Thursday 10 September 2009

A vodka induced record of how I wasted my summer holidays. Part One: Books.

Hello to all that may read this. This is my first ever blog and I'm going to proceed to ramble about what I've been up to recently. It'll probably bore you to death.

 It's actually taken me a lot longer to write one section of this, so I've decided this blog is going to be solely for books. I'll do the next one another night.

*Please excuse any grammatical/spelling mistakes and my tendency to ramble*.


A quick review of some of the better books that I have read over the last couple of months:

Fighting in Spain  by George Orwell.
Orwell is my favourite writer, so you'll never hear a bad word about him from me (apart from 'A Clergyman's Daughter'). This book is basically a condensed version of 'Homage to Catalonia',  which is Orwell's account of the Spanish Civil war where he volunteered to fight against Franco's fascist regime. This abridged version just includes the main stories, from his arrival at the front up to the point where he was wounded in the neck and discharged from the POUM forces. He also gives harrowing descriptions of trench warfare in the Spanish hills and street fighting in Las Ramblas in Barcelona. I would recommend this book to anyone who is new to Orwell's reports of his life experiences, as it should leave you with a great appreciation for his distinct talent for the written word. In conclusion, I would urge you to read the full version of the book as it gives the reader a greater insight into the the history of the war, the fragility of the Spanish government and more importantly, we see the beginning of the events that ultimately lead Orwell to condemn Communism in his later works.


Brave New World Revisited by Aldous Huxley 

When Huxley wrote 'Brave New World' in the 1930s, he wasn't expecting his prophecies to materialise so quickly, but in this essay written in 1959, he already proves that his predictions of test-tube babies, sub-conscious persuasion, over-population,  propaganda-as-truth and the loss of social morality were all becoming commonplace hundreds of years before he predicted. Huxley frequently highlights the major differences between his work and George Orwell's '1984'. The original book portrayed a world where the population were controlled, but ultimately raised to enjoy their lives and social-statuses through constant chemical-conditioning and easy access to simple human pleasures such as casual sex and drugs, as well as the eradication of war.  '1984' portrays the same totalitarian rule as 'Brave New World', but Orwell writes that the masses will be ruled under a regime of violence and fear, with the major continents in a constant war with each-other. 

We have to remember this book was written in 1959 and considers both Huxley and Orwell's predictions and sixty years later, it is evident that both books gave scarily accurate accounts of society today. Before you read this, make sure you've read both authors' original books. Both will make you realise how close they both authors became to predicting the future and this book will then solidify that opinion furthermore. 


Various Books by Jeffrey Archer

When someone gave me three of Archer's books to read, I put them straight on the shelf with the intention of giving them back without reading them a few weeks later due to my preconceptions of the author.  So when curiosity got the better of me one day and I finally picked one up, I was really shocked that this man could write such gripping stories. In the space of two weeks I read 'A Matter of Honour', 'As the Crow Flies' and 'A Quiver Full of Arrows'. It pains me to say that I could easily compare Archer's knack of gripping the reader in the same way as Dan Brown does in his novels. They both write with the same talent for drawing the reader so far into the plot that you have to finish the book as soon as possible. But when I read Brown's books, it was easy to tell that they were aimed at people who wouldn't usually sit and read a novel (no offence intended), whereas Archer's plots were deeper than Brown's, but they still managed to keep me so engrossed that I couldn't put them down. So, apologises to Archer. He still is a stuck-up idiot, but he does write very good stories.


Death In The Afternoon by Ernest Hemingway

Throughout the '20s and early '30s Hemingway lived in Spain and developed a great passion for bullfighting. This book gives detailed accounts of the major stars of the bullfighting profession and their celebrity statuses that they acquired, which also usually brought about their deaths in the bullrings of Spain. There are also vivid descriptions of the atmosphere that the spectators enjoyed at the fights and even details of Hemingway's visits to the ranches that reared bulls for the ring. 

Whether you are for or against bullfighting, the book is a very well written account of the events of eighty years ago and although some people may be shocked at the graphic details of the treatment of the animals and the graphic description of the act of the maiming of the bulls, it is still a great account of an age-old Spanish tradition.





I reckon the next one will be about new music I've heard...