Book review

Adventures in Bookland: The Lion Comic Book Hero Bible

26 May 2016
Edoardo
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While the beginning was a Word, spoken by God to and of himself, what are we to do in an age when words – the packets of meaning that carry the dim, refracted reflection of the original Word of creation – are being systematically devalued and drained of meaning? Think on it: from the inversion of meanings in slang and street talk to the complete draining of sense and colour and, sometimes, even logic that occurs in business speak, our language is having the sense drained from it, so that the awareness of power that once existed in speaking and reading, the belief, sometimes inchoate sometimes explicit, that words carry power and that that power might be made concrete in arenas as different as the working of a spell or the raising of a crowd, that sense of the power of words has diminished and in places disappeared. After all, look around you. Everywhere, people looking at screens but, for the most part, they’re watching cat videos or, thumbs blurring, they’re playing some graphics heavy game.

Our words have grown old and tired. Maybe it’s the penalty of centuries of civilisation. Maybe it’s a consequence of hearing ourselves speak so much that we have grown sick of the sound of our own voices. Or, more likely, it’s the response to the flashy new toys of the video kid. After all, movies are only a century old, TV just over half a century, and the new era of instant visuals is barely a decade old. No wonder people are dazzled by them – they still carry the flash and dazzle of movement, the deeply laid instinct to look towards something that catches our eye. Words, in comparison, are static: you have to seek them out. So no wonder then the Bible, the source of so many of the words, and most of the ideas, that underpin our creaking civilisation is passed over: it’s all just words on a page.

One way of facing this visual deficit is exactly what Lion have done with this brilliantly produced and richly conceived book: turn words into pictures – to be precise, the sorts of pictures that were the precursors of much of the film and gaming entertainment of today: comic-book art.

Siku (Old Testament) and Jeff Anderson (New Testament) draw the Word, and do so with a richness, immediacy and strangeness that kindles the Secret Fire of life back into words and stories grown old with repetition. I particularly liked Siku’s take on the Old Testament – the stylisation of his work marrying perfectly with the mythological strands of the Pentateuch.

I can think of few better ways to gain a new and fresh take on the Bible – or to have a crash course in the major aspects of biblical history. The Bible has a lot of words – the Lion Comic Book Hero Bible has a lot less!

In a culture that is rapidly losing its cultural roots, I’d also hugely recommend this book to any RE teachers looking for a quick and accessible and engaging way to introduce the Bible to a class of de-facto heathens.

 

Adventures in Bookland: Mr Fitton in Command by Showell Styles

22 April 2016
Edoardo
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Most books and most writers are forgotten. No less than yesterday’s news wraps today’s chips, the flavour-of-the-month writer of a decade ago is landfill now. It’s a melancholic thought. As a writer, I spend a great deal of time and effort trying to create something of value, something that will resonate with readers and cast a light (albeit refracted through the lens of the past) on the human condition. But a visit to a second-hand bookshop is enought to tell me that, despite my efforts, everything I do will be forgotten, left to gather dust on an obscure shelf until the last page cracks and moulders into dust.

So my appreciation of what Faber is doing with its new imprint, Faber Finds, where the publisher republishes worthwhile work and writers that had otherwise slipped from view, is redoubled: not only have they rescued from the obscurity of the second-hand bookshop some excellent writers but someday, after I am dead, a future editor browsing through some dusty shelves will stumble across one of my books and think, ‘Hang on, this is worth a fresh audience.’

The first book I read from Faber Finds was Susan Brigden’s London and the Reformation, one of the most enjoyably scholarly books I’ve ever read and one certainly worth republishing. Now, I’ve started on Faber Finds’ repackaging of Showell Styles’ Mr Fitton series: adventures at sea in the Napoleonic era and, I think, as good a series as CS Forester’s Hornblower. They are a delight to read. Showell Styles died in 2005. Most writers, ten years after death, have been long forgotten. He does not deserve to be and, through Faber Finds, will I hope find a whole new generation of readers.

Adventures in Bookland: Italian Ways by Tim Parks

20 April 2016
Edoardo
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Listen up, I’ve got this great idea for a book. It goes like this: for two thirds of the book I write about my commute to and from work, throwing in some stuff about the history of the underground to fill things out a bit, and then for the final third I write about my summer holiday. There, what do you think? Reckon I could get a publisher to stump up 20k in advance?

Sadly, probably not (although, if you’re a publisher and you like the idea and, more importantly, are willing to give me a 20k advance then let me tell you about my other idea for writing about my school run and the weekly shop).

