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Book Club - by Luke

Book Club - May 2006

Alec Guinness

May 29th 2006 09:19
Alec Guinness
Guinness, by Piers Paul Read
As usual, I'm going to start off my blog with the use of the words 'score' and '$5'... this time in relation to an Alec Guinness biography that I managed to get from the Collins Bookstore in Penrith whilst they were liquidating stock in prepartion for being taken over by Fox. Ahem... I got an Alec Guinness book for $5. Score.


Piers Paul Read was a friend of Alec's in the waning moments of his life, and due to this he managed to get Alec's widow and son to give their blessing to his biography of Alec Guinness, making this the only 'official' Alec Guinness biography (note: autobiographies not counting) to date. Guinness' widow died before the book was completed, and his son (whom he never had a good relationship with) didn't really seem to care (I'd assume), which leads this 'official' biography to be nowhere near as sanitized as it otherwise probably would have been.

Like Guinness, Read is a devout Catholic, so his biography seems fairly preoccupied with Guinness' faith... this is by no means a detraction from the book, as Guinness himself was fairly preoccupied with his faith. Read doesn't shy away from the darker corners of Guinness' life (and he has a few of them) and he manages to give an empathic (if not sympathetic) portrayal of a man who was, by his own admission, not very nice to know (he once smashed his infant son's wooden boat in a petty act of revenge!) A rather late observation in the biography from one of Guinness' friends pins the matter right through the heart (and I'm going to paraphrase here), "Alec was basically a not very nice man trying to be as nice as he could". What startled me furthermore for an 'official' biography (especially one by a Catholic who maintains he was Guinness' friend) is that the book meets the actor's homosexuality head on, acknowledges it, and traces Alec's struggle between his sexuality and his faith throughout his entire lifetime. Read is to be commended for his unflinching honesty.


Sir Alec Guinness
Guinness in his Oscar-winning role, 'Bridge on the River Kwai'
It is with this completely un-venomous treatment of the man's flaws (WAIT... I'm not saying homosexuality is a flaw, you need to read the book - Guinness hated his homosexuality) that Read manages to add depth and subjectivity to what would otherwise be just the usual run-through of childhood, war-service, movies, theatre, death. Read doesn't dwell on the flaws either, he leaves ample space for all the other things we (or I) want to hear about... the actor's chameleonic ability to portray a vast array of indelible charaters, his philanthropy, and his celebrated work on the stage.

If, like me, you're a fan of Guinness' work than this is a great tour of his career from start to finish. There's enough colour and gossip and realistic detail to keep it interesting for people with just a passing interest too.
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Posted By: Luke - Category: Film
   


Odd Man Out

May 26th 2006 12:20
Odd Man Out
Odd Man Out, the autobiography of Ronald Biggs
Ahhhh... Ronnie Biggs. Who doesn't have a little room in their heart for the ultimate 'man who got away'? You know, whenever my geography teacher was giving me the shits a little more than usual (and he often gave me the shits, he was a very irritating character) I would question his well-worn phrases. One of these phrases was 'Crime doesn't pay'. I used to always shoot back at him with 'What about Ronnie Biggs?' Of course, being in Year 8, I knew very little about Ronnie Biggs back then. All I knew was that he was a part of the 'Great Train Robbery' and got away with it, and it was enough to drive my geography teacher mad whenever I said it.

So I grabbed this book from one of those bargain book piles I often like to talk about. This one was about $5. It was written by the man himself and it looked like an interesting-enough read to pass my time on the train.

And what a story! I never knew his life ended up being so eventual. First, he robs a train of one of the largest sums of cold hard cash in history. Then he gets caught, goes to gaol, and escapes! Then he has plastic surgery to change his appearance, gets smuggled over to Europe, coasts it over to Australia and eventually ends up in South America where he becomes so loved by the community (and helps their economy a little into the bargain) that they refuse to extradite him back to England, where HRH's Scotland Yard and co. are broiling over with fury to make him pay.

Of course, you can never be sure how true any of it is when the author is a bonafide crook. But Biggs loves to tell a story and is quite humourously self-depreciating. He swears blind that his cut of the heist money pretty much all went on his getting away from England, and he seems to have a genuine lust for life, so he comes as a pretty likeable chap -a ll things considered.

