Hi there - as well as being a keen blogger, I'm a bit of a bookworm as well.
So, I'm going to post reviews of the last few books I've read - as I read another one I'll take the last one of the list.
All the reviews are also posted on Amazon UK - you may care to visit the links if you think the book sounds interesting. All reviews are put up under the the name "Stewart M - Victoria, Australia". You can find all 247 reviews here.
The Blue Riband - Peter York - 2/5
This book is about the Piccadilly Line, or
more accurately, the type of houses and people who live in the areas of London
served by this line.
It’s pointed out that there is more premium
real estate along this line –residential, commercial and tourist – than any
other on London. And then that point is made
again. And again. And again.
The ebbs and flows of who lives where, what
job they do, what country they come from and how rich they are is explained. And then explained again. And again. And then, just once more for luck.
As you may have gathered I found this book
a little repetitive. And I have to say I
also found the authors habit of littering his sentences with italics annoying
as well!
While the book may have some interest to
those who wish to chart the more recent changes in the demographics of London,
I would suggest that more widely focused readers might wonder why they keep
turning the pages.
The whole tone was a little too snug, a little
too self referential and just too repetitive.
I have enjoyed a number of the other books
in this series, but would suggest you start elsewhere on your journey through
this collection of tube books.
Waterlight - Selected Poems - Kathleen Jamie - 5/5
I am not a natural reader of poetry. I came to this book through the wonderful
prose books of the author.
Her prose is marked by a remarkable ability
to see and render detail in clear and precise language.
If anything, the poems take this ability
even further.
As the book progressed the poems became
longer and more complex and I missed the simple, but accurate word picture
painting of the shorter verses.
Maybe I was not ready for multi-page poems,
but the early pages of the book are filled with remarkable images and turns of
phrase.
If ever a book was to direct me towards
more poetry, I think it could be this one.
Highly recommended.
A History of Capitalism According to the Jubilee Line - John O'Farrell - 4/5
On the Jubilee Line our author faces a
life-threatening situation – the collapse of the world order, or perhaps the
collapse of a section of tunnel, or maybe both.
In order to escape, the author – and his
fellow passengers - needs to make a decision about which way to go to reach
safety. Although constrained by a tunnel
they need to choose a path defined by either the Left or by the Right.
So begins a (sort of) debate about the way
forward and which political light should guide it. The cast of characters in the tube train is
drawn from the heroes and heroines of both sides of politics, as well as
members of the public.
Much of the detail of the financial comings
and goings that built the new parts of the Jubilee Line occurred after I left
the UK, but even from the distant shores of Australia there was enough detail
in the book for me to follow the lines of argument and disagreement.
It’s reasonable to say that this books
reaches no firm conclusions on its central debate, but it does entertain on the
way to a point of no conclusion.
I have to say that the end of the book is
rather predictable, using a device beloved of Soap Operas when an unlikely plot
line needs to come to en end.
A brief and generally entertaining read.
Watcher in the Shadows - Geoffrey Household - 4/5
Set in the mid 1950s this is a story of
revenge, honour, violence and revenge.
Charles Dennim, an expert in small mammals,
finds himself the target of an assignation attempt. His wartime past prevents him seeking the
normal police protection, but also arms him with the skills he needs to protect
himself.
For much of the book you know little of his
foe, except that he also has a past well suited to revenge.
In some ways, Dennim is the perfect
Englishman; quiet and skilled, with a deep interest and expertise in a
seemingly small field. If it was not for
his past he could pass for a village vicar.
But this, of course, is not what he is.
However, it is in the “perfect” English
countryside of the Cotswolds that he seeks protection. He may not be English, but he hides in the
most English place he can find.
This is really a book of three parts – the
opening and closing thirds are excellent, fast paced, with out being frantic,
and delightfully detailed. The middle
third – while necessary to the plot, drags a little, but does seem to reinforce
the “middle England” feel of the characters.
As in Household’s most famous book – Rogue Male
– the English countryside this book is as much a character as the humans, and
(in my opinion) is a huge factor in the quality of the story. There is a detail in the landscape that allows
the human plot to feel far more believable.
I rather enjoyed this book, and while it
did feel a little familiar after reading Rogue Male, I would still recommend it.
This is a really good little book. While it does focus on the The District Line,
much of what the book has to say is about the way in which The Tube (or maybe
The Underground) developed around London and the way London developed around
The Tube.
Rather than being just a celebration of The
District Line, I think this book is a celebration of the possibility of public
transport. So many cities (including
Melbourne where I live) seem to have forgotten than public transport is not
only for the poor, or those who do not have a car. It’s a central part of city life that should
be planned with the growth of the city, not just bolted on when all the car
parks are full and the roads clogged.
Some of the other reviews here suggest that
there are factual errors in this book – and that may well be true. But this again missed the point. Errors about what is the first train of the
network or what sequence of trains can be caught, are “rivet-counter”
criticisms – i.e. ones based around an interest in spotting the numbers on trains,
rather than understanding their social, economic or even environmental
importance.
This was an interesting read that I would recommend
to anybody; especially those who wonder what a world without cars may be like.
Four Fields - Tim Dee - 5/5
This is a wonderfully dense, slow moving
and thought-provoking book.
