Ed Kay
Austen writes insufferable characters well, but it does mean spending a lot of time with insufferable characters. And there are a lot of them in Emma, including the main character. I had understood from 'the zeitgeist' that Emma was a 'matchmaker' but that's not really true: she's a meddler. A matchmaker puts people together successfully; Emma just interferes.
It's also unclear quite why Emma is considered to be so eligible. Everyone praises her beauty but they also seem to think she is clever, whereas she comes across more supercilious. Maybe it's just her fortune.
Otherwise it's the usual plot - will they/won't they in bonnets and carriages. I found I didn't really care for the happiness of any of them.
Patchy.
In the book's introduction, Neil Gaiman explains the purpose of the book is to showcase stories which engender the reader to ask “...and then what happened?” However, the only really compelling story in the collection was by Gaiman himself, an outstanding fantasy story with magic and mystery hovering at the edges. There were other engaging tales, well-written narratives and compelling character studies, but not many. And unfortunately there were too many mediocre - and a couple of downright bad - stories included, which only made me ask “...but WHO CARES?!”
I seldom read auto/biographies but am sometimes compelled to buy one when I find that I'd actually be interested in how someone got to where they are. Good old Ray. I enjoy his TV work and envy his skills and lifestyle. I often wish I could go to Alaska and survive alone in the wilderness for a year or two.
But living in the woods and being self-contained, especially when you're earnest and hard-working as Ray just doesn't make for interesting reading. The poor guy constantly feels the need to defend himself, against what criticism I can't fathom, because he's clearly humble and driven by a passion for his work rather than self-promotion. Perhaps I would have been better with one of his ‘survival handbooks' and picked up some knowledge and gone out into the wilderness myself.
Sorry, Rupert. Your writing is indeed as beautiful as the cover reviewers implied, but the content of your narrative was not as awash with catty tales of celebrity and excess as I'd hoped. I was hoping for gossip and filth, insights and snark and dismissal of ego. Sure, you've clearly had an interesting life, but I don't like you enough to want to hear about it.
Looking for a substitute for Reacher now I've nearly finished that series, I heard good things about this character Parker. He's a bit harder, a bit meaner, and a lot more taciturn, so steps in neatly to fill the hole left wanting revenge fantasies pursued by utterly assured and realistic but invincible protagonists.
Sometimes amusing, witty or quirky, but often just the miserable ‘oh so clever' unnecessary rantings of silly old people.
To be fair, did not finish this admittedly well written book. I'm sure this would be a very worthwhile read for those interested in the Dales and Yorkshire history. I was, however, expecting far more anecdotes and amusing characters than actually appeared, and grew bored.
Terrible, unfunny hypocrite. Frequently points out the lewd behaviour, feeble jokes and misogyny of those he's critiquing while failing to notice that his own reviews are full of the same. Utterly turgid.
Perhaps I need to be more forgiving reading historical fiction in the modern day, but Jesus, how many coincidences? Every single character introduced turned out to be related to another character from an entirely separate section of the plot. Apparently this was a big convention of the day (I know Dickens employs this in Oliver Twist, and similarly Bronte with Jane Eyre - “oh, these ENTIRELY RANDOM STRANGERS are actually my LONG LOST COUSINS!”) but it leaves me cold.
The writing is stunning, though. A bit overly-flowery at times, making the slower sections a trudge, but when he gets it right, Dickens nails it. As he does with the characterisation. Do you ever hate a self-promoting ass as much as you do Pumblechook? Or love a simpleton as you do Joe Gargery? Genius.
Excellent guide along with information to give historical context to the areas you walk through. The Capital Ring seemed to be much better signed than its big brother, the LOOP - especially when its path followed along with other routes such as the Thames Path or Jubilee Greenway. However, there are still areas where signs are absent, or misleading (particular bugbear: not finding signs at complex junctions but instead about 100 yards down the trail, on a straight part of the track, pointing straight on) and it would have been a struggle to find the way without the guide.
The main thing I missed was distances to each of the possible exit points on the route which would have made it much easier to calculate what would be possible in a day's hike, when combining multiple walks.
The first three stories in this collection left me totally cold and disinterested. I almost gave up on the whole book.
But something about the next story really started to draw me in, and then I found myself enjoying most of the rest of the book as much as I had hated the start.
I'm still not sure what changed. My state of mind? Possibly. The subject matter? Probably. I didn't at all empathise with a young girl growing up in Brazil, or care for the early style which was almost ‘magic realism'. But once the narrative began to take hold (the shape of an early romance, which then blossoms over subsequent stories through the marriage, divorce and taking a new lover) I was on firmer ground. I particularly loved “Taken for Delirium” which is a beautiful and heartbreaking meditation on living in the woods and communing with nature. At this point, I not only understood, but yearned to live this life.
