'Classic.' A Book Which People Praise and Do Not Read.'

Dear readers,

Not so much a book post but a statement of intent. Starting from Thursday I am going to be entering the world of antique book dealing. I am starting off with £50 and will only buy and sell books from antique dealerships or those who contact me via the blog; no eBay in sight. The hope is to make enough to survive my second year of university with more comfort than I have survived the first. Whilst writing about my progress on the blog I hope to draw attention toward the antique book market, one which has been truly ravaged by the advent of e-books and cheap paper backs. Clearly we must recognise that paperbacks and e-books are an excellent means of conveying the written word to a large audience, what I hope to achieve is a more realistic understanding how much the written word is worth to different people. Wish me luck, get in touch

Homeless

Gabriel Garcia Marquez; One Hundred Years of Solitude.

"During that interminable night, while Colonel Gerineldo Marquez thought about his dead afternoons in Amaranta's sewing room, Colonel Aureliano Buendia scratched for many hours trying to break the hard shell of his solitude." How we can empathise with Colonel Aureliano Buendia, as we become more and more engrossed in One Hundred Years of Solitude we soon realise the book has in turn made us one of the many isolated figures the book depicts.

Usually in this part of the blog I would give a general overview regarding the book, unfortunately in a book of this scale it is hard to say what the book is "about." One Hundred Years of Solitude is the quintessential postmodernist text, it uses the abstract and the unusual to form a tale of epic proportions. Even the characterization is bizarre, within 420 pages of literature there are over twenty characters whom at some point could be considered the "main character," only to consequently die and be replaced.

If this book is about anything it is about the passage of time and how time is recorded through the experience of our families. There is little description that can be added to that; that will not give away the plot or under-sell the story in some way. The only narrative point that seems pertinent is that offered by the blurb; "Through plagues of insomnia, civil war, haunting and vendettas, the many tribulations of the Bunedia household push memories of the manuscript aside. Few remember its existence and only one will discover the hidden message that it holds..."

To close, this is perhaps the most ambiguous of all my blog posts but unfortunately there is little I can say to do service to such a marvellous book. A book of such epic proportions and huge scale can only be understood through reading. Reading is all too frequently described as an "experience," or an "adventure," but if there was ever a time for such clichés this is it.

Douglas Coupland; The Gum Thief

Douglas Coupland first came to worldwide recognition as the author of, Generation X: Tales for an accelerated culture. This novel, published in the 1990s, came to be regarded as the definitive text of the generation defined by new technologies and greedy capitalism. Not to sound pretentious but Generation X can be regarded as one of the first pieces of; post, post modern literature. The Gum Thief explores the greed and tedium of greed caused by the system of exploitative capitalism we live under today.

In The Gum Thief we are presented with a middle-aged and divorced counter assistant named Roger. He is employed at the stationary giant "Staples" which he frequently refers to as "Stooples." Sick of his mundane life he begins a friendship with fellow employee Bethany. Unfortunately for Roger Bethany reads his diary wherein he pretends to be her, just to make things more perturbing and confusing he also writes a story simultaneously known as Glove Pond which is a fictional exaggerated version of his own life. Think of "The Mousetrap" in Shakespeare's Hamlet for a similar comparison. Just to add to the mystery around this novel it is written in an epistolary manner meaning we are presented with several stories rather than one story in a linear sequence. Confused? Good.

The Gum Thief is self consciously post modern. With metafiction and the epistolary format even the structure is interesting. The novel is superbly written and is entertaining throughout. There are numerous surprises and the novel written with grace and an intelligent aloofness. Perhaps the only criticism that could be levelled is that the way in which the novel is written means there is no grand complex moral message. Other than this, an amazing novel well worth a read.

The Iraq War

Hello dear readers, I know this is primarily a blog of books but I would like to use my role as a blogger to highlight something truly shocking. The Iraq war is drawing to a disgraceful and bloody end with no obvious benefit to any country involved, including Iraq. The argument that America invaded Iraq for oil is rendered redundant by the fact they have year on year imported less oil from Iraq from 2003 onwards. The real cost of war can't ever be truly quantified but this is the best guess we have. Here are the figures.

US Troops killed in action: 3,492
US Troops injured in action: 32,000
UK Troops killed in action: 136
Iraqi Civilian deaths: 654,965

Financial cost of war by the US: $801.9bn
Real cost to the US economy: $3tn
British cost of war: £9.24bn

A costly war in terms of lives and finance. With the country on the brink of civil war it is apparent that America and her servants have yet again made a balls up of this. George Bush and Tony Blair are war criminals, no morally sound human being can argue the death of nearly 700,000 innocent civilians can amount to anything other than genocide. Never forget, it is our taxes which funded this illegal campaign.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11107739

Ian McEwan; Enduring Love

How far can we believe those we love when what they are telling us seems so very improbable? When the version of the world they portray contains sexually obsessive monsters. Where God represents all that is evil. Where your life is controlled by the actions of strangers.

