Warren Loveridge

A brief, engaging, and beautifully written biography of Elizabeth. Without space for all the historical detail, Williams focuses keenly on the woman and serves us up an intriguing primer for a vast and fascinating subject.

Every now and then I read a book that completely humbles me. “Mister God This Is Anna” was one such book. This is another.

There is far too much in this book for a simple mind like mine to comprehend. As a straight read it frequently drags like molasses. For this I'd give it two stars. Many of the characters are deeply unlikeable, including at least one, and maybe two, of the brothers Karamazov. For them I'd give it two stars. But The Brothers Karamazov is far greater than any of this superficial stuff. I'm an uneducated lump, so I could only discern it vaguely and remotely. In fact, I had to read Nicholas Berdyaev's “Dostoevsky” to even begin to discern what Dostoevsky was getting at. That book itself was at least 90% over my head, an immensely difficult read, but the 10% I did comprehend shone a light on Dostoevsky and at last I was able to see a little into the vast depths of TBK. After all that, can I say I enjoyed it? Absolutely not. It's a mission to read. It is not light entertainment for a wet weekend. But it might be one of the greatest books I've ever read.

There is a lot of hi-falutin' stuff in here that shot right over the top of my rather lowly intellect, but Forster taught me a great deal as I plugged through to the end, and I will now view and reflect on every novel I read, or ever have read, in different lights and with greatly enhanced clarity. On this alone, I judge this little book a great success.

Not about Caxton at all, but a simple chivalry romance-by-numbers, with Caxton's Westminster workshop providing the factual setting, along with some historical characters; and the War of the Roses the historical background. A tragic ending tempered by a little Christian morality: if your life is miserable, it is only part of God's Great Plan. In the absence of happiness, have faith. Presumably there is some later reward coming for your forbearance...

This is an engaging short biography of Leonardo that I appreciated far more second time around, ten years later. I have to knock a star off though, because what is any book about Leonardo without illustrations?

This is the third Wyndham novel I've read, after The Day Of The Triffids and The Kraken Wakes. By now it seems that, when it came to structuring a novel, Wyndham was a bit of a one trick pony - “the master of the middle-class catastrophe”, I read somewhere. He can come across a bit quaint at times, and I'm sure he'd enrage third wave feminists everywhere. The first-person narrative by a middle-class English everyman who finds himself in the middle of the mystery, the quaint English backdrops full of regulation English character types (employed in bulk by BBC TV murder mysteries, for instance, as well as Wyndham), the preponderance of dialogue over action, the slow burning first half of the novel... you start to feel you're reading the same book over and over. But this all merely obscures the thoughtfulness and intelligence of Wyndham's writing. He projects a truly frightening scenario onto a very mundane backdrop, and compels very ordinary people to deal with it. It is the very trick of his books. I spent much of The Midwich Cuckoos wondering about apparent gaping plot holes (why does nobody bother to ask WHERE the Children came from, WHO begat them?), before Wyndham ratchets it up in the closing chapters and you realise he'd been leaving clues all along. Zellaby, the real protagonist (other than the Children), starts off as an insufferable bore but develops neatly into the novel's thoughtful hero. Wyndham intelligently poses important questions about evolution, hierarchy and dominance. At a certain point you realise he's got under your skin. And that is why, despite its faults, for which I knock off one star, I thoroughly recommend this as the most fully realised and thought-provoking of these three Wyndham novels. I'm now off to find a copy of The Chrysalids.

The biggest problem I had with this book was its entirely humourless tone.

There seem to be as many interpretations of this odd little book as there are readers of it. In it I saw a reflection of my own ongoing journey through the world of literature, history, philosophy and science, guided and accompanied by great characters both created and real; perhaps without the loss of faith and consequent distress experienced by the protagonist/narrator.

In my opinion this particular edition is overburdened by its lengthy, turgid introduction by Timothy Leary, although there are one or two nuggets of interest to be panned from it.

My personal problem with this book, and I accept that this is entirely a matter of opinion, is Krog's tendency to inject far too much of herself into the narrative. The astonishing, horrifying stories that were told at the TRC are more than enough without Krog's introspective personal experiences and perspective woven throughout.

On the other hand, it's Krog's book, and her prerogative. Her own story of her coverage of and reaction to the TRC is deserving in itself, and as an account of how the TRC affected those closely attached to it, I'm sure it is of interest to many. But in reading about the TRC, I wanted Krog to report the news, not be the news. Of all the books written about the TRC, I guess this was the wrong one for me.

If ever I'm asked what my favourite book is, I now have an unequivocal answer. I cannot recall any greater pleasure from reading. This is a six-star masterpiece. I'm incapable of doing it justice in a review. Of course it's not for everybody. One must have patience, one must be prepared to stop and savour this book along the way, pause for thought, digest it, consider it. Joseph and His Brothers challenges the reader, but not in the way that, say, Ulysses does. Joseph and His Brothers is beautiful and erudite. It is a joy. Take the time. Read it.