In may ways everything else I am going to
say will be just an extension of that opening line – if you are in a hurry I
recommend you stop reading this and buy the book.
For those of you with a little more time I
will expand my comments a little.
Fields are a strange combination of nature
and human control – and the fours fields of books title show varying degrees of
these two aspects. The Fens fields of
East Anglia and the abandoned fields of Chernobyl are mostly, but not entirely,
human. The fields of Africa and North
America are mostly, but not entirely, still shaped by nature.
The fen fields of East Anglia are returned
to in a conventional seasonal approach, but the content of these four chapters
goes far beyond the normal “it was winter and I saw this type of bird”
narrative that dominates so much nature writing. Water flows through the fens and the movement
(and control) of water are central themes in these chapters.
The ideas encountered in the other fields
are as divers as their locations – but ideas of control (or the loss of it) are
also present.
One of the things I most liked about this
book was its clear sense of ending – many books of nature writing seem to stop
only when the author runs out of things to say (or the year has turned full
circle). Here the book has a wonderful concluding feel, where themes come to an
end in a way the feels natural. The book
comes to an end, rather than simply stopping.
While it’s clear that the author is a bird
watcher – and most of the encounters with wildlife in the book are with birds –
this book has a far wider range (field?) of reference than just birds.
This is one of the best books in this
general area I have read in a number of years and it comes very highly recommended.
This is a difficult review to write.
Navigation is a fascinating subject – and the
ability of many ancient cultures to navigate around the globe with skill and
precision is remarkable. As a result I
was looking forward to reading this book.
Unfortunately, I think the book is a little
confused as to what it is trying to be.
Parts of it read like a navigation text book, but while the have the
tone of textbook, I never felt like I was being given enough information to actually
apply the things that we being discussed in the real word.
Then other parts read like popular science writing,
exploring the culture navigation. But
these parts seem not to have been written with the lightness of touch that
makes this style readable, nor do they contain enough anecdotes to offset this “dry”
style.
It’s clear that this book is packed with
good information; I just found the style of writing put me off.
I would recommend that you read a few
chapters before you press the “add to cart” button.
Metroland - Julian Barnes - 3/5
This is a rather clever story of two very
clever boys. The story line runs from
confident (possibly even over-confident) school boys, though growing adulthood
and eventually into the comforts of conformity for one and maintained range for
the other.
This is a very familiar story line and most
people of my age – teenaged when university did not burden you with debt for
life, and “youth” were expected to rebel – will find people and things they recognize.
While I can understand why this book is so
highly regarded, one thing about it did really annoy me. The characters in the books use French phrases
to talk to each other – secret codes that them distance from, or in their minds
elevate them above, the masses.
Unfortunately the use of the French phrases
in the book does the same thing to the reader – well it did I for me at
least. While the meaning of some of the
phrases can be deduced from how they are used, some cannot. As such, the joke remains on me, the poor
dolt in 9C who never mastered French.
Did I enjoy the book? – well, yes I
did.
Would I recommend the book – yes I would,
but if your French is as limited as mine, you may find it just a wee bit
annoying.
A Northern Line Minute - William Leith- 4/5
While this book would take longer than a
minute to read, it is rather brief – running to less than 100 pages.
The book is about anxiety (it says this on
the cover) set within the confines of both the Tube network and modern
cities. The claustrophobia of the tube
and the anxiety of modern living combine to make for a tense and interesting
read.
I think that the “minute” of the title
refers to those fleeting periods of anxiety (both justified and imagined) that
can echo through days, weeks, months or even years.
The Kings Cross fire and the Bishopsgate
bombing appear to be the backdrop to this story, real causes of anxiety,
blended with the fear of the unknown.
These are dark themes, but the book has a
realistic feel that makes it very readable.
I can only assume the reader of the one
star review has read a different book!
Recommended.
This is a really interesting book that
seeks to reevaluate the nature of pre-colonial Australia society.
If, like me, you have been brought up on
the idea of Aboriginal Australians being hunter-gathers, who embraced the
nomadic life style because of variable climate, you may ask, “What’s the
point?” – we know what was happening in the past.
The content of this book would suggest that
this image of Aboriginal Australian culture is very far from the truth. Early European journals contain references to
villages, large stone buildings, substantial food stores, sophisticated fish
traps and areas of obvious cultivation.
All of these aspects are absent from the hunter-gather story.
This book suggests two key reasons for this
– one was that it was politically convenient to ignore the established culture
so that it was more “acceptable” for the “advanced” colonists to take
over. Secondly, the book suggests that
the sheep that always arrived ahead of the colonists destroyed many areas of
cultivation.
It is claimed elsewhere that many of the
markers of civilization were absent from Aboriginal culture – this book flatly
contradicts this idea.
For all of its power, this book is not
perfect. Too many of the section read
like lists of examples, with details of villages here, villages elsewhere. While this is clearly an attempt to show how
wide spread certain aspects of Aboriginal
culture were, it does not makes for always entertaining reading.
This is a powerful, and probably important
book about how Australia looked in the past.
And equally, it may give us an insight into how we may have to manage
our natural resources in the future.
Highly recommended.
