Atomic Razor:

Thursday, 26 February 2009

You Learn Something New Everyday

In my case, that Radio 4 continuity announcers hadn't heard of "polyamorism" until today.Perhaps I just spend too much time hanging out on LJ. Apparently Woody Allen's latest film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, has a polyamory theme and there was a discussion about it (polyamory) inspired by the film on Woman's Hour this morning. Curiously, I didn't even release VCB was a Woody Allen film until recently as the posters (quite prominent) in London don't mention this, presumably because Woody's last few films haven't done very well (both critically and commercially). VCB has won an Oscar and netted $88M already against a budget of £20M, so it has turned out to be one of his more profitable films. I used to be - I suppose I still am - a big Woody Allen film. I ought to look out the film on DVD. Surprisingly though there has been less discussion of it on LJ, but then LJ is somewhat hit and miss about what is and what is discussed (on my flist anyway).

Posted by PMC on Thursday, 26 February 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Books We are Reading

David Nicholls: The Understudy
Not as good as "Starter for Ten". Nicholls would have written a better book if he had had the chance to read it out loud. (***)
Evelyn Waugh: The Diaries Of Evelyn Waugh
(*****)
Thomas Pynchon: Gravity's Rainbow
(*****)
Steven Weisenburger: A "Gravity's Rainbow" Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon's Novel
(*****)
Robin Farquharson: Drop Out
(***)
Tom McCarthy: Remainder
(****)
Howard Mittelmark: How NOT to Write a Novel: 200 Mistakes to Avoid at All Costs If You Ever Want to Get Published
(****)
Alphonse Daudet: In the Land of Pain
(***)
Peter Barry: Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory (Beginnings)
(****)
F Turner: From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism
(***)
Malcolm Bradbury: Mensonge: My Strange Quest for Henri Mensonge, Structuralism's Hidden Hero (Arena Books)
Annoyingly amazon.com does have a picture of the cover. A bit like a Bluffer's Guide to Deconstruction and Structuralism" - just not as funny. (***)
Jorge Borges: The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory: AND Shakespeare's Memory (Penguin Modern Classics)
(*****)
John Byrne: Writing Sitcoms (Writing Handbooks) (Writing Handbooks)
(***)
J.G. Ballard: The Atrocity Exhibition: Annotated (Flamingo Modern Classics)
Described by Zadie Smith in her recent (and, I think, seminal) article in the "New York Review" as "possibly the greatest British avant-garde novel". I have to admit that I find Ballard annotations to each section much more interesting than the actual pieces themselves, which probably says more about me (is there a word to describe people who prefer the critical apparatus of a thing to the thing itself - other than, of course, "pretentious"?) than is does about Ballard or TAE. But there is, I think, something here. One could imagine an undated version in which almost nothing had to be changed - almost all of the celebrities the text is fixated on are still icons forty years later, which, as Ballard indicates, probably tells us something about the 1960s. It's amusing that Ballard (writing, I suppose, in the late 1980s) is rather dismissive of Ralph Nader, well-known in the 1960s for "Unsafe at Any Speed"; if only he had known that it would be Nader or rather the fuckwits (I think that is the technical term) who voted for him in 2000 who would condemn us to eight years of George W. Bush. There's probably a story in that. (***)
Adolfo Bioy Casares: The Invention of Morel (New York Review Books Classics)
Rather disappointing. (***)
Michael Clark: Paradoxes from A to Z
(****)
Neal Stephenson: Anathem
"Another damned fat book, Mr Stephenson? Scribble, scribble, scribble, eh Mr Stephenson?" (****)
Adele T. Haft: The Key to the "Name of the Rose": Including Translations of All Non-English Passages (Ann Arbor Paperbacks)
(****)
Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose
This is not the edition I am reading (which is the early Picador paperback), but it is the edition with the David Lodge introduction, which I am currently reading in Lodge's collection "The Year of Henry James", which made it clear to me that here was a book I had to prioritise immediately. (*****)
A.S. Byatt: Possession: A Romance
(****)
Stella Gibbons: Cold Comfort Farm (Penguin Modern Classics)
I think this this should really be three and a half stars. I know, I know. OK, OK. Coming off the fence then three stars. The thing is that it is very clever and witty and funny, but it is also rather one note (leaving aside the first couple of chapters) and it would work better as a 60-page novella. After a few chapters, you get the shtick and after that it is just pretty much more of the same. Of course, it doesn't help now that Gibbons's explicit models (Mary Webb, Sheila Kaye-Smith - see http://segalbooks.blogspot.com/2008/07/further-beyond-woodshed.html) are pretty much forgotten and that D.H. Lawrence's star is no longer in the ascendant. (***)
Kingsley Amis: The Old Devils (Vintage Classics)
Deeply disappointing. (**)
The Poem of the Cid (Classics)
(***)
Posy Simmonds: Tamara Drewe
(*****)
Zachary Leader: The Life of Kingsley Amis
(****)
Posy Simmonds: Literary Life
Superb. I hope to been speared as a type by Posy by the time I am 50. Why is she merely an MBE? (*****)
Jenny Turner: The Brainstorm
(***)
Julian Barnes: Love, Etc.
