Category: Review (Page 105 of 132)

Cleopatra’s Needle: Two Wheels by the Water to Cairo by Anne Mustoe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The inspiration behind this journey is for Anne Mustoe to travel from the site of Cleopatra’s Needle on the Thames in London to the place in Egypt where the original monument came from, Heliopolis. Once again she would travel alone on her bike and to add to the challenge would follow the course of rivers and seas where possible. Her journey will take through four European countries and across the Alps before crossing the Adriatic and heading down towards where Europe meets Aisa; Turkey. The last part of her ride takes her through what is now a very troubled area of the world, as she passes Syria, Lebanon and into Egypt.

This is the first of Anne Mustoe’s books that I have read. She is a pragmatic, no nonsense type of character, who does not let most things phase her. She suffers from a knee injury, is robbed, cycles up and over the Alps and runs out of whisky and gets very wet more times than she cares to remember. She cycles solo most of the time but is joined on occasions by friends. As she rolls along the route, we are told about the people she meets and learns about the history of places that she passes through. The prose is quite matter of fact as Mustoe writes in a straightforward and competent way. It is not the best cycling travel book I have read but makes for enjoyable light reading. Will be reading some of her others, as this was one of three I picked up at the same time. 2.5 Stars

View all my reviews

An English Guide to Birdwatching by Nicholas Royle
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Lily Lynch and Stephen Osmer are your archetypical fashionable couple; she is an artist and he is a journalist and critic and they are heavily involved with the glamorous arty people of London. Osmer likes to write confrontational stuff about all sorts of subjects, including about an author and critic both called Nicholas Royle. Silas and Ethel Woodlock have retired to the Sussex coast to spend their final years near the sea, but what they had not taken into account is how much noise and distress the gulls would cause them. At a loss for things to do in retirement, Silas takes up creative writing and starts to think that he might have found something that he could enjoy.

When he finds his first short story ‘Gulls’ in a book called Murmurations: An Anthology of Uncanny Stories About Birds, he is not very happy. In fact, he is livid, absolutely livid, because the story has been attributed to an author called Nicholas Royle. Woodlock knows it is not Royle’s as it is the same as the manuscript that was left in a pub several months earlier after he had passed it to Ethel to read. Woodlock finds out where Nicolas Royle lives and in a moment of fury, decides that he needs to go and talk to him about this. He arrives mid-way through a party and lets rip at Royle before events take a much sinister turn.

There were parts of this novel that I liked; the way that the Woodlock’s fitted each other well, but were unsettled by the move to a new area. In real life, there are two authors called Nicholas Royle, who are frequently muddled and I liked the way that he has picked up on this and made it an integral part of the book. I liked the short essays called Hides, but it really jarred as it didn’t fit in with the novel and I am not quite sure why the conclusion of the novel is in the final essay. It is ok, but not fantastic.

View all my reviews

The Secret Life: Three True Stories by Andrew O’Hagan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

Modern society has become utterly reliant on the internet. It is pervasive and has many positive and negative aspects, from the way that it can bring people together to the troubling undercurrents of the darknet. In The Secret Life, Andrew O’Hagan brings us three different stories, one of a man who courted public opinion whilst holding it in contempt, a man who was thought to be someone else and shies away from the spotlight and a final story about a man who does not exist. All of these individuals live in the hazy zone between real and online life.

His first story concerns Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, the website that looks to get under every government’s skin. Assange had signed a fairly substantial deal with Canongate to tell his life story, and O’Hagan is brought in to interview, document and prepare a readable text ready for publication. Assange is a hugely complex character who suffers from justified paranoia, vanity and narcissistic tendencies, who wants to portray a particular image of himself and his website; he reviles excessive state controls that some countries apply, whilst missing the irony of applying similar rules to those that work for and with him. O’Hagan somehow manages to cobble together a manuscript for the publishers, but has come to realise that Assange doesn’t want to publish at all, merely to have the prestige of being an author.

