![Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom: Or, the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1420303391l/24278404._SX98_.jpg)
Showing posts with label Book reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Book reviews. Show all posts
Saturday 8 October 2022
A remarkable escape from slavery
![Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom: Or, the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1420303391l/24278404._SX98_.jpg)
Monday 26 September 2022
Vimto, Gonks, and Wayfinders. I remember them
![Mean Time](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1500675936l/34734569._SX98_.jpg)
Nostalgia suffuses Mean Time, especially the first poem in the collection, The Captain of the 1964 Top of the Form Team. It speaks directly to baby boomers, those who were at school in the 60s and 70s. The references tap on your heart with a hoppety beat; pop music, general knowledge, Vimto, Gonks, and Tuf Wayfinders shoes. What a great start to a great collection.
Friday 23 September 2022
Definitely, absolutely and without a doubt, 'my sort of book'
![Small Things Like These](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1636281095l/58639322._SX98_.jpg)
Wednesday 21 September 2022
A historic record of xenophobia
![Heart of Darkness](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1384802797l/18615474._SX98_.jpg)
The story concerns Charles Marlow, who relates his experiences in the African Congo, where imperialist traders sent "manufactured goods, rubbishy cottons, beads, and brass-wire... into the depths of darkness, and in return came a precious trickle of ivory". The depths of darkness relate not only to the unknown, unexplored lands beyond the sea shore, but also to the inhumanity that late 19th century traders expected to find there, as well as that of the traders themselves.
As Marlow journeys upriver he hears of a Mr Kurtz, a trader who is both respected and despised, and about whom he says, "All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz". In order to reach this enigmatic man, Marlow suffers much misfortune, adventure and horror. For all the vivid descriptions of the journey, the most memorable scene takes place in England, near the end of the book, when Marlow visits Kurtz's fiancee.
Modern-day readers might find Conrad's language in relation to indigenous people shocking and problematic. The book plays on a stereotypical view of foreign cultures and races as primitive and barbaric, and while the author portrays white traders as savages too, they don't quite balance out. It stands as a historic record of the xenophobia that existed at the time of its writing.
The text is dense, and the language lush. Amazingly, Conrad was not a natural-born English speaker, and I dare say this is another reason his work continues to be read and analysed. TS Eliot was inspired by Heart of Darkness, and Francis Ford Coppola adapted it for his film Apocalypse Now. For myself, I was left with only my own thoughts and a few online critical reviews with which to compare them.
Thursday 8 September 2022
A book that starts with the ending
![A House For Mr Biswas](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1457351043l/29436790._SX98_.jpg)
Tuesday 26 July 2022
Nostalgic notes from a small island
![Notes from a Small Island](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1331775349l/13542048._SX98_.jpg)
The main thing to note is that Bill Bryson has not written a travel guide. Sure, it describes a journey around Britain, but the chapters are numbered rather than identified by a destination, and there's no index. It's a memoir, and the places he visits mostly recall episodes in his life. For instance his first encounter with England in Dover, or when he met his wife in Virginia Water, or his first real job in Britain at the Bournemouth Evening Echo and his work at The Times newspaper in 1980s London during the "Wapping dispute".
It is funny tho'. I laughed out loud several times, really laughed. For instance when he gets drunk in Liverpool and when he can't understand the Glaswegian accent. I was thrilled to find he enjoyed the old Coronation Street Tour as much as I did, and nodded in agreement with his description of the rail journey along the North Wales coast. The humour is terribly British and may not be understood by all, nor be to everyone's taste.
If the humour's not your thing, a large amount of pleasure can be had in recognising destinations. Bryson's purpose is not to persuade you to discover new places, and although some towns sound horrible (Milton Keynes), the people are generally welcoming. Although I read somewhere that someone is attempting to recreate the tour and visit as many of the hotels, restaurants and pubs mentioned in the book that still exist.
Some things haven't changed. People still say you're brave if you're "planning to travel around Britain by public transport", and that "everyone, but everyone, you talk to in Oxford thinks that it is one of the most beautiful cities in the world". Also that "a place as prosperous and decorous as Harrogate could inhabit the same zone of the country as Bradford or Bolton". I can't speak for Bradford, but it's certainly true about the once great Lancashire town, tho' you wouldn't think so if you'd seen Bolton's eponymous fee-paying school in Cold Feet, and the town centre's Le Mans Crescent in Peaky Blinders.
