Streetlifers' Book Reviews
The idea is that we only write about one book at a time, that we have just read/ are reading or particularly remember.
I am sure we would all enjoy recommendations from other people. Good
ones and bad ones. I recommend we only write one review at a time because too many would end
up as a list and it would be good to write about books that are fresh in
ones mind, whatever the age of the actual book. All contributions are open to comments and discussion. Obviously this idea could develop differently, but this is just to start the ball rolling! Hope this idea meets with approval. I am sure a lot of people are likely to join in. Anyway, I will give it a try!
Comments
Having just started this, I haven't the energy to write a review this evening. But I will sometime tomorrow...meanwhile, be my guest!
All The Pretty Horses by Cormac Mc Carthy.
Browsing in the library my eye was caught by a name I knew but couldn't remember reading. On the cover it says 'One of the greatest American Novels of this or any time'...Oh yeah, I thought, because in my experience it aint necessarily so!
But this is one of the most enjoyable books I have ever read and lives up to the above description. I have just finished it. It has every virtue, for me at least. The authors descriptive powers makes it a joy to read...almost poetry (if that isn't off-putting) reminds me of Annie Proulx ...the story is fairly simple but totally engaging, and exciting, as the characters reveal themselves by what they say and how they react to malign circumstance as they journey from Texas to Mexico. One feels enormous sympathy with the characters and their doubts and affections and hard choices. It is full of surprises and I couldn't wait to get at it every evening. In other words I highly recommend this book !
Maybe a bit unusual because it's a history book, but I am reading The Complete History of England by Simon Jenkins recommended by critics because it joins the dots to all that history we learnt parrot fashion at school. It romps through the Kings and Queens so is a suprisingly easy read! It tells you not only why the Magna Carta wa simportant, but how it still shapes our lives today. Enjoy!
OK still hoping others will join in...here's another.
Nadine Gordimer JULY’S PEOPLE (1981)
I have never read any of her writing before. She has written lots of books and is a respected writer. I feel therefore a bit reticent about daring to criticise.
The subject matter is fine. South Africa …a white liberal family with a life of luxury are caught up in the breakdown of society and are sheltered by their black servant, with whom they have had a good relationship, in his village. So here is a fertile situation for a novel. And indeed there is plenty to exploit and she does. My grouse is about the way she writes. Most novels use similes’ generously and I have no complaint about that; what I found constantly tripping me up was heavy handed similes’. My ‘willing suspense of disbelief’ kept falling flat over some laboured expression. I could always see how they had been generated but that makes it worse …like seeing into a machine …dragging one back to the words on the page instead of stroking ones imagination which should be somewhere else entirely. But, then again it says ‘flawlessly written’ New York Times Book Review on the cover. Just my own opinion.
Nadine Gordimer is a Nobel Prize winner :-) a writers' writer maybe.
Yes, Nobel prize for literature 1991...and a joint Booker Prize winner. That isn't necessarily a turn-off! Have you read any Gordimer? I see this book was written 10 years before the Nobel Prize. Maybe others would get on with it better. Although I read it to the end, it ended up feeling more like duty than desire! The reality of the characters had been undermined for me.
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