The second essay describes how O’Hagan uses the identity of a deceased young man, Ronnie Pinn, to construct and fake real and online profile. After obtaining a birth certificate he starts by signing up to a couple of social media platforms, as the fake identity grows and the credibility of the identity is established, he starts to venture into the murky world of the dark net where illegal items are easy to obtain. It is all simple to do, but it didn’t really tell O’Hagan who Ronnie Pinn actually was, the more he investigated he realised that he was a much of a ghost in real life as he was on the net. Until one day he found out that his mother was still alive.

The third and final story is called the ‘The Satoshi Affair’ about the mysterious and elusive creator of Bitcoins. For ages no one really knew who Satoshi Nakamoto was, or if it was a group of people who pulled together the code to make the blockchain database that is the foundation of the Bitcoin credibility. There was lots of speculation as to the identity. O’Hagan was then asked to write the story of Satoshi Nakamoto, who may be an Australian web developer and former academic called Craig Wright. He had just avoided being arrested shortly after it was suggested by a website that he was Nakamoto and had headed to the UK with his wife. As O’Hagan interviews him, there are points of lucidity and certain moment when no one is actually sure if he is trying to pull the most elaborate hoax ever.

O’Hagan has bought together three fascinating stories of the modern day blend of real world and online personas and identity. It is quite shocking is some ways just what someone can achieve and obtain in the dark recesses of the net with little or no effort. The essay about Assange made for entertaining reading, just to see what he was actually like from an insiders view was quite an eye opener too. Craig Wright’s story was the hardest to get a grip on, even though he is a clever bloke and more than capable of coming up with the blockchain, there are still elements of doubt as to whether he is the legendary Nakamoto or not. Overall I thought that this was an enjoyable book of our modern age. 3.5 stars.

View all my reviews

The Reassembler by James May
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Modern gadgets and machines are designed to have almost no user serviceable parts, even a washing machine these days will need a technician to plug in a laptop to verify the fault before he is able to repair it. Gone are the days where most things could be repaired, though James May argues that this was because products were expensive, not particularly well made, often went wrong and so needed repairing and routine maintenance. He prefers modern gadgets that don’t need repairing or fiddling with to function. For May, reassembling items is a form of therapy; the act of creation calms and stimulates at the same time. That, and he has a thing about having the correct tools and screwdrivers in particular.

This is a nice tie into the series with lots of colour pictures from the workshop that he used on TV as he takes a pile of nicely laid out parts and makes a lawnmower and a guitar and an old Bakelite telephone. It is full of his rambling philosophy and dry sardonic wit, with short essays explaining how a specific item works, though sadly there is not as much text as I’d like. I completely get why he needs to assemble things, it is a theme that seems to be gaining traction elsewhere that using our hands to make and create is good for the soul. As an engineer (electronics and mechanical) I would have liked more detail on the items he was reassembling, but this an ideal book for the general reader.

View all my reviews

Night Trains: The Rise and Fall of the Sleeper by Andrew Martin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

Modern travel is ubiquitous. For a startlingly small amount of money, you can fly to a lot of places around Europe with the budget airlines. This does involve having to get to some slightly obscure airports at some unearthly hour of the morning, pass through a moderately humiliating security check before winging your way to the sun. Have the days of glamourous travel final vanished? However, there are still ways of arriving in a foreign city feeling refreshed without having to suffer the cattle class air transport and that is to find the night trains that are still running across Europe.

Andrew Martin decides to see if they are still a viable method of travelling across the continent and to see if the glamour of the past age has rubbed off on the modern transport. Martin catches various trains across Europe; The Blue Train from the Gare de Lyon in the heart of Paris to Nice on the Mediterranean coast, The ‘Orient Express’, a train that is a legend in its own right, though they no longer recommend carrying a pistol. He travels into the twilight zone on The Nordland Railway, one of Europe’s most scenic train journeys. He takes the Berlin Night Express that travels from the Swedish city of Malmö to Berlin before heading back to Paris for The Sud Express and then Paris-Venice.

