Levels of Life - mashing it up, Julian Barnes style

Levels of Life by Julian Barnes (JonathanCape: 2013). A book in three parts from a Booker Prize winning author. A literary mash up, exploring the history of ballooning, photography, love stories, and death. Wide ranging stuff.

What’s the saddest thing you can think of? Me, it’s always been a husband losing his wife (or a wife losing her husband for that matter). Always got me that one. Doesn’t matter how cheesy it is, that plot element has always made me choke when it’s cropped up on the screen or page.

And yet I subject myself to this. One of the world’s most decorated writers putting pen to paper to explore the grief he felt when his wife died.

I’m an idiot.

In fairness, it’s not all about that. The book is split in three parts. The first is a bit of non-fiction about ballooning and photography, the second is a bit of historical fiction centred on a bohemian love story gone wrong, and then the third part is where Barnes goes to town on his grief.

It works. Brilliantly. And here’s why.

For starts, it works because of the first two sections. They’re amazing. A quirky history of a quirky endeavour, followed by a thorough (but tastily bite-sized) love story which grows as it’s told. Both of the first two sections entertained me, set some of the structural thought which characterised the third section's grief, and introduced emotion slowly rather than simply plunging you in at the deep end.

For seconds, it worked because of the honesty and the rawness and the sheer humanity of the third section. There is no universal truth to grief, no universal experience. Julian Barnes is Julian Barnes; he felt and experienced and reacted to his grief in a Julian Barnes way. At no point does he melt into easy cliché. At no point does he pluck at the usual heart strings in the usual ways. He violently kicks against any sense of Disney emotion. He tells what happened to him - anecdote by anecdote, analogy by analogy – and leaves little out.

And for thirds, it works because this is Julian Barnes we’re talking about here. The guy can write. Every now and then, a sentence or a phrase or a structure will just knock you flat on your ass. I’ve read Barnes before and not quite got it, but I’m acutely aware pretty much everyone else has. The guy has high flung literary praise coming at him from every direction. And in this book, I get it too. I submit. Julian Barnes; you can write good.

9 GBR

One of the best things you’ll read this year. Why not 10 you ask? Because I do the scores, not you.

Next week, another story of a man losing his wife. I’m a glutton for punishment.

Shakespeare's Local - crossing over

Covers photograph badly in Kindle. Fact.

Shakespeare's Local by Pete Brown (Macmillan: 2012) - A history of the George Inn in Southwark, telling it's remarkable tale over many hundreds of years as it played host to some of histories greats and survived where many of its more famous contemporaries failed.

Crossover books are books of a specific (and usually niche) genre which win over a  general audience. 50 Shades of Grey is probably one of the best recent examples, taking erotica to the masses. Harry Potter did a similar thing for Young Adult fiction. Lord of the Rings for fantasy.

In that sort of company, Shakespeare’s Local won’t set the world on fire. But it deserves a serious nod of appreciation. How do you make local history more appealing to a wide audience? Focus it on a pub, throw in (often drunken) anecdotes of some of history’s luminaries, and hey presto, you’ve got a crossover hit on your hands.

Well, that’s the thinking anyway. But does the UK’s most famous beer historian and commentator pull it off? I think so. Mostly anyway.

For starts, he doesn’t write like the historians you read in school. This is not a text book, with a “and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened” approach. Pete Brown is way more conversational and entertaining than that. He warns you from the outset, giving you fair notice that he’s going to jump around a bit, include a few assumptions, litter the text with amusing footnotes. 

In reality, he doesn’t jump around the timeline as much as he perhaps thinks he does, but he keeps it lively nonetheless. As soon as you think you might be hitting a sticky patch, where he might be forced just to recount a few dry historical happenings in order to make sure the book has some proper context, he whizzes off into another anecdote or another rant or another character portrait. 

Maybe that's easier in a local history book anchored on pubs than it would be in a local history book about agricultural processes, but kudos nonetheless.

It’s all relative, of course. This is no thriller. Brown does what he can to inject drama, and an amusing analogy or quip is never too far away. But this won’t having you on the edge of your seat or rolling on the floor laughing. It’s a lively, colourful, entertainingly disjointed local history book, but it’s still a local history book.

So, if I’m 100% honest (and why wouldn’t I be), I reckon you still need to have at least a pilot light’s worth of interest in the subject matter before you pick this up. 

Me, I enjoy a bit of history. I enjoy it more when a crossover historian like Brown is at the helm, and I enjoy it more when it’s about something fun (like pubs), but I enjoy the dry stuff sometimes too.

I’m not saying you need to be a popular history fanatic, glued to Simon Schama every time he’s on telly. Just that you need at least a little spark of interest, even if it’s been largely suppressed. If there’s ever been a tiny voice at the back of your head which sounds like a history geek but has struggled to make itself heard, this could be the book to let the little guy out on.

8 GBR

I originally gave this a 7, then remembered my Kindle-era rule of only buying the hard copy of stuff I give 8 or above to. At which point I realised I really wanted to own the hard copy of this, so it MUST be worth an 8. (Impeccable logic, which I defy you to pick apart).

Interesting aside on this – Brown had his laptop with ALL his work on the book stolen when he was 3 months away from deadline, so had to start from scratch. Still churned out an 8 GBR though. I’m pretty darn impressed with that.

