Emma and Rebecca

I've been really busy at work and exhausted at home recently so have not been able to write the blog. But now that I have read a couple more books (well, nearly finished Emma) I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone.

Rebecca is a mystery novel by Daphne du Marier and tells the story of a young woman who falls in love with an older widower, marries him and then has to live with the constant comparison people make between her and the late wife, Rebecca. The main character is also the nameless narrator and we learn how she feels inferior in the huge country home of her new husband as she meets a series of his relatives and friends and has to deal with the servants.

She slowly learns about the tragic circumstances of Rebecca's death and the effect it had on her husband but there's a twist in the tale that allows the narrator to see her new life in a different light.

I couldn't put the book down.

Emma, on the other hand, written by Jane Austen in the 19th century has been a struggle from the start. I greatly enjoyed Pride and Prejudice but this one has had me easily distracted by other thoughts and issues at work. The language is very flowery as you would expect from Austen and she continues to use 20 words where 3 would suffice but that was the case with the first of her novels that I wrote so I'm not quite sure why this one has been such a tall order. In fact, I've been allowed to be so distracted by other things that I've had to read several passages twice and still couldn't write a proper review if I was paid. I'm nearly done now and about to start Catch-22 so let's hope I can get through the last couple of chapters quickly.

1984

George Orwell's classic tale of a futuristic society (futuristic in terms of 1940's when the novel was written) in which the population is strictly controlled by the dictatorship called Big Brother. Orwell paints a picture of a hellish existence where your thoughts are policed by the Thought Police, every member of the ruling "party" are monitored by a screen that is placed in every home and place of work and no one is permitted to enjoy themselves, build loving relationships or relax.

The main protagonist is Winston Smith, a low ranking party member who works in a government department that is responsible for changing history to suite the whims of Big Brother. If an estimate for manufacturing is published one week, when the actual output is published and differs from the estimate, the estimate is changed so that word of Big Brother is always seen to be right.

The story is based in a futuristic London in 1984. London is part of a new country called Oceana and is constantly at war with one of the other two global societies: Eurasia or Eastasia. The opposition and allies change frequently and on each occasion the history books have to be changed so that the current enemy has always been that enemy.

Despite the aim of this society being to create an equal society there is still a clear class system in place with the inner circle of the Party acting as the upper classes, the rest of of the party acting as the Middle classes and the "proles" the working classes that are largely left to their own devises unless they display problematic differences with the Party.

Opposition to the party is clamped down on immediately with the guilty arrested, tortured and executed. Their existence is always wiped out as if they never were.

The atmosphere is very oppressive throughout the novel as Winston struggles with his dreams, his vague memories of his childhood in which his parents and sister disappeared, his issues with the party and a relationship with a fellow Party member called Julia.

The end of the novel is predictable and painful to read but I found I was able to read the novel in a couple of days. A definite recommendation.

Dune

I'm not usually a huge fan of sci-fi novels but this one was OK. It took me a long time to finish it due to the fictional place names and people but once you got through that the story was quite entertaining but it's a little complicated.

It revolves around a aristocratic family and their community who move from their home planet to a sandy planet at the behest of the Emporer. This planet is the soul home of the spice Melange and the people that control the planet control the spice production.

The son of this noble family is some prophicised saviour of the native inhabitants of the planet and the final half of the story tells the tale of how he passes a number of tests to claim his place as the head of the population.

I can image that George Lucas used this story as inspiration for the Star Wars movies with it's stories of the "chosen one", trade rights and intergalactic wars. There's a series of these novels but I think I will leave them unread. Too many other literary classics to get through.

iPad and eBooks

I'm not sure I get the point of the new iPad from Apple. Someone at work bought one as soon as they were released and brought it into the office. Yes, they look cool and the fact you have one could be considered by those that know no better as cool, but what are they actually for?

Our two kids have recently bought an iPod Touch each; an iPod with a big touch screen that allows you to listen to music, watch movies, play games, download lots of meaningful and meaningless apps and a host of other tools. My iPod Classic allows me to take a large percentage of my music collection in the car and when I am travelling and play one game; solitaire. If I want to play games, look on the internet, watch movies and all that other electronic business, I have my laptop. A laptop can perform so many more tasks than an iPod/iPad so why is the iPad attracting so much attention?

My attraction to my iPod is that I can take over 1000 albums with me in the car in a wee box. I don't have over a thousand albums on it yet but I'm getting there (600 or so at the last count) and that's it. The new iPod Touch or the Ipad don't have the memory to hold that many albums so they are less about the music now and more about the other tools and , in particular, the games. The iPad is just a larger version of that but with the same limited memory and a limited memory that forces the music to compete for memory space with the apps and photos and movies that you can download for it.

So the iPod is no longer about the music but a myriad of other applications...and games.

