Andy's Blook bog (started 2006)

[Freewheeling Andy]

So I've finished reading Brideshead Revisited. Really, it's a fantastic book. I've loved the other Evelyn Waugh I've read - Scoop and Vile Bodies - but still approched with trepidation. After all, my knowledge is really of fractions of the rather misty eyed 1980s TV adaptation, which thoroughly put me off.

 

Funnily, my memories of the TV adaptation are sort of right - it is slightly weird aristocratic, vaguely homosexual young men romping around Oxford, to start with. And the book really needs that portrayal at the outset. So, although it would have put me off, it as actually what makes the book great.

 

It's not, fortunately, like the dreadful "Atonement", although both are sort of country-house period drama things. It's much funnier, and much deeper, and much better written, and keeps the interest. It's funny that, when reading Atonement, I thought it was the country-housey stuff that killed me. It's what puts me off Austen, too. But somehow Brideshead has enough to it to overcome that.

 

But partly, I think, the delight is that it's set in the inter-war years with a full knowledge of the decline and fall of British aristocracy, and there are so many elements of that decline woven through the book. The obsessions with religion and class and eccentricity and lineage, and how they were falling apart.

 

All the characters are fantastic and believable, too.

 

I really, really enjoyed it.

 

And now I'm reading a book on the US dustbowl of the 1930s called "The Worst Hard Time" by Timothy Egan. I've only just started but it's fascinating historical reportage of something I only know from reading Grapes of Wrath 20 years ago.

[Freewheeling Andy]

The dustbowl book was very good. A fascinating bedfellow to the Galbraith book on the 1929 crash - two very different ends of the great depression.

 

Since then I read Rose Tremain's The Road Home which was very nice, but a bit middle-class hangwringy sort of stuff about how Britain is actually generally very nice to foreigners.

 

And I've started on Iain Banks's The Steep Approach to Garbadale, which I'm very much enjoying so far.

[Freewheeling Andy]

As someone else has said, elsewhere, The Steep Approach to Garbadale has such a telegraphed "twist" that the ending is fairly underwhelming. The book, though, is very fun to read, so in the end it's like a good journey with a **** destination. A hike from John O'Groats to Motherwell was the analogy I read, which is probably a pretty good one.

 

Now I'm reading the widely praised Brief Wonderful Life Of Oscar Wao.

[rwemad]

So I've finished reading Brideshead Revisited. Really, it's a fantastic book. I've loved the other Evelyn Waugh I've read - Scoop and Vile Bodies - but still approched with trepidation. After all, my knowledge is really of fractions of the rather misty eyed 1980s TV adaptation, which thoroughly put me off.

 

Funnily, my memories of the TV adaptation are sort of right - it is slightly weird aristocratic, vaguely homosexual young men romping around Oxford, to start with. And the book really needs that portrayal at the outset. So, although it would have put me off, it as actually what makes the book great.

 

It's not, fortunately, like the dreadful "Atonement", although both are sort of country-house period drama things. It's much funnier, and much deeper, and much better written, and keeps the interest. It's funny that, when reading Atonement, I thought it was the country-housey stuff that killed me. It's what puts me off Austen, too. But somehow Brideshead has enough to it to overcome that.

 

But partly, I think, the delight is that it's set in the inter-war years with a full knowledge of the decline and fall of British aristocracy, and there are so many elements of that decline woven through the book. The obsessions with religion and class and eccentricity and lineage, and how they were falling apart.

 

All the characters are fantastic and believable, too.

 

I really, really enjoyed it.

 

And now I'm reading a book on the US dustbowl of the 1930s called "The Worst Hard Time" by Timothy Egan. I've only just started but it's fascinating historical reportage of something I only know from reading Grapes of Wrath 20 years ago.

 

Ahhh Andy.

 

You are so refreshing. I too have been put off many a book because of the suspected aristicratic, period drama, Austenesque element.

I thought I was just a moody ol' battleaxe.

I wasn't overly fussed on Atonement either.

 

I have never considered Brideshead Revisited as a book I may like, however, I may just give it a try now.

