To Have and Have Not, book review. (Ernest Hemingway)

What a strange book.

Harry Morgan is a fisherman who just got duped out of over eight hundred dollars by an American tourist (it's the 1930s by the way and the man who chartered Harry's boat, used his bate and lost his rods and reels for three weeks, has scarpered without paying), so he can no longer make a living out of fishing so, instead, he uses his boat illegally to transport both booze and people from Florida to Cuba, or Cuba to Florida.

After the tourist disappears, Harry's first 'job' is to take a dozen Chinamen from Cuba to America for the princely sum of twelve hundred dollars, but surmising a double cross, Harry makes sure he gets the drop on the ring leader and then dumps the twelve men on a local beach.

Then it's booze, which ends up with his boat being seized and him being shot at - which costs him his arm - and so, with no boat, only one arm and a family to feed, he steals a boat and ferries four Cubans from Florida back to Cuba so they can join the revolution.

There is some good writing here: the gunfight at the very beginning, his double-cross of the chief Chinaman, the night at the Veteran's bar and the ambushing of the Cubans before they get to close to home and shot him first, are all standout moments but the rest of the book just jumps around, with some of it being completely pointless.

There's seemingly random chapters about characters that have little or nothing to do with the overall story randomly interjected through the narrative, which is really weird - I can only guess that the author needed a few more 'haves' to balance against Harry and the rest of the 'have nots'.

One example is when Harry walks into Freddy's bar and calls one of the customers a whore, for the book to then shot of on a tangent and follow the loves, lives and affairs of these strangers until Harry comes back a few chapters later and the main story thread continues.

This happens again at the very end of the book when we're randomly taken from cabin to cabin of all the luxury yachts in the marina - in great detail I might add - from a man in his sixties worrying about his outstanding tax bill in America, through a family who are good and wholesome and treat everyone well and so sleep soundly, to a woman who is contemplating whether to take a sleeping draft of not, and again, I thought this was really strange. (Ironically this was one of the better written parts of the book, even though it had nothing to do with the story arc.)

So, To Have and Have Not, is good in parts but those parts are few and far between, so I can't really recommend it. Two stars.

Don't forget to search my blog for your favourite authors and books and if I haven't read them, message me with your recommendations.

Who & what do you read? Questions I get asked as a book blogger (Pt I) Michael J Richardson

For those of you who don't know me, I've been reading and writing since I was a teenager (properly reading that is, not force fed books I had no interest in at school, which excludes Stig of the Dump of course, which was my first serial reading experience), so that's a good thirty years under my belt, but what floats my boat, gets me going back for more?

Well, why don't we start with the classics. But wait, what is a classic? A book written over a hundred years ago? Over fifty? Harry Potter will be defined as a classic in the future if not already, so do I include them? Maybe it's Austin, Bronte or Dickens (of which I've liked but not loved - except A Christmas Carol, that will always be a 5 star book in my opinion), or Du Maurier, whose My Cousin Rachel is one of my all-time favourites. Looking further afield we have Jules Verne, not bad, Platonov, weird and Kafka - seriously, I think something got lost in translation like: plot and anything that actually makes sense - and I've never really enjoyed American classics either with Moby Dick, The Scarlet Letter, The Catcher in the Rye and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest all being a bit lacklustre - although I did like, The Great Gatsby and I am Legend is a masterpiece.

How about horror then? But again, what is horror? I recently read Roxane Gay's superb, An Untamed State, one of the most horrific books I've read recently but you'll only find it in the fiction section, as with Khaled Hosseini, who writes about the horrors of war torn Afghanistan in a way that pulls at your heart. I've also read The Girl with all the Gifts and its prequel (zombie apocalypse for those who don't know), but they're no more horrific than Stephen King epics' like The Stand and It, which are simply undefinable in genre. Then there are horror classics like Dracula (superb) Frankenstein (okay) and The Exorcist (seriously creepy) to consider, all having such great characters and depth that to simply call them 'Horror' would do them a great injustice.

