‘Clockers’, the 1995 Spike Lee film, is one I have not seen for a
while. The book of the same name pre-dating it by 3 years is written by Richard
Price, a regular contributing writer on ‘The Wire’. Since I have a liking for
both, I decided to take it for a spin, a rather long spin.
Split in two halves, alternate chapters focus on ageing homicide
detective, Rocco Klein, and drug dealing lieutenant, Strike. After being given
the duty himself, Strike discusses with his estranged brother that a local
restaurant manager and low-level drug dealer has ‘got to be got.’ But before
Strike can fully whimper out of his murderous responsibility, he is shocked to
find that the deed has already been done and that his brother has turned
himself in.
Put on the case, Rocco finds himself at odds to explain why a decent,
hard-working man would hand himself in over the murder. Believing his brother
Strike has to be involved somehow, Rocco presses hard to put the young clocker
under pressure to take responsibility for the murder and clean his brother’s
name.
The bold David Simon quote on the front cover reads ‘The Wire wouldn’t
exist without Clockers’ and is one that can be taken as true. Written at a
similar time to Simon’s books, it has a similar vein running throughout,
focusing on individuals and building up their character and traits slowly. Many
ideas, themes and characters from this book feature in ‘The Wire’, which Price
would later write on.
It’s a long read and an intense one, focusing largely on the two main
characters, but is well written, engrossing and asks some interesting questions
about what would drive a man to kill.
Days to read: 26
Days per book: 14.5
The Box Lady and Other Pesticles (Richard Herring)
Following on from where ‘Bye Bye Balham’ left off, this is the second
instalment of paper publishing of the second longest online blog in the world.
Looking back at himself a decade down the line, he sees himself
starting to set-up his new life in Shepherd’s Bush following having said ‘bye
bye’ top Balham. It’s more of the same, showing regret and shame at some of his
previous actions as an older, wiser and now married man.
Being that this blog has now made its mark on Mr Herring’s ‘Warming Up’
blog, I can’t wait to see my name in print in 20 years or so time.
Days to read: 15
Days per book: 14.6
Mao: The Unknown Story (Jung Chang and Jon Halliday)
Back in August, 2008, I bought and started to read ‘Mao: The Unknown
Story’. But by September, only just over one hundred pages in, I got bored and
chose to start something else instead. Ever since, the seemingly never-ending
book has remained on floor piles or shelves in the various accommodation I have
since inhabited. But, seeing as everything else on my bookshelves had already
been read, I thought it about time that I finally finished the bastard.
At some 765 pages, if you remove all the appendices and index, and small
print, this is a long old book. Upon starting it, I whizzed through the first
hundred pages again on train journeys, but beyond that, found the book to be
slow and plodding. The book starts off at a pace you feel you can keep up with,
but when getting to The Long March, you feel like you might have actually been
part of it, as it seems to read in a ‘and then this happened’ manner. Motivation
to keep going, therefore, soon started to decrease.
Reading ‘Mao: The Unknown Story’ is a bit of an ordeal, struggling
through a long-winded book, feeling less motivated and as if you aren’t intelligent
enough to care about some thing that
happened loads of years ago.
The book, however, does not always sit amazingly well with me. While a
history book – looking into ‘facts’ – it feels written in a story-like manner,
as if first-hand experience. While all sources, etc. are cited at the back of
the book, they are not always linked to the text, and the little inflictions
and adding of ‘our italics’ seem more like the authors painting the picture they
want you to believe, rather than leaving you to conclude your own opinions
based on evidence.
Much of the book is undoubtedly true and it uncovers some previously
unknown information, but with the style in which it is written and the negative
attitude towards the subject from the outset, it feels less an academic text,
and more a biased television documentary. This is a book that will divide
opinion, but one thing that is for certain is that this is not the most
comfortable read.
Days to read: 91
Days per book: 16
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