The Quatermass Book Reading Marathon Blog: Taking the Fifth

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Book 10...

REVIEW: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen


It had to happen, sooner or later. When I began these book-reading blogs, it was done in an attempt to have me try and expand my horizons. However, I never intended to go so far as to actually read Jane Austen, and yet, there is something perversely inevitable about it. My mother is an unashamed enjoyer of Austen, having in her possession the books and various adaptations, and so I have easy access to them. So I decided, on a whim, to try out the most famous of Austen's works, Pride and Prejudice.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. And the Bennets have an abundance of potential candidates. Five sisters, who will not be able to inherit their father's money, are vying for the attentions of various gentlemen in Meryton, Hertfordshire. While the good natured Mr Bingley embarks on a relationship with Jane Bennet, her younger sister, the intelligent and perceptive Elizabeth, finds herself insulted by the aloof and condescending Fitzwilliam Darcy. More suitors arrive, such as dry and self-mportant clergyman (and cousin to the Bennets) Mr Collins, and the agreeable militaman George Wickham, who tells Elizabeth more dark tales about Mr Darcy. But Darcy has more to him than meets the eye, and Elizabeth learns that pride and prejudice can often be major impediments to Darcy and herself alike...

I'll make it perfectly clear: I'm not a fan of romance novels. And quite frankly, I love mocking Austen, and Pride and Prejudice in particular, even though most of my acquaintance is through the famous 1995 TV adaptation. I am also not a fan of novels written before the 20th Century, if only because of the different terms used in the language, and the formality. The writing by today's standards is a little on the dry side, and many of the concepts that Austen's audience would have been familiar with (like the inheritance laws and how they treated female relatives) are irrelevant today.

And yet, there is surprisingly much to commend Pride and Prejudice, if only one would look it over. It is very soap-opera-ish, with relationships and romance and the lack thereof being prime concerns. But it is also an illustration of how love is never easy. This is very much the journey of both Mr Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet as they try to reconcile faults in each other and in themselves. That love prevails in their relationship, as well as that of Mr Bingley and Jane Bennet, is amazing, although things don't fare so well with Elizabeth's friend, who marries Mr Collins to avoid becoming a burden on the family, or Lydia Bennet foolishly eloping with the odious Mr Wickham. Not strong satire as, say, Dickens (who wrote later in any case), but there is some inescapable commentary on the inequities of society when it comes to romance. And as the title itself proclaims, pride and prejudice play a large role in the proceedings, and it is particularly evident in the characters.

Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy are the codifiers, if not quite the originators, of a relationship that develops from a mutual loathing. The worthy inheritors of Beatrice and Benedick, they are both intelligent people struggling against society's perceptions of them, and it is the fact that they both have faults and fine features about them that endear them to me. The other characters range from the well-rounded (Mr Bennet, Mr Bingley, Charlotte Lucas), to the obnoxious (Mr Wickham, Mr Collins, Lady Catherine) to the frankly bloody annoying (Mrs Bennet is particularly guilty of this, though Lydia Bennet deserves especial scorn for her idiocy and unthinking malice). Some characters hit the mark, others fall flat or annoy the hell out of me. But Austen is a master at getting them to act according to the storyline, even if some seem to be somewhat like a caricature.

Pride and Prejudice, then, while it doesn't rank very highly with me, is nonetheless something someone who wants to sample some classic literature should do. Believe it or not, there are worse things that getting lost in Austen. It could be worse. You could read Twilight.


8.5/10


First words: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

Last words: (Not revealed due to spoilers)

^I was waiting for your review of this. I've never read it myself. I don't care much for romance novels either. But I will probably read it now after reading your review.

Bit of advice: it will help if you have read a book from that era beforehand, like a Dickens novel. And Mrs Bennet is the most singularly annoying character in that book.

Also, keep in mind that there's a lot of difference between our attitudes and the attitudes of Austen's day. And Austen did go for some mild satire of romance stories of the day, too.

It's not for everyone. It is most definitely chick-lit. But if you want to make the effort, it may surprise you. That being said, I am not guaranteeing that it will entertain you.

Okay, Thank you Quatermass. I appreciate any and all of you advise.

The next book will be The Man Who Created the Daleks: The Strange Worlds of Terry Nation, followed by Stehen King's It.

