Try the ASP.NET PowerPack free today! - More Info - Download - Price List - Licensing - Buy Now!
ADO.NET ConnTest A simple, free Windows program to test ADO.NET connection strings.
Lines of C# Ever wanted to know how many lines of C# code are in a file or folder hierarchy? This free Windows program will tell you.
XmlTools Free tools to process XML files from the command line.
“Punished By Both Sides” Score: 4/5
This autobiography tells the story of a boy from Scotland during World War 2 who was:
Eventful! But the truth of the matter is that those startling events are really just the backdrop to a well told story of the life of a soldier. I don’t feel bad about mentioning any of those events – I don’t think they’re spoilers because they were all featured in the book’s launch publicity and they’re the main reason I bought the book. I’m paranoid about spoilers, but knowing all of those future events while reading the book didn’t detract from it one iota.
The story is an engaging one of a boy growing into a man when events seem to conspire against him. His own side seems to have been responsible for much of what was done to him, but he comes across as quite stoic about all of it, even when he felt he was cheated out of some discharge benefits. He could not be said to have had an easy time of it, but he bore it all well and there’s little bitterness in the book, and what bitterness there is is restricted to the Japanese treatment of prisoners. He may have a point in saying that Japan as a country still hasn’t come to terms with what was done in its name, the way that Germany has.
A fascinating glimpse of times I hope we never see again.
“Way Too Much Detail” Score: 4/5
It’s not that I know more than him on the subject and I’m picking holes in what he says. Oh no. He knows much more about the subject than I ever will.
No, the problem is that he insists on telling the reader all about it. It’s like he’s saying “Look, I spent months researching all of this nonsense so you’re going to have to suffer it too.” Some background is essential. More can add flavour or colour (to mix metaphors a little). The volume of background in this book though sometimes makes reading the next paragraph a painful decision. It really detracts from the story.
And the story itself is good. It’s nicely plotted, has some recognisable settings in Prague and New York (well, recognisable to me as places I have been) and was interesting enough to keep me more than 600 pages. It could just be me that feels this way; the book – surprisingly – won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2001. (It’s a surprise to me because I didn’t even know there was a Pulitzer Prize for fiction. There you go.)
In the time since I read this book I have successfully forgotten most of what he wrote about the state of comics pre-World War 2, but I haven’t forgotten how hard it made the book to read.
(Side note: this book spent over 2 years on my to-read pile before I got around to it.)
“Interesting Sci Fi Gimmic” Score: 4/5
And it’s good at what it does. It’s not great at what it does, but it’s good. Maybe his other stuff is worth a look too – I’ve already ordered another of his, so we’ll see.
“Unpleasant Person Making Money” Score: 3/5
The closest I came to reading any of his publications was when I nearly subscribed to The Friday Thing. I didn’t subscribe, in the end – even though it was a free email newsletter – on the grounds that I thought it was a pile of crap.
Now, having read this book, I can see the reason I thought it was a pile of crap is because I – apparently – don’t like Paul Carr’s writing. I don’t like his portrayal of himself, and I don’t like his writing style. And even though you can now download the book free, I still can’t say I’d recommend it.
I’ve nothing really against the guy. He may be nice enough in person. I just don’t think he’s as funny as he (writes like he) thinks he is, and I don’t want to read any more of what he’s written. (And yes, I’m sure he’d feel the same about me if he ever noticed me.)
“Hateful, Miserable Anti Hero” Score: 2/5
The setting for this book (and, I believe, the whole series) is good ol’ Norn Iron. That endears it to me, and I really want to like it. I have a fondness for Colin Bateman’s books because they’re set here, they’re written by a guy from here, they have characters and mannerisms we’ll be familiar with, and they’re written with the dry wit we’re known for.
This book, much as I want to like it, lacks a lot of those things.
I’ve no idea if Ian Samson is from here or not (and I’m not bothered enough to try to find out), but this book is written from the perspective of an outsider who arrives in Northern Ireland to take up a new job and doesn’t like much of what he sees when he arrives. It’s possible (likely, even) that the author is trying to hold up a mirror to Northern Ireland and show us how we’re seen from an outsider’s perspective.
It fails because the outsider is a dislikeable tosser.
I know that some stories have anti-heroes instead of heroes, and some heroes are dislikeable, some anti-heroes likeable, and sometimes it’s the other way around, but whether you like the lead characters or not you have to empathise with them and their situation or else the story is just dull. I had no empathy with the lead character, or any of the other ones in the book come to that. Apart from the miserable, hateful lead character, everyone else seemed a comic pastiche rather than a real person, but where that can work for some authors here it just left me wanting the book to end.
Maybe the idea isn’t that it’s a mirror for us Norn Ironers to see ourselves from a different perspective. Maybe it’s just a way for an outsider to point at us and laugh. If that’s the case I’ve no idea if it works or not. I don’t dislike any outsiders enough to give them this book to read to find out what they think.
“Not Worth The Effort” Score: 2/5
This book is in the second category.
There’s nothing overly bad about it. The characterisation is weak, but it’s like that in a lot of the crime genre. The plot is fairly standard stuff. The setting is Sheffield, so I suppose that’s a bit different, but it’s not really different enough to make the book stand out.
It’s just average. And given that, there are plenty of better books out there to spend your time on.
“Well Meaning But Preachy” Score: 3/5
Since then I’ve read a couple of op-ed pieces by her in the New York Times, and they’ve been, well, less than the quality of Nickel & Dimed.
