Ramnagel Male, It's complicated. Cape Town, South Africa

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  • The Poetical Works of Lord Byron (6)
  • By George Gordon Byron
  • Reading since Aug 2008
    
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  • From So Simple a Beginning (9)
  • Darwin's Four Great Books
  • By Charles Darwin
  • Reading since 2008
    
    Review
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  From So Simple a Beginning

  

  Voyage of the H.M.S. Beagle (1845): Found here is some of the best science writing ever to be penned. It is very readable and was a best-selling phenomenon in its day - people did not have the means to travel they do now and without television, Darwin's detailed and fascinating tale of the animals a ... (continue)

  Voyage of the H.M.S. Beagle (1845): Found here is some of the best science writing ever to be penned. It is very readable and was a best-selling phenomenon in its day - people did not have the means to travel they do now and without television, Darwin's detailed and fascinating tale of the animals and peoples and strange lands he encountered must have seemed like a steriod-boosted hybrid of a David Attenborough nature documentary and exotic travel programme.</p><p>Considering the tone and quality of the writing it is a sobering wake-up call to realize that Darwin was only 23 when he started writing it and the voyage lasted more than 5 years. Though the book was only published in 1945, much of it had been serialized during the voyage in scientific journals. </p><p>He comes across as a well-rounded young scientist. His knowledge of geology was as impressive as his intimate familiarity with animals and plants of all kinds. He had a sharp eye for detail but unlike most people could always put those details into a bigger picture. Details for him were the means to notice larger patterns, more general implications. The mere way grass grew, or the way stones were arranged across the road and in the surrounding country-side spoke volumes to him of seasonal weather influences, or climate. The kinds of plants and foods he noticed in an area could lead to insights of the food-chain dependencies of the common fauna of the locale and what further implications these relationships might have entailed. </p><p>History has confirmed that he had an uncanny instinct about natural systems that led him to make many guesses and predictions on a paucity of evidence that have since been vindicated. Almost every chapter surprises you, or rocks you back on your heels as you reel in the face of his astoundingly accurate conclusions; though you probably need to be familiar with the natural sciences to some degree to fully appreciate his insights.</p><p>My favourite chapters were the one describing with great humour what truly miserable pieces of frozen excrement the Falkland Islands are, and the landmark one that covers his first appraisal of the Galapagos islands. But there are gems scattered throughout the work like his bang-on-target analysis of the curious formation of reefs and atolls and why they can tell us about the changes in height of the earth's crust that happened hundreds of thousands of years ago, and why they are good correlators of volcanic activity, earthquakes, or the lack of both. Awesome. He did all that just by thinking about things very carefully, the very same things that were in plain sight of everybody else, too, who had previously tried and failed to come up with viable theories.

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  — Apr 22, 2009 | Add your feedback

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  • Sarum (102)
  • The Novel of England
  • By Edward Rutherfurd
  • Finished on Apr 30, 2013
    
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  • Claws (1)
  • By Ricky Sides
  • Finished on Apr 26, 2013
    
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  Claws

  Claw My Eyes Out!

  A poor novel. The idea of killer cats was interesting enough for me to start the book but the writing was stilted, and juvenile in the worst way. The romance between the two main characters was painful to behold. In fact, all the dialog was badly written. People just do not even remotely talk or int ... (continue)

  A poor novel. The idea of killer cats was interesting enough for me to start the book but the writing was stilted, and juvenile in the worst way. The romance between the two main characters was painful to behold. In fact, all the dialog was badly written. People just do not even remotely talk or interact the way the characters do in this book. This book was peopled by cardboard cutout stereotypes. It is an entirely two-dimensional, amateurish effort, and I have no wonder that this is not published by a known publishing house.

  This was worse even than Scott Sigler's "Ancestor," which is saying a lot. At least Sigler's action sequences were somewhat exciting. The action in "Claws" is unoriginal and yawn-worthy, unfortunately.

  Ricky Sides has written a number of "Peacekeepers" science fiction novels. All I can say with some confidence, without having read them, is that they cannot be worse than "Claws." Reading this review will probably afford you more reading pleasure and excitement than the actual book.

  This book was on promotional sale at Amazon for zero dollars for the ebook. I found it listed on kindlebuffet.com and thought I would give it a go.