There is one application, however, that would attract me to the iPad, but I'd still need my iPod for the music. The attractive feature is the ability to download and read books. I suspect you can already do that on a laptop but mine seems to take an age to boot up these days and it's for work anyway. The iPad is smaller than the typical laptop and starts a lot faster than one too, so you can turn it on and off as fast as you open and close a book.

What does this all mean about the future publication of printed books? From a number of articles that I have read recently it would appear that the sale of ebooks has exploded recently with the release of the Amazon's Kindle and other ebook readers but still runs short of the sale of traditional printed books. Unless you are Amazon where they recently announced that the sale of ebooks had overtaken the sale of printed books. For every 100 printed books they sold, they sold 180 ebooks. It sounds like a lot of this has to do with the price of the ebooks incomparison to their printed cousins and the convenience.

One interesting point I read this morning is that 54% of printed books that are sold are romance novels. Who is buying that stuff? Perhaps th same people that put Mariah Carey in the top 10 biggest selling artists of all time. I digress.

And think about the environmental improvements with ebooks. There is no paper manufacturing involved so no trees are killed and you don't have to drive into town to visit the book shop, you simply make your search on the web.

It's also an improvement, in some ways, for the writers. Many ebooks are self published and sold at under $10, making them more accessable to the public. Traditional books stores that have limited space to store their books often carry only the best sellers so it's more difficult to get into the published world if you are a first time writer.

I have to admit that I am somewhat attracted to the idea of ebooks, their portablility and their lower costs. It doesn't really matter to me how I read the words. There's no difference to me whether it's on a screen or a piece of paper. On the other hand I love visiting books shops and wandering through their many titles, whether I am planning to buy them or not. In fact next week, Tracey and I are visiting Portland where they claim to have the world's largest book store, Powells. That experience would be lost if ebooks took over.

One article I read talked about the traditions of books being lost on the next generations in the same way that music has with iPods. With music, kids no longer pour over album covers and invest time and effort in purchasing their records or CDs, they simply download one song at a time, losing the experience of listening to an entire album from song one to the last, but that's the topic of another blog.

I don't have the same issue with books because you can't download and read the odd chapter from one book and another chapter from a different book because you miss the whole point.

So if I was going to buy an iPad then it would be for the books...but then I'd have all those other apps and games to distract me. Perhaps not.

Captain Corelli

I have just finished Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres. Written in 1993 it tells the story of a number of characters on the Island of Cephallonia during the second world war and during the occupation of the island by German and Italian troops.

The story focuses on the daughter of the local doctor, Dr Iannis, who is forced to take in an Italian officer during the occupation. The daughter, Pelagia is betrothed to a local fisherman called Mandras who leaves the island to fight the Germans. Mandras returns from the war as a tramp having had to suffer the winter in the mountains of Greece and then leaves again to fight with a communist group leaving Pelagia to the charms of the Italian.

Her relationship with her gentlemanly oppressor starts badly as Pelagia tries to maintain an atmosphere of loathing but quickly changes to love.

As the war leads to a conclusion the island is witness to the type of brutality that you would expect from the Germans and Pelagia thinks that her lover has been killed and lives the rest of her life wondering what could have been.

It's a tragic love story with some twists and turns along the way and describes how war can affect an entire community and the love between two humans who just happen to be on the opposite side of the war's fence.

It was a great book but took me a lot longer to read than I had expected. It was a little slow to start and really only picked up towards the end but is, nevertheless, very well written and worth a read.

Those Damned Horns

I have been watching the World Cup like most of you. I'm not sure if it's been a particularly spectacular affair. The Argentinians and Germans have played some of the most exciting games in the competition but both failed to get through to the final. Brazil had a great start but fell before the last 4 and Spain, favoured by many, including myself, to win started badly and then dominated everyone without scoring very many goals. Having 60% - 70% of the possession is one thing but you have to convert that into goals. Switzerland managed to sneak a goal passed them in the first round and The Netherlands are a far better team with a few capable of scoring so the game should be a great one, but you never know. They may cancel each other out as the

fellas from Portugal and Brazil did and then we will be presented with 90 minutes or more of turgid football.

I have selected Spain to win tomorrow and need it for the pool that we entered in the office. The annoying thing is that we have a few Canadians who know nothing about the game who went on line and copied the predictions of various websites and tried to pass them off as there own and they are now winning. Some of them actually have Holland and Spain in the final where the more experienced among us had a Brasil / Spain final. Those damned hockey fans. I'll never live it down if I'm not near the top of the winners.

Let's hope for a great game tomorrow and one without those bloody horns. From the first game I saw they've spoiled every game and turned the beautiful game into the incredibly annoying game. It's like listening to a hornets nest for 90 minutes. I just hope that the fans from the domestic teams from around Europe don't adopt them. They should be banned forever.

Mark E Smith Interview

No, not one I did. This is one that is linked through The Fall's website:

http://thequietus.com/articles/04568-mark-e-smith-of-the-fall-on-art-the-artist

Enjoy