bookmark of the week

This is a Wallace and Gromit bookmark of the rocket from A Grand Day Out. Always been a big fan of the duo and the associated films and am planning to go and see Flushed Away soon with my eldest boy as a Christmas treat.

book of books - The 39 Steps

The reason for choosing this book by John Buchan as a lunchtime read is because it is a slim volume that can be consumed easily in sections over lunch. The unforeseen problem is that it is so addictive that it is almost impossible to put it down and turn back to the screen to get on with your work.

Plot summary
The story focuses on Richard Hannay a mining engineer who has returned to London after an absence of some years and is on the brink of heading to South Africa to avoid the boredom when he comes across a strange man called Scudder. The stranger outlines a plan to destabilise Europe and bring on war by murdering the Greek leader and just as it seems like he might live to solve the mystery he is killed and Hannay, armed with Scudder’s black notebook, is left to solve the crime and stop the Germans from getting away with the secrets - something he manages to do.

Is it well written?
It is self consciously the style of a dime thriller and the pace of the book is amazing and there is not much detailed description around the central issue of Hannay surviving and being around to foil the Black Stone secret organisation. Even if you don’t like thrillers the feature to admire here is the pace, which never flags over the course of the book. There also has to be a mention of the plot because it is not always clear what will happen next and that is also a good reason for sticking with it.

Should it be read?
It is not only a real page turner before Dan Brown even discovered he wanted to write one, but also paints a picture of pre-war innocence in 1913 London that is almost tangible as the old boys network and the Empire are still in full swing. Read it for pleasure but don’t expect to be reading it for too long because this will keep you going until the very end.

Version read – Penguin Classics paperback

Things you can only get away with in Joyce’s world

As I get near to the end of The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man there are several things about James Joyce’s world that make a real contrast with living in 2006 and so these are just a few I could think of

Walking around a capital city late at night dreaming up philosophical thoughts
Try doing that in London and you are likely to get your thoughts drowned out by the sirens, your eyes blinded by the neon or if you walk down by the river something a lot more sinister interrupt your night dreaming

Have an argument that becomes a shouting match with an Irishman about religion
A friend once thought it might be the right place and right topic of discussion to buttonhole a staunch catholic in an Irish pub and tell him that he thought there were aspects of his religion that were flawed. He was then floored in the more basic sense

Masturbating on a beach
It goes without saying this one, enjoyed by Bloom in Ulysses, is either going to go unnoticed or land you in hot water with the police or local vigilantes – take your pick

Go through a life that mirrors a work by Homer, Ovid or Saint Thomas Aquinas
With work, family etc you hardly have time to know that someone throwing a tin you in a pub is meant to be the Cyclops or that men singing in the corner by the piano doing bad karoke represent the sirens

Portrait of the Artist as Young Man - post III

Joyce is able to catch you in a web of religious debate, Irish politics and the profoundity of the shift from adolesence to adulthood and leave you wondering just where you are. It is rather like falling down a water shute without anything to grip onto but occasional glimpses of the pool below to reassure you that at least you are headed in the right direction.

Bullet points between pages 158 - 228

* Having had his sinful moment and then gone to his confessor Stephen turns into the most devout church goer so much so that he is called into to get advice that he should go into the priesthood

* Initially the idea attracts him because he is seduced by the position and the power but then he has a moment when he sees his friends swimming and sees a girl (vision of a girl) who he identifies as an angel or youth and decides that the way he should live his life is by making mistakes and being real

* The family keep moving and the next scene of family activity is in a different house and Joyce manages to convey the squalor with Stephen having to wash in a bowl in the sink before heading out to University

* At university Stephen seems to have carved out a reputation as a free thinker and his comments are eagerly soaked up by students hanging off his every word and you are introduced to a couple of his friends who urge whim to sign a petition for an independent Ireland and after his refusal to sign question his loyalty to the country

* Having gone through the religious phase, the indifference and now the intellectual critic of it all he is able to spar in conversation with the dean of studies and anyone else who wants to question him on his views

More tomorrow...

Lunchtime read: The 39 Steps post V

The brisk pace and chapter cliff-hangers continue to come thick and fast and this is building into a real climax but there’s only so much you can do in one lunchtime sadly..

Highlights from chapters seven, eight, nine and ten

Seven
* Hannay makes his way back to the road mender’s house to get his clothes and Scudder’s notebook but because he has been out all night in the damp he develops a fever and stays there being nursed back to health for ten days

* The liberal candidate he spent time with has contacted his uncle in the foreign office and Hannay comes clean about all he knows and in return is told that he is no longer a suspect for the murder

* Together they go through the notebook but the Foreign Office expert dismisses the thought that anyone would want to kill the Greek leader but then he is interrupted for a phone call…

“He returned in five minutes with a whitish face. ‘I apologise to the shade of Scudder,’ he said. “Karolides was shot dead this evening at a few minutes after seven’.”

