Stikkord: non-fiction

Since the middle of February

Mirthful 2 Comments

The Tale of Desperaux – Di Collofello
Very sweet. Not exceptionally good, though, and with an underlying sort of morality which bothered me. Since I rather like rats I objected to the description of them being so nasty to look at and touch (especially in comparison with mice, which are, apparently, not nasty at all), but I can understand how it might be necessary for the story. However, I can’t quite excuse the idea that a rat is a rat and can never change his nature, it smacks – to me – a little of the I’m-trying-to-be-politically-correct-but-I’m-a-racist-really premise that all, say, negroes are lazy, but it’s in their nature and they can’t really help it. Balderdash.

Small Wars Permitting – Christina Lamb
Very interesting, highly readable. My father just finished this when I was trying to get through Sorting Out Billy (see below) and there was no competition, really, I jumped at the chance to read something else. Lamb manages to be both informative, profound and thought-provoking and at the same time laugh-out-loud funny in places. The book contains both newly written context material and quite a few of Lambs articles from various papers and both are equally readable and absorbing. Highly recommended.

Then, a bit of a Durrell reread going on – in between all the other stuff – if I find the time and energy I might write a more detailed post on Durrell, but for now, here’s a list:
The Bafut Beagles – Gerald Durrell
Fillets of Plaice – Gerald Durrell
The Stationary Ark – Gerald Durrell
A Zoo in my Luggage – Gerald Durrell
Catch me a Colobus – Gerald Durrell
The Dunken Forest – Gerald Durrell
Himself and Other Animals – David Hughes (biography)

Sorting Out Billy – Jo Brand
I read only the first half, or thereabouts and then gave it up in disgust. Abysmally bad, actually.

The Book of Lost Things – John Connolly
Entertaining, slightly scary in parts. Well worth the time.

Anybody Out There? – Marian Keyes
Excellent. I was a little worried, not being a great fan of spiritualism and trying to speak to the dead, however, Keyes managed the issue beautifully, I think, and I didn’t cringe even once.

Slam – Nick Hornby
Hornby’s first «young adult» novel, which probably should be compulsory reading for most British teenagers as a sort of literary contraception. Not Hornby’s best book – by far – from an adult point of view, but then that’s hardly the right point of view for judging it.

American Gods – Neil Gaiman
Superb.

A Ramble Round the Globe – Thomas Dewar
Disappointingly unoccupied with whisky or with advertising, the two main reasons I am interested in Tommy Dewar, but a rather interesting read nonetheless.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid – Bill Bryson
Just what you’d expect from Bill Bryson: Very good.

At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig: Travels Through Paraguay – John Gimlette

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At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig: Travels Through Paraguay was an interesting read, in that it seems to deal pretty thoroughly with the recent history of Paraguay, a country I knew next to nothing about prior to reading this book. I am somewhat puzzled as to the title, as I never caught the reference, but it’s catchy – if not snappy – and so I suppose that’s reason enough to use it. This is not a travel book in the normal sense. True, John Gimlette travels around Paraguay, but nine tenths of the book is history of some sort. Not a bad thing, necessarily, but not quite what I expected. Still, an interesting read.

Going Solo

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I ended up rereading Going Solo because I had found it in a box (along with Waltzing through Flaws) and had given it to the husband with a «here you go, you need to read this» and he’d brought it to Vienna and was reading something else when I needed something to read and had put my own book (which I still haven’t finished) in the wrong bag. Uhm. Nice sentence, that.

Anyway. I’ve read Boy once, and as far as I can remember I found that pretty tedious. Going Solo, however, is charming and, amongst other things, leaves you wondering how on earth Hitler managed to get beaten by the allies, though I suppose someone in charge must have learned from their mistakes at some point after Dahl was invalided home. Or perhaps the allies were just more stubborn and won on the basis of sheer luck, which seems to be mainly what kept Dahl alive.

Diplomatic Baggage: The Adventures of a Trailing Spouse

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Diplomatic Baggage: The Adventures of a Trailing Spouse by Brigid Keenan was an impulse buy at a newsagent in town, and a pretty lucky one in one respect – Keenan’s husband «AW» gets posted to The Gambia in the late eighties, and since it’s hardly the country that pops up in books most often, it was a bit like an unexpected meeting with an old acquaintance*. The family arrives in the country just about a year after we left it, and the girls go to the same school my brother and I attended. That section alone made the book worth the price for me, but also the rest of the book is interesting and at times laugh-out-loud-funny, and Keenan manages to mix humour and seriousness in a way that makes the pages fly past.

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* For those not in the know, my familiy spent a year in The Gambia in 1986/87.

Lost for Words – John Humphrys

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There seems to be a bit of a red thread going on here, what with all these language-related books, and you might suspect I have been influenced by working at the department of language and communication studies. Which I have, I’m sure. You can’t just blame my employer, though, as we got John Humphrys’ Lost for Words: The Mangling and Manipulating of the English Language in a three for two sale (or something) while on our honeymoon this summer, and I hadn’t started the job then. You might blame my employer for the fact that I’ve just read the book, though, I suppose.