I don't have anything to add about any specific book here, just about this topic generally. I actually considered doing a "book a week" topic in addition to my "movie a day" topic, but it would be absolutely impossible for me to do this like you do. It's amazing that I manage to get through a movie in a day, seeing as I usually watch it in segments and keep stopping and starting. With books, I've always got about half a dozen of them going at the same time, and though I'm reading continuously, it's not uncommon for it to take me over a month to get through a single book.

</pointless observation>

That's part of the reason I throw a graphic novel or manga on occasion into the mix, though I can get normal books finished swiftly. I'm a good speedreader, but I can miss some of the subtle stuff at times.

The point is to read a couple at the same time. And choose books carefully. Work on a big one at the same time as a lot of smaller ones.

Keep in mind, too, that all of these books for these book-reading blogs, I haven't read before. Not all the way through, anyway.

Book 11...

REVIEW: The Man Who Invented the Daleks: The Strange Worlds of Terry Nation by Alwin W Turner


Trivial Pursuit has one particularly notorious error, for fans of Doctor Who. The question is, who created that series? The answer, Terry Nation, is incorrect: Sydney Newman is generally acknowledged as the creator of Doctor Who (though it was effectively created by committee more than anything else). Even so, there is a small grain of truth, from a certain point of view. Nation may not have created Doctor Who, but through his creations, the Daleks, he ensured its later success and longevity. He is also responsible for many scripts of various TV shows, as well as creating Survivors and Blake's 7.

The Man Who Invented the Daleks, then, is a biography of Nation, concentrating significantly on his work, not just on Doctor Who, but other shows. We see how he used to work for Tony Hancock, how he worked on The Avengers, The Saint, The Baron, and The Persuaders! And how he created the post-apocalyptic series Survivors, and the dark and morally ambiguous series Blake's 7.

The book is quite informative, though after his childhood, there is little time spent on Nation's personal life once his professional life begins. I have to confess that, after the enjoyably lively prose of the similar Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America, Turner's prose for this book is rather drier and less appealing. However, despite the title, the book does give a somewhat balanced view of his career, managing to avoid focusing solely on the Daleks and looking at his other scripts.

It is also enjoyable reading the parts that talk about the different attitudes to making television between the BBC and independent, commercial TV companies, as well as the evolution of TV in general. It also doesn't hesitate to point out the weaker parts of Nation's stories, a welcomed criticism, as he does have a tendency to reuse a lot of plot points and devices. We also see the failures as well as the triumphs.

Overall, while not as exciting as it could have been, The Man Who Invented the Daleks is nonetheless a solid, relatively enjoyable work, not unlike many of Nation's scripts, ironically enough. Fans of British TV may enjoy this, even if they aren't fans of Doctor Who, The Saint, or Blake's 7.


8.5/10


First words: The 2005 General Election was not one of the great moments in British political history.

Last words: But then, as Nation used to say: 'A good story is a good story.'

That's the thing with me. Movies all go by at 24 frames per second, but everyone has their own reading speed. And as I've mentioned in many other topics on these forums, even when I'm focused intensely on a book, reading is sometimes a nightmare due to whatever undiagnosed learning disorder I have. I consider it a miracle whenever I manage to finish a book in one week. It's usually a short 200-page novella when it happens.



This is another problem. I can only read what's interesting me at that moment, or else I can't focus at all. For example, Sherlock Holmes is one of my special interests. I've got all the original stories, big annotated and illustrated volumes, pastiches written by other authors, and books about Holmes films. And yet, if I tried to read any of it right now, not a word of it would sink into my brain. My interests come in phases, or waves, if you will, and I have to catch whatever wave comes my way.



I admire and envy you, and marvel at your insanity. I thought about setting myself a restriction in the movie a day topic, so that I could only watch movies I had never seen before, but I figured that I would go insane if I couldn't pop in the DVD of Blade Runner or The Thing after I had gotten sick of whatever I had recently been watching. Again, I have to read whatever it is that I want to read, or it's hopeless.

Part of the problem with the Holmes books is that it is written in a very different style to modern day writing. I find it harder to read books written before 1950, and especially before 1900. I still can, but many of the terms are used differently, or else are used differently, period. For example, who the f**k here had heard of 'Michaelmas'? And yet, that particular is mentioned in Dickens (in the first chapter of Bleak House, in fact) and Austen (Pride and Prejudice).