(****)
Julian Barnes: Talking It Over (Picador Books)
(****)
David Lodge: The Year of Henry James: The Story of a Novel
(****)
Ari Rafaeli: Book Typography
(*****)
Robert McKee: Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting
(***)
David Lodge: Author, Author
(***)
John Rolfe and Peter Troob: Monkey Business: Swinging Through the Wall Street Jungle
Not as well-written as Michael Lewis's "Liar's Poker" or as funny as Martin Kihn's "House of Lies" and now rather dated (there is one mention of the internet and none of email; the mid-1990s were still the days of voicemail), nevertheless this book has the unmistakable ring of veracity to it. I may never have been an i-banker, but I was a management consultant and I can believe that everything they report here is true. (***)
Marc Blake: How to Be a Sitcom Writer: Secrets from the Inside
Very short and pretty slight. Discusses the sit more than the com (I suppose this is discussed in Blake's "How to Be a Comedy Writer: Secrets from the Inside" - or not: see the Amazon review). Without the jokes, a sitcom, is just a sit, or rather it isn't as people aren't likely to carry on watching. (**)
Evelyn Waugh: The Complete Short Stories
Demonstrates that Waugh's strengths were very much at novel length (but I haven't got to the novellas yet) - each new set of dissolute aristos and upper middle class twits comes along so quickly that my class hackles were raised - but we can turn a sentence. (****)
Mitzi Szereto: Getting Even: Revenge Stories
(*****)
Belle de Jour: The Intimate Adventures Of A London Call Girl (tv tie-in)
Champion/Orlowski cashing in. Not very closely related to the risible tv series. For instance, Piper doesn't come from the North of England (unlike, say, Sarah Champion), always uses black cabs and men's deodorants. I suspect that the writers of the tv series have been carrying out secondary research as well as toning down the material in the programme to fit with ITV2 Middle Britain-"Daily Mail"-thinking demographic. (**)
Jorge Luis Borges: Antologia de La Literatura Fantastica
No, I haven't learnt Spanish (ought I?), but this was the only picture of the cover of the book that I could come across (quickly) and in odd way it is more authentic as it the cover of the Spanish language version of the classic anthology. (*****)
Lucy Fry; Heidi James; Kay Sexton: Two Tall Tales and One Short Novel: Anthology of Shorter Fiction
(***)
M.R. James: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
(***)
Evelyn Waugh: Put Out More Flags (Penguin Modern Classics)
(*****)
Marie Phillips: Gods Behaving Badly
(***)
Michael Chabon: The Yiddish Policemen's Union
(***)
Evelyn Waugh: Unconditional Surrender
(*****)
Alexander Waugh: God
(****)
Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion
Easy to see why this irks both the Godbotherers and the less strident atheists and agnostics in almost equal measure. But Dawkins isn't trying to write a dispassionate enquiry into the methaphysical credibility of the thesistic proposition. He is writing a polemical counterblast to the theistic propaganda a hundred volumes of which can be found in any bookshop. He also has the advantage of being *right* (as well as being a wonderful stylist). It is cheering that this is the current non-fiction bestseller. It is also cheering that this is merely the most popular of a number of atheistic polemics that appeared recently. Splendid stuff. (****)
Jorge Luis Borges: Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings (Penguin Modern Classics)
(*****)
Evelyn Waugh: Officers and Gentlemen (Penguin Modern Classics)
(*****)
Rob Long: Set Up, Joke, Set Up, Joke
Not as funny as I had hoped. (***)
Scarlett Thomas: PopCo
(**)
Julian Barnes: A History of the World In 10.5 Chapters (Picador Books)
(*****)
Julian Barnes: Metroland (Picador Books)
(****)
Julian Barnes: The Pedant in the Kitchen
(****)
Julian Barnes: Flaubert's Parrot (Picador Books)
(*****)
Ian McEwan: Enduring Love
(*)
Tom Wolfe: The Bonfire of the Vanities (Picador Books)
(**)
Alan Judd: The Kaiser's Last Kiss
(*)
David Nicholls: Starter for Ten
(****)
Alison Fell: The Mistress of Lilliput
(***)
Michele Roberts: Reader, I Married Him
(*****)
Michael Frayn: The Russian Interpreter
(***)
Michael Frayn: Towards the End of the Morning
(*****)
Michael Frayn: A Landing on the Sun
(***)
David Whittaker: Stafford Beer: A Personal Memoir - Includes an Interview with Brian Eno
(*****)
Ryan Bigge: A Very Lonely Planet: Love, Sex and the Single Guy
(***)
T.A. Shippey: J.R.R.Tolkien: Author of the Century
(***)
Brian W. Kernighan: The Practice of Programming (Professional Computing)
(****)
Evelyn Waugh: Men at Arms (Penguin Modern Classics)
(*****)
Barry N. Malzberg: Breakfast in the Ruins
(*****)
Anthony Hope: The Prisoner of Zenda (Penguin Popular Classics)
(***)
Evelyn Waugh: Black Mischief (Penguin Modern Classics)
(*****)
Jared Diamond: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive
(***)
Dominic Sandbrook: Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles
(****)
John Baxter: A Pound of Paper: Confessions of a Book Addict
(***)
Matthew Sweet: Shepperton Babylon: The Lost Worlds of British Cinema
