A small change this week, as I focus on a non-fiction book from a few years back. It’s A Short History of Nearly Everything from 2003, but as far as I know, not much has happened in the past six years. The news section focuses on Haruki Murakami’s new opus, as well as a novelist going overboard on twitter.
Recommended Reading #3
Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everythingis this week’s recommended summer reading. Unlike the novels featured in the last two editions of this column, this book is one that should appeal to everyone, and one that everyone should read. It’s thoroughly enjoyable, and endlessly informative. Due to Bryson’s past as a travel writer, it is more a travelogue of scientific history rather than a heavy textbook that needs a glossary.
The book is meticulously researched; Bryson consulted hundreds of science works, so you now never have to. He fills it with weird and wonderful characters, and there are plenty of rivalries which continue from chapter to chapter. It gives plenty of facts, but the most interesting part of this science history is definitely the characters responsible for unearthing (or in some cases blissfully ignoring) these facts.
A customer review calls it “a layman’s guide to the history of the world”. A better description could not be written. It really is the most accessible science book you’ll ever come across. But not only that, it’s interesting and captivating from the first page to the last.
Book News
Murakami channels Orwell for new novel
Acclaimed Japenese author Haruki Murakami has just released his latest novel 1Q94 in his native land. It’s heavily influenced by George Orwell’s 1984(as you can guess from that title), as well as the Japenese Aum Shinrikyo cult who carried out the 1995 nerve gas attacks on the Tokyo subway. Murakami claimed that he “long wanted to write a near-past novel similar to George Orwell’s futuristic novel 1984“. In Japenese, the letter Q sounds the same as the number 9, thus explaining the title of the novel. The 1000 page novel tells the tale of an aspiring novelist Tengo, and a woman who works in a gym named Aoname. As children, they had been friends. Now as adults, their lives are somehow connected, and each chapter alternates between the two protagonists. The novel has already sold 1.5 million copies in Japan, so an English translation is imminent.
Novelist unleashes bizarre rant on twitter
After Boston Globecritic Roberta Silman gave Alice Hoffman’s new novel a bad review where she claimed the “author doesn’t deliver”, she hit back on twitter. Hoffman attacked Silman in a long series of posts on twitter, calling her a “moron” and an “idiot” before giving out her email and phone number so her fans could continue to harass her:
Looking forward to that new Murakami, though I usually prefer his shorter books (like Sputnik Sweetheart and After Dark) to the longer ones like The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.
Hopefully we won’t have to wait too long for this one.
Why is the “too” in bold? Did I do another grammatical faux-pas? I’m good at those!
Norweigan Wood is my favourite of his, but After Dark is excellent alright.
Nah, it was just emphasis. His last few books have taken about two-three years to come out in English, and if this is a long one I wouldn’t expect it anytime soon.
Love Bill Bryson but A Short History of Nearly Everything should be on the Junior Cert science course, it’s that good and that easy to understand. The man is a genius. Can i recommend his autobiography? If you love reading childhood memoirs that have nothing to do with drink drugs or parental abuse but instead celebrate the more simple time in a person’s life then get your hands on it. He has a marvellous way of writing. It’s called The Life and Times of the Thunderbold Kid
I really need to finish A Short History of Nearly Everything. I read most of it a few years ago, but got distracted by the Leaving Cert and never managed to read the last quarter or so of it.
His autobiography is really good alright, quite a funny look at mid-20th century America. I can’t wait for the next part, to see how he went from schoolkid to journo to writer.