Ed Kay
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.
I love this book. One one level it's a simple - and simply written - story of a young magician battling against an evil force, but this is no wishy washy Harry Potter cartoon. Instead, we also get profound commentary on pride, ambition and self knowledge. The hero, Ged, is complicated, and flawed. His fight is not only external, but internal, and he is changed by his adventures.
Le Guin's world is beautifully drawn and cleverly imagined. There is an integrity to the magic here that is absent from many other fantasy novels. I find it incredibly frustrating reading about characters who use magic in certain circumstances but not others, with no real explanation as to why (Potter, Strange & Norrel), other than it suits the plot. There is none of that here. Magic is powerful, and consequential, and should not be deployed at a whim. This not only drives the plot but also provides a philosophical underpinning to the novel, akin to Spiderman's edict that with great power comes great responsibility.
Figured I should read an Agatha Christie and found this in a second hand bookstore so took my chance. The writing is very good, I can't argue with that. It's a great skill to sketch out about 15 unique characters in such short time, and balance the unveiling of the mystery without giving too much away. The evidence is laid out neatly and well summarised at various points using devices such as maps, reproductins of Poirot's own notes and helpful conversations amongst the investigators.
Unfortunately, though, it seemed to be totally pointless even trying to play along, let alone work out ‘whodunnit', since the ending is such a ludicrous cheat: everyone's the murderer! I mean, sure, it makes sense, but the fact that this guy was the driver and that woman was the cook is something we can never have known. All the ‘evidence', therefore, is pure lies. Everything is a red herring.
Just seemed like a massive cheat to me.
I might like to try another Christie at some point, but I'd prefer it if it was just a straightforward murder mystery with one assailant!
Hilarious and failed attempt at replicating the ‘Jack Reacher' formula.
Reacher is generally ridiculous, but remains almost plausible if you suspend your disbelief and commit to the fairy tale world that Lee Child creates.
This guy, on the other hand, demands an investment of faith bordering on the religious - and even then the story barrels on past implausibility into the preposterous and farcical.
The White House is blown up in the first 100 pages, for goodness sake, and things just get more ludicrous from there.
Some of my favourite quotes:
Was he really going to drive out to Mount Weather, now, after almost forty hours without sleep?
Yes.
He spun, took a knee, and fired two shots. He knew they had better be perfect shots, or else he was dead. He wouldn't have time to take a third.
BOOM. BOOM.
Luke saw no movement, as all became still. Finally, there was silence. He looked outside and saw the two men, both dead, both with perfect head shots.
He felt excruciating pain as he felt the bullet graze his arm. Blood squirted everywhere.
But he knew from experience it was a flesh wound. It was a small price to pay for saving her life.
I ordered this for my Kindle assuming it was some kind of ‘self-help' organisational tool that would turn me into a productivity wizard. The fact I was totally wrong was in no way a disappointment. I found this a riveting read. Gawande writes with real vigour, mixing anecdote with cold hard statistical fact and marshalling what becomes an incredibly strong and urgent argument. It's astounding that something as simple as a checklist has the power to increase surgical (and no doubt standard procedural) outcomes with very little cost, and bewildering that such an evidence-driven industry such as medicine would be resistant to something which promises great improvements with very little cost. This should be required reading for all NHS managers.
I feel slightly churlish giving such an incredibly intricate and well written book so few stars, but unfortunately, I just didn't enjoy it all that much. There were too many characters introduced so slowly and in such detail I had forgotten who many of them were by the time they reappeared, and I spent a lot of time hoping for some kind of recap so I could once again get back on track with what was going on.
Having started this while in New Zealand, it was fun trying to imagine the modern town of Hokitika reduced to such squalor and frenetic activity, like the antipodean version of the wild west. Catton certainly has a brilliant command of psychology and behaviour, imbuing all of her characters with unique and complex motivations. But the only one I really cared about was Staines, and the love story with him and Anna is certainly the highlight of the book.
There are many good reviews elsewhere on Goodreads which elaborate on all the clever structural and astrological tricks that are employed throughout the novel, but most of them went over my head. It's not a great mystery, it's certainly not a page turner, and it's at least 300 pages too long. But I was still mightily impressed by it, while remaining mostly bored.
