Ged Carroll

Category: oprah time | 書評 | 서평 : 文芸批評

Welcome! I guess the first question that you have is why oprah time? Well in my last year of college I used to sit in the house that I shared with my landlord and write my essays whilst watching cable TV.

There I would be sipping tea, writing away and referencing from text books spread around me on the couch and coffee table. One of the programmes on the in the background was Oprah Winfrey. A lot of the show was just background noise. But I was fascinated by Oprah’s book club.

She’d give her take on a book, maybe interview the author. And then it would be blasted up the New York Times bestsellers list. This list appears weekly in the New York Times Book Review. Oprah’s book club was later emulated by other talk show hosts, notably the UK’s Richard Madeley and Judy Finegan.

On the high end you had Melvyn Bragg‘s South Bank Show when they profiled an author of the moment.

When I came to writing my own review of books that I’d read, I was was brought back to that time working on a sofa. Apple laptop in hand. It made sense to go with Oprah time.

You might also notice a link called bookshelf. This is a list of non-fiction books that I have kept. And the reasons why I have kept them.

If you’ve gone through my reviews and think that you’d like to send me a book to review. Feel free to contact me. Click this link, prove that you’re human and you will have my email address.

  • Thoughts on Design

    Paul Rand’s slim book Thoughts on Design was originally written after World War 2 when he was in his 30s. He hadn’t yet done some of his most iconic work such as the IBM or TV network ABC.

    Untitled

    Straight out of the gate it focuses on design and its applicability to the job in hand. My friend Stephen used to talk about designers falling into two categories:

    • Idea led designers that focus on the communications problem
    • Style-led designers. Their work has a particular look and feel, that might be fashionable (for a while). The Designers Republic as falling into this category

    Rand is blunter in his assessment under a section called The Beautiful and The Useful. His point isn’t that they are mutually exclusive. Obeying classical art rules creates useless design unless it addresses the communications. The sad thing is that 70 years later it still needs to be said with the same urgency.

    Rand describes the designers challenge as an overlap with strategy and planning functions in agencies. Rand started in agencies a generation before planning emerged as a discipline. Planning started in London advertising agencies. The idea of leaving pre-conceptions out of the process is a keystone of planning and strategy.

    Finally, Rand focuses less on typography than one would expect. Instead he focuses on the creative use of space and direction. He viewed debates around the use of typography as an unnecessary distraction. Typography decisions would be resolved by wider thinking on space and direction. Thoughts on Design is surprisingly accessible. More book reviews can be found here.

  • Death Notice by Zhou Haohui

    China has had a run in English literature at the moment. Cixin Liu has overturned the world of science fiction with his Three Body Problem trilogy of books. Zhou Haohui’s Death Notice promises a similar shake up in crime fiction.

    Death Notice

    Death Notice takes place in 2002, the internet was changing Chinese society and the government hadn’t yet rolled out a consistent approach to online services and content. You had the first generation of Chinese internet giants, Google was available to trawl content worldwide. The world was your oyster if you were curious enough and had sufficient English skills. Forums were transformative, attracting participants who shared a passion to connect in ways previously impossible within China.

    It was also a more open time in terms of the government’s attitude to public freedom and discourse. The book is set before the implementation of Golden Shield project, which started to censor Chinese access to the web. The Golden Shield project also helps shape online consumer opinion through content deletion on social platforms and gaming trending items. Which is why it is the ideal time to set a complex serial killer that relies on the internet. It is also a China that longer exists. I was surprised that the book has been published and lauded in China as it begs comparison with the less open Xi regime.

    The death notice of the title refers to a crowdsourced list of wrongdoers who escaped justice and end up being dispatched in creative ways. I don’t want to say any more that would give away more of the plot.

    Death Notice leads you on a twisted exploration of who the killer could be, dragging in to suspicion even members of the investigative team. And this is apparently the first in a series of books. If you enjoy Scandinavian fiction like Jo Nesbo and Stieg Larsson, then Zhou Haohui offers something that provides a similar sense of innovation in crime literature. More books reviewed here.

