british – Cubilone's Dimension

REVIEW: SWEET TOOTH

I enjoyed Sweet Tooth‘s insight into ’60s and ’70s British life more than I did any of the characters, who I honestly didn’t care about all that much. It happens to me a lot, enjoying the setting and background more than the actual story, and it happens to me not only with books, but also with movies, games, sometimes even with people. Often I feel as if everything else apart from the protagonists, the setting, the situations, the world events taking place somewhere unseen and the emotional backdrop are the real centrepieces of a story. Here, it wasn’t Serena Plome or any of her lovers: it was MI5 and the world of domestic intelligence, the Cold War and the sides the public, or rather intellectuals, would pick in the “war of ideas”, be it consciously or subconsciously. Or somewhere in between.

Yes, I definitely enjoyed being transported to that era as a little observer; an era when a lot of things were the same as now, but they didn’t have phones or the internet. However, they did have a growing eco movement. They did have rock—in fact a lot of the rock stars we’re still idolising were alive back then, like my father often observes, who incidentally gifted me this book the Christmas before last; they did have marijuana, leftist movements and activists, they did have secret government services running the show in ways which will probably never be disclosed. A lot of what is still part of public discourse had its roots in that era. We think we’re being original, when we just haven’t done our homework. Am I ranting? I think I’m ranting.

What truly surprised me was the meta ending. I wasn’t expecting it to come from a story such as this, but then again, and this is probably another reason why I enjoyed it, Sweet Tooth was a book about books, authors and literature.

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REVIEW: TALK TO THE HAND

Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of Everyday Life by Lynne Truss

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Got this one in 2010 in Dundee, Scotland for £1.99 from a shop called The Works. Why can’t there be such massive book sales in Greece? For all the uncouthness Talk to the Hand wants to subscribe them to, the Brits seem to know perfectly well the importance of a cheap book.

The following two excerpts are two of the parts I thought were interesting in this otherwise unmemorable book:

…meanwhile the choice impulse is being exploited to the utmost degree. “More choice than ever before!” say the advertisers. “Click and find anything in the world!” says the internet. “What people want is more choice,” say the politicians. “Eight thousand things to do before you die!” offer the magazines. No wonder we are in a permanent state of agitation, thinking of all the unpicked choices and whether we’ve missed something. Every day, you get home from the shops with a bag of catfood and bin-liners and realise that, yet again, you failed to have cosmetic surgery, book a cheap weekend in Paris, change your name to something more galmorous, buy the fifth series of The Sopranos, divorce your spouse, sell up and move to Devon, or adopt a child from Guatemala. Personally, I’m worn down by it. And I am sure that it isn’t good for us. I mean, did you know there is a website for people with internet addiction. I will repeat that. There is a WEBSITE for people with INTERNET ADDICTION. Meanwhile, a friend of mine once told me in all seriousness that having children was definitely “on the shopping list”; another recently defined her religious beliefs as “pick and mix”. The idea of the world’s religions forming a kind of candy display, down which you are free to wander with a paper bag and a plastic shovel, struck me as worryingly accurate about the state of confusion and decadence we’ve reached. Soon they’ll have signs outside the churches. “Forget make-your-own pizza. Come inside for make-your-own Sermon on the Mount!” The mystery of voter apathy is explained at a stroke here, by the way. How can I vote for all the policies of either the government or the opposition? How can I give them a “mandate”? I like some of their policies, but I don’t like others, and in any case I’d like to chuck in some mint creams and pineapple chunks. I insist on my right to mix and match.

…

Finally, in the Guardian in April 2005, came the story of research conducted by a psychiatrist from King’s College London, which proved that the distractions of constant e-mails, text and phone messages were a greater threat to concentration and IQ than smoking cannabis. “Respondents’ minds were all over the place as they faced new questions and challenges every time an e-mail dropped into their inbox,” wrote Martin Wainwright. “Manners are also going by the board, with one in five of the respondents breaking off from meals or social engagements to receive and deal with messages. Although nine out of ten agreed that answering messages during face-to-face meetings or office conferences was rude, a third nonetheless felt that this had become ‘acceptable and seen as a sign of diligence and efficiency’.”

There was another good one about how everyday courtesy is becoming more and more similar to the kind of interaction you would expect from people behind steering wheels being angry at each other for one reason or another. This part in particular stayed with me because it reminded me of my dad. It was something he would say.

Now that I think about it, this whole book reminds me of my dad. It could have been written by him, in fact, only in that case it would have been a lot funnier.

I should just give him this book and see what happens.

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Review: Making History

Making History by Stephen Fry

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

“I don’t know why I find it intensely erotic to stand naked before an open fridge, but I do. Maybe it’s something to do with the expectation of a hunger soon to be satisfied, maybe it’s that the spill of light on my body makes me feel like a professional stripper. Maybe something weird happened to me when I was young. It is an alarming feeling, mind, because all those assembled food-stuffs put ideas in your head you’re on the rise. Stories of what you can do with the unsalted butter on ripe melons or raw liver, they crowd your head as the blood begins to rush.
“I spotted a big slab of Red Leicester and pulled off a piece with my hands. I stood there chewing for some time, buzzing with happiness.
“Thas was when the idea came to me, full born.
“The force of it made me gape. A mashed pellet of bread fell from my open mouth and at once the blood flew upwards to the brain where it was needed, leaving my twitching excitement below with nothing to do but shrink back like a started snail.”

No wonder this man can write so eloquently and wittily about penises. It’s a great thing it’s not just them he can write like that about.

Stephen Fry is some sort of homo universalis: a modern day Leonardo Da Vinci, only much funnier. He’s an actor, a humourist, a TV show preseneter, a walking encyclopedia, an activists for gay rights, a linguist… an intellectual all around. I had no idea he was a writer on top of all that but it comes as no real shock. One can’t resist but nod silently, in contemplation and agreement to Mitchell & Webb’s “who doesn’t want to be like Stephen Fry?”.

Imagine my surprise when I found out that the book I had picked from Politeia, just because it had “Stephen Fry” and “History” written with large playful letters on the cover where it also had a picture of a cat, had to do with WWII and alternate history. I was thrilled! It’s been some time since I last read a 500-page book in less than 10 days. It was a good page-turner, not too memorable or original, but for a lover of good alternate history and for one that wouldn’t turn down well-written science fiction, it was rather good.

I know that the best part of such stories, at least for me, is finding out the little details of the “fictional” worlds that have branched out differently. Therefore, I shall not disclose anything but what’s necessary to whet your appetite: if Hitler had never been born, how can we be sure that the evil he was responsible for would have been equally prevented? Would Rock & Roll have ever been born? Would Orwell live to write 1984? What would the computers look like in 1996 — the year the book was written? Stephen Fry in his signature cerebral style includes real historical tidbits on many personalities of the past as well as science and cultural background that make the thing more believeable. It seems only right that a man with a broad range of interests such as himself would be the perfect candidate to write such a demanding genre as alternate history.

I’ll roll this review up leaving you with this: at one point of the book, the protagonist decides that the format of a novel is not enough to convey the action; the book promptly switches to telling the story by means of being a film script, only to switch back when the heavy action’s suddenly over:“I fade from Hollywood screenplay format to dull old, straight old prose because that’s how it felt. That’s how it always feels in the end.

Exquisite.

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