 

I am also going to have a look for the Great Crash of 1929 .... I think there are a couple of us in our house that will find that interesting.

 

See.... you have real clout.

[Freewheeling Andy]

Thanks for your comments, rwemad. I'm glad I'm not the only one who objects to Austenesque nonsense.

 

Anyway, I've now finished Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao, and frankly I haven't the slightest clue what all the fuss is about. How did it win a Pulitzer, I wonder? It's geek central with all the (occasionally) obscure references to fantasy books which leave those of us unfamiliar in the dark. Maybe 15% is in Spanish, just random Spanish phrases thrown in, which adds another layer of lack of understanding. There are long footnotes galore on the history of the Dominican Republic, which would be fairly interesting on their own but don't belong in a novel. The structure is by someone desperate to be Philip Roth; the style by someone desperate to be Mr Cool; the result is actually pretty rubbish. Underwhelming. The only really worthwhile stuff is the link to Dominican history, but you get that better in Vargas Llosa's Feast Of The Goat.

 

Meh.

 

Right now I'm once again back on Ackroyd's Biography Of London, but will probably only last about 2 more pages before I buy something else less dull.

[Mac]

I won't be reading that book, then.

 

I also have Ackroyd's Biography Of London, and have been reading it since Jesus was a little lad in nappies. I think I may die before I finish it. I wonder how it ends...

 

Hope you're well, good fella.

[Freewheeling Andy]

I'm good. I've been reading the Ackroyd book, on and off, for about 8 years now, I think. It's been in four different houses with me, and I'm less than 400 pages in.

[Mac]

100 pages a house. That's not bad going. I'm 200 years old and only 300 pages in. That's worse, I think.

[Freewheeling Andy]

The funny thing is that it's actually quite good, and it's very fascinating. It's just too big to be read in any normal way.

[Freewheeling Andy]

So I read about half a chapter more of London before picking up Paul Theroux's Dark Star Safari (which I bought for the gf a couple of years ago and which has been unread since). It's a fantastic and fascinating book. Very happy to be reading it; it's very much got all that I like about travel writing. Not too much florid language; fascinating tales of the traveller struggling to travel (but not so much that they dominate the book); interesting history; a degree of affection for the place the traveller travels through, so you don't just get nasty sneering; enough cynicism, though, to not just be a paeon of praise.

 

And really, really nice writing.

[Mac]

I really struggle with non-fiction, you know. Can't get to grips with it - travel writing, biographies, that sort of thing (although I do like history books...)

 

Paul Theroux - he's Louis Theroux's dad, isn't he?

 

Maybe I should try this guy. Hope you're well, Andy. Nice review.

[Freewheeling Andy]

Yeah, he's Louis Theroux's dad. Surprisingly American, too. I'll put a proper review of the book in the non-fiction section once I've finished the book, which is still about 80 pages away.

 

I'm not sure it's where I'd start if I wanted to read some non-fiction travel writing and I wasn't a big fan of travel writing, though. It may be better to start with someone like Eric Newby or Patrick Leigh Fermor; but I think the key thing, at least to start with, is to get some classic travel writing about a region (or done in a time period) that fascinates you, so you can overcome some of your instinctive difficulties.

 

I might actually start a thread discussing what I like and dislike about certain types of travel writing, soon. But it will take me a while to write down my thoughts so I won't do it right now.

[Freewheeling Andy]

I finished the Theroux, which is still great. A bit odd at the end reading about South African stuff I know fairly well, and which doesn't fit so well with the rest of the book.

 

Anyway, next up (so help me god) is Angels and Demons.

[Jo-Bridge]

I finished the Theroux, which is still great. A bit odd at the end reading about South African stuff I know fairly well, and which doesn't fit so well with the rest of the book.

 

Anyway, next up (so help me god) is Angels and Demons.

 

How did you decide to read that? Doesnt sound like your usual type of book book! Its actually ok and better than the Da Vinci Code:lol:

[Freewheeling Andy]

Ha. No, it's not. My gf was reading it, though, and I need to read something relatively light and harmless after lots of fairly serious stuff. And she was laughing at it, so I thought "why not give it a go, and make lots of snide comments once I'm done?"