Disappointed with the final chapter which seemed to return to the rather obscure and distanced tone of the first, but by this point I'd been mostly won over.
This book was, unfortunately, pretty useless. I made an effort to hunt it down in Milan before I started the trail but it turned out to be a waste of time. There are plenty of apps and online information that I relied upon, and this just became additional weight.
The route is broken down into 45 stages, and each is presented with data in 6 sections.
1. Map
The scale of the map is far too small for this image to be of any use, and the fat line that is drawn to show the path obscures any detail that might be possible to make out. This is worse in large towns where there are many streets and signage tends to be poor.
2. Altimetry: distance, altitude, locations
The altitude map is useful as a reference to determine how difficult a stage is, but the locations on the graph often do not match to any labelled on the map or in the text, and vice versa.
3. Distance and difficulty summary
The ‘summary' of the stages did not match with my experience, and seems mainly to reflect the number of miles. For example, a 16km stage with a lot of steep and slippery climbs is graded ‘easy', while a 30km flat stomp on graded tracks is ‘strenuous' or ‘demanding'.
4. Transport, facilities, accommodation
Quite useful to get a sense of what facilities will be available on the route, though Italy being Italy, there are no guarantees that the advertised supermarkets or grocers will be open when you arrive. Accommodation details were often wrong - I found problems with addresses, phone numbers and emails, and came to rely on more up to date information online.
5. Route description
This section generally had me tearing my hair out with frustration. At well signposted stretches it would give lots of detail, and when the arrows disappeared the book would say ‘follow the arrows'. Descriptions are littered with confusion and error:
* “After the underpass, leave the road to the right on a gravel track the other side of the motorway” - the gravel track is THIS side of the motorway, BEFORE the underpass
* At a roundabout with 4 exits the book advises that you “turn right”
* “At via Palermo head down into town...” - but at the junction that street goes up in both directions! Which way is town, right or left?
* Often vague sentences such as “Follow [street] in [compass direction]” are used for junctions where street names are not visible and there are 3 directions to choose from. The frustration in most cases is that there are always easier and clearer descriptions that could have been provided, such as “Follow the canal”!
6. Significant sites and monuments to visit
Many of these describe ancient monuments that are locked, or closed, or no longer exist. Useful to get a quick list of top sites in larger towns (Lucca, Sienna etc).
Other pilgrims were carrying similar looking books by the same publisher which had very detailed hand-drawn maps which looked to be very useful, so note that this review refers only to this specific version. Note, however, that there are at least 2 map applications available for iPhone and Android that are far more useful for navigation, especially when you're lost.
Love the Parker novels and found this when looking for a new one in a secondhand bookstore.
Grofield is very much in the Parker mould - though as the jacket points out, he's a lot more suave and charming, if not equally cunning and ruthless. Likewise Stark's writing style is as urgent and uncomplicated as in the Parker novels.
The book started off brilliantly and kept me interested, watching the cat and mouse between Grofield and the eponymous ‘damsel' (who perhaps isn't as helpless as that might suggest). However, the second half of the book dragged with a shift in focus to other characters, and overall was a bit of a saggy finale.
Got about halfway through and am have had enough of the ‘world behind the wall' which might be some incredibly clever metaphor for the awful childhood of the girl Emily and the neuroses and anxiety of the narrator, but it's just really boring.
Wanted to like this far more than I did. I thought it was going to be a mystery but all questions are answered within the first 70 pages. The remainder of the book was just filling in the detail around the children's lives, and the breakdown of the marriage of the aunt who is looking for them.
Areas of tension that should have kept you interested were undermined, and unimportant, so there was no tension. For example, who was the father of the baby? Kat loved the child, enjoyed her life, and the story of the rape showed that actually for her it was a mystical, almost wonderful, experience, so there was no anguish, and no impetus for her (or us) to want to pursue or understand it any further. The throwaway reveal is that it is one of the (hunters/loggers)? that buys drugs. But at that point, you don't care, because Kat doesn't.
The main thread of suspense should be whether Maurice is going to escape - but we already know he does, because they found his body right at the start of the book.
Lots of promise, but the book undermines all of its surprises which makes it a mediocre thriller, and there wasn't enough poetry in the writing to make it worthwhile as literary fiction.