But that’s pretty well what Tim Parks does in this book. To be fair to him, he’s a fine writer and he argues, reasonably convincingly, that any human enterprise is necessarily so conditioned and embedded in its culture that to look, in detail, at that enterprise is to potentially understand the whole culture that produced it. However, he really is writing about his commute in to work (from Verona to Milan, so a long way) and what he did on his summer holidays (go and visit the south of Italy).  This can’t help but strike me as a writer blagging his way towards a subsidised holiday – and good luck to him, there’s few enough perks to being a writer nowadays. Well done, Tim! Now, if you read this, could you let me know which editor you sold this to at Vintage. I need to tell him just how fascinating the Piccadilly Line is.

 

Adventures in Bookland: No Ordinary Man by Donald McCrory

13 April 2016
Edoardo
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He wasn’t. Miguel de Cervantes that is. But he was almost as elusive a figure as Shakespeare, right down to the doubt as to whether they really did die on the same day (23 April 1616). There’s a bit more flesh on his life story: Cervantes fought at the Battle of Lepanto, rising from his sick bed to take part and receiving a wound that left his left hand permanently maimed; he was captured by Barbary Coast pirates and kept as a slave in Algiers for five years; he served the king of Spain as official and tax collector. But there are as many blanks as filled-out pages. McCrory does a good job of telling what we know and makes reasonable guesses as to what we don’t. He’s also good at setting Cervantes’ world in context. But it is, unlike Cervantes himself, a trifle worthy and just a little bit dull. Still, an excellent introduction to the man behind the man from La Mancha.

Adventures in Bookland: The Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko

28 March 2016
Edoardo
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Having tried American vampires in The Passage I thought I’d take a look at their Old World rivals: the vampires, shapeshifters, magicians and witches of Russia. (Also, I was away on holiday, and the place where we were staying had this book in its small library and there’s few things I enjoy more than the bibliodipity of thrown together book collections in out of the way places – there’s no telling what you might find there, since this is where books go to die. As many of the characters in the book are undead, it was all the more appropriate.)

So, how do these Russian vampires compare with their American counterparts? Considerably better personal hygiene and a marked tendency to break the action for long discourses on philosophy, in particular the emptiness at the core of human (and vampiric) experience. The American vampires just want to eat people. And, yes, the Russians drink more. Much more.

The Night Watch is much shorter than The Passage. There are more stories. The world does not end.

Go with the Russians!

 

Adventures in Bookland: The Passage by Justin Cronin

27 March 2016
Edoardo
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OK, let’s get one thing clear from the start. If, by any chance, you ever find yourself on a military appropriations committee and someone appears before the committee to ask for the funding to create a race of super soldiers that, by the way, happen to derive their powers from psychotic vampire bats, just don’t do it! Seriously, just say no. No, no, no.

This is the biggest draw back to the first part of Justin Cronin’s mega blockbuster vampire apocalypse: can you really believe that anyone, even the most jingoistic of patriots, would really say yes to such an idea? What’s more, after giving these potential super soldiers ‘the shot’ – distilled super vampire bat essence – these new super soldiers (who are all, incidentally, condemned killers just to add some human darkness to the vampire brew) all hunch up in corners, eating rabbits raw while producing rows of new razor teeth. Now, come on. Suppose you’d been mad enough to let things go this far, you’d still decide, being a ruthless sort, that the time had come to bring a curtain, a terminal curtain, down on all this.

But no. You leave it too late and the vampire super soldiers escape and – well, not to put too fine a point on it, eat the world (or at least America, the two being pretty well synonymous for the purposes of the book). And that’s just in part 1!

So, despite the slightly (well, completely) ludicrous premise, the story rips along and I really enjoyed part 1. But then, we reach part 2 and it pretty well all stops for about 200 pages. Yes, this new, post-apocalyptic world is all very interesting, but come on, do we really need to hear ALL the backstory? I think not. I have a life, commitments and lots of other books to read. So, I skimmed and I advise you to do the same. You can do so safely: I suggest taking a quick look at every fifth page, just to get an idea of what’s going on, and then continuing. The story does get going again, but it takes some 300 or 400 pages to do so. And then, you get to the end, and find that’s just the end of part 1. I mean come on! So, getting to page 872, or whatever it was, I faced a question: how much of my life did I want to devote to this story? Now, it’s true some stories can illuminate an entire life but The Passage isn’t one of those. I’d suggest limiting yourself to a week’s reading time on this one, while hoping that Justin Cronin employs a more aggressive editor for part 2.