Next week (if I finish it in time) a new release from the Tinder Press, which they were kind enough to send me an advance copy of (which makes me feel smug).

Young Stalin - history, no matter how you slice it

Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore (Wiedenfeld & Nicolson: 2007). Never has a blurb been less needed. Never has a title described a book so completely. This is a book about Stalin, when he was young. What more do you need?

I said I was going back to the Man Booker Prize shortlist this week. Then I got an interview with the author lined up. So you’ll have to wait for the review. It’d be rude to post a review before I post the interview, right? I mean, there are rules, surely?

Instead, I thought I’d go for a bit of non-fiction. It’s been a while. Part of the reason is they’re usually so bloomin’ long, and I know how restless you trouble-makers get if you don’t get a weekly GBR hit.

So I decided to take one from the shelf. There was a time a couple of years ago when this book was on a billboard in every tube station. And you can see why. It’s got such a romantic premise (is that the right word when it’s non-fiction? Is it a premise, or just a starting point? I’m not sure I care).

Even the cover screams out romance. This glassy eyed, revolutionary figure. It’s Che Guevarra, but more. Here’s a chance to get to know a guy who came from the gutter (quite literally) and rode an idealistic wave all the way to the top of the world. And because this book focuses on Stalin - the early years, we can even keep all the future evil-acts and genocide in the pleasantly blurred distance. We are left to get to know Stalin more as a human being. Allowed to at least begin to try understanding how he got to where he got, rather than simply denounce him as evil in a black-and-white, unthinking sort of way.

The back cover hardly stops this romance taking root. We’re treated to photos of Stalin at every stage of his rise, from urchin to commissar, with pauses at poet and pirate in between.

Here, no doubt, is the material for a historical biography that can grab the attention of the masses.

Well, you’d think so, but you’d be wrong. Don’t misunderstand me; as historical biographies go, this is pretty darn neat. In the context of its genre, it’s exciting and it’s important. It goes some way to explaining one of history’s all time formative personalities. It fills in a huge amount of general knowledge gaps, and it makes you feel entirely unworthy for wasting your life reading and blogging.

But I can’t help but feel the marketers have over-reached on this one. I’m all for bringing history to the masses, but we have to be honest as well. This is not a thriller. This is not a love story. This is not a fiery politically driven piece of literary fiction. This is a historical biography. For all the promised rushing glamour of the cover, and for all the posters that lined the tube at the time of release, and for all the awards this book won, it remains, at its heart, a history book.

I like history, by the way. I love reading it. But the mis-match between what this book promises and what it delivers irks me. It’s long. It has an index at the back. When you’re bang in the middle of it, you’re acutely aware you’re reading something scholarly rather than an entertainment. No matter how much I enjoy history, no matter how much I can become embarrassingly absorbed in the high brow, I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone somewhere picked this book up expecting it to excite at every turn of the page, and felt incredibly let down.

This leaves me with a dilemma. This is a good book. Approach it in the right way, and it’ll deliver what it’s supposed to. Yes, it’s a little frustrating the story stops just when you know it’s about to get global. Yes, it fails to deliver on the excitement of the premise (I’m using the word). But it feels harsh to give it a low GBR score simply because of a marketing flaw. Simply because its over-inflated promise and its reality don’t match up.

6 GBR

Thus ends our string of high GBR scores. I’m going to sit on the fence instead. Right in the middle of it.

If you enjoy reading history every now and then, go get this, quickly. If you’re expecting it to be as fast moving and arresting as fiction, don’t bother.

Next week, back to fiction, and back to the Man Booker Prize shortlist. I promise, this time.

King Leopold's Ghost - history!!

King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild (Houghton Mifflin: 1998) A history of King Leopold II of Belgium's reign in the Congo, and the individuals involved in bringing the truth of his rule to the world's attention.

Most history books tell you stuff you don’t know. Otherwise you really would get bored of them quick. But this, this told me about a major piece of the world story that I had no idea existed.

Sure, I knew about slavery. And I knew about the scramble for Africa, and knew that wasn’t a fun era for the locals. But this, this is something other.

This book isn’t just about the horrific cruelty of an imperialistic regime in a foreign land. It’s about a major worldwide movement against it. It’s about crusaders and explorers whose story exploded out of Africa and on to the world stage in an incredibly loud way. And then along came World War I, and it seems their voices got lost. Largely forgotten.

Maybe it has something to do with the shame of the imperialists, trying to forget a piece of history we’re not too proud of. Or maybe I was just off the day they taught this in school.

I had no idea, not an inkling, of the events in the Congo in the mid to late nineteenth century. I had no idea of the calculated barbarism of King Leopold II of Belgium. I had no idea of the regime he built in the Congo, of the smokescreens he threw up to mask its true nature, and the extraordinary lengths gone to by a few men and women to bring a spotlight to it. I had no idea of the international politics and public outrage that the episode threw up. I had no idea of how much the struggle was stamped into the public consciousness.

If I’m not being clear enough, in short, I was amazed.

The good history books, the really good ones, ordinarily get the cookie-cutter praise that they “read like a novel.” It’s important to take history and relate it in an entertaining way, with plot and drama and structure. Otherwise it won’t get read. And that’s exactly what’s done here.

Hochschild is helped by being given a great cast of characters, and a shocking narrative, but he stitches it together seamlessly. A little repetitive at times, and he dwells in one place for a few seconds too long here and there, but in all, it’s pretty neat and tidy.