In fact, you think reading Arthur Conan Doyle is hard? Try reading Dickens. Now there's an author who goes off on regular tangents and waffles on.




Keep in mind that there are very few books in this that I read that I don't particularly want to. That's why so many get high scores. But I try to branch out and read things that are famous, but I haven't read. Alice in Wonderland and Wizard of Oz were cases in point. They got low scores partly because they weren't inspiringly written, to me. Maybe it was because they were kids' books, not to mention their age, and Lewis Carroll's wordplay and hidden jokes went over my head. But Alice in Wonderland gave me a headache.

Twilight fared a little better, but it was still mediocre. Not abysmal, it was still readable, but it was mediocre.

But you get some gems, some expected, some not. I didn't expect either Monster or Transmetropolitan to fare so well, not to mention a couple of Doctor Who books that I reviewed, The Ancestor Cell and The Quantum Archangel. I didn't expect either of the last two Harry Potter books to get as high a score as they did, given how much I detested The Order of the Phoenix.

I do read books that I have read before in the interim, but I don't review them, especially considering that once I read something, I usually only read it piecemeal, to get to the good bits.

I don't think Doyle is hard at all. In fact, aside from a lot of outdated words, I find him amazingly modern and far easier to read than most authors of his time. Critics tend to put classic authors up on huge pedestals and consider them Literature with a capital L, but Doyle was writing simple adventures. He was the Stephen King of his day, essentially. (That is, Stephen King before he became super famous and started writing self-indulgent books that really, really need an editor.) Doyle isn't Lovecraft, that's for sure. Reading Lovecraft is like walking through knee-deep mud with someone riding on your shoulders.

As for books and movies that are out of my normal area of interest, I'm more likely to take a chance on a movie than a book, simply because a movie takes about two hours (total) to watch while a book takes me over a week. I'm not really into westerns, but just grabbing a western at random and choosing it as the movie of the day isn't something I can say will never happen. But grabbing a western novel, even one with a good reputation, just isn't likely to happen.

With movies, I'll watch just about any old pile of crap. Worst case scenario, it'll be over in two hours and I can rip it apart when I review it. But knowing that it takes me over a week to get through a book that I'm interested in, and nearly impossible for me to get farther than 50 pages in one that doesn't interest me, I think it was best for me to abandon any thoughts of a book a week topic. Even if I could do it, I would just be reading stuff I've already got on my shelf.

Agreed regarding Lovecraft: he was brilliant at atmosphere and horror, but he was way too wordy and an unrepentant xenophobe.

However, I actually found Mary Shelley, Oscar Wilde, and Bram Stoker easier to read than Doyle, to be frank.



A lot of the stuff I'm reading is on my shelf, or else I can get from the library.

Next review coming soon: Stephen King's It.

Book 12...

REVIEW: It by Stephen King


Stephen King is one of the most prolific authors of our time, that much cannot be denied. Whether he is a literary genius or not is another matter entirely, though I have to admit, both The Stand and The Shining (which I reviewed in an earlier book-reading blog) were excellent books, in my opinion. So, for my next foray into King's work, I decided to try the work that is considered by some to be his masterpiece, It. But would I share this opinion?

Derry is a small town in Maine, supposedly a good place for families to raise their children. But truth be told, it is a town with a dark secret. A very dark secret. Every 27 or 28 years, waves of violence convulse the town, and even then, it still is fairly violent most of the time. Yet the inhabitants don't seem to notice. But in 1958, a group of children called the Losers discover the true force behind the town's darkness: It, a monster who often takes the form of a clown called Pennywise. In 1985, long after they defeated It, the Losers, now adults, are summoned home to destroy It for once and for all. But It won't be destroyed so easily, for it is as much Derry as it is any of the forms it takes to consume its victims. And It has many servants that it intends to use to destroy the Losers, and the Losers may be fighting a battle they cannot win...

While It is a horror story, there is also another layer about how just because a small town seems peaceful, quiet, and wholesome, doesn't mean it is. In fact, one of the main themes is about things not being what they seem. It takes on many appearances, and Derry, while a small town, is also a hotbed of intrigue and apathy in the face of atrocity. It is also a tale of childhood, of innocence lost and how the Losers need to regain their childhoods in order to beat It for the second time. Two timelines, in the 1950s and the 1980s are interwoven, usually successfully, but sometimes not.

