a magazine column, since it comes in small chunks - bigger than a magazine article, in truth, but still. If I'd had more discipline I would have made sure to read one or more of these every day, in order to keep up the pace.
There are only thirteen chapters, but each is split into three to five "verses"; I call them this because they are only titled in the contents and at the start of each chapter - when you reach them in the text, they're denoted only by a large numeral at the top of the page. Sometimes these cover very different stories under a common theme; at other times, they seem to continue the previous verse more or less directly. The division seemed a bit arbitrary at times, and to be honest I often ignored them.
But enough of all that guff. Is it any good? Oh yes. Yes indeed. Berton has a wonderful prose style; everything is clear, his words flowing like a less turbulent river but still dynamic river - fast when the action is fierce, slower when the narrative turns to more domestic matters. It's only problem is that, being a true history of a place, rather than an event or even a person, it is a collection of short stories whose only true common theme is geography.
The early part of book is a little samey - he starts strong with a geological history of the river and how the falls were created (the first line is the very Biblical "In the beginning was the ice"), and their early "discovery", but the next few chapters are largely tales of Europeans coming and gawking in various ways. Eventually some real characters show up - the first of many celebrity cameos in Charles Dickens, and Frederic Church painting his celebrated landscape of the Falls - but the real narrative seems to arrive with the hucksters and crooks who established the first "civilised" period of Niagara's history.
I couldn't help but think of Deadwood as rival hotel owners fought each other for the right to fleece the hordes of Niagara tourists (William Hearst gets a mention, and Wild Bill Hickok is a later cameo!) - the blatant criminality and colourful setting would certainly make a cracker of an HBO series. From here on the action rarely stops, with the coming of daredevils, bridge builders and - my personal favourites - the scientists. Hydroelectricity came into its own nowhere in quite the way it did at Niagara, and no less a figure than Nicola Tesla arrives to harness the waters. (Tesla also shows up in The Mad Scientist Hall of Fame, a birthday gift from my beloved's parents, and an amusing if derivative mix of facts and psychiatric conjecture about scientists from fiction and history.)
Despite descriptions of the scientists as exploiters, it is clearly the "power magnates" and businessmen who drive the exploitation of the river. Surprisingly there seemed little evidence in the book to suggest that the use of the Falls for generating electricity has done any damage, but the industries that flocked to the area to take advantage of the power did more than enough - something that the final chapters explore in great detail in the case of "Love Canal", perhaps America's most famous toxic waster dump.
While there's little of it in the early chapters, when both Canada and America were still frontier societies, the second half of the book has plenty of comparisons between the two sides of the river. Canada get the better waterfall, of that there's no doubt, but Berton remains even-handed. Both countries get their share of praise and criticism for the way in which they exploit - or fail to exploit - the Falls, and indeed the afterword - which excellent summarises the preceding 450 pages - paints both as flawed but charming.
Niagara is far better in retrospect than in the reading, not because there's anything wrong with the prose, but just because it's a big story made of so many little stories, and the big story is easier to appreciate from above. I've learned so much: about the
I'll definitely be revisiting Berton, and indeed will probably acquire my own copy of the book to take with me to Niagara Falls. I want to visit the statues of Tesla and the French acrobat Blondin, take a tour of the massive power plants, and even see what's left of Love Canal. It's a rare pleasure to so keenly feel the history of a place, and I can't help but think that feeling will be wonderful when I am there in person.
Chapters: 13 (split into 52 "verses")
Page count: 449 (including the afterword, but not the acknowledgements, bibliography or very comprehensive index)
Book's title mentioned on page: 12 (the first page of the introduction. Well..."Niagara" is mentioned; he never uses the full title)
Best name encountered: Martha E. Wagenfuhrer; also the engineering firm of Balf, Sarin and Winkelman. (Isambard Kingdom Brunel gets a mention in passing, but only by his last name.)
New words: funambulist; cataract (in the geological sense; despite it's repeated use, I had to remind myself this wasn't a book about eyes right to the end)
Inner Five-year-old score: 7 (it has adventure and big buildings and Nikola Tesla and everything! That last chapter would have scared the hell out of me at five, though.)
Fun Wikipedia fact: Bruce Lee gave his only television interview on The Pierre Berton Show in 1971.
Too slow, Chicken Marengo!