This is worse still. This time she’s taking on ‘the cult of positive thinking’. There’s certainly plenty of fodder for such a battle, with positivity seminars, self-help gurus, ‘medicine’ and ‘psychology’ all forming sizable targets.
But the whole book is so preachy it had me cheering for the other side. I’m thoroughly against the non-science nonsense being published these days, but Ehrenreich’s attitude through the book is annoying and antagonising. And dumb. Sometimes she just doesn’t seem to understand what the people she’s talking to are saying, but she uses her authorial advantage to make it seem they’re wrong. Here’s a snippet:
‘Going back to his [Seligman’s] Authentic Happiness Inventory, I remarked that many of the questions seemed a bit arbitrary, leading him to snap: “That’s a cheap shot and shows your failure to understand test development. It doesn’t matter what the questions are so long as they have predictive value. It could be a question about butterscotch ice cream and whether you like it. The issue is how well it predicts.” Well, no. First you come up with a test that seems to measure happiness as generally defined, and then you can look for things that happiness seems to correlate with, such as liking butterscotch ice cream. But you cannot fold the ice cream into the definition of happiness itself.’
Well, no. (See? I can do that too.) If you’re trying to determine a short test that puts a value on something, you can quite validly:
The short test needs to have a very, very high correlation with the results of the exhaustive test (the ‘predictive value’ in Seligman’s terms), but there’s no scientific requirement for the questions to bear any relation to those in the exhaustive test. Statistically, the correlation matters, but the content of the questions doesn’t necessarily relate.
This is fairly basic stuff, but it sits just beyond her grasp. It’s a bit damning that I can read her account of the discussion and understand it better than she did when she was the one there asking the questions.
But what’s really galling for me is that I think a lot of what Seligman spouts is utter drivel – the same as many of the happy clappy people in this book. I don’t like them, or what they stand for, and I think they’re doing a lot of damage.
Apparently I like Ehrenreich even less.
“Weird, Wacky Mountain Silliness” Score: 4/5
So, he’s done another book. I love the way the cover says ‘Another “Novel” By Chris Elliott’, as if the publisher is distancing themselves from it as soon as it’s published.
The weirdness is still in there. If you’ve read Thwacker, you’ll not be surprised to know that the book is mentioned here with absolutely no regard to consistency or continuity. Important details (like time travel) are beautifully glossed over.
This book is ostensibly about Chris Elliott’s ascent of Mount Everest. The very title is a pun/rip-off of/homage to Into Thin Air, as the introduction makes clear:
“Ever since Jon Krakauer made it sound so appealing in his 1997 best seller Into Thin Air, thrill seekers, novice climbers, and disabled people with something to prove have all flocked to the Himalayas with one shared ambition: to stand atop the apex of the planet, look out at the spectacular view, and . . . snap a couple of snapshots . . . I guess.”
You probably need to know that Into Thin Air describes a disastrous attempt on Everest, where 8 people died. ‘Appealing’? Really?
This book actually is a comic romp, with lots of characters you’ll recognise (who I’m surprised haven’t sued). The whole thing is (quite deliberately) laughably bad – and laugh I did.
Here’s a great excerpt of what you’re in for:
“Duncan’s plan was a simple one, and his itinerary took into account the expedition’s limited budget. We would eschew flying altogether and cross the Atlantic in the Princess yacht, entering the Mediterranean through the Strait of Gibraltar. The Atlantic crossing would be dicey this time of year, as October was the height of the hurricane season – and the fog season (and I think the iceberg season too) – but Duncan felt it was worth the savings. If time permitted, Michael was hoping we could zip down to Guantanamo Bay and visit the detainees (I was going to make brownies – and then eat them in front of them. Take that, Geneva Conventions!). Then, after a relaxing cruise, we would pass through the Suez Canal and into the Red Sea, shooting (literally) our way South to the Gulf of Aden and out into the emerald Sea of Arabia (better known as the Arabian Sea). Catching the Malabar currents, we’d whisk north through the Hershey Highway and around the tip of India so quickly that there would barely be enough time to shout “Sri Lanka rocks!” before we rolled into our first port of call: enchanting Calcutta. From there it would be a simple ten-day white-water rafting excursion up the Brahmaputra River, through Bhutan and into Nepal, crossing into Tibet during the dead of night and then back into Nepal during the light of day – arriving on November 27 at our final destination: the Labuse Lodge, located in gorgeous downtown Labuse.”
Why did I find this funny? Well:
Mostly I just like the way the gags are weird, densely packed and unexpected.
If you liked Shroud Of The Thwacker, you’ll probably like this. If you didn’t, you probably won’t like this either. I enjoyed its very silliness.
“Smart, But Also Lucky” Score: 3/5
This is one of a series of books featuring the same detective/profiler. I don’t think I’ll be going out of my way to read any more of them though. The book itself was well written and well paced, and quite fun to read. On the other hand, it was quite short and the detective/profiler seems to rely too much on luck for my liking.
Still, it was a fun distraction for a while, and that’s not a bad thing in a book.
“Rankin, But Not Quite” Score: 3/5
I didn’t buy it for Pooley or Omally, but I did miss them. This book felt a little like a novel by a different author, set in the same Brentford universe as the Rankin books, just not written by Rankin himself. I’m not sure why – it’s not just the different characters, or that it’s the first Rankin book I’ve read that contained the phrase ‘blow job’ (instead of vague, sniggery references).
I paid £1.50 in a library sale for my copy, and it’s £1.50 well spent. I’m not sure I’d spend £2 on it though.
