Thar she Blew.... !

We talked over a strange collection of sea-faring dishes, and I'd like to hear anyone else's thoughts.

My conclusion was

• it's a great big strange book,
• it suffers from Citizen Kane syndrome (it's the GREATEST EVER! You MUST read it!) and there's always a problem living up to that,
• it has really obvious flaws (the ending isn't exactly a surprise, and Ishmael doesn't actually DO very much)
• but it does have large parts that are actually enjoyable to read.

The Wordsworth Classic edition I borrowed had a really interesting introduction, which included lots of nuggets. For instance, though this is an American book, it was a flop on publication and we wouldn't be reading it now, if it hadn't been championed by the late-19th century workers' education movement in Britain. They were inspired by its emphasis on the details of working class life and productivity, and also it's celebration of reading and knowledge.

I also got a distinct impression that it really makes even more sense (?) if you read Rabelais - I know nothing of this Rabelais, but if I remember him in six or seven months, expect to see him on a short list.

I enjoyed the 1956 Gergory Peck movie, which had a good go at trying to turn it into a story - and featured classic work by Orson Welles, Bernard Miles and Sir Lancelot Spratt / Lord Scrumptious (James Robertson Justice). Ishmael is played by Commander Nelson of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea fame, and Queequeg by the not-remotely Polynesian Friedrich von Lederhosen. Oh, and there's a fab fibreglass whale and a balsawood boat, apparently in the plughole of a large bath!

( IMDB tells me there's a superior 1978 version with Jack Aranson playing every single part, and another one with Patrick Stewart as Ahab. And a 1930 version, where Ahab kills the whale, goes home, and gets the girl! )

NEXT TIME

The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder

It's a short book, and a children's book, so that's our idea of relief after Moby Dick. This one is written by the guy who went on to write the philosophical children's book Sophie's World, and comes recommended by Angus' girls.

We pencilled in to meet on 18th December, unless anyone said they'd be busy then. I reckon we might be more sensible meeting early in January, if that means there more of a chance of Mark and others.

As for the venue, the blog seems to suggest that Craig's is the place we haven't been to for longest...

"Wilt thou beat this monster? Art thou game for Moby Dick?"

Though this truly is a more than substantial tome; and in the first 283 pages the monster himself has still not made any actual appearance; and though the writing throughout is not illiberally sprinkled with double negatives and other like infelicities; and though it even contains a monster of a sentence occupying one page to itself; this sentence appearing in a chapter - number 42 - devoted to the terrifying nature of the colour white; which chapter I read the day before I met my friend's albino hamster and thought "Melville thou'rt an egregious plonker"; and I would add that my friend also has a white over-stuffed sofa in which I am equally unable to discover any mystic terror*; and to make matters worse, I am unable to exert any directorial control over the cinematographic theatre of my mind, where Geoffrey Rush and Johnny Depp are firmly established in the roles of Ahab and Starbuck;
yet I remain determined to overcome, to succeed in the mad endeavour and finish this book, and am still approximately on target at fifteen pages per diem.

And I will say this - if thou art lagging behind, I say, "Skip the boring bits, shipmates! Read chapters 1 to 5, 10, 12,13, 16, 18, 21, 25 - 31, 36-39. 41, 42 obviously, 48 - 50, 60 - 63, 66-70, 72, 73 and so on!"







* With reference to the sofa, one must admit that there are persons, for instance those charged with cleaning duties, for whom whiteness in a sofa might enhance and magnify any terror the sofa might induce by its own merits, but this is not central to our purpose here.

Thar she blows!

I just lent my copy of Moby Dick on to Justin - how are the rest of you doing?

Sorry, that that was a wind-up. I found I had two copies here. In fact, I'm on page 43, so I'm already falling behind. I reckon we've got to be reading about 17 pages a day to get it read by 20 November.

Are we being absurdly macho in this quest? Should we be seeking out and consuming a book in this way - or could the beast prove too much for us?

Will the meaning slip past us, and the experience just be a bit like reading Master and Commander in slow motion?

Be that as it may, I see there's been comic book versions by the great Will Eisner and Bill Scienkiwicz,

If you're reading this by email, there's pictures on the blog.


And in the 1960s, there was a cartoon series, originally created by Alex Toth for Hanna-Barbera. He had a seal side-kick called Scooby, and helped two kids fight people like Manta Menace.

Heart Songs, 16 October

Next time, it's Heart Songs by Annie Proulx. We're meeting at my place, on 16 October.