It's taking me an age to get through Niagara: A History of the Falls. Not because Berton is a bad writer - far from it, his prose is engaging and to the point. The problem is this isn't a novel, nor a history of one identifiable thing; yes, everything is about Niagara in some way, but it could be the scam merchants fleecing tourists, or the daredevils climbing a wire above the cataract, or the power magnates building hydroelectric plants... All the bits are fascinating, but the players come and go and the Falls come in and out of focus. It's not the sort of book you generally read cover to cover.
Ah well. I've borrowed some comic books and banned myself from reading anything but Niagara. I'm making is sound awful, but it's not - it's just not a constant reading companion.
Should be done soon anyway, though. Only 100 or so pages left!
Ah well. I've borrowed some comic books and banned myself from reading anything but Niagara. I'm making is sound awful, but it's not - it's just not a constant reading companion.
Should be done soon anyway, though. Only 100 or so pages left!
Booktopia!
After racing through all three of Asimov's Elijah Baley/Daneel Olivaw novels in as many weeks, I feel right back in the reading game. I've regained momentum by reading something that slides into the brain the way ice-cream goes down the gullet (to borrow a comparison made by my friend Dave). Thus, I found it more important than ever to get my hands on a Pierre Berton book, so I could advance the Bunch of Authors project.
As I described in my last post, local bookshops left me without hope; three of Melbourne's regional libraries did have his work, but only one book apiece - one about Niagra Falls. Now, I could have caved and made the trek, but in the end I decided to punt for one of the books I really wanted to read.
Enter Booktopia. I first heard about them via a list of Amazon alternatives, following the so-called "Amazonfail" episode. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, here's a pretty good explanation of "Amazonfail".) I was abstractly irritated by that event, but to be honest it was more the horrendous postage that prevented me from buying books on Amazon. Booktopia is unique, as far as I know; while it does have a warehouse, it's not really a traditional online bookshop. Instead it lists books from publisher catalogues, putting in a special order with the publisher when you order your book.
I like this approach, because the model allows them to sell virtually any book with low overheads. It also highlights a truth that many bookstores seem to like keeping quiet: they can order pretty much any book from any publisher at any time, assuming it's still in print. I knew this when I worked at a bookshop in the early 90s, back when we didn't have computerised ordering (we had a yearly phone-book sized publication which listed available books by author, publisher and title).
So, for the recommended retail price plus a modest postage amount - and it's a flat fee no matter how many books you order - I am now awaiting the arrival of Berton's The Invasion of Canada: 1812-1813. I've also been to the bookshop and bought the next book after that, so there'll be no delay. After all, I've only about seven months left to get through these books - and some of them aren't short, and many may not be Asimov-style ice-cream. Plus, I'll need to make sure I have the last one or two ready to go with me to New York - where I'm excited to say I'll be heading for three weeks in November/December!
One quick note about Booktopia: the URL, as linked above, is http://www.booktopia.com.au - and it's important not to leave out the .au, as the .com site has been reported for malware distribution (or so Firefox and Google tell me).
Hopefully I'll be able to let you know what I think of Berton in a week or three. In the meantime, I plan to keep up my momentum by reading some other books, possibly including Tim Richards' Mind the Gap (a print-on-demand published sci-fi/fantasy work which I bought at the launch a week or two ago) and Iain M. Banks' Consider Phlebas, a belated birthday gift from Scott, one of my best friends.
It would be remiss of me not to mention that I have finally got around to reading one of the books I purchased from McSweeny's alongside Thanks and Have Fun Running the Country. It's titled Animals of the Ocean, In Particular the Giant Squid, and a more hilarious collection of anti-factual nonsense I have never seen. I've been reading it to my beloved in bed and she laughed so hard I thought she would die. It's the third volume in the "Haggis-on-Whey World of Unbelievable Brilliance", or "HoW?" series of books; kind of a literary equivalent of Peter Serafinowicz's Look Around You. Even though I particularly like cephalopods, I think I'll enjoy the rest of the series just as much.
As I described in my last post, local bookshops left me without hope; three of Melbourne's regional libraries did have his work, but only one book apiece - one about Niagra Falls. Now, I could have caved and made the trek, but in the end I decided to punt for one of the books I really wanted to read.
Enter Booktopia. I first heard about them via a list of Amazon alternatives, following the so-called "Amazonfail" episode. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, here's a pretty good explanation of "Amazonfail".) I was abstractly irritated by that event, but to be honest it was more the horrendous postage that prevented me from buying books on Amazon. Booktopia is unique, as far as I know; while it does have a warehouse, it's not really a traditional online bookshop. Instead it lists books from publisher catalogues, putting in a special order with the publisher when you order your book.
