KEV67
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Posts posted by KEV67
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What's the ending of Kes like? I never watched the end of the DVD, because I was worried some spiteful scrote would poison the bird. The football match in the film was great. I remember our English school teacher reading out that section of the book, although we did not study the whole book. There was also an interesting bit in the film where the boys were caned. I don't think they told the child actors they were going to be caned for real.
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I was interested in Project Hail Mary, a sci-fi book by Andy Weir. I can't find it in any of the local bookshops.
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I read The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Coleridge Taylor. That's a seafaring poem. I try to avoid those sort of nutters myself. The wedding guest had more patience than I have. I'd have told him to get lost.
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I don't like reading a book where the two romantic leads don't get together at the end. It's not that I really into romantic fiction. Sometimes I think an author thinks he can't give the readers what they want because where's the artistry in that? Unless it is a really great artistic ending, I would rather have the happy ending.
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Oh yes, Big Brother, CCTV, mobile phones, everything being connected to the internet, deep surveillance. There was that side to 1984 too. 1984 is often classified as science fiction. When I read it, I wondered where the science fiction was. The only bit of technology that was not available when the book was written were two way screens and cameras. In the Cold War era, Communist countries such as East Germany and China encouraged the population to denounce their neighbours if they suspected they were not ideologically pure. I think if you had to constantly worry you might be denounced to the secret police by a colleague, friend or neighbour for not showing enough enthusiasm for the political system, that would make you more unhappy than the thought that the state was looking through your old social media posts.
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I started to read it when I was 15 or 16. I got about three-quarters of the way through, and realised there were not enough pages left for Winston Smith to escape, join and maybe even lead the counter-revolution. I was disappointed and stopped reading. I should have read Fahrenheit 451 instead. When I was forty I read 1984 again and I thought it was brilliant. It has so many ideas you can see being acted out around us and around the world. The re-writing of history to suit a political agenda; the abuse of language to control thought; thought crime itself; double-think, which is the cognitive dissonance you put yourself through when you force yourself to believe what you know not to be true, because it is unsafe not to. I think that is partly why George Orwell is admired so much by the right in America and other places. It is a book about the deep cynicism of certain political leaders who manipulate social revolution to gain and maintain control of a state. If you read Orwell's later books and essays from Homage to Catalonia onwards, you can see that 1984 is a culmination of all his later political ideas.
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On 06/07/2021 at 5:41 PM, Raven said:
In part, this came about after reading Mark Kermode's book, Hatchet Job.
In the book Kermode argues that the place of critics is ever more important in the days of social media when everyone can say what they feel about a subject. If you have a well know critic give a review - whether you agree or not with their comments - you have a yard stick to judge their comments and ratings against.
I like Mark Kermode. His film reviews on the radio with Simon Mayo are hilarious.
That said, I regard these sort of review programmes as entertainment in themselves and very often do not agree with the professional critics. Barry Humphreys always used to go on about how great Babette's Feast was. I think it was about a Danish cook who comes into some money and spends it all on cooking a feast for her guests, because she used to work in a fancy French hotel or something. Yeah, that's just the sort of film Barry Humphreys would like. Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian loathed Joker. I thought it was the best film in 2019. Mark Kermode does not like The Big Lebowski. That was my favourite film for a long time.
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7 hours ago, Raven said:
I was just agreeing with your comment that one star seems harsh! (personally, I would probably give it a 3, but it is a long time since I read it so that's not a given).
The book, like many other science fiction novels that have been written by respected authors, seems to be widely lauded, but I've read other books that tackle the same subject better, but are consigned to relative obscurity because of the sci-fi label.
Yes, I was surprised to find it in the literary fiction section, because it definitely seems like science fiction.
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10 hours ago, Raven said:
I read The Drowned World a number of years ago now, and cannot remember a whole lot about it, but I wouldn't classify it as a one star book, even though I remember it as being hard going.
Yes, but I don't like it, which according to the guidance means I should five it one star.
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- 140 posts
- Location: Reading, UK
Posted June 8 (edited)________________________________________________________________________________________________
| Cruises |
| Moby Dick | Midshipman Hornblower | N**** & Narcissus | Master and Commander| Huckleberry Finn |
| Herman Melville | C.S. Forester | Joseph Conrad | Patrick O' Brian | Mark Twain |
| British Classics |
| Great Expectations | New Grub Street |Tom Jones | Wuthering Heights | Mary Barton |
| Charles Dickens | George Gissing | Richard Fielding | Emily Brontë | Mrs Gaskell |
| British Literary Fiction |
| I Claudius | Nice Work | Winged Victory | Mr American | Lionel Asbo |
| Robert Graves | David Lodge | V.M. Yeates | George MacDonald Fraser| Martin Amis |
| Food for thought |
| Lamb of God | Eating Animals | Alone in the Universe |Why Nations Fail | The Bottomless Well |
| Ralph R. Wilson | Jonathon Safron Foer | John Gribben |Acemoglu & Robinson | Mills & Huber |
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9 hours ago, Madeleine said:
Most of my ratings tend to be fall into either 3 or 4 stars - can't remember the last time I gave top marks to a book! If I don't finish one then it's usually a 1, to show that I did at least read enough of it to give a review, and I try not to be too scathing , just in case the author is lurking. A book which wasn't very good but which I did finish (or maybe skim read) to find out what happened would get a 2.
