Hooked On Classics Part One: Lorna Doone

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

As I'm in this twilight zone state of preparing to move house but not actually moving yet my reading has for the moment been reduced to my Kindle. A factor that adds another extra profit to those people residing in the Amazon e jungle.

As I've explained before my Kindle can be spilt easily into three categories. Those books bought at full price (the smallest of the three), those bought as an Amazon "deal" and those, mainly classics which were free.

Can't deny that in many ways having a lot of classics on the Kindle is not just financially a bargain (which it is) but also helps me go through all of those books that have obtained "classic" status but hadn't got round to reading because of life, the universe and everything.

That doesn't mean to say it's necessarily a rewarding experience. In previous posts I've discussed how Call Of The Wild  by Jack London essentially lifted the plot from Black Beauty. Or how the dullness of D H Lawrence's Twilight In Italy bored me into submission (the only remarkable fact of this book being that it made Italians seem dull) before I could go to town on it's racism.

And so we come to the latest e book that I've just finished reading Lorna Doone by R D Blackmore. Definitely a novel where more often or not you will hear the word "classic" nearby like some sort of literary stalker.

The thing about Lorna Doone is this. If you take the plot line at it's most basic (Historical - for us - Romance set in a "wild" part of Britain) it is I think the closest classic book to Wuthering Heights written by a man.

My view of Lorna Doone is that if this was a football match it would have been a draw. Where this novel scores is in the description of its setting. You do feel that you're in the wild west (well South West .....Devon) in the late seventeenth century. Also the writing does drive you on. R D Blackmore does know how to tell a tale and I did want to continue turning (or in fact swiping) the page.

I said that it was the closest classic book to Wuthering Heights written by a man. It isn't however better. For a start Emily Bronte's novel is far more subtle and nuanced. There are shades of grey (not as in fifty) absent in Lorna Doone. It's the Wild South West where heroes and villains are (with one slight exception) clearly marked.

Also the male narrator's (John Ridd) opinion of most women is laughable in this day and age. He seems to treat them as tolerated pets that need to be controlled. The one exception is the eponymous Ms Doone herself. She is basically woman placed on a pedestal. Beautiful, graceful, devoted you have to ask if she is quite the catch how was it that she fell in love with a narrator who by his own admission is not handsome (remember that if you see a big/small screen adaptation).

So then a draw. Happy to have read it. Won't ever read it again.

I found myself afterwards on a slight artistic interlude when the next book on the great e unread turned out to Memoirs of Journeys to Venice and the Low Countries by the artist Albrecht Durer bought for my appreciation of the artistic value of having to pay nothing.

For a short book (read in half an hour) it really was a waste of time. This was less a travel journal and more of a ledger as he detailed what he bought and sold. As a writer Durer makes a great artist.

The next book to read is ....The Rainbow by D H Lawrence. Regular readers will know that along with Bridgend Labour Council and Arsenal football club D H Lawrence has become quite the villain in this blog. Still as Michael Palin has shown I'm quite capable of disliking one book by a writer and liking the next. So we live in hope.

Until the next time.

Call Of The Wild by Jack London aka Black Beauty Part 2

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

There is always for the reader too many books too little time. And so you try and avoid as much film/TV series/any illustrations of a book as possible. But of course you're never going to completely successful. Snippets will come to your view.

If you take the Lord Of The Rings / Hobbits books for example. I know there is a search for rings, the hero has funny ears and there are old men with authority and white beards. Nothing though that would be any degree of spoiler to when I actually read the series.

So we come to Call Of The Wild. by Jack London, the latest ebook I've been reading. The snippets I knew beforehand were as follows. It involved a dog,it was set in somewhere icy and there was a sympathetic male character. I knew the final fact because though I've not seen it "the film of the book" starred Charlton Heston and if he's in a film you know he's not playing the bad guy be it in ice or the Planet of the apes.

What was unexpected, and I'm sure I'm not the first person to mention this, was that this turned out to be Black Beauty Part two. A different animal, I know. Tougher, I know. But still Black Beauty Part Two.

Essentially this is about an animal taken from a more comfortable environment and what it has to experience with different owners. It is tougher. It has literally, more bite,  but in concept it's no different from Anna Sewell's novel.