Struggled through the first half of this a few months ago as it just did not grab or move me in any way. I don't mind simple writing or tales with meaning or a moral, but here there was just nothing to enjoy. The characters were boring, nothing really happened, and I just didn't care one way or another. It wasn't even particularly funny. Uncovering the book at the bottom of a pile today I realise I just don't have the heart to go back.
Was hoping that this would be a good, short introduction to Steinbeck's more substantial works, and Grapes of Wrath is on my ‘to read' list, but now I'm reconsidering!
Simple, quiet, elegaic: this had a surprisingly profound impact on me. I found myself remembering moments from my past that I hadn't thought about for a long time; people and emotions from when I was very young. This was a joy to read.
This is a well studied and gently paced tale of an eccentric old duke on a quest for knowledge. The majority of the story describes his day to day existence which is never anything less than odd, his journal's providing the main evidence though scattered through with amusing anecdotes as told by his staff (I chuckled out loud on the tube when his maid described finding him hanging upside-down from a tree by his trousers!) The duke is preoccupied with the nature of existence; his explorations into science and shamanism offer many interesting perspectives on the dichotomy of body and soul and our place in the ‘grand scheme'. There are certainly plenty of abstractions to think about.
However, I was always hunting the undercurrent of plot tying the whole piece together, which was often too disguised or subtle for my tastes, if not entirely absent. While entertaining, I sometimes found myself wondering exactly where, if anywhere, the story was heading. I felt a little like the duke himself, wandering lost around his own huge estate, looking for evidence of his own existence.
By the final pages I had given up on there being any point to the story at all, when there was a sudden rush of clues and information which led to the twist which, personally, I had already assumed a few chapters previously. I must say it was a highly entertaining denoument, if a little inexplicable. There was no obvious catalyst to the dramatic change in the duke's behaviour. I would have preferred a more gradual build up of information and direction, and a clearer sense of purpose.
However, if you enjoy books for the characterisation and are not too interested in plot, then this is a very engaging and well written piece.
On the whole the signage on the LOOP is very good, meaning that you could probably find your way around this track for about 80% of the distance without a problem. However, for those areas where the signs are pointing in the wrong direction (for example, it seems the students have enjoyed realigning every single arrow in Kingston) or absent altogether (especially in wooded areas where multiple tracks cross) then this book proves invaluable. Sometimes the descriptions are a bit weird or arbitrary, or just outdated due to the restructuring of fields or the route itself, but even in these cases the Ordnance Survey maps will come to the rescue. I did the Heathrow stretch in the winter and one of the paths was totally flooded and impassable, but the maps allowed me to find a diversion on the streets without any difficulty.
It may be that there's an electronic route available using some kind of smartphone app, rendering even the maps useless. However, there's a wealth of detail included here that adds an extra dimension to the walk, over and above the information provided on the many LOOP or other information panels in various parks or riverside walks. Sharp provides little nuggets of history at relevant points, including interesting diversions to sights off the route that are worth visiting.
I really enjoyed this walk - and I'd recommend it to anyone living in London as a magnificent escape from the urban sprawl, as well as to gain insights into the city itself - and a great deal of that enjoyment was down to this book.
The major problem with this disappointing follow up is that it bulges with MacGuffins. Problems arise and are just resolved arbitrarily and with little sensible explanation.
Jessica's holed up in an impossible position, surrounded by an army trying to kill her. How will she get out of it? Ah yes, the mysterious, all powerful boyfriend will just show up and chop off their heads.
A reverend blows his brains out on live TV, and leaves behind a tape that suggests something awful happened in his past. What awful thing? How can we recreate an entire scene from audio? Oh, it's cool, the FBI have a clever machine that can detect the tiny sound of a child's ribcage being crushed, and where the people in the room are standing whilst watching it.
But who is the boy? There is no information. Oh, yes there is, here comes the mystical boyfriend again with some cryptic numbers on a mirror, leading to a library and a name. That is then cross referenced against a special secret super database curated by a rich tech geek - friend of the mysterious ex boyfriend! - who runs some algorithm to get the answer...
And on and on. How does clever Jessica solve it? Well, she doesn't. The boyfriend does. Seems he knew what was going on all along. Which kinda makes me wish I could read his story, since he's got all the answers.
Maybe he could tell me how the first crime was committed, what happened to the murderous cop, how was he controlled? How did Grandfather do his bullet trick, and how did it help them prepare to save the pope? How did it save the pope? Did it even save the pope?! (Clearly the pope is saved but no one seemed to actually care about it at the time.)
Reading thrillers and crime writing is a little like experiencing a magic trick and then having the secret revealed. There's a puzzle, and you enjoy watching the detective work backwards to piece it all together. The lure of this series is to see even more magical and impossible murders solved by a magic expert and thereby get some insight into the mind of a magician.