[Freewheeling Andy]

I'm 50 pages in. Christ, it's xxxxing awful. I mean really, really, really bad. It feels worse than the Archer tripe I read as a teenager when nothing else was to hand. Bad science, bad religion and bad history held together by some really, really bad writing.

[rwemad]

I'm 50 pages in. Christ, it's xxxxing awful. I mean really, really, really bad. It feels worse than the Archer tripe I read as a teenager when nothing else was to hand. Bad science, bad religion and bad history held together by some really, really bad writing.

 

Ha........ say what you mean why dont you!

 

I have read the Da Vinci but no others....... perhaps I shouldn't bother either.

 

What made me reply was the Archer comment. I remember being really impressed with Kane and Abel - yes, I was young and that short story about the cat.........

[Freewheeling Andy]

I imagine Da Vinci Code is written in the same spectacularly hamfisted style. The funny thing is that it's perfectly readable, once you suspend disbelief and turn off your knowledge of anything about physics or history. But the actually writing, the quality of the prose, is the kind of stuff that an English teacher would produce for a 13 year old telling them how not to write.

 

It's utterly laughable, the quality of the prose. Also very funny is the way it's written with the clear intention of getting filmed. Every bit of description is like a set direction or a bit of advice for someone in casting.

 

In some ways, it might be the worst book I've ever read. Although it's clearly not the least readable.

[Kylie]

Also very funny is the way it's written with the clear intention of getting filmed. Every bit of description is like a set direction or a bit of advice for someone in casting.

 

I think the same thing when I read the Harry Potter books.

 

It's been so long since I read a Dan Brown book. Maybe they're more bearable for me because I'm not up on physics or history. I know enough not to take him seriously though I remember thinking The Da Vinci Code was OK, but very forgettable. As in, I could remember next to nothing about the entire story a couple of weeks after I'd read it.

[Freewheeling Andy]

Funnily, although this is almost certainly the worst writing I've ever encountered, it's by no means the worst reading I've ever done. At least there's a plot to drag me along so I don't want to throw the book away.

 

It is laughably bad, though. I've just learned that apparently the Christian church borrowed the idea of communion from the Aztecs, who didn't even exist for another 1500 years...

 

And the physics is worse than the history.

 

How on earth have these books sold so well?

[~Andrea~]

Dan Brown may be a bad writer but I'm guessing he's pretty good at marketing, and deliberately chose to a controversial subject for publicity sake. Plus an entertaining plot goes a long way

[Freewheeling Andy]

Oh yes, it's not the worst reading I've ever done. It's perfectly easy to turn the pages. But it is just about the worst writing I've ever encountered. And amongst the most factually bollox.

[rwemad]

Oh yes, it's not the worst reading I've ever done. It's perfectly easy to turn the pages. But it is just about the worst writing I've ever encountered. And amongst the most factually bollox.

 

 

I don't really remember it too well, but I don't recall hating it, in fact I think I quite enjoyed it.

 

I think I approached it differently.

 

a. My history isn't brilliant

and b. I picked it up to read as a story .... it never entered my head that it may be based on fact any more than the bible or Harry Potter is (no offense anybody).

 

EDIT: Actually I haven't read it at all.... sorry ........ I was referring to The Da Vinci Code.

Edited May 12, 2009 by rwemad
because I'm a numbsky

[Kylie]

Rwemad.

 

Although I'm the same as you. I've approached the two Dan Brown books I've read as light reading and not to be taken seriously at all. And to date I have very little knowledge of history and physics - I suspect a lot of other people are the same and that's the reason he's been able to pull the wool over our eyes, in a manner of speaking.

[Freewheeling Andy]

Well, I've finished it and, astonishingly, it managed to deteriorate further. I'm not averse to light reading (which might surprise some). But this is another step beyond. It was actually excruciating. The spectacular unsubtleness, the dreadful plotting, the hideous prose, the mechanical wooden characters, and the massively telegraphed twists, combined with the assumption that the reading is an utter gurning moron.