I have always loved apocalyptic stories, too, from the short and punchy like, The War of the Worlds, I am Legend and The Day or the Triffids, to huge tomes like The Passage series and of course, the best of the best, The Stand - all fourteen hundred plus pages of it, and how the whole experience of reading books like these leaves you feeling lonely and apprehensive but with a fierce determination that if it were ever to happen to you, you'd be the good guy/girl, be on the right side and survive.

So where does that leave us? Well, this subject is far too long for one post so I'll blog part II in a few days' time and talk it through a bit more with you then. See you soon.

Don't forget to search my blog for your favourite authors and books and if I haven't read them, why not message me with your recommendations.

A Tale of Two Cities, book review. (Charles Dickens)

I am not a big reader of the classics, in fact this is only my forth Dickens: Oliver Twist, Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol (which I adore) being the others, and at first I found this hard going but, stubborn as I am when it comes to finishing books, I took a break and reread the first fifty pages or so and was, on second acquaintance, hooked.

The premise is a simple one of love, but as with so many love stories there are twists and turns. France is in the grip of revolution, blood is being spilt and the mere whisper in the ear of an official can find you in the stocks or worse, visiting the guillotine; so if you're an aristocrat, you're better off out of it and, as it happens, Charles Darnay is one such chap, who has just beaten a spying charge in a London court when he takes a fancy to the beautiful Lucie Manette.

Her love however, is bequeathed to another, reserved wholly for her father, Alexandre Manette, who was lost to her for many years. Only when she and the local bank manager, Jarvis Lorry (who become firm friends) got wind of his whereabouts from Manette's former servant and now bar owner, Ernest Defarge and his wife, did they manage to rescue him from his madness and shoe making in a Paris loft.

So lost was he - he'd lost all his faculties from being imprisoned in the bastille for years - that it took all of Lucie and Jarvis's strength and fortitude to nurse him back to health and as the months pass and Alexandre begins to embrace his new calm and peaceful life in London, comforted and looked after by friends and family - his daughter being the most dedicated - life takes a turn for the better; his daughter is to be married.

The writing here is as you would expect it to be: old school, which I both like and don't.

I like the use of old words, words that we no longer hear, and when people speak they do so with such delicacy and courtesy, even when they're being mean or threatening, and it all helps transport you back over two hundred years, to when the book is set. What I'm not so keen on is how the use of the archaic English language interrupts the flow of the narrative and had me flicking back and forth to see what I had missed.

As with a lot of Dickens' books, when first published, A Tale of Two Cities was serialised over many weeks, and I wondered if this was why I found it a bit disjointed.

The first few chapters are very atmospheric, and as I've said above, once understood, carry you on and into the rest of the story with pace but it is the ending, the last quarter of the book if you will, that I think seals its place in the annals of time; for it is here, having been lured back to France, that Charles Darnay is arrested and imprisoned for being an aristocrat. Along with Lucie, her father and Miss Pross (Lucie's governess) they attempt to win his case, but on release, he is rearrested on a trumped up charge. The Defarges - the bar owners who so kindly looked after Lucie's father when he was lost making shoes - have turned, put the word out about Darnay's roots, and shown their true tricolours.

The, 'will they, won't they,' tug of war over whether the jury will find him innocent a second time or have him condemned to Madam Guillotine, the behind the scene scheming by the tricoteuses, (a group of women who knit the names of those who should be executed into shrouds, Madam Defarge being their self-appointed leader) and the bloodlust of a baying crowds, is all in contrast to the peaceful and mellow existence the family had enjoyed in London, and it turns the pages quicker than you know.

So to sum up: Once I got my mind around the language - yes I know, it's written in English but that's like saying, Train Spotting is written in Scottish - this book thoroughly entertained. There is love, reunion and life, opposing hatred, destruction and death and there is atmosphere (and we all know how much I love atmosphere) along with a few more tranquil moments, and then there's the ultimate sacrifice, the giving of one's life for another, but that would be giving the game away so you'll have to check this one out for yourselves.

Three and a half stars.