The characters are fine, some standing out, others repulsive. Unfortunately, while It itself is an interesting villain, less could be said about the monomaniacal bully Henry Bowers. Of the Losers, we have a stirring pot of various outcasts and their parents, who range from the apathetic to the abusive (like Beverly's father, and Eddie's mother, the latter of whom has Munchausen's by proxy). While they stand out, they seem to be a little too much like caricatures, especially when, as adults, they regain their childhood memories and personas.

It has one major fault amongst a sea of them: King seems too obsessed with grotesquery and things that would disgust you and I. Okay, he is a horror writer, he's supposed to, but the art of a horror writer is to be able to attract the reader at the same time as they are being repulsed. The Shining and The Stand did that well enough. But It seems to go out of its way to squick people out (like what the Losers in 1958 do after they leave the lair of It), or else make them cringe. Tom Rogan, Beverly's abusive husband, and Beverly's father, join Henry Bowers and Patrick Hockstetter in grotesque characters with no redeeming features whatsoever, and Mrs Kaspbrak's Munchausen by proxy abuse is painful to read. This obsession with gross and dark stuff without depth, combined with what I feel is some padding, is what drive the score down for It.

It is not a masterpiece, in my opinion. It is a good book, in the end, but it is not King's best. Still, if you're looking for a substantial horror story, you could do worse.


8.5/10


First words: The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years- if it ever did end- began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.

Last words: (Not recorded due to spoilers)

Book 13...

REVIEW: Enter Wildthyme by Paul Magrs


After the gargantuan effort of finishing Stephen King's It, I decided to go for a lighter book. And how much lighter, then, can I get than a book starring Iris Wildthyme, Paul Magrs' female pseudo-Doctor Who? Having not actually read a book with Wildthyme in it (she makes a number of appearances in the Doctor Who novels by Magrs), this, then was a new experience for me. But how would it turn out?

Simon has been summoned to look after the Darlington bookshop of a friend who has disappeared. But poet Anthony Mervelle seems determined to find something that is now in Simon's possession. So too is the mysterious and flamboyant Iris Wildthyme, an eccentric woman who travels through time and space in a London double-decker bus. She is tracking down those who attacked a charity-shop spaceship in Earth orbit, and she is sure that a mysterious jar in Simon's possession is the key. With sentient stuffed toy Panda and living vending machine Barbra, Iris and Simon must find out what Mervelle and his sentient poodle masters want with the jar. And with Mervelle poisoning Simon's friend Kelly against Iris, time is running out. From the headquarters of alien investigation organisation MIAOW to 19th century France when the Martians invade, all the way to a world where creatures of glass await, the fate of the universe hangs in the balance...

Magrs' style is not unlike Douglas Adams in many regards, a sense of playful fun combined with science fiction. However, there are times when he seems to be trying too hard to make us laugh. The story itself, while nonsensical, does manage to remain entertaining while spoofing many conventions of Doctor Who (MIAOW could very well be a gynocentric UNIT or Torchwood). But either Magrs is planning a sequel, or he's gone around the bend, as the ending comes abruptly and without warning or foreshadowing for a sequel, leaving all sorts of plot-threads hanging. And some of the elements (sentient, malevolent poodles, pinking shears that allow time travel) may seem too bizarre to anyone who hasn't heard anything of Magrs' work (I was helped partly by my reading of synopses of his novels).

Iris Wildthyme is a wonderful creation, frankly. Even outside the actual Whoniverse, she still runs around time and space, having a good time. She is basically a female Doctor with the dial turned up to eleven. And Panda is interesting, a sentient stuffed toy with a mature attitude. But somehow, many of the other characters fall flat, which is a shame, really, as there are some excellent character concepts.

A combination of an abrupt ending, weird and alienating story, and a few flat characters mark Enter Wildthyme down for me. Even so, it isn't really bad. It's got some nice ideas and an interesting story behind the bizarreness. If you like Doctor Who or Douglas Adams, try it.


8/10


First words: The worlds and times visited by the old boiler were unusually fully aware of the fact when the Begins at Home clanked and shuddered into orbit.

Last words: (Not recorded due to spoilers)

The next book will probably be High Rise by JG Ballard, and I am working on the first book in Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series, Wizard's First Rule.

I could read 170 books in one day!

...as long as they were preschool age books.

Nah, but for real, that's a huge array of accomplishments.
You must have so much information in that head.
Mad props to you Quatermass.