Martin's Booklog

Imperial Life in the Emerald City — Rajiv Chandrasekaran

Published on July 27, 2008

Cover of Imperial Life in the Emerald City

Imperial Life in the Emerald City
Rajiv Chandrasekaran
365 pages including index
published in 2006

The Emerald City was what its inhabitants called the Green Zone in Baghdad in 2003-2004: a pleasant bubble of transplanted America, cut off from the everyday reality of Iraq, the ultimate ivory tower where the Coalition Provisional Authority that was in power in that year made its plans for the future of Iraq, unhindered by much knowledge of the world outside their bubble. Imperial Life in the Emerald City is an eyewitness account of that first year of the American occupation of Iraq, as seen from inside the bubble. It’s a story of how wide eyed innocents and well intentioned ideologues came to Iraq to remake the country into a model of Jeffersonian freemarket democracy, with little more to recommend them for the job than their personal loyalty to Bush and the Republican party and how they were cruelly disappointed by the reality of post-war Iraq and its missed opportunities.

In short, this is a whitewash, though perhaps not a conscious whitewash. It’s true the New York Times quote on the back calls this a “A visceral –sometimes sickening– picture of how the administration and the handpicked crew bungled the first year in postwar Iraq” and that every other page or so has you slapping your face at yet another incredibly obvious stupidity, but in the end it’s still a whitewash. The clue is in that word bungled. As if the Bush administration and their lackeys in Iraq started the war and subsequent occupation with the best of intentions, but lacked the competence to fulfill them, or took the wrong decisions for Iraq not to further their own ends, but because they were a bit naive about the realities of the country. The book is steeped in the assumption that, while the people in charge may have made the wrong decisions, they had every right to attempt to make those decisions. It’s like reading a book on British rule in India that only tells of the problems the British had in establishing their rule and in the day to day running of their empire, without ever questioning the presence of the British there.

Bad Monkeys — Matt Ruff

Published on July 21, 2008

Cover of Bad Monkeys

Bad Monkeys
Matt Ruff
230 pages
published in 2007

When your local library’s automated lending system refuses to recognise a book you’re attempting to borrow when it’s clearly there in front of you, it’s enough to make you a little bit paranoid, but when that book is Bad Monkeys, an example of American Paranoia at its finest, with a Christopher Moore quote on the cover saying “Buy it, read it, memorise then destroy it. There are eyes everywhere.“, you become more than a bit paranoid. Little did I know then how appropriate that little incident was. Bad Monkeys is one of those books that makes you look twice at every CCTV camera on your daily commute, not to mention much more innocent examples of street furniture for signs of hidden cameras.

You might know Matt Ruff from Sewer, Gas & Electric, his brilliant and hilarious parody-slash-update-slash-mixup of the stoner paranoia classic Illuminantus! trilogy, not to mention that bible of teenage libertarianism, Atlas Shrugged. If that novel showed Ruff’s absurdistic, bombastic side, Bad Monkeys is toned down, sleek and effortlessly cool. It still taps into that vein of essential American paranoia that also drove Sewer, Gas & Electric, but this time it’s more refined, less consciously wacky.

Whose Body? — Dorothy L. Sayers

Published on July 20, 2008

Cover of Whose Body?

Whose Body?
Dorothy L. Sayers
191 pages
published in 1923

Back in 2001 when I started this booklog I’d just discovered Dorothy L. Sayers and her Lord Peter Wimsey detective novels, which explains the high porportion of them amongst the crime fiction I read in 2002/02. At the time I read whatever one I could get my hands on, without regards to publication order, which led to some unfortunate accidents, like reading Have his Carcass before Strong Poison. Once I’d finished the series I was a bit sated, which explains why I hadn’t read another Lord Peter novel in over four years. But when I was looking for a light, short detective novel to read in bed one dreary weekend, my eye fell on Whose Body? and I thought it high time to reread it.

Whose Body? is the first Lord Peter Wimsey novel, originally published in 1923. We first meet Lord Peter in the back of a cab, on his way to a rare books action, when he realises he left his catalogue at home. One damn and a annoyed taxi driver later, he’s back just in time to hear his man Bunter answer the phone. Luckily he come home when he did, because it’s his mother, the Dowager Duchess, who asks him to help with a spot of bother for one her acquaintances, Tipps, who just found a body in his bathtub – a stark naked body, apart from a pair of eyeglasses.

Swiftly — Adam Roberts

Published on July 19, 2008

Cover of Swiftly

Swiftly
Adam Roberts
359 pages
published in 2008

I’m not a great fan of Adam Roberts, as my reviews of his first two novels, Salt and On, as well as his first book on science fiction show. He has a style of writing that is too flat and detached for my liking, a penchant for using unlikeable characters as his protagonists, some difficulty in creating a good story and a view of science fiction I don’t share. In both Salt and On Roberts had created interesting settings, but fell down on providing the characters and story to do justice to them.

Swiftly, not to be confused with his earlier collection of short stories also called Swiftly, is Adam Roberts’ latest novel, a continuation of Jonathan Swift’s classic proto-science fiction novel, Gulliver’s Travels. Roberts takes Swift’s satire on early eigthteen
century Britain and Europe and imagines what could’ve happened if Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa and the Houyhnhnms were real, what the world could’ve looked like almost one and a half centuries later, in 1848. Now there are huge armies of Liliputians (or rather the more reliable Blefuscudians) working in England’s industries, bought and sold as so many animals. The Houyhnhnms have been enlisted as His Majesty’s Sapient Cavalry, while the Royal Navy has killed most of the Brobdingnagians as a menace to the British Empire. There’s another war with France going on, one England is winning handily, laying siege to Versailles.

Righting English that’s Gone Dutch — Joy Burrough – Boenisch

Published on July 14, 2008

Cover of Righting English That's Gone Dutch

Righting English That’s Gone Dutch
Joy Burrough – Boenisch
166 pages including index
published in 2004

I was going to start this review with a funny paragraph containing most or all of the errors Joy Burrough – Boenisch talks about in her book, but decided to be merciful and spare you the hilarity. If you do want examples, I’m sure I’ve made most of the mistakes she mentions at one time or another, either here or on my other blogs. Though I pride myself — like everybody else in the Netherlands — on my good command of English, both written and spoken, I still make the ocassional mistake, especially when tired or in a hurry. It’s in those circumstances, when I’m not paying quite enough attention to what I’m writing and rely on instinct, that Dutch habits take over and mistakes are made, because I
use the wrong translation, attempt to use Dutch rules of grammar, or do something else that works in Dutch but not as well or at all in English.

Which is what Righting English That’s Gone Dutch is all about: those errors people with Dutch as their first language make in English when they go by assumptions carried over from the Dutch. It’s intended for people who are perfectly comfortable writing in English, perhaps a little
bit too comfortable, but who don’t quite have the command of English a native speaker would have. As the author puts it, it’s for people who write perfectly grammatical English, but with a Dutch accent: Dunglish. As such Righting English That’s Gone Dutch isn’t intended for people who only have a modest grasp of English, but for those of us who can write English perfectly well, apart from several niggling habits we’ve carried over from Dutch.