Kenneth McMahon
Balderdash and Piffle, the TV show mentioned late in the book, was my first introduction to the OED and the concept of antedating. I became enamoured right away with the thought of trying to find the earliest occurrence of a word, and have long since thought “That'd be an interesting job” Turns out after reading this book that it probably wouldn't be my dream job. It still interests me for the detective/research elements but sounds quite tedious in ways that I hadn't considered.
I mistakenly thought the book would deal more with the hunting down of words and meanings (the title does kind of lean that way) but found it somewhat disappointing to discover much of it was about the history of an office department and how their ways of doing things involved through the years. I much preferred the asides where the author talked about this histories and changing meanings of certain words and would've enjoyed more of that.
In addition, I just couldn't warm to the author (outside of feeling sympathy for the issues with his daughter) As a reader, he seemed to speak down to me quite often - “If you didn't spot that, then you're not good enough to work here” (possibly, but I don't read books for criticism of my work ethic) and I'm surprised to see other reviewers describe him as funny, because I thought his attempts at humour were trying too hard.
Still, it was an enjoyable enough read, and I subscribed to the online OED afterwards (I still want to antedate words), so job done Mr. Simpson.
Simplistically written, but that might be for the benefit of teenage readers learning about the subject in school. My son currently is and I figured I'd read it too to educate myself on something I just knew about on a surface level.
An interesting and entertaining read but loses a star for the many variations of “this didn't actually happen, I've invented it for the purpose of this story” in the endnotes.
It's a famous book, so I had an inkling of what was going to come, but even when it did, I was shocked. Just devastating.
As a teenager, I was a huge Michael Jackson fan. Not quite on the level of a camping outside his hotel type fan, but I absolutely devoured his music, his dance moves, his music videos and the liner notes and credits of all of his albums and bought numerous editions of his singles because of a different radio edit or remix. I thought he could do no wrong and defended him whenever I had to.
Despite my fandom, this was actually the first biography I'd ever read about him. So while I have nothing to compare it to, it felt even handed to me and thankfully wasn't the tabloidy nonsense I'd always steered clear of. Still, as other reviews have pointed out, with the title it has I expected a more thorough look at the musical side of the man. Even as the author does focus on his private life too, it's a little strange that there is zero mention of 1997's remix album Blood On The Dance Floor, particularly the track ‘Morphine' (an autobiographical song about painkiller addiction) There are also some minor (but glaring to a fan) errors. The author confuses Childhood with Little Susie, and the music video for Remember The Time with In The Closet, to name just two. Who's to say there aren't other minor errors elsewhere in some of the other details too?
By the time Unbreakable came out, I'd sadly grown out of the fandom. While I recognized him to be one of the world's greatest ever entertainers, I also realised that he was a highly flawed individual. This book did a good job of reminding me of both. I didn't pay Jackson much attention after 2001, and so it was a little disheartening to read of the painful, drug addled, divaesque and frankly somewhat pathetic existence he led for the last 8 years of his life, and of all the vultures and enablers he surrounded himself with.
The parts of this book related to the creation of dictionaries and the OED are hugely interesting and the stories of the two men are somewhat interesting to a lesser extent, but the author's conjecture and rampant speculation was infuriating. He suggests reasons for people behaving as they do without any hint of evidence, at one point positing a theory for why Minor commits a horrific act, but then immediately states that there is absolutely no reason to believe this is true! Then why even introduce the bizarre idea? A lack of footnotes/end notes crediting the sources for quotes he uses was also off-putting.
I also couldn't help thinking throughout that Minor's contribution and relationship with Murray were being exaggerated by the author for the purposes of a good yarn. Minor was just one of hundreds (thousands?) of contributors, and I suspect Murray corresponded and met with many of them over the years, not just the murderer.
I really enjoyed Leacock's Literary Lapses, but unfortunately this one was pretty disappointing. Had a couple of little laughs here and there. I was gonna say that I can't wrap my head around how much of a comedic classic it is considered to be in Canada, but actually I've lived here for 15 years and it's exactly the gentle, vanilla humour that Canadians love.
Doyle is at his best when writing typical Dublin characters so the first two stories here are the best of the bunch (A da is unsure how to act when his daughter invites a black fella for dinner; Jimmy Rabbitte sets up another band) but the rest of it is subpar, especially in the stories where Doyle writes from an immigrant's perspective in silly stilted dialogue (“We enter the cafe called Bewleys”)
I think this review by Robert Barnard sums up my feelings on this one quite nicely - “Entertaining for most of its length, but the solution is one of those ‘once revealed, instantly forgotten' ones, where ingenuity has triumphed over common sense”
An intriguing subject, but I personally would've preferred more discussion of the historical events rather than the source accounts. While interesting to read, they get a little bit samey and dry to read after a while.
