what i read

hello fellow readers


and so to another couple of book reviews, then. or thoughts on two books that i recently read. recently, look you see, but actually finished a couple of weeks ago. sorry for this, not that it matters, being all "hot off the press" as such, but i have been a bit busy.

it would be standard for me to issue a splendid and colourful *** SPOILER WARNING *** for these review things. please note that in this instance i really do mean this. both reviews, or commentary like thought pieces, feature images of pages from the relevant book. with respect to the latter this concerns a section towards the concluding "business end" of the novel. so please proceed of your own caution with care.

that said, to start off with as usual then, a look at the two books under consideration, and as much of a spoiler free and brief view that i can give.

Nomad, declared as being by Alan Partidge but possibly more so by Steve Coogan and two gentlemen of the surname Gibbons, is a most splendid comedy affair for fans of erstwhile and possibly fictional media darling Alan Partridge. American Assassin by someone called Vince Flynn is a reasonably decent "America as the policeman of the world" overt-covert espionage killer thriller thing, blighted by a really, really poor editing job.

links provided here are purely for your convenience, then. they are not an endorsement, recommendation or any such form of affiliation. whilst once again reminding you of the rather pretty and splendid looking spoiler warning at the start, on we go then. or at the least i do, and if you carry on reading then so do you, which would be just great.

generally two types, or if you will genres, of books i tend not to read are non-fiction and comedy. for both i find i much prefer watching a documentary or a live show, or otherwise listening to some variation of audio book. with prompting from my (considerably) better half, who presumably felt that i could do with some more light-hearted reading at the time, i decided to pick up and read Nomad by Alan Partridge.

for many of you, i know, the provenance of the books i read is the most important part of all of this. in this instance, as the quasi branded price sticker suggests, £4 off of cigarette counter at Morrisons. yes, it was a delight to see a book of interest once again being on display there.

plot, or ostensible point of the narrative? after some sort of vision or dream or similar incident, renowned broadcaster Alan Partridge determines that he must take a symbolic walk very much in the "footsteps of his father". this is, ostensibly, to try and reveal or at the least understand a mysterious journey his father once took to a nuclear power plant, with the unresolved intention of that journey to be gainful employment.

in cutting to the chase some, the only real measurement which counts for any sort of comedy venture is the question of whether or not it is funny. does it entertain in a comedic way? yes, if somewhat sporadically which might be a concern for what is a rather slender book.

knowing of Alan Partridge and his key works is, to state the obvious, somewhat essential to understanding this book. if you are not familiar with Knowing Me Knowing You (radio and TV variations), the two superb series of I'm Alan Partridge and the perhaps better than was expected (as in exceedingly funny) Alpha Papa film then you will not, i suspect, get very far with this book.

thankfully, and somewhat with mercy, little or no reference in Nomad relates directly to the very little seen Mid Morning Matters series by Alan Partridge. very wise, this. few is the number who saw it, due to the limited means. when you accept huge money off of Sky for a show you accept that not a lot of people will actually watch it.

where does the book fall short? the book-running running joke of frequent, and extensive, footnotes gets rather tiresome. i would say a substantial volume of the text - a percentage in double figures - features in the footnotes rather than the journal, account or whatever you would call it. there's also some lazy page filling stuff. like, for instance, an entire chapter dedicated to bashing Noel Edmonds. something which has been done, time and again, on repeat by most UK comedians and comedy outlets for several years.

and yet the Alan Partridge concept does not feel stale. wisely, perhaps taking a cue from John Cleese with Fawlty Towers, Coogan et al have been cautious not to overtly dilute the Partridge marketplace. this may be stating the obvious, then, but for Alan Partridge fans, yes, Nomad is like totes worth picking up and reading. or hearing, for i believe the audio book version is splendid.

so on, then, to a book which turns out to have been published several years ago, or if you like 7. my attention was drawn, however, to American Assassin by Vince Flynn only recently, what with the film adaptation being an "official partner sponsor" of certain shows on the CBS Action channel on the tele and that.

regular readers of this blog will be aware of the fact that i cannot see this film adaptation due to my long term boycott of Michael "Keaton" films. i consider it a veritable disgrace that he is allowed to use this name when his actual name is, actually, Michael Douglas. as and when he starts using his given name i will cease the boycott. well, then or as and when it is practical for me to go and see something what he done that i am interested in.

provenance of my copy of this novel, resplendent as it is with a film tie-in cover variation? i caught it when it was the "select book of the week" at Tesco, for a price of £3. many people get all excited, you know, going "ooooh, look, sales of books are now once again higher than ebooks". this is no surprise. for some reason ebooks now cost 2, sometimes 3 times as much as the paperback. considering i can pass on a paperback, or donate it to charity, or do what i like with it in the exact way that i cannot with a more expensive ebook, why would it come as a surprise to learn that my ereader now sits undisturbed and untroubled by use?

the plot? some stereotypical, alpha type of American sports student called Mitch Rapp feels as though he has a gripe against Muslim / Islamic terrorist cells on account of how many times they have stepped in and killed his friends and family. how convenient, then, that he looks slightly Arabic, is a perfect athlete, has deft military skills despite no training and has been watched to be groomed by some covert US Military / CIA type of organization. and so off he goes to get trained and sent to kill key figures in the ostensible "war on terror".

with absolutely nothing new, original or otherwise creative here the success of the novel hinges on the familiarity being entertaining for this sort of book. yes, it is. a rather engaging style of writing makes it a pleasure to read. despite some awful, horrid proof reading errors. like the one coming up.

before you look at the next picture, and indeed the paragraph below it, please note that this gives away a massive spoiler for events at the business end of the novel. look and read at your own risk.

the infamous "page 355" episode. i was confused and bewildered at the name used in the second line you can see there. this would be because he was not there. no. instead it was protagonist Rapp and another character looking across a city, wondering where the character name used might currently be held. i had to re-read and double check myself with this.

considering i am mr typo king, with a favourite thing of mine to be to type "doe snot" instead of "does not", perhaps i should not thrown stones. then again, i am not a professional proofreader or book publisher, am i? quite strange that this error slipped through somehow.

in my imagination, then, if the film adaptation follows the novel it will then follow the Full Metal Jacket approach -  half training, half that training in action. although that broad wording is doing a great disservice to the magnificence of Kubrick's penultimate film.

as a novel, it's ok, as in not so bad. from time to time as i read a thought that came to mind was "man, I Am Pilgrim was a really great novel", and i would say read that one rather than this one. mostly, though, it kept me entertained. for those who like heroic acts of ostensible good vs a defined evil, well then there is all that you would want of that here. but not so much more.

so there we go. two books which i absolutely do not regret using my limited reading time to, erm, read, but not ones that have me running around declaring their amazing greatness. not that i run around all that much.

them there ebook things might be expensive, but i am looking now at the convenience. it seems i would have to wait well into 2018 to get paperbacks of the more recent novels by John Grisham, Michael Crichton (the apparently final posthumous one, Dragon Teeth) and John Connolly. it might be that i give in to temptation and get one or two of them in advance in an electronic way, since i find hardbacks too awkward to read. but then i do have quite a pile of paperbacks here to read still.

anyway, that would be all that. my usual wish, that for some reason this has all been of interest to someone somewhere, is indeed applicable.


be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!