For some reason, the cover shown at Amazon is different from the one on my copy (mine has Alec Guinness from "The Man in the White Coat"). The Weasel was right: this book does have something interesting or unexpected on practically every page. The chapters on the pre-WWII years and particularly the 1920s silent era are the most fascinating as they describe a truly lost world (but one that reflects and refracts our own time - see Frederick Lewis Allen's "Only Yesterday" (1931) for the an instant history of US in 1920s and I must now read Robert Graves's and Alan Hodges's "The Long Weekend: a Social History of Britain, 1918-1939" (1940) - for illuminating contemporary takes on those times) and one that does invoke many suggestions for alternative universes. The book suffers from the fact that it's not actually that long and the history of British cinema is not actually that small, so even though large areas are completely neglected (science fiction, unsurprisingly), there is still a sense of a book told at a gallop. Sweet would have been better to have written two books one for pre-WWII and one for post. Another irritating habit of Sweet's is to give a list of films illustrating some theme or the work of a particular actor or director, but not to do so in chronological order. Yes, the most respresntative example might have come first, but that's the way it was, it can't (typically) be turned into the pay-off of the section. It's also not clear how much Sweet really likes British cinema. But he does achieve one thing. I'd love to see some of those British silent epic and so I shall hasten to the Curzon and the NFT to see when they might be showing them. (****)
Malcolm Gladwell: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
(****)
Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart: What Does a Martian Look Like?: The Science of Extraterrestrial Life
(****)
Candace Bushnell: Sex and the City
(**)
Humphrey Carpenter: The Angry Young Men: A Literary Comedy of the 1950s
This a fun read, but a very slight one. Which sums Carpenter. He was a pleasant writer, but original or deep research was never his forte. OK, he was a busy man, so why should he have bothered when there was all that secondary literature to be... mined? But the Angries were an interesting (if heterogeneous) bunch. And, yes, I wish I was as talented as Kingsley Amis. I remember reading "Lucky Jim" in about 1984. It bowled me over, so I can only imagine the impact with its freshness and liveliness. I can only imagine the impact it must have had in 1954. There is a great deal of interesting material here. But like all these books, it needs to be at least twice as long (there are many writers from Angry-influenced writers from a very slightly later period such as Stan Barstow and David Storey or, for that matter, B.S. Johnson, who are not even mentioned). Carpenter sees the Angries as a passing show and that was true to a certain extent, but the fact is that 50 years later we are still talking about them. They must have done something right. They were news that has stayed news. (***)
Neal Stephenson: The System of the World
Only just started this. And given that I'm doing by MBA, I've no idea when I'll finish. But it'll be there besides my bed to remind me of freer days to come. (***)
Elizabeth Benedict: The Joy of Writing Sex
Entertaining and informative guide to writing about sex. Pity it wasn't longer. It's a huge area (or, rather, areas) and Benedict does pass through rather quickly at times. But then we can always use our imagination if we want more. (****)
Chris Turner: Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Documented an Era and Defined a Generation
Is "The Simpsons" the greatest TV show of all time? Well, if it isn't what is? Certainly, this book makes a convincing case for the priority of America's First Family. (Homer for President. Face it, he couldn't be worse.) Extremely readable, it is sliping down like an oyster. I'm up to page 100 already and I should be reading MBA books. My reasoon for only giving this book 4 stars is that not only does it not have an index, unforgiveable in itself, it doesn't even have a table of contents! Shame on you, Ebury Press. I can only hope these omissions are the mass market paperpack. (****)
James Gleick: Isaac Newton
James Gleick is probably the best science writer out there. Apparently, this book contains mistakes. But until I have the time to read Richard S. Westfall's monumental biography of Newton, "Never at Rest", this will more than do as an introduction to Newton's life and thought. Good preparation for "The System of the World", Volume III of "The Baroque Cycle" due any week now. (****)
Jonathan Coe: Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson
A biography of one of The Razor's favourite writers by another of the The Razor's favourite writers? What's not to like? Not much. I really like Coe's chatty style (I suspect he would be an interesting chap to have a curry with). Johnson was a fascinating character and he must have been quite something to come across in real life. Sure, Coe never really gets under Johnson's skin, but that's true of almost all biographies. Despite being four years late, I suspect this book was written in a hurry (we know that it was written at the same time as "the Closed Circle, Coe's eagerly awaited completion of the tryptych he began with "The Rotters Club"). There are a number of stylish repetitions that jump out at you and also a number of mistakes and typos. It could have benefited from going through the word processor one more time *and* a good copy-edit. But this is a zippy, zingy read about one of Britain's most interesting post-War writers. Johnson had incredible, bombastic self-belief (a cover for his lifelong suicidal depression), something the Razor does not. But if Johnson could do it, maybe he can too. (****)
Adam Roberts: Salt (Gollancz SF S.)