Unfortunately, I couldn't stand the editor's endnotes. At times, she came across as treating the reader like an idiot. One example, for instance, regarding the trial of a woman named Rachel mentions “I, this deponent, asked her whether she gave Rach[torn]* any pins and she said she gave Rachel about seven” At which point, I turned to the endnotes to read “Probably Rachel” Well, no shit. Unfortunately, too many instances of this type of worthless footnote turned me against the book, and I ended up disliking the entire reading experience.
A mixed bag of things that no longer exist and thus obviously can't be found, things that likely never existed but, more interestingly, things that are known to have existed but nobody knows where they are anymore. A fun book to dip into every so often for bitesize mysterious tales.
Though the situations were entirely different, elements of Orwell's essay on his school days rang true for me too. The practice of memorising certain facts and passages in preparation for exams rather than actually engaging with the subject certainly existed 15-20 years ago in Ireland. I suspect it still does.
Orwell does a magnificent job of writing about the complexities of being a child trying to understand the world around him, giving voice to thoughts I'm not sure I ever considered. It was certainly a timely read personally, as my 5 year old son starts school this week. Thankfully, times have obviously changed for the better, but I do wonder how my son will view this new world.
Figured I'd get it read before Branagh's movie comes out. It's supposedly based on this book, but the trailer bears no resemblance to the book whatsoever, with its seances and supernatural goings on and its Venice setting.
The premise is a cracking one. Talk at a party comes around to murder and a 13 year old girl mentions that she once witnessed a murder. Nobody believes her but an hour later, she's found head down in a bucket permanently bobbing for apples. This is Christie in her later years so she seems to shoehorn some of her own moaning in whenever she can. She has four different characters mention apropos of nothing that “they don't keep mental patients locked up anymore, they just send them home these days to live in the community”. The talk of the killer potentially being “some mentally disturbed person” who walked into the party and spotted an opportunity occurs so much that you would think it must have some relevance to the outcome. Characters also complain more than once of mothers not raising their children right anymore, children getting into cars with strangers and long haired young men smashing up phone boxes for the hell of it. Though she does have the good sense to have a dialogue between teenage boys and immediately start off by saying they had a very adult manner and if you closed your eyes you might think it was two elderly gentlemen speaking. Nobody wants to read Agatha Christie's attempts at 60s youth slang.
Quite a dull read overall with Poirot plodding around repeatedly asking characters the same questions like a Broken Sword game - “And what did you think of the young girl who was murdered?” “What do you know about the foreign girl who disappeared a few years ago?” etc. In the end, the mystery and its reveal weren't particularly interesting. I'm not sure the motives of the killer fully make sense but I'm also past the point of thinking about it too much.
A fun, clever story even if it does all seem quite coincidental in the end (The killer had no way of knowing if the final two murders would actually take place. And what would've happened if it was Lombard remaining? He seems unlikely to have just hung himself. For that matter, it seems silly that Vera would just go and hang herself after surviving the whole ordeal.)
Incredibly contrived opening chapter. A doctor suspected a man of murder, and just happened to accidentally take a snapshot of him. Then just happened to carry that snapshot around with him. Then just happened to pass that snapshot and the story on to the major, who then just happens to carry it around with him so that he can tell the story to Miss Marple.
Once you get past that, it's decent enough entertainment, and to be fair even though it was spelled out early on, I still didn't have a clue who the murderer was right up to the moment of reveal.
Nothing special really. Page after page of rampage and destruction interspersed with some fighting and bad dialogue.
Unfortunately mostly dull with only the Sayers and Iles contributions shining through, though the latter is a bit overlong. Sayers seems to be the only one who came at the case as a mystery writer occasionally wondering how the real life problem may have been presented in a mystery story, and how a fictional detective would've judged a clue.
Excellent read, the first book in a long time that I've thought about at work all day wanting to get home and pick it up again.
A minor complaint is that I would've liked to read an epilogue detailing what each of the men got up to, how did they assimilate back into normal life, etc. I felt like I had grown to know them so it was sad to read in another polar exploration book afterwards that Tim McCarthy signed up for the war effort three weeks after he arrived back in England. He died a few months later when his ship was torpedoed by the Germans. I found it devastating to know he went through that incredible feat of survival, only to die not too long after.
A fairly straightforward story, but it's definitely worth checking out for Dave Taylor's illustrations alone. The pencil drawn art is gorgeous.
A very entertaining man-on-the-run story even if like me, you've got limited technological knowledge. Intriguing escapades but much of the time I was wondering why this guy, who was always so sorry for hurting his loved ones by doing this, kept on doing it. Especially because there seemed to be no real reason for him continuing to hack beyond bragging rights.
Mitnick isn't particularly likable, constantly talking about other hacker's egos and arrogance, whilst saying lines like (paraphrased) “Who else but me would have the balls to hack the FBI whilst being investigated by them?” Actually, much of the excitement of the book was wondering when and how they were going to catch him.