Other Useful Numbers by Sarah Broughton

Other Useful Numbers

One of the joys of putting books on my wish list for later purchase is that when I get round to reading them I have forgotten all about them and so can encounter them completely fresh without the mind being directed to a certain reaction on the basis of a review etc.

Other Useful Numbers is one of those books, and it is a clear strength of the writing that front a standing start I was hooked on it before turning the first page.  Within a sentence or two you are inhabiting the mind of the central character, Tracy, and that is at times an uncomfortable place to live.  She probably depressed, is struggling to come to terms with the break down of a long term relationship, is estranged from family, is seemingly unable to maintain a friendship for more than a few weeks without causing it to implode.  In lots of ways she is a very easy person to dislike, however for all the failings my reaction was one of great compassion.  Maybe it is because I feel like as much of a fish out of water in most social settings as she does, have spent hours at parties standing on my own in the corner getting (not that) slowly pissed because I can't do small talk.

I really loved this novel and would highly recommend it.

A Century of Olympic Posters by Margaret Timmers

A Century of Olympic Posters

The story of Olympic Posters is used by Timmers to tell the story of the ideas and ideals that shaped the Games as much as it shaped the art work used to promote those Games. It is a century when advertising came of age and so the Posters chart the rise and rise of the visual as the key element of communication.  This also links into the way the Games have become since the Second World War a truly Global event and therefore the Posters have to work beyond the reach of mainstream European Languages and cultural settings.

Even those on a mission to by pass the Olympics this summer would still find this a worthwhile couple of hours read. 

The One from the Other by Phillip Kerr

The One From The Other

Reading this back to back with Resistance was probably a bit unfair to Kerr as the whole style and objective of his writing is different, I would try to resist a comparison of better or worse.

It is fast paced and everything you want in a crime thriller, my only worry was the times when it starts moralising which is something beyond the capacity of such a framework. It is again the risk, as there was in Resistance, of taking on history and especially a period that is just are the edge of memory.  Here the back drop is the search for Nazi war criminals and this remains a touchy subject for many, why some were punished and other rehabilitated, and even today old men are being unmasked and put on trial.  You can't talk of the Holocaust without speaking of the horror, but where Kerr is strong is showing that while there might be some bad "bad guys" there are no real "good guys", war and a system such as the Nazi state leave no one entirely innocent.

The story manages to escape being dragged down by its historical setting - but only just...

 

Resistance by Owen Sheers

Resistance

To take on history and turn the tide of the Second World War on its head is a brave step for any writer, and could easily spell disaster for the narrative, yet Sheers creates his alternative history with such skill and populates it with such natural characters that you are drawn in and inhabit with them this new and dark reality.

Part of the skill is to have placed the drama well away from the centre stage, the whole novel revolves around the fact that the valley is forgotten, beyond the back of beyond.  Therefore history is hinted at without the need for grand set pieces, Hitler visits London in a rumour rather than a fully form account.

There is a deep sorrow under this story and as it came to a conclusion you wished for other choices to be made yet you accepted that there were no "other choices" open. What it says about love is hard to understand, what it says about the power of women is in the end uncomfortable.  It is writing at its best and this will linger on.

From the weak reviews of the film adaptation it would appear that failed to live up to the quality to the novel.  

The earth hums in B flat by Mari Strachan

The Earth Hums in B Flat

This is a charming novel despite the darkness of much of the subject matter; adultery, depression, domestic violence, and even murder. Yet these events do not become sensationalised, there is no move towards the voyeuristic here, these become the ordinary backdrop to the life of a young girl moving across that line between childhood and adolescence.

What Gwenni refuses to do is give up the child's view of the world, despite the fury of her mother, she allows the world to remain enhanced despite pressure to "grow up" and the darkness that surrounds her.  This is what made it such a delightful read, I believe, or try to believe, in that enhanced world and so it is joyful to share for a while the life of another believer.  As the novel moves on it is clear that there doesn't need to be an either/or choice between "reality" and "enhancement" - and I hope that we misunderstand St Paul's putting away of childish things when we interpret it as a rejection to the childlike wonder this novel is so richly populated with.

I for one will now be trying to learn to fly while I am awake again...

The Problem of Knowledge by A. J. Ayer

The Problem of Knowledge

I am a bit of a sucker for a Pelican and the subject matter of this one took me back to the great lectures I had in Durham with Richard Smith - but I never quite got my head around those lectures and it is safe to say I didn't get my head around this book, but the pleasure is in the trying.

And, I think, that is really Ayer's point, he can not give us a philosophical proof on the existence of the past, of feelings of others (or even the existence of any other conscious being other than oneself), but at some point we have to acknowledge that despite the philosophical uncertainty the only practical explanation for the world is that there was a past, the only practical explanation for what appear to the numerous other conscious human being you encounter in daily life is that they are in fact conscious, and so on.  Any explanation I seek for the apparent existence of the Pelican Original in front of me other than the fact that there is a thinking being A. J. Ayer who wrote it is beset with greater difficulties than excepting A. J. Ayer exists, however it remains the best explanation and not the 'only' explaination.

But not finding certainty does not mean we should give up the search for truth, and the philosophical models that try and give certainty are clumsy and inelegant.  It is better that we learn is how to hold the two in tension, to acknowledge the philosophical uncertainty while still continuing to life in the world.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451 

Finally got around to actually reading this - it has been on my to read list since 2nd year at Durham (ie over a decade ... opps!). It is a book that is so often referenced that by a kind of osmosis you know it even before you read.  This means that you have to pay an extra special kind of attention to it so you actual encounter the book itself and not an amalgam of hearsay about it.

It is a classic and it holds up under the weight of its own reputation, in many ways seeming to be speak more to us today than to the early fifties (which we now tend to paint as a golden age of civilization). 
What would Bradbury make of us watching live streams of people sleeping in the Big Brother house and everywhere everyone in their personal ipod world tweeting vacumously to the planet?