Ronald Biggs
The one who got away.
There are many adventures along the way for Biggs. Several attempted kidnappings, further escapes, musical collaborations with the Sex Pistols and lots of South American shenanigans keep the tale interesting from beginning to end, and it's interesting to note now that Biggs finally did go home to England, and that it was his choice in the end.

My geography teacher used to always counter-reply to me that crime certainly didn't pay and that Biggs' crimes cost him his family. I didn't know otherwise at the time but I was glad to find out that this wasn't really true. Biggs actually started a family in South America. Sure, he had family back in England, but he saw them in the end. So he won. I'm sure he wouldn't have lived his life any other way either, so I guess - for some - crime does pay. Take that Mr. Picker!
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Posted By: Luke - Category: True Crime
   


Brave New World

May 25th 2006 11:48
Brave New World
Australian edition
I just finished reading Brave New World the other day and I must say it was a jolly good read indeed! I picked it up a while ago after reading Orwell's 1984 and seeing as this book predated it by a good 16 years or so and is listed on pretty much every must-read sci-fi and literature list ever written, well, I figured it was worth reading.

I was very surprised by a lot of things in this book. 'Brave New World' was written in 1932 by Aldous Huxley and details the world far into our future, where people are genetically engineered rather than born and the population is kept in line with a drug called soma. All this I knew. What I didn't know was how frank it would be in regards to sex and how our attitudes towards it might change in a world where the idea of 'family' is null and void. It was very interesting, especially when you consider what era this book was written in.

'Brave New World' is often cited as a dystopian novel, meaning that it portrays a seemingly-perfect world that is actually quite rotten or flawed underneath. Huxley himself would renew and review his views on his most famous book several times in his lifetime, including in a followup essay-tome 'Brave New World Revisted' (1958). What I found with Brave New World was that it wasn't quite anywhere near as damning of it's depicted future as I had been led to believe it was. All manner of left-wing pinko commies seem ready to denounce the current order and how like our world has come to resemble the soma-addled class-defined society of Huxley's damning vision. But it isn't that damning! Yes, all the flaws are there to see, but the author's voice within seems quite ambiguous when it comes to certain aspects of his future... the 'Savage' rails against this perverted future but sometimes he is quite an unsympathetic figure, and on the flipside - the authoritarian figure of Mustapha Mond is probably the most likeable character in the whole book! What's going on everybody?

Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley. Hated H.G. Wells. Loved mind-altering drugs.
Obviously, this is what is great about books. Anyone can read one and come away with a completely different interpretation, and I guess this is why everyone should decide for themself what they think of a book rather than take anyone's word as gospel. 'Brave New World' is definitely one thing, and that's important. It's probably a superior book when compared to '1984' if you want to talk in terms of ideas and the way in which they're presented for digestion. That's not to take anything away from '1984' either, they're very different books (and if anything, '1984' is probably better written). Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think 'Brave New World' is probably closer to Vonnegut than it is to Orwell.

Brave New World
Earlier edition. From wikipedia.org
The title of 'Brave New World' is a Shakespeare-reference and Shakespeare plays a pretty big part in the second half of the novel. There's a lot to address in this book and I wouldn't dream of addressing it all, but it's amazing how much is fit into so few pages. This book is easily a one of a kind and I can't believe I missed out on reading it at school - what a jip!

'Brave New World' was amazingly out of print for a while. Thankfully it's back, with a vengeance.
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Posted By: Luke - Category: Classics
   


The Ipcress File

May 24th 2006 11:18
Ipcress File
The Ipcress File (Australian edition), this is most likely what it will look like if you're looking for it in Australia.
This would have to be one of my all time luckiest bargain finds ever. I found it for about $4 in a bargain pile, and it seems to always turn up in bargain piles of books wherever I look so chances are that if you're looking for this in a bargain bookstore you'll probably find it. And it's worth finding.

The Ipcress File is the first book by hard-boiled spy and historical author Len Deighton. It was published in 1962 but it holds up very fucking well today. It pretty much helped redefine the spy thriller-novel at it's time of release and continues influencing the genre today (take a look at a few days back on this blog for the entry about The Gun Seller for an example).

Deighton and Caine
Author Len Deighton with Michael Caine


The protagonist of the Ipcress File is pretty much the anti-James Bond. Where James Bond was sophisticated, lived the high life and never set a foot wrong, the nameless 'hero' of the Ipcress File is a working-class spy always worrying about his next paycheck and always trying to skive on his duties. The cover of the book and the filmed version of it will ensure that you imagine no one else other than young Michael Caine as the dry-witted slouch who narrates his adventures herein.

