Miss, Educated

'Educated' by Tara Westover (Penguin Random House, 2018)

With schools still closed or partially closed due to Covid-19, education is back in the headlines.  At first, it seemed like a dream scenario for many students, but the novelty soon wore off, and many are now realising the long term damage of a disrupted education.  Someone who knows more than most about the challenges of catching up on missed classroom time is Tara Westover, author of memoir 'Educated'.

Tara Westover grew up in rural Idaho, USA, the youngest of seven children in a family dominated by her father.  His twin obsessions were becoming as self-sufficient as possible in preparation for the end of the world, and avoiding contact with the authorities.  As such, while the children didn't go to school or see doctors, they learned to preserve food, use firearms and hide resources such as fuel around the family homestead.  They worked as his crew in their scrap yard, often risking life and limb in an environment where health and safety amounted to decaying steel toe-capped boots and not much else.  When accidents occur, the children are treated by their herbalist mother.  As she grows up, Tara's relationship with her siblings changes as they each begin living lives of their own.  While Tyler shows her there may be hope beyond the farmstead, the mercurial Shawn leaves her broken and doubting her own mind.  When Tara herself finally decides to pursue formal education, she manages to overcome her father's opposition, but, when challenged by life in an alien outside world, will she flee and return to the familiarity of home?

Strangers in the Night

Hot on the heels of 'Diamonds are Forever' comes Ian Fleming's tenth Bond book, 'The Spy Who Loved Me'.  Written from a female perspective, this AudioGo CD version was read by Rosamund Pike (Miranda Frost in Die Another Day fact fans!)

In an isolated American motel, the Dreamy Pines Motor Court, Vivienne Michel is alone with

'The Spy Who Loved Me' by
Ian Fleming and read by Rosamund Pike
(AudioGo, 2012)

nothing but thoughts of her past disappointments - bitter love affairs, faded career prospects, shattered dreams.  Nursing her wounds and in search of a fresh start, she's begun a cross country journey that she hopes will lead to something new, something better.  But fate has other ideas.  With the arrival of two terrifying psychopathic gangsters, Vivienne finds herself caught up in a deadly criminal plot and Dreamy Pines begins to turn into a nightmare beyond anything she could have imagined...

Oh. My. Goodness.  'The Spy Who Loved Me' is far and away the most visceral, hard hitting and haunting of all the Bond novels I've read to date.  People often talk about being on the edge of their seat and in this instance it was not a metaphor.  At the end of every disc, I was finding I was about to topple off my chair and I couldn't get the next CD into the player quickly enough.  Perhaps it was to do with the narrator - Mr Fleming does an unexpectedly good job writing from the female perspective, while Ms Pike is fantastic, her performance expertly drawing you into Vivienne's rapidly shrinking and increasingly threatening world.  I felt like I was in the room with her, a helpless bystander watching as the horrors unfolded, praying for someone to come and help her.

This is the first Bond novel that I know I definitely want to read again.  'The Spy Who Loved Me' is a chilling, taut, suspenseful thriller of the first order and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who enjoys the genre.

Now, what next...?

Related Posts

'Casino Royale'
'Live and Let Die'
'Moonraker'
'Diamonds are Forever'
'Goldfinger'
'From Russia with Love'
'Dr No'
'For Your Eyes Only'
'Thunderball'
'Octopussy, the Living Daylights and Other Stories'

Diamond Geezer, Hard Case

After several months, I've finally finished listening to AudioGo's 007 Reloaded recording of 'Diamonds are Forever' by Ian Fleming, read by Damian Lewis.  Yay!

'Diamonds are Forever'
by Ian Fleming
Read by Damian Lewis
(AudioGo, 2012)

Millions of pounds worth of diamonds are being smuggled from West Africa to the United States via London and MI6 is investigating.  Suspicion has fallen on the anglo-American Diamond Corporation, but the authorities need to know the pipeline's route so they can close it down.  It's a tough job that needs a skilled agent, so M sends James Bond undercover to track who is handling the illegal gems.  But as Bond penetrates deeper into the organisation, he encounters harder and more brutal adversaries, until he's face-to-face with the Spangled Mob gangsters behind the Corporation and their psychopathic heavies Mr Wint and Mr Kidd.  Is Bond in too deep this time?  Can he convince the gang of his false identity?  Or will Britain's greatest spy end up in a desert shallow grave?

Like a number of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, 'Diamonds are Forever' suddenly gets going quite a way in, in this case about 100 pages from the end.  It starts well, with an intense description of the first link in the smuggling chain, then the initial investigations in the UK followed by Bond's first moves undercover and his introduction to the damaged Tiffany Case.  Then it all goes flat for a bit while there's some stuff about fixed horse races and gambling before Bond upsets his paymasters and finds himself in trouble.  To be honest, it almost felt like Fleming had suddenly developed an interest in equestrian events that he really wanted to (horse) shoe in, but I'm probably being a bit harsh.

As in 'Goldfinger', the gangsters are as repulsive a group as you could ever imagine, while Wint and Casino Royale'.  They are truly terrifying villains, prevented from becoming cartoonish by Fleming's tactile descriptions, which mean you can't stop yourself imagining them in three dimensions, conjured through every one of the five senses.

'Diamonds are Forever' by
Ian Fleming
(Penguin Modern Classics, 2004)

Kidd take sadistic torture to levels not read since '

For me, the books often hang on how I feel about the heroine and I must admit that I grew to like Tiffany Case.  She's tough with a heartbreaking back story, but had humour, playfulness and ambition.  She made her own decisions and made her own mistakes.