I like this approach, because the model allows them to sell virtually any book with low overheads. It also highlights a truth that many bookstores seem to like keeping quiet: they can order pretty much any book from any publisher at any time, assuming it's still in print. I knew this when I worked at a bookshop in the early 90s, back when we didn't have computerised ordering (we had a yearly phone-book sized publication which listed available books by author, publisher and title).
So, for the recommended retail price plus a modest postage amount - and it's a flat fee no matter how many books you order - I am now awaiting the arrival of Berton's The Invasion of Canada: 1812-1813. I've also been to the bookshop and bought the next book after that, so there'll be no delay. After all, I've only about seven months left to get through these books - and some of them aren't short, and many may not be Asimov-style ice-cream. Plus, I'll need to make sure I have the last one or two ready to go with me to New York - where I'm excited to say I'll be heading for three weeks in November/December!
One quick note about Booktopia: the URL, as linked above, is http://www.booktopia.com.au - and it's important not to leave out the .au, as the .com site has been reported for malware distribution (or so Firefox and Google tell me).
Hopefully I'll be able to let you know what I think of Berton in a week or three. In the meantime, I plan to keep up my momentum by reading some other books, possibly including Tim Richards' Mind the Gap (a print-on-demand published sci-fi/fantasy work which I bought at the launch a week or two ago) and Iain M. Banks' Consider Phlebas, a belated birthday gift from Scott, one of my best friends.
It would be remiss of me not to mention that I have finally got around to reading one of the books I purchased from McSweeny's alongside Thanks and Have Fun Running the Country. It's titled Animals of the Ocean, In Particular the Giant Squid, and a more hilarious collection of anti-factual nonsense I have never seen. I've been reading it to my beloved in bed and she laughed so hard I thought she would die. It's the third volume in the "Haggis-on-Whey World of Unbelievable Brilliance", or "HoW?" series of books; kind of a literary equivalent of Peter Serafinowicz's Look Around You. Even though I particularly like cephalopods, I think I'll enjoy the rest of the series just as much.
Star Trek III: The Search for Berton
Next up on the Bunch of Authors list is one Pierre Berton, a new name to me - and more's the pity. It turns out the late Berton was a journalist, columnist, historian and novelist - pretty much a Canadian national treasure. I'm keen to read several of his works, including Welcome to the 21st Century and The Invasion of Canada, his book about the War of 1812 - about which I know nothing except what is covered in the (hilarious) Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie song, "The War of 1812". (Check that out at the Dead Trolls site - look under audio.)
The trouble is no book shop I've been in has any of Berton's works. Readings didn't even have him in their database! The few that did have him in their systems didn't have any copies on hand, and didn't list either the books on the top of my Berton list. I'll look up the bibliographic details and put in an order, but considering how far behind I currently am, let's hope I can turn up something in a library or second hand bookshop soon...
Going backwards in the list, thanks to the geeky opinion blog Hoyden About Town, I've had some of my hopes for Feminism is for Everybody answered in the form of Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog. For readers more familiar with my science stuff, it's probably best thought of as the feminist equivalent of talk.origins - a comprehensive FAQ and list of resources to help avoid having to repeat yourself in online arguments again and again and again. It's also a great resource for someone like me looking to expand my vocabulary and thought. Check it out!
Something that's not on the list: Isaac Asimov. I'm aware the "books read" list at right makes it look like I've read virtually nothing at all, but then it only lists those books that contribute to the Bunch of Authors project. I've read plenty of other things this year, the latest of which was the first Elijah Baley novel, The Caves of Steel. It's a whodunit set in the future with robots and politics and it's great, though newly imbued with a feminist perspective I couldn't help but notice that it fails the "Bechdel test". I only recently discovered this test, popularised by web comic Dykes to Watch Out For, but basically a film or whatever passes the test if there are two female characters (preferably named) who have a conversation with each other about something other than a man. The Caves of Steel only has one named female character (though to be fair, I should mention there are probably only about six or seven significant characters in total), and she's the wife of the protagonist, plaincothesman (policeman) Baley. She turns out to be quite pivotal in the plot, but isn't exactly a great leap forward in characterisation of women and male-female relations... But putting that aside, it is a cracking read - dated in many respects, perhaps, but still visionary and thrilling. I've already lined up the two sequels, The Naked Sun and The Robots of Dawn (the latter of which I read in my youth), for alternate books while I continue with the project.
