118/1001 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest' by Ken Kesey- or 'American Rebellion Books, You're Doing It Right!'

Written during my brief hiatus from 'The House of Book'. I wrote most of this as a draft post, but for some reason never finished it. Well a jolly Sunday afternoon has been spent drinking a mug of tea, stroking the Tabby on my lap, and finishing this baby off. Though I finished this book a couple of months ago, I've really enjoyed going back to it, I guess this is one of the bonuses of a blog!

So, in an attempt to actually increase my 'read' number, which has been languishing at 117 for months now (thanks, Victor Hugo) I picked up 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest', a fairly thin (250 pages), well established classic that I already happened to own. A win win right? My only real hesitation was its standing as a American 20th century classic, which anyone who has read my post about 'On The Road' will realize  is not really the sort of book I get along with.

I principally loath the whole 'freedom', 'America is the home of the rebel', 'stick it to the man-ness' of them. I dunno what it is about America and their obsession with their foundation. We British have firmly go over it, and lets face it, when it comes to the final result we were the more injured party! I see no indication that Americans are any more free than anyone else in the western world, in fact the irony of these books seems to be that they feature Americans rebelling against, well, established America! These rebels either come off as whiney bitches (I'm looking at you Holden Caulfield) or pathetic wasters (that would be you Dean Moriarty). These guys really are rebels without causes, 'oh no I live in a prosperous western country where my liberty is not particularly infringed, where education is free (but we have no interest in it) and I have the opportunity to be whatever I want to be'. Poor baba.

Which is exactly why I actually quite liked 'One Flew Over The Cukoo's Nest'. Randle McMurphy, redheaded rebel as he is, has a damn good reason to rebel. Nurse Ratched (great, Dickens type name) is really, really fucking vile. You love to hate her, and you love McMurphy BECAUSE he stands up to all her crap and makes everyone else stand up too.  The guys in the hospital are treated in a pretty shitty way, and as the book goes on this escalates further and further. You love to hate this establishment because it is grossly unfair, and McMurphy is awesome at sticking it to the man.

Boo! Hiss!

Things gradually escalate through the course of the book as McMurphy continues to challange Nurse Ratched's authority and she continually punishes the inmates further and further, and you are dying, dying for a great 'stick it to the man' happy ending. AND IT DOESN'T HAPPEN. The ending (spoiler alert) is totally brutal and ugly and isn't particularly satisfying. But that's awesome because that is life, you cannot always break the system. McMurphy ends up dead, after one of the inmates takes his own life in a most horrific manner, and the nurse, slightly battered, retains her post. There is no grand victory, only a subtle change among the remaining inmates, the glorious revolution McMurphy aims for does not happen, but he at least gets the other guys thinking.

Realistically, most of the people who really make a difference in this world, the Martin Luther Kings' and Gandhi's, don't life to see the fulfillment of the ideas they promote. Their remarkable lives cause ripples with long lasting implications, but they rarely get to live to see the change the promote. McMurphy, though we don't really see it, profoundly changes all the mens lives even though his campaign fails. It's deep. It's real. It kicks all those daft American rebels butts!  

Recent Book Acquisitions of Interest

Well recent is a bit of a stretch I guess, some of these go back to Christmas!

My first book worthy of showing came from my mother. I should explain that since January 1st me and my fella have been trying to lose weight. I know what a cliche right? Losing weight in the new year, how original! But it needed to be done as we are both a little too fond of our food. So far I've lost a stone and a half (21 pounds in American money) and I aim to lose at least that again, maybe, possibly, we'll see.

Anywho she saw this in a bookshop in Colne and thought I needed to have it, and it turned out she was right.  The cover is made out of that old fashioned brown paper than rips and tears so easily compared to modern glossy book jackets. It's wonderful to see this in such great condition.

The blurb inside the dust jacket tells me the book is about a guy going to a fat farm in order to lose weight. The illustrations are adorable, lots of terrifying looking nurses and grumpy looking fat guys eating soup.

