nwhyte's reviews
4413 reviews

Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1191535.html[return][return]I have previously read both War And Peace and Anna Karenina, and I think the first thing to say is that Resurrection is an easier read - shorter, for a start, and with fewer characters who also appear to have fewer variations in their names. The thirty-something Prince Nekhlyudov, who is Tolstoy here as Levin is in Anna Karenina, is serving as juror in a murder trial when he recognises one of the defendants as the girl he seduced ten years before. She is wrongly convicted, and Nekhlyudov's consciousness and conscience are suddenly activated with respect to the horrible injustices of the penal system and of Russian society as a whole. He follows her to Siberia in an attempt to compensate her.[return][return]The social commentary is biting and convincing, and the account of life with convicted criminals and revolutionaries pretty vivid, and likewise his commentary on elite attitudes and behaviour. It's unfortunate that Nekhlyudov, the viewpoint character, is rather a bore. His decision to marry Katusha seems based much more on what will make him feel better about himself, rather than any attempt to discern what her needs may be. (She never seems very keen on the idea, even before she meets Simonsen.) One feels that, rather than try and write a character with a story, Tolstoy has put himself into the book as a commentator on society. I'm sure it caused quite a stir among his fans in the 1890s, but the ideas that prisons might be unpleasant places or the judicial system imperfect are hardly news to today's reader. (Are they?) Nekhlyudov's sudden discovery of these facts seems rather artificial. [return][return]Whatever its flaws, though, it's prettuy digestible and might be a good jumping-off point for readers who haven't otherwise tried Tolstoy.

The Mabinogion by Anonymous

http://nhw.livejournal.com/877227.html[return][return]The collection of Welsh classic legends. The stories are not gems of perfection - internal inconsistencies and unresolved plot elements abound - but I found myself nonetheless carried along by most of them. Oddly enough the one that grabbed me most was Peredur, the story that later became that of Perceval or Parsifal, with his peculiar series of deeply symbolic adventures.[return][return]The Penguin explanatory apparatus was a bit annoying. A page at the start of each story, explaining what happened, and a long introduction (24 pages of a 300 page book) which all combined to present the Mabinogion as an object to study rather than literature to be enjoyed.[return][return]With all that editorial effort, I would also have liked some unpacking of the basic concepts of the Welsh society portrayed. There is a little of this - the translator explains the shifting meanings of arvei meaning first "weapons" but later "armour", and marchawg which shifted from being a mere "horseman" to a full "knight". But there were other concepts which the translator puts directly into English expecting that we will automatically understand what was meant in the original medieval Welsh: "king", "court", "girl", "to sleep with".[return][return]I'm very surprised that there is so little extant Welsh literature of that era; the Irish somehow must have preserved their manuscripts better? Or wrote things down sooner?

The Conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar

http://nhw.livejournal.com/1049815.html[return][return]An interesting first-hand account of seven years of campaigning (essentially the summers of the years from 58 to 52 BC) by the Roman army in what is now France, with excursions to what is now Germany, Belgium and England. The Penguin edition is not bad at all, with decent footnotes drawing attention to where Caesar is nuancing the story to make himself look better (the book was published shortly after his return to Rome, engaged in the struggle which ended with him becoming Dictator in 49 BC). The maps are OK but as usual I wished they were more detailed. There must be scope for a coffee-table book with glossy photographs of landscapes and archaeological finds following his footsteps through France.[return][return]Apart from Caesar himself, the most interesting character is the Gaulish rebel leader Vercingetorix, who led the final revolt in 52 BC and was presumably a visible prisoner in Rome at the time the book first came out. Caesar puts in his mouth several set-piece speeches to his followers and allies, and gives him credit for a plan to kick the Romans out of Gaul which came close to success.[return][return]There are a few other names here that one knows from their later careers. One sub-commander in Caesar's victory over Vercingetorix, who had also commanded an innovative Roman naval campaign on the Atlantic coast a few years earlier, is "young Brutus". Another is Mark Antony, who otherwise only appears in the postscript, written by Caesar's friend Aulus Hirtius after the assassination (when of course Antony's fortunes were rising rapidly).[return][return]The most striking thing about the book is the detailed description of the waging of war in the first century BC: depending as much on psychology and local micro-politics as on military superiority. The Gauls never seem to have resorted to guerilla warfare, preferring to have large armies in the field under one or more warlords. (Perhaps guerrilla warfare requires an egalitarian political ideology?) I was struck also by Caesar's account of the battle of the first landing in Britain in 55 BC, as much as anything because the only other example I can remember of a contested landing of an invasion force on either side of the English Channel is D-Day, almost exactly 2000 years later.[return][return]Anyway, a fairly quick and not too taxing read, helped by the scholarly apparatus.