Finally, while it's not a book, I did see the Star Trek film. My beloved loved it, as did I - hence the title of this post, as I felt compelled to show her previous entries in the franchise (don't worry, I left out Star Trek: the Motionless Picture). There's been plenty of criticism of the film from a feminist perspective (see, as probably the best example, this piece in The Guardian), and the group I first saw it with had some too. I can see the point, though it's fair to say the film has been imagined by JJ Abrams as a story about two iconic characters in which everyone - even the antagonist - takes a seat way in the back. (I'm left hoping to see more of Urban's Bones McCoy in the inevitable sequel, though we shouldn't hold our breath expecting new characters to be introduced.)
Something it made me recognise, though, is that stories of the future no longer present a people or society much different from our own. They're like what my best history lecturer used to call the "Disney versions" of stories about history - stories about people just like us, though with funny hats (or in this case, attractive jumpsuits). The world of Star Trek's 23rd century reflected a slightly idealised America of the 60s in its original television incarnation, and in the new film, despite the faster than light travel, alien contact, even alien sex, it's recognisably...well, not even 21st century America, just the 60s again, but with a 21st century idea of future technology. There's no evidence of the major social changes that surely - or at least hopefully - we are moving toward.
While I enjoyed Star Trek, I've no illusions that it represents the great things I love about science (or speculative) fiction - a bold imagining of the what could be. (If you want a vision like that from the past, try Asimov or the extraordinary Paris in the Twentieth Century by Jules Verne.) I'm hoping for something more exciting and visionary from Doris Lessing, who's later on in the list, but if you have any suggestions for good, visionary fiction depicting real social change, I'd love to hear them.
The trouble is no book shop I've been in has any of Berton's works. Readings didn't even have him in their database! The few that did have him in their systems didn't have any copies on hand, and didn't list either the books on the top of my Berton list. I'll look up the bibliographic details and put in an order, but considering how far behind I currently am, let's hope I can turn up something in a library or second hand bookshop soon...
Going backwards in the list, thanks to the geeky opinion blog Hoyden About Town, I've had some of my hopes for Feminism is for Everybody answered in the form of Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog. For readers more familiar with my science stuff, it's probably best thought of as the feminist equivalent of talk.origins - a comprehensive FAQ and list of resources to help avoid having to repeat yourself in online arguments again and again and again. It's also a great resource for someone like me looking to expand my vocabulary and thought. Check it out!
Something that's not on the list: Isaac Asimov. I'm aware the "books read" list at right makes it look like I've read virtually nothing at all, but then it only lists those books that contribute to the Bunch of Authors project. I've read plenty of other things this year, the latest of which was the first Elijah Baley novel, The Caves of Steel. It's a whodunit set in the future with robots and politics and it's great, though newly imbued with a feminist perspective I couldn't help but notice that it fails the "Bechdel test". I only recently discovered this test, popularised by web comic Dykes to Watch Out For, but basically a film or whatever passes the test if there are two female characters (preferably named) who have a conversation with each other about something other than a man. The Caves of Steel only has one named female character (though to be fair, I should mention there are probably only about six or seven significant characters in total), and she's the wife of the protagonist, plaincothesman (policeman) Baley. She turns out to be quite pivotal in the plot, but isn't exactly a great leap forward in characterisation of women and male-female relations... But putting that aside, it is a cracking read - dated in many respects, perhaps, but still visionary and thrilling. I've already lined up the two sequels, The Naked Sun and The Robots of Dawn (the latter of which I read in my youth), for alternate books while I continue with the project.
Finally, while it's not a book, I did see the Star Trek film. My beloved loved it, as did I - hence the title of this post, as I felt compelled to show her previous entries in the franchise (don't worry, I left out Star Trek: the Motionless Picture). There's been plenty of criticism of the film from a feminist perspective (see, as probably the best example, this piece in The Guardian), and the group I first saw it with had some too. I can see the point, though it's fair to say the film has been imagined by JJ Abrams as a story about two iconic characters in which everyone - even the antagonist - takes a seat way in the back. (I'm left hoping to see more of Urban's Bones McCoy in the inevitable sequel, though we shouldn't hold our breath expecting new characters to be introduced.)
