Finished Two Books In A Day Including The Worst Football Book I've Ever Read

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

So two books have been finished. The first was Too Late To Turn Back by Barbara Greene. An account of her journey through West Africa in the nineteen thirties with her cousin Graham Greene.

It's an OK book. The author isn't racist towards the native people there although there are moments where she does come across as patronising. To be fair she does appear to acknowledge this in this edition published in the nineteen eighties.

To be honest acceptable though it was I very much doubt I'll remember it in the future. A sort of literary McDonalds.Apart that is as a comparison if I ever read her cousin's account of the same trip Journey Without Maps.

So the next Penguin/Pelican paperback to emerge from the great unread is:

A128 - W G Fearnsides and O M B Bulman  - Geology In The Service Of Man

Yes I know. But when you collect vintage Penguins/Pelicans then this is a consequence.

The blurb describes it as "eminently readable". I doubt that but no stone will be left unturned in finding out.

I've also finished Big Sam the autobiography of Sam Allardyce (with Shaun Custis). In terms of his time in the job the Usain Bolt of ex England managers.

I'd borrowed that book (written before he became Sunderland manager let alone England) to have a laugh in the light of what happened subsequently. Those moments are there but on completion my main question is how a book as badly written as this one got published.

For there are moments when it seems to suggest that Allardyce can barely string words together (which his TV interviews show is not the case). I've mentioned before of a sentence with four "I"s in it. Another example that caught my eye was in describing the Bolton player Hierro "There wasn't a better passer in the Premier League and I include Paul Scholes who was the master". A sentence which if you think about it makes no sense. I did wonder whether an uncredited writer of this book was Google translate.

Even the construction of this book is dire. Chapter five is entitled Stateside With The Rowdies with regard to Allardyce's time with Tampa Bay.and has roughly fourteen pages in it. Just three are actually about the Rowdies. The remaining pages are devoted to other tropical parts of his career in Coventry and Preston.When going through the clubs he's managed suddenly inserted between them is a chapter on his management style. Surely that would have been more suitable towards the end?

And speaking about the stories of the clubs he's managed I have said before that I've some sympathy with him for how the football boards/owners have treated him (although in his last season with West Ham if the second half of that season was as good as the first he could still be Hammers manager today). But these chapters seem less about setting the record straight as settling old scores. In terms of the trials and tribulations of being a manager a far better book is Neil Warnock's The Gaffer (who is,incidentally, now manager of Cardiff City).

So in all respects this is an awful book. However as I mentioned before when taking this out  of Porthcawl library there might be a chance of redemption. For as the lady librarian implied, there are further chapters to be written.

Until the next time.

F Scott Fitzgerald and An Ordinary Reader Becoming Literary Switzerland

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

I am an ordinary man with an ordinary not special job but I do like to read which has been one of the most consistent things in my life. But I've never been involved in the book industry in anyway. Not even working in that rarest of places now a bookshop. And what I mean by all of that is that whilst I have opinions on writers and books I cannot claim that it's complete. Other things (ie life) interferes. So what's going to be said is on the understanding that with the writers I'm going to chat about my opinion is based on the books I've read so far.

That being said when faced with reading a book by a "great" writer then liking it is obviously fine. You are in tune with accepted opinion. Funnily enough hating it is equally ok. For you disliked it for a reason and can passionately argue your case. As I've mentioned before of the books I've read nothing has wavered from my view that D H Lawrence is a writer of pretentious tosh and would not be remembered today if it wasn't for Lady Chatterley's Lover. There is also John Galsworthy, author of The Forsythe Saga series of books ..well words fail me...as they do him.

But F Scott Fitzgerald is in a special category. I've finished The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Six Other Stories. That makes two novels (not Gatsby) and a collection of short stories that has been read so far and my position on him that I mentioned when I started the book has not changed. For like The Simpsons and Star Wars with Fitzgerald I am neutral,I am literary Switzerland.

And neutrality is a very difficult position to explain when discussing a writer deemed to be "great". Because being neutral makes you feel you've missed something whereas hating it makes you think everyone else is wrong.

If we take the title story of a person who ages backwards physically and mentally well it was all entertaining enough but then again so was Under Siege with Steven Seagal. When you let your brain go beyond first gear then holes in the story begins to show.

Other stories in the collection were contrived pieces of machinery where you almost felt as if you were reading a literary service manual. But, (and it's a big but) all of the stories were readable. The trouble is at no time did I feel I was in the presence of greatness

So the new Penguin from the great unread is:

Barbara Greene - Too Late To Turn Back

Barbara Greene was a cousin of Graham Greene. This is an account of a trip they made together to Liberia. This is from the Penguin Travel Library Series of the early eighties. Worth a read I think.

Until the next time.