Fever
Reading this off the back of a Planet review that called it an inventive and engaging debut I am afraid to report that I was disappointed - somehow it story just didn't come together as a convincing whole.
It is populated with larger than life characters which should have given vigour and interest but they seemed mostly to be fairly thin and so lacked any believability. Also there were a number of sub-plots, for example about the central character's grand mother, yet they weren't developed to the extent that they added depth and so served only as a distraction. At just under 120 pages I think it would have been better if it had be edited down into a good short story
Friday, 25 March 2011
Monday, 21 March 2011
Between Heaven and Charing Cross by Martin Warner
Between Heaven and Charing Cross
I read this book a year or so ago - it is a worthwhile read, and I wanted to share a quote from by Anthony Burton (Bishop of Saskatchewan) it that has stuck with me
"When the Church takes account only of the present, she does nothing but change; if she looks only to the future, she does nothing but dream; only when she is conscious of being the living tradition of Christ is she truly renewed."
I read this book a year or so ago - it is a worthwhile read, and I wanted to share a quote from by Anthony Burton (Bishop of Saskatchewan) it that has stuck with me
"When the Church takes account only of the present, she does nothing but change; if she looks only to the future, she does nothing but dream; only when she is conscious of being the living tradition of Christ is she truly renewed."
Sunday, 20 March 2011
Can-cans, Cats & Cities of Ash by Mark Twain
Can-Cans, Cats and Cities of Ash (Penguin Great Journeys)
This is an engaging and irreverent account of Mark Twain 'Grand Tour' - a good tonic from the more po-faced travellogs that make up most of this 'Great Journeys' collection.
It is also of interest as direction of vision is reversed with Twain giving an explorers account of the exotica of Europe - rather than a European account of natives elsewhere.
His account of visiting the Acropolis by night brought up for me something meloncholic about our current age of mass tourism. While I could go and stand in the same spot as Twain I doubt I would be able to have that same experience of wonder - there great sites of the world today (and the majority of minor ones) are too sanitised and packaged, the obligatory audio guide might add a few tip bits of historical gossip but I find it divorces you from the possibility of a deeper and more visceral encounter with a place.
This is an engaging and irreverent account of Mark Twain 'Grand Tour' - a good tonic from the more po-faced travellogs that make up most of this 'Great Journeys' collection.
It is also of interest as direction of vision is reversed with Twain giving an explorers account of the exotica of Europe - rather than a European account of natives elsewhere.
His account of visiting the Acropolis by night brought up for me something meloncholic about our current age of mass tourism. While I could go and stand in the same spot as Twain I doubt I would be able to have that same experience of wonder - there great sites of the world today (and the majority of minor ones) are too sanitised and packaged, the obligatory audio guide might add a few tip bits of historical gossip but I find it divorces you from the possibility of a deeper and more visceral encounter with a place.
Monday, 14 March 2011
Lambeth Palace Library: Treasures from the Collections of the Archbishops of Canterbury
Lambeth Palace Library: Treasures from the Collections of the Archbishops of Canterbury
This is a richly illustrated "coffee-table" volume, which shows the breath and at times eclectic nature of the Library at Lambeth - with the influence of particular Archbishops shining through in its holdings.
As the book journeys from the early manuscripts to the modern archives of the likes of the Mothers Union you find that the interest shifts from the "afterlife" to the production or accumulation. That is to say that the "afterlife" of the manuscripts is the many and varied hands through which they passed over the centuries before finding their way to Lambeth. Yet for the archives it is the taleof the life of the organisation to which they belonged that is of real interest.
Is this a book only for starchy Anglicans? I think not - anyone with a board interest in English history would enjoy this because the Archbishops of Canterbury's place has been right at the heart of the English establishment (whether you like it or not). It would, I think, also appeal to the Art Historian.
This is a richly illustrated "coffee-table" volume, which shows the breath and at times eclectic nature of the Library at Lambeth - with the influence of particular Archbishops shining through in its holdings.
