ed_moore's Reviews (345)

Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage was a really enjoyable poetic journey through the wonders of Europe’s nature and classical world. Byron writes of a melancholic pilgrim who self-exiles himself from England and embarks on a journey across Portugal, Spain, Greece, Albania, Switzerland and Italy, focusing on its nature and once great empires.

A love of literature and the poets is appreciated and mourned, as is the loss of classical civilisation and its beauty, hence resulting on many a callback to Greek and Roman mythology. There is also focus on still ongoing issues of ownership, such as a criticism of England’s claim to the Elgin marbles where Byron argues they should be returned to Greece, this sense of ownership also being related to the likes of the tombs of Dante and Boccacio resting outside of Florence. The fact that 150 years later the Elgin marbles are still a cultural debate really resonated. Byron’s musing over the loss of old empire was beautiful. 

The poem was disjointed in places however, the vignettes of countries existing with no depiction of how Childe Harold travelled between them, nor was the purpose of his pilgrimage ever explained beyond a self-exile. I will leave on the line “I am as a weed” because that simple self discovery stood out as my favourite part of the poem. 

Being a collection of short stories Chaucer’s ‘The Canterbury Tales’ qualifies for quote a neutral rating, with some good stories but also many unremarkable ones. It was however interestingly structured in a collection, for the tales recounts a group of pilgrims on their way to see the tomb of Sir Thomas Beckett in Canterbury, of whom travel together and hold a story contest along the way, the host declaring the best storyteller will have a meal bought by the rest of the pilgrims on their return to the inn they left from.

Chaucer initially intended each pilgrim to tell four tales, but the book ends at 24 stories, each pilgrim having told one. Therefore the winner of such competition is never decided and falls to the reader. I will highlight ‘The Knight’s Tale’, a story of two brothers feuding over the love of Emelyne whilst locked away. It was the first tale of the pilgrimage and I also believe the best, certainly most memorable which could also come down to its placement as the first story. I also enjoyed the Manciple’s tale, whereas can’t crown this one as though it was my favourite it was only the tale of why crows have black feathers, as taken from Ovid’s ‘Metamorphosis’. I appreciated it due to its familiarity hearing it in now its third iteration, having previously read Ovid and Fry’s ‘Mythos’. There was also an unusually large amount of tales with the central focus on farting, highlighting Chaucer to have had the sense of humour of the average 13 year old boy. 

A lot of the stories were cut off or interrupted, Chaucer lacking the desire to finish them and therefore the book being very broken at parts, though he did cut of the tale told by his own self insert so I suppose he is at least humble in some manners. I will note that I listened to ‘The Canterbury Tales’ which I think really helped in preventing it being too much of a slog and allowing some enjoyment, listening to the constant rhymes was very pleasing on ones ear and defiantly wouldn’t have had the same effect or charm if I just read it, if this were the case I think I would’ve found the collection quite hard to enjoy. 

‘A Clergyman’s Daughter’ is the first book of Orwell’s that I have read and not been utterly captivated by. It was a story about a loss of faith and shaped to be a promising criticism of organised religion in its opening, and as it progressed did succeed in recounting the hardships of poverty and the lower classes in typical Orwellian fashion, whereas these themes were much more fractured and far less impactful than I am used to with Orwell.

The book follows Dorothy, the daughter of a rector in the small village of Knypes Hill, and her loss of memory resulting in her existing in poverty as a hop-picker, on the streets in London and in a small private girls school. This also opened some criticisms of the private education system in the early 20th century, whereas there were too many issues raised across one book to the point where no single criticism was fully explored. I would’ve much preferred a designated focus on its initial staging to attack organised religion, for we have seen plenty about destitution from Orwell. There was also a mention of a dog called Toto in the opening chapters though I don’t think the book was particularly linked to ‘The Wizard of Oz in any way’! Orwell has faced backlash for his presentation of female characters, and in most cases I can look beyond this as the individuals are never the primary focus in Orwell’s writing and messages, though in the case of ‘A Clergyman’s Daughter’ I don’t believe Orwell did an awful job. Dorothy as a character was strong willed, broke away from patriarchal systems and expressed agency, though a lot of this was ultimately futile but I shan’t spoil such with details.

I didn’t much like Orwell’s chapter spacing and the structure of this book. Each of the five chapters takes a completely different circumstance and setting, which are each only partially linked to one another, and the third one breaks style completely and is written as a script with a huge cast of characters whom very few of had been introduced prior. Also the main catalyst for Dorothy’s fall into poverty, her memory loss, is left completely unexplained which created major plot holes. It was a fine book, but only fine. With how amazing an author I know Orwell can be I expected an awful lot more from it. 

