Commafruit

Fitting only too perfectly, I read this semi-autobiographical tale while travelling freeing around Europe, albeit by train, and found that the open-mindedness and happy-go-lucky nature of the story had a great influence on me.

The writing style, liquid, almost stream-of-consciousness, and packed with details of people, places, vehicles, journies, works perfectly with the content, and let’s the reader in on the psyche and excitement of travelling across America in this era.
Dean Moriarty, on whom most of the action focuses, is unusual in that although he is dishonest, cheats the author and their friends at every opportunity, and is just a general liability, he is incredibly likable, and in this way maintains the authors loyalty.
The book is also a tantalising look at a time when everything was simpler. People were less expectant, most trusting, less materialistic. The distinction between this and the modern world, in particular modern America, is infuriating.

The same thought came to me after reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, but it’s as relevant here. At school, we read Wuthering Heights, which for this generation and at that age (15-16 years), is an extremely boring, unpleasant novel. Surely if we’d studied one of the two books mentioned above they would ahve inspired less hatred for English literature than Emily Bronte did for so many.

Edit: So apparently Penguin are releasing a new, uncut version to celebrate 50 years, called On The Road: The Original Scroll.

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The back of my copy contains a quote from the New York Times: “you emerge from this marvelous novel as if from a dream”, which for me sums the book up perfectly. The recurring themes, with characters carrying family traits through generations mean the dozens of characters you encounter are not overwhelming.

I know nothing of the history of Columbia, details of which are reportedly encoded within the story,but the book is enjoyable in it’s own right nonetheless.

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This isn’t the book I intended to buy. I went into Waterstone’s to buy a french dictionary, decided I wasn’t ready for one, started browsing the travel writing section, and ended up buying this.

Gorman is evidently prone to ‘adventures’ – before this one he’d been off on a project to find everyone in the world with the same name as him – as he’s distracted from writing a novel by “Googlewhacking”, a fad that swept the Internet a few years ago, helped not a little by this book. A Googlewhack is a two word search on Google which returns only a single web page. Dave Gorman made it his mission to find 10 of these “in a row”, by which he means the next Googlewhack is found by the owner of the web page which produced the last one. Since he is also required to meet these people, Gorman travels all around the globe in his mission, and it’s this which forms most of the interest in the book. The people Dave meets are interesting since they’re all so diverse, yet all (with one exception) have a willingness to find more Googlewhacks for him.

All tied together nicely by the authors witty commentary (I laughed out loud in several places), this is a charming tale of what can happen when you have someone with an unstoppable curiosity, tons of energy, and nothing to stop them…

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Four narrators, all with linked lives, all trying, and largely failing, to achieve something, or even to make sense of the world around them. Coupland manages to tackle tough issues – religion and it’s relevance in the modern world, especially how it relates to the horrors described in the first part of the book; deception; exploitation; faith; and how all these things manage to mingle with more personal issues, such as being part of a family unit or forming relationships. This makes everything seem petty, as if you could view these situations with utter objectivity.

Comparisons with Generation X are inevitable, but I think this book is more affecting, even though is cannot match the atmosphere of the authors debut.

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The first thing to strike me about this novel is that it is so thin, at just over 100 pages, I read it in an afternoon. The story is touching, though the characters are not as life-like as I had been led to believe. Very little happens in the plot, and though some of the descriptions are (deliberately) ambiguous, there is similarly little intrigue. Nonetheless, I found the story engaging due to it’s setting – this is a time of simplicity and innocence which is long lost, especially in it’s American setting. Given that the text was first published in 1958, and Capote’s next work was the 1965 In Cold Blood, which deals with murders committed in 1959, this novel seems to represent the end of the authors innocence, and also mark the end of this gentler time in the world.

The value of the Penguin edition is enhanced somewhat by the inclusion of three short stories (House of Flowers, A Diamond Guitar, and A Christmas Memory), all of which have their merits, and are perhaps even greater examples of literature than the main event, it being little more than a short story itself.

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Although published as three distinct volumes, The Baroque Cycle should really be considered one epic (2500+ page) novel, which has then been split (just to keep you awake) into eight “books”. It is for this reason I am commenting on the series as a whole, rather than attempting to look separately at the three volumes, Quicksilver, The Confusion, and The System Of The World.

The Baroque Cycle is intelligent, heavy going, and compelling. It is based on the history of the period between about 1660-1714, and features (household name) real people from that era as characters. Very often it’s laugh-out-loud funny, and is consistently engaging – the characters (that is to say, the entirely fictional ones), are believable, the plots and situations are atmospheric, but it’s also extremely thought provoking and educational. Anyone with any interest in the history of science, English etymology or politics should seriously consider these books for their educational purpose, let alone the tale contained.
Stephenson brings us great gifts with this release – he is surely among the best writers in the world today.

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I was stunned by this novel. Not sure I’m qualified to comment on it… this book has jumped from me being only vaguely aware of it to being one of my all-time favourites, it’s incredible.

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I picked up this paperback for (I think) 50p, in a pile in a supermarket. I only bought it because the author’s name seemed so familiar – it turns out to be the actress who played Mrs. Doyle in Father Ted^w. I very nearly stopped reading after the first chapter or so (the writing style is really quite jarring), but decided to persevere. There’s nothing particularly wrong with this book, it’s just underwhelming. The story is engaging enough, if somewhat lacking in action, and the characters are well fleshed out (the narrator and protagonist in particular is well realised), but nothing here piques ones emotions or curiosity even slightly.

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A triumph of imagination and imagery – Niven’s depiction of the vast scale of the locations encountered in the story is humbling, the perfect background setting for a far-future space adventure!
I was less thrilled with the human (maybe that’s not an appropriate word, only two of the four lead characters are human – let’s say corporeal) aspects of the story… if once they seemed fantastical, to me they just felt secondary to the yarn itself and to the graphical descriptions.

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