Eight
* Hannay is taken into the confidence of Sir Walter the Foreign Office official and told that an agent is coming from France and that the enemies of the state will do anything to get at him

* Back in London Scotland Yard clear his name and he heads to the Savoy to lie low for the night but he gets this yearning to be involved in the action and heads back to Sir Walter’s House

* A conference is in progress and the First Sea Lord comes in and then leaves except that Hannay seems to understand that it was an impostor and breaks into the conference and tells the remaining men

Nine
* After discovering their meeting was infiltrated the assembled company are horrified and expect the spy to head stray back to his masters with all the secrets but Hannay remembers the clue to the 39 steps and the tide

* They set off to the Admirality to check tide times and then drag in an old coastguard and they narrow down the location to the Kent coast and head off to try and stop the spies from leaving the country

Ten
* They converge on the location and work out that one villa has 39 steps to the sea but the house contains an old stockbroker and so Hannay is doubtful that he has the right place even after a boat moors out to sea containing a German trying to pretend to be English

* Hannay decides that the only course of action is to act as if he is totally confident of his plan and face the music if he is wrong because the stakes are too high to risk doing otherwise and he remembers a friend telling him that the beest form of disguise is 'atmosphere' which the men in the villa seem to have created perfectly

* He walks into the house and faces the three men who act so well they make him feel it has all been a mistake but then he recognises them and confronts them but as he blows his whistle one of the men escapes and the old man boasts that he has got away but then Hannay finishes the scene off with a great line:

"'I hope Franz will bear his triumph well, I ought to tell you that the Ariadne [their escape boat] for the last hour has been in our hands.'"

Of course war breaks out but Hannay stopped some secrets from being used. What a great read. I'll post a review in the next couple of days.

Portrait of the Artist as Young Man - post II

I have never visited Ireland but Joyce does give you a yearning to go there, although no doubt the Dublin he writes about has changed out of all recognition. But there is a love for his country that comes through his writing and makes you want to go and sit in a bar in Dublin and soak it all in. Maybe that’s an ambition for 2007?

Bullet points between pages 90 - 158

* Stephen and his father head back to Cork, the family home of the Dedalus clan, to sell up some of his father’s property and Stephen is dragged round the city and his father’s old college

* He is embarrassed by the reminiscing but part of his trip includes a trip to the bank to get some money out that he won for an essay prize

* That money soon changes hands with a prostitute as he experiences his first taste of sex and it changes him because it is a major sin and there is no retribution it starts to turn him away from the church

* There is then a lengthy sermon preached by the priest on the theme of hell and the Dante like vision of intense never stopping fires make Stephen feel that the message is for him and he has to repent of his sins

* He has a nightmare about the corner of hell that is being reserved for him and goes to confession and the chapter ends with him feeling saved and his soul is intact after he has admitted all of his sins - all this at the age of 16

More tomorrow (altough it is the work Christmas lunch so the post might not make any sense)...

Lunchtime read: The 39 Steps post IV

It’s hard just to read this during my lunch break because it is a real page turner and the temptation is the carry on but work beckons.

Highlights from chapters five and six

Five
* After having taken the liberal candidate into his confidence Hannay sets off on a bike to set out for the farmlands where he intends to lie low being undetected but before he has got very far he is spotted by a plane and then men start beating the glen to discover him

* A stroke of good luck comes in the guise of a roadworker who willingly lets him spend the day doing his jobs and then three men do stop and interrogate him but leave satisfied

* Just as he is wondering how he will escape an acquaintance from London appears and Hannay gets him to hand over his car and he drives down through the valley and through the cordon of watchers

Six
* He sleeps rough but the acquaintance from London has told the police and they have started to comb the hill looking for him so he has to keep dodging them and finally runs into an old house that respects a museum

* The man in the museum seems to know him and it turns out Hannay has walked into a trap but tries to act his way out of it but fails and is put into the storeroom while the leader goes out to get the men who interrogated him as a road mender

* In the storeroom he is kept in he discovers a locked cupboard and inside is some explosives which he recognises from his time as a mining engineer and he uses this the blow the wall down and makes good his escape after discovering a hidden aerodrome

book of books - Love in The Time of Cholera

ne of the main things that makes you enjoy a book is the characterisation and for me I just couldn’t grow to like Florentino the man who holds a torch for his teenage love for fifty years. Maybe it was the Gabriel Garcia Marquez describes him in creepy dress and because of his numerous liaisons with women of varying ages but he never inspired sympathy or excitement.

This book is a bit of a slow burner and because it is about waiting and love you feel that you spend a lot of time waiting for the story to develop. There is a clever device at the start because you know that the waiting does end but it takes a long time to get back to that moment of decision.

