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I’ve been struggling to finish books for ages now, so I think I quite literally have a dozen books I’ve made inroads into and then abandoned, I don’t know what it is when you only seem to be sustained by that first foray into a new book, but I’d love to know what to do about it.
Anyway.
Covering old ground, I acquired and read Firelord, Earthlord and Windlord, by Michael Scott, featuring our favourite sadistic children’s character Padeur the Bard (see a few pages back). And, quite simply, they’re not as good; Padeur plays a marginal role next to two distressingly dull “real world” point of identification characters, and the whole thing’s pitched at a much younger audience than the Tales of the Bard books. Some interesting (and somewhat contradictory) background material to the other series, but basically: don’t bother.
Don’t know if this has made it anywhere else, but another quick read was the translation by Matthew Fitt of Dahl’s The Twits into Scots. And it’s simply fantastic! Here’s a quick quote from The Eejits to give an example:
As ye ken, an ordinary unhairy coupon like yours or mines jist gits a bit stoorie if we dinna wash it, and there’s naethin wrang wi a wee bit o stoor.
But a hairy-bairdie’s face is a different story awthegither. Things hing ontae the hairs. Things like broon bree get richt in amang the hairs and bide there. We can dicht oor sleekit faces wi a cloot and we look mair or less awricht again, but the hairy-birdie mannie cannae.
If we caw canny, we can eat oor meals wioot getting scran aw ower oor coupons. But no the hairy-birdie mannie. Keek close in next time ye see a hairy mannie eatin his denner and ye’ll notice that even if he opens his mooth aw the wey, he cannae for the life o him get a spoonful o potted heid or cream crowdie or chocolate jibble intae it wioot skiddlin some o it on the hairs.
Braw! As my auld Auntie would say.
Continuing with the kids’ books, I made it to the end of A Series of Unfortunate Events which deserves at least some remarks. Fittingly enough, The End is all about the absence of finality and true endings in life, and continues the wordplay and formulaic genius of the previous volumes. While in places it almost inevitably seems to dawdle, he brings it home eventually, and while I don’t know that there’s that much to actually discuss about the books (any other Snicket fans still out there – worth bumping the old thread now that the series is over?) I still thought it was an enjoyable slice of alternative kid lit.
I also eventually made it to the end of King’s The Dark Tower. Not as interesting as the last two “new books”, either his inspiration or my motivation was flagging, most of the ideas were already in play and slouched towards their resolution, and most of the new ones were so swiftly introduced and despatched that they didn’t convey and sense of weight. Quite liked the ending though. Patchy, but not an awful conclusion to an intriguing series in the end.
Last and least, an “epic fantasy” first novel exploring Gnosticism by a well-known critic – I thought that would be right up my street. Nope. Harold Bloom’s The Flight to Lucifer: A Gnostic Fantasy was simply dreadful, easily one of the worst and most unreadable books that’s passed through my hands. Bloom, whatever one thinks of his literary theories or character, cannot write narrative fiction for Gnostic toffee, and this book was an utter failure from first to last at expounding upon Gnostic philosophy or in any way being a successful example of dramatic fiction, and far too wrapped up in pseudo-meaningful symbolic happenings and its own wearisome self-importance. |
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