It’s not dispassionate - he injects his own values and his own judgements at will. But they’re almost always correct. And they give the book an energy that it would be lacking otherwise.

It’s all left wonderfully open ended as well. It’s history, so there aren’t absolute winners and losers. There’s no neat resolution. Every character is flawed. Which means you put the book down at the end and you’re hungry for more. You want to discuss it and pick at it and understand it from other places.

This is good history. It’s essential history, really. It’s entertaining history. It enlightens. It twists your perspective and your gut and your soul as you read it.

I have to retrain myself here. I loved this. But the GBR scores are about whether I think you’ll love it too. Despite everything, this is still history. It’s slower than fiction. It’s more interrogative. It’s more detailed. And that’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

9 GBR

I clearly have no self control.

We seem to be on a good run GBR scores at the moment (9, then 8, then 7, then 8, now 9) Maybe I’m getting soft. Or maybe books are getting better.

Next week, a visit to Baker Street to see if they can keep up the pace.

Over Seventy - the sixth biscuit

Over Seventy by PG Wodehouse (Herbert Watkins: 1957) A self proclaimed "autobiography with digressions". Wodehouse pontificates on pretty much everything, using his status as a septuagenarian to wisely survey the world before him and the life he's led

Having decided to treat myself last week, I couldn’t resist more of the same. I never could leave it at just one biscuit. Just one scoop of ice cream. I always had to have two. Or more often, three. Occasionally four. Five once or twice, but never six.

So the treat this week was Wodehouse shaped. I love that guy. Like most people, it started with Jeeves and Wooster (courtesy of Fry and Laurie). But once I decided to read some of the books, I was hooked in whole other way. Read about it right here (for those GBR novices amongst you).

This, though, isn’t another typical Wodehouse book or short story. This is a memoir of sorts. Not for ole P.G. the introspective story of a life well lived. Not for him the listing out of events and friendships that spanned his years. Instead, Over Seventy is his 200-odd page response to a request from a journalist asking for some of observations of the world now that he was officially an old gent.

I was chuffed that the opening of the book does at least go over some biographical details. I wanted to know how it all started for Wodehouse, and I was given the facts of the matter in fairly short form. I even found out one or two things about his “process” that surprised me (you’ll have to read it to find out for yourself).

But then the book deviates. As Wodehouse argues, any book of his life would largely be taken up with “and then I wrote another story, and people liked it. And then I wrote another story, and people liked it. And then I wrote…” and so on.

So instead, we’re treated to his musings on any number of topics and trends, generously interspersed with an anecdote here and a by-the-way there.

It’s warming reading. It really is. It has the same escapism and old world humour that his fiction does. It wraps its arms around you, deposits you in an old leather armchair, lights the fire, puts a glass of port in your hand, locks the world outside, and does a thoroughly good job of entertaining you. It’s easy, and that’s its power. It comes off the page in the honeyed tones of your granddad.

All the more impressive given the work that’s gone into this. Wodehouse admits himself that he goes through small forests worth of paper in planning his books. Each sentence is formed, reformed, redrafted, edited, reshaped. He went to a lot of trouble to make his writing what it is.

There is a Wodehousian downside though, and one I’ve not come across before. With his other stories, there’s always a strong sense of “what next.” The scenarios he concocts are often complex and tension ridden. With this though, there was no real point. No end game. It’s more a collection of what he thinks about stuff.

Endearing, funny, clever, insightful in parts. But nothing to make you grab it and thirstily drink up a few pages, nothing to make you absolutely positively have to find out what happens. I wouldn’t dare go as far as to say it dragged (this is Wodehouse, after all) but the lack of urgency was an occasional but definite drawback.

Still huge amounts of fun though. Still something I loved. Still a writer that makes me feel wonderful to read.

8 GBR

Go read some Wodehouse. Now.

Next week, I may have to go back to reading something I don’t already love. I guess.

Touching the Void - devil in the detail

Touching the Void by Joe Simpson (Jonathan Cape: 1988) The pretty harrowing account of the very nearly fatal attempt by Joe Simpson and his climbing buddy Simon to climb the Siula Grande mountain in Peru.

I went on a walk in Thornley Woods once when I was a kid and got lost. For like a whole hour or something. Even started getting dark. Had to get a lift back home with some random farmer in the end. It was pretty scary stuff.

That’s about as close as I’ve ever got to frontier peril. So reading about Joe Simpson’s ill fated trip up a mountain somewhere in South America was a world away. He (and his climbing buddy Simon) faced disaster after catastrophe after calamity on their trip. They stared death in the eyes on numerous occasions, and often assumed the other had perished, never to be seen again.

This book has all the virtues of a real life disaster adventure. If it was fiction, the eyes would roll at pretty much every turn of the page. You’d throw your arms up and say “come on now, get serious, this would just never happen.” But it’s not fiction. It’s the opposite. It’s non-fiction. So all you can do is sit back and be amazed at the recollections of Joe and Simon.

And what recollections. They go to town with some of the detail.

My brother (and regular GBR commenter) writes the odd report for his rugby club in Gateshead. It’s a feat that impresses me. I can barely remember the score of a game ten minutes after I leave the pitch, never mind recall enough details to write a report with any accuracy. But my brother plays in the game, and then manages to recount all the major instances in sequence hours (sometimes days) later.