Something it made me recognise, though, is that stories of the future no longer present a people or society much different from our own. They're like what my best history lecturer used to call the "Disney versions" of stories about history - stories about people just like us, though with funny hats (or in this case, attractive jumpsuits). The world of Star Trek's 23rd century reflected a slightly idealised America of the 60s in its original television incarnation, and in the new film, despite the faster than light travel, alien contact, even alien sex, it's recognisably...well, not even 21st century America, just the 60s again, but with a 21st century idea of future technology. There's no evidence of the major social changes that surely - or at least hopefully - we are moving toward.
While I enjoyed Star Trek, I've no illusions that it represents the great things I love about science (or speculative) fiction - a bold imagining of the what could be. (If you want a vision like that from the past, try Asimov or the extraordinary Paris in the Twentieth Century by Jules Verne.) I'm hoping for something more exciting and visionary from Doris Lessing, who's later on in the list, but if you have any suggestions for good, visionary fiction depicting real social change, I'd love to hear them.
"Leave on the light for bell hooks"
Most people have a fairly cliché idea of feminism, that it's a movement made of bitter man-hating women whose major problems have all been mostly dealt with - that it's all about women who want to be equal to men. bell hooks (she spells it without capitalisation) found that people held such views even after she explained her experience of feminism, since they figured she was an unusual case, not a "proper" feminist. It didn't help that most works on the theory of feminism are impenetrable academic texts inaccessible to the layperson. Hence Feminism is for Everybody, a book intended to introduce the feminist movement and explain its importance to everybody.
Feminism is for Everybody isn't a long book, but it took me a long time to finish reading it, and I think there are three reasons for that. It starts off magnificently well, though, with a passionate and inspiring introduction that introduces hooks' definition: "Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression."
That's it! How wonderful, positive and succinct that definition is. It's so good, and so far from the popularly portrayed image of feminism, that I knew I'd found the feminist work I'd been wanting. I've long considered myself a feminist, but never really stopped to consider what that meant, or how to really act on it. I'd never taken a course, and I hadn't tried reading the theory, I'd never joined any groups. I didn't know who to ask or where to begin, let alone what to do on my own to make a difference. Finally, I thought, a book that will tell me "what feminism is, what the movement is all about", as hooks says.
Sadly, this isn't quite that book. Chapter one is "Feminist Politics" with the subtitle "Where we stand", and seems full of promise. Her definition of feminism is explained: she does not believe that men are the enemy, but that sexism is the enemy, regardless of whether it is perpetrated by men, women, adults or children, or if it is ingrained, systematic, institutionalised. You have to understand sexism to be a feminist, hooks rightly says, but she doesn't deliver what her book needs: a clear definition, or at least simple discussion, of what sexism is, its pervasiveness, and perhaps even some figures (and surely there must be plenty of them) to really make it impossible for a novice to ignore. (Recall that this is the book she wishes she could give people who have a mistaken notion about feminism.)
hooks quickly deviates from a clear discussion or definition of sexism to talk about the origins of the feminist movement, of what decisions it made and what influences it had that caused the current - and incomplete - picture of feminism to arise. In a pattern that repeats in the chapters that follow, she spends far too much time explaining and dismantling the popular idea of feminism, and nowhere near enough time building a picture of what feminism is and should be.
This is the same mistake a lot of science textbooks make. We don't need to be told about creationism and Lamarckism to understand evolution; we don't need to go on an historical journey from Ancient Greece via Lavoisier, Dalton, Rutherford and Bohrs to understand modern atomic theory. It's an interesting story, as is the history of feminism, but following it isn't the same as learning what's happening now. In a science textbook, the tangential approach just means it takes a very long time to get to the point (which may have merit, if someone needs to be eased into ideas slowly); in this book's case, the effect is far worse, since the historical discussion focuses so much on feminism's mistakes that we never seem to spend much time on its purpose or meaning.
The book's organisation also leaves something to be desired. I never got a sense that each chapter built on the previous ones. Rather than using the historical angle to lead me from feminism's origins to its current form, the chapters read like essays which could have been arranged in any order. The most compelling is probably chapter eight, "Global Feminism", but it's only four pages long - far too short for what was for me one of the most important ideas in the book.