The Ipcress File
DVD cover of film
The Ipcress File is a paranoid, inventive delight of shady organisations, shadier colleagues, topical menaces, smart alec first-person POV and a real doozy of an ending. The film came fairly hot on it's heels some three years later and helped propel Michael Caine to super stardom between his two other breakout films 'Zulu' and 'Alfie'. Caine's character is named as Harry Palmer and he would go on to play him in four more films. The character remains un-named in the books.

Deighton would go on to have a successful career writing various interconnected spy thrillers and historical war books. 'The Ipcress File' is a great place to start if you never thought you'd like spy novels (like me).

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Posted By: Luke - Category: Crime/Spies
   


Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

May 23rd 2006 10:42
Harry Potter 1
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Adult's edition)
Well, it was only a matter of time before I spoke about Harry Potter. Yes, I read (and like!) Harry Potter. Yes, I know it's not 'cool' for someone of my age to like it. Yes, I know it's a massive trend and there are other books in the same genre that are better. I know all these things... but I still enjoy the Harry Potter series tremendously (and I do mean tremendously).

I found it hard to read the first and second Harry Potter books as I came to the series late, around the time I saw the film to 'Chamber of Secrets'. I found it hard to read because I already knew everything that was going to happen, but if you ever intend to read any Harry Potter book it's imperative that you read them from the start because there are a lot of details and characters that aren't fully serviced by the (otherwise excellent) films


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Fantasy
   


George Orwell in Burma

May 22nd 2006 02:24
Secret Histories
Secret Histories, by Emma Larkin. Australian edition cover.
'Secret Histories: Finding George Orwell in a Burmese Tea Shop' by Emma Larkin is a book I picked up from a discount pile on a day where I found myself facing a long train ride without a book to read. It turned out to be a nice enough choice...

Basically, it's travel literature meets critical analysis. Sounds fun, right? Well, despite it's premise sounding more like the acorn of a PHD paper, it actually reads quite well. Larkin spent some time travelling through Burma (that's Myanmar to the politically-correct), armed with her trusty knowledge of all things George Orwell. She attempts to show how Orwell's formative days stationed as a soldier in Burma influenced his writing, and how much Burma itself has come to resemble an Orwellian-nightmare of 1984 or Animal Farm-ish proportions


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Travel
   


Books and school

May 18th 2006 08:26
Hating Alison Ashley
Hating Alison Ashley, by Robin Klein
This is just a loose-ish collection of thoughts regarding the books I had to read for school (1992-1997).

When I was at school my favourite subject was, without a doubt, English. During high school the only books I read outside of school were Doctor Who books, I read hundreds and hundreds of them... I have a whole bookcase full of them. But I still enjoyed reading for English... most of the time


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Posted By: Luke - Category: News and Miscellany
   


The Spook's Apprentice

May 17th 2006 07:46
The Spook's Apprentice
The Spook's Apprentice (great cover!)
Look at this fantastic cover! Why is it that children's books almost always have better covers than their adult counterparts? Look at a Stephen King cover and you'll see some murky half-lighty crap pushed into one corner of the cover by his enormous name. Better yet, look at an average literature novel's cover and you'll see some painting from the 17th century plastered across the front that has next to nothing to do with the book's plot (oh no, it's meant to be evocative of the 'mood', give me a break arseholes!) This links in to my point about judging a book by it's cover... you see, I think it's perfectly okay to judge a book by it's cover. If the author's name is ten centimetres high then you know you can probably expect some bland crap coasting along on the author's fame and boisted by their own self-assurance (read: arrogance). If the cover's illustration is depicted in a certain way, you can tell how the publisher (or author, if they have enough clout to have final decision on what goes on the cover) wishes to market the book... if it's arty then it probably reflects how they want to you to see the text. If it's stark and simplistic it might reflect the in-your-face nature of the book (think Chuck Palahniuk). The most universally highly-regarded books have next to nothing on their covers because they don't need to advertise.

