The Big Mac Novel

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Well Jack O'Judgement by Edgar Wallace is finished. Let my say at the outset that I liked it a lot in a sort of don't think about it wallow in it sort of way. Rather like the Sir Walter Scott historical novel The Talisman that I chatted about recently as long as you don't take it seriously you'll be fine. This book is, to use an old expression, a rattling good yarn.

(Must admit that I'd been waiting for a while for an another writer that I could say I disliked one book but liked the next one. Did not expect it to be Edgar Wallace!)

But when it was finished it made me realised that what I was reading was what I would like to call a Big Mac novel.

The thing about a Big Mac is this. You want it, you eat it,you've enjoyed it. But soon after you've forgotten all about it. A Big Mac novel is a work where the writer has specifically set out to write a bestseller. You've read it, let's say you've enjoyed it, but soon it'll just escape your mind.

When I was a teenager/in my twenties many Jack Higgins/HarryPatterson novels were consumed in the mistaken belief that I too could be a rough tough man's man (especially when I took my glasses off). But The Eagle Has Landed aside I can barely only remember some of the plots of the books and have forgotten many more. Ditto Dick Francis. And as for Alistair Maclean could not tell you the plots of his novels other than those that were made into films (and let me say here, his books were dull the films were better).

Or perhaps Frederick Forsyth is a better example. After his first three thrillers can anyone really recall a book of his? Or for the ladies Barbara Cartland, a woman who produced so many romantic novels I'd be amazed if she could remember the plot of them all let alone the reader.

(Of course there are exceptions. One of my favourite "Big Mac" writers as I've mentioned before was Arthur Hailey, author of Airport and Hotel and whose ebook versions of his novels sell for the astonishly high price of six pounds)

You could just say that this is because I'm a man in his fifties. Something I can't deny. But there are many other books I can remember reading at that time that I can recall now as if it was yesterday. Also, can you drag from the memory the plot of all the James Patterson (plus one other) thrillers you've read?

I'm not being snobbish. There's nothing wrong with having a Big Mac medium meal. I had one last Friday.....

(A quick aside here that was a mistake. I'd finished the afternoon/evening shift at work and for reasons that I won't bother you with needed to get something outside of the house for dinner. Well after ten o'clock on a Friday evening going through the drive through in my Kia Picanto surrounded by the young dudes and dudettes in their flashy over the top shiny alloyed wheeled cars made it the longest time I've ever had to hang round there for a burger)

.....but it's just that a fuller meal is better.

The next book randomly picked, which yet again seems to show that my Kindle has a sense of humour is the first part of the three cities trilogy, Lourdes by Emile Zola. Firstly because this weekend has been all Francais due to the election of Emmanuel Macron. The new President has already pronounced that he's going to seek the transfer of jobs from the City of London to France due to Brexit. Must admit that I'm going to have absolutely no sympathy for anybody there who loses their job who in the past practically wet themselves with excitement because a company closed offices/factories for "efficiency savings" in Britain despite the human/social consequences because it sent the share price up (but note before you call me a "traitor" or a "saboteur" I'm talking about those people only).

And it's also rather funny that having never read Emile Zola before this year I have in the past few months read a book about him and a short story (The Flood - Worth reading).

Must admit it shows that I'm more ignorant of France than I thought. I never realised that Lourdes was a city. You learn something everyday. Such as never go to a Mcdonalds drive through on a Friday night.

Until the next time.

The Trouble With George Clooney's 2010 Film The American Is......I've Read The Book

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

As you know from my blog I read a lot of books. What you will rarely get here is a chat about films. I'm not a film buff. Of course I have favourites won't deny that but when I've control of the TV I'd rather as a rule watch the football (rugby,basketball etc).

And there is the subsection to that of films that are based on a book. Again normally I'd avoid them as it would spoil my enjoyment of the work it was based on. Reading a book after seeing a film would be like watching a recording of a football game whilst already knowing the result (in most cases,but I'll come back to that later). And If I've already read the book then to me what's the point of watching the film for exactly the same reason.

Of course occasionally the film is better than the sourced book. But in my experience only if the original was dull. The Guns Of Navarone as an entertainment is a perfectly good war film but the only near death experience I had when reading the Alistair Maclean thriller was to my brain as it was coma inducing (and for the record that's not an exception - I don't particularly like him).

All of this is leading to of course the recent exception to the above. Wife/daughter have been nagging me to do more in watching my recorded programmes on the DVR. It's about 14%  clear at time of writing. This is to be fair mainly due to recordings of football (rugby,basketball etc) as well as the Welsh language programmes such as the soap opera Pobol Y Cwm. So I've been making an extra effort to watch them. Which brings us to The American. A 2010 film starring George Clooney.

Now you may remember a while back after reading the original Martin Booth novel I said that when this film was next on TV I'd see it. This was partly out of curiosity and partly that I like watching films set in Tuscany as this is where my Italian relatives live. It came up on the DVR list and so started viewing .....I wish I hadn't.

The film starts with a gunfight in a frozen snow ridden part of Sweden. In the book a similar scene is the main character's bad memory somewhere around the middle and that was it. In the film it's the beginning and turns out to be part of the plot. In other words they were changing the storyline.

Personally it really angers me when they do that because if you hadn't read the book you'd have a wrong idea of Martin Booth's thriller. I first realised that film/TV could cheat like this when I was nine years old. There was a TV series in the early seventies of Black Beauty. Set in a Victorian country doctor's house the point was that for me as a nine year old it seemed to be a series for girls (the lead character other than the horse being the eldest child, a daughter) so I didn't watch it after the first few episodes.

About a year later I had the flu and as this was not even the age of the video recorder let alone the internet reluctantly picked a book from my great unread at that time which turned out to be somebody's unwanted copy of Anna Sewell's original novel. Well I was bowled over. Not only was it good it also had nothing to do other than have a black horse in it with the TV series that bore it's name. And incidentally it was also far tougher than I'd expected.

If you've read the book first you'll realise as a consequence that the main villain is not the same as the film. When you realise that it's not difficult working out who that is.

I mentioned  before in this blog falling asleep when trying to view the film for the first time. Well I understand why now. The novel slowly ratchets up the suspense with powerful intensity . The film is just slow and the occasional gunfight and naked female breasts cannot hide it's overall high boredom level.The most lively bit is at the end but I was just too numbed/annoyed to care.

George Clooney is the best thing in the film. In conveys the icy isolated main character impressively. However although he is the best thing in the movie he doesn't carry it.

I really should have known better.

Until the next time.