Plot summary
A young ill at ease boy Florentino Ariza falls in love with Fermina Daza someone who is above his position in society and through stalking, writing letters all the time and serenading her he breaks down her resistance and she agrees to marry him. The father takes her away and on her return she cannot understand what she ever saw in him and then is courted by Dr Urbino who comes from a wealthy family and eventually wins her hand in marriage. Florentino decides to wait for the doctor to die and rises up in the River Company to gain the status that would be fitting of Fermina. The doctor does die and he does manage to win her heart but it is a fraught process that ends with them trying to hide from the world on a boat flying the flag of cholera to keep other people away.

Is it well written?
The structure is interesting because you follow the story of the doctor discovering a dead friend and then having a fatal accident himself and so by page 50 the man you expected to be the centre of the narrative has died. Then it shifts back to the past and slowly builds up the story of the relationships between the main characters until that point of death and then takes the story to a conclusion. As with the Garcia Marquez books it is beautifully described and set firmly in its location but the characters, which are introverted and not that loveable, and of course at the end are elderly are not that easy to identify with.

Should it be read?
When I picked this book up in a second hand bookstore in Bath the owner said approvingly when he handed it over that it was his best one. I still have 100 Years of Solitude to read but my feeling is that it is a book that resonates with readers in different ways. It should be read because it is the only way of taking a side in the argument and working out if you identify and sympathise with the characters.

Leads to
More Garcia Marquez is the next obvious step but the idea of waiting for a long lost love is also something that crops up in Thomas Hardy’s work particularly Two on a Tower.

Version read - Penguin paperback

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - post I

Stephen Dedalus is one of the two main characters in Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man focuses on that character but at a much younger age. Bearing in mind he is 22 in Ulysses he is a school boy when he is introduced in this story.

Unlike Ulysses James Joyce seems to be sticking to a more easily readable style here with it much easier to create a picture in your mind of what is going on.

Bullet points between pages 1 - 90

* The story starts at a Jesuit school in Ireland and Stephen is homesick, bullied and struggling to enjoy his school time and after being pushed into a ditch becomes ill and ends up in the infirmary

* The sense of homesickness, loneliness and desperation to fit in and understand how to blend in and succeed in the school is tangible and well described by Joyce, who presumably must have experienced the same things

* He then goes home for Christmas and the meal is disturbed by a row between his father Simon and Dante some sort of family friend over politics, specifically the right or wrongs of priests using the pulpit as a place to recommend certain political parties

* The row between the protestant Dante, Stephens father, his great uncle and a friend Mr Casey, who has spent time in prison for his political views, breaks down as they row about a story told by Casey who recounts the time he spat in the eye of a lady heckling him after a speech.

* Casey then breaks down after saying that there should be no God in Ireland with tears in his eyes and cries for Parnell a politician who fought hard for autonomy and Home Rule

* The story then moves back to school and in a vivid passage Stephen is beaten for making up the story that his glasses broke accidentally despite the truth in his tale. The beating scars him mentally and he goes to the Rector to complain and as a result of that bravery is heralded as a hero by his classmates

* Things at home change and they move house and Stephen dislikes Dublin but there is a suggestion that political activities by his father have forced the change as much as financial cut backs

* He is told to stay in the Jesuit school and because of his friendship with a girl he comes in for another dose of bullying and seems to always be acting in the wrong way provoking more animosity

More tomorrow...

Lunchtime read: The 39 Steps post III

This thriller is already gripping just a couple of chapters in and the story continues to develop at a rapid pace

Highlights from chapters three and four

Three
* Hannay gets up to Scotland and as he leaves the small station and heads over the glen his spirits soar but they come back down with a bump when he heads back to go in a circle and reads about the murder in the paper and then sees the Police interviewing the stationmaster and his son t the small station

* As the train slows down he decides to jump out but the barking of a dog, the bleating of the herd and the belief that he has committed suicide means that it is a very public escape

* He finds an aspiring author who is running a very empty inn and offers him a secret hiding place away from the police but two strangers find him and although Hannay, who has broken the code of Scudder's notebook. gives them a decoy note he knows they will return

* He gets the inn keeper to organise the police to come at the same time as the sinister men return and as they go up to the inn to be arrested Hannay jumps out of the window and steals their car

Four
* He makes a mistake by taking the car because he is easily identifiable and as he pulls into a town the policeman tries to stop him and he has to speed away over the glens

* The next problem is that a plane is scrambled and as he searches for trees to hide in he drives up a private road and has to swerve to avoid an oncoming car and his car slips down into a brook and is destroyed

* The owner of the other car takes him home and is full of apologies and turns out to be a liberal candidate having to deliver a speech that night and asks Hannay if he is a free trader and could speak with him about the dangers of protectionism and because he is in a fix Hannay agrees

More tomorrow...