Powerful, tough, gritty and astonishing, say the Amazon readers.

Sounds like a good one to go for after the disappointment most of us seemed to feel about Never Let Me Go.

Not me though, I thought Never Let Me Go was a powerful allegory of the way we concede everything to the demands placed on us and eventually die, comforted only by the spurious belief that our love for others will somehow allow us to live on.

Or something.

Next time round, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, on September 11 at Justin's house.

Critically acclaimed, it's nevertheless had its share of criticism -- one Amazon reviewer says "It's like one of these cheap paperbacks you buy at the airport and throw away after reading". alleging that it's so poor ("lazy, heavy-handed and relentlessly dull") that Ishiguro must have paid someone else to write it.

"It's like the Harry Potter conspiracy all over again," says "confused KZ fan".

Elsewhere, it got high praise. They did it in Guardian Book Club (heavy spoiler warning!!) and reviewed it (again heavy plot spoilers).

Shouldn't that be the Anti-Social History of the Machine Gun, you ask?
Well, I suppose that's the point.

Anyway, The Social History of the Machine Gun by John Ellis is
available from Amazon (though with a slow delivery date so let's buy it elsewhere), so we're reading it, and meeting at Omar's to
discuss it. Ok?

On 19 June. Or you get filled full of lead. Or something.

Life of Pi

Karen Armstrong's History of Islam was somewhat lacking in personality, we found. So we're fleeing gratefully to the comforting shelter of fiction.

From the title, I would have thought Life of Pi would be a popular maths book, but it;s actually a Booker winner, and a "great read" according to Amazon visitors.

One of them warns that "the religious preaching was a little off putting", though, so maybe we haven't quite escaped....

Meeting on 22 May, at James'.

Islam - A Short History

We all enjoyed "Snow", and it seems a good idea to get some gen on Islam. So the next book will be Islam: A Short History by Karen Armstrong.

And in the absence of James this time, we're meeting at Mark's, on 17 April.

I don't know if this is relevant to this book, but I like her take on fundamentalism. Most people believe that Islamic fundamentalists, and US Bible Belters alike are throwbacks to a mediaeval viewpoint. She thinks it's the opposite: fundamentalists are actually very "modern", in that they have a "practical" understanding of the truth of scripture, instead of the "mythical" understanding people once had (And that might be all we need to calmly tell Dawkins to settle down and relax).

As Wikipedia puts it:

Central to her reading of history is the notion that premodern cultures possessed two complementary and indispensable ways of thinking, speaking and knowing: mythos and logos. Mythos was concerned with meaning; it "provided people with a context that made sense of their day-to-day lives; it directed their attention to the eternal and the universal." Logos, on the other hand, dealt with practical matters. It forged ahead, elaborating on old insights, mastering the environment, and creating fresh and new things. Armstrong argues that modern Western society has lost the sense of mythos and enshrined logos as its foundation. Mythical narratives and the rituals and meanings attached to them have ceded authority to that which is rational, pragmatic and scientific - but which does not assuage human pain or sorrow, and cannot answer questions about the ultimate value of human life. However, far from embarking on a wholesale rejection of the modern emphasis in favour of the old balance, the author contends, religious fundamentalists unwittingly turn the mythos of their faith into logos. Fundamentalism is a child of modernity, and fundamentalists are fundamentally modern.

Kars exists

Reading Snow, I've been wondering how much of the background is real, and how much is fictionalised.

I'm surprised to find that Kars exists, and is quite an interesting place - near the border with the former Soviet republic of Armenia, and with lots of history. The emerging Turkish state signed a Treaty with Russia there in 1921.

I've been looking at Turkey and there's more surprises. Here's some things I didn't know:

• It's the 17th largest country in population, with 72 million people.
  
• In 1923, Mustapha Kemal kicked the Allies out (they were occupying it after the fall of the Ottoman Empire) established a republic and named himself Ataturk ("father of the Turks")
• There were military coups in 1960, 1971 and 1980.
  
• The term "Bey" means "chief" and is roughly equivalent to our "mister".
  

Next time -- Snow by Orhan Pamuk.

"Dense, intense. A mountain of a book."

Meeting at my place. On 13 March.

See you there!

Catcher in the Rye

Next time, The Catcher in the Rye by noted recluse J D Salinger.

We're meeting on 6 February, at Angus' house.













Little known fact: J D Salinger's son, actor Matt Salinger. played the part of Captain America, in a recent movie released straight to DVD.