All the books I gave 1 star to were written by dead authors, except for William Gibson.
I quite like the guidance:
1 star - did not like it
2 stars - it was ok
3 stars - I liked it
4 stars - I really liked it
5 stars - it was amazing
That means I should give The Drowned World one star. Seems harsh. I probably should regrade some of the other books. For instance, I gave Ulysses two stars because there were several bits I did understand and enjoy, but on the whole it either bored me, or went over my head, or irritated me. So overall I didn't like it.
Perhaps a distorting factor is that because the top score is 5, you naturally think the average score should be 2.5, but because the minimum score is 1, the average score should be 3, provided scores are normally distributed, which I don't suppose they are. I don't think null ratings are included in the average ratings, but perhaps they are.
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2 hours ago, Hayley said:
The Admiral Benbow Inn in Penzance (from Treasure Island) is brilliant in real life. It's really quirky inside, with loads of antique maritime artefacts (the table I ate at was at a ships wheel!) and the food was lovely (and, perhaps surprisingly, very reasonably priced!). I'd love to go back.
Interesting, I sometimes go to Penzance for work reasons and have walked past the Admiral Benbow numerous times. It is not one of my favourites though.
In Reading, where I live, there is a bar/ night club called Up The Junction. This is just down the road from Cemetery Junction, so called because of the graveyard. There was also a pop song by Squeeze in the 70s or 80s with the same name. However, before that in the 60s, there was a book by Nell Gunn (need to check). It was a bit grim.
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I am currently reading The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard. I am only going to give it two stars, but I was wondering whether I should give it one. When I rate books on Goodreads I am reluctant to hand out many five stars, but I still award more five stars than one stars. If I am enjoying a book so little, I would probably stop reading it, in which case I would not rate it all, which is like a U for ungraded. Usually I do plough on through a book, even if I am not enjoying it much. The only one I have not finished recently was Riders by Jilly Cooper. I heard it was better than it is usually given credit for, and it still appears on bookshelves and bookshops decades after it was published, so I thought I would give it a chance. However, I am just not in touch with my feminine side as much as I would need to be, and it is a very long book. Out of the 446 books I rated on Goodreads, 42 have five stars; only 13 have one star. This reminded me of school. I expect teachers do not like to hand out too many A's, but rarely give out any E's. I can remember getting some A's at school for my essays, as well as a few D's. I mostly got B's and C's. I don't remember getting any E's. Interestingly, I think there is a statistical bias in Goodreads ratings. Most books fall within the 3 to 4.5 stars range after ratings are averaged. If a book has under 3.5 stars, it is probably not that good a read. If it has over four stars, it probably is a good read.
Thing is, I am not a book critic or academic assessing how good an author's work is. I am a reader reflecting how much I enjoyed the book, and I don't have to justify it, be consistent about my marking scheme, or take considerations of taste or viewpoint into account. Another difference between a teacher marking a pupil's work and me rating an author's book is that usually the teacher would know a lot more about the subject than the pupil, where as books are often written by the very brainy. Thus Virginia Woolf is a very great author. She must be because her books were 2nd and 3rd in the BBC Culture's Greatest British Novels poll. Neverheless, I thought Mrs Dalloway was tedious and To the Lighthouse was underwhelming. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford was awful. Similarly, The Egoist by George Meredith. Don Quixote, is it really that good? I thought the second half was better than the first, but still. Problem is giving books like these one star while giving About a Boy by Nick Hornby five stars probably marks you out as a bit of a philistine, but maybe I should not worry about that.
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I noticed that there was a Wetherspoons pub called The Joseph Conrad in Lowestoft. I don't know what connection Joseph Conrad had with the place.
I wish someone would open a pub called the Hand and Banner. It was the pub in Daniel Deronda in which Dan meets some politically active people through whom he meets other people who become important to him. Pubs play a big part in George Eliot's works.
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On 05/07/2017 at 10:43 PM, Alexi said:
There's a Moon Under Water in Manchester as well. There is also Peveril of the Peak, although it is not named after the Walter Scott novel. Worth a visit though just for how distinctive a place it is!