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  — May 2, 2013 | Add your feedback

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  • The Sea (164)
  • By John Banville
  • Finished on Apr 15, 2013
    
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  The Sea

  A Masterpiece

  A formidable mastery of poetry, narrative, and the English language oozes from virtually every sentence in Banville's The Sea like honey dripping from a comb. His art is simply breathtaking.

  This book will not be enjoyed by people out for easy entertainment, laughs or scares, or an exciting ... (continue)

  A formidable mastery of poetry, narrative, and the English language oozes from virtually every sentence in Banville's The Sea like honey dripping from a comb. His art is simply breathtaking.

  This book will not be enjoyed by people out for easy entertainment, laughs or scares, or an exciting story with action and adventure. True, The Sea does end off with a somewhat gobsmacking finish, but the real joy to be had here is the bleak yet sometimes colourful but always stunningly poetic introspection by the main character on the nature of love, love lost, childhood alternately dimly and starkly rememembered, and our relation with death and the end of all things.

  After finishing this book I felt intellectually winded, emotionally drained, even a little afraid in a quiet way that Stephen King himself could not manage in me. This little book packs a very velvety, long and langourous knock-out punch, long in the making from the first word to the final few pages. I researched John Banville after reading The Sea and found he is considered on a reasonably short list for the Nobel Prize in literature. Reading that did not surprise me at all.

  Banville's first person narration works very well. The main character's memory is, like our own, faulty and biased and inventive, and since the novel is almost entirely the reminiscing of a single character, we the readers get a very vivid and human portrait painted for us. Banville allows his character to coin terms or words, for example, like "Avrilaceous," which only make sense in their proper context: an old scholar's very personal mind as he remembers aspects of his life and experience.

  There is almost an embarrassment of riches here. Can one not be slightly resentful before this minutely controlled cascade of talent vesting in one author? I shall have to set aside some serious reading for his other works, which seem almost universally praised. The Sea is, however, according to more than one critic I have read, an emminently decent little place to start with this author if one has not yet read him.

  Excerpts:
  "The sand around me with the sun strong on it gave off its mysterious catty smell."

  "A deep, dreamy silence accumulated around us, soft and dense, like silt."

  "He has the glazed flawlessness of an actor who has been playing the same part for too long. I wonder if he really is an old army man. He does a good job of hiding his Belfast accent but hints of it keep escaping, like trapped wind."

  "We have had a storm. It went on all night long and into the middle of the morning, an extraordinary affair, I have never know the like, in these temperate zones, for violence or duration. I enjoyed it outragiously, sitting up in my ornate bed as on a catafalque, if that is the word I want, the room aflicker around me and the sky stamping up and down in a fury, breaking its bones."

  "I do not entertain the possibility of an afterlife, or any deity capable of offering it. Given the world that he created, it would be an impiety against God to believe in him."

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  — Apr 15, 2013 | Add your feedback

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  • Mr. Monk in Outer Space (14)
  • By Lee Goldberg
  • Finished on Apr 5, 2013
    
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  Mr. Monk in Outer Space

  Monkish Hilarity

  Another solid entry in the Monk series of books written by the same writer of the television show.

  All the usual humour and genius level detective skills are present in this Monk offering.

  Monk's brother, Ambrose, features quite prominently in this story as he helps Monk solve a tricky case invol ... (continue)

  Another solid entry in the Monk series of books written by the same writer of the television show.

  All the usual humour and genius level detective skills are present in this Monk offering.

  Monk's brother, Ambrose, features quite prominently in this story as he helps Monk solve a tricky case involving particularly fanatical science fiction fans, a breed whose costumes and made up languages literally fills Monk with a near incapacitating horror. When Monk finds a decades old box of cereal in the memorabilia section at a science fiction convention he wants arrests to be made!

  This series seems to be very dependable. Each book has so far been of the same standard and enjoying one of them is an almost sure-fire guarantee that you will enjoy them all. I read one every now and again so that I do not get tired of it. If you are looking for relatively light entertainment with lots of laughs and some dazzling detective work, then, once more, you cannot go too far wrong with a Monk book.

