It Might Have Been International Women's Day But Fathers And Sons Is Better Than Wives And Daughters...And Other Books

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today,

Well have been reading a few books since we last chatted. So let's start with a biography of Robert Burns by John Sharp. If this book was a meal I'd describe it as edible but nothing more. I'm sure there are better bios to use your time on instead.

You may remember a few posts back that I chatted about Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell and that I didn't like it. Well in the random way I pick books to read the next book turned out to be Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev (and it was random....honest!).

Whilst not perfect I enjoyed it. On the one hand you get the sons, with their youthful hopes,ideals cynicism, and disdain for their elders. Also properly discovering for the first time the mystery that are women. On the other there are the fathers. Men you feel are dissatisfied. The feeling that as their best years have passed them by they haven't yet found a certain peace within themselves.

There is more of the sons than the fathers, and as now I belong to the former I would have rather seen it the other way. Still of the books I'm chatting about today this was the best in my view.

The Angel of Terror by Edgar Wallace is one of those books that's perfectly acceptable as long as your brain is cruising in first gear. That said, Erle Stanley Gardner is better.

To be clear with regard to my criticisms of other Wallace thrillers it didn't strike me as racist and regard to sexist whilst the heroine has moments of dimness where she needs the help of men the cleverest villain is a woman. So I suppose that is some sort of equality.

Beowulf then. No one knows who wrote this epic poem but I think we can hazard a guess that it was a man, Indeed I'll go further by saying that it was not the sort of man who would wander lonely as a cloud and chat about daffodils either.

At the risk of being beheaded by the ghost of some Viking warlord what it didn't do is become one of those exceptions to my disregard of poetry. Ditto The Dalby Bear and Other Ballads by George Borrow.This time though I think this was my fault as I downloaded writers mentioned by Robert Macfarlane in his book Tracks ( W H Hudson was another) but in my eagerness to download everything I disregarded the fact that this is a ballad so probably better appreciated with music. I'll give George a pass.

Regular readers will know that there are certain writers that I describe as literary Switzerland in that whilst I don't dislike them I don't understand why they're considered great either. Anton Chekhov falls into this category and taken as a whole The Schoolmistress and Other Stories does not change anything.

There are exceptions. The title story (which is the best of the collection) and a few others make you sit up and take notice. But for the most part I just shrugged and moved on to the next tale.

In another tick off the literary bucket list the book I'm reading now is The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens. Can't say I'm happy with the portrayal of the villain but I'll chat about that when I've finished.

Until the next time.

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 Most Important Book I've Read This Year

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Let me set the scene for you. It's Sunday afternoon and surprisingly the sun is shining. It's pleasant out there...but I'm inside the house blinds shut.

I should be cutting the grass for the final time before we move out (probably)...but that can wait until Tuesday.I'm inside.

Wife/daughter are out. Next weekend wife and I will be doing a final blitz of the stuff barring the barest of essentials to be packed before the move. The world is my oyster....and I'm inside.....reading.

Not since American Psycho have I read a book that I just had to complete. As a reader it's a rare feeling when a book grips you to that extent. Where almost everything else just has to stop.

As I chatted about yesterday Robert Tressell's novel The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists grips from the first chapter because though it was written in 1911 the message seems astonishingly relevant in the Jackboot Britain that has stealthily been created in recent months. I won't detail what happens in the rest of the novel. I wouldn't spoil things for you. But it shows a vision of a Britain that already exists post Brexit and will only get worse.

For whoever in Britain has been supposed to have "taken control" post Brexit it won't be ordinary people, that's for certain.

And let us be clear here the "Philanthropists" of the title are firstly the people who accept lower standards in their lives for fear of the consequences of rebellion ,that I understand and have acted this way in the past. However there are also those ordinary people who vote Conservative in the UK or Trump in the US  believing that they are natural right wing voters and yet these are the very people who will probably be badly affected by the consequences of their action.

It's not perfect. A bit of editing would have helped. And it's vision of socialism seems quaint now when people such as in Wales have voted for Labour to control towns, cities etc and have been disappointed to have found them as arrogant as Conservatives. It was one of the reasons that I decided to join Plaid Cymru.

However its importance in this age of Jackboot Britain cannot be over emphasised. It describes a Britain where the ordinary are at the mercy of those with money, where the media is biased to the right wing and nothing, absolutely nothing is beyond the needs of avarice.

Good people voted for Brexit and were misled. This novel shows the consequences of a town that rich men rule.

