The first time. True tales of virginity, lost and found.

C

Thought I'd read this for something completely different. I didn't know what to expect, apart from maybe some sad and cringeworthy tales of women remembering experiences they'd rather forget...but I wasn't expecting such a GREAT book.  Honestly, this book was surprisingly brilliant. Really well written, funny in places, extremely honest, sad in parts but always incredibly moving.

it was tales that the writer had collected from willing women and men (aged between 85 and 25) who agreed to be interviewed about their first sexual experiences. All tales were placed into the social contexts and norms of their days.  It was fantastic social commentary of life and sex  in Britain from the 40s up to the present day. 

I loved it because it was so well compiled and she just comes across as a really great interviewer, managing to put people at ease and ultimately getting the people to tell her so much more than what she bargained for! 

I wish I had read this book when I was much younger. Anyone 14 or upwards and ALL sex education teachers should read this book...it might freak the kids a bit but ultimately it's all stuff I wish I had known about when I was younger.

What I love is the tone of the book is not judgemental at all. it's up to the interviewees to decide what 'losing your virginity' entails. Is it the first time you have full sex, the first time you have an orgasm, the first time you feel totally , absolutely and completely in love with someone or is it never? 

Is it worth waiting and holding out for someone special or is it better just to get the first time done, dusted and behind you? What are the pressures put on young people today and are we really anymore sexually aware and active now than young people 40or 50 years ago? 

  People candidly  recount all of the above issues and I especially loved the male point of view. It was great to get really brutally honest, funny and also sensitive impressions of virginity loss from the male perspective! 

I love the way that difference is applauded too. The stories from gays and lesbians are well told but the section that affected me mostwas on abstinence. people who had never had sex seemed to be the most shunned and isolated group. ('Still  a Virgin and not religious, why are you so weird?'  seemed to be a common question these people encountered!)  It was really refreshing to read stories from people who were happily declaring themselves, ( most of them without God in their ear) as different. 

In this book she talks about losing something you don't really have and why virginity is still a discussion point, even in modern Britain.

 When The author was about eight years old she found out what the word VIRGIN meant and she was shocked that there was a word to define the 'default' state. This was similar to me too. When I found out at about the same age I was upset to know that I could be labelled as a virgin. I didn't like the word or the label! 

What this book highlights though is how choices have improved life for women in the Western World. They might not be easy choices but at least here in Britain people can make them and not concern themselves too much with people's reactions to them. But here we are in the minority, most women around the world are still being brutilised for 'losing' something that is almost impossible to quantify or to define.  

All my friends read this book and then give it to your teenagers! 

Sea of Poppies.

I first read this five years ago and totally loved it.  After having a bad run of quite dull books I pulled it off my shelf and read it again.  To be honest I didn't enjoy it as much second time but the plot is fantastic and I happily and quickly read it in under a week. 

It starts really well in the villages of central India in 1832. All the villagers are being forced to grow opium poppies to sell to the East India company who are then selling all this opium to China. The harsh life of the local people is set bare in stark reality. The British colonialists come out as nothing better than drug barons...which to be fair we were. But my God, we were efficient and skilled at it.

This book is all about getting the characters onto the IBIS boat which is sailing to Mauritius via Hong Kong. The boat used to carry slaves but now is being used to move opium to China and back to the West.

The characters are all a bit wooden but it's still a fun book.  I loved the free born American slave, (who luckily for him looks completely white because his mother was only a quarter black) I love the bankrupt Raja, who loses all his money and status due to the money grabbing, duplicitous Brits. The Raj is a guy who doesn't even know how to wipe his own bum until he learns hard lessons inside the British jail. The section where he cleans up the body of his fellow prisoner who is suffering from severe cold turkey is really well written. 

it's all a bit bonkers and I have to admit on second reading a bit cheesy but the first half based in Central India is really good. Once all the characters start moving and collecting on the IBIS boat in Calcutta it loses it's way a bit.

BUT the highlight for me is the language.  Ghosh writes in the language of the lascars and pirates; who run the boats, the British; who run the country, and the locals; who run nothing.  It's a book full of mad words which I loved. I'm sure this wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea because it is quite hard to follow in places and it could be seen as pretentious.  But it for me it worked because even if I didn't understand everything in places it didn't matter!  Misunderstanding was part of these peoples lives as they all tried to communicate with each other and I just became part of that confusion too.

Enjoyed it, but not as much as I thought I would.  Oh well, I think I put this book on a pedestal when I read it 5years ago and I think what I like to read has changed.

Underground London

I'm not having much luck with books at the moment. This started well with descriptions of London's covered up rivers and why people decided to cover them up because they were so filthy.  Then  there was an interesting paragraph on how underground stations are built, and that was it!

By chapter 3 it was SO boring.  The author just talked  about what he learnt as he went round London with tour guides.  he was just grabbing sound bites from tour guides and people on the street. The book was more about him and the people he was meeting.  Which would have been fine if he or the people he were meeting were interesting!

By chapter 5 I gave up.  it's not often that I stop reading a book.  I always think it will get better but life is just too short to trudge through this shit. A poor, dull, tat filled 'book'. 

 

Confronting Iran

F

Got this for a few quid in a second hand bookshop in Oxford and it's been a slow but interesting read. Got a bit bogged down though.  Iranian history is a tad mind blowing! Can't  find this cover online, hence the photo.  I would only recommend this book if you want to know about Iranian modern history. No Isfahan,  Cyrus the Great, Zoroastrianism or Persepolis in this book! 

 Most people know I am completely fascinated by Iran, so a perfect little read for me but bloody hell there is A LOT to get your head round!  

