Brief Book Critiques! (Yeah, I know)

I’ve decided to do very short book critiques after all (despite what I JUST said a few days ago). I think my one redeeming quality is that I will keep them VERY brief. Easy to read or skip, depending on how you feel that day. I find that the emotions that build up in me after reading a book (whether because the book is great, tepid, or ferociously terrible), scream to get out. So, if I put just a blurb on each, I’ll feel better, and it’ll also help to keep me focused on my blog. The first books I’m going to do is 1) the one I finished tonight, The Map that Changed the World by Simon Winchester, and 2) the one I finished a few days ago, English Passengers by Matthew Kneale. I’ve already hinted what I feel about each. Since these are my first two, they’ll be longer than ones I’ll do in the future. Really.

THE MAP THAT CHANGED THE WORLD (Simon Winchester) Grade: C-

*long, silent scream* I’m sorry, but WHY WHY WHY WHY is this book an “international best seller?” Is this like the Stephan Hawkins book where everyone buys it and no one reads it or just pretends to? This book was 299 pages long (I kept flipping to back and checking it the whole time I was reading it), and it was FANTASTICALLY boring. Unless you really really REALLY like geology, run far far away from this book. Though it claims to be a biography about the unfortunate founder of Geology, William Smith, it’s more a long and tedious blabber fest on fossils and stratification in England. I think it’s already starting to leak out of my brain. Though the story about Smith is compelling and tragic, it doesn’t REALLY begin until the last 100 pages of the book. The 200 pages preceding that just go on…and on…and on. If it wasn’t for the fact that I feel an almost divine power over me to finish every book I start, I would have turned this into toilet paper long ago. The only other good thing I can say about it, is that it does paint a detailed picture of the horrendously painful injustice of classicism in 19th century England. Otherwise, unless rocks get your rocks off….. read Hawkins.

ENGLISH PASSENGERS (Kneale) Grade: A+

This book rocked (pun intended)! Historical novels are my favorite, especially ones about places I am not too terribly familiar with. This book is just that (set just about 50 years after the book above, in the mid to late 19th century). It is set in Manx, England, and eventually, Tasmania (known then as Van Diemen’s Land). A crew of bootlegging Manx men get stuck with a charter of three unlikable men (a desperate priest, a self-promoting doctor, and a spoiled brat forced to go by his parents) for a quest to find the Garden of Eden in Tasmania. Various fascinating and comical lives are intertwined together in this part tragic, part hysterical novel. The life of “Peevay,” a half-English, half-Aborigine boy is one of the most fascinating of the book. The way the author can explore so many different cultures and make you feel so deeply engrossed with each one, really deserves kudos, especially his focus on Manx and native Tasmanian cultures. I could get into all the other artfully dealt with subjects (colonialism, religion, self-promotion, etc.), but … naaah. As for the “historical” part of this fiction novel, I hope Kneale really did his homework on this, because otherwise he’s sure fooled me. Well done. I really enjoyed it and look forward to the next one I read.