These guys though, these climbers, they’ve got down on paper every single thought, feeling, impression, technical detail…you name it, they’ve put it in here with painstaking care. And I’m guessing this was written at least a few months after the fact. It’s mind boggling.

In a lot of ways, this detail really helps. It livens up the text, and helps it go from simply being a literal telling of events into being a compelling account of how the experience effected the two climbers. The way they felt and the way they reacted, the thought that went into their decisions, the agony of the accidents and how they quantified it at the time. It’s all detail that adds richness to the text.

But the detail has two fairly annoying draw backs too. First, the climbing jargon in here is fairly heavy. I’m sure it makes sense for climbers, but there were entire scenes that I found it hard to picture as I have no idea what a “crampon” is, or a “moraine”, or even a “crevasse” is (though that one got pretty obvious after a while). You learn to skip past the jargon, but I can’t help but think the book would have been more translatable and have a more powerful visual quality without that sort of heavy detail.

The other problem with the detail is you have to start wondering where it all came from. These guys were dead on their feet. For days. Going through hell. Then months later they remember with perfect clarity the song that got stuck in their head at a particular moment, or the exact amount of screams they heard in the night. Even getting the sequence of events straight must have taken some doing. I imagine they put a bit of research in. Looked at maps and stuff like that to jog their memories. But still, the detail is at such a level that its authenticity remained a nagging doubt for me all the way through. I’m not saying any of it is untrue, just that elaboration and assumption may well have been co-writers.

To be fair though, there was enough good in this book to overcome the rest. It is inspiring in a pretty real way. Whilst the constant set-backs take on a bit of a repetitive quality, you can’t help but be amazed at how they’re conquered. (And no, that’s not a spoiler. The guys got out to write the book, so it’s fairly obvious they survived. Idiots).

And whilst a little distracting, the detail did help create a real atmosphere. I’d sit there reading this and be properly transported to the bottom of that freezing crevasse (that’s right, I’m using the word now). This book does a good job of putting the outside world on the outside.

It’s a little clichéd, but it does put things in perspective a little. Any real-life book that involves near death experiences will do that. My train may be ten mins late and the coffee shop may have short changed me this morning, but at least I’m not half way up a mountain with a broken leg and no hope of escape before I freeze to death. So, you know, suck it up.

How about a score then? Finger in the air, and it comes down with a…

6 GBR

Good and bad aspects to this. But it’s definitely worth a pop. It’s a bit different from stuff I’d usually read, but there’s enough inspiration there, and enough raw emotion to make me recommend it. Also, it’s only like 200 pages, so if you don’t enjoy it, it’ll be over soon. And there’s always the pictures to look at if you get bored.

Next week, something from my wife’s book club (if I finish it in time).

Persepolis - graphic

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (Vintage: 2008). A graphic novel following the story of the author’s life. She grew up in Iran and lived through the headlines. Persepolis gives an insight into the lives of a political family, and how the story of Iran shaped the outlook of one of its daughters.

I was watching Fresh Meat last week. At one stage, they took the mickey out of “geeks that read Iranian graphic novels and get around to talk about it” (or something like that, anyway).

This was about three days after I finished an Iranian graphic novel. And had decided to blog about it.

It was a struggle not to feel pretty small at that point.

To be fair to Persepolis, it’s also a “major motion picture”, which earns it a few more cool points, right? No?

Well, no matter, I read it and now I’m blogging about it, and if that means I get judged by the Fresh Meat crowd, well I guess I’m just going to have to live with that. So there.

This was my first graphic novel. Which, after a bit of thought, I’ve realised really is too wide a label to be a genre. I mean, it’s like saying this is my first movie, or this is my first cartoon. It’s a format, but the differences between each example can be huge. Persepolis, Watchmen, Sin City – they’re all graphic novels, but I’m willing to bet cold hard cash that they’re all very very different.

So I’ll not pause too much on the graphic novel factor. It was new to me, but I got used to it pretty quickly. I guess the big difference is that there are more tools on hand to create a distinct feel. Satrapi didn’t have to rely solely on the words on the page to develop the atmosphere of the book, she had the style of the drawings, the way they were arranged on the page, the expressions on people’s faces – all came together to signpost both the plot and the emotion of the book very effectively.

Perhaps most impressive about Persepolis was its consistency. The writing style, the pictures, the layout – they all chimed together, they all looked and felt and sounded the same. This is a book with a very strong personality, and it works well to tell a powerful story.

But there was a fairly major downside to Persepolis for me. The style is very simplistic, which means that it comes off as childish in places. Which is brilliant  and apt in the early and middle parts, where the world is being presented through the eyes of a child. But the kid grows up as the story moves on, and the style stays the same. When there’s high drama early on, the child’s voice and perspective makes it all the more heartbreaking. But when there’s similar drama later on, and we’re still experiencing it with the same style of narration, it comes across as flippant.

And a little annoying.

I don’t want to get too down on it. I enjoyed reading it, and it’s probably a little unfair to applaud the style of the book and then criticise it for staying true to that style from start to finish. I just felt that the story moved but the characters didn’t. The grown up Marji at the end of the book still feels like the child Marji from the start.

Maybe that was intentional. Maybe she’s trying to show that we’re the same people our whole lives, no matter what age we are. Maybe that’s a good point to make. But in making it, I think she’s sacrificed depth and development and richness.