Over the last 100 or so years Iran has been eyed up by Ottomans, Brits, Soviets, and finally the Americans. I read about how democracy was halted in the 50 s by the Brits and Yanks as they didn't like Iran's elected choice of leader, this of course was linked to the Brits and Americans losing control over the unbelievable amount of oil coming out of Iran. So the CIA assassinated him and somehow became even closer allies with Iran. Infact Iran was almost like a state of the USA. the countries seemed to be happily married in the 60s and 70s but then the crushing and bitter divorce took place between the two countries at the end of the 70s. In fact it's only now that the two countries are beginning to slowly communicate with each other again.  Both sides made bad decisions but ultimately the USA made errors by just flinging money and crude capatilism into a country which didn't need this kind of assistance.  I could see from the history a kind of simple logic behind the revolution.  it was a kind of  backlash against implied Soviet invasion from the north, Sunni aggression from their Arabic neighbours and American might and Israel thrown in for good measure.  how a country could fall under such a harsh regime is beyond me but I'm sure Iranians were just trying their best to preserve their country and protect themselves. The book then talked about the hideous war with Iraq, the emergence of Hezbullah in Lebanon...not actually Iran. and life under sanctions in this theocratic country today.  All a bit grim to be honest...

I also read about how the Bosnians were given weapons by the Iranians. Without the help of Iran Bosnian Sarajevo would have fallen.  Hence all the Iranian shops there I suppose. Never knew this until now.  

Out of It

I really wanted to like this book.  It's not often that I find a novel which is based in Gaza. It looked good and had great reviews but unfortunately I was greatly disappointed. I was looking forward to reading a book which would transport me to a different and harsh reality in one of the most politically,  economically   and physically isolated cities on the planet.

It doesn't matter how much you are interested in a place you still need a story to hold you,  writing that grips you and characters you can believe in.  Unfortunately I got none of the above from this book!

This book only managed to annoy and irritate me. The characters were so weakly described I couldn't really give a damn about what happened to them.  In fact the last 30% of the book was a quick flip through, I was so bored I just couldn't be bothered to read it properly. Hence I can't really review what happened because there wasn't a story! 

A shame really, I just felt this book didn't describe or explain anything successfully. It was devoid of any emotion and people were flat as pancakes.  I was annoyed that the horrors of life in Gaza was having no affect on me. Normally when I read a novel based in a particular place I get transported to the time and inspired and interested in the history and politics, but not with this bilge.

  Nah...not for me!

 This book proves to me that if I want to find out anything about Gaza city I just have to go there...what do you reckon to my chances?!

The Princess Bride

What a great read. I have been feeling under the weather for a couple of weeks and this book choice couldn't have been better. It's been a brilliant read and has kept me well and truly entertained. In fact I think I have been placed under a spell of ' a long and annoying cold ' whilst reading it.  You need to be ill to enjoy it.   This is similar to young William, who gets the original version read to him by his grandfather whilst suffering from pneumonia.  I hope that now I have finished the book the spell will be broken and I will finally begin to feel better!  

A few months back my friend Lucy asked me if I had ever watched the movie and when I said I hadn't she told me I should because it's so funny. When I was wandering round the £2 bookshop in Oxford I found this copy of the original book and remembering what Lucy had told me I bought it. I haven't been disappointed, it's been fabulous.

William Goldman wrote this in 1973 and the film was made in the 80s.  I'm so glad I have been able to read this book with absolutely no knowledge of the film. William Goldman is a genius of structure and plot.  Here he has created a world within a world  within a world with all the classic fairy tale elements kept in and all the boring sections cleverly removed.  

The introduction is William Goldman talking about his life. He mentions his screen play script for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid (true) and his psychotherapy wife and rather lazy son. (Found out now this is all false, he didn't have either. )  He talks about his memories of having the original version of The Princess Bride by S. Morganstern read to him by his grandfather. For about 15 pages I was taken in and then suddenly it dawned on me the introduction is totally imaginary and William Goldman  hasn't rewritten the old classic by Morganstern at all.  The whole wonderful recreation is his alone and he turns the art and craft of telling fairy tales on its head.  The satire is amazing  and so funny and works so well because Goldman obviously loves a great fairy tale. He scribbles amendments and notes and tells us when he has removed the boring bits and why.  It's all so clever and entertaining.

For people who don't know the story there is Buttercup the most beautiful girl in the world. Westly, the farm boy, her true love.  Prince Humperdink, the evil guy who she must marry and the great characters of Dread Pirate Robert, Vizzini the hunchback, Inigo Montoya ,the best fencer in the world who must kill the man with six fingers to avenge his father's death and Fezzik, the Turkish strong man. 

The story is based in the country of Florin and the action moves from the country to the palace to the  Mountain  of Insanity and the Fire swamp ( I loved the ROUSs, the rodents of unusual size.) At this point it's like Shrek on acid.

There is a turn to the dark side when Westly is tortured in the Zoo of Death but mostly this book is just so uplifting.  I even love how grumpy and self obsessed William Goldman seems to be in his introduction.  (A dig at self obsessed writers and artists the world over I believe.) 

I urge all my friends or anyone still reading this review to READ this book or watch the movie, or both.  I can't believe it has taken me so many years to do so and I am really looking forward to watching the movie.  As William Goldman also wrote the screen play I have heard there are hardly any changes.  In fact many fans think the film is even better. ( Most fans did watch the movie first though.) I'm looking foward to finding out what I think but I have a gut feeling that the book will  still be my favourite!  

A real gem and a book I will keep for ever and read again and again!

PS. have just found out that Inigo Montoya is played by Mandy Patinkin in the movie.  I will never look at Saul from Homeland in the same light again! 

Child 44

I have raced through this book pretty quickly and enjoyed it.  It has made my trips to work pass in a flash and made the trip back by Eurostar zoom by in what seemed minutes.