This sidetracking, and overall feeling of defensiveness, is the first reason I found it hard to get my teeth into Feminism is for Everybody. The second was a minor one, but still important: hooks' prose is weird. She doesn't use any kind of opaque academic style - far from it, she's refreshingly direct and passionate - but she does use the vocabulary of academic feminism. Remember, this is meant to be a handbook for beginners, but she uses "hegemonic" and "white supremacist capitalist patriarchy" without ever offering a definition or introduction to these terms. I'm left to wonder if my understanding of them is accurate, complete or even compatible with hers. I think so, but without clearly laying that groundwork I can't be sure. This flies in the face of her desire to create "not a book thick with hard to understand jargon and academic language", another promise made in the introduction.
hooks also chooses some odd conventions which are never explained, throwing me out of the rhythm of her sentences every time I encountered them. The main one is that she doesn't use the definitive article ("the") for the feminist movement, resulting in sentences like this: "From its earliest inception feminist movement was polarized." I can only assume this is significant, but since the significance is never explained I couldn't help but stop and think about it every time it occurred.
I can't discuss her prose style, though, without praising her use of the word "awesome". I know it's become archaic, but I truly miss its use to describe something that inspires awe and wonder, rather than just as a synonym for "very very good". (I have a whole outline for a comedy show based on this idea.) hooks uses awesome sparingly, and clearly means it in the old school way.
The third and most important reason it took me such a long time to read, though, is a positive one: this book has had a massive impact on the way I think. I had to take breaks to allow what I'd read to percolate through my brain and see how my thinking was altered. As my friends and beloved will attest, since starting this book I've become vaguely evangelistic about feminism - I can't stop thinking and talking about it. It's vaguely worrying; I'm trying to spread and support an idea I don't yet fully understand, though I see its shape and feel its importance.
If it fails in its goal of clearly explaining what feminism is and what it's about to someone who isn't sure, Feminism is for Everybody certainly doesn't fail in conveying how important and fundamental feminism is as a movement for social change. To read a feminist book and feel entirely included in its dialogue as a man is quite an experience. I still have a long way to go to understanding what the changes need to be and how to help affect them, but the seed is planted.
So how to sum up? Feminism is for everybody, but Feminisim is for Everybody isn't quite for everybody - not in the way hooks says she wants it to be. If you're at least a little literate about feminism and want some help crystallising your thoughts, or if you're sure there's more to feminism than equality in the workplace and the right to vote, this book will back you up. Just don't expect it to help you explain that to anyone else.
By the way, I'm looking for further books to expand my feminist horizons; if you have any recommendations for books that discuss current feminist theory and/or its practical application, please let me know!
Chapters: 25, plus the introduction
Page count: 118 (not counting the index or "about the publisher" section)
Book's title mentioned on page: x (in the introduction)
Best name encountered: bell hooks (it's a pen name)
New words: none for me, but I imagine plenty for what should be her target audience
Inner Five-year-old score: 1 (way above the head of any five-year-old)
Fun Wikipedia fact: hooks ran a luncheon lecture series titled "Peanut Butter and Gender" at Berea College in Kentucky
Feminism is for Everybody isn't a long book, but it took me a long time to finish reading it, and I think there are three reasons for that. It starts off magnificently well, though, with a passionate and inspiring introduction that introduces hooks' definition: "Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation and oppression."
That's it! How wonderful, positive and succinct that definition is. It's so good, and so far from the popularly portrayed image of feminism, that I knew I'd found the feminist work I'd been wanting. I've long considered myself a feminist, but never really stopped to consider what that meant, or how to really act on it. I'd never taken a course, and I hadn't tried reading the theory, I'd never joined any groups. I didn't know who to ask or where to begin, let alone what to do on my own to make a difference. Finally, I thought, a book that will tell me "what feminism is, what the movement is all about", as hooks says.
Sadly, this isn't quite that book. Chapter one is "Feminist Politics" with the subtitle "Where we stand", and seems full of promise. Her definition of feminism is explained: she does not believe that men are the enemy, but that sexism is the enemy, regardless of whether it is perpetrated by men, women, adults or children, or if it is ingrained, systematic, institutionalised. You have to understand sexism to be a feminist, hooks rightly says, but she doesn't deliver what her book needs: a clear definition, or at least simple discussion, of what sexism is, its pervasiveness, and perhaps even some figures (and surely there must be plenty of them) to really make it impossible for a novice to ignore. (Recall that this is the book she wishes she could give people who have a mistaken notion about feminism.)
hooks quickly deviates from a clear discussion or definition of sexism to talk about the origins of the feminist movement, of what decisions it made and what influences it had that caused the current - and incomplete - picture of feminism to arise. In a pattern that repeats in the chapters that follow, she spends far too much time explaining and dismantling the popular idea of feminism, and nowhere near enough time building a picture of what feminism is and should be.