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

http://nhw.livejournal.com/156774.html[return][return]It's surprisingly approachable, for Great Literature, but very long at almost 1000 pages in the Penguin edition, so I've given myself a break after finishing the first part, as published in 1605 (almost 400 years ago), and will leave the second part, of 1615, for some later time.[return][return]It reminds me of nothing so much as Tristram Shandy, except that it has a far more coherent plot (this is not saying much of course). Don Quixote himself is gloriously delusional, and of course unwittingly plays a satirical role in exposing the workings of society. Interesting too that the distance between his society of 1605 and ours of 2004 seems much less than the distance between 1605 and the medieval world of chivalry which he imagines himself to inhabit. Of course Quixote's medieval world is a creation of fantasy, and his 1605 is rooted very firmly in contemporary reality.[return][return]Apart from the narrative frame of Don Quixote himself and his delusions, there are lots of romantic sub-plots - actually so distinct from one another that you could almost call them novellas - some of which eventually get tied together in a way that is reminiscent of Wodehouse. Added to that, the geopolitical tension of Spain vs the Islamic world of North Africa is eerily reminiscent of another modern genre - the beautiful Zoraida almost seems like an ancestor of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.[return][return]For all that, I'm not utterly convinced that this really is the best novel of all time. I'm sure it deserves honour and celebration as being the first (or among the first) attempts to write a novel per se. But to say that is a bit like Johnson's remark about a woman preaching being like a dog walking on its hind legs, the impressive thing being not that it is done well but that it is done at all. Perhaps if I ever get around to the second half it will make more of an impact on me.[return][return][return][return]http://nhw.livejournal.com/1031434.html[return][return]Well, I finally managed it: the second half of Don Quixote, having read the first part three years ago. It hangs together rather better than the first part - much less episodic, one senses that unlike his characters the author knew which way things were going. There is some nasty business with a Duke and Duchess who set our heroes up for a series of practical jokes; but Sancho Panza acquits himself very well from it all. In the end, Quixote's neighbours get him to just give it a rest, and the world is obviously a poorer place as a result. (Also he then dies, to reinforce the point.)[return][return]One recurrent theme of Volume II is that Quixote and Panza keep on bumping into people who know them not only from Volume I (published ten years before) but also from the seventeenth-century equivalent of fan fiction; in an early chapter, Panza is prevailed upon to explain a couple of continuity glitches from the previous volume, and there's a repeated complaint that the fanfic writers have got the leading characters completely wrong. [return][return]It didn't blow me away, to be honest, in the same way that Proust has been doing; but it is one of those books everyone should try and get through.

Real Fast Food: 350 Recipes Ready To Eat In 30 Minutes by Nigel Slater

http://nhw.livejournal.com/914452.html[return][return]It's been a real inspiration to me this holiday; the concept is a very straightforward one, cooking really tasty meals reasonably quickly. I can't say that it always took me less than half an hour to do the recipes, but the results were worth it. Slater encourages experimenting, and this evening's meal was my substition of stewed leek instead of fennel in his pork and lemon dish. All very yummy.

The Meaning of Tingo and Other Extraordinary Words from Around the World by Adam Jacot de Boinod

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1334256.html[return][return]The author is a researcher for the Stephen Fry quiz show QI, and the book basically reads like an extended set of QI rounds about funny words in foreign languages, all mildly amusing. I spotted one spelling error - the excellent Serbian word inat is given as iant - and there may be others, but I will not be consumed by vengeful spite over it; also I imagine there is room for interpretation of some of the definitions, such as the 10 Albanian ways of describing a moustache, which to be do not seem very different from the ways we describe different moustaches in English.[return][return]Going back to spelling, I was a bit dubious of the example given of a word with five consecutive consonants - cmrlj which is Slovenian for bumble-bee - first off, 'lj' is a single letter in Slovenian and second I think the 'r' is basically functioning as a vowel there. (If you are trying to say it to yourself, remember that 'c' is pronounced 'ts'.) However there is no doubting the authenticity of the Dutch word with eight consecutive consonants, angstschreeuw - linguists may cry out in fear and horror that 'ch' is a single phoneme, but it is spelt with two letters. (Again, if you are trying to say that to yourself, remember that 's' and 'ch' are pronounced distinctly in Dutch, unlike in German.)[return][return]Like the TV programme it is based on, the book is a little too pleased with its own cleverness, but fun all the same.