Overall, this was a pretty good Bond book, although it's not for the faint hearted.  If you like the others, you're going to like 'Diamonds are Forever', but I wouldn't recommended it as an introduction to the series.

Now, what next...

Related Posts

'Casino Royale'
'Live and Let Die'
'Moonraker'
'Goldfinger'
'From Russia with Love'
'Dr No'
'For Your Eyes Only'
'Thunderball'
'Octopussy, the Living Daylights and Other Stories'

Call Me Indestructible...

Sorry I'm late! I finished listening to 'Moonraker' by Ian Fleming, read by Bill Nighy, last weekend and completely forgot to blog about it. Suspect I've been thinking too much about my Christmas shopping. Well, there are so many fabulous books out there it takes a lot of brainpower to decide which to give to people!

'Moonraker' by Ian Fleming
Read by Bill Nighy
(AudioGo, 2012)

At the beginning of 'Moonraker', James Bond seems a bit bored.  He's back at his desk in London, teasing his secretary, worrying about his colleagues and desperate for a diversion. It isn't much, but when M asks for his help with a possible cards cheat at his exclusive club, Bond jumps at the chance.  After all, why would Sir Hugo Drax, multi-millionaire, commodities tycoon and national hero need to cheat at cards? Drax's bad habit must be stopped before a scandal breaks, something which would threaten his latest project, the superatomic Moonraker rocket, jewel in the British defence crown.  Suitably beaten, it looks like the end of it, until events take an unexpected turn and Bond finds himself at the Moonraker construction site. Working with undercover Special Branch officer Garla Brand, he soon realises something isn't quite right. But can he work out what it is in time to save the world once more?

Who'd have thought that a Bond set in Britain rather than some exotic location would be this good? Seriously, if you'd said the next movie was going to be filmed in Kent, I would have laughed.  But, like so many of the other 007 Reloaded audiobooks I've listened to this year, this is deceptively brilliant.

The plot is well paced and the story filled with so much mystery that I couldn't wait to hear what happened next. Bond and Brand puzzle over clues that are like odd shaped jigsaw pieces and the tension increases with the arrival of each new tidbit.

And the peril! It looks like it's far more dangerous for Bond at home than it ever could be abroad! The one unsolved mystery is how he manages to make it through the book without breaking anything. But then, he wouldn't be much of a hero if he wasn't indestructible.

'Moonraker' by Ian Fleming
(Penguin Modern Classics,2004)

By contrast, Drax is a man destroyed then reassembled, reborn from a murky past but scarred mentally and physically.  The physical descriptions of him are raw and often repulsive, but they bring the character to life in all his skin crawling glory.

I often worry about the way women are portrayed in Fleming's books, but I rather liked Carla Brand. Although not my favourite Bond girl, she was tough and clever and added a twist to the book's ending which I rather liked.

I must also mention Bill Nighy, who read this particular audiobook. He was absolutely fantastic and I hope to hear more by him in the future.

Overall, if you enjoy action, adventure and thrills, then you'll enjoy 'Moonraker'. I'm getting used to this Bond now and am enjoying finding out more about his world.  I can't wait to start 'From Russia with Love'.

Related Posts

'Casino Royale'
'Live and Let Die'
'Dr No'
'For Your Eyes Only'
'Thunderball'
'Octopussy, the Living Daylights and Other Stories'

Check (Work) Mate

I mentioned a few posts ago that I felt fortunate because I'd only found a handful of books so awful that I'd had to give up on them.  Although I didn't actually give up on 'Office Politics' by Oliver James, Lady Luck had turned against me and I really wish I'd gone for the paperback rather than the audiobook version.

'Office Politics' should be a must-read for the modern employee.  Although we all feel like we're so busy trying to get the job done there's no time to think about anything else, we can't ignore the fact that good or bad relationships with colleagues can make or break us and our careers.  Oliver James' book aims to equip readers with enough understanding to recognise and protect themselves from the political games that other people play at work and perhaps use some tactics to help them progress.

My feelings about 'Office Politics' are a bit chequered.  The big issue with the audiobook was the narrator.  Any fan of the BBC's 'Horrible Histories' will know what I mean when I say "I'm a shouty man!".  For everyone else, imagine one of those annoying blokes who pop up in cheap adverts yelling at you to buy windows or call a personal injury hotline, like hyped up bingo callers.  My ears rang after listening to this recording for any length of time and it began to try my patience very quickly.

It didn't help that the makers somehow didn't notice the number of words that were pronounced incorrectly either, even relatively normal ones like 'persona'.  For a bookish type like me, it was rather distracting, just as typos and bad grammar are in any printed book.  I found myself hissing at the CD player like the audience at a panto.  I'm baffled at how the makers of this recording didn't notice anything wrong.

These two pretty big irritations mean I don't feel fully qualified to judge the content of the book itself.  I know that Oliver James has a bit of a monopoly on popular psychology books, so assume he must be successful for a reason.  I did find the content rather hard to get my head around at times, but this may be because when listening to something you have to keep pace with the speaker, whereas readers can both go at their preferred speed and re-read anything they're unsure of.

Overall, I think this audiobook was rubbish, but I would like to give 'Office Politics' another chance in written form.  For the moment, though, I think it's time to roll the dice and move on to something else.