  • The Sacco Gang by Andrea Camilleri

    The Sacco Gang is an easy to read dramatisation of a true story about a family in Sicily during the rise of fascism. Andrea Camilleri is better known as the author of the Montalbano series of crime novels. With The Sacco Gang Camilleri takes the original source material about the Sacco family and then filled in the spaces to provide clarity to the narrative.

    The Sacco’s were a family on the rise in Sicily. They got their advantage through a mix hard work and good luck. They realised when it was luck rather than convincing themselves that it was their won skill. The Sacco’s  managed to move above the hand-to-mouth existence of indentured farm labourers; a common existence in pre-war Sicily.  Sicilian society was essentially feudal in nature, grinding poverty and injustice gave rise to the mafia and allowed it to turn into something malignant.

    The family’s deeply ingrained sense of natural justice meant that they were not going to give into the mafia’s attempt to ‘tax’ the family back into poverty. Their socialist leanings meant that the family also became targets for the fascist government, even as they crushed the Sicilian mafia.

    Camilleri wraps this all up in a small very easy-to-read novelette. More book reviews here.

  • Realm of the Damned by Alec Worley

    I was given a copy of Realm of the Damned – Tenebris Deos by one of the staff at Forbidden Planet. Werewolf Press did a really nice job of printing up Alec Worley’s graphic novel. The subtitle is a nice touch as Worley must have been thinking that he had a franchise on his hands.

    Realm of the Damned

    The next installment is out later this year.

    So whats Realm of the Damned like? It reminded me a lot of Blade 2. You have the titular character who is a natural enemy of vampires brought in by them to kill a super vampire that would kill all of them.

    The closeness of a vampire slayer to the Catholic church is very reminiscent of John Carpenter’s Vampires series of films. The main protagonist Alberic Van Helsing is already tired and worn out, rather like Wolverine in Old man Logan; but with severe addiction issues.

    Where Realm of the Damned differs from these films is in aesthetic. It’s like something out of a black metal album lyrics. Darkness, killing, death, decay, hopelessness, savagery, dark magic, endless supplies of blood.

    A badass character like Kate Beckensdale’s Selene from the Underworld series would only work if she was emerging from a sea of blood. Think Ursula Andress emerging from the sea in Doctor No, but everything’s red.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ6mOC4uSX4

    And there in lies the weakness of Realm of the Damned. It’s something that the writers of Arachnophobia knew very well. If you want something to shock and horrify, use it sparingly. Unlike horrific spider films of the 1950s and 60s Arachnophobia had one spider who popped up at any time rather than a legion of spiders.

    Even Garth Ennis’ The Punisher punctuates violence with detail and plot movements. Realm of the Damned splashes the claret too much and loses much of its effect.

    Of course, I am probably not the main target audience for this book.

  • Über by Kieron Gillen

    Back in the day reading graphic novels like the Über series would have been a niche interest at best.  Now with the rise of Marvel and DC universe films they are part of mainstream culture.

    Über invasion

    But not all comics are about accessible hero stories with easy cinematic adaption. My preferred writers like Gillen use the superheroes to ground the stories more in a gritty reality.

    Garth Ennis from Preacher to The Boys has looked to subvert and examine comic franchise conventions. Gillen tried to get us to examine our own conventions and pre-conceptions about war.

    I see clear parallels between their work and the ‘political’ spaghetti westerns of Franco Solinas in particular.

    Gillen’s Über uses superheroes to explain the kind of damage cased by massed Russian artillery in the march to Berlin and atom bomb blasts a la Hiroshima.  Superheroes make the horrors of war more relatable.

    It is also interesting how what would seem to be a ‘diesel punk’ series hinges on transformations that are outside the the power of medicine even now. Finally, there is a clear parallel and differentiation between Captain America and Über.

    In summary, if you want a good thoughtful read and aren’t squeamish; start reading Über.