This one I include not so much because it's pretty,but because I think it's awesome it exists! This is the area where I live, and I wasn't aware of much in the way of literary connections round about, except for Dickens visiting once, and the Bronte girls going to some hideous, torturous school up the road.

Now I know there really aren't many literary connections with the area, this is a very thin book, but at least what little literary connections there are I can now read about and bore other people with. Yay!

Another one courtesy of my mother, bought presumably because I'm a teacher and I occasionally have to wear one of these silly gowns. True story. What is most remarkable about this one though is that she found it in some remote part of Spain while walking the way of St. James. How on earth did it get there?

 This beaut was found at one of my local charity shops. I have a major weakness for Folio Society publications, and I'll buy them even if they aren't on a topic I'm particularly fond of, or indeed ones I've never heard of like this one. I have an entire bookcase of Folio Society books, they are a joy to read and I make no excuses for my extensive collection. Note the slipcase underneath. Don't ya just love a slipcase?

And don't ya love these illustrations? Come on, you just have to be heartless to throw out a book like this, shame on you whoever donated this baby.

Finally I have the two books bought for me by my fella for Christmas. He is a cruel and evil man, and even though he knows I'm part way through collecting half a dozen new series of pretty books he buys me two more for a new series of pretty books to ensure that I have to start collecting them. As I say cruel and evil.

So here they are, beautiful, leatherbound Barnes and Noble classics. GRRR, they are just too damn beautiful not to collect.

Look at these illustrations? Being beautiful and all. How dare they!

118/1001 'I FINISHED LES MISERABLES' or 'MY GOD READING THAT BOOK SEEMS TO HAVE PREVENTED ME FROM POSTING IN MONTHS!'!!

Firstly I guess I should apologise for not posting on here in a good while. I could say I've had a lot on recently, and I have in truth. I could say that some pretty big things have been going down in my life over the past few months, and that would be a fact. But really I am a very naughty book blogger who is slapping her own wrist very fiercely right now and promises to be better in the future.  

Ladies and Gentlemen, that was my face upon finally finishing that epic book of epicness (its official title on this blog it seems). I don't think I've felt such complete and utter satisfaction at finishing a book as I did this one. Not ever, and I've read some long books in my time let me tell you!

Now don't get me wrong, I didn't dislike Les Mis. Actually I loved the story, the story was awesome, the story was heartbreaking and heartwarming and made me want to throw the book across the room and scream but also hug it close and keep it under my pillow in the space of a couple of lines. It was an emotional roller coaster. It was amazeballs. It had twists and turns coming from nowhere that even a bitter, twisted old plot predictor such as myself didn't see coming. I both wanted to snog Jean Valjean (though that might have been the Hugh Jackman element showing through) and take him in my arms and tell him everything was going to be OK. Cosette was kinda loveable but also kinda bratish and annoying in a way that teenage girls ACTUALLY ARE (trust me, I work with the little madams all day long). The same goes for Marius, both naively idealistic and utterly self important as most young men are. The innkeeper and his family are vile, just vile, in that way that you kinda enjoy, like hating Umbridge in the Harry Potter books. You hate her so much, even more than Voldemort, because of her petty, petty, smug ways, and that is how much you hate Thenardier!

HOWEVER and it's a big HOWEVER, a big fat giant HOWEVER (hence the capitals, hell I'd increase the font size if I could), Victor Hugo cannot stop ruining what is a perfectly good story with his long, boring-ass ramblings about nothing you want to know about! Seriously this guy cannot shut up about really random things that detract totally from the story and which aren't even that interesting in the first place! They vary from 'The Battle of Waterloo', in more detail than most books on the subject, 'The History of some Weird Convent', which despite an interest in religious stuff I almost nodded off during and my personal favorite 'A Complete and Unabridged History of the Parisian Sewer System', all you ever needed to know about where French poo ends up. These 'mini books' appear right in the middle of areas of the story which are actually quite interesting, so to be honest even if they were about anything you cared about, you end up reading them at double quick speed because you just want to get back to the story! But they are never about anything you care about. Never. 