Anyway, Humphrys’ book is basically a collection of examples, or at least that’s what it feels like, with a little discussion around each one and with some conclusions drawn from the evidence. It’s hard to disagree with the conclusions. It’s also hard not to laugh at times, especially when Humphrys reminds me of why I had to quit reading feminist literary theory. It’s because feminists manage to write this sort of thing in good faith and expect us to take them seriously:

Is E= mc2 a sexed equation? Perhaps it is. Let us make the hypotheses that it is insofar as it priveleges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us. What seems to us the possibly sexed nature of the equation is not directly its uses by nuclear weapons, rather it is having priveleged what goes fastest.

(Luce Irigaray, apparently.*)

I can understand that women feel uncomfortable being termed a «chairman» or a «fireman» or any of the other «male» words that have been and are still current in our language(s). I just think that sometimes, perhaps, the so-called feminists go over the top a bit. And that quote is a keeper**, and even if Humphrys’ book did nothing else, providing me with that would still be worth the time and money.

But it does do more. It’s funny, frequently lol funny, and it’s intelligent. In short, it’s a good read.

A thought: I wonder if I ever split infinitives? Let me know if you spot any, will you?

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* Actually, one thing this book is missing – which is a major drawback – is proper references.

**The more I read it, the more the mind boggles. Especially at these «other speeds that are vitally necessary to us».

English Journey

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This book is a tie-in to a BBC programme made to «celebrate» the 50th anniversary of J.B. Priestly’s English Journey. Bainbridge’s version is sub-titled «Being a rambling but truthful account of what one person saw and heard and felt and felt during a journey through England», which I suspect is also a «rip-off» of Priestly. I found my copy – a first edition in dust jacket – in a shop in Wigtown, for the princely sum of £2. It has the inscription «FROM BERYL», to which the shop-owner has noted, in pencil, «(probably not the author)», and I tend to agree. Still, it was a good buy.

The account is certainly rambling. Bainbridge uses a language that is very reminicent of a diary, especially in leaving out the subject in many sentences (as in «Went to Milton Keynes» rather than «I went…» or «We went»). It might not suit everyone, but I like it. It is also, in many ways, a sort of summing up of all the things that are not wonderful or terrible about England, but that are not ordinary either. For an anglophile like me it’s a lovely read, though I must admit it’s made me rather «homesick».

And I like her conclusion, such as it is.

I suppose I’ll have to get hold of Priestly, now (though not on ABE just now – they only have one copy listed, and it’s at 50 dollars, which seems unecessarily steep for a whim – you can find lots of Bainbridges, though, if you don’t happen to have one already).

Used & Rare, Slightly Chipped and Warmly Inscribed

Mirthful 1 Comment

And when you’ve read 84 Charing Cross Road, what is more natural than to polish off Used and Rare, Slightly Chipped and Warmly Inscribed in quick succession?

I see from the archives that I must have neglected to record my first reading of Warmly Inscribed, which is annoying, but most of what I said for the first two hold true for this one as well – the difference, if there is one, is that larger sections of the book are dedicated to single «stories», such as that of the New England forger of the sub-title. This is in no way a bad thing, and like the two first, Warmly Inscribed is a bit of a must-read for any bibliophile.

Broken English Spoken Perfectly

Mirthful

A collection of examples of that which we know as Engrish, but with a mostly Scandinavian origin. My favourite was from «A hotel in Vienna» and literally made me laugh til I cried:

In case of fire, do your utmost to alarm the hotel porter.

(I couldn’t help imagining a porter with a particular affinity for horror movies, who would naturally be more difficult than the average person to «alarm».)

All in all: Funny.

Typisk norsk

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Det er jo hyggelig å få ting man ønsker seg til jul. Jeg kom aldri så langt som til å se på Typisk norsk på TV, men boka er jo litt mer brukervennlig i og med at man ikke er avhengig av å først finne ut og så huske et spesiellt tidspunkt på akkurat det tidspunktet og være i nærheten av en tv. Sånt er jo bare pes. Boka derimot kan man for eksempel plukke opp når man spiser frokost eller bare tilfeldigvis har noen ledige minutter.

Og det har jeg altså gjort.

Man kan vel si at jeg nå vet langt mer om norsk språkhistorie enn jeg gjorde før jul. Ikke at det egentlig skulle så mye til, selvsagt, og mye av det jeg nå vet har jeg sannsynligvis glemt igjen snart (med en hjerne som lekker som en sil blir det gjerne sånn). Men da kan jeg jo lese boka om igjen. For den var riktig så underholdende. Det var vel kanskje særlig alt «ekstramaterialet» som var underholdende, med det kan man jo også lese igjen. Boka inneholder nemlig, foruten språkhistorie fra unionsoppløsningen til i dag delt inn i tiår, bokstavenes historie, ords opprinnelse, forsøk på gjenoppliving av gamle ord og «Folkets ordbok» som kanskje var noe av det mest fornøyelige, der var det nemlig svært mye nyttig. «Automagisk» har jeg vel hatt i mitt aktive ordforråd en stund, men arrogasme («den nærmest sanselige gleden man kan ha av å plassere en velformulert (men ganske arrogant) replikk på riktig sted til rett tid) for eksempel var en praktisk nyhet.

Boka kan altså i høyeste grad anbefales, og jeg har store planer om å prøve å få med meg i hvert fall ett eller to av programmene i den nye serien. Og så var det å melde seg inn i kjell-bevegelsen, da.