It was all high adventure based in Russia in the 50s.  A serial killer is on the loose and Leo, a former KGB operative, decides to investigate the crimes fully.  As the regime states that there is no crime in the Stalinist Soviet Union, Leo and his wife have to go on the run in order to do the job properly. 

This book read like a TV mini series, high on adventure and pace but unfortunately low on character development.  When people spoke the author reverted to a script like style of writing which was pretty annoying and a bit lazy too, I thought.  Evil people were ridiculously evil and although Tom Rob Smith had obviously done lots of research into life in 50's USSR it all just took a back seat to the thrill of finding out what was going to happen next. I felt a bit detached from the horrors of the period. It could have been set in Gotham city for all I cared! 

Ultimately a good read, with a totally ridiculous ending!  Yes, I was totally hooked and addicted throughout. 

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 3/4

S

I found this in a charity shop in Newcastle and grabbed it. Finding this book on the cheap has been a mission of mine for years and I had no success until last week.  I have a feeling Adrian would be proud of me!

I was a bit nervous about reading this after last reading it when I was 11. 1/4 but over 30 years later I enjoyed it FAR more.  Every page was funny and even funnier as an adult and even funnier because this is my generation and my youth.  A nostalgic, bitter sweet and hilarious read.  I loved it!

Adrian is so naive.  He writes things literally without any idea of what's going on.  His parents splitting up, them arguing about who ISN'T going to get custody of Adrian. it all seems to leave Adrian unaffected. He is a misunderstood intellectual (who admits he isn't very clever.) All he wants to do is marry pandora and get a few of his poems published.

I love the bit when his Mum and creepy Mr Lucas from next door are locked in the kitchen supposedly doing DIY and Mr. Lucas tells Adrian he can't come in because the boiler is at a crucial point and his Mum has her hands full.

I love how Adrian starts reading War and Peace on a Saturday and finishes it in 1day saying it was quite good.

I love how he thinks his spots are because his parents feed him unhealthy food and because school dinners are crap.  He believes that crap school dinners are a strategy of Margaret Thatcher's to keep the young people mentally and physically deficient in order that they can't rise up against the government. (Good idea Adrian.)

I love how his Sunday's are so boring. The highlights of the weekend are weekly shops in the supermarket and seeing Pandora.  his parents really are under stress. Break up, unemployment and depression.  But somehow you love them all; even his hard up, unemployed Dadand his Mother, who is a new convert to the feminist movement.  She's learning karate and Adrian is scared that she is going to karate chop his Dad in the wind pipe.

I lovehis 80 year old woodbine smoking communist friend Bert who Adrian befriends only because it enables him to miss maths class every week.  Adrian and pandora spend loads of their free time with him and often end up cleaning the filthy house he lives in.

The way his dad jumps out of bed when Adrian tells him that Argentina has invaded the Falklands and we are at war is a classic.  Adrian's dad thinks the Falklands are just off Scotland and when Adrian tells him they are over 8000 miles away he just groans and jumps back into bed.

As for getting the airfix glue on his model plane stuck to his nose when attempting a bit of glue sniffing..great.

I think this is a wonderful British Classic and if you haven't read it for a while I recommend it.  As for kids of 13 now...I really don't know what they will make of it.  Bits of it are generation specific but the humour and honesty haven't dated at all. Plus it will make teenagers today see how kids entertained themselves when there really was no money and nothing to do! 

PS. I forgot aboutAdrian's diary entry for the school day trip to the British Museum in London. Brilliant! 

PPS. And how Adrian's Dad brings crisps to the hospital for Adrian as a present after Adrian has his tonsils out. Great.

PPPS And Sabre the dog

PPPPS and how his granny beats up the guy who is bullying Adrian.

Enough....I could go on and on.

 

They Were Divided

No joke, I feel like I could get a few points in Mastermind if I decided to have Austro Hungary between 1904 and 1914 as my specialist subject! I'm sure all this useless knowledge will fade quickly but come the centenary of the First World War next year I feel super prepared.

This book was the saddest, the most political and the most boring of all three books.  (Luckily the thinnest too.) My favourite character obviously died of alcohol poisoning and syphillis without a penny to his name.( At least he was spared from having to fight in the Great War.)

Life in Transylvania continued with all the partying, gossiping,duelling and such nonsense. Everyone was arrogantly ignoring all the winds of change and disharmony around the rest of Europe and this attitude   ultimately left Hungary unprepared to gain revenge on Serbia for the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.  ( Ironically Franz was universally despised by Hungarians.  Everyone said that the only person who  loved him was his unfortunate wife...who was killed alongside him.) 

One of my favourite sections was when a British anti duelling representative came to Transylvania to talk about banning it and unbeknown to him, whilst he was talking, the guys in the audience were secretly planning a duel.  It took place outside in the tea break, luckily nobody was killed and all involved were able to return back for the second half of the presentation. One guy heavily bleeding and bandaged.

I also loved the parts in themountains with the Romanian peasants and the gypsies,  really beautifully described without a hint of patronism. 

Banffy was a Hungarian speaking upper class Transylvanian but his first love was his beautiful Transylvanian countryside. he despised the aristocratic idiots who run the country.(A group which he unfortunately belonged to.) Banffy was most at home high in the mountains with the Romanians. he learnt the language and had great respect for the peasants. he could see that only trouble lay around the corner and this book is a sad farewell to a country and a system which he knew was gone for ever. 

A fantastic set of books.  A challenge , but also great fun(in parts) but this one was obviously the most serious.  The book ended with the first day of the First World War. What ever happened to these characters is left to my imagination.  Which was a bit harsh! 

BUT it's really made me want to return to Transylvania...maybe next year.