For me Creation did not live up to its exciting premise. In fact, by the end there had been far too little Creation and far too much recounting of the petty intrigues of a bunch of obscure despots and kings in India and Cathay. There were moments of brilliance, like sparks bursting from the slumbering embers of Vidal's talent, but much of the book dragged, sometimes interminably. Cyrus Spitama barely rose off the paper, nor did any of the remarkable figures Vidal placed before him. The book only sputters into life at the court of Darius, and Atossa was to me the only character to show any depth and vitality. The narrative is loose, the dialogue is pedestrian, and the prose ordinary. Creation is a lost opportunity. It might have been brilliant.

By the time Malone had finished describing his first encounter with the extraordinary, blustering Professor Challenger, there was, in my mind, only one actor to play the part. Brian Blessed! Picture him fresh from the set of The Black Adder, ditching his armour and donning his pith helmet, bellow and malevolent glare intact. Blessed was Challenger for me, throughout the rest of the book. A hearty, king-sized actor for a hearty, king-sized character.



And off we tramp into the vast, unexplored jungles of the Amazon, Professor Brian and his gang of intrepid, unfazed, courageous white men with guns (plenty of them), accompanied by the usual Negro servant of giant proportions and unbreakable loyalty, a couple of swarthy half-breeds nursing evil intent, and a bunch of Indian navvies to carry the provisions. What more does one need in a proper adventure story? Well, action of course, occasioned in this case by a bunch of hungry dinosaurs, and some aggressive anthropoids who are eventually rounded up and pushed off a cliff in the name of human primacy. Yay! The humans won! The course of destiny is corrected, and everybody goes home a hero.

I loved this book, like I loved King Solomon's Mines. It made me proud to be a white man of intrepid colonial descent. However I have to deduct a star, if only because the politically correct and culturally sensitive gender-non-specific global citizen of the 21st century within struggles with the idea that 56 (or however many it was) new species of Lepidoptera are worthy of scientific curiosity; but some rather defensive anthropoids are monsters that must be shot, speared and pushed off a cliff. It's all very Cortes. But I suppose in 1913 the sun still hadn't set on Conan Doyle's British Empire.

I guess it does what it says on the box, however this little book might be the driest hundred-odd pages I've read since giving up on Lawrence James a little while ago. Disraeli and mid-19th Century are intrinsically entwined, but Parry fails to extract the former from an excruciation of Byzantine detail concerning the latter. In just 137 pages, justice is done to neither.

Holy Jesus! Reading this book is like going on an acid trip yourself. Surreal, grotesque, disturbing... and very funny.

I'm not into wizards and dragons at all. Life is too short to read bad books, and I've had some terrible experiences with fantasy fiction, so I'm unlikely to be found in that particular section of the bookshop. However Ursula K. Le Guin is an awesome, towering presence, so A Wizard of Earthsea has been on my list of books to read before I die. I'm glad I made the effort. This is quality stuff. Yeah, there are dragons and wizards, and the Bildungsroman first half drags a bit. But the pace gathers, and soon a work of great imagination is revealed, rising far above the soup of common pulp fantasy in which this world is awash. If anything says anything about A Wizard of Earthsea, it is my new desire to read the rest of the series.

Others have commented on The Ministry of Fear's implausible precept of a cell of Nazi sympathizers hiding a microfilm in a cake. Yeah, nah. But putting that argument aside, what really elevates this book into 5-star territory is the sublime quality of the writing. This is Greene maintaining the incredible momentum he hit with The Power and the Glory and starting to cement himself in the very first rank of English writers, where he remains to this day.

Gorgeously illustrated.

Peter Freestone is a nice man and he has a very interesting tale to tell. I assume that it was David Evans' job to take Peter's material and turn it into an engaging, readable book. In that case, David has let Peter down miserably. The book is very poorly edited, a complete mess in places. There are poorly constructed sentences that need to be read more than once before the intent emerges, contradictory statements, atrocious punctuation... all the stuff that a co-author is employed to sort out.

The editing mess really scrubs the shine off the book, and it's a great shame because Peter Freestone has a unique perspective on a most interesting and beloved man.

An exquisite noire thriller.

Thomas Costain tells a good story, but his writing frequently made me cringe:

“It was hard to believe that anything resembling the unmannerly sound generally described as a snort could issue from a nose as delicately made as Ildico's. But her response to his remark fell most certainly into some such category.”

Ugh. So hardly Robert Graves, then. But I enjoyed it enough to negotiate my way through the clunkers and persist to the end, and I did learn quite a bit about Attila and his career.

Recently reading a short hagiography of Lincoln, my interest in the topic of slavery in America was piqued. Even a 21st century New Zealander, thousands of miles and more than a century and a half removed from the scene can discern the continued relevance of the world-changing events encompassed in this book. I happened upon it during an unplanned visit to the local library, and was compelled to take it home. Of course I would have to do a lot more reading before I could pass comment on Professor Kaplan's themes and conclusions, but I will say that the book was a difficult introduction to the subject.

