Books: The Twits

As previously mentioned, I like to reread old childhood books when I go home, and I've been working my way throaugh the Roald Dahls. Most recently I reread The Twits. It was a favorite when I was younger, and it's still great now. For me, it's on a par with The BFG.

It's about two really nasty, ugly, disgusting people called Mr. and Mrs. Twit. They spend their time being horrible to animals and plotting horrible tricks to play on each other. Until one day the family of monkeys Mr. Twit keeps in a cage in the garden come up with a clever plan to rid themselves of the horrible Twits, with the help of their friends, the birds. What makes this one so good is more of the brilliant playing with words that Roald Dahl did so well in The BFG, the wonderfully creative nasty things that the Twits did to each other, and the very sticky end that they came to. It's all very satisfying.

Books: We Didn't Mean to Go to Sea (spoilers!)

As previously mentioned, I like to revisit childhood favorites every now and then. This book isn't actually one I read as a kid, but I loved the series. It's the 9th book in the Swallows and Amazons series, which I've been slowly rereading. It follows the accidental adventure of the Walker children (the Swallows), who sail across the sea to Holland by themelseves. At the start of their holidays they meet a man who agrees to take them for a trip on his boat. Unbeknownst to the children he has an accident while on land getting supplies and is delayed. Meanwhile both a fog and the tide come up. Their anchor chain is too short to hold them in the high water, and because of the fog they don't realise they're drifting out to sea until it's too late. Because of bad weather and treacherous rocks, they decide that the safest thing for them to do is to keep sailing on until the weather changes, and in the morning they find themselves in Holland. They also rescue a drowning kitten from the sea on the way. Luckily in Holland they meet their father who is on his way to England and he helps them sail the ship back to England safely.

I really enjoyed this book, and the whole series so far. The circumstances in which they find themselves sailing to Holland are written in a very believable way. The story takes palces over a much shorter timescale than other Arthur Ransome books, making it much more intense. The long, anxious night, the struggle against the storm, the seasickness and the struggle to stay awake are really gripping. And, OK, the end is a total deus ex machina, but I don't mind that. Like the whole series so far, it's a great read.

 

Book Reviews: The Magic Finger (spoilers)

As I've mentioned before, I like to reread my old childhood books when I go home, and recently I've been working my way through the Roald Dahls. The latest one I've read is The Magic Finger. It's a very short one, and I got through it in one sitting, but it certainly packs a punch. It's about a little girl with a magic finger that tingles when she gets angry and makes weird and wonderful magical things happen. She uses this magic finger to teach her hunting-mad neighbours not to hunt, by forcing them to swap places with a family of ducks and learn some empathy.

As I said, it's small but mighty. It's very well written, and the anti-hunting message comes through loud and clear. The difference between good and evil is also much less clear-cut than in a lot of other children's books. Even though the family of hunters is clearly the villains, as you follow them on their journey as ducks you can't help sympathising with them and how lost, confused and uncomfortable they feel. Their redemption is very genuine and you're left feeling that they really have changed and are on the right side now. Not bad for something only a few dozen pages long!

Book Reviews: The Ambassador's Mission

This is another book by Trudi Canavan, set in the same universe as her Black Magician trilogy and her The Magician's Apprentice prequel. It's the first book in a trilogy called The Traitor Spy trilogy. It's got many of the same characters as the Black Magician trilogy, but the focus has shifted onto the next generation.

I liked the jump forward in time and how the world I knew was facing new threats and challenges which were very different to previous books. Though I liked the new characters, I actually thought that the older characters were still the more interesting group. The younger generation seemed to lack their own identities and were merely their parents' children. As the start of a trilogy it works well, but considered by itself it's not as good. The ending isn't very satisfying and there are a lot of questions left unanswered. The focus seems to have been on setting up the next books rather than having much action in this one. Still, it has achieved what it meant to though, in that I'm eager to find out what happens in the next book.

