Freewheeling Andy
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Posts posted by Freewheeling Andy
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The more I think about this, the more satifying the end becomes. If the book is a book about love, but about love being awkward, and fickle, and mucking people around for their entire lives, then the previously unsatisfying ending, although still not "happy" in the way an ideal world would produce, is much more in keeping with the whole timbre of the book.
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Ooh! (Or hoo!) I was in High Halstow in about Novemberish, on possibly the stupidest walk of my life. I just felt like walking miles and miles and miles on the flat. I started from the nature reserve, walked down to Cliffe, then all the way around the Hoo sea wall as far as Allhallows, and then back inland. I think it was around 23 miles. I was very knackered at the end of it. A very spectacular place, although I can imagine it's not to all tastes. Huge expanses of sky, industrial stuff looming on the other side of the river, and down and upstream, and yet almost complete tranquility and marshes and birds and river/sea.
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Hmm. Well I read almost nothing yesterday. I tried, but was slightly drunk on the bus home from beer, wine, curry and champagne, and wasn't really concentrating too well.
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I never knew why the stars and crescent were on the Pompey thing. Cool.
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I suppose, being a blog, I should update this when I can, rather than when I'm just finishing/starting a book. Give a sort of running commentary on observations.
Actually, most of my reading since the last entry has been in Alan Davidson's Oxford Companion to Food (starting with the entry about Saanen cheese, the world's oldest cheese - sometimes up to 200 years old) and then some of the cheese entries in McGee's encylopedia of food.
The Martha Gellhorn remains fascinating and horrible in equal measure - although the journeys are never complete horrors as she always seems to meet nice people. But her views on Africa from the mid 20th century, when travelling through countries which were still part of empire, are sometimes shockingly outdated, and sometimes remarkably prescient and cogent. The most shocking thing is the way she talks of the blacks doing this, and the blacks doing that, and the whites behaving differently. She's generally nicer about the Africans than the French, but the turn of phrase seems startling to the modern ear.
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I bought the 'adult' cover editions
Ah.
How the world has changed.
"Adult books" used to be concealed inside less racy stuff. Now, it seems, kids books are concealed by adult covers.
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Well, here goes.
I'm not really sure it'll count as a blog, as such, just notes on what I'm reading, and when I'm reading it.
Which is fine. I just think it's interesting to look back over your year.. plus it'll help you with the 2006 Book Club Awards!
Btw, was 'Blook bog' deliberate?!
Definitely dlebirate
I was realise I was doing this Blog thing basically in the "current reading" section, and thought I'd isolate it.
Although I'm not sure anyone will be that interested in my readings, but it'll be good for me to think about the books I'm reading a bit more.
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Second book of the moment (and now the only book I'm reading) is Martha Gellhorn's "Travels with myself and another: 5 Journeys from hell" and is beautifully written, and utterly engrossing. It's very funny. You don't feel too sympathetic for her, either, because she doesn't play it that way. A very good thing, too. Travel books which have a "woe is me" element are annoying. Here she knows she's getting herself in a mess, and happily admits her flaws and faults.
Her opinions are sometimes wrong, and the language definitely comes from an earlier era. Particularly with the section I'm on at the moment where she's travelling in Africa, in the 1960s (in Cameroon right now). Although even with this she admits her ignorance - a joy I've only ever found one other travel writer admitting, Eric Newby in his wonderful and deranged A Short Walk In The Hindu Kush (more Newby to come before long on this blog, I suspect).
Anyway, I shall go home, and if I don't spend all evening eating I'll no doubt meander through some more of Martha's book.
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Well, here goes.
I'm not really sure it'll count as a blog, as such, just notes on what I'm reading, and when I'm reading it.
2006 started with me in the middle of two books.
Well, I was right near the end of John Lanchester's Fragrant Harbour. It's a book I've fallen in love with. One of those big epic books, spanning decades, with different intertwined lives (except not that epic in length).
I loved Lanchester's first book, The Debt To Pleasure, but was very disappointed by his second, Mr Phillips. I wouldn't even have bought this had I not found it in the second hand stacks under Waterloo Bridge.
It's not, exacly, a return to form. It's a very different book to the previous two - more of a traditional novel. It's about Hong Kong "Heung Gong, Fragrant Harbour. Chinese Joke." Says one character. Not a subject that ever particularly interested me before, but he brings it to life, across the last 60 years.
Anyway, I finished this whilst on a rattly and tedious train from Nottingham back south and had that "why couldn't it go on longer" feeling, and then moved on to the other book I'm in the middle of for the rest of that boring ride...
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I read this book a while ago, and it was really good. I was wondering if anyone else had read it.
I've never even heard of it. Who's the author? What's it about?
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>>>90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac<<<
For the love of god, why??????
Please! I hate this book. It sucks. I could write a better novel.
