"Wild, Wild World" - "Into The Wild", Jon Krakauer and others
You know, I have no idea how I manage to take the time to do so much reading but when I finish this review of three books there will still be three books left I need to review. And they keep piling up. Seriously, no idea where the time is coming from...
"Into The Wild" - Jon Krakauer
Rating: *** and a half of *****
I really wanted to read this book because I'm a sucker for travel books and Alaska and this seemed to be a connection of both so what could go wrong?
What could go wrong indeed... but first a short synopsis: In this book, reporter and novelist Jon Krakauer retraces the steps that brought Chris McCandless from his well to-do neighborhood on the US East Coast to a rotten bus in Alaska and ultimately his death. Artfully, he interweaves great works on Alaska and the Wild with accounts of McCandless' travel companions and his own experience with climbing and survival in the Wild.
This book took me ages to finish, mostly because I was very divided about it. On the one hand, Krakauer is really an exceptional writer and reporter, a very good observer and very committed to the issues he writes about, with a style to boot. It's narrative, yet not overly florid and it's journalistic yet he doesn't hold back with carefully weighed and phrased judgement on the subjects and persons he's writing about.
Unfortunately... even that didn't help me in not getting rather pissed at McCandless. Not even because he made a lot of mistakes on his journey to Alaska but because he was an inconsiderate brat who measured other people by impossible moral standards and didn't even think about the grief he might cause the people who loved him anyway. In truth, the most important person in Chris McCandless's life was Chris McCandless and that angered me to no end. It's a pity that this was aggravating enough that not even Krakauer's superior writing skills could make that go away.
All in all, it was certainly inspring but the urge to slap McCandless a good one was outweighing Krakauer's skill and that's why it only got the three and a half stars.
"Mit dem Rücken zur Wand" - Klaus Kordon
Rating: **** of *****
Since I'm always a sucker for anything taking place in the era between 1914 and 1945, I bought this one. Additionally, it's also the second part to a trilogy so uh... there was no point in not buying it...
Anyway, like I said, it's the second part of Kordon's "Pivotal Points" trilogy about three important eras in German history: the revolutionary winter in 1918/19 (feautured in "Die Roten Matrosen oder Ein vergessener Winter"), Hitler's rise to power in 1932/1933 (featured in this book) and the end of WWII in 1945 (featured in "Der Erste Frühling") from the point of view of a communist working class family living in Berlin during these times. In this part, we learn about the struggles between communist, socialist, social democratic and Nazi followers, the immense poverty that was part of Berlin in these times and ultimately Hitler taking over the German government.. along with the protagonist Hans falling in love for the first time, becoming an uncle, seeing his sister become ostracized from his communist family because she choses to stay with her Nazi fiancé...
There's one thing Kordon really excels at: Historical facts. If you read a historical book by Kordon you can be sure he knows what he's writing about and it's almost as good as reading a history book itself. Kordon also manages to tell history with stories, so to say. He illustrates great world history with the history of the small people, breaks down simple facts and figures into the joy and suffering of a fictional family to make children and young adults see beyond the bland facts in their history books.
I also loved it how he was able to illustrate everyone's failure, not only that of the communists or the Bourgoisie or the social democrats. He makes it clear that the Nazis' rise to power was the failure of a whole system, not just a few individuals or political parties. In each and every story you can see his great conviction to show how easy things like this can happen and how much we have to take care that it won't happen again.
The only problem I always see with Kordon is see is that he sometimes sacrifices authentic dialogue for the sake of telling his young readers about historical facts through his characters. Now and again, dialogue sounds rather like Kordon giving a lesson in history than one character talking to another. I do see that this is perhaps necessary for a children's or young adults' book but I do wish he would make it less obvious when he's trying to get historical facts across. Other than that, though, reading Kordon is a must, if you want to know more about German history and why certain things happened like they did.
"The Remarkable Life And Times Of Eliza Rose" - Mary Hooper
Rating: *** and a half of *****
To be honest... I bought it mostly because I was so in love with the cover (yeah, yeah, book and cover and judging and all that...) *coughs And yes, also because I found the synopsis interesting.
And so here it is (the synopsis, that is): Eliza Rose, ousted by her mother - or at least the woman she thought to be her mother - and all alone in London lands herself in the Clink, one of the most infamous prisons in England. However, she's lucky enough to capture the eyes of equally infamous Ma Gwynn, owner of a whorehouse and mother to famous actress Nell Gwynn. And so Eliza starts her wondrous journey from serving maid to orange seller, highwayman's moll and maidservant to... no, that would be telling.
Well, I have to say... I expected more of it. I give the author credit for keeping the characters' speech patterns contemporary to the period the story is settled in and she had some very colorful supporting characters. It's not an easy feat to accomplish and Hooper did well in that. I was disappointed by her protagonist, Eliza Rose, though. Throughout most of the book she was mainly passive, self-doubting to the extreme... even at times whiny. For almost the whole book I found myself thinking again and again "Grow a fucking spine, wil you?" and at times even wishing someone would give her a real kick in her lovely behind to keep her from stumbling into one thing after the other.