5 GBR

Plenty good about Persepolis, but plenty bad too. Classic middle value score.

Next week, think I’m going to turn a little Doctorow. I’m sure the Fresh Meat lot would approve. Not that I care.

A Brief History of Time - a waste of mine

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking (Bantam Press: 1988) One of the world’s greatest minds sets out to explain the very big (and very small) theories of the universe, exploring the nature of space time and the possibilities that our understanding of it opens up.

Hmmm.....yes, well.....right....hummmm, ok.

Uh huh.

Not quite sure where to start with this one. No doubt about it, it was a toughie.

I bounded into it full of enthusiasm. We all know about this book, and every time it’s talked of it’s praised for its ability to explain the mysteries of the universe in a populist, accessible way.

Bull.

Well, that may be a bit harsh. It started out colourfully enough. And there were tid bits of light. The odd anecdote that brought a point to life, the odd passage that suddenly made the previous twenty pages of confusion make sense.

But for the most part, confusion reigned. Confusion and disappointment.

I’ve no doubt part of the fault was my own. I’m not an idiot, but I’m perhaps not the most scientifically minded either. I’m sure one or two people I know would have grasped a lot more of this than I did. But no more than one or two. OK, maybe three. Come to think of it, four, but that’s it. Four people I can think of that might skip through these pages a little more light footed than me, without having to read passages two or three times before they even began to make some sort of sense.

And the shame was that, after a while, I stopped caring. I hate it when that happens with a book. Here are these powerful little collections of pages, capable of huge things, truly huge things. They can (and have) changed worlds, inspired greatness, all that stuff. And here I was, with one of them in my hand, doing nothing other than reading the words in my head one after the other, taking none of it in. The words could have been anything by the end. Which felt like a massive waste.

I tried. I did try. I’ve read scientific books before. Philosophy books. Other books crammed with difficult ideas. But this one, this one drained away my enthusiasm and my patience to the point that (to my embarrassment) I simply stopped caring.

This book may succeed in its scientific mission, but it fails in its literary one. It may accurately put forth the important thoughts of a great mind, but it failed to take me along for the ride.

Which is, after all, what I was promised. I was promised the secrets in the universe packaged up in a way that made them accessible to me.

They were not.

1 GBR

Ouch! Sorry Stephen.

Right, I’ve held up my part of the bargain. Dave told me I couldn’t read and review this book. Well, I have and I did.

And the stakes? Well, Dave lost, so now Dave has to do a guest review.

Over to you, Davey boy.

Next week (presuming that Dave takes more than a week to do his review) an interesting idea from that delightful Stephen Fry.

Cream Teas Traffic Jams and Sunburn - a bit of a surprise

Cream Teas, Traffic Jams andSunburn, by Brian Viner (Simon & Schuster: 2011) Brian Viner blends his own experiences with those of his family, friends and acquaintances to explore the cultural phenomenon of the British on holiday. Using anecdotes, history, and his own keen observations, Viner shines a light on why we do what we do when we're at leisure, from Bognor Regis to Beunos Aries.

Choosing books to read is a minefield. One which, with a bit of time and the odd lost leg, most of us like to think we can navigate fairly well. As much as we’re urged not to judge a book by its cover, most of us do to some extent. Not literally, but we usually let a handful of initial signifiers dictate whether or not we pick a book up.

Genre. Author. Reviews. Recommendations. The title. The blurb on the back. Tick one or two of those boxes, and you’ll probably pick it up.

Which is why I was fairly sure I was going to hate this book. From all I could tell, I thought it’d essentially be the book version of one of those painful TV shows where they get a bunch of tv “celebs” to talk to camera about how mad the ‘80s were. I thought it’d be full of “aren’t we crazy” moments. I thought it’d rely heavily on having a reader who is prone to chuckling internally with a “that is so like my Aunt Ida” thought. In short, I thought it’d be pretty vacuous.

But it was free. And I try to keep an open mind. So I gave it a try.

And it proved me wrong.

The main thing it had going for it was the wit of Brian Viner. Wit can take you a long way, and Viner has it in spades. And he uses it to good effect, carefully avoiding too much of a “isn’t it funny when…” tone by telling his anecdotes with genuine good humour. That I did end up accidentally feeling an affinity for his experiences (and those of his seemingly hundreds of interesting friends) is testament to how well this is written. I opened the first page determined not to succumb to what I though would be a sickeningly chummy narrative, and I closed the last page wanting to go round his house for dinner.

And it’s not just his wit that turned me around. He brings some good history into the book as well, charting the course of the holiday as a phenomenon and introducing the pioneers who, through the centuries, have defined how we spend our leisure time (that is, once the world’s workers had some of it to spend).

There are some genuinely interesting facts and figures in here. Just ask my wife. She suffered through a week of me starting sentences with “did you know that…”. She smiled sweetly throughout, (she’s a trooper like that), but I know it’s annoying when someone keeps bugging you about stuff they’ve just read in their new book. Again, the fact I ended up feeling compelled to share what I was reading then and there goes some way to show just how much this book won me over.

But, to be fair, I had a long way to go. I started convinced that I was going to hate this book. Its wit and its history meant that I didn’t. But not hating it and actively liking it are two quite different things.

