The Reason You're Alive By Matthew Quick :American Conservative Literature?

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

So I finished yesterday one of the library books I'd borrowed a few weeks back which was this (even though I did a spoiler alert in the title)

Not Easy On The Eyes This Cover

Now the cover revals that Mr Quick was the author of The Silver Linings Playbook. I'd heard of the film, didn't realise it was a book, haven't seen/read either.

The best thing I can say about this novel was that it was readable. I'll give it that. Ultimately though I didn't like it. Firstly because until the end there are few moments in this book where anything really happens. It is mainly a reminiseence by the main character Vietnam War Veteran David Granger.

He is not just a war veteran but a Republican. It's his views that permeate the book. So that it's the sort of narrative where he is not just right politically but in everything else as well. He might be aware that he has certain flaws. But these are caused by what others inflicted on him. Such as him not being on good relations with his son is partly due to him being "a liberal".

He is not racist....apart from being of the view that all muslems are terrorists. Equally disturbingly he seems to think that paedophilia is accteptable if a) Done "back in the day" b) Consensual c) If your mind's messed up due to having fought in a war.

America is "the best country in the world". Well I'm old enough to say it isn't. Nowhere is perfect. Everywhere has problems they're just different.

The fact that it was a Conservative book did not bother me (I've praised Jeffrey Archer in this blog!).It's more the lack of nuance, subtlety that's annoying.

For all I know there may be hidden subtexts that I didn't catch. I don't think so. But you know any book is irritating where it has these so well hidden that you'd have to use infra red technology to highlight them.

The book cover of the UK paperback edition is interesting. Firstly the blurb says that the book "challenges us to look beyond our own prejudices and search for the good in others". That presumably refers to the politics. Also there are five comments of praise. None though from any British and only one from an American newspaper, which I think tells you how it was received.

So the question is this. Would this book have been published in Britain if it wasn't for The Silver Linings Playbook?

I don't think so.

Until the next time.

On A Vain Search For A Jeffrey Archer Novel In W H Smiths Epping

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

It seems that on returning from hospital my mother's taste in books has gone as wild as her taste in food. She asked me today as well as groceries to get a novel for her in the Epping branch of W H Smith (she can't remember where her library book is). That novel was Not A Penny More Not A Penny Less by Jeffrey Archer.

This choice, left field though it was, was not an issue for me. Firstly it meant that her taste for reading had returned. Secondly, as I've mentioned before in this blog I have no problems with Jeff's books before A Matter Of Honour judged purely as an entertainment. Indeed I've read Not A Penny More Not A Penny Less and, as a piece of bestsellery fun, liked it.

Now what I'm going to say next is not at all scientific. Obviously the state of selling books has changed since I was a child. The internet has seen to that. Still the percentage of adult books for sale in the shop seemed small for me and if you exclude those being offered as a "Two for £7" offer then really pitiful when you reduce the choice to adult fiction. The time when a small branch of W H Smiths was my childhood book nirvana has long since gone (Ilford many decades ago).

So looking for Archer's books did not take me long. Nor did looking at them either. There were just four. These four were part of the "Cliveden Chronicles" (which I haven't read) and as they were numbers two,four,five and six respectively then buying them instead of the novel she wanted to read was not going to buy them as a consolation prize. Indeed if you were not following the chronicles then no one was going to buy them.

When I was young, so the glasses I'm wearing are obviously rose tinted as well as modelled on Joe 90, then if you were a bestselling writer (I'm not talking about the factory like James Patterson - plus one other) then most of your books were going to be on sale in the local small town bookshop. Not apparently anymore. No Kane and Abel or indeed my favourite Archer novel of all time First Amongst Equals. Nothing. And you can't say that it was because they were written decades ago. Stephen King's Carrie and Misery were in that very same branch.

Jodi Picoult and Stephen King had more books than Archer in this branch. As indeed did Terry Pratchett and Peter James.

So what am I saying? Perhaps it's the case that Jeffrey Archer is not as much of a bestselling writer than he was. No real idea and to be honest I don't care.

Well if you live in a small town and want a particular book that very day then you will probably have to go to a bigger town (for example the W H Smith in nearby Harlow is larger). A small town with a bookshop is unfortunately rare nowadays unless you're watching old movies. Penarth has one. Epping did once but it closed years ago.

The small town bookshop then. Slowly dying due to the internet and supermarkets. And yes I'm just as much of a hypocrite as the rest of us.

Until the next time.

Is Jeffrey Archer The Tiger Woods Of Bestselling Writers (He Had It But Now It's Gone)?

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

In the long, long years ago of my early youth. When I started to work and my political views were not as left wing as they are now .....well.....I have a confession I need to make.

I liked Jeffrey Archer (as a writer he stresses).

Yes there I said it. I've come out of the bookshelf to say this. Only in terms of entertainment value you understand I enjoyed his books. From Not A Penny Not A Penny Less to First Amongst Equals his books passed through my eyes voraciously.

Jeffrey Archer had seemingly the gift of making you want to turn the page. It didn't matter that his style was not perfect, he could, as any of the blurb on his bookcovers will say "tell a story".

In fact I'll go further, judged solely as an entertainment First Amongst Equals is one of the best books I've ever read.

But...(you knew that this was coming)

When I read A Matter Of Honour there seemed to be something missing. That urge to turn the page was gone. I've read another whose title I forgot but was something about The American Constitution. That too was dull, uninteresting. He seemed to have lost his touch. He was like any other writer now.

And so now after all these years I've read Tell Tale, and....he has become exactly like Tiger Woods, an impressive past hiding an unimpressive present.

These are a collection of short stories. Some are "twist in the tale", others are "rags to riches (not necessarily in wealth - in a career sense as well)". All of them are however pedestrianly written. If his name wasn't on the cover I'm sure it would not have been published.

The twist in the tale stories were either predictable or you just shrugged your shoulders in your mind and thought "there we are then". As for the rag to riches tales. He's done them before....and better.

I noticed that a number of stories were "inspired by real events". The word "inspired" gives Archer a lot of wriggle room. In Who Killed The Mayor? inspired by real events a killer (easily guessable) is revealed. I'm sure he doesn't know re the "real events" who that person really is. I don't really care aside from View of Auvers-sur-Oise which had an ending which didn't so much beggar belief as was selling the Big Issue on the street. Yet it too is inspired by real events

Perhaps what the book needs is to follow the example of Fanta Orange. There's orange in it but when you look at the bottle it's just 4% (!). So perhaps the reader should be given a percentage as to how much of each story is real.

There is also one story which has three separate endings because Archer couldn't be bothered to decide which one to pick. Listen Jeff...this is a book...not a DVD!!!

Jeffrey Archer then. He had it. He lost it. And he still hasn't found it.

Until the next time.

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