Month: December 2009

Categories
1980s

The Mosquito Coast – Paul Theroux

I have loved Marcel Theroux’s books, enjoyed watching Lois Theroux on television and so have always been curious about books written by their father, Paul. Paul Theroux is the most famous of the three, so it is strange that he is the last one I have discovered, but now that I have, I will be keeping an eye out for as many of his books as possible.

I have always been intrigued by Mosquito Coast, but for some reason assumed it would be a dark thriller involving machetes, cannibals and malarial fever. I have no idea why I thought that, because it turns out that none of those are present in the book. I was surprised at how literary it was, having more in common with The Poisonwood Bible than any action film.

Mosquito Coast tells the story of a family who move from America to the jungles of Honduras. The father is an eccentric inventor, who is convinced that his family would benefit from leaving civilisation and becoming self sufficient. He has a bizarre plan that involves trading ice with the Hondurans.

I loved the first half of the book; the descriptions of their move into the jungle were perfect – atmospheric, emotional and realistic.  I was convinced that the book was going to become one of my all time favourites, but unfortunately the second half of the book wasn’t as good. It lost the plot – literary! The father’s eccentricity became the focus of the story and I thought the book lost a lot of the magic. It was still a fantastically written book, but it was just a bit too weird for me.

There were many thought provoking observations about our society:

He said, ‘It’s savage and superstitious to accept the world as it is. Fiddle around and find a use for it!’ God has left the world incomplete, he said. It was man’s job to understand how it worked, to tinker with it and finish it. I think that was why he hated missionaries so much – because they taught people to put up with their earthly burdens. For Father, there were no burdens that couldn’t be fitted with a set of wheels, or runners, or a system of pullies.

It is amazing how relevant the book is to life today, considering that it was written almost 30 years ago. It must have been ground-breaking back then, but even now the messages about the fragility of society and our desire to conform to the norm are relevant.

Recommended to lovers of literary fiction.

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Have you read Mosquito Coast?

Which Paul Theroux book should I read next?

Categories
Other Richard and Judy Book Club

The Richard and Judy Book Club 2010

Richard and Judy are back!

Richard and Judy left our screens last July, leaving a big hole in the publishing industry. Their book group boosted sales for those lucky enough to be selected, with the average book selling 250, 000 copies.

It has recently been announced that Richard and Judy plan to revive their book club in 2010. They are going to place their famous stickers on a selection of books and run the book group online, through the Richard & Judy website.

UPDATE: 24th June 2010

Richard and Judy have announced that their book club will run in partnership with WHSmith. The couple will promote one book every fortnight via stickers in WHSmith stores. 6 books will be chosen later this year and then another 8 books will be promoted in the Spring/Summer of 2011. The books will also be discussed on their new website. I’m looking forward to seeing which books they choose!

UPDATE: 28th August 2010

The 2010 Richard and Judy book list will be launched on September 2nd.

UPDATE: The Richard and Judy books have bee revealed!! 

CLICK HERE to see my post about the eight Richard and Judy books which have been selected. 

 

New: TV Book Club

Channel 4 have also revealed that they plan to launch The TV Book Club in 2010. The TV Book Club will follow the old Richard and Judy format, but use a series of celebrity presenters including Jo Brand and Gok Wan.

Edited to add: The TV Book Club has now announced its book selection.

I will be keeping an eye on both book clubs and will be interested to see which is the most successful. I think it will be hard to maintain an interest in an online only book group, but I wonder how successful those stickers will be. How many of the people who bought Richard and Judy’s selection in the past actually watched the program?

Will you be following either of these book groups?

Which do you think will be the most successful?

Categories
2008

Right to Die – Hazel McHaffie

Right to Die is the about a young man who is dying from Motor Neurone Disease. Written in the form of a diary, it shows how his thoughts and emotions change as his health deteriorates.

The book is essentially a study of the euthanasia debate. It is packed with arguements on both sides, but ultimately results in a powerful pro-euthanasia message.

The book is very well researched, with medical and legal facts sprinkled liberally, but appropriately throughout. It was very emotional and I found that I couldn’t read much of it at once, as it was too sad.

I do not want to be relegated to the rank of a dumb animal because I can no longer plead my cause. I do not want to be pitied by the gentle ones, resented by the hard ones, tolerated by the indifferent ones.

The medical professionals in this book were all portrayed as incredibly helpful, caring individuals and this jarred with me initially, as I am so used to hearing about them behaving negligently. I still feel that the GP in the book was unrealistically attentive, but in the end  it was refreshing to see the medical profession in a positive light.