The wit can only take you so far. It took me to about two hundred pages before it started to wear thin. If he’d stopped the book there, I probably would have scored this pretty darn high. But he didn’t - Viner went on for another 100 or so pages. And (I’m sad to say) it just got a bit sameish after that. I’m not sure if the best anecdotes are packed in at the start of the book, or if I just got a bit bored. Either way, the book rather peaked and then declined fast.

And there were one or two aspects that I didn’t really notice at the start of the book, but that started to bug me by the end. One was the unfeasible amount of holidays Viner seems to take. I know this is a man who, through his job, has the opportunity to travel a fair amount, but he seems to pack in a dozen breaks a year to various destinations. True, they’re not all far flung and exotic, but they are numerous. By the end, all I could feel was slight depression that I don’t get away anywhere near the same amount.

The other slight annoying aspect was the sheer number of “close friends” Viner references. Every page details the story of another set of “close friends” and their experiences, more often than not whilst on holiday with Viner and/or his own family. The cumulative impression is of a man who spends all of his time on eventful holidays with hundreds of his closest friends. And that isn’t a man I can really identify with, which is important when it’s his voice you’re listening to throughout the book.

So, to the score. How does a…

6 GBR

…grab you?

A rollercoaster of emotions for the week. Hating it one second, loving it the next, then bottoming out at something just above indifference.

Next week, something a bit more established. The second young adult book of GBR history, though of a different era than the first. Intrigued? You should be.

A Million Little Pieces - forgetting the debate

A Million Little Pieces by James Frey (2003: John Murray (Publishers)) The author writes of his experiences when, aged 23, he entered one of the most expensive and exclusive rehab centres in the USA. James Frey had brought his life to within seconds of the end through years of drug abuse. He details his time in rehab, during which he gradually takes back control of his life, though not quite in the way he’s supposed to.

Book recommendations come at all sorts of times. Drunken taxi ride home with a team-mate after an end of season curry night out? Alright then, let’s talk books. That’s just the kind of high life I lead. As I was settling back in the car seat, all smug at successfully navigating a night of carefully controlled revelry without embarrassing myself, BAM! – out of no-where, here comes a book recommendation from my fellow Bec Old Boys player.

Cue Amazon one-click and my iPhone, and I bought this one there and then, before I even commenced my usual dance outside my front door as I fished around for my keys with the ticking clock of a need for the toilet counting down perilously.

I eventually got around to reading this whilst on holiday in the Lakes a couple of weeks ago.

So what did I think of it? If you know one thing about this book, it’s the controversy that surrounds it. Internationally lauded at the time, the author has faced massive criticism since details came out which made his version of events questionable at best. Presented as a memoir, most now agree that A Million Little Pieces is fairly loosely based on the facts, though it’s still pretty unclear as to what is real and what is not.

Knowing this before turning the first page does make you read it in a curious way. It takes a while to stop analysing the events of the book. It takes a while before you stop wondering “did that bit really happen” at every turn, and start just reading it for what it is. As much as I tried not to let it, the context this book does get in the way a little.

But eventually, it does melt away. This is a long book, so there’s plenty of time for you to hear it properly. And when that happened, I liked what I heard.

No doubt about it, Frey writes in a compelling way. The pain and the trauma draws you in. The ordeals Frey describes and the emotion that feeds on the back of them hit home in a big way. The whole book (well, most of it) is spent in the confines of a rehab centre – not a lot actually happens, but Frey finds enough action to explore to ensure the 500-odd pages go by without any real hanging around.

Frey’s style is also a massive plus. It’s not quite conversational, but it works to convey a thought process that you can instantly understand. Frey lets you into his head in an incredibly effective way, and he uses a distinctive writing style to do it.

All of which is to say this is a hugely enjoyable and emotional read.

But if you’ve skipped ahead already to check out the GBR rating (don’t act innocent, I know most of you do it), you’re probably asking yourself “well, if it’s good, why not a higher score?”

Well, a couple of reasons. The main one is the way in which Frey presents himself. True, he’s incredibly open about his battle with addiction, and he’s quick to describe himself as a loser who’s sunk about as low as someone can go. But between the lines, he’s kind of up himself. The dialogue he gives himself, the way he tackles confrontational situations, the philosophy he develops – it all just drips of self congratulation. Frey is presented as the smartest, wittiest, most bad-ass, loyal, mature, deepest person in the world. The black and white words on the page are pretty humbling, but it’s incredibly clear that Frey thinks a lot of himself. He ends up coming off as a lonely hero, a great man flawed by addiction. And I don’t buy it.

So where does that leave me? A book I really enjoyed. A book that has a lot of merit in it. A book that deserves to be read and understood. But one that asks you to jump a pretty significant fact-or-fiction hurdle. And a protagonist that is way too cool for school for my liking.

6 GBR

This is a great book. A sure fire 9 GBR if it was a novel. But it’s not. It’s a memoir. Whether it’s 100% fact or not doesn’t bother me a huge amount. What does is the way Frey writes about himself, especially  between the lines. Which may be a bit harsh, but I prefer my heroes a little more humble.

Deep breath. Next week, something completely different.

And the Band Played On - real good stuff

And the Band Played On by Christopher Ward (Hodder & Stoughton: 2011) The story of what happened after the Titanic went down, focussed on the family feuds that one of the young members of the Titanic band left behind. Set largely in Dumfries, the family’s tale after the boat sank is a tragic one. The author is the grandson of the musician, and in writing this book, he’s forced to face some uncomfortable truths about his relatives.

