Rivals for Love
May. 31st, 2016 12:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyToday I had to call my former finance assistant in my works's old office, now another company, on the other side of the state. The phone there was answered by, let's call her Trish, for that is not her name. There weren't any Trishes working there last year, so I said, "This is Alicia from NewCompany, is [former assistant] available, please?" And Trish, I could hear her smiling as soon as I said that. She was thrilled to talk to me (that is not a universal experience, I must say). She asked how I was, and mentioned several of my past antics (e.g. the year I tried out different fortune telling methods for footy tipping, and my constant campaign to stop people using the colour photocopier unnecessarily), and all I could think was, what sort of impression did I make over there that they are telling new employees about their former finance manager? "She managed our money and she was MAD!" Anyway, I politely endured her, and then she put me through to [former assistant].
When I got off the phone, I told Jenny/NA about it, and she said, "Oh, that would be Patricia who left in 2014, remember her? I'd heard they re-hired her." So it was someone I'd actually worked with for three years. And she was the person that organised the footy tipping the year I did the fortune telling thing, so that should have given me a clue. That's what happens when you go by a different version of your name. It could confuse a stupid person.
It's the last day of the month and I won't finish my current book tonight, so here is:
May books read
* The Buried Giant - Kazuo Ishiguro (2015) ★ ★ ★ ★
I like to read one-star Amazon reviews when I finish a book, and for this book they include: Maybe because as an American I'm not all that familiar with English history, I was forced to slog my way through it. This book is set in a post-Arthurian dreamscape filled with ogres and dragons. I'm not sure anyone is familiar with that particular period of English history.
Anyway, unlike that person, l liked this. It's a fable about ageing and loss and memory, and it's lovely.
* The Beetle: A Mystery - Richard Marsh (1897) ★ ★ ★
The description of this book on Wikipedia says it all: It's "an 1897 horror story in which a polymorphous Ancient Egyptian entity seeks revenge on a British Member of Parliament". I suppose that could happen.
This was... a diversion? Not as sensational as previous sensation novels, but, eh, it was competent and it filled time. But it's about an Ancient Egyptian sect that is kidnapping English girls for human sacrifice, and it was written in 1897, so I braced myself for some outrageous racism, and I wasn't disappointed. (That doesn't sound right.)
Also, one of the main characters, Sydney Atherton, is a chemical weapons developer and CAT MURDERER. I think I was supposed to find him charmingly eccentric, but I didn't, on account of the CAT MURDERING. I was hoping the beetle would get him, but it didn't. He lived, and got married to a wealthy young woman who is going to fund an expedition to the Amazon to test his chemical weapons on the animals there. I'm not making that up.
Sample dialogue: "I—I am the victim of a delusion."
"What is the nature of the delusion? Does it take the shape of a — beetle?"
* The High Mountains of Portugal - Yann Martell (2016) ★ ★
That would be Yann "Life of Pi" Martell. My thought process was: Life of Pi won the Booker; past winners are often nominated again; if I read this now, I might be one up for my Booker read later this year. Should I have bothered? No. This should not trouble the literary prize-givers.
I had a hard time coming up with a star rating for this. It's solidly written, and pleasant enough, if a bit heavy-handed on twee. There was a magical realist autopsy that made me roll my eyes. Anyway, most of the way through the book was a solid three stars. And then the ending came along and knocked a whole star off with the strength of its stupidity.
This is a book in three parts. A triptych, if you will. Each part is separated by forty-odd years, beginning in the early 1900s; each part is about a man grieving; each part is connected by: a small Portuguese village, the death of a young child, people walking backwards, and chimpanzees. And religion, I suppose, but mostly chimpanzees. If Life of Pi's dominant image was the tiger in the boat, The High Mountains of Portugal wants you to think about... a chimpanzee on a crucifix. Sigh.
Also, it has this terrible simile, describing a man walking backwards:
His eyes, for the most part relieved of the burden of directing him, relax in his skull like two passengers sitting on deck chairs at the rear of a ship.