Love in the Time of Cholera - post VII

The book comes to an end and I’m still not sure how I feel about it. If someone was holding a torch for my wife just waiting for me to pop my clogs then I am sure I would be far from happy about it. But on the other side of the coin no doubt there is a certain romance about it.

Bullet points between pages 292 - 348

* Florentino has to wait for the letters to be replied and then plucks up the courage to visit Fermina and then it becomes a regular thing each month although she never concedes that he has a chance of developing the relationship beyond friendship

* He is 76 and she is 72 and there is an increasing emphasis on age and despite all the care he has taken to be in shape when they are finally free to marry she says she is old and he starts to accept that things are not the same

* She starts to correspond with him on a daily basis after he falls down the stairs in his office and is bed bound but then two stories are written in the local paper that undermine her - one being about an affair her husband is meant to have had and the other about the shady business dealings of her father

* When Florentino finally gets out of bed with a walking stick and goes to visit her they both seem decrepit and old, beyond love almost, but he still holds out hope and his persistence does seem to wear her down plus he writes an article under the name 'Jupiter' that tries to redress the lies printed in the paper

* Fermina’s daughter hears about the growing friendship between her mother and Florentino and tries to stop it but is told by her mother never to enter the family home again and leaves after only just healing the rift

* Meanwhile the young lover of Florentino discovers the hidden cache of love letters from Fermina and following her failure of her exams kills herself

* The news comes to Florentino when he is aboard a river cruise with Fermina, a trip that sees them finally move from letters and conversations to something physical and love blossoms

* But as the trip starts to end they panic about the possibility of going back to real life and so they hoist the yellow flag meaning that there is cholera aboard and come down the river without interruptions

* But when they reach port the health authorities want to know what is going on and the captain panics to which he is told by Florentino to go back up river and repeat the trip again - when asked how long he can keep doing that the old man who has waited so long for love tells him he can keep doing it forever

Review follows in the next couple of days

Lunchtime read: The 39 Steps post II

Highlights from chapter two

* Hannay discovers Scudder is dead and that his flat has been ransacked, presumably as the murderers were searching for his bloack pocket book where Scudder had made notes

* After thinking about it Hannay comes up with a plan to carry on Scudder’s mission and picks on Galloway as a remote part of Scotland where he can hide for the twenty days until the Greek leader comes to London

* Dressing and filling his pipe he touches the black mnotebook in the bottom of his tobbacco jar and fools the lookouts borrowing the milkman’s chat and apron and then runs and gets on the train from Euston going up to Scotland

Is he safe? More tomorrow...

A select audience

With the launch of a book about Manchester United FC that is priced at £3,000 yesterday The Independent asks just who is making these books and what you get for your money. One further question I would ask based on the limited but important invitations I have had to other people’s homes is: just who has a coffee table these days, let alone one that would be covered with books costing thousands of pounds?

Find the people with the coffee tables and that’s where your market is for these ‘add a couple of zero’s to the price tag’ books.

Love in the Time of Cholera -post VI

It has been hard to read much of this book today because of other demands on my time but I have squeezed in a few more pages to keep the highlights moving on and will aim to finish it tomorrow

Bullet points between pages 260 - 292

* The story catches up with the first chapter when Dr Urbino died and it describes how Floretino rose to the top of the River Company and how he looked after himself always readying himself for the day when he could be there for Fermina Daza

* As he makes love to the 14 year old that has become his legal custodian, something a bit unpleasant here, the bells ring out for the death of the doctor and he rushes round to the house

* Although he knows it is wrong he blurts out his declaration of love and then spends the next two weeks ill with regret and worry until he comes home one night to find a letter waiting for him in a puddle outside his door

* She sends him a letter full or rage because she is genuinely grieving and the timing could not have been worse but she cannot stop thinking about him but when he gets the letter it hits him and he realises that it was the response he should have expected

The end comes tomorrow…

Lunchtime read: The 39 Steps post I

There is a little dedication at the start, where John Buchan tells a friend that he had read through all of his dime novels so decided to write one himself and the tension in this thriller is introduced very quickly.

Highlights from chapter one

* Richard Hannay has returned to England after years of absence and is bored with London and as he walks back to his flat in central London he vows that unless something happens then he will leave and get on a boat for South Africa

* As he enters his flat a man from upstairs asks him to shelter him and explains that he has unconvered a conspiracy to set Germany against Russia and the only problem is that the Greek leader Karolides is honest and stopping the scheme so he will be assasinated when he comes to London on a visit in a month's time

* He leaves the man in his flat and when he returns the visitor Scudder tells him about the plan to kill Karolides in more detail and seems to be very nervous - sure enough the next evening as Hannay comes in the lights are off and his guest has been knifed through the heart

More lunchtime tomorrow...