The thing about real life stories is that they happened in real life. None of this “based on a true story” crap. None of this “some scenes have been staged for dramatic effect” nonsense. Reality TV can only take you so far. For me (and for many of you too I’d imagine) history is where it’s at. Honest to goodness, this-really-happened, history.

After we leave school, it’s pretty easy to forget. In truth, even when we’re at school, history misses the mark more often than it hits it. The same topics can be churned through too many times, and the pressure to actually remember what you’re being taught renders it ever so slightly boring.

And then books like this fall in your lap. And you start to catch the history bug again.

As history goes, this is fairly old ground. Everyone knows about the Titanic. You know the one - big ship, hit an ice-berg, sank in the Atlantic.  You might even know some of the smaller details - the fact that the whole “women and children first” idea came from the Titanic. And then there’s the detail that kicks off this book. The fact that the band played on the deck of the ship as it was going down, trying to bring a bit of calm to the situation as people fled for their lives. And then the families of the band were sent a bill for their lost uniforms after they drowned.

And it’s that kind of detail that makes books like this worth reading. The little ones. The ones that have real people’s faces behind them,

I don’t want to go on about it, but this stuff really happened. It’s as real as the people around you right now. These people lived this story, and then they died, and then we came along. The lines between us and them are, in the grand scheme of things, pretty small. For me, that makes any story compelling. This one is no different.

Of course, there are down sides. The pace dipped every now and then, and I had to remind myself of the reality of this stuff to make sure I stayed interested. There are parts where there’s a little too much conjecture, a little too much “I don’t know exactly what happened, but it was probably…”

But for a history book, it avoided a lot of the usual traps. The people he talks about are huge characters, just huge. Their personalities are compelling, almost to the point of being caricatures in some places. And the book has the feel of a story - the kind that a lot of history books just don’t. It never feels like a text book. It has the structure of a fiction book.

So yeah, I enjoyed this. I felt better for having read it. It probably won’t make my top ten books of the year, but it won’t be too far behind.

7 GBR

Another sit-on-the-fence 7 I’m afraid, but this was never going to be anything other. 6 seems harsh. 8 seems a smidge too much.

Next week, some popular philosophy. I bet you're looking forward to that one.

The Perfect Nazi - hmmmm...

The Perfect Nazi by Martin Davidson (Viking: 2010 – published in paperback by Penguin: 2011). Martin Davidson is a maker of documentaries and writer of non-fiction. His family holds a secret they rarely talk about though – his Grandfather was in the SS during the War. In The Perfect Nazi, Davidson embarks upon a mission to find out what his Grandfather actually did during the war, and why he did it. How could his own flesh and blood play such an active role in one of the world’s most evil stories? Was he an unwilling passenger, or a committed member of the cause? And if the latter, what drove him to such acts of hate?

I lied to you.

And I feel bad about it, I really do. Over the last 20-odd posts, I feel we’ve developed a bit of an understanding, you and me. Blogger and blogee. And don’t try to tell me it’s all one way. I know you feel it too.

And then I went and lied to you.

I told you I was “giving the real world a rest” this week. That I’d break the streak of non-fiction reviews and pick up something fuelled by imagination again.

But I didn’t. I read The Perfect Nazi by Martin Davidson instead.

I lied to you.

But that’s OK. Because Martin Davidson lied to me too.

You see, he told me that, in the pages of this book, he “unmasked his SS Grandfather.” That he drew on “an astonishing cache of personal documents” to “understand how [his Grandfather] and millions of others like him were seduced by Hitler’s regime.” So, understandably, what I expected was a very personal book, focussing tightly on the life of Davidson’s Grandfather. A book that gave a personal history of an SS officer, one that went some way to explaining how large parts of an entire generation of Germans managed to depart so terrifyingly from Western  morality.

That was a prospect that intrigued me. Like most other people my age, I’ve learnt of the evil of Nazi Germany. Partly through school, partly through programmes like The World at War. I’ve been presented with the facts and been astonished that human beings like you and me could believe such things and commit such atrocities.

What I’ve never really seen is a sustained explanation of how they came to descend so far. That’s what Davidson promised with this book. The personal story of a single man whose life led him to an SS uniform, whose experiences delivered him to a blinding belief in things you and I find sickening.

Trying to find out how he got there – now that sounded like a book worth reading. And that’s what Davidson promised to me.

But it’s not what he gave me. What he gave me was a plotted history of the rise and fall of Nazism. Sure, there were sections that tried to focus on how the course of German history affected the man on the street. He tried to insert his Grandfather’s story wherever he could. But a lot of the time he relied on assumptions of how the narrative of history translated to the individual. He spent so much of the book on the big stage, detailing the history of the German side of the war and painting the major events that drove it.

All too often it felt like Davidson’s Grandfather’s  story was an afterthought. It’s not entirely his fault of course. He’s handcuffed in part by a scarcity of materials. His family was tight lipped about the actions of their patriarch, and finding records of an individual Nazi amongst millions restricted Davidson to a few scraps of paper detailing his rank and his memberships. Huge assumptions are made about his motivations, his state of mind, his ideology, even his actions. And, once these assumptions are made, Davidson then picks up the macro-narrative again.