 So why include all of this rubbish? Well I have a theory about old Victor. I can only assume that Monsieur Hugo was terribly fond of his research, as all good authors are, right? Trouble is I think he resented having to spend ages reading up on the Battle of Waterloo say, when it actually only briefly featured in his story. He had to be thorough, he had to do the reading, but all that research just for one measly scene. Nar. Not for Victor. So he has to share it all with the reader, whether they like it or not. Hence why we have a book that is twice as long as it needs to be and puts most people off because of its size. Derp! No wonder there are so many abridged versions out there, and if you want my advice you will read one of them if you ever attempt this story. I'm not normally one for promoting abridged versions of books, I'm a literary purist don't ya know, but I'm more than willing to make an exception here. More than. 

     "Oh alright you got me"

The Film

Yeah I saw it, yeah I liked it, yeah I still think you need to read the book. Do I need to say much more? Before this film I'd never even seen a version of the musical, my entire back history with the whole Les Mis thang came from the book and the book only. Talking to people who LOVE the musical, and many of them came crawling out of the woodwork when the film was showing, I was so disappointed to learn very few of them had read the book. The talked to me as if I didn't really know the story like they did, which was incredibly frustrating and the opposite was true. Thenardier is not a loveable rogue out to make a quick buck, he's a murdering, sadistic psychopath who wants Jean Valjean dead. Eponine is not a tragic heroine, the victim of unrequited love, she is a thieving, teenaged, prostitute with a crush. Worst of all Marius is not a political hero, forever scared by surviving a protest his comrades did not, he only enters the whole barricade thing part way through, only follows that political group to spite his rich but bigoted grandfather and he renounces the whole thing afterwards and regrets his involvement! Saying you've watched the film or the stage production and that you 'know' Victor Hugo is like saying you've watched '10 Things I Hate About You' or 'She's the Man' and that you 'know' Shakespeare. Beyond retarded. 

I'll be posting up a whole load of reviews in the next few days to make up for what I missed over the last couple of months. Watch this space! 

'Mistress of the Art of Death' by Ariana Frankin, or 'I need to speak to someone because I'm a bit too into child rape'

I'M ACTUALLY HALFWAY THROUGH LES MISERABLES!

Of course I'm still way off my target of finishing the darn thing before the film comes out or, you know, before the next ice age, but it feels like a massive achievement.
So I took a break from the epic french novel to indulge in one of my reading guilty pleasures, namely medieval mystery novels. In a previous incarnation I was a medieval history student, and occasionally I like to remember those care free days with an actual real scholarly book, other times I just read a novel set in that period for a quick medieval fix. Lee Child with his rubbish book of rubbishness and Victor Hugo with his long book of much longness were kinda killing my love of reading a little, so I decided to have a go at medieval mystery that I've fancied reading for ages, and that has been gathering dust on my shelf for a few years now. Also it's set in Cambridge, which I recently visited for the first time, so it seemed an apt choice.

'Mistress of the Art of Death', as the name suggests, has a female protagonist, and this is the first murder mystery I've tackled with one. My medieval regulars are normally male, with Brother Cadfael (the late Ellis Peters hero) and Captain Own Archer (Cadace Robb's rather dashing male lead) serving as my regular medieval fixes. The historian in me sees the sense in male protagonists in this time period, and I was wary of a female lead, not least a female medical lead. Still every review I have read of this book told me it was historically accurate, so I shushed my internal historian and decided to give Dr. Adelia Aguilar a go.

The story focuses on a party of foreigners led by the feisty (just an aside why are female protagonists always feisty? is it just me?) Dr. Aguilar who arrive in Cambridge to seek the murderer of a child and find some further missing children. To be fair to her the doctor is pretending not to be a doctor, and has traveled from a medical school in Italy, which historians do believe educated women. They soon uncover the bodies of further children, and must find the murderer quickly as the townsfolk of Cambridge are pretty keen on blaming the Jews and slaughtering them in revenge. In true heroine fashion Adelia dramatically finds the killer, escapes his fearsome clutches, falls in love along the way and is commended by the king and encouraged to stay in England to find more killers to ensure further books in the series. Pretty standard stuff really.