Transition by Iain Banks

 I haven't read any Iain Banks for years and I love lots of his books, so starting this was like being reacquainted with an old friend.  I found this on my friend, Nicky's bookshelf, took it,  started it and have devoured it in just a few days.
It started so well, really weird stuff based around an infinity of parallel universes in which special people,called transitionaries, can move. They take a pill called Septus and transition all over the place.  They take over the physical body of locals (leaving a lobotomised version of themselves in their previous bodies) and murder people who they think will be harmful to the society.  They also torture lots of people in order to get information. 
The organisation running this system is called the Concern, and like all uber powerful countries and government systems it has become highly corrupt and their leader, Mrs d'orletean, is an evil despot.

This book promised so much, but in the end,never really delivered. Also it was incredibly dark and depressing...with horrid sections on the place of torture in society and long rambling sections on the evil of capitalism. (Parts of which were very clever and funny.)

There were lots of gratuitous sex and drug references, but to be honest, I couldn't see why. Don't get me wrong, I'm not  a puritan in anyway,  but it was as if Iain Banks was just being lazy and putting lots of sex and drugs into the plot just because he thought his loyal reader fanbase liked that kind of kinky, weird shit.
I wasn't convinced...sad thing is this book was SO GOOD at the beginning with its Christian terrorists and world jumping assassins.  But I feel I never got past the great ideas to any kind of plot or reason behind what was going on. 

It was a seriously dark book  with lots of pseudo philosophy. A book which has ultimately left me feeling a little bit queasy and with a thousand unanswered questions. A shame really because I loved the ideas.  

They Were Found Wanting

This second part of my Hungarian trilogy has kept me busy for nearly a month and it is all so superduper tragic!  How many doomed love affairs can I take? How many lunatics? Drunkards?  Gamblers?  Liars? Money grabbers?   Sharp accountants  and house keepers who rip off the naive upper classes who they 'serve'?  Useless and corrupt politicians? Oiled moustaches? 'Terrorist'Romanian priests?   Duels? Gluttony? Abused wives? Evil mothers? Intelligent female cattle breeders?     I feel that I am living and breathing life in Hungarian Transylvania and loving every minute of it.  I'm up to 1910 and I know that life is not going to get any better for these people! I just wonder how much more everyone can take.

My favourite character Laszlo got so drunk, left the love of his life after he dramatically threw his life savings at her and then walked through the snow all night, swigging from his bottle and ended up falling into an open frozen sewer. This awful event happened about two thirds in and he was never mentioned again. I'm desperate to know what the hell happened to him, so I have to delve straight into book three.  Im sure he didn't die in that frozen hole! There hasn't been a funeral.

I haven't been so engrossed in a set of books like this for years.  Each one is as thick as a door stop so I am glad I am reading it on my kindle.  I love how all the characters are so well described, I love and hate them all with a passion. No one is bland, that's what I appreciate most. It's full of people and families and I get confused with who is who. But to be honest it doesn't really matter, I'm sure that is part of the charm. 

I also like how the modern and old lives collide in this book. People are driving cars but still organising duels to protect someone's honour. It's made me want to go back to Romania and find out more about this amazing author and his old ancestral home (which was burnt to the ground by the retreating Germans at the end of the Second World War, but has since been rebuilt.) He describes Transylvania so beautifully.  These books are ultimately a love story to his old lost lands and a world which vanished for ever in his life time.

They Were Counted by Miklos Banffy

Wow, what a book! I loved this and I have to admit when I lost my Smart Phone part of me was thinking, never mind Jane, now you have more time on the train to read this instead of playing around on the Internet.

I found this by accident on the Kindle store.  It's the first part of a trilogy based around the last days of the Austro-Hungarian empire, 1904-1914, ending with the assassination of Franz-Ferdinand in Sarajevo.  To be honest I thought it would be a bit slow and heavy.  But no way, it has been amazing and this morning I downloaded the other two parts.  I am addicted! 

I have successfully  been transported to life in Transylvania and Budapest between 1904 and 1906. the main character is a lovely, aristocratic naive guy who has returned back to his Mother in their castle and how he falls in love with Adrienne, who is married to a sadistic, evil bastard.

Things I have learnt thanks to this book:

How women in this society wear the metaphorical trousers and run the households like a tight ship. How men can lose everything over the gambling tables.  How to entertain a big-wig at a game shoot who can't shoot straight. How to organise a duel.  How to save villagers from pay day loan sharks.  How to camp in the forest with the gypsies. How poor men manipulate rich women of marriageable age for money.  How servant girls are so easily abused.  How women are nothing more than their husbands possessions.  How to have a successful, secret, illicit affair.  How to trash parliament and have a riot.  How to manipulate the weak (both poor and rich). What to wear to a Ball and what to drink until 6 in the morning if you don't want to collapse in your own vomit.

Yes, it's like a funnier and wittier War and Peace.  A book full of people and life and humanity.  I have laughed and cried and I can't believe that this book is virtually unknown. I suppose Austro Hungary 100 years ago doesn't interest many people here. But it is the characters and stories which are the great pull!  Yes, I loved it but I am a true romantic sucker for castles, duels and doomed love stories.  

Here is a good review, which is exactly my opinion too.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/aug/05/writing-wall-miklos-banffy-summer-readings

State of Wonder

This book did  take a while to get into but as soon as it settled into being based in the Amazon Jungle it was fabulous.   As most people know, I do like a little bit of travel, but the Amazon has never been high on my agenda, and after reading this I can see why!   Ann Patchett really does make you feel like you are there with the doctors and the researchers, totally out of their depths in this alien environment.  Surrounded by the suffocating trees, the local tribes,  the dangerous waters and the massive snakes that can appear from anywhere.  Not to mention the psychedelic mushrooms, the tree eating women and the  mysterious death of a scientist. You really feel part of the action!
  This book is a mixture of a modern Heart of Darkness and a block buster fantasy fiction movie. I love the way Ann Patchett tells her stories.  She really pulls you in and you can see everything so vividly.  I  feel like I have been out in the Amazon with them all! (Much cheaper than a plane ticket.)  She makes it all so unglamourous and you can almost smell the sweaty bodies and feel the stifling heat!  You really get into the heads of these scientists and doctors who are being paid secretly by a pharmaceutical company  to find new drugs.  The secrets which they do find  are  amazing and pretty controversial.
I'm not going to write anymore because I don't want to ruin it for anyone who wants to read it.   Stick with the first 100 pages...the momentum soon picks up!