That's not how eyes work, Yann.
* Hy Brasil - Margaret Elphinstone (2002) ★ ★ ★ ★
Hy Brasil is a mythical island off the coast of Ireland, but this is an alternative history that suggests that it's real, situated in the middle of the Atlantic, and everyone knows about it. Who used to live there? Well, the oldest families on the island are called Morgan, Kidd, Hawkins and Hook. Pirates, in other words. Pirates and monks, and then the British built a colony, and then in the 1950s there was a bloodless coup (which is the bit I found hardest to buy, because the British never gave up land that easily), and now it's a one-man dictatorship.
Into this comes a young woman called Sidony who has been hired to write a tourist guide book. Her questions set off a chain of events that uncovers the personal and political history of Hy Brasil.
This is cleverly done: while Sidony bumbles around trying to work out what happened in the recent past, there's another story being sketched in the background, about a man called Ishmael, who is the obvious choice to be a good, democratic President. (He also meets a whale at one point.) I was actually far more interested in Ishmael than I was in Sidony, but the stories intertwine. Apart from a pointlessly open ending for one character, I really liked this.
* Miss Marjoribanks - Margaret Oliphant (1866) (abandoned, twice)
I'm still working my way through books I already own. This one is from Project Gutenberg, and has been on my Kindle for ages. When I opened it, I was surprised to find that I'd already read 7% of it at some point, and forgotten all about it.
Once I started reading again, it all came back to me. Lucilla Marjoribanks is a determined young woman; when her mother dies, Lucilla sets out to take over housekeeping for her father, a doctor, and become a leading light in local society. And I wish her all the best, but this book just wasn't for me. But if you like Mapp and Lucia (which I didn't), perhaps this might also be right up your alley.
* The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island - Bill Bryson (2015) ★ ★ ★
I like Bill Bryson, but this was a little disappointing. In this one, he travels around Britain twenty years after he last did, but I don't think his heart was in it. He seemed... grumpy and distracted? As though he was writing this book in his spare time between other commitments. He spends two-thirds of the book in the south of England, a couple of chapters in the midlands and the north, one chapter in Wales, and barely even that in Scotland. It's also quite repetitive, and doesn't follow the (very loose) criteria he sets out at the start, and generally just needs a good edit. It's not one of his best, but even on an off day, he's still reasonably good value.
When I got off the phone, I told Jenny/NA about it, and she said, "Oh, that would be Patricia who left in 2014, remember her? I'd heard they re-hired her." So it was someone I'd actually worked with for three years. And she was the person that organised the footy tipping the year I did the fortune telling thing, so that should have given me a clue. That's what happens when you go by a different version of your name. It could confuse a stupid person.
It's the last day of the month and I won't finish my current book tonight, so here is:
May books read
* The Buried Giant - Kazuo Ishiguro (2015) ★ ★ ★ ★
I like to read one-star Amazon reviews when I finish a book, and for this book they include: Maybe because as an American I'm not all that familiar with English history, I was forced to slog my way through it. This book is set in a post-Arthurian dreamscape filled with ogres and dragons. I'm not sure anyone is familiar with that particular period of English history.
Anyway, unlike that person, l liked this. It's a fable about ageing and loss and memory, and it's lovely.
* The Beetle: A Mystery - Richard Marsh (1897) ★ ★ ★
The description of this book on Wikipedia says it all: It's "an 1897 horror story in which a polymorphous Ancient Egyptian entity seeks revenge on a British Member of Parliament". I suppose that could happen.
This was... a diversion? Not as sensational as previous sensation novels, but, eh, it was competent and it filled time. But it's about an Ancient Egyptian sect that is kidnapping English girls for human sacrifice, and it was written in 1897, so I braced myself for some outrageous racism, and I wasn't disappointed. (That doesn't sound right.)