Reminded me of "The Sparrow", but in a good way. Roberts's science is a bit dodgy at times, but if he dismissed all sf with dodgy science, there wouldn't be all that much left and at least he never egregiously insults the intelligence of the reader. I liked the descriptions of the anarchist and statist societies. Reminded me of "The Dispossessed", but in a good way. As was waisely said, at the Jomsborg Thing, this is a very British novel. And all the better for that. (***)
Michael Palin: Mind the Gap
A collection of photographs of the tube taken at or near the stations at the ends of the various lines. Just wonderful. There is something incredibly *homely* about this book, perhaps because the pictures are most of suburban stations and the captions make one realise that Mr James is a man just like you who likes to hear the hear the football results of "Grandstand" after a crisp Autumn Saturday spent pottering about the tube. There is the thrill of the recognition of the familar and so often ignored here. (*****)
Alastair Reynolds: Revelation Space (Gollancz SF S.)
Started this last night. Reynolds is the other tutor on my Arvon course at the end of August. Whereas I've read all of Christopher Priest's work, I doubrt I'll get through much more of Reynolds as this given that all of his books are long and all of them st in the same universe. But this is *hard* sf, it got good reviews and it should be right up my street. I hope so. (****)
Andrew Collins: Where Did It All Go Right?: Growing Up Normal In the 70s
Collins grew up in suburban, provinicial Northampton. I grew up in suburban, provincial Preston. Emphaisis on the provinicial. There's a great of commonality between our lives. There are two major differences. Firstly, Colins self-consciously strived to be popular and cool and he succeded. Secondly, the all-pervasive influence of the Roman Catholic Church was absent from his life. It makes a difference. I couldn't write a book subtitled "Growing Up Normal in the 70s". This is not a short book and the truth is that Collins's childhood is really that interesting after a while. Also, he never tells us why he didn't go to the Swaperama when Cheggers came to town nor exactly what it was that his brother, who did attend the event, was so disillusioned by. The Razor demands to know. (***)
Peter Robinson: Snapshots from Hell: Making of an MBA
A slight read, but a quick one (I only bought it on Friday!). I don't think Imperial will be very much like Stanford (the sun won't shine and there won't be a hot tub), but it does provide a taste of what b-school might be like, althoughI am a non-poet! As some reviewers have pointed out, Robinson's experience is very non-typical. Had he not had the White House experience, he'd never have got personal interview with Maxwell, Jobs and Murdoch. He also never tells us what his GMAT was. Maybe it wasn't so important in the 80s. He's also very Reagenite, but no mention of the S&L scandals. Strange that. Still, worth a read as there aren't many books on b-school experiences. (****)
Neal Stephenson: The Confusion
Volume II of the Baroque Cycle. This book has it all: adventure, romance, philosophical discussions. What more could you ask for? Deeply, deeply wonderful. (*****)
Karl Sabbagh: Dr Riemann's Zeros
Just started this last night. Given the importance of the Riemann hypothesis - and given the difficulty of explaining just what the heck it is all about - I felt it was behoven on me to find out more about it. (****)
Alan Ayckbourn: The Crafty Art of Playmaking
Only half the book is about playwriting; the other half is on directing. This is a slight book, but it's always hearing the advice of one of the true master's of the modern stage. (****)