This is the same mistake a lot of science textbooks make. We don't need to be told about creationism and Lamarckism to understand evolution; we don't need to go on an historical journey from Ancient Greece via Lavoisier, Dalton, Rutherford and Bohrs to understand modern atomic theory. It's an interesting story, as is the history of feminism, but following it isn't the same as learning what's happening now. In a science textbook, the tangential approach just means it takes a very long time to get to the point (which may have merit, if someone needs to be eased into ideas slowly); in this book's case, the effect is far worse, since the historical discussion focuses so much on feminism's mistakes that we never seem to spend much time on its purpose or meaning.
The book's organisation also leaves something to be desired. I never got a sense that each chapter built on the previous ones. Rather than using the historical angle to lead me from feminism's origins to its current form, the chapters read like essays which could have been arranged in any order. The most compelling is probably chapter eight, "Global Feminism", but it's only four pages long - far too short for what was for me one of the most important ideas in the book.
This sidetracking, and overall feeling of defensiveness, is the first reason I found it hard to get my teeth into Feminism is for Everybody. The second was a minor one, but still important: hooks' prose is weird. She doesn't use any kind of opaque academic style - far from it, she's refreshingly direct and passionate - but she does use the vocabulary of academic feminism. Remember, this is meant to be a handbook for beginners, but she uses "hegemonic" and "white supremacist capitalist patriarchy" without ever offering a definition or introduction to these terms. I'm left to wonder if my understanding of them is accurate, complete or even compatible with hers. I think so, but without clearly laying that groundwork I can't be sure. This flies in the face of her desire to create "not a book thick with hard to understand jargon and academic language", another promise made in the introduction.
hooks also chooses some odd conventions which are never explained, throwing me out of the rhythm of her sentences every time I encountered them. The main one is that she doesn't use the definitive article ("the") for the feminist movement, resulting in sentences like this: "From its earliest inception feminist movement was polarized." I can only assume this is significant, but since the significance is never explained I couldn't help but stop and think about it every time it occurred.
I can't discuss her prose style, though, without praising her use of the word "awesome". I know it's become archaic, but I truly miss its use to describe something that inspires awe and wonder, rather than just as a synonym for "very very good". (I have a whole outline for a comedy show based on this idea.) hooks uses awesome sparingly, and clearly means it in the old school way.
The third and most important reason it took me such a long time to read, though, is a positive one: this book has had a massive impact on the way I think. I had to take breaks to allow what I'd read to percolate through my brain and see how my thinking was altered. As my friends and beloved will attest, since starting this book I've become vaguely evangelistic about feminism - I can't stop thinking and talking about it. It's vaguely worrying; I'm trying to spread and support an idea I don't yet fully understand, though I see its shape and feel its importance.
If it fails in its goal of clearly explaining what feminism is and what it's about to someone who isn't sure, Feminism is for Everybody certainly doesn't fail in conveying how important and fundamental feminism is as a movement for social change. To read a feminist book and feel entirely included in its dialogue as a man is quite an experience. I still have a long way to go to understanding what the changes need to be and how to help affect them, but the seed is planted.
So how to sum up? Feminism is for everybody, but Feminisim is for Everybody isn't quite for everybody - not in the way hooks says she wants it to be. If you're at least a little literate about feminism and want some help crystallising your thoughts, or if you're sure there's more to feminism than equality in the workplace and the right to vote, this book will back you up. Just don't expect it to help you explain that to anyone else.
By the way, I'm looking for further books to expand my feminist horizons; if you have any recommendations for books that discuss current feminist theory and/or its practical application, please let me know!
Chapters: 25, plus the introduction
Page count: 118 (not counting the index or "about the publisher" section)
Book's title mentioned on page: x (in the introduction)
Best name encountered: bell hooks (it's a pen name)
New words: none for me, but I imagine plenty for what should be her target audience
Inner Five-year-old score: 1 (way above the head of any five-year-old)
Fun Wikipedia fact: hooks ran a luncheon lecture series titled "Peanut Butter and Gender" at Berea College in Kentucky
My baby and me went to a counsellor
Oh dear...it has been a while. When I first started this post, I was in Adelaide, for the Fringe Festival. It was a busy time, but on a day trip into the city I called in at a Borders (I know, I know) to see if they had anything by bell hooks. I asked the retail assistant (I presume this is the correct title) if they had a feminism or "women's studies" section; she said they had a "small section" and gave directions. It wasn't that small - most of one Ikea-standard-sized bookshelf! They only had one bell hooks book, but as soon as I caught the title I felt it might be the one for me. After reading the introduction I decided it would be perfect.