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

I'm a bit stumped with what to write about this book.  I took it on holiday with me and it should have been a quick read but it ended up being in my bag , living in there, for the majority of my trip!!  But hey, I'm not sure if this book was for me because I think it was written primarily for non-Brits or ex-Pats with a strong cliched idea of what village life in England is/was about.
 I just found all of the characters totally and absolutely unbelievable.  In fact, apart from the main two characters  everyone was  either a caricature of little Englanders from the 1950s or 'evil' Muslims dropped into the book for dramatic affect.( Major Pettigrew should have just shot his annoying son by page 10 and done us all a favour.)
 I didn't feel any empathy for any of the characters and even though it was sold as a Love Story it all seemed  totally sterile and soulless to me. When I found out the Major was only 68 I nearly spat out my Croatian beer, to me he seemed at least 87! When one of the village kids was told off for playing with a kid from a 'One-parent-family'  I almost spat out my Bosnian sausage!   Was this author for real?  Was this really written just a few years ago?!  I then found out that the author hasn't lived in the UK for years.  It showed! This book was described on the back as being 'quirky and full of charm'.  Bullshit, it was as dull and dank as village ditch water.

Alex's Adventures in Numberland

Bloody hell, What a book!! 

 I did a maths degree over 20 years ago and I often wonder why I did.   But then I read a book like this and it all makes sense.  This book was perfect; full of interesting history, facts and ideas that made my head spin and yes, the pure beauty and wonder  of maths shined through. (Really, it did!) 

I haven't just read this book I have thought about it for days.  I feel like I have re-connected with an old weird friend who I last chatted to over 20 years ago. I think it's both  the humour and the passion of the writer which makes this book outstanding for me. Yes, parts of it are funny because mathematicians through history are completely bonkers.  I grabbed it off the shelf in the library at the last minute and the first thing I am going to do after I return it is buy myself a copy.

It starts with the history of counting and how some tribes in the world have no numbers greater than two in their language.It talks for a while on different counting systems and how an ancient people from Babylon had a number system based around 60.  (They left us with the system we use for time.  60 minutes in an hour.) It moves on to the first  writing, which was accountants tallying up pints of beer. Counting was perfected as an art form by the Japanese and Chinese on the abacus and the notation was developed by the Indians . The Indians were the first people to use zero. The concept of using a symbol to show the idea of nothing was beyond the Greeks, Chinese and Babylonians.

Roman Numerals were no good for addition and the fight to get the Arabic /Indian number system into the West was interesting because during the 7th century the West had just started fighting the Islamic world. The West was envious that their grasp of mathematical notation was better and hence science, engineering and astrology was so much further advanced in the Islamic world   It  all came down to their representation of 'nothing' and  their simple number placement which we take for granted now.

Indians call 'Slumdog Millionaire' 'Slumdog Crorepati' due to having a unique counting terminology and a system which goes back to Buddha. Buddha was the first philosophical mathematician who sat around thinking about very small and very big numbers. Now it has been proven  that he got his estimates for the size of an atom and the size of the Universe almost correct. Buddha was the first, and probably only, man to hold a perfect image of the smallest and largest objects known to man in his mind without any mathematical proof.

The book then moves away from numbers and into my favourite world of geometry and shape. He talks about the beauty and sophistication of Islamic tiles as a representation of God through art and then moves on to  the 50 pence piece.  British mathematicians and members of the blind community lobbied for the 7 sided coin,  which was the first  curved heptagon coin in the world.

 I love the bit on how paper folding is the only way to prove mathematical problems which completely stumped the Greeks. The Delian problem is one such mind bender

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doubling_the_cube

 I loved this because it was all new to me and made me realise how  folding a piece of paper can solve problems which the Greeks couldn't solve.  (How sad am I.) 

The book is still not even half through at this stage and I'm in total awe and think my head is going to explode with information but I take a deep breath and carry on.

We move on to shapes that have no volume and infinite surface area.  They are called Menger Sponges and kind of freaked me out. ( Like when you put  a mirror on your head and look at yourself in another mirror.) Some maths nutter in the States decided to make a third level Menger Sponge out of  66,000 business cards.  They are painstakingly created from small 3D units and took her and her friends over 7 years to make. (again it all goes back to origami.)  This woman is a complete and absolute mentalist.

http://www.theiff.org/oexhibits/menger02.html

If she made a level 4 Menger Sponge it would take over a million cards and weigh a ton, hence it couldn't support its own weight. She didn't attempt it. In the world of pure maths a Menger Sponge continues for infinity, in reality it stops after the number 3.

The book then went on to talk to people who were banned from casinos because of their mathematical wizardry at the poker table. A pretty useful skill.

The  golden ratio was also covered.  This  ratio is the number of life, beauty and science. It's found in art, architecture, graphics, photo composition, personal beauty, dental cosmetics, the stock market (?) and the graph of a heart beat. It's also the same ratio we use when converting kilometres to miles.

Eddy Levin with his golden gauge was pretty mental!  Mr Levin was a dentist from North London who decided to use this gauge to help him make false teeth in  the best proportion.  His gauge is totally ridiculous but proves the point about how many things are created in this ratio.

http://www.goldenmeangauge.co.uk/

I love how the gauge is so UGLY but the proportion he is measuring is the height of  balance and beauty!

The best part of the book was at the end.  (If you are still here this is the bit which really got me going!)

