Posts Tagged ‘fiction’

I have not posted about many books recently. Not because I haven’t been reading, but because I have been tackling the Leo Tolstoy epic, War and Peace. I have not finished it, but I have reached the end of the first volume.

That term is a little misleading as the copy I have divides the book into two halves, which it calls volumes. However, Wikipedia divides it into four books/volumes, which according to the text itself, I am now on the 8th book.

The story is that of the Russian high-society during the Napoleonic years. So far there has been some peace, then some war, then some more peace. Throughout this the story had managed to maintain my attention with it’s beautiful language even if parts of it threatened to stray into a Jane Austen-style monolog on the problems of finding a husband.

So good so far. I will report back after volume 2.

I’ve been reading Emily Brontë’s Wuthering, Wuthering, Wuthering Heights. As Elina predicted most of this time was spent with Kate Bush running through my head. There are definitely worse things in life.

What a horrible book it is though. I spent most of it hoping that one of the characters would snap and run a knife through Heathcliff. Sadly, nobody did. However, it did at least have an almost happy ending. I also had to draw a little diagram to track the family tree – though it turns out Wikipedia already has one prepared.

The 29th book in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series is “Night Watch”. Sam Vimes, the History Monks, time travel – what is there not to love about this novel? Nothing, that’s the answer. I love Lu-Tze and the City Watch is awesome too. It also reminded me of one of the half a dozen Star Trek episode plots that almost all of the 300 episodes are based around.

The Amazing Maurice is the first Discworld novel that is aimed at children. When that actually translates into texts, there is very little difference. The balance of jokes is perhaps more targeted at children than adults, but there was still plenty in there that I found entertaining and funny.

What did change was that even though it is set in the Discworld universe, you do not need to know anything about Discworld or have read the previous novels to be able to fully enjoy this one.

I had seen the film a decade or so ago (probably on VHS, that is how long ago it was), but with the 100th anniversary of theGreat War arriving, I decided I would read the original novel by Erich Maria Remarque.

It turns out that the war was pretty horrible.

It was not the shocking moments of horror that you might encounter when watching Roman Polanski’s The Pianist. It was the relentless horror, sometimes sparse in the detail, but the fact that you can gloss over such issues, reflects the nightmare of trench warfare. Other times the details are not spared. Of course we all know it was horrible, but simultaneously cannot imagine what it was really like; so such attempts are probably useful.

It would be nice to think we had learned our lesson. Of course, that probably is not the case. Even aside from the two world wars, Nassim Taleb wrote in The Black Swan that after the huge war that raged across the whole of Europe, people presumed we would have realised war was a stupid idea and would never do it again – that was the Napoleonic Wars.

Anyway, back on the book. I knew the ending from the film, so the impact was not as powerful as it could have been. Nevertheless, it is still a bold one.

Leonard of Quirm, Rincewind, Captain Carrot, and a chance to save the world! What more could you want from a Discworld novel? Plus a little bit of Death too. I really enjoyed The Last Hero. It did not have too much substance to it, but it was only half the length of a typical Discworld novel and the short format worked really well for it.

Ah, the problems of eighteenth century women, how plentiful they are. Luckily, though I hate to spoil it for you all, everyone ends up with a husband. So that’s nice.

Imagine a world in which all books are banned. Where all books are burned because they might contain conflicting ideas. Where thinking is actively discouraged in favour of accepting the simple truth presented by authority. In short, imagine the Bible Belt.

This is the setting for Ray Bradbury‘s dystopian novel, Fahrenheit 451.

I had already seen the movie, which I enjoyed, and I enjoyed the book as well. However, I would not go as far as Tom to suggest that it is better than Nineteen Eighty-Four or Brave New World. I enjoyed both of those far more whereas I cannot say I imagine myself re-reading Fahrenheit 451. Definitely worth reading though.

A friend recommended I read War Horse. I sounded quite a good idea at the time, because I thought they said “war whores”, and thus assumed it was about sex workers from 1914 to 1918. In fact, even when I found out there was a horse in it, I assumed it was just on the more risque end of the spectrum.

However, it turns out that it is actually a story about a horse that goes to war.

The book was good, though I imagine the stage production is far more moving.

I had a lot of optimism when I started reading Lord of the Flies. I was hoping for a fascinating exploration of the dark side of human nature through the story of what would happen if a group of boys found themselves alone on an uninhabited island. A primitive, savage society arranged around its leader, the lord of the flies.

However, it turns turns out that the lord of the flies is just a pig’s head on a stick.

Still, at least I know never to reveal that my childhood nickname was “piggy”. So it was not a complete waste of ten hours of my life, even if the author, William Golding, somewhat missed the point.