Book Reviews: The Magician's Apprentice

The Magician's Apprentice is a prequel, from one of my favorite authors, Trudi Canavan. It's written as ancient histroy to her Black Magician trilogy. The Black Magician trilogy concerns the goings on in the Magician's Guild in the land of Kyralia. The Magician's Apprentice is set long before, and is about how the Guild was set up, and about how one young apprentice discovered the secrets of healing magic, which had eluded magicians for so long. There is also a third important character, Stara, a young woman from Sachaka, Kyralia's enemy. In Sachaka women are very much second class citizens, and so Stara runs away and starts an organisation called the Traitors. She wants to set up a women's sanctuary, but in later books the organisation has also become guerilla fighters and assassins. As a prequel it works well. When it's set there is no Guild for educating young magicians and instead magicians each take on an apprentice and teach them individually. But of course everybody teaches slightly different things. The way the magicians come to the conclusion that setting up a guild to share knowledge would be a good idea is convincing, and the way the young magician, Tessia, slowly discovers the secrets of healing magic is very good too. There's a properly nasty and threatening villain, Takado, who drives the plot forward nicely.

I do feel, though, that it falls into a trap, that plenty of prequels do, of being more concerned with fitting into the larger narrative than with working well on its own. The main story could have been more exciting, and there's a shocking bit in the epilogue where, with NO warning, you find that in subsequent years Tessia's master was assassinated. I know the epilogue was trying to sound like a history book, but I could have done without that bit.

Book Reviews: The BFG

As previously mentioned, I like to go back and reread childhood books sometimes. Well, a lot of the time actually. Lately I've been working my way through the Roald Dahls. This is definitely the best so far! It's gloriously creative and silly with a big victorious finale. I love the super imaginative descriptions of the weird Giant Country and catching, mixing and blowing dreams. And the frobscottle with the bubbles going down, of course. It's got genuinely detestable villains and loveable heroes. The best bit is the words though. Apparently it was inspired by Roald Dahl's wife, who had had several strokes and was struggling to speak. Often her words came out a bit jumbled up and he used this as inspiration for the BFG's style of talking. Even though he uses a lot of made up words you always know exactly what he means and it makes the book much more fun and colourful. And if it seems a bit cruel to write a book that seems to be making fun of her, Roald Dahl did also more-ore-less single handedly teach her how to speak properly again.

Book Reviews: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stane

As previously mentioned, I'm a masive fan of Harry Potter. This is the Scots translation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. I really enjoyed reading this! It went a little slowly at first as I was getting used to the new language patterns, but I soon sped up. I read the entire thing in a Scottish accent in my head. It was really interesting reading something so familiar in a different style, and really interesting seeing a style of speaking in print that I'd only heard spoken before. In my head it sounded just liked several ex colleagues! And my Scots came on leaps and bounds! I learned lots of new Scots word. A cat is a bawdrins, a toad is a puddock and an owl is a hoolet. I thought the translators did a really good job with it, being true to the original, while making something new at the same time.

Book Reviews: A Web of Air

Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines quartet is one of my favorite series of all time.   It's about a post-apocalyptic world where cities are mobile and travel across the world eating each other.   A Web of Air is the second book of the prequel series.   The first book, Fever Crumb, told the story of how London became the first city to become mobile.   At the end of the book, the main character, Fever Crumb, runs away with two orphaned children.   When the second book opens Fever and children have joined a travelling theatre and Fever is their lighting technician.   They reach a city which seems to be in our Portugal.   It's been built in an ancient bomb crater and the buildings are on rails and slide up and down the walls.  Along with people the city is home to a race of super-intelligent seagulls called angels who have learned to speak human language.   Fever meets a reclusive boy called Arlo who is experimenting with flying machines.   Fever decides to help him.   The two make great progress. but enemies don't want the project to succeed.   Arlo and Fever move to a more remote island to work and incorporate some ancient technology into their machine.   They succeed (and fall in love) but their enemies ultimately catch up with them and their flying machine is destroyed.  Arlo feels betrayed by Fever and disappears.   At this point Fever's parents catch up with her and take her back to London.   So not what you'd call a happy ending. 