Children's books seem to have the kind of cover that intrigues and instills a real sense of adventure. Don't the publishers realise that adults want to be whisked away on adventures too


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Fantasy
   


Vernon God Little

May 16th 2006 05:24
Vernon God Little
Vernon God Little
'Vernon God Little' won the 2003 Booker Prize and is an exceptional and somewhat topical piece of modern literature that deserves to go down as a classic as the years roll by. It's a very readable book and calls to mind (and I'm by no means the first person to say this), the book 'Catcher in the Rye' due to it's unique style of first-person narrative.

Fifteen-year old Vernon Little is the surviving best friend of a boy who embarked on a Columbine-style shooting before killing himself. As such, Vernon Little remains the prime surviving suspect for the murders and the whole town is pretty much out for his head. He makes a rather nice scapegoat in light of the killer's suicide depriving them all of 'justice', and some of his own anti-social actions don't really help him, so he decides to do a runner to Mexico


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Literature
   


Casino craziness

May 15th 2006 04:10
I'm not much of a true-crime fan but I picked up this book because I had nothing else to read at the time and I was a big fan of the movie (who isn't?) 'Casino' is Nicholes Pileggi's follow-up to his much-acclaimed 'Wiseguys' (the story of Mafia-informer Henry Hill, which was made into the film 'Goodfellas' by Martin Scorcese). 'Casino' follows the story of three gangster-types who came to Las Vegas in search of a fortune and brought it all crashing down around them via their own weaknesses.

Frank 'Lefty' Rosenthal
Frank 'Lefty' Rosenthal
From the book's back cover


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Posted By: Luke - Category: True Crime
   


The Gun Seller

May 14th 2006 03:36
Hugh Laurie
Hugh Laurie - Actor, Comedian, Author
Hugh Laurie is currently most well-known for playing the titular character on the American drama series 'House'. A few people I know have been surprised to learn that he is actually British... with this in mind, a lot of people would probably be unaware that he had a long career in television comedy back in the UK before 'making it big' in the U.S. Even less people are probably aware that he also wrote a book once, about ten years ago. This book is 'The Gun Seller', which is the main purpose of my blog here today.

I bought this book about six or so years ago to round out a 'three for $12' book deal. I didn't actually want this book, I just wanted these two other Doctor Who books, but I felt like I was ripping myself off if I didn't make use of the deal. And so 'The Gun Seller' has sat on my shelf slowly gathering dust ever since. I recently finished reading a whole bunch of Robin Hobb books recently and was looking for a change of pace so I thought I might as well finally read Mr. Laurie's book


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Crime/Spies
   


The Colour of Geekdom

May 12th 2006 05:22
Terry Pratchett
Terry Pratchett, allegedly a very hairy man.
To the uninitiated (and yes, that includes me) Terry Pratchett represents, perhaps, the most geekish of geek literature. By and large, fantasy fiction has and probably always will be, the realm of society's fringe-dwellers - the maligned, the unique, the escapists... the nerds. And whilst I may already be a fully-fledged card-carrying member of this club, I had always reassured myself, "Well, at least you don't read Terry Pratchett!" Doctor Who, yes. Discworld, goodness no. For a long time I resisted the bright mawkish books with the annoyingly cartoonish covers. I cringed at the goofy and corny sense-of-humour that emanated from them, all-too-reminded of the most geeky kids at school who always said the worst possible thing in front of their peers - their sense of humour provoking laughs more often then providing them. Trainspotters. Stamp-collectors. Letterbox-photographers. These are the people that come to my mind when I think of Terry Pratchett! So, naturally, I avoided his books like they were AIDS itself.

Well, now I'm 26. And I don't give a fuck about school anymore. And, most importantly, someone gave me a copy of Pratchett's first Discworld novel, 'The Colour of Magic'. So I read it. Wanna make something of it


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Fantasy
   


Motley Crue's 'The Dirt'

May 9th 2006 09:41
The Dirt
'The Dirt' by Motley Crue
Whilst I don't for one second believe that anyone in Motley Crue was physically or mentally capable of actually writing any of this book it still goes down as one of the biggest works of genius in the musical autobiography genre ever. 'The Dirt' is an infamous warts-and-all retelling of Motley Crue's heady rise from rags to riches and their gleeful wallowing in a combination of said rags and riches from thereafter. I imagine they all sat down with a ghost writer of some sort (in the spirit of Motley Crue I can't be FUCKED going to check my book. Yeah, take that!) and regaled him or her with hours upon hours of sordid misadventures and endless debauchery.