I still decided to give Hooper a second chance and guess I'll try at least one more book to see if Eliza was like this because the author wanted her to be like that and can also write strong female characters who know what they want (she certainly wrote Nell that way, which does give me reason to hope). Don't know yet which book it'll be but I guess everyone deserves a second chance ;)
"Into The Wild" - Jon Krakauer
Rating: *** and a half of *****
I really wanted to read this book because I'm a sucker for travel books and Alaska and this seemed to be a connection of both so what could go wrong?
What could go wrong indeed... but first a short synopsis: In this book, reporter and novelist Jon Krakauer retraces the steps that brought Chris McCandless from his well to-do neighborhood on the US East Coast to a rotten bus in Alaska and ultimately his death. Artfully, he interweaves great works on Alaska and the Wild with accounts of McCandless' travel companions and his own experience with climbing and survival in the Wild.
This book took me ages to finish, mostly because I was very divided about it. On the one hand, Krakauer is really an exceptional writer and reporter, a very good observer and very committed to the issues he writes about, with a style to boot. It's narrative, yet not overly florid and it's journalistic yet he doesn't hold back with carefully weighed and phrased judgement on the subjects and persons he's writing about.
Unfortunately... even that didn't help me in not getting rather pissed at McCandless. Not even because he made a lot of mistakes on his journey to Alaska but because he was an inconsiderate brat who measured other people by impossible moral standards and didn't even think about the grief he might cause the people who loved him anyway. In truth, the most important person in Chris McCandless's life was Chris McCandless and that angered me to no end. It's a pity that this was aggravating enough that not even Krakauer's superior writing skills could make that go away.
All in all, it was certainly inspring but the urge to slap McCandless a good one was outweighing Krakauer's skill and that's why it only got the three and a half stars.
"Mit dem Rücken zur Wand" - Klaus Kordon
Rating: **** of *****
Since I'm always a sucker for anything taking place in the era between 1914 and 1945, I bought this one. Additionally, it's also the second part to a trilogy so uh... there was no point in not buying it...
Anyway, like I said, it's the second part of Kordon's "Pivotal Points" trilogy about three important eras in German history: the revolutionary winter in 1918/19 (feautured in "Die Roten Matrosen oder Ein vergessener Winter"), Hitler's rise to power in 1932/1933 (featured in this book) and the end of WWII in 1945 (featured in "Der Erste Frühling") from the point of view of a communist working class family living in Berlin during these times. In this part, we learn about the struggles between communist, socialist, social democratic and Nazi followers, the immense poverty that was part of Berlin in these times and ultimately Hitler taking over the German government.. along with the protagonist Hans falling in love for the first time, becoming an uncle, seeing his sister become ostracized from his communist family because she choses to stay with her Nazi fiancé...
There's one thing Kordon really excels at: Historical facts. If you read a historical book by Kordon you can be sure he knows what he's writing about and it's almost as good as reading a history book itself. Kordon also manages to tell history with stories, so to say. He illustrates great world history with the history of the small people, breaks down simple facts and figures into the joy and suffering of a fictional family to make children and young adults see beyond the bland facts in their history books.
I also loved it how he was able to illustrate everyone's failure, not only that of the communists or the Bourgoisie or the social democrats. He makes it clear that the Nazis' rise to power was the failure of a whole system, not just a few individuals or political parties. In each and every story you can see his great conviction to show how easy things like this can happen and how much we have to take care that it won't happen again.
The only problem I always see with Kordon is see is that he sometimes sacrifices authentic dialogue for the sake of telling his young readers about historical facts through his characters. Now and again, dialogue sounds rather like Kordon giving a lesson in history than one character talking to another. I do see that this is perhaps necessary for a children's or young adults' book but I do wish he would make it less obvious when he's trying to get historical facts across. Other than that, though, reading Kordon is a must, if you want to know more about German history and why certain things happened like they did.
"The Remarkable Life And Times Of Eliza Rose" - Mary Hooper
Rating: *** and a half of *****
To be honest... I bought it mostly because I was so in love with the cover (yeah, yeah, book and cover and judging and all that...) *coughs And yes, also because I found the synopsis interesting.
And so here it is (the synopsis, that is): Eliza Rose, ousted by her mother - or at least the woman she thought to be her mother - and all alone in London lands herself in the Clink, one of the most infamous prisons in England. However, she's lucky enough to capture the eyes of equally infamous Ma Gwynn, owner of a whorehouse and mother to famous actress Nell Gwynn. And so Eliza starts her wondrous journey from serving maid to orange seller, highwayman's moll and maidservant to... no, that would be telling.
Well, I have to say... I expected more of it. I give the author credit for keeping the characters' speech patterns contemporary to the period the story is settled in and she had some very colorful supporting characters. It's not an easy feat to accomplish and Hooper did well in that. I was disappointed by her protagonist, Eliza Rose, though. Throughout most of the book she was mainly passive, self-doubting to the extreme... even at times whiny. For almost the whole book I found myself thinking again and again "Grow a fucking spine, wil you?" and at times even wishing someone would give her a real kick in her lovely behind to keep her from stumbling into one thing after the other.
I still decided to give Hooper a second chance and guess I'll try at least one more book to see if Eliza was like this because the author wanted her to be like that and can also write strong female characters who know what they want (she certainly wrote Nell that way, which does give me reason to hope). Don't know yet which book it'll be but I guess everyone deserves a second chance ;)