This book's strength lies not in the story, or in the characters, but in Philip Reeve's imaginary landscapes.   Though brilliant, Fever is not a particularly likeable main character.   This is because of her engineer's upbringing.   She has been taught to be cold and logical.   Despite knowing this about her I still find it hard to empathise and warm up to her.   However, I loved the idea of the city in the bomb crater, the moving buildings and the talking seagulls.   Very original and creative.   A good read, but still not as good as Mortal Engines, or Larklight, Philip Reeve's steampunk series.

A Short History of Nearly Everything: Measuring a Meridian

"If you had to select the least convivial scientific field trip of all time, you could certainly do worse than the French royal Academy of Sciences' Peruvian expedition of 1735.   Led by a hydrologist named Pierre Bouguer and a soldier-mathematician named Charles Marie de la Condamine, it was a party of scientists and andvetures and who travelled to Peru with the purpose of triangulating distances through the Andes.

At the time people had lately become infected with a powerful desire to understand the Earth - to determine how old it was, and how massive, where it hung in space, and how it had come to be.   The French party's goal was to help settle the question of the circumference of the planet by measuring the length of one degree of meridian (or one-360th of the distance around the planet) along a line reaching from Yarouqui, near Quito, to just beyond Cuenca in what is now Ecuador, a distance of about 320 kilometres.

Almost at once things began to go wrong, sometimes spectacularly so.   In Quito, the visitors somehow provoked the locals and were chased out of town by a mob armed with stones.   Soon after the expedition's doctor was murdered in a misunderstanding over a woman.   The botanist became derranged.   Otheres died of fevers and falls.   The third most senior member of the party, a man named Jean Godin, ran off with a thirteen-year-old girl and could not be induced to return.

At one point the group had to suspend work for eight months while La Condamine rode off to Lima to sort out a problem with their permits.   Eventually he and Bouguer stopped speaking and refused to work together.   Everywhere the dwindling party went it was met with the deepest suspicions from officals who found it difficult to believe that a group of French scientists would travel halfway around the world to measure the world.   That made no sense at all.  Two and a half centuries later, it still seems a reasonable question.   Why didn't the French make their measurements in France and save themselves the all the bother and discomfort of their Andean adventures?

The answer lies partly with the fact that eighteenth century scientists, the French in particular, seldom did things simply if an absurdly demanding alternative was available, and partly with a practical problem problem that had arisen with the English astronomer Edmond Halley many years before - long before Bouguer and la Condamine dreamed of going to South America, much less had a reason for doing so.

(...)

They chose the Andes because they needed to measure near the equator, to determine if there really was a difference in sphericity there, and because they reasoned that mountains would give them good sightlines.   In fact, the mountains of Peru were so contantly lost in coud that the team often had to wait weeks for an hour's clear surverying.   On top of that, they had selected one of the most nearly impossible terrains on Earth.   Peruvians refer to their landscape as muy accidentado - "much accidented" - and this it most certainly is.   Not only did the French have to scale some of the world's most challenging mountains - mountains that defeated even their mules - but to reach the mountains they had to ford wild rivers, hack their way through jungles, and cross miles of high, stony, desert, nearly all of it uncharted and far from any source of suppplies.   But Bouguer and La Condamine were nothing if not tenacious, and they stuck to the task for nine and a half long, grim, sun-blistered years.   Shortly before concluding the project, word reached them that a second French team, taking measurements in northern Scandinavia (and facing notable discomforts of their own, from squelching bogs to dangerous ice floes), had found that a degree was in fact longer near the poles, as Newton had promised.   The Earth was 43 kilometres stouter when measured equatorially than when measured from top to bottom around the poles.