Enduring Love is concerned with the life of Joe Rose, a member of the affluent middle classes. His life is changed forever when alongside a set of strangers he attempts to moor a hot air balloon which has torn free of its moorings. The men all grab the balloon but upon realising they may die if the balloon goes to high they let go, bar John Logan who falls to his death. From here on in a member of the group, Jed Perry, becomes sexually obsessed with Joe and believes he is the only means in which he can find God. Jed's obsession is born out of de Crembault's syndrome which is an illness that rationalising dangerous sexual obsession. This obsession quickly begins to threaten Joe's life and family; soon enough Joe is driven near to murdering Jed.

The book explores the tension between chance events such as the hot air balloon accident and those who bring stability to our lives such as Joe's family. Jed can be seen to embody this instability. He is a man of God which suggests the unpredictable nature of forces we cannot see or control play a huge role in our lives. He is also suffering from an illness which makes him hugely irrational and dangerous further indicating his representation of instability. On the other side of the coin we have the stability of Joe's previous life, he is middle class, he is happily married, and he has a good job. The introduction of this instability in Jed threatens to unravel Joe's once perfect life.

The book itself is exceptional well written. We are all aware that McEwan is unable to write a poorly crafted sentence. Time and time again the biggest frustration that can be found with his work is that it is so uncomfortably middle class. His protagonist is a struggling journalist with a wife who is a university lecturer. Everything about Joe is middle class, unfortunately this means that when he encounters a character such as Jed who is clearly unwell we find it hard to empathise with his constant complaints of a man he is often cruel to.

Make no mistake this is an excellent book. An accurate commentary on the real workings of people's lives and relationships? It certainly is not.

Milan Kundera; The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The desperate wife, the attractive mistress, the bad guys and the good guys, love and loss, faith and suspicion. Fear not humble readers this is no typical love story, or other than at a superficial level a love story at all. Born in Czechoslovakia in 1929 Kundera leads us through his world and gives us an insight into the regime which would not only ban his books but force him to live in exile.

The book primarily follows Tomas and Tereza, two lovers who have encountered one another purely by chance. It is hard to say where this book begins, physically as with all books it begins at page one but the narrative of Tomas and Tereza does not begin till chapter three. Right from the beginning Kundera lets us know that this is as much a book on philosophy as it is a story of love, already by the time Tomas is introduced we have peered into the world's of; Nietzche, Paramedies, Aristotle and even Jesus Christ himself.

From the start it becomes apparent that Tomas and Tereza are never going to have a conventional relationship. Prior to his meeting with Tereza Tomas was a notorious womanizer, and even after meeting Tereza he continues in this vain, much to her annoyance. Here in lies the dichotomy of the novel, Tomas seeks the weightiness, the "unbearable," of being in a relationship with Tereza, whilst also aiming to achieve the "lightness," of his various affairs. Clearly these two world's cannot exist alongside one another and herein lies the crisis of the novel, Tomas begins to act in a more obscure and unpredictable way in order to fulfil these needs. Outside of his relationship with Tereza, Tomas, functions as Kundera's voice in the novel, he is used to explore the dangers of the communist regime and the oppressive way in which it acted toward intellectuals. With such complexity in his life contrasted against the way in which the regime wish to opress him, Tomas' tale could never be a straight forward one...

The narrative is simply brilliant, all the way through Kundera's voice is never lost. Just as the story begins to progress Kundera intervenes and shows us another side to the story or introduces some obscure philosophical concept that can be related to the story. He does this without ever making the story feel stale, he creates an atmosphere that is so intimate we don't mind being removed from the narrative for a while as it ensures Tomas and Tereza cannot be harmed, for the time being.

The characters themselves are varied and interesting. Tomas manages to cheat on his wife numerous times whilst still being likeable, and even attracts sympathy when his life begins to go downhill. Perhaps the greatest criticism that can be levelled against this book is that Tereza is somewhat dull, for all she is presented as being the victim of the novel her refusal to leave Tomas yet constantly verging on suicide is somewhat tiresome.

Kundera has achieved something truly magnificent. There are few novels that are as effectively comedic and tragic. Truly, truly, truly, an amazing novel.

Ian McEwan; Saturday

Hello once again, recently my updates have been sparse and I am sure my five followers are bereft at this fact. Do not fear, my exams are over and I will be able to regularly blog once again, whether you choose to read it or not I leave to your own fine judgement. Anyway, on with the book!

To begin, we all know that Ian McEwan is incapable of writing a bad sentence. Saturday is no exception, throughout his use of prose is brilliant, at times bordering on being melodic. However, for all his writing may be wonderful at times this affects the progress of the story. I genuinely can't see how nearly fifteen pages describing a game of squash could be fundamental to story progression. More so, his protagonist’s obsession with his father in law wastes valuable narrative space, at the climax of the story the father in law bizarrely becomes the centre of attention rather than the men robbing his house.

It is truly a shame that McEwan's obvious talent is wasted in this novel. Perhaps worst of all is the odious family he presents us with. The surgeon father, the poet daughter and rock star son could not be more stereotypically middleclass. All in all this book is well written, but at times frightfully dull, long winded and ultimately disappointing that McEwan believes the middle-class are truly like this.
Sorry for such a short post, but now I am back in to doing it they will improve. Cheers for reading.