Don't forget to search my blog for your favourite authors and books and if I haven't read them yet why not message me with your recommendations.

Heart of Darkness, book review. (Joseph Conrad)

Sitting on a cruising yawl (a sailing boat to you and I), in the Thames estuary, waiting for a flood to subside and the tide to turn, Marlow - a seaman of some repute - recants the epic journey he once took into the heart of the African rain forests; to the heart of darkness.

Just getting a commission was hard enough, until a wealthy benefactor stepped in, and his passage from England to Europe and then on to the African continent, took weeks, all before he had to battle his way through the dense jungle of the Congo to discover 'his' steamer a wreck.

A month or two pass whilst he repairs his charge, making her seaworthy again, and then finally, he is able to press on, up the Congo River in search of the legendary explorer and ivory thief, Mr Kurtz.

With every mile travelled, the forest encroaches, the air thickens and the natives get bolder. As a reader you feel the tension build, the exhaustion and the sweat running down their backs, you hear the call of the birds, feel the humidity, as if you are right there in the jungle, and you get nervous when you see, through dense undergrowth, eyes staring back at you.

Heart of Darkness is a short book but the writing is as fierce as the mosquito filled heat soaked African rain forest, and as every meander in the river is traversed, the intensity rises and the tension builds, leaving you somewhat exhausted by the end but wanting more.

Three and a half stars for this one then, as it is good, builds tension well and has you on edge for a fair chunk of the book, but I did feel a bit lost sometimes, which might be me, but there you go.

A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, book review. (Jules Verne)

Well what a jolly jaunt this book is; with polite peril and gentlemanly resolve, even in the darkest depth of the earth, it certainly is a throwback to the olden days. This is not a complaint by the way, but a compliment, and the language and general sense of the past, all add to the narrative.

After the discovery and subsequent solving of a three hundred year old puzzle, suggesting that travelling to the centre of the earth and how it might be accomplished, is possible, Axel, and his uncle, Otto Lidenbrock, (a scientist held in the highest regard), begin their journey.

Heading across Europe from Hamburg to Iceland, they make their preparations - hiring an Icelandic man by the name of Hans, and acquiring the necessary provisions for their decent into the volcano of Snæfellsjökull.

As you can imagine, their journey is fraught with danger: exposure, hunger, ancient extinct creatures, to name just a few, but when Axel becomes separated and believes all is lost, as his light gradually dims and he finds himself alone in the impenetrable dark, miles beneath the earth’s surface, you get a real sense of foreboding.

When our intrepid explorers discover an underground sea, with sandy beaches, cliffs, inlets and tropical foliage to boot, there is euphoria, but before all of that there is the thirst. Minutes turn to hours that become days, with no water, but what is that noise? Are they hearing things? Are they hallucinating?

With the last of his energy, and with brute force, Hans manages to bore a hole through the rock, and find water; hot scalding water, but water all the same.

Incidences like this befall our trio throughout the book, the tempest that destroys their raft and the battle between two giant marine creatures, are both worthy of mention, as is the constant sense of threat, but the stand out moments for me where, Axel's despair in isolation, and the almost catastrophic effects of their dynamiting what they were hoping was their path to the centre of the Earth.

It's not a long book this one, and is quite fast paced, especially the second half, so well worth a read.

Three and a half stars.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, book review. (Ken Kesey)

I'm not going to lie to you; I found the first half of this book hard going. (Hence the Whisky!) I don't know what it is about classic American literature, but I always seem to struggle with it, be it F Scott Fitzgerald, Steinbeck or Salinger, there just seems to be a disconnect.

Many of you will have seen the film with Jack Nicholson, and therefore know the basic story - McMurphy is a wise cracking, gambler, who has avoided gaol (jail) for what he thinks is going to be a few easy months in a mental hospital, and he brings turmoil and discord to what was once a peaceful, psychiatric ward.

From what I remember, the film was really quite good, but I saw it too long ago to make any meaningful connection with the book; which I felt dragged, to the point where I had to put it to one side and read something else, before coming back to it.