Bouguer and La Condamine thus had spent nearly a decade working towards a result they didn't wish to find only to learn now that they weren't even the first to find it.   Listlessly they completed their survery, which confirmed that the first French team was correct.   Then, still not speaking, they returned to the coast and took separate ships home."

Book Reviews: Going Solo

This is another autobiography by Roald Dahl.   This one is about his time in the air force after leaving school.   It's obviously a story about courage, but it's also one about exotic adventures in a far-off land, but mostly it's just about a young man trying to find his way in the world.   It's also about how much surviving a battle is down to chance.   Very harrowing.   The number of near death experiences in this is...quite an eye-opener.   I enjoyed this one much more than Boy.   Again though, some thing that comes through very strongly is the strong relationship between Roald Dahl and his mother.   The ending, where Roald Dahl is shipped home due to injuries and is reunited with his mother moved me to tears.   Perhaps my favorite bit though, is the description of the people he met on the way out to Africa.   It reminds me so much of my life in an expat community.

“What I remember so clearly about the voyage is the extraordinary behaviour of my fellow passengers.   I had never before encountered that peculiar breed of Englishman who spends his whole life working in distant corners of British territory.   Please do not forget that in the 1930s the British Empire was still very much the British Empire, and the men and women who kept it going were a race of people that most of you have never encountered and now you never will.   I consider myself very lucky to have caught a glimpse of this rare species while it still roamed the forests and foot-hills of the Earth, for today, it is totally extinct.   More English than the English, more Scottish than the Scots, they were the craziest bunch of humans I shall ever meet.   For one thing, they spoke a language of their own.   If they worked in East Africa, their sentences were sprinkled with Swahili words, and if they lived in India then all manner of dialects were intermingled.   As well as this, there was a whole vocabulary of much-used words that seemed to be universal among all these people.   An evening drink, for example, was always a sundowner.   A drink at any other time was a chota peg.   One’s wife was the memsahib.   To have a look at something was to have a shufti.   And from that one, interestingly enough, RAF/Middle East slang for a reconnaissance plane in the last war was a shufti kite.   Something of poor quality was shenzi.   Supper was tiffin and so on and so forth.   The empire builders’ jargon would have filled a dictionary.   All in all, it was rather wonderful for me, a conventional young lad from the suburbs, to be thrust suddenly into the middle of this pack of sinewy sunburnt gophers and their bright bony little wives, and what I liked best of all about them was their eccentricities.  

It would seem that when  the British live for years in a foul and sweaty climate among foreign people they maintain their sanity by allowing themselves to go slightly dotty.   They cultivate bizarre habits that would never be tolerated back home, whereas in far-away Africa or in Ceylon or in India or in the federated Malay states they could do as they liked.   On the SS Mantola just about everybody had his or her own particular maggot in the brain, and for me it was like watching a kind of non-stop pantomime throughout the entire voyage.”

 

Book Reviews: Boy

This is Roald Dahl's own account of his childhood.   It describes his time at school, his friends and their escapades, his family and long summer holidays in Norway.   I enjoyed re-reading it, but somehow I wanted more from it.   I wanted the autobiography of one of the most brilliantly creative and imaginative and disgusting children's writers to be full of weird occurences, colourful characters and wacky adventures.   Instead it mostly seems to consist of being miserable at school.   There are a few nasty medical procedures described as well, reminding us how recently we didn't have things such as anaesthetics.   It's not a very happy book.   What does come through is what a great woman Roald Dahl's mother was and what a great influence she had on him and how strong their relationship was.   She sounded like a very strong and brave lady.   And his descriptions of Norway make you desperate to go and spend long summer days exploring the fjords alone to your heat's content.

    

A Short History of Nearly Everything: Atoms

From A Short History of Nearly Everything:

"Atoms, in short, are very abundant.