The obvious comparison is Stephen King’s The Stand. Is The Passage as good? No. Despite The Stand being even longer (although it does finish the story within the confines of one book) at no point reading it did I start skipping – I wanted to read it all. With The Passage, I wanted to know what happens in the end, but preferably without having to plough every furrow along the way.

 

Adventures in Bookland: North York Moors & Yorkshire Wolds by Mike Bagshaw

11 March 2016
Edoardo
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I spent over ten years writing and editing guide books for Time Out, so I know a good guide book when I see one – and this is a really good guide book.

First, it fulfills the primary role of a guide book: it guides. When we visited the North York Moors in February, the book showed us where to go and what to see and, being published only last year, the details were all correct. But the mark of a really good guide book is when it goes beyond the basic guide book function and this one does. Reading it before we left, it made us even more eager to visit, by unveiling all sorts of places that we would never have known to visit, from the stepping stones across the River Esk in Egton Bridge to loneliest pub in England, the Lion Inn atop Blakey Ridge, to which we repaired for some much needed hot food as the wind blew spindrift over the snow fields atop the moors. And looking at the book after we have returned has helped us appreciate even more what we saw, as well as firing a determination to return again.

Mike Bagshaw fills the book with the sort of detail that comes from many years intimate knowledge of a place and its people – I was particularly struck by the story of his late neighbour, a true Yorkshireman, who through all his three score years and ten never once set foot beyond the county’s boundaries.

Having seen the demise of Time Out’s guide books – which were pretty well the best city guides out there – it’s good to see a publisher, Bradt, that is still prepared to invest in producing a high-quality, well written guidebook. Well done Bradt and well done Mike Bagshaw!

 

Adventures in Bookland: The Touchstone by Andrew Norriss

9 March 2016
Edoardo
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Go on ask me a question. Any question. You know you want to.

It can be anything, anything at all, and I’ll tell you the answer. Which stocks to buy, who will win the league, how to build a destructor death ray shooting pink plasm. All you have to do is ask, and I’ll tell you the answer.

I reckon I’d like to be able to do that – but then, I’m the sort of person who likes quizzes. My dream job would be as the Chaser on The Chase (which, if you don’t know it, is a daytime quiz programme where a team of four attempt to escape the Chaser, a professional quizzer, as the Chaser hunts them down: each time the contestants get a question wrong and the Chaser gets it right, he draws closer).

Sadly, I don’t even know enough to be the Chaser, let alone the Touchstone. Because the Touchstone really can answer any question you ask it. Any question at all. Including the one about how to make a destructor death ray shooting pink plasma.

Ah. So, perhaps not the sort of thing you want to give to just anyone. Quite right. But, the question is, who should you give it to? The Guardians? (They are, in fact, the Guardians of the Galaxy, only this version does not feature talking raccoons and ambulant trees but rather a somewhat ruffled civil servant.) Now, this is the first of Andrew Norriss’s books where I don’t think I agree with the answer. I’m not sure any institution could guard such knowledge since the knowledge would, in the end, corrupt the institution, leading the, in this case, Guardians, to see themselves as more important than that which they’re guarding, ie. everything else. It’s what happens to institutional bureaucracies over time. I’d much rather have Douglas, our 12-year-old hero, in charge of the Touchstone than the Guardians. I sort of think I’d even prefer the gung ho adventuress who gives him the Touchstone to have it. But then, there is one question that will answer with surety what your attitude to the Touchstone would be, and it’s the same question that was posed to Achilles: to have a long and happy life, or a short and glorious one.

When I was fourteen, I posed that question to my classmates and, to my surprise, received a unanimous reply: long and happy. I was the only one, at the time, who wanted glory and fame. I suspect that was because, to that point, I’d never really been unhappy, and, when you’re 14, the prospect of dying at 28 seems just as dim and distant as dying at 78.

The Touchstone is for those who want a long and happy life and, as I’ve got older, I have come to appreciate that much, much more. But, in our increasingly safety conscious world, I fear we lose something by giving no avenue for the young glory hunter: in previous ages he could sail off to strange lands, now there’s no such opportunity.

Another thought: with the internet increasingly omnipresent and omniscient, have we, in effect, given a Touchstone to everyone? If so, it’s chief effect seems to be a proliferation of cute cat videos and the further loss of personal memory; if everything can be called up, why bother to recall it? But, I suspect, memory is an underappreciated aspect of intelligence. We are currently applying a worldwide test to see if we can do without it. I suspect the answer will be no – and I don’t think I need the Touchstone to tell me that.