However, there was nothing to learn here and no clever twists to marvel at. Shame.
I grew increasingly infuriated with this book. Perhaps I had too high hopes for it. I'd anticipated a literary version of Dan Brown - all the excitment and adventure, but well written.
As a number of other Goodreads reviewers have pointed out, it's actually the direct opposite of Dan Brown. Everything he does badly, Mosse does well. Unfortunately, it also means that what Brown does well, Mosse does badly. Primarily, plotting.
Brown has puzzles and secrets and mysteries and twists and brawls which drive you relentlessly forward. Sure, it's not pretty, but it's engaging. Mosse seems to edge around all of these things: there are chases and fights, but they entail no peril; there are secrets, but they are mundane; there's what I think is supposed to be a twist but it was already clear after 200 of the 550 interminable pages. (Spoiler: Audric Baillard is Sajhe!)
But there are no puzzles. There's no clever working out, or excited discoveries. As a reader you don't feel like you're joining in the uncovering of a mystery. There's just a ring, and a disc, and some books, all of which have some mystical (religious?) powers.
And there's another difference: Brown's books are very much rooted in reality, the grim treachery of religions, and the people who use them for their own ends. Labyrinth is supernatural, though without much explanation or excitement. You pretty soon get bored of people half-recognising other characters, or feeling like they've been somewhere before, but not knowing why. All this tentative, allusive language is an apt representation of reading the book. There's just no way in. There's a ghost of something fun and compelling, but it's evasive.
And there's absolutely no need for this book to be 500 pages. After 400 pages of tedium, there's then 50 pages of exposition where one character just tells another character what other boring stuff happened.
I'm sure that all the historical research would be interesting to anyone who's keen on this period of history - and I certainly learnt a lot more from this than anything Robert Langdon uncovers on his own terrifying thrill rides through Europe.
But if I've bought a ticket to a theme park I'd much rather spend 10 minutes on a rollercoaster than an hour in a lecture theatre.
I was going to give it 3 stars but have wound myself up writing this and realised that I didn't really enjoy it, at all, so have dropped it to 2 stars.
I remember reading 1984 when much younger and being surprised at how readable it was. A simple story, well told, disguising some more thought-provoking ideas and clever satire.
So I should have been prepared to find the same with this book: also very readable, straightforward and funny, but discussing some darker truths.
My reaction to the main character kept veering wildly from frustration and annoyance to sympathy and affection, but this meant I was always engaged in one extreme passion or another. This is not a boring book. Add to that some comic moments and a general, overall amusing tone and rarely was the smile not on my face.
Orwell's writing is just so beautiful and controlled: it takes a lot of skill to make writing look this damn easy.
My favourite image is a description of a nursing home wherein the inhabitants have nothing to talk about except their diseases:
“All over the darkish drawing-room, ageing, discoloured people sat about in couples, discussing symptoms. Their conversation was like the dripping of stalactite to stalagmite. Drip, drip. ‘How is your lumbago?' says stalactite to stalagmite. ‘I find my Kruschen Salts are doing me good' says stalagmite to stalactite. Drip, drip, drip.”
Genius.
Picked this up in a walking hut. Odd to think someone would have carried it with them on a trek, I read it in an hour before dinner! Firstly just random entries, and then when I realised it was intended to be read in order - like a novel, not a dictionary! - I went back to the beginning.
And found myself charmed. A bold concept and executed perfectly. Entries are sometimes a line, others a page: poems or stories or random thoughts or rants or aphorisms or philosophy, but always engaging. Sometimes beautiful, often sad, but always rooted in the reality of being in a relationship. I enjoyed how neurotic the narrator was, how full of doubt: is she really the one? Even after heart wrenching descriptions of his feelings. In fact, that juxtaposition seemed to be the heart of it, and a couple of entries brilliantly capture that duality (I don't have the book now, but the gist being, for each tiny thing she does that twists you up with delight, and melts your heart, there's another habit that drives you insane). The titles (defined words) are rarely mentioned in the entries themselves, and often cause you to reevaluate the meaning of the piece.
I enjoyed how the format forces a non linear plot, so you're aware of... later developments early in the book, but the author still manages to reveal things in stages to some extent such that you feel there's some progression occurring.
But: there's no real ending - or beginning. Just like a dictionary. And just like love. Who can say exactly at which moment this magical thing occurs? Love affairs and relationships are made up of tiny instants, fleeting moments, simple words. This book is both a great descriptor of, and metaphor for, love itself.