This is part travelogue and partly a nostalgic look back at the golden age of night express trains that used to flow back and forwards across Europe. It is a more expensive way to travel, but whilst it doesn’t have the prestige of years past with their gilded dining carriages and champagne flowing, going to sleep in one country and waking up in another, definitely makes the travel element a major part of the experience. It is still a relatively safe form of travel that attracts a variety of characters and because it is not always straightforward it makes for interesting reading. It was a way of him reliving some of the holidays that he had as a small child travelling Europe with his father and sister, arranged for by The British Railwaymen’s Touring Club in the early 1970’s. I have read a number of Martin’s books in the past and this is another that he has written that is definitely worth reading. 3.5 stars

View all my reviews

Testosterone Rex: Unmaking the Myths of Our Gendered Minds by Cordelia Fine
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The gender issue is a hot topic at the moment, for decades we have been led to believe that ‘boys will be boys’, that pink and blue toys are entirely suitable for the appropriate sex and that men have evolved to take risks because of the extra testosterone swishing about and that the female brain is utterly different to the male brain.

Psychologist, Cordelia Fine, is having none of it.

The ‘nature versus nurture’ argument is dragged up frequently, but by using arguments from social history, psychology, neuroscience and evolutionary science, Fine takes apart all the old, entrenched evidence and goes a long way to explaining how what is between your legs doesn’t create male and female natures, but the elements that actually defines us is a complicated mix of evolution, hormones, culture and sex.

Fine is not afraid to be controversial in some of her conclusions in this book, looking at the facts and assessing the evidence; pointing out the errors is not going to endear her to some readers. She has written an interesting and enlightened take on the role that testosterone has to play in both male and female bodies, and the effects that it has. She does not hold back as she obliterates the myths and cultural norms in society that still surround the gender issue. She is not afraid to get stuck into the science and statistics and evaluate the studies that have been done. It is a really good popular science, one of the few where I have actually laughed out loud at certain points of the book. Worth reading.

View all my reviews

Turning by Jessica J. Lee
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

At the end of her twenties, Lee finds herself in the city of Berlin. Ostensibly there to write a thesis she has left behind a home, family and quite a lot of heartache in Canada. In a city of 3.7 million people, she is all alone. The thesis plods along, but what motivates her to get up in the mornings is taking a swim in one of the lakes that surround the city. Even though she is swimming solo, there is something reassuring about swimming in the cool dark lakes that help ebb away her inner pain. Knowing how many lakes there are around the city, she decides to try and swim in fifty-two different ones regardless of the season and the temperature.

It doesn’t stay this way, but for a few magical moments in autumn the water is crystalline, like swimming through a gemstone

What starts as a challenge to get herself out of the house and exploring the area slowly descends into an obsession, finding that perfect lake, luxuriating in the cold waters, watching the clouds reflect in the mirror like waters and floating in a gin clear lake. The ritual of wild swimming gives her a new inner strength and helps overcome the past fears of swimming in open water when she was small in Canada. Winter swims add another level of difficulty as she has to use a hammer to crack the ice from the lakes before sinking into the bitterly cold water.

I hear nothing. It isn’t a terrifying, muffled nothingness, but a quiet solitude. Stillness, and I float.

I have read a fair number of these nature memoirs now where the author seeks solace in the natural world to overcome a set of personal issues and tribulations. This, however, is one of the best that I have read so far. Lee’s writing is beautiful, immersive and effortless. The prose has a clarity and depth that is quite breath taking for a debut author. Her openness of her past issues and descriptions of the lakes that she swims in, the way that she notices the details in the way the seasons turn the lakes are quite something. Lee is an author of some skill and I can highly recommend this.