As the book journeys from the early manuscripts to the modern archives of the likes of the Mothers Union you find that the interest shifts from the "afterlife" to the production or accumulation. That is to say that the "afterlife" of the manuscripts is the many and varied hands through which they passed over the centuries before finding their way to Lambeth. Yet for the archives it is the taleof the life of the organisation to which they belonged that is of real interest.
Is this a book only for starchy Anglicans? I think not - anyone with a board interest in English history would enjoy this because the Archbishops of Canterbury's place has been right at the heart of the English establishment (whether you like it or not). It would, I think, also appeal to the Art Historian.
Saturday, 5 March 2011
Operation Mincemeat by Ben MacIntyre
Operation Mincemeat
I decided to get this book after watching a BBC programme based on the book. There is the obvious drama of the central story - the trick to convince the Germans that the invasion was going to happen elsewhere - which has lead to a number of re-tellings of this most secret of wartime operations.
But there is as much interest in the wider stories.
First the fact that the popular myth of the Second World War, that it was won by the mixing of British courage and determination with the best of British bumbling amateurism in the face of the clinical and highly organised Nazi war machine, is in most cases wide of the mark. The Nazi war 'machine' was nothing of the sort - it was chaotic, build on personal ambition, jealousy, and deliberately overlapping jurisdictions - while the British were for the most part highly organised and ruthless in the use of technology - but somehow that story of the British war is just not Cricket. Operation Mincemeat is a prime example - it success was in equally measure due to the efficiency of the British and the incompetence of the Germans.
The second wider story is about "intelligence" in general - and the ease in which it fails us. During the Cold War the speed of the arms race was driven more by the over-estimates or exaggerations of the US and Soviet intelligence communities as it was by the actual stocks of arms either held. (If is of course understandable - it is better to over egg this kind of pudding - as the court of enquiry is likely to worry less if you said the enemy had 10 tanks when in fact he had 5, then if you said 10 and he had 20). In the last decade the failure of intelligence has come increasing into focus with the fact that the majority of the global intelligence community was certain that for example Saddam had WDM when it would appear he had none springs most readily to mind. His obstruction of the UN weapons inspectors was most likely driven not by the fear that they would uncover WMD but that they would uncover that there were none.
The third is Wikileaks - with the distance of years the telling of this story has little risk - yet at the time the secrets and the bending (even breaking) of the law allowed a great good to occur. We need to take care in demanding that every corner of life is open to constant glance - because sometimes the honest do tell lies. Who is the arbiter of what is told and what with held is always contested - but the idea that it is a general good that everything is made public - or that such publication actually reveals much in the way of "truth" is in my mind doubtful.
Lastly I liked the local Southampton connection of Ewen Montagu one of the masterminds of the operation, a son of Baron Swaythling.
I decided to get this book after watching a BBC programme based on the book. There is the obvious drama of the central story - the trick to convince the Germans that the invasion was going to happen elsewhere - which has lead to a number of re-tellings of this most secret of wartime operations.
But there is as much interest in the wider stories.
First the fact that the popular myth of the Second World War, that it was won by the mixing of British courage and determination with the best of British bumbling amateurism in the face of the clinical and highly organised Nazi war machine, is in most cases wide of the mark. The Nazi war 'machine' was nothing of the sort - it was chaotic, build on personal ambition, jealousy, and deliberately overlapping jurisdictions - while the British were for the most part highly organised and ruthless in the use of technology - but somehow that story of the British war is just not Cricket. Operation Mincemeat is a prime example - it success was in equally measure due to the efficiency of the British and the incompetence of the Germans.
The second wider story is about "intelligence" in general - and the ease in which it fails us. During the Cold War the speed of the arms race was driven more by the over-estimates or exaggerations of the US and Soviet intelligence communities as it was by the actual stocks of arms either held. (If is of course understandable - it is better to over egg this kind of pudding - as the court of enquiry is likely to worry less if you said the enemy had 10 tanks when in fact he had 5, then if you said 10 and he had 20). In the last decade the failure of intelligence has come increasing into focus with the fact that the majority of the global intelligence community was certain that for example Saddam had WDM when it would appear he had none springs most readily to mind. His obstruction of the UN weapons inspectors was most likely driven not by the fear that they would uncover WMD but that they would uncover that there were none.