In my degree I loved spherical geometry.  This is  simply drawing shapes on balloons and globes and seeing what happens to lines and angles.(Plotting trajectories of aeroplanes round the world and that kind of stuff.)  I loved all this nonsense but then we also moved on to think about hyperbolic space. Hyperbolic space is constant negative curvature.  A shape which never joins up to itself and also has  a vast surface area. (like a pringle in its simplest form.)    Wonderful  things happen in hyperbolic space but it was all beyond me at university  because I couldn't imagine the structure. We never had models to work with.   No one ever told me that sea coral,  lettuce,  even delicious CURLY KALE  are all simple hyperbolic structures. Natural objects often need to maximise their surface area so they can take in sunlight and nutrients efficiently.

Now the great thing is in 1997 a  mathematician decided she wanted to learn more about hyperbolic structures so she could teach the subject better. Many of the students were also having problems getting their heads round the subject, so she decided to crochet herself some!  She took the geometry world by storm. No one had ever thought of this simple solution before. (I suppose not many mathematic professors crochet in their free time.)   She is my hero  and I might begin to crochet my own structures soon.    I might finally be able to understand something that I never thought I would. 

What a book!  Thank you Alex Bellos for writing this. You have inspired me and reminded me why, underneath it all, I still am completely in love with and in awe of maths.   Right , I'm off to find my crochet  hook.

http://crochetcoralreef.org/contributors/daina_taimina.php

http://theiff.org/press/NYTcrochet.html

http://crochetcoralreef.org/Content/makeyourown/IFF-CrochetReef-HowToHandout.pdf

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Thanks Helen Corbett for recommending this to me.  I ordered it from the library and have devoured it in less than a week.  What fun it was and it's put me in a really good mood. (Two fun and mental books in a row!) This book had to be read in print format because it was full of the most weird and bizarre old photos, which had been lovingly collected and cared for by the author and others.

They are really odd and freaky pictures which the author uses to add atmosphere and a cinematic edge to his completely bonkers story.  The pictures themselves are totally bizarre but make complete sense when you enter into the kind of X-men world off this unknown (made up?) island off the coast of Wales.

The American teenage hero witnesses the murder of his Grandad and vows to travel to the Children's home on a far flung Welsh Island to find out the history and reason behind his Grandad's interesting life and violent death.

This book is American, and the first part is set in Florida, I loved the descriptions of life on a housing estate for a teenager in downtown Miami. I especially liked his descriptions of the multi ethnic  Santas on his neighbours roof! 

The jump to village life in Wales is  a really off the wall shift but it works.  I loved it. I  haven't whipped through a book so quickly in ages! It is written for a teenage audience but even so parts of it are pretty grim.  You do need a strong stomach.  (Especially when you see the kid in action whose specific peculiarity is bringing dead people back to life by inserting fresh cow and sheep hearts into their cadavers! ) Parts of it reminded me of an American Werewolf in London, other bits were X-men, other bits a bit Enid Blyton'! . But the story itself was really inventive and based around a  24 hour time loop stuck on 3rd September 1940, which is accessible from the back of a cave on this weird Welsh Island. All of the kids are safely cocooned within this time loop, lovely reset every evening by Miss Peregrine, who is a woman who can change to a peregrine falcon. 

I loved this guy's writing style.  It was really good fun and totally and absolutely off the wall! OK , it's written for teenagers but hey, no worries that's what I still am at heart and it instantly took me back to the feeling I got when I sucked up books like a hoover when I was 13.

Nights at the Circus

Oh my God, what a ridiculous, bonkers, clever, funny, wonderful book.  YES, I loved it and it's definitely my book of the year so far. Angela Carter writes like a maniac on psychedelic drugs and often just reading her sentences is like tripping out in a linguistic circus.   But hey, I liked that and it didn't bother me that sometimes I didn't understand everything.   In fact the end is so crazy I don't think you are meant to understand it!
Reading this was great fun.  the characters are amazing and their adventures are outrageous.
A woman called  Fevvers  (feathers in cockney) tells a young American journalist about how she ended up being the greatest aerialist at the end of the 19th century.  She was born with wings, abandoned andbought up in a brothel, after this she was sold to a museum of curiosities run by a hideous skeletal woman. She finally ends up joining the circus and despite being more than 6 foot tall  and massive (with wings)  she becomes the sensation of the moment.
The journalist wants to get to the bottom of how she has 'conned' the nation but instead he ends up falling for her charms and becomes besotted with her.
Her circus is planning a tour across, Siberia and into Japan so the journalist gets a position incognito as a rather crap clown.  He secretly writes newspaper articles and lives in poverty with the other clowns and some peasants whilst Fevvers lives the high life in five star hotels. The book is full of totally crazy characters: Educated apes who can write and draw up plans of their evening shows. (They are also desperate to gain their freedom from the circus.)   A psychic pig  from Texas who can predict the future.  A mad Count who wants to entrap Fevvers and force her to live as a toy in his mansion. An evil female prison warden who has the most cruel and vile prison for female murderers ever imagined. Shamens and outlaws from the depths of Siberia, Italian suffragettes and of course manically depressed clowns.

I know that Angela Carter studied English for years and years  and was HUGELY 'clever' and 'literary' and that there are lots of supposed messages in this book but to be honest I didn't really get it on that level and read it as an enjoyable mad story.  The only bit that did confuse me was the end...but hey, maybe when I read it again I'll understand it!