I suppose, being told in the first person by an American Indian, who pretends to be deaf and dumb, is regularly drugged and resides in a mental institute, may have had something to do with that, but it's not until a fishing trip, (about half way through the book) that I felt it really started to get interesting.

There are flashes of greatness here, some of the group therapy sessions are tense and leave you guessing. McMurphy's ability to talk everyone around to his way of thinking, are intriguing but soon grow tiresome; the Chief's flashbacks of home are convincing and come with a hint of sadness, but his visions of a hidden world, a world where everything is controlled by the Combine, are lacklustre.

I think perseverance is the key with this book. I'm glad I stuck with it, and in the end I can see why some of you might like it, but for me, I can't recommend it.

Just scrapes three stars for those flashes of excellence then, the fishing trip being the one true highlight, but without that scene, it really don't think it would have been worth my while.

Dracula, book review. (Bram Stoker)

Dracula, one of the best and most influential books I have ever read!

Quite a statement that, so let’s look at it in a little more detail.

The book is written as a series of diary and journal entries in the first person, and from several different perspectives. The characters are both male and female, one being a solicitor, one, a Doctor who runs a lunatic Asylum, and then there's Dr Val Helsing from Amsterdam.

Mina Murray and Lucy Westenra's diary entries, add both intrigue and passion, we have the somewhat delicious English language, (as it was in late Victorian England), a love quadrangle, rather than a love triangle, desperation, sadness and remorse, but above all, we have Count Dracula.

We all know the story of course, or do we?

I first read this book over twenty years ago and in that time I'd forgotten most it, remembering just the bare bones.

I had a vague recollection of Renfield and the asylum, the predicament in which Johnathan Harker found himself in, in the depth of the unforgiving Carpathian mountains, but I'd forgotten the pace of the book, the shear depth of fear the poor souls experienced, as they battled their way to Carfax Abbey, and then across Europe, to confront what must be, one of literature's most revered villains.

And let us not forget one of the all-time best chapters in literary history, chapter 7, where the description of the storm and the landing of the Demeter, (Dracula's ship), at Whitby Harbour, is told as a news article in a local newspaper.

Reading this book again, got me thinking about how many stories, films, television programs, cartoons, and comics there must be out there, that have been influenced by this book? Hundred, thousands maybe, who knows! From the obvious like, Salam's Lot and the Twilight saga, through Richard Matheson's sublime, I am Legend, to Justin Cronin's less obvious but equally exquisite, The Passage, to count (pun intended) but a few. (My own short story, Lycanthrope, would never have materialised without this book).

So, a solid five stars for Bram Stoker's Dracula then, and what a better time to start reading it, than on All Hallows’ Eve.

Enjoy my fiendish friend, read deep.

The Curious case of Benjamin Button, book review. (F. Scott Fitzgerald)

Yes, very curious indeed. 

A few years ago I read the Great Gatsby by the same author and really liked it, but this collection of short stories is quite something else. 

Firstly, Benjamin Button is only a dozen or so pages, so a really short story then; quirky though. 

Some of the other stories here are better, my favourite being, O Russet Witch, which has a certain charm about it that captures the mood of an affluent 1920's America. Coming in a close second is the equally delightful, but somewhat brutish, May Day, which centres on a mob running through the city, and is the longest story here. 

Some of the others were a bit boring, but that's the beauty of short stories I suppose, the good ones stick with you, the others can be quickly forgotten, and you don't end up kicking yourself for wasting too much time. 

This is the third selection of short stories I've read this year, diversifying from my usual novels, and it's been a breath of fresh air; something I would heartily recommend you try, especially as we all seem to lead such busy lives these days and have so little time to do the things we really love, (like having the time to escape into the depth of a great book every day).

So, grab a collection that suits you, whether it be a classic like this, something contemporary, like Mark Haddon's The Pier Falls, (Blog review on 30th August), or something dark like Stephen King's, Full Dark, No Stars, and dig in; you won't regret it. 

This collection gets a 'reasonably entertaining' three stars.