View all my reviews

Turing’s Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe by George Dyson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Three quarters of a century ago a small number of men and women gathered in Princeton, New Jersey. Under the direction of John von Neumann they were to begin building one of the world’s first computers driven by the vison that Alan Turing had of a Universal machine. Using cutting edge technology, valves and vacuum tubes to store the data, the first computer was born. This unit took 19.5kW to work and had a memory size of five, yes five kilobytes. It caused a number of revolutions, it was this machine that laid the foundations for every single computing device that exists on the planet today, it changed the way that we think about numbers and what they could do for us and the calculations that it ran gave us the hydrogen bomb…

I had picked this up mostly because of the title, Turing’s Cathedral, thinking that it would be about that great man, the way that he thought and the legacy that he left us with regards to computing and cryptography. There was some of the on Turing and his collaboration with the American computer scientists and engineers through the war, but the main focus was on the development of the computer in America and the characters that were involved in the foundation of today’s technological society. Some parts were fascinating, but it could be quite tedious at times. There were lots and lots of detail in the book, the characters and political games that they were playing and subject to, not completely sure why we needed to go so far back in time on the origins of Princeton. Definitely one for the computer geek, not for the general reader.

View all my reviews

Land of the Midnight Sun: My Arctic Adventures by Alexander Armstrong
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Arctic lands and ocean that sit on top of our world are harsh and unforgiving in the summer. One mistake can literally cost you your life, so unless you really know what you are doing, it is not best advised to visit in the winter. Alexander Armstrong obviously missed this piece of advice, because he is persuaded that this is going to be the optimum time to visit, in particular, if he wants to witness the end of the winter night and see the sun rise over the frozen north. But before he goes he needs to learn about Arctic survival. This is done in the most British of ways; learning from an ex-marine, in a conference room with tea and biscuits, yes biscuits.

Dusting the crumbs off and suitably equipped for his cold trip into the Arctic, Alexander heads to Scandinavia to see the sun rise for the first time is quite a while. His journey will take him around the some of the countries around the Arctic ocean. After a night in the famous Ice Hotel, he travels to Iceland where he is humiliated by a Viking style wrestler called Eva, with have a few heart stopping moments with the ice truckers as they trek back and forth along frozen rivers delivering the items that people need to survive. Foolishly he decided to try ice swimming where the water is a tropical -1 deg C, but made a better choice with pools that are warmed by the geological faults. He sees sights that will stay with him for the rest of his life and meets people who are generous with their time and hospitality.

Alexander throws himself into the various activities that they have chosen for him, which makes for entertaining reading (and viewing too). This is not a landmark book in travel writing, rather a reasonable tie-in to the TV series. It is written with Alexander’s subtle humour and wit, with the odd laugh out loud moment and it is a light hearted and easy read.

View all my reviews

Gods of the Morning: A Bird’s Eye View of a Highland Year by John Lister-Kaye
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Even though the Highlands of Scotland feel like our last wilderness, they have still been shaped by man. One man who has been fortunate to experience the wildlife and seasons at their most dramatic is John Lister-Kaye at his home and Highlands field centre, Aigas. He doesn’t really need to go looking for the natural world; it is just there. The long hours that he has spent there have permeated deeply into his soul, he knows the best seasons to see the deer, the place to the spot the pine martens, the fleeting visitors who come for the summers and who have headed south from the Arctic winters. In this book, Lister-Kaye talks us through the events that have taken place over a year, but rather than being written as a diary, it is a series of observations on some of his favourite wildlife and feathered friends, in particular, interwoven with musings over the changing climate where they live.

Like molten gold from a crucible, the first touch of sun spilled from the east

This is the first of Lister-Kaye’s books that I have ever read and I have been meaning to get to it for ages. He writes in a careful and considered way, drawing out the detail of the things he is seeing around him as they happen, and quite often what he writes is just quite beautiful. The field centre that he runs provides him with inspiration and a deep rooting in the natural world and is the font of his knowledge and understanding of what happens as the seasons roll around. He manages not to make it a polemical rant over the state of the climate, but you get a sense of his grave concerns over the future. Will definitely be reading more of his books, as I have just got his newest!

View all my reviews