Whiner In The Rye

From the beginning of this book I think in my mind it was doomed. The tale of Holden Claulfied is one of extreme teenage angst. Holden having found himself being kicked out of another expensive boys college for once again failing all subjects but English leaves to spend a couple of days in New York instead of going straight to his parents. During this mini adventure of self-recovery we learn vaguely of Holden’s past, the people he knows and of his seeming mental instability. Starting with his last day at Pency we meet a couple of his ex- fellow students and we slowly begin to see his disgust and lack of appreciation for practically anyone. As he narrates to us the next few days culminating in his return to his parents bosom Holden meets a number of people new and old and casts cynical judgement over all save two nuns. He has a fair deal of money available to him and seems to be from a high class. He does several things all of little consequence and doesn’t finish all his back story telling us how he doesn’t want to talk about it.

My problems with this book began stacking up from page one, I have to admit I am not a big fan of the style of narration, on top of this although I can appreciate in some areas the poor writing is more a reflection of the language of the time in the majority of places the writing is simple poor. More importantly the story is boring and due to the way it is written it is also at time disjointed skipping bits Holden decides he doesn’t actually want to tell us. One fine example of this is at the end where Holden’s stay at hospital and his interaction with the staff and his psychoanalyst is simply cut out, just because. On top of these major things where numerous other problems I had, mainly with the plot. The biggest problem however was the main character, a self-obsessed teen with virtually no care for anyone else and a boxful of poor excuses when it comes to himself. He comes across as stuck up and nauseating and I found it impossible to care for him at all even when he is getting beaten up by a pimp. The constant criticism of others and the world and the annoying pessimism grates, many say that this book is a great reflection of adolescence however I find it a rather extreme, unfair and damning reflection. One issue that comes across and is immensely ironic is despite Holden’s accusations of everyone but him being a phony his character and the book seems to be just that; phoney.

In conclusion this appears to be a man writing about adolescence long forgotten, the writing style is poor and the characters are unlikable. Though I don’t like to be overdramatic I think this book is the worst book I have ever read, if you want to know the truth.

Titus Finished

Praise be to Gormenghast for i have finally finished the Titus series by Mervyn Peak. It is strangly difficult for me now to look back and evaluate those three monoliths. It is suffice I beleive to give only a small review despite the time that they have taken from me. The story follows to being with life within the castle city of Gormenghast, home to the newly born Titus Groan, seventy seventh Earl. From then on it follows his life, the life of the castle, and the lives of those with whom he meets and interacts. The characters and well defined and have numerous dimensions, their consturction is antastic and some of the secondary characters really stand out as amazingly well developed. The settings are fantastically described and built in a way that forces manifestation in the readers mind to minute detail. The stroy in itself is long and full of twists and turns, it perfectly embodies the concepts of a boy growing into a man and offers a number of satirical perspectives of society and life in general. In many ways these are fantastic books, so why am I so hapy to be finished with them? The truth is that they are too much. This my sound silly but at times the description was too much, sometimes the focus on other characters where unnecessary, sometimes the story took very odd turns that made little to no sense, sometimes the satire wasn't spot on or just not amusing.

This series could be done in one book, In fact the third book barely seems to be connected with the first two and could be read seperately as a concept of insanity and would be an amazing stand alone book. For all it's good points this series gets lost in itself and a mire of words, metaphors and hyperbole.

Just A Little Bit Racist

King Solomon's Mines is a work by H. Rider Haggard in which an old elephant hunter leads an expedition in search of a mans brother, and on this quest they discover the great kings diamond mines. The story is a fairly straight forward adventure story, there is an epic journey, lessons of morality, a finale battle and a little twist. The story to a modern audience is nothing necessarily fantastic but in it's day it was the first to look at adventure in exotic africa, bringing to the common person and glimpse of a strange foriegn land full of dangerous natives. Allan Quartermain is the narrator, main character, man of great wisdom, a keen hunter and a self confessed coward. He is met by two men who task him with being their guide as they seach for George Curtis, Sir Henry Curtis' lost borther. They cross a searing desert and scale the snowy peaks of the mountains called Sheba's Breasts. They find the body of a legendary adventure and face moments where when moments near to death they are saved by seeming miracles and occasionally the wisdom of Quartermain or the knowledge of the natives in their employ. Upon reaching the green and fertile land beyond the mountian, without a sing of the lost brother they are spurned on by hope of finding him, and the riches of diamonds. But first they must dabble in the polotics of the nation they discovered where the strange white wizards from the stars are viewed with awe and fear.