But what is far from standard in this book is the completely vile, disgusting, stomach turning child murders. Now don't get me wrong, there ain't a child murder that is pleasant, but this book reaches new heights of grossness. Brother Cadfael's murder investigations normally were only as graphic as a nun drinking poison, or an infected dagger wound, and that is kinda what I want. I have no stomach for vile murders, if I wanted that I would read some of the more modern serial killer novels, or, you know, a Jack Reacher book. So reading about children having their eyelids cut off and being raped to death was not exactly what I either wanted or expected. Nor was I prepared for a graphic confrontation with a naked, skull masked murder in a remote clay mine with a heroine who must shout the most vile insults she can think of at the raping bastard in order to make him loose his erection and prevent him getting it on with an 8 year old boy. Not good. Not nice. Not right.


In fact the book really made me think the author wanted to write something more gritty and modern, but felt that she should set it in the past for some reason. The book is set during the reign of Henry II, one of my favorite kings, and one of Ariana Frankin's too apparently, as she wrote a quite academic book about his legal system (under her real name Diana Norman). Perhaps this is why she wanted to write a historical book, which features Henry himself, even with a more modern zeal for gore! Overall I would probably read the next book in the series, which is also sat on my shelf, to test how far this gore goes. Sadly there will only be the few book in this series that are already published, as the author has recently pasted away.      

Some Books from Morecambe Market

So I haven't bought many books recently, mainly because my shelves be all kinds of full, but this weekend I couldn't resist purchasing these three beauties. I got them from a house clearance stall at my local market, along with some awesome elephant book ends.

This is 'Animated Nature vol. 1' by Oliver Goldsmith. It's quarter bound in leather, but I admit it has been through the wars somewhat. However its pretty leather bounding is not what I bought it for.

 The plates in this book are fascination, and quite a few of them, like the frontispiece here, are in colour. That's the handsome author on the other page, and the date is 1870.

Books like this you normally find with the plates removed, because they sell for far more than the book ever would if you frame them. Who wouldn't want this on their wall, especially with such a fantastic illustration of a whale. That's right folks that thing at the bottom is a whale!

Also these illustrations of 'man' are quite fun, there are several pages of them, showing us what all the different races look like. If I really wanted to I guess I could cut these plates out and sell them, but I couldn't commit such a heinous crime!

These babies are a very different story. As a kid my Mum used to read a poem called 'The Lion and Albert' to me. She herself listened to her grandfather recite it every Christmas, and he had heard Stanley Holloway read them on the radio. It's a tale of a family who visit Blackpool zoo, but unfortunately their son Albert is eaten by a Lion. The whole thing is told in a Lancashire accent and is really funny. So when I saw the books of these poems, published in 1940, I just had to have them!

 The illustrations are gorgeous, all in black, white, red and green. I've never heard of any of the poems except 'The Lion and Albert', so I had a great laugh reading through them.

And what did I pay for them? £1 each! I love that it is possible to find such old books so cheaply in this country. Sure these Albert books are in a pretty poor state, but who cares? I shall keep them forever and entertain my kids by reading them the poem just like my Mum did, only now they will have the pleasure of seeing the illustrations too!

Lancaster Book Group- 'The Killing Floor' by Lee Child, or 'Dick-lit; A Beginners Guide To Writing Predictable Macho Novels That Will Make You A Fortune'

So the Les Miserables EPIC READ OF MUCH EPICNESS continues, and I'm still not even half way through, and even though I'm mostly enjoying it I do wonder if I'll still be reading it when I'm 50!

However I was allowed a brief interlude between pages of Much French Misery to read November's offering from my book group. As I mentioned in a previous post I've actually been 'let off' the last two book group reads because I'd already read them, allowing me time to focus on Les Mis (weep!). This month however I'm up again with the first of Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels 'The Killing Floor'. I feel it goes without saying that this is not the sort of thing I would choose to read normally, but hey-ho the purpose of book groups is to make you read something you haven't already right? Right?