Only Richard III could take a woman from grieving the man that he murdered and manage to gain her hand in marriage in the matter of a scene. Shakespeare’s ‘Richard III’ is a play about plotting, manipulation and betrayal as Richard III conducts his bloodthirsty ascension to the throne and and subsequent fall. Richard was a fascinating protagonist, as he was very similar to Iago, the villain of ‘Othello’ in that he is very vocal with his schemes and consequently holds an unusual connection with the audience and the reader. This was a play that followed the villain and in all his murder he was far from likeable yet still fascinating. Shakespeare also made the artistic choice to answer the mystery of the princes in the tower, not shying from the fact that they too were victims of Richard’s power hungry wrath, as is likely assumed by history but impossible to confirm. It was the best of Shakespeare’s histories I have read so far due to how unique and interesting the persecutive of Richard was. 

I’m not much of a lover of Virginia Woolf’s works, but was aware ‘Orlando’ had a different feel to it, and quite frankly it was unlike anything else I have read by Woolf and I loved it! It is a story that explores history and posterity, gender and sexuality and has the beauty of nature and literature at its heart, with the central idea of feeling out of place in ones own time. ‘Orlando’ explores the transgender identity before it was a coined concept, the young Elizabethan nobleman Orlando waking up one day to find he had become a woman, and being completely acceptant of it, continuing to enjoy life, with no question raised from those around him. How this transformation occurred and the passage of time in ‘Orlando’ is confusing, the fictional biography of the eponymous protagonist spanning across 400 years and ending in 1928. It also wrestled with ideas such as identity in history, and also acceptance of sexuality and following Orlando’s transition the realisation of the limitation of being born a woman from the perspective of one who used to be a man was such a powerful feminist discussion and passage of the book. The appreciation of poetry and literature across the novel was a delight and as typical of Woolf the prose was beautiful, though in this case more so than anything I have read by her before. I shall leave on a line that really touched me from the beginning pages: “Letters and nature seem to have a natural antipathy; bring them together and they tear each other to pieces” (Pg 13)

Edgeworth’s ‘Castle Rackrent’ is a telling of the history of the Rackrent family by their loyal servant Thady Quirk. It has a focus on preserving Irish independence and legacy by discussing the noble families history and affairs, in the name of placing the Irish man on a pedestal. It was emphasised that the editor of the fictional chronicle could’ve glamourised the history further, though chose not to to preserve true history (though the Rackrent’s are fictional anyhow). In how mundane Edgeworth made the history, I would argue it wasn’t a chronicle in desperate need of telling for whilst there are key events and points of note they weren’t written in the most engaging of ways and really the only defining factors of the noble family were debt and alcoholism, with sprinkles of anti-semitism too. Overall I don’t believe the initial premise was particularly great, and Edgeworth’s writing failed to do much to enhance it. 

Ten Little Soldier Boys went out to Dine, one choked his little self and then there were nine.
Nine Little Soldier Boys stayed up very late; One overslept himself and then there were eight.
Eight Little Soldier Boys travelling in Devon; One said he’d stay there and then there were seven.
Seven Little Soldier Boys chopping up sticks; One chopped himself in halves and then there were six.
Six Little Soldier Boys playing with a hive; A bumblebee stung one and then there were five.
Five Little Soldier Boys going through a door; One stubbed his toe and then there were four.
Four Little Soldier Boys going out to sea; A red herring swallowed one and then there were three.
Three Little Soldier Boys walking in the zoo; A big bear hugged one and then there were two.
Two Little Soldier Boys sitting in the sun; One got frizzled up and then there was One.
One Little Soldier Boy left all alone; He went and hanged himself and then there were none. 

The initial title of Agatha Christie’s ‘And Then There Were None’ was perhaps the only fault of this story. The characters could have had a little further development too to engage a greater reader connection but for the premise of the story I would argue it wasn't overly necessary. It was a murder mystery so well crafted to the verses of the old nursery rhyme ‘ten little soldier boys’ that each of the ten people invited to Soldier Island off the coast of Devon died as the soldiers did in the verses of the rhyme. Those ten were the only people on the island, meaning the murderer must be among the cast of victims. Each had committed a murder in their past that was unpublishable by the written law hence the enactment of the deaths was a passing of justice, where in paranoia people are turned against one another in a bestial manner in effort to not be killed like all those around them. It was such an excellent tale of human instinct and morality so cleverly tuned by the rhyme and concluding almost poetically, fate playing its cards. The lack of a detective also enhanced the intensity of the mystery, for the reader became the detective because the murders were ongoing, and to oneself the next victim was always assured but unknown. The red herrings are even plainly spelled out but just slip under ones nose. I cannot doubt the genius of Christie’s mystery and the role it placed I as the reader in perhaps made it the most engaging, well thought out and intense murder mystery stories I have ever read, I absolutely loved it. 