Reading this book it was evident to see how the man twists, turns, and near misses make H. Rider Haggard a fantastic adventure rider with many points driving you forward to read on just to be sure the well structured characters survive. At times the story has one to many coincidences to be taken entirely seriously but part of it's unbelievable nature is part of its charm. The language was at time difficult for me being in an old fashioned formale style, there was also an issue in that a lot of the ideas where "of that time". What I mean by this is that there is open racism, condoning of animal hunting on large, large scales and themes not present in todays society. But still this book had me reading on, it had a quality many books lack in it's pure sense of adventure and discovery.

Overall this is a well written book and a fantastic read. Some of the characters could have had further developement, and some events seemed unnecessary. But a good old book many modern story tellers could learn from.

I Dreamed Of Them

Blade Runner is a title that I imagine many in the western world know whether they have seen Ridley Scott's repeatedly released with extras masterpeice. However the number of people who would recognise the title Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is undoubtedly smaller, which is in my mind a great disappointment. At first when I began reading it was difficult to not make comparisons between the two works however I soon stopped as I found that they were undoubtedly two DIFFERENT peices of work. I will at no point say one is better than the other, nor will I deny that the movie is made from the book but they are deffinitely different beasts.

The book looks at a post appocalyptic world where the dust from the fall out has killed most animals and made the majority humans infertile, deformed, and mentally retarded (though I hate having to I would like to stress I use this term in it's full and literal sense, characters find their mental abilities become retarded due to exposure) and the only chance is to escape to the moon. Within this world people are encouraged to own animals though they are of great cost, a real animal is a status symbol, though if out of your price range you can obtain an electric one. In this world as well, or more importantly off this world on mars, there are also electric humans of a sort; androids. Andys as they are known are not known to the general public and are not permited on earth, highly intelligent though decidedly inhuman with their lack of empathy they are slaves on the colonies of mars and other planets. But they have sentience and on occasion rebel, and when they rebel and come to what's left of San Fransisco Rick Deckard is not usually the man they call. But the latest Nexus-6 units have outwitted and near fataly injured his supperior so it falls on him to "retire" the remaining six of one violently rebellious group. Despite the best efforts of the Rosen organization to stop his investigation Rick powers on outsmarting them and the first Nexus-6 chasing the $1000 bounty on their heads and hoping he might be able at the end of it all to replace his electric sheep. Outside of this there is a world where moods can be inflicted by machines, where empathy boxes connect you with Mercer, the conept of empathy that guides the unity of mankind, and through out the book Buster Friendly and hif Friendly Friends build up to a big announcement. The story goes beyond Rick's gruff monologue on his investigation and we are introduced to some of the androids as well as a "chicken head" a special as they are known. The story is therefore given three dimensions and we follow many moral struggles as the characters go through a rough 24 hours. There are tense moments and action right next to philosophical musings and science fiction marvels.

This book is amazing, it reads well and easily switching between characters fluidly and giving a real indepth view of a world far disconnected from ours. There are twists and turns, and the sory is full of intigue, at moments you are left just as confused as that characters and at others we are left to lament for the ignorances. The story is not unbeleivable and with few mistakes or plot holes, questions are brought up about humanity, the roles we lead, the power of corporations and the rights of people dependant on status. Philip K. Dick shows an amazing talent at creating a world with out getting dragged into over written description. More over and most importantly we are given characters who have a real quality to them, with whom we can relate, and who we end up careing for even if some of them we only know briefly. The end is in a way a little disappointing as after a number of revelations we a left to guess as Rick goes to bed. Overall I find it hard to find fault but at times a little more description would have been nice, and there are moments where double bluffs and questions as to who is human and who is an Andy becomes confusing. These are little problems though in a world of wonder.