North of the Stupid Line

Further to my post about Hillary Rodham Clinton’s memoirs, Living History, after receiving Bill Clinton’s autobiography for my 24th birthday back in 2004, I’m very pleased to announce that I’ve finished it at long last!

I have to say that Bill does certainly know how to waffle. However, I appreciated the detail, honesty and frankness of his account. He has certainly had an interesting life. I liked the way he brushed over the Monica Lewinsky issue; he simply said that he’d done something inappropriate that he was incredibly ashamed of.

What I’d like to pick up on is the partisan nature of American politics. On pages 862-863, Bill states:

“When the New Right Republicans had taken power in Congress in 1995, I had blocked their most extreme designs and had made further progress in economic, social, and environmental justice the price of our co-operation. I understood why the people who equated political, economic, and social conservatism with God’s will hated me. I wanted an America of shared benefits, shared responsibilities, and equal participation in a democratic community. The New Right Republicans wanted an America in which wealth and power were concentrated in the hands of the “right” people, who maintained majority support by demonizing a rolling succession of minorities whose demands for inclusion threatened their hold on power. They also hated me because I was so apostate, a white southern Protestant who could appeal to the very people they had always taken for granted.”

That sums it all up really, doesn’t it? While the Democrats are more concerned about improving the lives of the working and middle classes, and asking the upper classes to pay a bit more in taxes, the Republicans want the upper classes to pay less and the lower and middle classes to pay more in taxes. Republicans aren’t interested in human rights and the environment. They weren’t interested in working with Bill; they just wanted to bring him down because he was such a good President.

I realise that I have only read one side of the story; Bill and Hillary’s. So I will see if I can get hold of a book published by a Republican, perhaps Newt Gringrich, and see what I think thereafter.

For now, however, I would say that I’d rather be a Democrat than a Republican. Does that make me a Democrat?

I’ll look into how the UK Conservatives and Labour parties compare with the US Democrats and Republicans in a later post.

I’m at a lost what to say this evening, so I thought I’d do a book review. The book of choice is Stephen King’s The Dark Tower; the seventh and final book in the series.

The series is King’s most accomplished work to date. They make you realise just what a clever writer King really is. The world of Roland the Gunslinger and his ka-tet consisting of Eddie, Susannah, Jake and the adorable Oy comes to a stunning conclusion in this seventh instalment.

What struck me was how clever King writes. He incorporates himself as a character in the story, and I don’t mind admitting I shed a tear at events that unfolded towards the end. I won’t reveal what happened at the end, but it was fitting. I was tremendously satisfied when I finished this book.

All in all, although King tends to waffle at times, and you sometimes just wanna scream “get on with it, man!”, The Dark Tower series was definitely a series worth persevering with. It took King a long time to write the series, but it’s been worth it.

I had to laugh, but in order to tell you about why I had to laugh, I have to make a confession about what some of you may consider as “eew”!

I’m a bogside reader.

There.  I said it.

How has this confession come about?  Quite simple, really. I’m reading Kate Fox’s Watching the English at the moment, and I had to laugh at the coincidence; I was reading about bogside reading, wait for it, when I was on the bog!

There are many English people – particularly males – who find it very hard to defecate at all unless they have something to read.  If there was no proper bogside reading, they will read the instructions on the soap-dispenser or the list of ingredients on the spray can of air-freshener.

Fox, Kate, Watching the English, p221

Ho hum! That’s very true of me!  However, I do not have a bogside collection of books and magazines.  I tend to take a book or magazine into the loo with me.  According to Fox, this makes me lower-middle or middle-middle.

There you go.  There’s one more thing about me that you did not want to know!

Having just finishing reading Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss, seeing as I enjoyed it tremendously, I thought I would write a review.

Now, you wouldn’t think that a book about punctuation would be a source of laughter, would you? You’d be surprised by Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Lynne Truss’ writing style is to be commended, simply because she makes what many people would think a stuffy, academic, and above all, boring, subject, actually quite amusing.

Truss appeals to that ‘stickler’ in me who finds mis-punctuation by the masses pretty damn annoying, such as: placing the apostrophe in the wrong place; not using commas or using too many commas; not knowing when or how to use colons and semi-colons; when to use single and double quotation marks etc. There’s even a ‘Punctuation Repair Kit” in the book, with adhesive stickers of apostrophes, full stops, question marks, exclamation marks etc. so any old stickler can stick ‘em where he or she spots a punctuation no-no and corrects it. The idea just tinkles me pink!

I’d like to quote Truss at page 136,

“Victor Hugo[,] (…) when he wanted to know how Les Misérables was selling – reportedly telegraphed his publisher with the simple inquiry “?” and received the expressive reply “!”

To me, that quote sums up the nature of Truss’ book. It demonstrates just how important punctuation is to the English language, and how it should be preserved against an influx of new technologies which are influencing the way we write English, which is causing us to neglect niceties such as spelling and punctuation. It also shows just how expressive punctuation – that is, without any words at all – can be.

I am so excited because books by two of my favourite authors, Robert Jordan and George RR Martin, are being or have been released this month.

George RR Martin hasn’t published in years, even though he is currently writing a series of books called A Song of Ice and Fire which are breath-taking in their scale and viciousness. The latest instalment, A Feast for Crows was published on 17 October 2005, and I’m desperate to read it. Only problem is, it’s been so long since I read the first three books, that I can’t remember what happened. So, looks like I’ve got a bit of re-reading to do.

Another book out in hardback from 11 October 2005 is Knife of Dreams by Robert Jordan, another fantastic fantasy author. His Wheel of Time series has taken hold of me and won’t let go. Knife of Dreams is the penultimate book in the series, so I imagine the pace will be fast and furious, and un-put-downable. Only problem is, all the other boks in the series I have are in paperback, so I’ve got to wait until Knife of Dreams is out in paperback before I can read it. Pah.