"A classic is a book that everyone wants to have read, and nobody wants to read." - Mark Twain.
Anyone who thinks Americans are irony-impaired needs to discover Mark Twain.* In fact I think it's possible that he stole far more than his fair share of irony, so for every humourless rightwinger we have Twain to blame. I'll be honest with you: this isn't exactly a new release. You could say. It's been out for. . . a while. However, it's available to download for free on the Kindle app, as many classics are, and I've been meaning to read it for a few yonks now.
And you should read it too, because it's utterly brilliant. I'm aware that the title of this blog is Neddy's Awesome Reads, and so far I have failed to describe anything as an awesome read. No longer! Huckleberry Finn is an awesome read. It will also make you think you're floating down the Missippi on a raft, eating cornbread, looking at the moon and listening to the local wildlife. And believe me it's weird the first time that happens. It has fantastic characters, settings, a great plot, it'll make you laugh, it'll make you panic, and it has a really interesting take on society. Which is, of course, the society of working class southern US in the 1840s. So if you're squeamish about the word "nigger" this is not a book for you. Every few years, as I understand it, someone sets up some kind of campaign to do a find and replace in Huckleberry Finn and change each "nigger" to "slave." Which is, of course, entirely missing the point. It's not pretty; it's inexcusable to speak that way now, but it is how people spoke then. Deal with it.
The basic storyline is: Huck is a tearaway boy in his early teens who is being held prisoner by his abusive alcoholic father. He escapes, fakes his own death and sets off down the Mississippi River on a raft. He meets up with a runaway slave called Jim, and they travel together and have various adventures. And here's the interesting (and heavily irony-laden) message of this book: Huck often does the right thing, even as he berates himself for it because he thinks it's wrong because of the society he lives in. What's more, he can do the right thing only because he's a complete outcast from society and has nothing to lose. Unlike, for instance Uncle Tom's Cabin, (itself a good read, and much misunderstood book) in which people are basically either saintly or depraved, and remain so throughout, the characters in Huckleberry Finn are a sticky mess of contradictions, and always only a moment away from realising what an absurd situation they're in.
As I say, it's brilliant. Read it now.
* Or, if they prefer, The Simpsons also works. I like the episode in which whatsherface who wrote the Bridget Jones books explains in very patronising tones about how Americans have no sense of irony and so British humour is far superior. Then suddenly she goes into a Benny Hill fast forward chasing round bushes routine. Utterly beautiful.
Tuesday, 19 April 2011
Thursday, 14 April 2011
The Virus Hunters: Joseph McCormick and Susan Fisher-Hoch
Okay, everyone loves a weird disease that makes people's limbs fall off and blood pour from their eye sockets. Or is that just me? Perhaps it is.
The Virus Hunters deals with a bunch of these kinds of diseases. It was written by the guy who discovered/named the Ebola virus, and has spent most of his career running around chasing viruses and trying to prevent them from spreading and such, in his job for the US Centre for Disease Control. It's co-written by his wife, who is in the same line of work... but to be honest I found her writing style quite annoying for some reason, so I skipped those chapters.
Blood pouring from eye sockets aside, the real story behind this book (which the authors themselves don't even seem to have realised) is the relentless tension between the latest scientific advances which these chaps know, and the way medicine is practised in some of the poorest parts of the world. There's something slightly dismissive about the way McCormick refers to "The white man's medicine" and the awe in which it's held by the diseased masses (the action mostly takes place in various countries in central and western Africa). I know what he means to some extent - the infrastructure isn't there at the front line, there's a lack of trained doctors around (some of these countries don't have a single medical school), and all the time you have some thoroughly nasty diseases doing the rounds. Hospitals are in a dire state.
But it's not "the white man's medicine". It's evidence-based, modern, scientific medicine. When done properly it does a lot of good, but the major problem in the background of these stories seems to be that a little bit of modern medicine is a very dangerous thing. Frankly "traditional" medicines may not do much good (except for the occasional discovery of something that actually works) but they don't tend to do all that much harm either. Once people get the idea that sick people need to have injections, because that's the western thing to do, and there isn't a supply of sterile, disposable needles available... well you can imagine where it goes from there. (I should add that this was published around 1995, so things may have moved on. Hopefully they have. If nothing else, the situation with Aids may have taught people that using the same needles on everyone in the ward isn't a good plan. Hopefully.)
So what's interesting about this book, I think, is that it doesn't seem to be about what the authors think it's about. They present it as sexy science, weird diseases, and a bunch of dead people. What comes across, though, are these cultural tensions. You are very, very conscious that there are double standards. The horror of a member of the CDC squad being accidentally exposed to infection is supposed to chill you to the bone, while all the time Africans are getting sick and dying. I suppose that's the way of the world - aid workers surely eat better than the refugees they're helping, or they wouldn't offer to go out there in the first place. There's no doubt that these CDCers aim to do good, and do save many lives. I think it's the fact that it doesn't get commented on that bothers me. Or perhaps the fact that I wouldn't want to leave the comforts of home to go out there and do it myself.
