01.02.2012
This book had good reviews on Amazon, but oh my god.. I found it so tedious. I've read plenty of other Joe Simpson books about mountain climbing.. he wrote Touching The Void which is one of my all time favourite reads, but this is just a long, long introspective, self indulgent non-story. He does however, raise the politics of Tibet and China and of course the plight of the Tibetans but somehow manages to make even that worthy subject all about him. I'd like to think that instead of just moaning about how guilty he feels about climbing in Tibet he might get off his backside and actively do something about it.
01.02.2012
I really enjoyed this book; my interest in North Korea is very much piqued but in fact, I was more interested in Tan Wee Chen's accounts of other places such as the former Yugoslavia and the Sudan more. It's really a series of travel essays which is great for the bed-time reader who needs a natural break in writing before being able to actually put their book down! Tan Wee Chen is very much a travel addict and likes to write up his travels; the more challenging the country the better. He spends a little bit too much time on the history of the countries as an intro and personally, I think the book would have been better focussing on the travel experiences, but if you don't know the history of the Balkans for example, it's a good summary. The other thing I liked is that he is quite an 'innocent' writer... he speaks as he finds without wondering if what he is saying is politically correct and actually forms an opinion of cultural differences that had me going, ooh he shouldn't say that.. but on the plus, neither can he contain delight and joy at the people and places he goes to and that's rather sweet. It's slightly out of date at the present time, with leaders who are very much alive in the book now dead. Nonetheless, a good read if you don't actually want to go to Iraq yourself but would like to know what it's like there!
20.01.2012
I only picked this book up because I was desperate for something to read. I'd got it at the Amnesty International Book Sale locally and devoured the rest, but somehow this got put to the bottom of the pile. I thought it would be a schmaltzy book, but in fact, it is anything but, and it's meaningful in many ways. Charting the marriages of both grandmother Bernadine (in 1930's Ireland) and granddaughter Tressa (contemporary New York) it's a beautifully observed book about how marriage isn't always a bed of roses and that relationships struggle with the same issues regardless of moment in time or country. Both women eventually come to a resolution within their relationships but it isn't the sugar-sweet homily I had (unreasonably) expected it would be. The book is interspersed with recipes.. most of which were pretty unappealing to me, but it is written in such an engaging style that you are instantly drawn in.
20.01.2012
This is such a sweet book with lots of anecdotes, some very sad and some very funny and all the more poignant to me because I'm in touch with Marc Abrahams, the author, on Twitter because of his work to banish puppy farms (see Puppy Farm tab on my home page). The dog who swallowed NINE golf balls.. the gerbil that needed a caeserean and a random donkey-nativity incident are all parceled up in an easily readable package.
20.01.2012
Dom Joly's book really piqued my interest in North Korea, one of the most obscure regimes in the world so I picked up this book, This Is Paradise!, by former resident of North Korea, Hyok Kang. While I am aware, from Dom's book, that any tourism to NK is heavily monitored and visitors are not allowed to tour the country without an official guide, what goes one behind the scenes that visitors are shown is shocking. It's a country always hungry because they just can't produce enough food to feed the entire country and many other countries won't supply them with food so basically they starve. Famine is a part of life. It's a largely hidden regime, ruled entirely by dictatorship where the people know little of the world outside. Hyok Kang escaped NK (or PRNK = people's republic of North Korea) in 2007. The book was gripping from start to finish..it focusses on Hyok's childhood mainly..and I highly recommend it.
14.01.2012
14.01.2012
If you've read Three Cups of Tea then this is an eye-opener. Basically, a man called Greg Mortensen founded a highly successful charity building schools in Afghanistan, where due to the terrain partly, there simply weren't enough schools. He then wrote a book about his experiences, called Three Cups of Tea, which has now been found to be littered with inaccuracies and the multi-million dollar charity not all it seems. One particular inaccuracy just made me laugh; a paragraph in Greg's follow up book has his holding the hand of Mother Theresa's body, to which he had been given special access to pay respects to.. it transpires that in fact, Mother Theresa actually died three years before! Three Cups of Deceit is a very slim book; more of a bound article I would say and there is no point at all in reading it unless you are aware of the charity and have read the Three Cups of Tea. My jaw dropped on several occasions at the sheer chutzpah of the lies told in the first book, so on that level it was pretty entertaining!
01.01.2012
Beautiful Malice by Rebecca James
If you love mind-games, you'll probably whizz though this book about a fatally flawed friendship. As the book goes on, the dreadful incident that defines Katherine's life is revealed, as is the true nature of her new friend, Alice. It's not a brain stretcher but definitely a page turner.
Blue Eyed Boy by Joanne Harris
This is a horrible, tortured piece of writing that I totally gave up on. I can't remember the last time I didn't finish a book, but this story of an 'odd' man still living at home with his mother while living an alternative life on line did me in. When you're reading a one-person narrative that chops and changes (he is nominally writing an on-line novel on his web-journal) and you can't tell what is fantasy or fact, but can pick up the very obvious *brewing storm* the whole thing just becomes tedious and frankly, I stopped caring what happened.