Things have changed a lot in the past 25 years and I'm not sure it still reflects Britain and the British. Bryson mentions his "greatest admiration for the A-Z" but who uses that anymore in the age of mobile phones and Google maps? On the underground I was recently disabused of the "orderly quiet; all these thousands of people passing on stairs and escalators", after being elbowed out of the way and told to f*ck off at London Bridge tube station. One thing Bryson would perhaps consider a change for the better tho' is that these days the BBC is no longer showing repeats of Cagney and Lacey.
More stuff
Tuesday 7 June 2022
Not a woman who bears grudges?
![The Cactus](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1579961136l/50652583._SX98_.jpg)
The story is narrated by its protagonist, Susan Green, who in the first sentence of the book describes herself as "not a woman who bears grudges, broods over disagreements or questions other people’s motives", which implies that she most certainly will do all of those things in the following pages.
Monday 16 May 2022
What makes states: walls and writing
![Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1501054376l/35829998._SY160_.jpg)
The author is an American political scientist and his book investigates the formation of the earliest states.
Thursday 12 May 2022
A fine book let down by poor digitisation
![Brown Girl, Brownstones](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1563835438l/50010858._SX98_SY160_.jpg)
Sunday 8 May 2022
She was only Anne
Thursday 5 May 2022
"Lies, lies, adults forbid them and yet they tell so many."
![The Lying Life of Adults](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1592501402l/48753820._SX98_.jpg)
The book begins with Giovanna Trada remembering an incident when she was 12 years old: "my father said to my mother that I was very ugly". He goes further, explaining, "Adolescence has nothing to do with it: she's getting the face of Vittoria" his sister, whom Giovanna has never met. Piqued by a further description that in her aunt "ugliness and spite were combined to perfection", the young girl contrives to meet this woman to whom she bears a resemblance. As a consequence Giovanna discovers the working-class roots of her academic father, and learns that what adults say is not necessarily true.
Friday 22 April 2022
The legacy of apartheid
![The Good Doctor](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1435338950l/25800413._SX98_.jpg)
The story is told by Frank, a middle-aged, listless doctor who "had swallowed a lot of frustration over the years" and works in a hospital where there are few, if any, patients. It's set in a Homeland region of South Africa, described by Galgut in the Author's Note as "impoverished and underdeveloped [...] set aside by the apartheid government for the 'self-determination' of its various black 'nations'".
Sunday 17 April 2022
Nice use of the subjunctive mood
![Farewell, My Lovely (Philip Marlowe, #2)](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1615156635l/5000026._SX98_.jpg)
So starts Raymond Chandler's second Marlowe novel, Farewell, My Lovely.
Tuesday 29 March 2022
Ghosts of loss, death, injury and trauma
Friday 4 March 2022
This was not the face in the doorway
![The Fortune Men](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1622070282l/58170263._SX98_.jpg)
Monday 28 February 2022
A teenage boy with raging hormones
![The Rachel Papers](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328335629l/11328978._SX98_.jpg)
Thursday 24 February 2022
Antigone, Iphis, Electra and more
![Antigone Rising: The Subversive Power of the Ancient Myths](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1575313208l/49078102._SX98_.jpg)
Friday 11 February 2022
Living through a period when politicians don’t merely lie
![Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: Adventures in Modern Russia](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1505952615l/36276386._SX98_.jpg)
Other than a handful of students, that's been the limit of my personal knowledge of Russians.
Monday 7 February 2022
A cock that could drill a hole through stone?
![Beautiful Antonio: Il bell'Antonio](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403397115l/13373334._SX98_.jpg)
The story is set in Italy, the Sicilian town of Catania to be precise, and concerns a sensitive young man named Antonio, reckoned by family, friends, and random women to be the epitome of an "Italian stallion". All is not as it seems tho'.
Monday 17 January 2022
My lack of imagination?
![Harmless Like You](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1526799545l/40179762._SX98_.jpg)
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