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.
Really wanted to like this as bizarre short stories are my kind of thing. Started excellently with the Summer People - subtle, mysterious and a touch sinister. But after that i don't really know what happened. The tales got a bit more convoluted, unnecessary. I found I was wrong footed with lots of similar sounding names, or complex and confusing sentences. This is a terrible review because I can't articulate what it was that I didn't like, but basically I found it hard work when I had hoped it would be deliciously light. Not so put out I wouldn't consider reading another of her collections, but it would be last chance saloon!
The voice of Jack Sparks is brilliantly rendered: cocksure, brash, full of himself. And totally deluded. I found the first half of the book more compelling than the second, when things started to get just a bit too silly. But since I read the book in one day, it clearly had me hooked, and 3 stars would not really do it fair justice.
So many names, to go with all the races and peoples and legends and languages and countries and cities and histories, that they all start to blur into one random character string and you forget who everyone is supposed to be. And sooooo loooooong. But I guess that comes with the territory.
Thought I was a fantasy fan, but perhaps not the sweeping epics. I was bored by LOTR, I was bored by this for much of the time. Horrified to discover that this is part one of a trilogy - and that trilogy is only one of a set of NINE sequences about the Riftwars. You're very welcome to it.
Having said all that, I can't deny I was swept up at times, and despite the tedium I found I did care and even though most of it was entirely formulaic and predictable, I was still happy when “things turned out alright in the end”.
I don't doubt that those critics hailing the author as “essential” and “authentic” are right, because I can recognise his unique and bold storytelling voice. However, that doesn't mean I like it. I can look at a beautifully rendered painting and not feel moved by it.
And many of these stories left me baffled, or just disinterested in the squalid lives he was describing. “Time and Again” stands out with a clever narrative, but the rest are unmemorable.
Perhaps most damning is the fact it took me 5 months to get through the book, as I could never manage more than two stories at a time, and never felt inclined to pick it up for a while afterwards....
I think I prefer King's shorter works, because often with his novels I find he can go on and on and on, run out of steam and then slap a crappy ending on it. With shorter works, at least the bad endings come before you've invested so much in the story.
Not that he's a bad writer - in fact, it's because you can get so lost in the worlds he creates that the bad endings are like a slap in the face.
(I found it quite funny to find, in one of the story ‘intros', a complaint from the author that the TV movie ‘I Bury The Living' was wrecked by its denouement, and his wish that someone would remake and fix it. How about you rewrite the end of Needful Things, then, Steve?!)
His ability to sketch a scene or a character with a few strokes is on display in this volume, as is his imagination, some fantastic ideas (what if...) and - dare I say it - even one killer ending. He also showcases that he doesn't have to rely on horror or sci-fi to tell a good tale. In fact, all of my favourites here are just these kind of stories: character studies.
‘Morality' is a brilliant thought experiment riffing on the old premise: what would you do for a million dollars? ‘Premium Harmony' and ‘Herman Wouk is Still Alive' are two stunning little vignettes of desperate lives and sorry ends.
‘Under the Weather' is a great little tale of delusion (with the second best ending of the book); ‘Blockade Billy' is a proper Boys Own sporting adventure, (with a Kingian twist); and ‘Drunken Fireworks' is a pretty hilarious tale of back country one-upmanship.
I also enjoyed his attempt at poetry in the style of the Ancient Mariner: ‘The Bone Church' telling the maniacal tale of death and hallucinations deep in the jungle, in the voice of a man driven mad by the experience and faring worse than those who never made it back.
Most of the ‘typical' King stories here were of course entertaining and fun to read (a Kindle that predicts the future, a malevolent devil in the guise of a small boy, a monster car from another dimension) but for me, the glory of this collection are the stories that ditch the silly gimmicks and get to the heart of who we are.
King includes an anecdote about meeting a lady in the supermarket who recognises him as the author of “scary stories” that she doesn't care for. Instead she prefers “uplifting stories, like ‘Shawshank Redemption'”.
“I wrote that, too” he says.
“No you didn't” the lady replies, and goes on her way.