I absolutely flew through Osman’s ‘The Bullet That Missed’, reading at least two thirds of it in a day. His third instalment of the ‘Thursday Murder Club’ series was as lighthearted yet captivating murder mystery as the rest, but I would also argue his weakest. Whilst in hindsight I perhaps was too generous in my reviews of the first two, and it wasn’t 2 stars equivalent of a weaker book, it still was not quite on the level of the prior pair. It follows the collection of pensioners as they investigate the murder of promising news reporter and journalist Bethany Waites, whilst getting entangled in various organised crime plots and past relations with KGB spies. I was really engaged in the primary mystery, and the initial solution and ending prior to the classical murder mystery twist was satisfactory, the true ending and twist that came about in the matter of a few inserted pages and changed the whole manner of the story was however really disappointing. My other criticism is that whilst each crafted well, and each character interesting and loveable, I felt that this instalment introduced too many individuals taking on separate parts of the investigation, as oppose to the initial concept of the collection of four pensioners working through each stage together. A lot of the dynamic between them is lost when they each take separate strands of investigation and keep recruiting other characters outside of the Thursday Murder Club to handle separate avenues of enquiry. Despite this, the book was still a light and fun read and kept me engaged, just disappointed in comparison to Osman’s first two books.

Austen’s ‘Sense and Sensibility’ was so painfully uneventful. It follows a pair of lovesick sisters, Marianne and Elinor Dashwood, as they navigate upper class marriage. I tried to give Austen another chance as I believed she must be popular for a reason, but her works really aren’t for me. Every character felt the same, there was no sense of setting and the sisters place their entire worth on marriage. For a moment towards the end I saw some character arc and redemption, Marianne finding her voice, but that was snatched away in pages and she returned to the hollow protagonist she was throughout the whole book. The story seemed solely to be a series of conversations by identical in personality upper class couples about marriage that came to no such satisfying conclusion. Austen’s works are for some people, but seeing no difference between ‘Sense and Sensibility’ and ‘Pride and Prejudice’ in each of their lack of plot and characterisation, she just isn’t my sort of writing. 

I can’t really have a definitive opinion on Pullman’s ‘Grimm Tales’. It is a collection of fifty fairy tales compiled by the Brothers Grimm from the well known Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood to the likes of The Brave Little Tailor or The Cat and the Fat. They often had moral lessons and similar tropes, so in some areas were repetitive and also frequently made little sense, just pausing as I read and thinking ‘what on earth…’ I assumed that the ‘Grimm Tales’ were much more violent renditions of the tales told to children today, whereas to my surprise in most cases the violent realities weren’t far from what is now told and many weren’t actually brutal at all, though there are many notable instances of mutilation, eye-gorging and incest in some. In the nature of Fairy Tales, majority of characters were stock characters, Princes and Princesses, Wise Women and Witches, and this did get repetitive but I can’t really criticise Fairy Tales for using stock characters. Every princess was however “the most beautiful woman in all the land” somehow though, and I still can’t understand what it meant by the frequently repeated phrase that “each of his daughters more beautiful than all the rest” as it is impossible for each of the 12 princesses to be more beautiful than the other 11. Descriptions are limited and where they exist  also the same, something is always “as white as snow and as red as blood”.  Whilst the repetitions and use of stock can’t be used as a criticism, I did get annoyed by ‘beauty’ often being the only defining factor, and the lack of individual agency in majority of the female figures. My favourite tales were ‘The Moon’, a short fable explaining why the moon goes through phases, and ‘The Musicians of Bremen’ about a Donkey, Cat, Dog and Cockerel in search of work as musicians which was a wholesome little story. If I were judging the book on its characters, writing style or plot like the large majority of books, it wouldn’t score well however in the nature of the collection being a translation of the fairy tales that have be prevalent in everyones childhood, I can only justify a neutral rating, for I cannot penalise the elements that make the stories ‘fairy tales’.