Every 14 Days...(24)

The Double (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)

Suppose I should read some Dostoyevsky in my life. Especially when it's two for £3.99.

With 'The Double' recently made into a film by Mr. Gadget Man himself, Richard Ayoade, I thought this would be a good place to start. Maybe it wasn't. The film met mixed reviews, as did the original story itself, even from the man himself.

A civil servant is one day shocked to find a 'double' of himself now working at his office, though the polar opposite to many of his negative traits. Soon, the 'original' finds himself behind his clone in work and social life, leading to a bitter conflict and an inevitable decent into madness.

The idea is a strong one, though the execution is maybe not always the best, not always a great read, though conveys the frustration, anger and madness that the 'double' creates in the story's hero. The humour in the writing is also good, with long-winded repeating of phrase. But towards the story's conclusions, you felt perhaps more could have been done with the idea.  

Days to read: 18

Days per book: 15.0

The Last Holiday (Gil Scott-Heron)

Gil Scott-Heron is a poet, and I know it. As one of the unofficial godfathers of rap, he is a master of words, and so I expect nothing less from his memoir. But as a memoir, this is a little confused. Released posthumously, it was always going to be more a sum of parts rather than a whole, and the supposed focus is not always apparent.

The idea was for it to focus around his part in Stevie Wonder's 'Hotter than July' tour in the early Eighties - a tour promoting Martin Luther King's birthday being made a national holiday - but before he could get there, he chose to tell the story of how he got to be there first. This results in the book essentially being an out-and-out autobiography up to a certain point in his life, but then sees several leaps in time over the next thirty years.

So, this may not necessarily be as it's billed, but this is jazz, baby. His writing doesn't need any structure, with his lists of adjectives flowing poetically off the page. There are indeed lots of poetry breaks throughout, almost as summations of the moment, like a haiku, but within the main body the words flow like a song.

This makes for a joyful read about his upbringing, his father who played or Celtic and the start of both his writing and music careers, edited and cobbled together for your listening pleasure.

Days to read: 19

Days per book: 15.0

The Strange Library (Haruki Murakami)

'The Strange Library' isn't really a new Murakami work, being that it dates from Japan in 1982, released as a short story of a different name. But it has now made its way to English translation, released as a illustrated children's book...which is probably why it was so quick for me to read, being that it is actually a book aimed at my reading level.

A young boy enters a library, returning some books, wanting to take out some more. He is sent to a strange reading room, where his reading of books is demanded by a strange old man, and of course, a sheep man - a Murakami favourite. Looked away and forced to read as much as possible about Ottoman Empire tax collecting, he worries that his mother will wonder why he has not returned home in time for dinner.

This book is less about its story, however, and more about the English translation which illustrates the story using images from The London Library and other collections. This make it more of a strange art piece than children's short story, making it interesting to look at, though the story flies by the images with ease.

Days to read: 1

Days per book: 14.9

Notes from Underground (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)

Yay! Hundredth book spectacular! So, it's just over four years since I started this pointless experiment. By now, I should have reached a little over one hundred books read. I'm a little off that target, having just reached one hundred exactly.

Not exactly a celebratory piece to mark the moment, 'Notes from underground' is a dark read about a middle-aged man, made bitter by the modern world, living underground providing us with a lecture as to the world's wrongs, before we are shown examples from his earlier life of experiences that led him to where he now resides.

The story is in two clear halves: the first a long, rambling critique of society; the second stories from his younger life. The first half proves a difficult read, with long rants in hard to digest chunks, though provides some interesting insights throughout. The book's second half is both an easier read and brings it back to life, as I felt myself often drifting into the depths of lost concentration in the first half. Here we see stories and characters brought in - and they are welcome - working as examples of the narrator's decent into the man he has now become, trapped in a St Petersburg basement.

This is an interesting read, an at-time-difficult read, but ultimately rewarding one, providing a criticism of early modernist society.

Here's to the next hundred...urgh...

Days to read: 13

Days per book: 14.9