This sums up how I feel about this book, and perhaps King in general. He has such capacity for hope and beauty and can startle us with a view of ourselves and the human condition (I think this is why his horror leaves us so breathless and engaged) - but this element of his range is often lost or ignored in the majority of his books.
King clearly writes what he loves, and that, mainly, is horror. But it's a shame that his chosen genre and populist tag overshadows his talents, and that critics and fans alike overlook these less fantastical revelations of his skill.
Great little volume wherein a master craftsman explains why and how he writes.
We begin with a “CV”: a series of vignettes from the writer's life. Snippets of memory, anecdotes and seemingly random reminiscences that offer a fascinating insight into what made Stephen King Stephen King. Plus a great deal of huffing and puffing about why writing about writing is a pain in the ass, and that just because he can do it well doesn't necessarily mean he can or wants to explain to others how to do it.
Then he goes on to do exactly that, simply and carefully, but thoroughly.
First up, the “Toolbox”: a brief primer on grammar, vocabulary and style. Then to the meat of the matter, “On Writing” itself. How you put your toolbox to use and craft a story that people want to read. Suffice it to say, he makes it sound very simple.
One thing that stood out, and amused me a little, was his discussion of plotting. He proudly expounds on how his stories evolve organically according to wherever the characters take him. To me, this is the only wishy washy part of the whole book, and since I HATE his endings (despite, or because of, loving 99.9% of the rest of his lengthy novels) it explained quite a lot.
Finally he ends with a short and brutal story of near death and horrific recovery - except this isn't a fiction, it's his real life. During the writing of this book he was run down while out for his daily constitutional, and this chapter reveals how writing brought him back to life.
Finishing with a neat example of how to edit a first draft, as well as a reading list that would take you a lifetime to get through, it's a perfect, neat and brilliant summary of a writer's life and motivations.
Inspiring.
Haven't read much King lately and disappointed to find he's still in need of an editor with a butcher's knife to slash away the dead meat. Far too long. Also found a lot of the exposition ringing false, in particular the descriptions of technology. At times it was like asking my grandpa to describe the internet. Noticed that his wife Tabby is thanked for her assistance explaining mobile phones. Can't help but think someone under the age of 70 might have been a better advisor. Liked the characters though these also felt like they were veering on the edge of caricature. He can still drive a plot and raise the tension like a master, but wonder if he's losing touch with the Americana he used to convey so well
As one of the generation which fell between the stools of antiquated communication and modern technology, I was always a fan of the handwritten letter and miss that personal touch lost in email and social media. This is certainly a grand reminder of the beauty and elegance that handwritten notes can bring to our lives, and it has inspired me to endeavour to awaken this old habit in the new year.
Shepherd offers some useful tips on phraseology for more difficult letters - condolences in particular. However her tone is often trite, bordering on patronising, and there's really only so many times you can talk about fine paper and quality ink.
But on the whole a good little meditation on real communication in a digital age. Thanks Katie!
Got this mainly for the boxing story “Fifty Grand”, which was excellent. Unfortunately I'm not a fan of the ‘nothing happens' variety of short story that make up 90% of this book. Sure, Hemingway's spare prose might be good, but when it services inconsequential tales filled with faint characters, there's just not much to enjoy.
Not read one for a while. Airport. Picked it up. Just like another cup of coffee. Then read it. Turned the pages and looked at them. Not my favourite, not my least favourite. But somewhere in between. Mid-range Reacher. But mid-range Reacher is still better than another high end book of the month. Solid. Reliable. Comfortingly familiar. Reacher never gets less than three stars.
So. Boring. Unlike the first book which constantly unfolds with new characters and revelations, this one takes 200 pages for something to happen and another 200 for people to start making progress understanding it. In the meantime we read, and reread, that the characters involved in three separate investigations have so many questions and just don't get it. “Blomkvist puzzled over these questions and then made himself coffee and a sandwich”. Ugh.
Interesting concept. Particularly liked the conceit that the lie becomes the truth - because isn't society just a set of constructed truths we choose to live by? But this intriguing kernel gets pushed aside by a, well, far more technological Colonel, which derails all the subtlety and killed off my interest. Thought the writing was pretty bland too, and repetitive. Makes me want to watch the Costner movie, which is unforgivable.