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  — Apr 12, 2013 | Add your feedback

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  • Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (298)
  • By Roald Dahl
  • Finished on Mar 26, 2013
    
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  • Titan (20)
  • By John Varley
  • Finished on Mar 18, 2013
    
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  • The Adventures of Jimmie Dale (Dodo Press) (1)
  • By Frank L. Packard
  • Finished on Mar 9, 2013
    
    Review
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  The Adventures of Jimmie Dale (Dodo Press)

  Masked Mystery Adventure Still Thrills

  Jimmie Dale, care-free young millionaire by day, intrepid crime-fighter by night. The Gray Seal is Jimmie's alter ego, a formidable burglar and safe-cracker who always leaves a diamond shaped, gray paper "seal" behind as his calling card. Jimmie did it for kicks, just because he could, for "the shee ... (continue)

  Jimmie Dale, care-free young millionaire by day, intrepid crime-fighter by night. The Gray Seal is Jimmie's alter ego, a formidable burglar and safe-cracker who always leaves a diamond shaped, gray paper "seal" behind as his calling card. Jimmie did it for kicks, just because he could, for "the sheer deviltry of it," never actually stealing anything.

  But one day a mysterious woman contacts him by letter and threatens to expose the Gray Seal's true identity to the police unless he does her bidding. Jimmie is blackmailed into becoming a full-blown crime fighter, pitting his formerly frivolous though formidable skills against various kingpins and denizens of the underworld. The woman, known only to him as the Tocsin, supplies him with details, always anonymously, on upcoming robberies, murders, or instances of fraud. Every bit of skill he has so playfully acquired up till now is used to the utmost, stretching Jimmie to the limit to keep his nonchalant millionaire playboy image from being exposed while at the same time having to cover the bruises and desperate adventures of his alter ego's nocturnal exploits.

  These are adventures for young readers, and each book is partially a collection of the previous year's serializations from the magazines in which Packard published his stories. For the first half of The Adventures Of Jimmie Dale each chapter represents yet another exciting episode in the dashing life and dangerous of Jimmie Dale. The second half of the novel is not a compilation of serialized stories, though, it is a conventional mystery thriller covering a single story thread that draws all the preceding stories together very nicely. Jimmie faces his most dangerous mission yet, protect the Tocsin, whose true identity Jimmie does not even know, from enemies so shadowy and dangerous that they are the stuff of legend, striking fear into the hearts of the most hardened criminals.

  I found the second half of the book to be very well written. Packard's plot is complex and intelligent and ruthless. Jimmie Dale as a hero, takes on a darker, more serious aspect, and the action steps up a notch. Jimmie Dale faces deadly situations and his plight becomes alarmingly desperate. Reading the second-half I can now see why Packard is still so highly regarded. I originally read these books as a teenager and enjoyed them immensely. I spent years trying to find them again after having forgotten the author and the titles. As an adult I can still appreciate this somewhat nostalgic trip back to one of the highlights of my childhood reading.

  Packard's work prefigured later popular tales of masked heroes like Batman and the Phantom, bringing to the popular mind the earlier exploits of a lesser known hero with a secret identity: Baroness Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel. Jimmie Dale may be the first masked vigilante hero with a secret lair, the Sanctuary, which in turn may have inspired the Bat Cave and Superman's Fortress of Solitude. Jimmie Dale even has a faithful, old-school butler who would go to any lengths to protect him.

  Packard's influence on the mystery/masked hero genre is widely regarded as profound.

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  — Mar 11, 2013 | Add your feedback

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  • The Zombie Survival Guide (291)
  • Complete Protection from the Living Dead
  • By Max Brooks
  • Finished on Mar 8, 2013
    
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  The Zombie Survival Guide

  Pardon Me Sir, But Your Arm Seems To Have Fallen Off

  It is difficult to anticipate how well The Zombie Survival Guide is written. The author is Max Brooks, writer for the Saturday Night Live show and son of the famous comedy icon, Mel Brooks. The writing is flawless: it is very convincingly done. It is exactly what it purports to be: a c ... (continue)

  It is difficult to anticipate how well The Zombie Survival Guide is written. The author is Max Brooks, writer for the Saturday Night Live show and son of the famous comedy icon, Mel Brooks. The writing is flawless: it is very convincingly done. It is exactly what it purports to be: a complete guide for protecting oneself against an outbreak of the undead.

  Brooks starts the book off by rationalizing what, exactly, a zombie is and how one comes about. He goes on to discuss every aspect of surviving the undead: weapons, transport, terrain, political responses, social responses, survival in a group or solo, defence strategies of all kinds in all circumstances, survival in a post-zombie-apocalypse world, global recovery time, decay rates of zombies in all terrains above ground, below it, and beneath oceans, lakes, or other bodies of water.

