Monday, May 28, 2018
Sunday, May 27, 2018
Saturday, May 26, 2018
Book #51 - Back To The Front
Back To The Front by Stephen O'Shea
Just about need to read with a dictionary nearby - apparently he wrote with a thesaurus in one hand.
Jumps around - very difficult to follow. Having just finished another of Jon Krakauer's books it seemed to me that Stephen O'Shea was attempting to write in a similar style, because JK slides from present to past similarly, only JK does it much better.
Strange analogies throughout the book. "Yperite is dichlorethyl sulfide, a variant of the mustard gas that in 1917 began wafting regularly over the Salient. The people of Ypres live with that suffocating legacy, just as the people of Lynchburg, Virginia, can now profess a belief in due process of law without the slightest trace of self-consciousness."
Sentences that never end, and So. Many. Commas. "According to legend Joseph of Arimathaea, the fellow who took Christ's body down from the cross, brought the Holy Grail to Britain, and from the wooden staff Joseph carried with him a thorny shrub had sprouted in Glastonbury, which is the English town, as every well-red pot-head used to know, with the strongest claims to having been Camelot."
Descriptions and explanations that go on for ever. Four paragraphs to describe a thing that is only peripherally related to the story line.
There are a couple descriptions I liked: "Armentiéres becomes a puddle in search of the hole in my shoe." and "Housewives heading home from the boulangerie frown in undisguised horror at the sight of us - the local eccentric putt-putting his way into town with an ungainly trophy found wandering the fields." (p.101)
Just about need to read with a dictionary nearby - apparently he wrote with a thesaurus in one hand.
Jumps around - very difficult to follow. Having just finished another of Jon Krakauer's books it seemed to me that Stephen O'Shea was attempting to write in a similar style, because JK slides from present to past similarly, only JK does it much better.
Strange analogies throughout the book. "Yperite is dichlorethyl sulfide, a variant of the mustard gas that in 1917 began wafting regularly over the Salient. The people of Ypres live with that suffocating legacy, just as the people of Lynchburg, Virginia, can now profess a belief in due process of law without the slightest trace of self-consciousness."
Sentences that never end, and So. Many. Commas. "According to legend Joseph of Arimathaea, the fellow who took Christ's body down from the cross, brought the Holy Grail to Britain, and from the wooden staff Joseph carried with him a thorny shrub had sprouted in Glastonbury, which is the English town, as every well-red pot-head used to know, with the strongest claims to having been Camelot."
Descriptions and explanations that go on for ever. Four paragraphs to describe a thing that is only peripherally related to the story line.
There are a couple descriptions I liked: "Armentiéres becomes a puddle in search of the hole in my shoe." and "Housewives heading home from the boulangerie frown in undisguised horror at the sight of us - the local eccentric putt-putting his way into town with an ungainly trophy found wandering the fields." (p.101)
Thursday, May 24, 2018
Monday, May 21, 2018
Thursday, May 17, 2018
Saturday, May 12, 2018
Wednesday, May 9, 2018
Monday, May 7, 2018
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