This is the motto which fuelled the rest of this post

So I tried to be open minded, I honestly did. I thought 'hey this is a best-selling book, a best-selling book about to be made into a Hollywood blockbuster, there must be something redeeming about it?'. I know plenty of people who have loved these books, sure all those people have been men over 40 but that doesn't mean they won't interest me, hell plenty of 20-something women such as myself enjoy Sophie Kinsella and God knows I hate her*, so maybe I'll have similar tastes to middle age men. You never know right? Right?

So, yeah, it sucked. It sucked big time. It was really bad. Like hella bad. Like a waste of paper bad. Like I can't believe it got published bad. Like it makes me want to become a writer because God knows I can write better than that bad. Bad. 

The basic story goes that hard man Jack Reacher, ex-military golden boy and ultimate lone wolf, wanders into a small town in Georgia and is promptly given the sort of warm welcome that makes Rambo look like.... well, actually it's just a total Rambo rip off so I guess a comparison is a waste of time here, it's just the initial plot of Rambo. Anyway he goes to prison for a while for a crime he didn't commit, gets out after killing a few folk inside, and attempts to chase down the people responsible for his initial incarceration and horrifically murder them. All with the help of everyone in the town who's black (like 3 people, but Lee Child is keen to tell you that the bad guys are not only murdering scum, BUT THE BASTARDS BE RACIST TOO) and the one female character, who also happens to be drop dead gorgeous and has the uncanny ability to drop her knickers every time Jacky boy enters the room. Oh and she's a cop, but she's totally down with the protagonist killing bad guys left right and centre because, you know, he gives her the good lovings.  

Jack spends the majority of the book either murdering people in horrific and grizzly ways (and I'm not kidding here, one guy has his eyeball popped out with a thumb, another has his neck hacked away until his head is only attached to his body through his spinal cord), sleeping with the only woman in town or SHRUGGING. Seriously this guy must be suffering from a repetitive strain injury in his shoulders because of the sheer number of times he has lifted them towards his ears. Every response he gives throughout the entire novel, whether it is to a police chief holding him at gun point or a bad guy threatening to chop his balls off, is pre-empted by a shrug. I know he's cool and everything, but who in their right mind shrugs in that situation? 

Oh and the plot twists, the clever plot twists, the plot twists are so predictable it's painful. Early on in the book Jack learns that the conspiracy he's trying to crack has 10 members, all of whom must be chased down if he is to stop their diabolical scheme. Of course we're supposed to guess which members of the town are one of the 10, and every time one of them reveals themselves, usually laughing manically and pointing a gun at Jack's head Bond villain style, we are supposed to exclaim 'oh lordy I didn't see that coming'. You can tell Lee Child is proud of these moments, he writes them with relish, leaving the revelations till last thing in a chapter to keep you hooked. But it's so easy to guess who is in the 10 it's all very flat. Every single one of the bad guys can be easily identified by the sheer fact that they are rich (the conspiracy involves counterfeiting)  and racist. Now I'm not saying racists are nice people, generally they're not, but I'm guessing in a small town in the state of Georgia it wouldn't exactly make you stand out, nor would it mean you were a member of an international counterfeiting ring! However this is not the worst of the failed plot twists, oh no, there is a quite outrageous and startling one that really beggars belief. The book begins with a guy being murdered, a guy that is shot in the face and cannot be identified. Now I don't know who decided to put the slightly lame 'Jack Reacher's CV' in the front of the book, I'm guessing some smart arse publisher who thought it would be cool. This 'CV', which you are surely expected to read before you start the novel given where it is placed in it, clearly tells you the date of Jack's brothers death, something obviously essential to put on any CV (!!!). Therefore it doesn't take a genius to notice that JACK'S BROTHER DIED THE SAME DAY AS THIS MYSTERIOUS MAN! And if that wasn't obvious enough too anyone with a brain in their scull then the first half of the book is peppered with comments like 'the man reminded me of you Jack', 'the man was about your height and build Jack', 'have you heard from your brother recently Jack?' etc. Then finally when the identity of the dead man is revealed WE'RE SUPPOSED TO BE SURPRISED! Seriously, seriously, seriously retarded writing, and editing, and publishing. 

