Just a quickie
In brief:
I read Self Help recently, by Edward Docx. I found it a bit slow to get into, but devoured it once I was about 30 pages in. A really wonderful novel, heartwarming, funny and thought-provoking in equal parts. Entertainingly for me, the characters (and, presumably, the author) hang around the same parts of London as I do. Off-hand discussions of the topography of the Northern Line may not be everybody's bag, but they're certainly mine. Recommended.
I've also read Gemma Bovery, a comic by Posy Simmonds (first serialised in the Guardian) and How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The World, by Francis Wheen. Gemma Bovery was excellent; genuinely engrossing and beautifully composed, both visually and textually. Mumbo Jumbo was... well, it had its moments- the author's rants against postmodernism were entertaining, for instance, but I couldn't help feeling that I was reading a polemic. I kept comparing it to Bad Science by Ben Goldacre, and it came up wanting. With Goldacre, I get the sense that the issues he's writing about are genuinely pervasive and worth getting angry about- with Wheen I wonder whether he's been cherry-picking the facts that fit his argument. Also, it's not especially clear what that argument is- the title promises to tell us how mumbo-jumbo conquered the world- Wheen tells us only that,in his opinion, it has conquered the world, and doesn't do an especially good job of demonstrating even that. Don't get me wrong; the forces that Wheen rails against (Thatcherism and neo-liberalism, the rise of fundamentalism, academic psedobollocks) are things that worry me, but he doesn't offer an especially illuminating analysis of them, or any reason for us to suppose that they may be new- I'd argue that, far from taking over the world, mumbo-jumbo has been with us all along.
Oh, and I watched the first disc of series 3 of Arrested Development. Unfortunately, what was, for the first two series, one of the funniest sitcoms I've ever seen, appears to have jumped the shark calamitously. There are still isolated moments of comic genius but, overall, the characters are too exaggerated, the humour too self-referential and the plot too convoluted for me to really give a shit any more.
So that's what I've been reading and watching. As work was a bit quiet last week, I decided to take advantage by booking some leave and taking a four-day weekend, following a one-day week. Next week, however, marks the start of the dreaded Busy Period, so I'm off to Portsmouth for a week. A whole week with no internet- however shall I survive?
I'll let you know.
PS- The second and final part of Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader, Neil Gaiman's 2-part run on Batman, is out at the end of next week. Thought I'd add that.
PPS- If you get a cup, line it with microwavable cling film, break an egg or two into it, twizzle and tie up the cling film, then put the whole cling film/egg complex in boiling water for a few minutes (leaving the cup), you get one of the world's greatest poached eggs. From b3ta.
I read Self Help recently, by Edward Docx. I found it a bit slow to get into, but devoured it once I was about 30 pages in. A really wonderful novel, heartwarming, funny and thought-provoking in equal parts. Entertainingly for me, the characters (and, presumably, the author) hang around the same parts of London as I do. Off-hand discussions of the topography of the Northern Line may not be everybody's bag, but they're certainly mine. Recommended.
I've also read Gemma Bovery, a comic by Posy Simmonds (first serialised in the Guardian) and How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The World, by Francis Wheen. Gemma Bovery was excellent; genuinely engrossing and beautifully composed, both visually and textually. Mumbo Jumbo was... well, it had its moments- the author's rants against postmodernism were entertaining, for instance, but I couldn't help feeling that I was reading a polemic. I kept comparing it to Bad Science by Ben Goldacre, and it came up wanting. With Goldacre, I get the sense that the issues he's writing about are genuinely pervasive and worth getting angry about- with Wheen I wonder whether he's been cherry-picking the facts that fit his argument. Also, it's not especially clear what that argument is- the title promises to tell us how mumbo-jumbo conquered the world- Wheen tells us only that,in his opinion, it has conquered the world, and doesn't do an especially good job of demonstrating even that. Don't get me wrong; the forces that Wheen rails against (Thatcherism and neo-liberalism, the rise of fundamentalism, academic psedobollocks) are things that worry me, but he doesn't offer an especially illuminating analysis of them, or any reason for us to suppose that they may be new- I'd argue that, far from taking over the world, mumbo-jumbo has been with us all along.
Oh, and I watched the first disc of series 3 of Arrested Development. Unfortunately, what was, for the first two series, one of the funniest sitcoms I've ever seen, appears to have jumped the shark calamitously. There are still isolated moments of comic genius but, overall, the characters are too exaggerated, the humour too self-referential and the plot too convoluted for me to really give a shit any more.
So that's what I've been reading and watching. As work was a bit quiet last week, I decided to take advantage by booking some leave and taking a four-day weekend, following a one-day week. Next week, however, marks the start of the dreaded Busy Period, so I'm off to Portsmouth for a week. A whole week with no internet- however shall I survive?
I'll let you know.
PS- The second and final part of Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader, Neil Gaiman's 2-part run on Batman, is out at the end of next week. Thought I'd add that.
PPS- If you get a cup, line it with microwavable cling film, break an egg or two into it, twizzle and tie up the cling film, then put the whole cling film/egg complex in boiling water for a few minutes (leaving the cup), you get one of the world's greatest poached eggs. From b3ta.