Telling a story is vital when presenting history to the general reader. He or she needs to able to follow a narrative, and feel a sense of engagement with the individuals and incidents described. My old English teachers were fond of telling us that a story has a beginning, a middle, and an end; and this is where Professor Kaplan fails his readers. The book is a mess (an infodump, as another reviewer here has put it). We are jerked back and forth in time, whilst incidents and individuals loom up suddenly and just as quickly vanish again, some to come back around later, others to never be seen or heard from again. For example, the three-fifths compromise makes several brief appearances before we are treated to even the most skeletal of explanations, and that wasn't enough to prevent me from having to consult the internet. Elsewhere I found myself reading lengthy quotations from Frederick Douglass without being told anything about him. His use of the plural pronoun at one point made me realise abruptly that he must have been black - cue another internet search. Thank goodness for Google and Wikipedia! I spent half my time reading the book, and the other half online trying to catch up with Kaplan's racing, leaping, diving mind. I started to think that I was reading the wrong book, and I needed a better grasp of American history and politics of the period before tackling it, but upon reflection I realised that it wasn't me, it was Kaplan. He has written a very disorganised, wordy and rather exhausting book. In the acknowledgements he thanks a bunch of people including his editors and a bunch of people who read the manuscript, but I'm compelled to conclude that none of them did their job. The fact that other reviewers have pointed out some glaring factual errors reinforces this impression.

It's a great shame. With good editing, and far more thought about narrative flow, Kaplan might have produced a extremely informative and interesting book on a subject whose legacy affects us all to this very day. Instead he has given us a tedious and tiring read. Even the title turns out to be confusing and not true to the scope of the material. I can only say in its favour that, despite the book's major flaws, I saw it through to the end and actually learned a lot. But Kaplan came close to scaring me back under my rock.

John Man writes very good books for the general reader. He can ramble a bit at times, but his research and erudition are exemplary. I judge this book 3.5 stars, but within the 5 star system it is fairer to round up to 4 than down to 3.

This novella reads more like a sketch for a Graham Greene novel than a Graham Greene novel. All the elements are there, but nothing is fleshed out. 140 pages provide barely enough space in which to scratch at the surface of what this book might have been, had it been written by a younger Greene. At the end, so many issues seemed unresolved. What about the Oedipal nature of the relationship between Jones and Anna-Luise? Why did Greene deprive Jones of a hand? It serves only fleetingly as a means of Fischer mocking Jones, and a superfluous source of self-consciousness for Jones when under the circumstances his age and station might have been enough. These and other things are never explored, as I might typically expect of Greene. The characters are hastily pinned together. We are never drawn into the depths of the greed and motivation of the Toads in accepting the humiliations of Fischer. Every now and then a sudden phrase or paragraph that echoes Greene's former power leaps of the page, but for the most part he phones this one in, and I'm left with a great sense of unfulfilment. I had a similar feeling reading “The Human Factor”, his previous novel from two years before, and it starts to strike me that as Greene slipped into great old age, his quality was declining along with his quantity. Greene at his best is beyond my inarticulate ability to praise him. But by his late seventies, whilst still active, he was offering nothing to enlarge and enhance his remarkable canon. Greene is known to be an early hero of John le Carre's, but le Carre states somewhere his disappointment that Greene ended his career with a series of “low energy novellas”. I think he hit the nail bang on the head there.

In the reign of Domitian, Sadoc, a pessimistic and slightly unreliable narrator succumbing slowly to the ravages of disease, chronicles the history of the very first Christians, beginning with the resurrection and ascension of Jesus (which here takes place in 37, shortly before the death of Tiberius) and ending with the destruction of Pompeii in 79.

The enormous scope of this novel is almost Burgess's undoing. We follow the Apostles in their work against a background of the machinations of the Roman Empire, and we are taken into the boudoirs and minds of Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian as they indulge their excesses, and deal with the Nazarene existential threat. If I were to find fault, it would be the occasional jump in the narrative, and odd patches of descriptive thinness that contrast with Burgess's usual rich detail. Together with what seemed to me a rushed ending, this suggests that Burgess might have been constrained by page space and/or time. That the novel was written as preparation for a screenplay (for the television series A.D., also released in 1985) lends weight to this speculation.

A longer novel would have done the story greater justice, and Burgess's extraordinary writing certainly had the power to grip the reader through many more pages than 379. In fact, to descend from his lofty, sparkling prose to a less extraordinary writer is akin to going cold turkey - withdrawal is experienced.

I will not attempt an analysis of the novel. Others do a far better job than me. I can judge neither the themes and conclusions that Burgess explores, nor his choice of fact to blend with his fiction. I judge The Kingdom of the Wicked a success by other criteria. A book such as this is to be savoured and absorbed.