But on a final note it not just the writer and the editor and the publisher who are retarded, oh no the casting director on the new film is going to have to take that title too. See throughout the novel it is mentioned almost as many times as Jack shrugs that Jack is exactly 6 foot 5. It's in the little CV printed at the beginning, it's pointed out by various people, and every time Jack is presented with something that might be too short for him, like trousers or beds, he has to mention that he is 6 foot 5 and therefore finds these things tricky DON'T YOU KNOW. Therefore I present a meme which perfectly illustrates the look on my face when I looked up the upcoming film on IMDB. 

 Casting the shortest male lead in Hollywood to play a guy who is constantly referred to as very tall. Smart mover casting director, smart move. 

*not just because she writes inane books I'll have you know, oh no I have personal reasons for hating her that are totally unrelated to her crappy books. 

'The Chateau' by William Maxwell or 'I think Americans in France after the war doing nothing is REALLY INTERESTING'

Again my apologies for not posting for a while. This month has been rather hectic at work and as a result I have had little time to blog or to read! I'm continuing to slog my way through 'Les Miserables', which at 1200 densely packed, small margined, extra large pages is going to take me a fair while. That said however I am really enjoying it and will post about it in due course.

This is what I'm desperately trying to avoid!

The last two books for my reading group happen to be books I have already read, which has given me a break from these 'obligatory' reads, so for some dumb reason I decided to go back to the book group at my workplace- completely daft! Hence me reading a really obscure American novel that apparently some genius ex-pupil of my school recommended to the librarian instead of getting on with my 1001 quest! Seriously pants on head retarded! 

 DERP!

So 'The Chateau' is about an American couple who thought it would be a good idea to travel to France for an extended holiday in 1948. They spend the entire book slightly puzzled about why everyone doesn't love them as the great liberating American heroes and why the trains aren't running and why everything looks a bit bomby and everybody is poor and sort of fed up with the Germans. Sweet Jesus this book does very little for the 'Americans abroad' image!

 Is pretty much what the French do throughout this novel

Literally these guys spend a few months in France (and other countries, but for some reason Maxwell decides not to tell us about that) travelling round and being socially awkward. Very little actually happens cause this is one of those books that is supposed to be SUBTLE and CLEVER and therefore BORING! Maxwell gives us lots of tiny, insignificant details about train times and luggage and nylon stockings (which these super awkward American's bring along to give to their chambermaids, and then wonder why people think they are patronising!)  but fails to tell us about stuff that might actually be interesting. For example they are constantly eating large multi course dinners or having to get ration books, but not once do they say what they are eating! I mean you go to a country like France after a lifetime of American cookery (that's not me being patronising, just saying it's gonna be, ya know, different!) and you would think it might be worth commenting on. If it's a choice between a detailed description of lavish French cookery or train times, I know which one I would rather read about. 

 Hi, I'm William Maxwell, pleased to meet you. 

So this pair of Americans spend most of the book living in this chateau (hence the title) with a snotty aristocrat that has fallen on hard times since the war and seems to slightly resent having to open up her fine and wonderful abode to gawking foreigners and poor people. A set up for hilarity you say? You could make a fine sit-com out of this you say? The more grown up and literary of you say what an excellent medium for discussing the complicated relationship between members of a country and its liberator as well as the class divide in modern Europe. Well you would all be disappointed, because excellent as all those things would be, Maxwell squanders his opportunity and instead just makes the whole experience awkward, boring and tedious. There is some apparent secret about how the family lost their money which is hinted at as being terrible and is built up to be some grand revelation for the end of the book, but even this disappoints. The narrative closes with no answer to this, but then in some strange, slightly tacked on bit at the end it is revealed, and it's really nothing special. Really. Also the tacked on bit at the end smacks of Maxwell getting totally bored with the whole thing, failing to write what was actually going on into the actual story, and creating a short 'conversation' with an anonymous person (surely not the reader, they fell asleep ages ago!) that reveals everything. And hell even the revelations are dull!

  why did I write such a long review? This sums it up perfectly. 

In conclusion this book sucks. It really sucks. Hella sucks. There is a reason no one has ever heard of it.