What I loved the most about this book is her openness about human characters. She's harsh on both sexes and is honest about how good and also how cruel humans can be to each other. I got a great sense of how much she must have enjoyed writing this book.  It was a bit like reading an improved version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Mister Pip

I finished this a few days ago and I've been a bit stumped about what to write...here goes!
    It's set on an Island called Bougainville.  (I found out it's a real place, an Island in Papua New Guinea...near Australia.)  It's told from the point of view of a 14 year old girl, who's living through a terrible civil war in the 1990s.  As a reader we never really get to know what the war is about. The only white guy on the Island ends up being the village teacher and reading them Dicken's Great Expectations.  This book takes the kids away and opens up their imaginations and they all suddenly realise about the power of dreams.  I'm glad I have read Great Expectations, otherwise this book would have been a real chore.At first the book is quite dream like, almost fluffy in its style  with lots of descriptions of people staring into space and thinking a lot....I wouldn't have minded all this staring and thinking  if the author had given the reader a  slight indication of what the HELL they all were thinking about and staring at.  I just don't think the author was able to successfully get into the character of being a 14 year old girl because when the tone changed and the  extreme violence kicked in, it all just left me cold really. I didn't really care because not one of the characters seemed real to me at all. This Lloyd Jones guy  might have transported his main character successfully into the grimy world of Dicken's England but he totally failed in taking me to the tropical island of Bougainville.
It's a shame really because I really wanted to like this book. The idea behind the story was great but I just think this writer was  trying too hard to be all 'intellectual' and 'write clever stuff' and failed miserably. Terrible things happening to characters in books only work if they are people that you believe in and this was a sham.  To be honest I'm quite angry that the violence left me feeling just slightly sick.
The best thing about this book was the rather beautiful cover.

The Fast Diet

I read this this evening. It took me one sitting to digest this and yes, I was fascinated.  I'm also bloody starving as I have started this 5:2 diet today.  I'm not into diets at all but yesterday I ate enough for 4 people so even if I don't continue the famine at least I have slightly readdressed the balance.

This book was a sane, logical argument in favour of restricting calorie intake (500 for women) on two days a week. The other 5 you can eat what you want to. It sounds easy.  I'm sure it isn't. But the  benefits seem immense according to the book.  I'm not sure about the benefits in reality! Today I have had 2 weetabix, 1 tea with milk, a miso soup and a salad and lots of herbal tea. I have been teaching  teenagers and this afternoon I was climbing around cleaning all the classroom white boards.  I feel BLOODY STARVING AND KNACKERED!  I have decided to come to bed early for a change and hopefully fall asleep soon. I really want some wine to knock me out.  Luckily I don't have any.

It.ll be worth it though because if I keep this diet up I might live to be 140 years old with no dementia. Now,that will be fun! Being so old and remembering with perfect clarity all the days I spent eating BUGGER ALL.  can't wait!  Night...

Lionhearts:Saladin and Richard I

Got this from the library and it's taken me a while to get through it but I surprisingly really enjoyed it. It was a bit like reading A Game of Thrones set  in the 1190s but without the  dragons or any women. 

(I googled  'life of women in the 12th century' and got nothing much apart from poor women got up at 3am, fed the family and the chickens, worked on the land, made candles out of animal fat and died at around  age 35!)  Life really was so grim on this Earth that the symbolic heavenly paradise of Jerusalem was political and religious gold for the people who controlled it.  

The book kicks of with the life of Saladin.  A man of culture and learning who was able to unite most Muslims from Egypt to Iraq and organise an  attack on the foreign invader expansion in his lands. He also had the respect of the local Syrian Christians who liked his fair minded and pragmatic approach to life. He begins the conquest by killing off the evil corrupt Christian knights who control the trade routes. This took me back to his adventures in Karak and  Shobak castles in Jordan. He then had an amazing victory at Hattin where he killed off thousands of Christians by simply blocking off their access to fresh water. Genius.

Richard I , King of England, (who much preferred living in France to the grim lands of England.) heard about the advances of this mighty leader and he decided it was time to reclaim the Holy Land back. 

 Richard I comes across as a great warrior and logistics manager but someone who could also behave like a 5 year old whenever he wanted to.  He was good with money and spent the cash that he gained /stole/bribed through his travels through France, Italy and Cyprus really well .Even though most 'Christians' in Europe were at war with each other, he managed to get everyone behind the greater cause of regaining the holy land back off the Muslims. Richard I was like a self publishing brand.  I see him as a Simon Cowell/Mountbatten character.Weird but true.

Richard's travels across Europe are a joke. Every leader hates him, but he has money, vision and strategy plus he's canny enough to treat his soldiers well.  I love the way he gets his 'Iron Army' of thousands down the cost from Acre to Jaffa. He organises  the boats with supplies. He has the guys on their days off safely walking on the beach completely exhausted carrying  all the equipment. The knights are protected by the longbow men , foot soldiers  and the highly organised Hospitallers and Templars at the rear. It's a perfect example of team work but  the irony was that  Muslim attack was less of a worry than the tarantulas, mosquitos, thirst and  heat. 

Reading this  makes you aware of the long standing political  and emotional reasons behind the tensions in the middle East.  What I didn' trealise was how strongly  Europeans hated each other.  After his experiences in the Middle East Richard decided it was finally time to travel home to sort out problems back  in England.  Unfortunately Richard suffered from extreme sea sickness, so travelled back by land. This resulted in him being locked up in a German jail for 4 more years.  Bad luck!  That guy sure would have a few tales to tell!

The One Hundred Year Old Man who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared

Right, I've finished it!  That was a big thick book and to be honest I'm glad it's over.  By the end I had had enough and had lost interest in the characters but the first half of the book was EXCELLENT.  I loved the story with the suitcase and the criminals  and the hard drinking in the forest and the elephant and the hot dog seller. If this book were shorter it would have been fabulous but to be honest I just lost the will to live by the end and even now 12 hours later I'm beginning to forget what the story was about!
In fact I don't really know what this book was about. It was just whimsical, fluffy stuff which went no where.  A bit like a written version of Forest Gump.  I sound harsh because parts of it were funny but to be honest not funny enough...maybe Swedish humour is just lost on me.
I feel happy that its finished and I can move onto something else. I hate it when a book starts really well and then just goes downhill. I'm left reading hoping that it will pick up again.  Unfortuately this book didn't, it just run out of steam!

