F and I will be going.
Monthly Archives: July 2013
June Books 17) Hunter’s Moon, by Paul Finch
He said he was a doctor. And he certainly looked like one, with his dickie-bow, patched tweed jacket and ridiculous, unmanageable hair. But a doctor? Here? And where was here?
I’m sorry to start the day with two petulant reviews, and I promise the next will be more positive. This is the last of the Eleven/Rory/Amy novels, and probably one you can skip; there are lots of quite good elements – some very well realised aliens and cyborgs, and a slap at the easy target of reality television; I think Finch also captures Smith’s Doctor rather well. But the basic scenario, of people being kidnapped to become prey in a grand hunt, is pretty cliched by now, having been done slightly better in The Five Doctors and much better in a Tenth Doctor novel, The Doctor Trap; of course all of these are rooted in The Most Dangerous Game. I did not think that the horror of the situation was adequately reflected in the prose; I also thought the main non-Tardis crew sub-plot, the redemption of a failed London copper’s relationship with his family through his heroism, was handled too superficially. In general this felt like an book with adult themes being written for younger readers, and there was a failure to connect style with substance.
There were other minor implausibilities which pushed my own buttons, such as an Albanian character (who disappears as soon as he is mentioned) called Miklos; just possible if he was named after a Hungarian friend or relative, but Mëhill is the usual Albanian translation of Michael, and even that is not very common.
It is a rare lapse in quality of the New Series Adventures, which after a dodgy start in the Eleventh Doctor era became generally much better than this. It was released at the time of broadcast of The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon, at the same time as ‘s much better The Way Through the Woods and James Goss’s superb Dead of Winter), both of which I strongly recommend instead.
June Books 16) Afspraak in Nieuwpoort, by Ivan Petrus Adriaenssens
I had very high hopes for this graphic novel about the first world war; it won both the 2012 Prix Saint-Michel for best Dutch-language comic (in Belgium), and the 2011 Stripschapsjaarprijs (for the Netherlands and Flanders) in the Dutch-language literary category (that’s literary as opposed to action and yoof which are also Stripschapsjaarprijs categories). It has been translated into English as The Nieuport Gathering (which isn’t a great translation – “afspraak” is closer to “appointment” in meaning, and “appointment” is closer to what actually happens in the book), with the author’s name shortened to Ivan Petrus.
The story is a gritty documentary-style recreation of the war zone around Nieuwpoort on the Belgian coast, just after the sluice gates on the Yser were opened to halt the German advance in 1914. Three soldiers, one English, one Belgian and one French, meet by the blasted defences on 1 November and agree to meet up there every ten years into the future. Another English soldier later hears the story from his fellow-countryman and decides that he too will try to keep the appointment. The framing narrative is set sixty years later in 1974, as the fourth soldier, his grand-daughter and her Belgian boyfriend track down what happened to the other three. The historical detail is meticulous – the three main characters were all in fact real people, Raoul Snoeck of the Belgian publishing family, the poet T.E. Hulme, and a moderately famous French marine commando, Jean-Marie Le Blic; and the landscapes both of devastating wartime and of more peaceful years afterwards are beautifully detailed, the war scenes normally in a muddy monochrome, the modern points a bit more tinted.
But I am afraid I was rather disappointed. I find it significant that the publicity around the book tends to emphasise the fact that it is based on historical facts rather than that it might be a good story in itself. While the landscapes are great, the people often rather less so; the frame I’m using above shows De Blic (of whom no actual photograph survives) leading a raid, and I find the humans in it poorly drawn and unrealistically posed; surely, even in 1914, commandos would creep rather than charge into such a mission? It is as if the concept of taking cover had never been invented! I also felt that the stories told, while of course moving tales of gallantry and tragic waste of life, didn’t actually take us much further than the war stories of The Victor comic of my childhood. There is little reflection on why these four soldiers ended up in the war, and none at all about the Germans. I actually found the postscript, detailing Adriaenssens’ research into the period, more engaging than the rest of the book.
Afspraak in Nieuwpoort isn’t actually bad, but with the coming centenary, we’ll be seeing a lot more of this kind of thing and I hope some of it is better.
Links I found interesting for 05-07-2013
- Sci-Fi Author Iain M. Banks Gets Asteroid Named after Him
#somethinginmyeye
Wednesday reading (a little late)
Current:
Harvest of Time [Doctor Who] by Alastair Reynolds (halfway through)
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol (two thirds through)
Jagged Orbit, by John Brunner
Last books finished
The Complete Stories of Zora Neale Hurston (finished on the way home last night; if I had done this post on schedule, it would have been in current reading)
Next books
A Room of One’s Own, by Virginia Woolf
Desert, by J. M. G. Le Clézio
Confessions of Zeno, by Itali Svevo
The Also People, by Ben Aaronovitch
Books acquired in last week:
None!
LT Unread books tally: 451 – up from last week, despite no new books, because “Unread” tags were not being tallied with “unread”.
Captions please, especially on the last frame (ages added for info)
Women of colour writing for Doctor Who
Will Malorie Blackman be the first?
I haven’t gone through this list in detail – compiling it was hard enough work – but I suspect she may be.
(I can think of two male writers of colour who have written televised episodes of Who and its spinoffs – Glen McCoy and Noel Clarke. There may well be others.)