I'm serious.
Overall, I think the BBC list is okay. I've read a number of the books on it, and some of them even made my top ten list for this forum.
Ah... On The Road. It was a brilliant book when I read it as a 20 year old, and an utterly dreadful piece of rubbish when I tried to re-read it as a 30 year old.
I think it's, more than anything else I've read, a book for reading as a feckless youth.
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Ha! Typically, of course, The Postal Service are another band I keep hearing recommended but haven't (to my knowledge) heard.
I guess I'll have to try and find a couple of downloads.
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What's Death Cab... like? Friends keep recommending the record to me.
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I was chatting to a mate about this, and he pointed out something rather interesting. The book, though it is written in this nice romantic fiction kind of way is, at the very least, very ambiguous about the effects of love. With someone staying in a loveless marriage in the hope of getting back with the woman he loved; with that woman apparently living a spinsters life for years to arrive in an unworkable relationship, and then apparently waiting another 50 years to see that person one more time. And another who commits suicide after a single, short, failed relationship. And another man who's lived loveless and decaying for 40 years after his wife died young.
It's actually a pretty damned dark book, when you look at it.
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I just bought 4:
Chavez Ravine by Ry Cooder
Illinoise by Sufjan Stevens
Dimanche a Bamako by Amadou and Mariam
and
LoveKraft by the Super Furry Animals.
That's the trouble with Christmas shopping. Get me into the shops and I buy loads of stuff for myself.
Oops.
All of them are excellent. The Amadou and Mariam is chilled out African party music. Probably the best (possibly the record of 2005) is the Sufjan Stevens one, although it won't be to everyone's taste. Acoustic and mellow and quite odd.
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No pizza, no burgers, no cakes, no pies, no chips?
You know how many parents would kill for a child that healthy?
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If he's just avoiding chips and cake, and eating fish and fruit, I wouldn't try and change it, Angel...
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Keep working on it, Angel. I was always unadventurous and sullen about my food. But the "little bit of... x" every meal eventually brought rewards. There was an age (probably about 18) when it suddenly dawned on me that I just said I didn't like things because that's what I'd decided, but the taste was actually rather good.
The best thing about that was that it made me realise I could learn to like all kinds of other foods through the same method.
The only things that have really failed are cooked egg white, and blueness in cheese.
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Blimey, Angel. You've read all the really difficult 19th century stuff? I'm impressed.
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Ah. I used to be the fussiest eater in the world. I've got easier going, and I'm sure everyone else is much, much fussier now than I ever was.
You can't be over tolerant. Chicken is chicken, for example. Don't let them get away with only liking nuggets (of all things!), and refusing drumsticks or breast.
And make sure they always eat a small amount of things they claim not to like. A "New taste for the day" experience, say.
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And the same for the Random House Double List.
2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
4. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
4. THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien
5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
5. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee
6. 1984 by George Orwell
7. CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller
10. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
14. DUNE by Frank Herbert
16. STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND by Robert Heinlein
18. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
19. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
20. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
25. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
29. THE STAND by Stephen King
42. ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
43. HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
45. THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
51. THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY by Douglas Adams
55. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
59. ENDER'S GAME by Orson Scott Card
65. SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES by Ray Bradbury
73. ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE by Robert Pirsig
74. A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
75. SCOOP by Evelyn Waugh
76. AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS by Flann O'Brien
77. FARENHEIT 451 by Ray Bradbury
779. WATERSHIP DOWN by Richard Adams
80. NAKED LUNCH by William S. Burroughs
84. IT by Stephen King
90. MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN by Salman Rushdie
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OK. Following Kell's example. These are the ones I've read. In bold the ones good enough to go on a top 100 list.
1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy (I only read the first 50-100 pages, though)
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel Garc
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Mamacita's list is far more plausible (well, the "Board's List". Clearly the top places on "readers list" were come to by some tactical voting amongst scientologist loonies and others). Even though I find Joyce unreadable, I can see why he's top.
Of course, number 7 or 75 on the Board List of Mamacita's should be number one.
Probably
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I disagree with number one, for a start.
Best book ever?
Good grief?
And all that Potter nonsense in the best 25 books of all time?
Oh dear oh dear.
Sometimes I despair of the British public.
Andy's Blook bog (started 2006)
in Past Book Logs
Posted
It was excellent. A friend was over from Switzerland, and we went for a couple of beers; then for a curry (I'm now completely convinced by the theory that you should drink gewurztraminer wine with a curry, after the second success in a fortnight); then to watch the skaters at Somerset House whilst drinking a glass of champagne. All on her expense account.
I don't think much reading will be added to the reading blog today/tomorrow, as I've suddenly had some urgent work come in, and I've spent the last four hours at the climbing wall being inept and falling off and clumsy and am now completely shattered and still have to cycle home from the office.