Also, one of the main characters, Sydney Atherton, is a chemical weapons developer and CAT MURDERER. I think I was supposed to find him charmingly eccentric, but I didn't, on account of the CAT MURDERING. I was hoping the beetle would get him, but it didn't. He lived, and got married to a wealthy young woman who is going to fund an expedition to the Amazon to test his chemical weapons on the animals there. I'm not making that up.
Sample dialogue: "I—I am the victim of a delusion."
"What is the nature of the delusion? Does it take the shape of a — beetle?"
* The High Mountains of Portugal - Yann Martell (2016) ★ ★
That would be Yann "Life of Pi" Martell. My thought process was: Life of Pi won the Booker; past winners are often nominated again; if I read this now, I might be one up for my Booker read later this year. Should I have bothered? No. This should not trouble the literary prize-givers.
I had a hard time coming up with a star rating for this. It's solidly written, and pleasant enough, if a bit heavy-handed on twee. There was a magical realist autopsy that made me roll my eyes. Anyway, most of the way through the book was a solid three stars. And then the ending came along and knocked a whole star off with the strength of its stupidity.
This is a book in three parts. A triptych, if you will. Each part is separated by forty-odd years, beginning in the early 1900s; each part is about a man grieving; each part is connected by: a small Portuguese village, the death of a young child, people walking backwards, and chimpanzees. And religion, I suppose, but mostly chimpanzees. If Life of Pi's dominant image was the tiger in the boat, The High Mountains of Portugal wants you to think about... a chimpanzee on a crucifix. Sigh.
Also, it has this terrible simile, describing a man walking backwards:
His eyes, for the most part relieved of the burden of directing him, relax in his skull like two passengers sitting on deck chairs at the rear of a ship.
That's not how eyes work, Yann.
* Hy Brasil - Margaret Elphinstone (2002) ★ ★ ★ ★
Hy Brasil is a mythical island off the coast of Ireland, but this is an alternative history that suggests that it's real, situated in the middle of the Atlantic, and everyone knows about it. Who used to live there? Well, the oldest families on the island are called Morgan, Kidd, Hawkins and Hook. Pirates, in other words. Pirates and monks, and then the British built a colony, and then in the 1950s there was a bloodless coup (which is the bit I found hardest to buy, because the British never gave up land that easily), and now it's a one-man dictatorship.
Into this comes a young woman called Sidony who has been hired to write a tourist guide book. Her questions set off a chain of events that uncovers the personal and political history of Hy Brasil.
This is cleverly done: while Sidony bumbles around trying to work out what happened in the recent past, there's another story being sketched in the background, about a man called Ishmael, who is the obvious choice to be a good, democratic President. (He also meets a whale at one point.) I was actually far more interested in Ishmael than I was in Sidony, but the stories intertwine. Apart from a pointlessly open ending for one character, I really liked this.
* Miss Marjoribanks - Margaret Oliphant (1866) (abandoned, twice)
I'm still working my way through books I already own. This one is from Project Gutenberg, and has been on my Kindle for ages. When I opened it, I was surprised to find that I'd already read 7% of it at some point, and forgotten all about it.
Once I started reading again, it all came back to me. Lucilla Marjoribanks is a determined young woman; when her mother dies, Lucilla sets out to take over housekeeping for her father, a doctor, and become a leading light in local society. And I wish her all the best, but this book just wasn't for me. But if you like Mapp and Lucia (which I didn't), perhaps this might also be right up your alley.
* The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island - Bill Bryson (2015) ★ ★ ★
I like Bill Bryson, but this was a little disappointing. In this one, he travels around Britain twenty years after he last did, but I don't think his heart was in it. He seemed... grumpy and distracted? As though he was writing this book in his spare time between other commitments. He spends two-thirds of the book in the south of England, a couple of chapters in the midlands and the north, one chapter in Wales, and barely even that in Scotland. It's also quite repetitive, and doesn't follow the (very loose) criteria he sets out at the start, and generally just needs a good edit. It's not one of his best, but even on an off day, he's still reasonably good value.