What a Carve Up

What can I say about this book.  Firstly, it's meant to be a satire on the excesses of 1980s Britain.  OK, but satires are meant to be funny and this was not funny at all...it was depressing really and took itself far too seriously.  I wanted to like it but I didn't.  I think Coe was trying to be far too clever and there was just too much in this book and I got overloaded. It was just too pompous for it's own good and every character was either depressed, mad, physically sick or an arsehole.

Parts of it were interesting though especially the chapters on the hideous Winshaw family:

The meanest, greediest, cruellest bunch of back-stabbing, penny-pinching bastards who ever crawled across the face of the Earth.   Between them they represent all of the ills of British society and to be honest Jonathan Coe surpassed himself here!

• One brother was busy carving up the NHS and turning it  into a profit-making business.(Most of this section has come true now.)
• One sister was a hack who would write drivel and lies about anybody in her paper ( amazing foresight considering the fall out of the British Press.)
• One brother was a banker (Again it was uncanny reading about the initial seeds behind the economic crash, which were planted in the 80s;  .)
• Another sister was an intensive animal farmer. (The secrets of her farming success would turn the stomach of even hardened carnivores! Again, still  poignant today what with all these horses around!) 
• One brother was an arms dealer and a total crook. The section on selling arms to Saddam was pretty good actually.
• Another brother was a film producer who was a total pervert. (Shades of Savile here.)
• Another was an art dealer who knew sod all about art and didn't really care as long as he made a huge profit.

Yes, a lovely genetic pool here.
I think if you are the kind of person who likes being depressed and feeling totally helpless in this shitty world than this is the book for you. In fact even Coe must have got bored of writing  this depressing book because the end is just a cop out.  He'd had enough and just gave up!! Wish I had.

The Talented Mr. Ripley

Wow, what a great and entertaining book.  I loved it and I want to know more about Patricia Highsmith.
 I can't believe she wrote this book in 1955.  It seemed so modern, stylish and fresh and really tense.  I read it on the train up and back from, Newcastle.  Visiting my good mate Nicky put an extra macabre twist on the whole event because I weirdly imagined  how I could bash  Nicky around the head  and get away with  her murder.  (Sorry, no offence Nicky, if you read this. It just proves how much this book got into my head!)  
At first I found it hard to get the actors from the film, Jude Law and Matt Damon, out of my head.  In fact Jude Law was well cast as the fun loving, dippy and rich Dickie but Matt Damon was just too good looking and clean cut.  Mr Ripley is a nobody, a faceless grey person who has no confidence until he takes on the personality and identity of the only guy he liked and killed, Dickie.  Ripley hates himself until he is in character.  He is a loathsome man really but Highsmith is amazing and twists the book so that you are behind Ripley all the way and just want him to get away with the murder. Also the repressed homosexual edge of Ripley's personality is  expressed in a really clever and totally repressed way!
This book was a  real page turner and so, so twisted. The manipulation and games played by Ripley are ridiculous but it works because you really believe it could have happened. He is so organised in his deception  and you, as the reader, become so involved in his plan that yes, in the end it is like you have become Ripley yourself.  When he makes mistakes you think...NO! NO! RIPLEY THE GAME IS OVER. It's a stressful and claustrophobic read but ultimately totally enjoyable.  Great!






 

A Game of Thrones

Yes, I was hooked onto this book within a few chapters.  I hadn't watched anything on the TV, so I didn't know anything about this series and I really enjoyed it.  My inner JRR Tolkien geek was really happy with this book whereas another part of me was horrified by how violent, gratuitous and degrading the storyline was. The author is obviously obsessed by histories and wars of the Middle Ages but hey, it worked.
As complete escapism it was brilliant. I loved the dwarf, Jon Snow, the dragon Princess, the completely imagined world with all the different families, the ice wall in the North, the zombies, the Dothkari with their voodoo magic, the outdoor prisons on the top of precipices, the direwolves, the tree face worshippers and  the evil characters.  The only problem I had was with the maps, which are hard to access on a kindle and also how much I have left to read.  This thick booked adventure is just 1/7 of the total. That's a huge investment of my time!

Music and Silence

I loved this book and read it really slowly.  It was like dark chocolate, a little goes a long way.  The story was  set in the King's court of Copenhagen in the 17th century and I  felt like I was there living amongst these characters. Denmark at this time was a cold remote place where people lived a life believing in myths and fantasies and I really felt the power of these in this book.  It was like Hans Christian Anderson for adults.
 The main character, who played the lute for the King, was British, handsome, talented, kind and in love with the Danish maid servant to the evil queen.  The king was highly educated and kind but naive and as ugly as a toad, and the women in it were mostly complete monsters. The King's mother hoarded up all her wealth and would do anything to hide it from her poor son. The way she hides her money and gold is hilarious.  His wife was a beautiful, intelligent, yet selfish bitch who was having an affair with a Lord and constantly getting drunk out of complete boredom. And there were other witches who held power through their cooking abilities, their sex drives or just through their desire to  just better themselves.
This book seemed more like a well written fairy story than anything too serious.  It had moments of complete bonkers madness in it and others of complete poetry. It was a book of absolute opposites:  Music and silence, love and hate, black and white, beauty and ugliness, modern thinking and belief in myths, funny and serious.
 Yes, it was great and to be honest I would quite happily read it all again! Rose Tremain writes like a dream. Thanks again Freia for the recommendation.  It's taken me about 4 months to get round to writing a review...but I haven't forgotten this book. Probably the best read of the year. (No, equal first with The Lacuna!)