The Virus Hunters deals with a bunch of these kinds of diseases. It was written by the guy who discovered/named the Ebola virus, and has spent most of his career running around chasing viruses and trying to prevent them from spreading and such, in his job for the US Centre for Disease Control. It's co-written by his wife, who is in the same line of work... but to be honest I found her writing style quite annoying for some reason, so I skipped those chapters.
Blood pouring from eye sockets aside, the real story behind this book (which the authors themselves don't even seem to have realised) is the relentless tension between the latest scientific advances which these chaps know, and the way medicine is practised in some of the poorest parts of the world. There's something slightly dismissive about the way McCormick refers to "The white man's medicine" and the awe in which it's held by the diseased masses (the action mostly takes place in various countries in central and western Africa). I know what he means to some extent - the infrastructure isn't there at the front line, there's a lack of trained doctors around (some of these countries don't have a single medical school), and all the time you have some thoroughly nasty diseases doing the rounds. Hospitals are in a dire state.
But it's not "the white man's medicine". It's evidence-based, modern, scientific medicine. When done properly it does a lot of good, but the major problem in the background of these stories seems to be that a little bit of modern medicine is a very dangerous thing. Frankly "traditional" medicines may not do much good (except for the occasional discovery of something that actually works) but they don't tend to do all that much harm either. Once people get the idea that sick people need to have injections, because that's the western thing to do, and there isn't a supply of sterile, disposable needles available... well you can imagine where it goes from there. (I should add that this was published around 1995, so things may have moved on. Hopefully they have. If nothing else, the situation with Aids may have taught people that using the same needles on everyone in the ward isn't a good plan. Hopefully.)
So what's interesting about this book, I think, is that it doesn't seem to be about what the authors think it's about. They present it as sexy science, weird diseases, and a bunch of dead people. What comes across, though, are these cultural tensions. You are very, very conscious that there are double standards. The horror of a member of the CDC squad being accidentally exposed to infection is supposed to chill you to the bone, while all the time Africans are getting sick and dying. I suppose that's the way of the world - aid workers surely eat better than the refugees they're helping, or they wouldn't offer to go out there in the first place. There's no doubt that these CDCers aim to do good, and do save many lives. I think it's the fact that it doesn't get commented on that bothers me. Or perhaps the fact that I wouldn't want to leave the comforts of home to go out there and do it myself.
Tuesday, 8 February 2011
Mogworld - Yahztee Croshaw
This book, sadly, doesn't really work. Here's why.
The main character is beset by a variety of confusing circumstances which he doesn't understand and which he is trying to investigate. So far so good. This is a mystery to be solved then? Well kinda. The thing is that mystery in fiction works in a particular way, and Mogworld comes across as written by someone who doesn't understand that.
If you look at some really well-written mystery fiction, such as Agatha Christie (or J.K. Rowling for that matter - let's not be snobby about it), you usually find yourself in a race against the main characters to discover the answer to a puzzle. What makes Christie such compulsive reading is that you know that you and Poirot have the same information to work on, and there's a hope that you might figure it out before he does. And of course Christie manages this information like a magician: every time she throws in the vital clues and then immediately distracts you from them so that you only half notice them, if you notice them at all. Then when Poirot gets there before you do, you're kicking yourself because you had the information, and you should have figured it out, but you didn't.*
Arthur Conan Doyle is a bit different in that there's no way you could possibly get there before Holmes, because he always has information that you don't. These stories are less about the mystery itself and more about the joys of shady characters, damsels in distress, and Holmes looking moody. Holmes tends to figure out the answer at warp speed, and then explains how he did it, involving a newspaper story from twenty years ago, a gang of information gathering street urchins, and the fact that he instantly recognised that waiter as Kentucky Jim, the infamous gangster. It's not pure mystery in the way that Christie is, but it's good in a different way.
In the case of poorly written mystery, the author often underestimates the reader's intelligence. This can lead to the reader figuring out who the murderer is halfway through the book and then waiting another agonising 200 pages for the characters to catch up. Ben Elton tends to do this with the murder mysteries he keeps writing. Not once has the murderer come as a surprise to me. Usually it's so obvious it's painful.
So now we come to Mogworld and why it doesn't work. Jim finds himself in a strange situation - a land in which nobody can die without quickly respawning; stuff gets deleted and everyone seems to be heading for the same quest. The issue of why nobody can stay dead could be an interesting mystery to solve. Except it's not, because the reader knows the answer from page one: this is a story set inside a computer game. So you're not going with Jim as he tries to figure it out. You've effectively solved the case and wandered off at the very beginning. What's more, if you wanted to set up a character it's virtually impossible to give a damn about, this is how to do it. Firstly, make a character who can't die or suffer any permanent damage: way to make dangerous situations lose any kind of interest and become tedious. Secondly, issue constant reminders (via the computer game cliches) that this character isn't real. There's a reason why novelists don't do this. Hell, there's a reason why people who write video games don't do this. None of the NPCs in WoW say things like, "you know, it's weird: Cairne Bloodhoof has been killed by the Alliance loads of times, and he always came back unharmed a few minutes later, but then one day he was deleted and remained dead."
