On Books: Particularly The One That's Ninety Percent Belgian

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

First a quick word about this blog and me. Car had a bit of a bash last week. It's thankfully drivable and if the eyesight test is anything to go by will be right as rain once the garage the insurance company picks deals with it. Cannot obviously chat about the circumstances at this time....except it wasn't my fault.

Me? Shaken but not stirred.

Even when I get the courtesy car I'm a bit too nervous at present to do any exploring of places in South Wales new to me. So that bit of the blog will be put on hold for (I assume) a few weeks.

But there will always be the books.

So have at last finished Thomas Wolfe's You Can't Go Home Again. I've discussed this book in an earlier post with regard to it's attitude to African Americans. I'm afraid to say that didn't change. It does however almost makes me delighted to tell you that this novel is just plain awful even if you took that part away.

Basically about the travails of an American writer. You think you know where this is going to and then for no coherent reason vears off in both style in location. It's as if Mr Wolfe wrote the novel, then felt that he needed to make it bigger thinking it would make the book more important than it actually is. Characters appear then wander off as if they had a prior engagement....I wish I did.

The new book from the Kindle is Operation Eichmann by Zvi Anaroni and Wilhelm Dietl. It's about the capture of the notorious Nazi and bringing him to justice in Israel. Mr Anaroni was the lead investigator, so it should be an interesting read.

As for the library, yesterday I borrowed two books. This was the first:

Jeffrey Archer - Tell Tale

This is an intriguing book for me as I've not read one of his works in decades (for reasons I'll chat about when I've finished it).

It's to book I'm about to start. Because the other, and the one I finished in a day, was this:

Alec Le Sueur - Bottoms Up In Belgium

Having married a Belgian woman Mr Le Sueur has knowledge of a much maligned country and so what he's produced here is part travel book, part guidebook, part history book, part reminiscence of things Belgian that most people across the channel would not be aware of (and even less so post Brexit - again it seems to be affecting a lot of what I'm reading at the moment).

It was written,I should point out, in 2014.

Perhaps I should mention my own "Belgian" story here. Many, many, years ago I was having a conversation with a guy and for reasons I no longer recall he demanded me to name him a Belgian writer apart from Herge.

"George Simenon" I replied.

"He's French" came the indignant response.

"Actually he was born in Leige". From which I swaggeringly left the room.

What might seem like an act of bigheadeness on my part was actually because I was afraid he was going to ask me to name another  Belgian writer. I literally quit whilst I was ahead.

I loved this book. So let's get the critisms in first. There were three chapters which seemed pointless to me. First was that on the Formula 1 Grand Prix. I'm sure you could create regional variations everywhere of "the traffic to get there is awful/it's expensive/it's noisy. Ditto the Belgian history in Eurovision (aside from the interesting fact that the entry is alternately in Flemish/French).

Even the chapter on the EU seemed not really all that "Belgian" to me (Brexit again).

That out of the way this is the book Belgium needed to sell itself to the outside world. It taught me many things I was not aware of (suspect British people will be stunned by what Mr Le Sueur reveals about Stella Artois and a certain "British" sportsman..I know I was) in a humorous and friendly way. And unlike the book on the Scilly Isles I discussed previously this wasn't the sort of travel book that focuses on the eccentrics of a place.

(Without wishing to spoil things for the reader I should mention that there's one chapter that because of circumstance ends on a tragic note. The author writes about the situation humanely and should be praised for doing so)

I'm not going to Belgium (or indeed anywhere else) any time soon. But the Belgian tourist board should give this man a medal. For it's made me want to visit one day.

Can I name ten famous Belgians? At a push yes. Two cyclists,one writer and a combination of footballers and the cast of Professor T.

Until the next time

In Which Four Books Are Read In Twenty Four Hours And An Update To The Welsh Labour Metaphor

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Well four books have indeed been read in a twenty four hour period. A combination of their relative briefness and my insomnia which has recently returned to bite by waking me up. Still four books off the list of Kindle great e book unread is productive.

(As a quick aside apparently ebook sales are falling at the exact moment that because all my traditional books have all been boxed/crated up awaiting the move I've used the Kindle the most. Thus showing my ability to join a trend at exactly the opportune moment! As I've said in the past though the Kindle (other e readers are available) does have it's strong points but nothing beats the quiet pleasure of turning a page).

And so to the four books:

Orations by President John Quincy Adams is really just a fancy title for a political speech. Let me save you the bother. It's not the Gettysburg address.

The Panda Theory by French writer Pascal Garnier. This is a novel of a man who wanders around a small town in Brittany and the people he meets. It's a story where nothing much happens, but it doesn't matter , because you the reader are affected by the ordinariness of it all. Essentially decent people trying to get a handle on their lives.

Needless to say I loved it. The blurb said that Garnier (a writer I wasn't aware of before buying the book in an Amazon deal) could be compared to George Simenon and I get it. Not only in the type of story being told but also in its relative thinness and its sense of place. I've never been to Brittany but  felt in the time it was being read that I was there. Garnier is a writer I'll look out for in the future.

Haydn is a 1908 biography of the composer by John F Runciman. Short,opinionated and basic (and that's just Runciman.....I'll get my coat) this really was a waste of time which upon finishing it made me able to go back to sleep.

A Ball Player's Career by Adrian C Anson is a sporting autobiography published in 1900 giving his account mainly of his time playing (and managing) the Chicago Base Ball Club.

It's a charming read, but not without bite. The story of a proposed breakaway league is fascinating. And the account of the way he left the club, having been betrayed by at least one person he'd considered a friend is heartbreaking.

