Kategori: Aardwolf – one hit wonders

I found Francis Wheen’s How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World heavy going at first, but once I warmed to it I practically flew through. For some reason I had expected more of a language discussion and less of a political discussion – probably because we purchased the book at the same time as Melvyn Bragg’s The Adventure of English. However, the political stuff is pretty informative and entertaining – occasionally laugh-out-loud funny – too. A few favourite quotes:

‘Keep an open mind!’ broadcasters pleaded when they screeened the bogus Roswell video. The Daily Telegraph, one of the few newspapers which spotted the film as a fake from the outset, had the best riposte: ‘If you open your mind too much, your brain may fall out.’

And Wheen seems to feel about the «England’s Rose» version of Candle in the Wind much in the same way I do myself:

According to Elton John, singing his heart out in Westminister Abbey while mixing metaphors with glorious abandon, she was England’s rose, a candle that never faded with the sunset when the rain set in (as candles so often do) but strode off across England’s greenest hills, its footprints preserved for eternity.

The one thing that’s wrong with the book – and which really got my goat – is that Wheen makes a point of the importance of source-checking regarding David Irving on pages 98/99 (Harper Perennial, 2004, 4th printing), but is himself amiss in this regard. I’m the sort of reader who actually wants super-whatsit numbers next to every quote and a foot- or endnote saying Ibid. the fiftieth time a source is quoted (giving the page number, naturally). On page 85 Wheen quotes Eagleton, but there are no notes for page 85. On page 86 there is a long quote from Eagleton’s essay ‘Where Do Post-Modernists Come From?’ duly noted in the back, but there is no real indication whether the quote on page 85 is from the same source or not – Eagleton not being the least prolific of writers, if it’s not, how do I set about finding it? So while this endnotes-with-page-references may make the text easier to read for people not used to academic papers, I’d have appreciated a properly source-checkable text myself.*

But, it’s worth reading, definitely.

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* The observant reader will have noticed that I have myself omitted page numbers for the two quotes above. I am acutely aware of this and will remedy it asap – it’s just that Martin’s run away with the book.

Brad Newsham’s Take Me With You has been on the shelves for a few years now, so I have no idea why I’d never heard of it before. I picked it up because it was on a «buy one get one half price» sale at W.H.Smith when I already had The Sunday Philosophy Club in my hands from the same promotion. With the sub-title «A round-the-world journey to invite a stranger home», Take Me With You was, at the very least, intriguing. It reads – as a review quoted on Newsham’s webpage says – like a page-turner. Well, unless you happen to have heard of it before, since the reason it reads as a page-turner is that you have no idea who of the various people Newsham meets on his travels will be the person to receive an invitation in the mail.

I enjoyed it for another reason, too, a fortunate side-product of the main purpose: There are more conversations with strangers and portraits of characters in this book than your average travel journal. This is a good thing. I have no doubt the scenery Newsham travelled though was spectacular at times (and he mentions it, too, at times, in case you wondered), but when you travel – at least when I travel – it’s the company you keep and the people you meet who set the mood, and I always miss that when for one reason or another a writer does not provide this.

Jeg har hatt lyst til å lese Vilde Bjerkes biografi om hennes far en stund, men har liksom ikke kommet så langt som til å kjøpe den. Her om dagen var jeg på biblioteket for å låne Bjerkes samlede dikt og fant fram Du visste om et land i samme slengen, jeg tenkte at det jo ikke er nødvendig å kjøpe alle bøker man skal lese heller.

Desverre stemte det litt for godt. Boka var litt skuffende, selv om jeg ikke helt kan sette fingeren på hvorfor, og jeg kommer derfor neppe til å ha lyst til å lese den igjen og vil gladelig levere eksemplaret tilbake til Deichmanske. Jeg visste lite om Bjerkes liv på forhånd, så sånn sett lærte jeg en del nytt, men var allikevel altså noe skuffet. Det er mulig jeg hadde helt feil forhåpninger, blandt annet var jeg lite imponert over Vilde Bjerkes språkføring, men det er vel egentlig urimelig å vente at hun skal skrive eksepsjonellt godt bare fordi hennes far gjorde det.

I went to the library to borrow André Bjerke’s collected poems Monday, and picked up a few new (well, new to me) comic books at the same time. Castle Waiting was one of them, and a very good read it was, too. I’ve made a reservation on volume two, there only seem to be two, actually, which is a pity, but can’t be helped.

In which we are not sure quite what to think

I’ve been meaning to try reading Rankin for a long time, and so I borrowed Knots and Crosses from my mother some time this spring an now finally got around to it. And I don’t know quite what to think. It’s engaging, I’ll give Rankin that, and having to put it away at arrival at work with only five pages to go was not good – I contemplated hiding in the ladies’ until I’d finished it (though didn’t). But there was less Edinburgh flavour than I’d been led to believe (that’s obviously not Rankin’s fault, it’s a miscommunication between me and the people I’ve heard about the series from). And I’m not entirely sure that I like John Rebus. Or rather, I’m not entirely sure I respect him, which is almost worse. This is partly due to my usual lack of enthusiasm at any sort of infidelity (Rebus goes home with another woman after starting a tentative relationship with a colleague – not a very serious breach of trust, perhaps, but enough for me to lose respect), but partly something else which I can’t quite define.

So. Not entirely sure. I think I might read at least one more Rebus book and see whether my interest vanes or vaxes. If the former, I’m likely to give the series up as a bad job…

In which we are entertained.

I pick up some odd books. David C. Taylor’s Zoovet: The Life of a Wildlife Vet may not be the oddest of them, but it at least seems to be out of print. Which is really a pity because it was highly enjoyable. Taylor describes, in anecdotal fashion, the trials and tribulations of a vet specializing in exotic animals. The style is reminiscent of Gerald Durrell (and you know I enjoy his books)

A very different sort of travelogue compared with the ones I normally read, Tim Mackintosh-Smith’s Travels with a Tangerine had me variously fascinated, spellbound and laughing out loud. The focus on a world quite foreign to me and also the temporal confusion resulting from the change, or mostly lack thereof, between Ibn Battutah’s time and ours made this a very refreshing read. As a bonus, the author has a wonderfully dry sense of humour and a gift for understatement. Quite definitely one to recommend.

How disappointing. I love travel books, and I love travel books about the UK above all, which is why I was looking forward to reading A Fête Worse than Death by Iain Aitch, however, the book was a bit of a disappointment. I’m hard pressed to put my finger on exactly why Aitch’s writing is not engaging. He includes liberal amounts of anecdotes, enough dialogue to please me and visits precisely the sort of events whose description I’d be likely to find interesting. He even travels the way I would, by public transport or by convincing people to give him lifts. And still I continually found my attention drifting. A pity, really.

In which we go spying.

The second book borrowed from Theresa was Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh. I really don’t have a lot to say about this one either. I enjoyed it is praise enough. One thing I wasn’t quite happy with was that the child psychologist seemed to make a point – worth noting, I thought – of how Harriet was less able to concentrate on what was actually happening around her when she was taking notes all the time, and I felt that that point was never really taken up again. But that was really all I had to complain about, and it wasn’t very important at that.