Is it better than Black Beauty? Given I read the latter as a child not sure whether my view would be swayed by the passage of time. What I will say is that the whilst Call of the Wild is readable I'm not sure whether it deserves classic status especially as now I've realised it's basic concept is not new.

Perhaps indeed there should be a greater appreciation, as I've also explained in earlier posts, of what Anna Sewell actually did.

The next one on the great ebook unread is Twilight in Italy by D H Lawrence. Regular readers of this blog will know that I'm not a fan, but let's see if this changes anything.

Until the next time.

Last Chance To See Bridgend Town's Main Post Office Plus Other Town/Book News

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Yesterday then I did something probably for the last time. I went to Bridgend Town's Main Post Office to get the car tax sorted before it's closed down and moved to the basement floor of the nearby W H Smith in February next year.

I've mentioned before that although the closure of standalone main Post Offices is a UK policy I believe that the Labour party, whether in the assembly or the council, have made the job easier because of their negligence/incompetence in the running the town which essentially has run it down thus not attracting people to it with a consequent loss of business.

To put insult to injury I also mentioned that a MERRY CHRISTMAS sign was put up outside the building by the council as part of the general town centre decorations. The Labour people here can be so crass.

Before I continue to chat about the Post Office and as I did refer to the town centre decorations this is apparently the Christmas tree nearby.

Is that all there is?

Hope there are more decorations to come. It looks like was just plonked in the first available space and then had the lights thrown at it.

And there's another vacant lot I've noticed since my last visit.

A Children's/Ladies Clothes Store 

But at least the Labour council aren't scrimping on Christmas decorations....priorities you see.

Back to the Post Office. Went inside and paid off the car tax. I remarked the move to the guy behind the counter and he confirmed that they would be going to the basement floor of the local W H Smith (which I'll chat about later). When I stated that would mean less space he agreed.

In the future this will be a historical picture of how things used to be

Paid the car tax and walked out. Probably for the last time.

In the local Welsh Ambulance charity shop I was pleased to able to buy two pre ISBN Penguins costing 99p each (remaining budget now until Monday 17p). The bad news was that it was both by John Galsworthy, a writer I don't like on the purely technical grounds that he's rubbish.

831 - John Galsworthy - The Man of Property

2653 - John Galsworthy - To Let

Before leaving the town I went to the local W H Smith to have a look at the Post Office's new home. Here is the basement :

Not exactly welcoming

And of course not only will the Post Office lose space but so will W H Smith. The basement stuff here that won't be flogged off at discounted rates will be moved to the ground floor so that they'll be less space for (for example) books. To be honest though my love for W H Smith has weakened through the years. It's branch in Ilford Essex played a big part in my reading education as a child in the seventies. But now it seems to be some sort of bazaar flogging off anything it can. Yesterday I even noticed e cigs behind the counter!

Have finished the ebook My Dining Hell by Jay Rayner. A collection of restaurant reviews he's done through the years. It was admittedly a book only bought to finish off an Amazon voucher. But I enjoyed it.

Can't say I'm a great restaurant visitor. In recent years money, or the lack of it when I was unemployed,was a factor. Nowadays it's just a matter of, dare I say it, taste.

The restaurant critic I would argue has an advantage on other critics in that for the normal reader a bad review would confirm his/her prejudices about restaurants. And when I'm talking restaurants I mean the sort where the food is placed artistically on the plate and where the menu is apparently written by a Booker prize winner.

For the most part this is the sort of pretentious place that is attacked here and entertainingly so. I'm sure Jay Rayner written forests (and now electronic forests) of reviews where praising restaurants to the hilt but let's face it, for the average reader My Dining Heaven wouldn't be as interesting and he knows it.

He gives McDonalds a bad review. I'm slightly more enthusiastic about it than him. It reminds me of the sort of bestseller book you enjoyed at the time but forget soon after (Dick Francis comes to mind) and I prefer McDonalds to Burger King where you have a race to finish the burger before the bap dissolves in your hands.

I wondered also what he felt of Nandos. My personal view being that it was ponced up KFC. Got to google and find that out.

Anyway I do recommend it. The next book on the great ebook unread is The Call Of The Wild by Jack London. The sort  of classic you've been meaning to read for years but life interfered. Now's my chance.

Until the next time.