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Showing posts from 2018

The End of the Year Show 2018

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Books, films, music; but 2018 for me was mainly about books . The thing is, I've kept up a record of books I've read since childhood, in a succession of notebooks, and I noticed this year that - since even if I read little or no books, I still move on to a new page - I would run out of pages in a very few years. So, I bought a new fancy notebook and in thoroughly OCD fashion, copied it all out again. I made a few adjustments to correct various mistakes etc., but things are looking good once more. Especially since it led to a resurrection of my set of Rotring ArtPens, ie. my fountain pens . I ditched my use of disposable cartridges, and fitted them with refillable ones, and then a set of nice inks. Mostly blues and blacks but also red, green and so on. Some have been used to colour code types of book in the notebook - eg. blue for prose, purple for poetry. But more satisfyingly I began to write letters. I knew full well that only one or two friends and acquaintances were lik

Lord Hornblower, by C.S. Forester

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C.S. Forester  was just about my most read author as a boy. He's famous for his Hornblower books, but wrote much more, with several being made into films. The best known is probably The African Queen , which was the last Forester book I read until now. Hornblower is a great character, brave, a leader of men, but also cerebral, sensitive, and with a strong moral core. As part of that he has an enormous streak of self doubt and introspection, which causes him difficulties at times, especially romantic ones, and which can also be off putting for the reader in the later books, of which Lord Hornblower is one. But even in these later volumes, Forester's writing strengths are to the fore: his deep knowledge of history and seafaring, and his knack for writing classic adventure yarns. I lapped up Hornblower as a boy, and any of Forester's other books I could lay my hands on. I'm sure Hornblower fed into my spell as a Royal Navy cadet; indeed, as a Midshipman and then 

Into the Fire, by Elizabeth Moon

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As the cover tells you, Into the Fire is the second book in a series titled Vatta's Peace , which follows a five book series, Vatta's War . 'Vatta' is a family and an interplanetary corporation, but it is also the protagonist, Ky Vatta . Its genre is 'military science fiction'. Elizabeth Moon  is new to me, which may be a sign that I really have been out of it as far as science fiction is concerned, because she's been successful, with several series of novels published. I haven't read the earlier Vatta books, but I've picked up most of what I needed to know from the many flashbacks and references to past events. I bought this book having enjoyed the previous volume in the Vatta's Peace series, Cold Welcome , and I picked up that book on the spur of the moment wandering around a bookshop, and being intrigued by the premise. Cold Welcome is a story of a desperate struggle to survive in an icy and very hostile environment after a space shuttle

The Magician's Nephew, by C.S. Lewis

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Here is a children's book, dating back to 1955, the sixth to be published in C.S.Lewis's  fantasy saga of the magical land of Narnia . I've been doing a lot of nostalgic reading lately, and glancing back through my booklist I noticed I'd given this particular volume a 'star'; and I wondered why. A friend lent me a copy, in this edition ( right ). It's certainly not the first book I've read more than once, but this goes back to childhood, and I'm now looking at it through very different and much more aged eyes. The Magician's Nephew is a prequel to the other Narnia stories, and therefore first in a chronological sense. Modern publishers tend to list it as 'Number One' in the series, but this is unfortunate. You don't have to be a serious critic to agree with almost all of them, that it's best to read the series in order of publication. There's a clear assumption in the text that you're already familiar with details of

An Actual Otter

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I can't resist reporting my sighting of an actual real otter on Wednesday, my first ever sighting of an otter in the wild. Even though I can't show you a picture of it. I did have a camera on me, but I didn't want any fumbling with the camera to distract me from the fleeting glimpses of the animal. This picture is a poor substitute, but at least I did take it myself. It was a couple of years ago, at a country wildlife park in South Devon, near Exeter, called Escot if I remember correctly. I don't think these were British otters, but they were probably the first I'd seen close up. This was during their feeding time display, which I'd recommend - they are very entertaining animals, lively and clearly intelligent. Escot is great, by the way; amongst other things they have a maze which I'd have loved to try, except that just as we got there it was taken over by a paintball game. Anyway, back to Wednesday. I was visiting friends in North Yorkshire, and we

The Amber Spyglass, by Phillip Pullman

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The Amber Spyglass is the third part of Phillip Pullman's  His Dark Materials trilogy. Here follows a few random impressions. I can't in all conscience do a full and proper 'review' because I began it several years ago, only to put it down halfway through. Circumstantial reasons, I don't remember why. Also, it's very much part of the whole, the whole trilogy, which I began even further in the past. But I've just finished it, today, and it's made more of an impact on me than I anticipated. - Back when I stopped, it was frustrating; and I did skim ahead to get the general picture of what happened. Hm. I've yet to find an exception to the rule, that this is never a good idea , especially with a book of any complexity. Pullman's prose is very fine, and needs to be relished and nurtured, and you do lose out on some understanding if you skim, thinking you only have to pick up on main events. As I now know. - This (right) was the edition I bou