I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in exploring the euthanasia debate, or looking for an emotional read.

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Categories
Other

Read the Book, See the Movie Challenge

Read the book see the movie challengeReady When You Are, C.B. is hosting the Read the Book, See the Movie Challenge which involves reading a book and then watching the film based upon it.

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I’m going to try to compare 4 books and films in 2010, but I am having difficulty trying to decide which ones to pick. I’d love to watch The Road when it comes out on DVD and hope to watch and read Twilight in 2010, but other than that I can’t think of any ideas.

Can anyone think of a fantastic book with a great film adaptation?

Categories
2000 - 2007 Memoirs

The Inner Circle – T.C. Boyle

The Inner Circle is the autobiography of the fictional John Milk, a sex researcher, working alongside the famous Alfred Kinsey. Regular readers of my blog will know that I have recently had problems with a few fictional biographies (Summertime and An Equal Stillness) and so had decided to avoid them for a while, but luckily I had already started The Inner Circle and so didn’t miss out on this fascinating book.

Alfred Kinsey was a zoologist at Indiana University in the 1930s, when he embarked on a study of human sexuality. His controversial research brought many taboo subjects out into the open for the first time and generated a huge amount of public interest.

Publishers are forever using the cliche “eagerly anticipated” to describe ordinary and humdrum volumes of which no one is even remotely aware, but I can say, without doubt, that Sexual Behaviour of the Human Female was the most feverishly awaited and explosive title of the century.

I think the key difference between this book and the two mentioned above, is that this is an autobiography and so all the emotion is there. We are not passively hearing the facts about their lives, but are living inside their head, feeling their emotions.

This book does contain a lot of sex, but it is all scientific, and not in any way titillating. I found the attitudes to sex in the 1930s fascinating. The differences were striking and I don’t think I’d realised how much things had changed until I read this book. Kinsey’s lectures on the basic biology of sex are something we are all used to having at a young age, but in order to get into his class, the University students had to be married, or at least engaged. These young adults were so in the dark about things that they formed phantom engagements just to be able to listen to him and learn the basic facts about the birds and the bees.

It did slightly annoy that I didn’t know how much of this book actually happened, but after finishing, I realise that it didn’t matter – I enjoyed reading the book and learnt a lot about life during the 1930s and 40s.

Recommended to anyone interested in the development of early sexual research.

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This is the first T.C. Boyle book that I have read and I was very impressed.

Have you read anything by T.C. Boyle?

Which Boyle book should I read next?

Categories
2000 - 2007 Books in Translation Chunkster Crime

Grotesque – Natsuo Kirino

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Translated from the Japanese by Rebecca Copeland

Out is one of my favourite books and so I was very excited about reading Kirino’s second novel, < ?php echo amazon('0099488930','Grotesque’); ?>. Unfortunately, it failed to live up to my expectations.

Grotesque is very different in style to Out. It is slower, less gritty and without the moral dilemmas that made Out so special.

Grotesque centres around the murder of two prostitutes in Tokyo. The unnamed narrator was the sister of one of the victims and the best friend of the other. Her life becomes dominated by their deaths, as it is all anyone wants to talk about with her. We find out who the killer was very early on, so this book isn’t really a thriller, it is more like a character study. It deals with the motivations for prostitution and the process of grief following the murders of people who are close to you.

It sounds like a fascinating book, but unfortunately I found it quite boring. Some people think it is clever that the narrator was unreliable and meandered from one reflection to the next, but I found it very frustrating. There was no plot thread to drive the story forward and the ending was disappointing.  I think this quote gives you a good sense of the apathetic attitude present in this book:

You imagine Yuriko’s death shocked me, but it didn’t. Did I hate her murderer? No. Like my father, I didn’t really care about learning the truth.

I felt as though I was wading through depressive thoughts and didn’t see the point of the seemingly random snippets of their childhood lives.

There were several theoretically shocking scenes in this book, but they had no effect on me as I hadn’t bonded with any of the characters.

The writing was of a high quality and I didn’t find any of the jarring Japanese translation problems that I encountered with Out. I also loved the first chapter and her imaginative predictions of what her children would look like if she decided to sleep with various men. There were many other good paragraphs, but I’m afraid that overall the book was disappointing.

If you are interested in reading an investigation into the thoughts of a disturbed young woman then you might enjoy this book, but if you are looking for the best thriller on the planet I suggest you try Out.

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Have you read any of Natsuo Kirino’s books?

What do you think of them?