Been a massive bookworm for a month (when I wasn’t checking out filming locations of following recipes or trying to get in shape for the Santa Dash.) It’s one of 8 plans I have this year. I read:
1) Rendezvous with Rama
Arthur C Clarke’s 1973 follow-up to his groundbreaking 2001: A Space Odyssey, Rendezvous with Rama follows some astronauts travelling to a cylindrical metallic planet, which itself is hurtling towards the sun, and they investigate its potential as a second home.
Massively inventive, scientifically fascinating, dialogue now quite dated and the plot didn’t seem to go anywhere. Certainly an enjoyable read though.
2) Stan: Evil Rises
Short comic free on entrance to 2022’s For the Love of Horror convention. British take on The Evil Dead with a livestreaming wannabe influencer in the lead. Pretty funny.
3) For Your Eyes Only: Ian Fleming and James Bond
Times journo Ben Macintyre’s mission is to guide us through the life of one Ian Fleming, also a former Times hack but – earlier, in the Second World War, a Naval Intelligence Officer. This life of dreaming up schemes against Britain’s enemies, planting limpet mines on submarines and downing (literally) crippling amounts of hard liquor gave plenty of inspiration for his writing life.
Before long, he devised the ultimate post-war fantasy of the secret agent: James Bond, suave MI6 operative with a licence to kill, seduce and down insane amounts of vodka martinis yet still be able to drive sports cars without careening off a cliff. Someone that men and women could fantasise about in one way or another – transported from their bombed out city, they could imagine themselves in tropical islands, living the high life, eating fine cuisine, firing hi-tech weaponry and getting the girl.
The book is a biography of the author, but also an investigation into the Bond character: the background, the role at Q branch, the missions he’s sent on.
It’s also a comparison of how Fleming’s and Bond’s lives cross over, and how the lives of the people he knew inspired Fleming to create the ultimate spy (not to mention, a few supporting characters too). There’s a great anecdote about Fleming crashing the filming of Dr No in 1962, plus many others. A must for Bond fans.
4) Maus
Maus, by New Yorker magazine artist Art Spiegelman, tells the story of Spiegelman’s father Vladek, a textiles trader and all-round handyman, and how he survived Auschwitz.
Published in 1992, it’s the first and to date only graphic novel to win the Pulitzer Prize. This weighty, generous book, set mostly in the ‘30s and 40s, depicts the Jews as mice – including the narrator and family – and the Nazis as cats, all in bleak monochrome.
The tale of a young Polish man who endures and survives the most horrendous of environments tells a harrowing account, one that many others of his family didn’t live to tell. The creator – who puts himself in the frame as a central character as ‘Artie,’ also depicted in rodent form – interviews his father and coaxes out of him a memoir that haunts and sears into the mind.
Terrifying, poignant and more relevant than ever today.
5) Dynasties: The Rise and Fall of Animal Families
Author Stephen Moss joins a BBC film crew – headed up by naturalist legend David Attenborough – for a 2018 5-part documentary series following animal families over the course of up to 2 and a half years.
Each episode follows a different animal – usually an alpha male or female - and their families, and are given anthropomorphic human names, along with their kindred. Charm is a lioness on the plains of Kenya’s Masai Mara, defending her territory. David, a Senegalese chimpanzee, fights to maintain his position as group leader, when Luthor makes a strike to usurp him. (Their diet is described, bizarrely, as ‘catholic.’) Tait, a painted wolf native to Zimbabwe and alpha female, is the only one in her pack who will breed. But with whom?
Moss adapted the programme into a solid, beautifully explained and illustrated accompanying book, each episode forming a chapter. The section on emperor penguins was more general, as opposed to following one particular creature. I got the impression that as there were so, so many of them – thousands of seemingly identical birds are photographed – that there’d be no way to single them out and name them.
Finally in central India we join Raj Bhera, a 5 year old female Bengal tiger as she rules over the same land area that her ancestors have for the last century, possibly longer.
Brilliantly written with stunning photography, the team behind the programme pulled together to make an astounding TV show and literature.
Interesting to see a nod to naturalist Jane Goodall, who as it happens died this month.
Didn’t get as much read as I wanted, but made a dent on the To Be Read pile. Enjoyed it, though.
No comments:
Post a Comment