The King’s Speech
(Looking at Egypt to see if we can make it two heads of state in one day…)
From Norman Davies’ History of Europe:
The EU explained
There are a few errors here – notably, Sweden doesn’t have an opt-out from the euro, it’s simply not got around to joining – but the general point is clear.
Test your language skills
In English, French, German and Spanish, at http://www.languagelevel.com/ – I got C2 in English (phew!), C1 for French and German, and didn’t get past the first question in Spanish…
Links I found interesting for 02-07-2013
- Welcome Croatia
EU Commissioners (with one notable exception) welcome Croatia to the EU in their own languages.
Wednesday reading
Current:
Kraken, by China Mieville
Standing in Another Man's Grave, by Ian Rankin
The Monsters and the Critics, by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie
Last books finished
Spend Game, by Jonathan Gash
Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins
Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie
The Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens
Misschien, by Kristof Spaey and Marc Legendre
Nooit, by Kristof Spaey and Marc Legendre
Ooit, by Kristof Spaey and Marc Legendre
Next books
The History of the Hobbit, vol 1: Mr Baggins, by John D. Rateliff
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, by Jeanette Winterson
Shakespeare’s Planet by Clifford D. Simak
[Doctor Who] The Wages of Sin, by David A. McIntee
Books acquired in last week:
Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie
LT unread books tally: 436.
Brussels welcomes Croatia
Berlaymont display:
And the Portuguese restaurant across the road is offering punjene paprike (Croatian stuffed peppers):
June Books
I am behind with blogging, due to a bad back for the last week or so which meant reading was much easier than writing.
[one unlisted]
The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature, ed. Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn
The Irish Constitutional Revolution of the Sixteenth Century, by Brendan Bradshaw
PR Urban Elections in Ulster 1920, by Alec Wilson
Miradal: Erfgoed in Heverleebos en Meerdaalwoud, by Hans Baeté, Marc De Bie, Martin Hermy, Paul Van den Bremt and Sara Adriaenssens
TARDIS Eruditorum – An Unofficial Critical History of Doctor Who Volume 3: Jon Pertwee, by Philip Sandifer
Fiction (non-sf) 5 (YTD 14)
The Garden of Evening Mists, by Tan Twan Eng
The Gondola Scam, by Jonathan Gash
Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson
Danny the Champion of the World, by Roald Dahl
The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco
SF (non-Who) 3 (YTD 36)
Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins
Blackbirds, by Chuck Wendig
Starship Fall, by Eric Brown
Doctor Who 5 (YTD 32)
Rags, by Mick Lewis
Head Games, by Steve Lyons
EarthWorld, by Jacqueline Rayner
Hunter's Moon, by Paul Finch
Something Borrowed, by Richelle Mead
Comics 3 (YTD 16)
Clockworks (Locke & Key Vol 4), by Joe Hill
Saga, vol. 1, by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples
Afspraak in Nieuwpoort, by Ivan Adriaenssens
~5,700 pages (YTD 30,500)
7/22 (YTD 30/117) by women (Mendlesohn, Sara Adriaenssens, Robinson, Collins, Rayner, Mead, Staples)
2/22 (YTD 4/117) by PoC (Eng, Staples [I think])
Rereads: The Name of the Rose – 1 (YTD 6); I don't think I had read all of Danny the Champion of the World before.
Acquired 2011 or before: 8 (YTD 40) – Danny the Champion of the World, EarthWorld, Head Games, The Name of the Rose, The Irish Constitutional Revolution of the Sixteenth Century, Housekeeping, Rags, one other
Acquired 2012: 2 (YTD 17) – Starship Fall
Acquired 2013: 12 (YTD 60) – Catching Fire, The Garden of Evening Mists, Miradal erfgoed in Heverleebos en Meerdaalwoud, Afspraak in Nieuwpoort, Hunter's Moon, Clockworks, Saga V 1, Blackbirds, The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature, PR Urban Elections in Ulster 1920, TARDIS Eruditorum 3, Something Borrowed
Reading now:
Dead Souls, by Nikolai Gogol
The Jagged Orbit, by John Brunner
The Complete Stories of Zora Neale Hurston
Coming Next (perhaps):
A Room of One's Own, by Virginia Woolf
Desert, by J. M. G. Le Clezio
Confessions of Zeno, by Italo Svevo
The Last Empress, by Anchee Min
The Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens
Fantastic Voyage, by Isaac Asimov
Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins
Katherine Swynford, by Jeannette Lucraft
Kraken, by China Mieville
The Flood, by Ian Rankin
The Monsters and the Critics, by J R R Tolkien
The History of the Hobbit v. 1: Mr Baggins, by John D. Rateliff
Shakespeare's Planet, by Clifford D. Simak
Rebus's Scotland: A Personal Journey, by Ian Rankin
The Tunnel at the End of the Light, by Stefan Petrucha
The Adventures Of Luther Arkwright, by Bryan Talbot
The Theology of the Gospel of Mark, by W. R. Telford
The Subtle Knife, by Philip Pullman
The Moment of Eclipse, by Brian Aldiss
Harvest of Time, by Alastair Reynolds
The Also People, by Ben Aaronovitch
Vanishing Point, by Stephen Cole
Plague of the Cybermen, by Justin Richards