They are also fantastically durable.   Because they are so long-lived, atoms really get around.   Every atom you possess has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you.   We are each so atomically numerous and so vigourously recycled at death that a significant number of our atoms - up to a billion for each of us, it has been suggested - probably once belonged to Shakespeare.   A billion more each came from Buddha and Genghis Khan and Beethoven, and any other historical figure you care to name.   (The personages have to be historical, apparently, as it takes the atoms some decades to become thoroughly redistributed; however much you may wish it, you are not yet at one with Elvis
Presley.)"

Book Reviews: Married to a Bedouin

This book first came to my attention a few years ago on a trip to Jordan.   The book was in every book shop there.   It's the true story of a New Zealand woman who went to Petra in Jordan on a gap year and fell in love with a Bedouin tribesman.   They got married, had children, and she stayed in Jordan until his death.   Petra is such an amazing place, and it was great to learn about it from the point of view of someone who's lived there.   The book describes in detail what it was like to live as a Bedouin in the 70s, in an ancient tomb, carved into a cliff.   It's fascinating!   Despite the author's strong feelings on the subject, I was quite glad when all the Bedouin were moved from the ancient site that they'd been treating so carelessly.   Its is sad that their way of life was lost, but in my eyes an ancient site as amazing as Petra is more important.   It gave me a real insight into another culture as well.   Made me more understanding.   And she's kind of living my dream too.   I often think I'd love to run away and live in a cave.   There are certain aspects of the writer's personality I didn't like, but apart from that I would thoroughly recommend this book.

Book Reviews: A Venetian Affair

A Venetian Affair is a really interesting book.   It's the true story of an 18th century love affair between a member of the Venetian ruling class and the illegitimate daughter of an English baronet.   They couldn't get married because she illegitimate, foreign and a protestant, but they carried on their passionate affair for many years.   The story was published by one of the man's descendants, and is told through the couple's real love letters, with commentary by the author.   It's a fascinating look at 18th century life, and a reminder that people never change.   Sadly this isn't a fairytale and there's no happy ending here.   The couple end up splitting up. What I enjoyed most about the book wasn't the love affair (bits did get a bit tedious, with jealousy and lovers' tiffs), but the historical aspects.   We get a first hand glimpse of 18th century Venice, Paris, London and people like Casanova and Napolean.   It's a really interesting read.

 

Book Reviews: These Happy Golden Years

This one is possibly my favourite of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books.   It's the book in which Laura leaves home to be a teacher for the first time, starts spending more time with Almanzo, and at the end of the book Laura and Almanzo get married.   It's a very sweet and old-fashioned courtship.   They have their first kiss only after they get engaged.   But what makes Laura such a likeable character is how she doesn't just fall into his arms.   She resists his advances for months, and when she thinks he prefers someone else she gets angry and tells him to sod off, rather than dissolving into tears.   She's so feisty!   The first few chapters are truly painful to read too.   When Laura is stuck staying with a highly unpleasant woman and she feels so trapped and homesick we feel her despair.   It's great writing.  

What always strikes me about these books is how different everything was back then.   Laura becomes a teacher even though she really doesn't want to, to please her mother.   The idea that my mother would tell me what job to do is very alien to me.   As is Laura's becoming a schoolteacher at fifteen, and teaching pupils older than herself.   Mad.   These books have taught me so much about the past, and Laura is possibly one of my favourite book characters ever.   And it's even better than she was real.

Book Reviews: The Bride's Farewell

I have to say I find Meg Rosoff a bit hit and miss.   I loved How I Live Now, hated Justin Case, quite liked What I Was and didn't think much of There is No Dog.   This one falls firmly into the Loved It category.   It seems to be a more grown-up novel than the aforementioned others.   The pace is slower, the writing less frenetic, but it still has the Meg Rosoff twists and turns and rambling adventure in which the characters are buffeted to and fro by Life.   It's about a young woman called Pell who runs away from home on the night before her wedding.   Her little brother follows her, and it looks like the two are setting off on a glorious adventure together.   But then her brother is kidnapped, and her horse is stolen.   Pell begins a meandering, often disastrous journey to get her brother and horse back.   It's a totally unpredictable book.   I'm usually a slow reader, but I got through this in a day.   Well worth it.