You see, there are bands that talk about being 'rock n rol'l and there are bands who live the exhalted (and dirty) lifestyle that has become myth. If even half of what goes down in this book is true then I dare say Motley Crue live the myth


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Music
   


The Da Vinci Code cometh!

May 8th 2006 09:12
The Da Vinci Code
Lookin' tough
Well, it's only ten more days until the Da Vinci Code film erupts from the Earth and spreads it's filth all over us like a great Satanic plague. A horse did turn on another horse and ate it, an old lady was seen to cavort with her cat in a rather frisky and risque manner, and a man walked backwards through a garden (a dog was barking at him). Truly this is the end of the world? Has thy seen the light? Do ye attest to the unholy nature of Dan Brown's cinematic mania? Do ye repent? Repent! Repent! REPENT!

Sorry. I got carried away


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Posted By: Luke - Category: News and Miscellany
   


Brushing the Tip of Fame

May 5th 2006 07:36
Brushing the Tip of Fame
Brushing the Tip of Fame by Nicholas Hope
Nicholas Hope isn't the most well-known of Australian actors. His best role was in the cult classic 'Bad Boy Bubby' and, although he won the AFI award for Best Actor that year, he has kind of disappeared off the radar since. But he has not been idle! This is a extremely funny and uninhibited memoir of Hope's adventures in the screen trade, a chronicle of the time he has spent travelling from one European festival to another and making various films in Scandinavia that have remained largely unseen in the rest of the world.

Looking somewhat like a poor man's Hugo Weaving, Hope was never going to make it big as a leading man... so instead of wedging himself into character bit parts playing a range of lunatics that all riffed off his most well-known role he instead opted to use his new-found and brief fame to take a wild ride along the European film festival circuit, promoting 'Bad Boy Bubby' and living it up via it's cult status. So, as you may imagine, 'Brushing the Tip of Fame' reads almost more like backpacker's travel literature rather than a film memoir


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Film
   


Northern Lights

May 4th 2006 07:12
Northern Lights
This is what the current edition of Northern Lights looks like.
This is the book that got me back into reading a few years ago after I stopped for a while. It's a wonderful and fantastic book that can be found in the teen fiction section of most bookstores. But this isn't a book for kids! Don't brush it off - it's a lot more rewarding, original and complex than a lot of 'adult' fantasy novels.

It's the first in a trilogy called 'His Dark Materials' and it's called 'The Golden Compass' almost everywhere in the world except for Australia. It's a dark novel set in a world a lot like ours, but a lot different as well. This is Earth in a parrallel universe, where the Church rules all and humans are born with their soul outside their bodies; their souls are called daemons and appear as animals that never leave their side. The heroine of 'Northern Lights' is Lyra - a young run-about of a scamp who journeys north into the Arctic Cirlce to rescue her friend Roger, following a trail of kidnapped children into the icy realms of the enigmatic Armoured Bears and intriguing Witch-Clans


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Fantasy
   


A Gap in Nature

May 3rd 2006 06:48
A Gap in Nature
A Gap in Nature, by Tim Flannery and Peter Schouten
'A Gap in Nature' is a large hard cover (at least, I haven't seen a soft cover version of it about so I'm pretty sure it's only available in hard cover) book about animals that have become extinct in the last four or five hundred years or so. Each animal is given a page or three... one page of text, provided by the reliable Australian naturalist/writer Tim Flannery, and a page or two for an extremely detailed painting by Peter Schouten. If you're interested in reading in-depth accounts of extinct animals then this isn't the book for you... this is more of a coffee table book, and is worth getting mostly for the pictures - and that's not to write off Flannery's efforts at all, his text is more than sufficient.

Quagga
A Quagga, now extinct.

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Posted By: Luke - Category: Nature & Science
   


Playing Beatie Bow

May 2nd 2006 06:31
Playing Beatie Bow
Playing Beatie Bow by Ruth Park

Chances are that if you went to school in Sydney, Australia, during the 80s, you read this book at one point or another. You probably also saw the film, and you might have also gone on an excursion to the Rocks in Sydney to look at some of the old houses there.

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Posted By: Luke - Category: Classics
   


Outposts

May 1st 2006 06:01
Today's book is 'Outposts' for Simon Winchester.

Outposts
Outposts

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Posted By: Luke - Category: Travel
   


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