I have also imbibed a few pints in the Angel, which featured in Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell.
I think The Angel was mentioned The Pickwick Papers, although, thinking about it, that was The Angel Hotel in Bury St Edmunds.
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Looking around Waterstones today, I saw a graphic novel version of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. I was surprised to see that book turned into a graphic novel. That must have been a labour of love because I doubt they'll make much money from it.
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I have been looking for the book in the shops, but I can't even find it in hardback form yet. That high GoodReads score might be down to fans who pre-ordered a copy.
I hear the protagonist in Project Hail Mary is very like Mark Watney in The Martian, only de does not use profanity, as he is a school teacher.
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I have been watching some fantastic science channels on YouTube recently. In particular Anton Petrov's and Sabine Hossenfelder's. What was I watching today? A vid by Anton Petrov about a pair of galaxies that don't seem to have any dark matter. Yesterday it was about how the Milky Way's rotations were slowing down. Sabine Hossenfelder's vids are more along the lines of why the universe is not a computer simulation, or the granularity of the universe. It's an incredible subject, but I don't think most science fiction writers are very up to speed with science.
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I liked Why Nations Fail, but it divides opinion.
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2 hours ago, Athena said:
I have heard great things of Project Hail Mary too (now I wonder who the BookTuber is that you follow, I'm a BookTuber myself and follow a whole bunch of other BookTubers. Was it Daniel Greene? He is one of the bigger BookTubers who talks about adult science-fiction). I would like to read it too, I'm waiting for a medium-size paperback release. I loved The Martian, so I think/hope I will love this one as well.
No, it was Becky M.
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I noticed this had come out when reading an article in The Telegraph about books that have come out in 2021. The reviewer had a literary bent, so only gave it 3 stars, but said it was difficult to put down. I looked it up on GoodReads and it has an average score of 4.57 from 49,204 reviews. That is about the highest score I've come across. A sci-fi booktuber I follow (someone who has a YouTube channel discussing books) gave it five stars. I did like The Martian. Apart from the Martian storm that caused the rocket crew to take off and leave protagonist behind, the science was very strong. The characterization: I wouldn't say it was complex. I don't think the protagonist suffered many dark nights of the soul. He'd be too tired for a start. He'd wake up in the morning, ready for another sixteen hours' problem solving, then go to sleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. I have read him described as a more intelligent Robinson Crusoe. I identified more with Robinson Crusoe. Robinson Crusoe spent a long time hollowing out a tree trunk in the forest to make a canoe, figuring he'd work out how to get it to the shore later. When he finished it, he couldn't get it to the shore. That's the sort of thing I might do, but Andy Weir's Martian definitely wouldn't. I hear his other book, Artemis, set on the moon, was not as good, but his latest book, Project Hail Mary, is back to his best. It sounds like it will definitely be made into a film before too long, so I should probably read it.
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I cannot really understand Shakespeare's plays without studying them first. I used to think it was because the words were so different to contemporary English. Now I am not so sure about that. I did not have much trouble understanding The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, written in 1749, or Robinson Crusoe, written in 1719. I expect if I read the Diary of Samuel Pepys, I would not have much difficulty. I think it is either because Shakespeare's written style is especially flowery, or it is the actual ideas I have difficulty with. I often wonder how much of it was getting through to Shakespeare's original audiences. I assume most of it was, but were they picking up on every nuance?
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Most the time I use Amazon if I can't find what I want at Waterstones or W.H.Smiths (or Oxfam). I have used Hive recently. I think I have also used Book Depository, World of Books, A Great Read, and Wordery. Hive is good if you want to help out a small, local bookshop, because you can pick your books up there. There's another that sells second hand books, World of Books I think.
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I read the historical King Richard II was the one who went out to meet Wat Tyler and the leaders of the peasant revolt. He gave in to their demands, persuaded them to go home. After that he reneged on his promises and all the ring-leaders were hanged. So, on the one hand, he did have more nerve than is shown in the play; on the other hand, he also demonstrated that you could not trust him.
Books in HMV
in Book Buying
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I quite like seeing which books are in sale in my local branch of HMV. Strange that the vinyl is so expensive, but the books are so cheap. Also strange is that whenever I try to re-buy a truly great record, which I used to have, they don't have it. What sort of record shop doesn't have Beck or The Violent Femmes? Anyway, getting back to books. I am often intrigued by their offerings. They have a lot of sci-fi, music memoirs and modern classics. They also sell books like Naked Lunch, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and The Men who Stare at Goats. I am delighted that they continue to sell A Clergyman's Daughter by George Orwell. Orwell disowned the book himself, but I thought it was great.