But that’s exactly why I picked up this book. I wanted to know the man’s state of mind. I wanted to know how he went from innocent babe to card carrying, flag waving, Jew hating Nazi. I wanted to know exactly how this man ended up the way he did, and exactly what it drove him to do. But Davidson does not tell me any of that with any degree of certainty.

On the plus side (and there is one), this is a highly readable book. I sped through it. It wasn’t what I promised, but it was a detailed and gripping representation of the most terrifying phenomenon in modern history. Nazism has spawned a galaxy of books, documentaries, and films. As a topic, it’s as fascinating as it is frightening. These were real people that did these things. These heart breaking things actually happened. This evil truly existed. And Davidson does go into a level of detail about it that makes for some glued-to-the-page reading. That he uses a German perspective to it all perhaps gives it an extra edge. Throw into the mix the quality of writing (which is incredibly high) and you’ve got yourself a book that really is difficult to put down.

But that doesn’t get past the fact that I was lied to. I was promised a personal account, an explanation of what drove this man, and I didn’t get it. Instead, I got another history book.

I can’t help but think that Davidson has cheated here. There are thousands of books out there about Nazi Germany. I’d wager it’s one of the most written about topics of all time. It’s a topic that grips in its own right, and one that I’d bet is difficult to write about without some level of success. Davidson tried to rise above the rest by promising a genuinely new perspective and a new understanding.

All he delivered though was another (albeit very good) book about the Nazis, with just flashes of personal history based too much on assumptions.

4 GBR

And every one of those four are because of how well written this book is. I really did speed through it. Part of that speeding though was because I was constantly on the hunt for what I was promised.

I didn’t find it.

Right, next week I really am going to put the real world back on the shelf. Fiction for me all the way next week. I promise.

And I wouldn’t lie to you.

Bounce - dragging out an inspirational premise

Bounce by Matthew Syed (Fourth Estate: 2010, paperback edition published April 2011) Table tennis great turned journalist Matthew Syed explores the existence of talent in sports and other walks of life. He blends the research of others, his own experiences, high profile anecdotes, and interviews with a range of professionals to make the case that extraordinary amounts of the right types of practice are what builds sporting legends, not natural talent.

We’ve spoken before, you and me, about why I don’t ordinarily read books like this. It’s one of those where the whole thing is put out there on the front cover. “The myth of talent and the power of practice,” it says, underneath the author’s name. An interesting premise, but a fairly thin one. I always worry that a book like this is just too straight forward. There’s no such thing as talent. Greatness is the result of the right amount (and the right type) of practice.  That’s what Syed thinks, and that’s what he spends the majority of the book explaining.

Except, of course, it doesn’t take that much explaining. I just did it there using about half a paragraph.

Of course, it is a little more complex than that. Syed uses an impressive array of evidence to back up his premise. He weaves some interesting, high profile anecdotes to give the point a lot of colour. And he addresses most of the obvious objections, working hard to explain them away.

The biggest challenge for any book like this is to make it readable. It’s non- fiction. It cites a lot of research. It dwells on a single theory for most of the book. So can Syed ensure it remains enjoyable to read, unrepetative and interesting from page 1 to page 267?

Well, kind of.

It helps that the premise is inspirational - the notion that anyone can achieve greatness, as long as they put in an ungodly amount of practice and direct it properly. Syed explains how that practice fundamentally changes an individual, makes them able to see and do things that others can’t. It ends up looking like talent, but instead is the result of practice (albeit a mind blowing amount of it).

The premise is interesting enough to keep you hooked for a while, and Syed does a good job of carrying on the conversation in a lively way. The whole idea that talent is nothing and practice is everything is immediately uncomfortable, rendered so by the impossible feats we see sportsmen and women achieve almost every week. Surely natural talent exists? Well, by the end of the book, Syed had done enough to make me doubt it.

And that’s probably the biggest mark of approval I can give this book. I got to the end without being bored, and my mind had been (if not entirely) at least a little changed by the power of the arguments.

But that’s where the positivity has to end, I’m afraid. Getting to the end of a book without getting bored isn’t enough. There are millions of books out there that do so much more than not bore me. Indeed, there are unread books on my own book shelf that I’m sure I’ll enjoy more. So I couldn’t help but think that, once I’d understood Syed’s central argument, the rest of the book was just wasted time for me.

And changing my mind about a long held belief isn’t enough either. To be honest, my mind had been changed after the first few chapters. I got it. Syed had a powerful argument, and he made it well. But then he had another 200-odd pages to fill. He filled them with some fairly interesting material, but none of it really made me sit up straight in my seat.

So, an above average sports science book. More entertaining than I’d thought it was going to be, and more enlightening too. But not enough of either to overshadow too much else that’s on my bookshelf.

6 GBR

The eagle eyed amongst you will notice that 6 GBR is more than the 5 GBR I gave to Moneyball, probably my favourite sports science book. That's because Moneyball is about baseball and nothing else. Great for baseball fans, rubbish for everyone else. Bounce is more accessible and wide ranging, so I think it's more likely to be worth your time.

Thought that one was worth an explanation.  

After a couple of non-fiction books, I’m going to give the real world a rest next week.

Keep your comments coming in folks, and if there’s a book you’d like reviewed, just let me know and I’ll add it to the (ever growing) list!