But I do need The Touchstone for another take on how to write a book without a single excess word or spurious phrase (like that one!).  Read it, tell others about it, answer questions on it. Make it your touchstone, if not your cornerstone.

Adventures in Bookland: Mr Fitton’s Prize by Showell Styles

23 February 2016
Edoardo
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I remember it exactly. The first time the natural physical insouciance of youth was cracked. I was on the hovercraft crossing the Channel – back then, there was no tunnel, and the quickest way across was by the giant, car-eating hovercraft that roared over the strait – and, naturally, on boarding I had rushed to the front, where the seats looked out past the captain’s bridge to the approaching shore – and the choppy waves of the Channel. Setting off, I discovered something unexpected, although hardly unforseeable, about hovercrafts: since they hover, they follow the line of the waves, rather than ploughing through them. Oh, how I laughed with glee as the front of the hovercraft rose up towards the crest, opening up a prospect of sky and foam, then dropped, precipitously, into the trough beyond, changing on the instant from clear blue sky to roiling green water. The other passengers sought calmer berths further back, but we youngsters stayed at the front, revelling in this natural roller coaster. Or some of us did. After about twenty minutes, my exhilaration began to feel a trifle… forced. Something seemed to be forcing its way upon me. Unfortunately, it was my lunch.

I just about made it to the toilet in time.

I had not known before that I could get sea sick. Turns out, I’m about as bad a sailor as ever turned green over the big greeny blue. Further confirmation was supplied when learning to dive in Australia (did you know, they even have barbies on boats – not that I was eating anything).

So it must be the nautical equivalent of rubbernecking that produces my fascination with naval literature, in particular stories set in the heyday of the Senior Service during the Napoleonic Wars. Patrick O’Brian, CS Forester – you merely have to point me at a ship of the line and I’ve cast off hawsers and settled down to read.

But I’d never heard of Showell Styles and now I must give thanks to Faber Finds. It’s stated purpose is to restore to print great writing across every genre of fiction and non-fiction – and with Mr Fitton’s Prize it has succeeded. This is a masterclass in writing, its apparent effortlessness concealing a real mastery of the craft. Looking up the author, I find that he wrote over 150 books in a 50-year career, both fiction and non-fiction. In fact, I find that he was what I want to be. Plus, he has pretty well the coolest name ever. So, Mr Styles, may you sail home, and be my guide.

Showell Styles (1908-2005)
Showell Styles (1908-2005)

 

Adventures in Bookland: Railhead by Philip Reeve

2 February 2016
Edoardo
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In this day and age when the old shames, for good or ill, no longer embarrass, when I can go to dinner with old friends and be told, apropos of nothing, that their son is gay and the conversation move on as if nothing more remarkable has come up than that he has switched jobs, there yet remains one love that dare not speak its name. I would not speak of it myself, where it not for the fact that someone I know is subject to this-this compulsion. But the time has come to face society’s scorn and incomprehension, to take on the last prejudice and say it.

Say it loud.

My son’s a trainspotter and I’m proud.

There, I’ve said it.

What’s more, I’ve done it. I’ve spent endless hours on windy platforms, warmed only by a thermos flask of tea, while my son has jumped up and down in excitement as a Black Five has gone steaming past (see, I even know the terminology now), or a class 66 has trundled through, pulling a long train of troublesome trucks. So I’ve been there, I’ve got the anorak (a vital accessory at some stations, where there really is no protection against the wind).

So, now, after all this time spent alongside railway lines, whether I would or not, what do I really think of trains?

They’re all right.

Get you from London to Birmingham pretty well. Or, in Philip Reeve’s new book, from one planet to another. Only, in the future, the trains talk. They’ve got guns. And some even fall in love. So, on the face of it, a little different from the 8.14 First Capital Connect service from Harpenden (or First Crapital Connect as commuters, not particularly affectionately, called it).

But, standing on the platforms, surreptitiously looking at my son, and the other spotters, shining faces turned to the tracks, I realised that, in fact, it’s true. Trains do talk; they do sing and maybe some even fall in love. Only, most of us are too blind to see it. Only those derided blokes in the anoraks down the end of the platform get it. Someday, they will catch that 7.37 service to the Greater Magellanic Cloud that departs from Euston.

Although Philip Reeve keeps it quiet, I’m willing to bet he has his own anorak hung up on the back of a door, and a thermos flask ready to go. Only a trainspotter, closeted or otherwise, could have written this book and it’s time Philip Reeve joined me in coming out of the closet.

Come on Philip, say it loud.

We’re trainspotters, and we’re proud!

The future is arriving, and it’s coming on rails.