Beautiful by Katie Piper
This is a very inspirational read, but didn't answer a lot of the questions I think other people would naturally have about Katie. It charts her journey from the dreadful acid attack through to starting her charity to help others with facial injuries. While there are no holds barred on an emotional level, things seemed very hurried towards the end and there was no clear explanation about how she could afford to live the independent life she lives now. The book explains that she had a compensation pay-out that wasn't enough to buy a property so I just had this niggling question throughout of how she managed financially. This of course, does not take away from the awfulness of what she struggled through and it's all kinds of miracles that Katie has turned her life around despite everything. What I found fascinating is the description of the man who arranged for the acid to be thrown; such a desperately damaged person with no rational concept of normal human behaviour. The worry is that people like him exist at all, but they do and that is salutory. Katie has been and continues to be brave beyond belief, inspiring to others and resolute in her determination to embrace the life she hadn't inspected. I wished for a bit more detail towards the end of the book, but otherwise, I found it a worthwhile read.
Hidden Lives by Margaret Forster
I really enjoyed this story from Margaret Forster, whose books can lean to the downright depressing. It's the story of her childhood in Carlisle and an exploration of family myths, including the fact that her grandmother never accounted for 23 years of her life (and an illigitimate child) and took the secrets to her grave in 1936. Margaret's family weren't rich, but neither were they poverty stricken, but her mother always wanted a life with more trappings than they had. In face, Margaret's mother had a good job before she got married but married women weren't considered employable so the family lived on one wage, despite her mother having good earning potential that would have made an acute difference to their lives. Margaret Forster writes in a very honest way, and had it been a novel, her mother would have realised that family and health were more important etc, but as it was, she never did and went to her grave rather bitter. On the upside, Margaret was sure she didn't want a similar life, and despite marrying young and having a child almost straight away, she only briefly gave up her independence. So, the book charts three women's lives and the slow progression of opinion and womens' place in the world.
I've done a lot of reading over Christmas; kicking off with Hospital Babylon by Imogen Edward-Jones. It's an amalgamation of real-life experiences of doctors working within the NHS and put into a first-person story. Actually, it isn't nearly as shocking as you'd think and certainly nothing that you wouldn't already have read about if you have half an eye on the papers, so I read it with a bit of a weary eye. It's much as you'd expect from a failing system, cynical doctors and patients too sick or elderly to make a stand.
17.12.2011
Twice a year in a local church, Amnesty International holds a book sale with thousands of books at silly prices. They're mostly all donated by publishers so you quite often get proof books or unedited editions but that's all part of the fun. Obviously, all the money raised goes to Amnesty. But, as well as donating to a great cause, it's my opportunity to pick up books that I wouldn't necessarily buy at full price because they're not obvious choices. In fact, I like challenging my own pre-conceived ideas about what I should and shouldn't be reading. I used to read what I thought I 'ought' to, rather than what I was drawn to, but now any book snobbery is well and truly out of the window. I just love reading and I will pretty well read anything (except Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.. I just couldn't get to grips with it at all!).
So, last week I read The Lady's Maid by Rosina Harrison. It's a little bit more than an 'upstairs, downstairs' story but obviously these tales of two lives within one house are having their moment again thanks to Downton Abbey. Rosina Harrison was Lady's Maid to Nancy Astor. Nancy was known to be eccentric, impulsive and incredibly difficult (interspersed with endearing qualities too, but not enough, in my view!). The book charts Rosina's life at the beck and call of Nancy and how she learned to keep things running smoothly when Nancy was determined that they should not!
It's very simply written, and doesn't dish any real dirt, but more, gives an insight into daily life. Rosina remained loyal to Nancy until her death but she doesn't betray confidences and is more of a raconteur. This book is a really quick and easy read; I really enjoyed it because it wasn't a challenge but was hugely interesting. If anything, I thought Rosina a bit holier-than-thou and wished she'd share more of the juice, but in fact, the book is more about Rosina's life with the Astors than the Astors themselves. I'd definitely recommend it as an easy, relaxing and rather lovely read.
13.12.2011
I cannot tell you how much I loved this book. To cut to the chase, it's all about how there is almost no such thing as luxury any more because it's really all about the money. A good example from the book is how you can go into Louis Vuitton or similar and get exactly the same consumer experience as you would in Gap.. i.e. you pick out your product, take it to the till, someone shoves it in a bag, you pay and leave. Yet the concept of luxury used to be so different back in the day with personal service, bespoke ordering, appointment based purchasing, hand deliveries and impeccibly produced goods. Basically, by paying more, you got more, both in terms of service and goods.
Dana Thomas, the author, is the cultural and fashion writer for Newsweek in Paris, and her research is beyond the call of duty. She talks to major players in the fashion industry, such as Miuccia Prada and Bernard Arnault (LVMH) looking at the business aspects of luxury. Details such as 40% of Japanese people own a Louis Vuitton product, the biggest profit making store for Chanel in 2008 was Waikiki in Hawaii, and the shocking corner cutting to wring out yet more profit is just fascinating. Once upon a time, luxury goods, particularly leather goods, were made in Italy - nowadays, just about everything is outsourced to China where it can be made far more cheaply. The end result isn't a cheaper product for the consumer, but a bigger profit for the brand.
It's a brilliantly written book that I've been recommending to everyone who has ever lusted after a designer bag or fragrance.
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