Of the four books this definitely got the silver medal.

And the latest book I'm reading? King Solomon's Mines by H Rider Haggard, Definitely one of those books that you should cross off your literary bucket list whether you eventually like it or not. It's not the first book of his I've read. As a teenager I read a novel called Beatrice which was pure unmitigated twaddle from start to finish. Still, this is obviously a more famous work and has stood the test of time, so we live in hope.

And speaking of time....it's metaphor time  and yesterday was probably the last time before we move I went to the barbers. It is, you may remember a converted van, outside what was the Ogmore and Vale Labour club, now but a sorry wreck of happier times and was what I used as a metaphor for Welsh Labour in an earlier post.

The Metaphor Returns

You will see that to the left of this photo is a van. That's where the barbers have moved to as it was right next to the club for years. Clearly something was going on.

On entering the van I mentioned their move and my assumption that something after all this time was going to happen was proved correct. There was a lady and male barber there. He said the building was going to be completely demolished. Not saying that this was going to happen by election day but what was an iconic Labour party building in the area will soon become just a memory, and a withering one at that. So not just a metaphor for Labour in the present but for them in future as well.

What I'm going to say next is what the barber told me. I'm assuming it's correct, but for all I know this is but local gossip. You will need to bare that in mind.

What he said was that the demolished building was going to be replaced by flats for social housing with a couple of shops at the bottom and the specific one he mentioned was a Co-op grocery store.

Now I have no problem with social housing. The lack of it in Britain I'd argue is helping to cause social instability but if correct the news about the Co-op shop bothered me. Why? Because there are two convenience stores just a block away.

Why would Bridgend labour council agree to this? We all know exactly what's likely to happen. The Co-op will come in. Undercut the two other stores and then will have the power to do what it likes as at least one would close down. Competition only works for a short while but eventually in this sort of circumstance there is only one or at the very least a predominant store remaining which will have the power to do what it likes without any major comeback.

As far as I can see it (and let me stress again it's on the assumption that what I was told was true) this is just the Labour council spreading their legendary incompetence in town management to the suburbs as well.

Incidentally we discussed the forthcoming elections (a lady hairdresser was there as well) and I stated that Plaid Cymru was having my vote. No one actually questioned me on it. No one said "You're an idiot" or "You're English why? ". Labour need to understand that many Welsh people are disillusioned. Carwyn Jones might blame Jeremy Corbyn but the cancer affecting them started a long time before he came to power. This is just an excuse to hide a party which has been arrogantly incompetent in government on a local and regional level in Wales for years.

As I left I knew the lady hairdresser would consider voting for Plaid. My job was done.

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

When Van Der Valk Almost Made Me Watch The Olympics

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

I must admit that despite being a sports fan the Olympics is  just passing me by. This started in 2012. Sometimes I have an instinctive aversion to following the herd. Not every time and it seems to come onto me in fits and starts but it does occur.

2012 remember was held in London. The nation was encouraged "to get involved" by people who probably considered them normally as lower orders and/or marketing fodder. I reacted against. When Olympic flame was passing through Bridgend on its way to London. Wife and daughter went out to see it. Me? I watched TV. Can't remember what I watched...didn't care.

During the tournament made it a point of scrupulously ignoring it on TV.radio,online. Didn't work all the time of course. There were moments when smiley faced announcers were cheerleaders for sports that few people would bother to watch if they paid them to do so because "Team GB" was on. Just reached for my nearest book and ignored it. That Saturday evening when Britain won three gold medals in the athletics? I was busy reading.

What made me act in this way was not a lack of respect for the participants but an aversion to the hype that surrounded this event. Four years later nothing has changed. It's being held in Brazil, a country with political,economic and health problems and yet we're being meant to forget about it for the duration of the games.

I switch on the TV in the morning. Thankful that most of the action occurred when asleep and find presenters with those same smiley faces telling me that a bunch of divers won a bronze medal. Let's pause with that for a moment. Wales only recently came joint third playing in one of the biggest tournaments of the biggest sport in the world and as I recall not once did it make the top story on the UK TV news. Yet two men in a sport that few people would notice normally get into exactly the same position and it's the headline.

And again I should stress here that I'm not belittling the achievements of the people participating. What I'm belittling is the media hype that surrounded them.

So I pay little attention to the Olympics. But if we go back to 2012, there was one moment that I wobbled.

We were at a friend's house. The Olympics of course was on. Specifically the gymnastics. Wife/daughter/friend were astonished that I'd brought a book along with me. They watched the television. I was reading.

That book was Because Of The Cats by Nicolas Freeling. I'd been looking forward to reading this thriller, part of the group of novels about Dutch detective Van Der Valk, because as a child I was a fan of the subsequent seventies TV series.

When we arrived though I knew a difficult afternoon awaited me. A quarter of the way through this story and I didn't like it. It was dull and predictable. What was probably the worst thing though was that after the first few chapters it didn't strike me as being all that Dutch either. Full disclosure here. I've never been to the Netherlands but when I started reading George Simenon's Maigret novels I'd never been to France either but you know exactly where you are in those books.

It did not improve that afternoon. I was bored. There was a clear temptation to just put the thing down and watch the sport. I persevered. Wish I could say that there was a reward as a reader in persevering but no. Not the worst book I read in 2012 (take a bow The Silver Spoon by John Galsworthy) but far and away the most disappointing.

Ah well you can't have everything. Be it an Olympic bronze or knowing every book you'll read will be good.

Until the next time.