This novel's time has come again. Read it before you find it conveniently unavailable.

The next book to read is Jack O'Judgement by Edgar Wallace. Something tells me I'm not going to be as enthusiastic about this one.

Until the next time.

In Which My Edgar Wallace Amensia Is Cured......Unfortunately

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

You may recall that when mentioning that next book on great ebook unread was The Keepers Of The Kings Peace by Edgar Wallace I said two particular things. One was that I'd no idea of the plot (as the book was free and by a writer I'd heard of I was happy to obtain it) and that the last Edgar Wallace book I'd read was so long ago (decades in fact - the nineteen eighties) I had forgotten what my opinion of it was.

Well that's now changed. Perhaps it was literary shock therapy but everything bar the title of the book I'd read in the eighties (bought for twenty pence in Wanstead Library....I remember that now!) has come back.

The Keepers Of The Kings Peace was written in 1917 and is part of the Saunders of the River series about a commissioner of a British African colony. That sentence alone should tell you where its political thoughts lie. Essentially it's a group of short stories showing how Saunders and his lieutenant "Bones" deal with various problems whilst ruling "the natives" but always having time for a spot of tiffin

And as the above paragraph suggests it's racist in the patronising "We've taken over your country and will now teach you our superior way of life" sort of way. The one white woman in the story is described as more beautiful than the native women and in most of the stories the dealings between the British and the local people are really like between master and servant.

The "N" word is used three times though to be fair twice by a villain.

But even if we leave aside the imperialism and racism (!!) the book also jogged my memory as to why I didn't like the thriller I'd read all those (many) years ago. For whilst I wouldn't go as far as to say it was dull it's only a few notches above that. Pedestrian is the best word to describe it when I would have been perfectly happy if it had just been on an urban speed limit.

What it reminded me of was that the thriller I'd read had no nuance, no danger, no thrill. A problem was seen,and dealt with and that was it. Exactly the same thing here. There was no sense that "the British" were going to emerge from this damaged in any way. It was just so predictable.

So then, a book for Edgar Wallace fans or those Brexiteers who think that a better union than the EU is to create a British Empire Mark 2 starting with Spain. Everyone else should avoid.

Whether this is because of Edgar Wallace's reputation as a writer who churned books like factories produce cars I don't know. What I do know is that compared to the other writer I've read with a similar reputation for producing many books, George Simenon, Edgar Wallace trails far,far behind.

Perhaps some memories are best left forgotten.

The next ebook from the great unread is When The Sleeper Awakes by H G Wells. My view on H G Wells is mixed but what makes this book interesting is that I never heard of it before downloading it.

Until the next time.

Until the

The Importance Of Being Ernest Alfred Viztelly

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

I've finished reading With Zola in England by Ernest Alfred Viztelly. An account of Zola's exile in England when he was being arrested in France for the Dreyfus affair which was published in 1899.

The book is an amalgam of articles Viztelly, a journalist, wrote about how he helped Zola in this time in the London Evening News.

It was an interesting read in many ways. It's Victorian Britain yet there are still issues of media attention as well as the fear of Zola being apprehended against his will and taken back home to France.

But what makes this book really important is when you compare the attitudes of turn of the century Britain to the present day. Whilst obviously Zola is a "celebrity", did not have a physically (though obviously emotionally) traumatic journey to England, had rich friends to help him and was living in relative comfort it is still the case that this was a Britain that took in asylum seekers.

If Zola had lived today the jackboot media would have questioned why he was in Britain, mocked any friends that dared to assist this drain on Britain's resources, would have made anywhere he resided appear like Buckingham Palace, condemned his lack of English and would have only welcomed him if he attacked the European union from the highest mountain.

What this would have done is that less people would have helped him settle in a foreign land and the jackboot journalism rabble rousing would have also made him venerable to abuse and possible attack from the feral amongst us.

For obviously accepting that security checks on asylum seekers need to made the attitude of Britain now to asylum seekers is cold and cruel. It will also damage Britain in the long term in the eyes of the rest of the world.

Britain was the country that let in Karl Marx. It will be given no marks for what it's doing now.

So Ernest Alfred Viztelly, a man who was proud of Britain's then attitude to asylum seekers and who helped a friend in need.He is the type of Great Briton that we should follow.

The next book on the great ebook unread is Keeper Of The Peace by Edgar Wallace. It's not clear what the plot's about and I must admit that it's a long time since I've read an Edgar Wallace book (such a long time ago I can't remember what I thought of it) so am curious to read one now.

Until the next time.