  The breadth and scope of this small book is breathtaking. It is written with very accessible and lean prose, which goes along way to maintaining the reader's illusion that the zombie threat is, in fact, a real one. Historical cases of actual zombie outbreaks are covered from prehistory to the modern day, where the oddly plausible stories of government cover-ups provides much straight-laced humour by pandering to no doubt to a myriad of extant conspiracy theories. This is where the true humour of this work lies: in the deadpan, serious delivery that lampoons conspiracy nuts and the ridiculous Hollywood offerings in the zombie genre. Brooks effectively and incisively skewers Hollywood zombie movies and horror movies in general by deflating the "myths" about how best to survive against undead monsters. He gives the "true" account of the best tactics and weaponry, thereby showing up Hollywood's movie plots for the silly fluff that they often are.

  So, a chainsaw might look cool and formidable in a zombie movie, but in real life, zombies, being mindlessly motivated to devour you, are not able to be intimidated; a chainsaw can stall or run out of fuel; it is heavy and unwieldy; it requires very close contact with the undead and increases the danger of being infected; it makes a huge noise that merely attracts every zombie in the vicinity; and finally, a chainsaw is liable, in close combat with a ravening horde of the undead, to decapitate you as much as the zombie behind you, striving to sink its teeth into your flesh.

  A bus might seem a great way of fleeing a zombie infested suburb, but it is lousy at navigating streets strewn with the debris and abandoned cars that inevitably accompany a zombie outbreak. Refueling a bus is also no easy matter and forget about changing a tyre. Even if one does make it out into the country, a bus still cannot travel off-road to avoid an obstacle: it can easily get stuck and essentially turn into a big can full of zombie snacks!

  If you would like to find out which weapons are better under which circumstances against a moaning horde of the living dead, then this book is the gold standard. It is written with marginal amounts of explicit humour, but its satirical and pseudo-documentary style is hilarious in a very intelligent way. I have no doubt that some of our more unhinged citizens would actually believe this book. Brooks's historical accounts of actual zombie outbreaks around the world are disturbingly realistic and plausible. They form the last quarter of the book and are not at all repetitive except with the most superficial reading. Each "account" cleverly illustrates a different aspect of zombie attack or defence in action. Brooks ingeniously weaves his zombie-spin into actual historical occurences, giving the accounts that much more plausibility. Even the mummification practices of ancient Egypt are given a plausible "zombie" interpretation!

  Reading this book one is inevitably struck with the realization that it contains some very relevant information about survival, weaponry, emergency transport, and hostile terrains in general. It seems to take itself almost entirely seriously, and in doing so, convinces us, while reading at least, of the real and immanent danger of a potential zombie outbreak, coming soon to a neighbourhood near you! I look forward to the successor, World War Z, which seems it may be even darker and more realistic. Brooks is clearly capable of excellent writing, and despite the subject matter of this satirical dissection of Hollywood B-movies and conspiracy theory madness, this book is written with a skill and in prose far above your average pot-boiler thriller or John Grisham-clone bestseller.

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  — Mar 11, 2013 | Add your feedback

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  • Moxyland (17)
  • By Lauren Beukes
  • Finished on Feb 26, 2013
    
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  Moxyland

  A Lekka Kif Jol!

  Hip, lyrical, relentlessly unhelpful (see review title), Moxyland is a dystopian near-future set in Cape Town, South Africa. I say unhelpful because Beukes uses Capetonian slang without any hint of meaning or glossary, even when context could give no clue to a non-South African. Local brand n ... (continue)

  Hip, lyrical, relentlessly unhelpful (see review title), Moxyland is a dystopian near-future set in Cape Town, South Africa. I say unhelpful because Beukes uses Capetonian slang without any hint of meaning or glossary, even when context could give no clue to a non-South African. Local brand names and slang for local food or products got a bit overwhelming at times. Even as a Capetonian familiar with the slang, the in-group shibboleths, Afrikaans, and Cape Flats gang-slang, there was so much of it that it was in danger of seeming too contrived. How a non-South African appreciates this barrage is beyond me--perhaps they would see it as fresh, new, and a Clockwork Orange contender. In truth, it is not anywhere near as abstruse lexicographically as Anthony Burgess's controversial classic, but several international reviewers were seemingly very impressed with Moxyland's "new lexicon." Not fully understanding it, international reviewers may have decided it is something rare and special.