It's called Feminism is for Everybody and the wonderful introduction explains, very quickly, that bell hooks often wished there was a simple book you could give to those people who think feminism is about hating men and became redundant when women got the vote. They've been misguided by a media controlled by patriarchy, after all; they should be able to realise that, as the title says, feminism really is for everyone. She also gives her excellent, succinct definition of feminism as "a movement to end sexism and sexist oppression."
Sadly, now I'm halfway through, I don't think this is the book she wanted. But more on that later, when I've finished it.
The same city trip, I visited the (only?) roleplaying game shop in Adelaide, and instantly remembered why I hadn't bought anything there last time: they're much more expensive than my FLGS* in Melbourne. This time, on their second hand shelf, I found a gem: the Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual, August 1979 edition, for only $30! It's a classic, with a terrible cover, strange statistics and some odd inclusions, and it's a lot of fun to read. I'm not very familiar with editions of DnD which pre-date late 2nd edition (though I did once create a character using the original rules for an abortive attempt at Keep on the Borderlands), but I'll use it for inspiration for my fourth edition campaign.
I also made the time to visit one of my favourite second hand haunts, O'Connell's Bookshop on Hindley Street. Three times I've been to Adelaide, and every time I've found something great here. This time I picked up a couple of Asimovs - The Caves of Steel and its sequel, Robots of Dawn - and a Douglas Coupland, Eleanor Rigby. I read Robots of Dawn as a boy, after my step dad encouraged me to try Asimov. I really enjoyed it, and a collection of his short stories about a tiny "demon" named Azazel, but when I tried to read Foundation I lost interest. Of Coupland, I've only read Microserfs, but I greatly enjoyed it and thought I'd step away from similar themes for a second pass. (I have, though, watched the first half of the JPod television adaptation, and it's very good.) I've started on The Caves of Steel. For some reason I feel odd reading only one book at a time.
So that's us caught up. The Melbourne International Comedy Festival starts tomorrow, so you may not hear from me until May. I hope you all understand. Assuming there's more than one of you, of course.
It's called Feminism is for Everybody and the wonderful introduction explains, very quickly, that bell hooks often wished there was a simple book you could give to those people who think feminism is about hating men and became redundant when women got the vote. They've been misguided by a media controlled by patriarchy, after all; they should be able to realise that, as the title says, feminism really is for everyone. She also gives her excellent, succinct definition of feminism as "a movement to end sexism and sexist oppression."
Sadly, now I'm halfway through, I don't think this is the book she wanted. But more on that later, when I've finished it.
The same city trip, I visited the (only?) roleplaying game shop in Adelaide, and instantly remembered why I hadn't bought anything there last time: they're much more expensive than my FLGS* in Melbourne. This time, on their second hand shelf, I found a gem: the Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual, August 1979 edition, for only $30! It's a classic, with a terrible cover, strange statistics and some odd inclusions, and it's a lot of fun to read. I'm not very familiar with editions of DnD which pre-date late 2nd edition (though I did once create a character using the original rules for an abortive attempt at Keep on the Borderlands), but I'll use it for inspiration for my fourth edition campaign.
I also made the time to visit one of my favourite second hand haunts, O'Connell's Bookshop on Hindley Street. Three times I've been to Adelaide, and every time I've found something great here. This time I picked up a couple of Asimovs - The Caves of Steel and its sequel, Robots of Dawn - and a Douglas Coupland, Eleanor Rigby. I read Robots of Dawn as a boy, after my step dad encouraged me to try Asimov. I really enjoyed it, and a collection of his short stories about a tiny "demon" named Azazel, but when I tried to read Foundation I lost interest. Of Coupland, I've only read Microserfs, but I greatly enjoyed it and thought I'd step away from similar themes for a second pass. (I have, though, watched the first half of the JPod television adaptation, and it's very good.) I've started on The Caves of Steel. For some reason I feel odd reading only one book at a time.
So that's us caught up. The Melbourne International Comedy Festival starts tomorrow, so you may not hear from me until May. I hope you all understand. Assuming there's more than one of you, of course.
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