The Warden by Anthony Trollope

http://nhw.livejournal.com/705634.html[return][return]Actually a rather good book. I was particularly intrigued by trying to work out what Trollope was really trying to say. While we are made to feel very sympathetic to Mr Huntley, the eponymous warden, the fact is that he is getting a substantial amount of money for doing almost nothing; and the argument that the old men of the almshouse would be incapable of spending the money wisely, if it was theirs, seems pretty patronising - is Harding's expenditure of it, on music and soft furnishing, so much more moral? And the ending of the story, where all goes to rack and ruin - well, this is actually the fault of the bishop, for not getting the confused legal situation sorted out, rather than the fault of the zealous Dr Bold for raising the question.[return][return]Having said that, I rather liked some of the very conscious ironies that Trollope puts in the book: Dr Bold, after all, is himself the beneficiary of unearned income, which is what allows him to bring the case in the first place. I relished even more the brief descriptions of British policy on Ireland:[return][return]"Sir Abraham Haphazard was deeply engaged in preparing a bill for the mortification of papists, to be called the "Convent Custody Bill," the purport of which was to enable any Protestant clergyman over fifty years of age to search any nun whom he suspected of being in possession of treasonable papers or Jesuitical symbols... The bill had all its desired effect. Of course it never passed into law; but it so completely divided the ranks of the Irish members, who had bound themselves together to force on the ministry a bill for [Irish economic development, though rather a silly policy]."[return][return]So some at least of this is meant as simple satire. And yet his entire chapter - "Tom Towers, Dr Anticant, and Mr Sentiment" - about the baneful and pernicious influence of the media seems pretty heartfelt (and also helps explain why this author appealed so much to John Major). I will just have to read more and see what I think.

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

http://nhw.livejournal.com/689494.html[return][return]I thought it was rather good. It's the story of a young soldier in the US Civil War, with a very strong psychological perspective on his frame of mind as he goes into his first battle (and indeed runs away from it, but goes back and tries again). As well as the exploration of the central character's inner life, the descriptions of landscape and of the battle scenes are vivid and colourful. My one reservation is that the tight third person point of view is somewhat let down on the few occasions that Fleming actually speaks; his words as reported just don't seem completely consistent with the character whose complex ruminations we have been pursuing. Apart from that, good even-handed stuff. (The author was born in 1870, years after the war ended, but based it on interviews with veterans and the battle is generally supposed to be Chancellorsville.)

Death in Holy Orders by P.D. James

http://nhw.livejournal.com/1042549.html[return][return]This is the first Dalgliesh novel I've read - I have a feeling I did once get through An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, so not quite my first P.D. James. (Interestingly, the two books share the theme of the detective being called in to investigate the opossible suicide of a young man by his distant, rich, estranged father.) I very much enjoyed it, especially in contrast to Little, Big which I was slogging through at the same time. Of course, the whole thing depends rather a lot on hidden coincidences and secrets (the bit about the consecrated wafer seemed particularly unlikely to me), but it is entertaining and I found the resolution at least psychologically consistent with what we knew of the characters.[return][return]The book is set in an obscure High Church Anglican seminary, and there is a certain amount of reflection on the current state of the Church of England - though perhaps it's more that she is doing a conscious (and at one point complete overt) riff on Trollope.

Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World by Niall Ferguson

http://nhw.livejournal.com/160170.html[return][return]Ferguson's critics are not entirely fair. He is brutally honest about the downside of the British Empire - the nineteenth-century famines of Bengal and Ireland; the Amritsar massacre; the cynical parceling up of ancient African states; the South African concentration camps; the massive death rate among African slaves in the Caribbean. But he also argues that the Empire brought to the British a sense of engagement with the world which (he believes, and I think he's right) contemporary American lacks. More controversially, he argues that the countries ruled by the British on the whole ended up better off than they would have been if ruled by other empires or if left to their own devices. He doesn't really produce enough quantitative data on this point to satisfy me, though it's fairly clear that he has a case.[return][return]Some very interesting snippets: that in fact the Boston Tea Party was a reaction by smugglers to the reduction of the tea tax, which made their business much less profitable, and that the American colonists of the time were probably better off on average than the residents of Britain. His statistics on the large numbers of Scots and Irish, in comparison with the numbers of English, who participated in the activities of Empire. His somewhat cynical line on nineteenth-century moral panics over slavery, suttee, and the powers of native judges. All in all a very stimulating read.