  And that would not be far wrong. Moxyland is a fresh take on juvenile dystopia and it confers special impact on those few who understand its "new" lexicon of South Africanisms. I say juvenile dsytopia for the fact that all the major characters are hip, crazy, radical, sexually non-normative, young people. They are a motley crew that range from the rich to the street-wise to the 12 Monkeys-style activists; from the meek to the vicious, the caring to the mercurial, even homicidal. Drugs play a large part of the dystopian disenfranchisement of the independent mind: everything, for example, is linked through your cell phone--if you do not conform or toe the corporate line, you can get disconnected from the network, and without a working phone, you are completely cut off from an internet connection, entry to buildings and public facilities, and any form of money transaction. In other words you are dead in the water. And that is only one thing the corporate police forces can do to you if you cross the line. Young adults can become walking advertisements for corporate logos, addicted to drinking the official company soft drink--though such a procedure does come with some serious benefits, experimental though they may be.

  This book is a gritty new cyberpunk, not so rooted in virtual realities and embedded neuro-interfacing computers, but in the future politics of dissent in a grimy world that is wholly subject to the needs of large corporates and their police forces who now run society with an iron fist. It is a world where the forlorn hope of society rests in the incapable hands of a ragtag assortment of addicted, spaced, embittered, vicious, unstable, terrified youths. One gets the feeling that in this world, everyone dies in the end. But to find out you will have to read the book. I felt Moxyland was merely the beginning, a very talented start to a promising new voice in South African science fiction. I am looking forward to reading Beukes's much lauded and prize-winning next offering, Zoo City, to see where she takes some of the ideas the seeds of which she sowed in the shallow dirt of Moxyland. It looks like Beukes may be a rare beast indeed: a break-out speculative fiction South African author!

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  — Mar 11, 2013 | Add your feedback

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  • The Heroes (63)
  • By Joe Abercrombie
  • Finished on Feb 21, 2013
    
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  • The Married Man's Guide to Adultery (1)
  • A Study of Adulterations
  • By P. G. Du Plessis
  • Finished on Feb 15, 2013
    
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  • Best Served Cold (73)
  • By Joe Abercrombie
  • Finished on Feb 11, 2013
    
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  • Last Argument of Kings (114)
  • Book Three of the First Law
  • By Joe Abercrombie
  • Finished on Jan 31, 2013
    
    Review
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  Last Argument of Kings

  The Dog's Bollocks

  Top notch action-adventure fantasy novel in the sword and sorcery department.

  A couple of things set Abercrombie apart from the competition, I think. First, his writing transcends your average pulp-fiction level. His characters are well written, believable, and fleshed out in glorious 3-D. Second, ... (continue)

  Top notch action-adventure fantasy novel in the sword and sorcery department.

  A couple of things set Abercrombie apart from the competition, I think. First, his writing transcends your average pulp-fiction level. His characters are well written, believable, and fleshed out in glorious 3-D. Second, he writes for a more mature audience. He pulls no punches in his combat scenes, and his descriptions of the psychology of torture is actually quite thought provoking. At times one might think it all a bit gratuitous but in general Abercrombie seems to write what is necessary in futherance of the plot. His human relationships are on the whole quite believable for the fantasy genre, indeed, he seems to go further than most in fleshing out his characters. To mitigate the violence Abercrombie is quite accomplished conveying humour into his scenarios. So, there are quite a few good laughs along the way in his books.

  In summary, there is some shocking violence and death. There are believable and sympathetic characters. There is an intelligent plot, and authentic dialogue. Humour. Decent writing with poetic imagery and inventive language. Psychological insight. Philosophical conundrums. It is all round a highly recommended series for fans of sword and sorcery epics.

  There are three books in his acclaimed First Law (2006-2008) series. Then he added a couple of stand-alone novels set in the same world that are also very favourably reviewed, Before They Are Hanged (2007), and Best Served Cold (2009), both of which prominently feature characters from the First Law series, so it is recommended to read these last even though there are strictly speaking stand-alone novels.

  I do have one or two caveats, though. Some of the characterization is a bit juvenile, for example, the childish rivalry between the Union war generals, which is depicted as not much different from schoolyard petulance and competition for glory. It just did not ring that true in Before They Are Hanged (2007). Also, the endless descriptions of Inquisitor Glokta's aches and pains and his relentless pessimism does begin to grate just a little after two books of it. These are minor gripes though and I still recommend the series to fantasy fans. Abercrombie is certainly not at the serious five star level of George R R Martin, but he is close enough for some fine entertainment.

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  — Jan 21, 2013 | Add your feedback

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