The third is Wikileaks - with the distance of years the telling of this story has little risk - yet at the time the secrets and the bending (even breaking) of the law allowed a great good to occur. We need to take care in demanding that every corner of life is open to constant glance - because sometimes the honest do tell lies. Who is the arbiter of what is told and what with held is always contested - but the idea that it is a general good that everything is made public - or that such publication actually reveals much in the way of "truth" is in my mind doubtful.
Lastly I liked the local Southampton connection of Ewen Montagu one of the masterminds of the operation, a son of Baron Swaythling.
Vortex by Michael Hofmann
Found in Selected Poems Michael Hofmann
Where was our high-water mark? Was it the glorious
oriental scimitar in the Metropolitan Museum
in New York? Nothing for a pussyfooting shake-hands grip:
your hand had to be a fist already to hold it ...
I wondered why the jewels were all clustered
on scabbard and hilt and basketed hadn-guard,
why there were none on the sward itself.
I could only guess that the blade leapt out
to protect them, like a stong father his family.
- Or next door, where, as the guide explained,
there was a deity in the ceiling, who would shower
genius or intellect or eyewash on those beneath?
And strightaway, to my fierce embarrassment,
you pushed me under it, an un-European moment -
though I tried also to relish the shiver of limelight.
- Or was it more even, less clinching, the many years
I used the basin after you had shaved in it?
It was my duty to shave the basin, rinsing
the circle of hairs frm its concave enamel face
till it was as smooth as yours ... I was almost there,
on the periphery of manhood, but I didn't have your gear:
the stiff brush of real badger (or was it beaver?);
the reserved cake of shaving soap: the safety razor
that opened like Aladdin's cave when I twirled the handle.
... That movement became an escape mechanism:
I was an orphan, a street Arab, waiting for you
in international lounges, at the foot of skyscrapers;
entertaining myself with the sprinker nozzles
secreted in the ceiling, whirling dervishes
sniffing out smoke, in a state of permanent readiness;
that have since emancipated me, like the razors
- cheapskate, disposable, no moving parts -
I now use myself ... The water drains away, laughing.
I light up, a new man.
Where was our high-water mark? Was it the glorious
oriental scimitar in the Metropolitan Museum
in New York? Nothing for a pussyfooting shake-hands grip:
your hand had to be a fist already to hold it ...
I wondered why the jewels were all clustered
on scabbard and hilt and basketed hadn-guard,
why there were none on the sward itself.
I could only guess that the blade leapt out
to protect them, like a stong father his family.
- Or next door, where, as the guide explained,
there was a deity in the ceiling, who would shower
genius or intellect or eyewash on those beneath?
And strightaway, to my fierce embarrassment,
you pushed me under it, an un-European moment -
though I tried also to relish the shiver of limelight.
- Or was it more even, less clinching, the many years
I used the basin after you had shaved in it?
It was my duty to shave the basin, rinsing
the circle of hairs frm its concave enamel face
till it was as smooth as yours ... I was almost there,
on the periphery of manhood, but I didn't have your gear:
the stiff brush of real badger (or was it beaver?);
the reserved cake of shaving soap: the safety razor
that opened like Aladdin's cave when I twirled the handle.
... That movement became an escape mechanism:
I was an orphan, a street Arab, waiting for you
in international lounges, at the foot of skyscrapers;
entertaining myself with the sprinker nozzles
secreted in the ceiling, whirling dervishes
sniffing out smoke, in a state of permanent readiness;
that have since emancipated me, like the razors
- cheapskate, disposable, no moving parts -
I now use myself ... The water drains away, laughing.
I light up, a new man.
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