Book Reviews: Little Town on the Prairie

Another Laura Ingalls Wilder book.   They're semi-autobiographical books about life growing up as a pioneer girl.  This one is just as good as the previous ones.   It's more joyful than The Long Winter.   In stark contrast to the books like On the Banks of Plum Creek this one sees Laura beginning to spend a lot more time in town, socialising with other people.   And it's good to see out heroine having some fun.   A lot of the focus of this book is on the family trying to get together enough money to send Laura's sister Mary to college.   Laura gets a job in town sewing shirts to help raise money, and sees things she's never seen before, like drunkeness.   It's odd to think how taboo it was for a respectable young girl to get a job back then.   And of course there's the start of the great romance with Almanzo.   Not that Laura really knows what's going on at the time. All in all, despite it being a very different type of book to the earlier ones, this book is still just as charming and engaging and I would highly recommend it.  

  

Books: Hook's Pictorial Edinburgh

I got a lovely present from my grandparents a little while ago.   It was a book of photographs of Edinburgh, called Hood's Pictorial Edinburgh.   They bought on a holiday to Edinburgh during the 30s.   All the photos are from that time, and I love it!   I've always loved old photos of familiar towns, because I find it very interesting to see how they've changed.   It really is a lovely book.   Here are a few photos from it:

Book Reviews: Traction City

Traction City is a short story, written for World Book Day 2011, by Philip Reeve, one of my favorite writers.   It was published along with some short horror stories, called The Teacher's Tales of Horror, by Chris Priestley.   Philip Reeve wrote a series of books called the Mortal Engines Quartet (which is brilliant!), and this little story takes place in that universe, and uses some of the same characters.   It's about a policeman hunting a Stalker aboard the moving city of London.   A Stalker is a piece of ancient technology, a half-mechanical, half-organic warrior.   It's very well-written, and even though it's only very short it manages to be very exciting and scary.   For fans of the series it's a very interesting look at some parts of the universe that weren't explored in the books, but it works as a stand-alone story too.   The Teacher's Tales of Horror is worth a read too.   Some genuinely creepy stories.

        

Book Reviews: The Casual Vacancy

Being a massive fan of the Harry Potter books I was pretty nervous when I picked this up.   I knew it was going to be nothing like Harry Potter, and by all accounts nowhere near as good, but my curiosity forced my hand.   I needed to know what J.K. had been up to.   It centres around a local election.   It turns into a pretty fierce and dirty fight and brings out the worst in a lot of the characters.   It's told from the point of view of lots of different characters.   Perhaps a few too many to be honest.   It takes a while to get them all sorted out in your head.   I thought I might like it because I enjoy her humour and characters more than her storytelling, and even a book with no magic in it would surely still have just as many funny bits and characters just as appealing.  I was wrong.   Just about every character in this is detestable.   And while the humour is definitely still there, it's a lot more well hidden.   The humour in this comes from the skilled way J.K. depicts a small, claustrophobic rural community and its small minded petty people who care more about image and their own comfort than their neighbours' welfare.   I think just about every character reminds me of one or more of my parents' friends.   It's surprisingly gritty.   There's plenty of sex, drugs, self-harm, poverty, bullying and people generally being awful to each other.   And it's convincing too.   I never thought J.K., the author of Harry Potter, would be able to do grit, but it's properly shocking and dark.   There's so much conflict between children and parents too.   There doesn't seem to be a single happy family in the village.   Really makes you think about what's under the surface and what seemingly happy people are hiding.   And of course it doesn't have a happy ending.   The wrong person wins the election, the socialists lose their fight and children die.   I can't say I really enjoyed this book.   It's well-written, interesting, insightful, moving, but not really my sort of thing.  I much prefer my books with some magic in them.