There are some amusing moments, mostly around subverting cliches and drawing attention to the absurdity of some of the stuff that goes on in an MMO. Yes, on some levels, this stuff is quite funny. But here's the catch: it would fit into a stand up comedy routine, or a web comic, quite well. It doesn't work in a novel. Dara O'Briain does a great routine about Snake from Metal Gear Solid, and how his image as an elite agent doesn't fit with how badly Dara plays him. It's very funny. It would make a terrible novel. Novels are supposed to draw you in and make you forget that what you're reading is the product of someone else's imagination - not draw attention to it constantly.
This book reads, unfortunately, like a book which was written by someone who likes video games a lot more than they like novels; someone who doesn't understand how a novel works and what it's supposed to do. It's a shame. I really wanted to like it.
* Actually there is a knack in working out who the murderer is in Christie, and I'm very good at it. It has nothing to do with the information given, and everything to do with her writing style and the way she deflects attention from the real murderer - you get used to it. But that's kinda a given with someone who's written that many books.
The main character is beset by a variety of confusing circumstances which he doesn't understand and which he is trying to investigate. So far so good. This is a mystery to be solved then? Well kinda. The thing is that mystery in fiction works in a particular way, and Mogworld comes across as written by someone who doesn't understand that.
If you look at some really well-written mystery fiction, such as Agatha Christie (or J.K. Rowling for that matter - let's not be snobby about it), you usually find yourself in a race against the main characters to discover the answer to a puzzle. What makes Christie such compulsive reading is that you know that you and Poirot have the same information to work on, and there's a hope that you might figure it out before he does. And of course Christie manages this information like a magician: every time she throws in the vital clues and then immediately distracts you from them so that you only half notice them, if you notice them at all. Then when Poirot gets there before you do, you're kicking yourself because you had the information, and you should have figured it out, but you didn't.*
Arthur Conan Doyle is a bit different in that there's no way you could possibly get there before Holmes, because he always has information that you don't. These stories are less about the mystery itself and more about the joys of shady characters, damsels in distress, and Holmes looking moody. Holmes tends to figure out the answer at warp speed, and then explains how he did it, involving a newspaper story from twenty years ago, a gang of information gathering street urchins, and the fact that he instantly recognised that waiter as Kentucky Jim, the infamous gangster. It's not pure mystery in the way that Christie is, but it's good in a different way.
In the case of poorly written mystery, the author often underestimates the reader's intelligence. This can lead to the reader figuring out who the murderer is halfway through the book and then waiting another agonising 200 pages for the characters to catch up. Ben Elton tends to do this with the murder mysteries he keeps writing. Not once has the murderer come as a surprise to me. Usually it's so obvious it's painful.
So now we come to Mogworld and why it doesn't work. Jim finds himself in a strange situation - a land in which nobody can die without quickly respawning; stuff gets deleted and everyone seems to be heading for the same quest. The issue of why nobody can stay dead could be an interesting mystery to solve. Except it's not, because the reader knows the answer from page one: this is a story set inside a computer game. So you're not going with Jim as he tries to figure it out. You've effectively solved the case and wandered off at the very beginning. What's more, if you wanted to set up a character it's virtually impossible to give a damn about, this is how to do it. Firstly, make a character who can't die or suffer any permanent damage: way to make dangerous situations lose any kind of interest and become tedious. Secondly, issue constant reminders (via the computer game cliches) that this character isn't real. There's a reason why novelists don't do this. Hell, there's a reason why people who write video games don't do this. None of the NPCs in WoW say things like, "you know, it's weird: Cairne Bloodhoof has been killed by the Alliance loads of times, and he always came back unharmed a few minutes later, but then one day he was deleted and remained dead."
There are some amusing moments, mostly around subverting cliches and drawing attention to the absurdity of some of the stuff that goes on in an MMO. Yes, on some levels, this stuff is quite funny. But here's the catch: it would fit into a stand up comedy routine, or a web comic, quite well. It doesn't work in a novel. Dara O'Briain does a great routine about Snake from Metal Gear Solid, and how his image as an elite agent doesn't fit with how badly Dara plays him. It's very funny. It would make a terrible novel. Novels are supposed to draw you in and make you forget that what you're reading is the product of someone else's imagination - not draw attention to it constantly.
This book reads, unfortunately, like a book which was written by someone who likes video games a lot more than they like novels; someone who doesn't understand how a novel works and what it's supposed to do. It's a shame. I really wanted to like it.
* Actually there is a knack in working out who the murderer is in Christie, and I'm very good at it. It has nothing to do with the information given, and everything to do with her writing style and the way she deflects attention from the real murderer - you get used to it. But that's kinda a given with someone who's written that many books.
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