Brenda Monk is Funny, by Katy Brand

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I know of Katy Brand as a stand up comic, although I've only seen her on the news satire show, Have I Got News For You . She comes across as being very sharp. And funny. All very promising, because this book is set in the world of stand up comedy. The front and back are covered with quotes from well known writers and comedians, about how funny it is. I picked this up from my local library, part of my unconscious search for variety in my reading this year. I must have thought this would be a good light comic read, but it's actually quite a different kind of book.  Brenda Monk is Funny is the story of a comedian's girlfriend who gets fed up with being the material for his humour and decides to become a stand up comic herself. It's often funny, but not so much from the content of any stand up routines. We're sort of expected to take them for granted; which is okay, because we quickly come to understand that the delivery of comedy is all about crafting the perform

A Quiet Place

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A Quiet Place is a science fiction / horror film which may have got your attention thanks to its USP of a monster which zeroes in on sound. In the poster pic right, star Emily Blunt is trying to keep silent while there's a monster in the house - and she's about to give birth. I don't want this blog to end up a movie review site, and hence don't intend to post about every film I see; I wouldn't have commented on this film, except that the premise has led to attendance at a cinema showing being an interesting experience . The film is very quiet for long stretches. Music and sound are used to heighten tension; but the main characters use sign language a lot of the time for obvious reasons, and for the most part we're listening to ambient sounds, suffering the tension of knowing that since this is a horror film, a sound is going to disrupt the silence at any moment and death is going to come running. So, by all reports I've heard, audiences have tended

Hard Eight, by Janet Evanovich

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Hard Eight is the eighth volume in Janet Evanovich's highly successful series, which has now reached number 24, I believe. So successful that the publishers have long since given up on covers with sexy girls and guns. See the cover of this one - they're slumming it, aren't they? It all began with One For The Money , which described how sassy young Stephanie Plum , native of Trenton, New Jersey, fell into the role of bounty hunter, to chaotic and generally entertaining effect. Evanovich quickly set up a regular supporting cast including ex-hooker Lula, pervy boss Cousin Vinnie, her entire mad family, notably eccentric Granny Mazur, and, most importantly, the two men in her life with whom she maintains off-again on-again relationships, one-time bad boy cop Joe Morelli, and dangerously shady ex-military Ranger. They're all there in Hard Eight , which like all the previous volumes has one ongoing big mystery, alongside a couple of Failure To Attend bond cases for her t

Naiskiekkoa - trying to watch women's ice hockey

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Or, the frustrations of trying to follow the sport on the BBC It's the Winter Olympics, and now is that brief window of time, once every four years, in which my favourite sport, women's ice hockey , makes an appearance on British television. You would think that, as technology advances, the provision of sport on BBC media , paid for by a hefty licence fee, would get better and better. Unfortunately, that isn't the case, and this morning has been a perfect case in point. Right - From the IIHF web site, one of the very few pictures of the game which feature any Finnish players at all. They love the Canadians. Well, so do I, to be fair, but you can see that it's not only the BBC which treats everyone apart from the US and Canada as bit-part players. No niin (as the Finns say). I love women's ice hockey, and going to see some has been a central preoccupation of visits to Finland for some years. I go to Finnish Saturday School and study the language, and natu

The Bucket Shop, by Keith Waterhouse

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It's been a gap of many years since I last read a book by Keith Waterhouse , and it took a very long time, and the invention of the internet, for me to track down The Bucket Shop . It was his fourth novel, dating from maybe not long after he left Leeds and fetched up in London. I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but it's a very used paperback, and not only features stains on many pages, but on one, what looks like a deeply embedded insect wing. I was misled by the title. I thought a 'bucket shop' - a phrase from another age - meant one of those cheap travel agencies. No, here, it's simply a junk shop. William , the central character, wanted to be an antique dealer, but doesn't know his trade, and is clueless about business basics. So, his shop sells odds and ends, mostly at a loss. His only regular 'customer' appears to be a photographer we know only as Pringle , who owes him quite a sum, for items he's rented as props for his wo

Keith Waterhouse

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I wouldn't have felt the need to introduce  Keith Waterhouse  in my student days. Back then, he could scarcely have been more omnipresent, as a writer. His scriptwriting , with Willis Hall and others, was all over London's West End theatre land, as well as television. In fact, only 3/4 years ago I enjoyed a production of one of his best known plays, Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell , by a rep company locally. He was a giant of journalism , as a columnist for the Daily Mirror and later the Daily Mail. Though not listed below, there are half a dozen published collections of his newspaper pieces. And he wrote 17 novels (I'm including the two Pooter books in this regard). But when he died in 2009, while he received many respectful tributes, it didn't make the waves it would have done even only a few years previously. His books were already hard to find, even in one of the larger Waterstones. I suspect he's been branded a man of his time, meaning the Sixties, as far as novels

A Question of Integrity, by Susan Howatch

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A Question of Integrity by Susan Howatch  tells the story of Alice, a young woman who has experienced only disappointment and reached a very low point, who finds kindness and then hope in a Christian community centred on a London church and healing centre. It's led by a charismatic preacher with some special gifts; Alice fixates on him and develops an unhealthy obsession which she finds it hard to come to terms with, until the end of the novel. Nicholas the preacher is a problematic character, both as a type, and as the crux of the story. His gifts, which are described variously in terms of magnetism, healing and hypnosis, have a dark side, and it is his use of those gifts which raise the question of integrity in the book's title. A Question of Integrity  is very different indeed from the genres I usually read. It was a personal gift, and that entered into my attitude to the book. Perhaps I'm implying that I might otherwise have left it alone, or given it up. I don'