What I'm reading ...

I have started White Teeth by Zadie Smith.

I read this book before, but I am re-reading it [unusual for me] as it is the Jan Bookclub selection.

After a couple of chapters, I have to confess that I can recall very little from last time. It is slightly familiar, but I have no idea what the story will be about.

What is clear to me is Zadie Smith's amazing use of English, particularly the use of very accessible metaphors. Here are a couple of examples:

"Archie's marriage felt like buying a pair of shoes, taking them home and finding they don't fit. For the sake of appearances, he put up with them."

"He was a man whose significance in the Greater Scheme of Things could be figured along familiar ratios:
Pebble : Beach.
Raindrop : Ocean.
Needle : Haystack."

The Da Vinci Code - by Dan Brown

I guess I can see why this book is so popular. It is easy to read, even though the story is quite complex, and it has a very brisk pace. The characters are well drawn and there aren't too many, considering that it's a 600 page book. It's a mystery story with lots of interesting facets, ultimately a quest for the Holy Grail. I quite enjoyed reading it, but ...

It was spoilt for me by two things. Firstly, Dan Brown is an American and, hence, I'd assume that he writes in American English. The publishers insist on translating it into British English. This would be fair enough, if they didn't do such a sloppy job, which results in an odd mid-Atlantic dialect that I find uncomfortable. All the spellings ["colour", "travelling" etc.] are changed, as that is easy. It is the usage of words that is astray: "rotaries" instead of roundabouts; "cellular phone" in stead of mobile; "pavement" for road surface; "gooseflesh" [spoken by a supposedly very English character] instead of goose pimples.

A bigger problem for me was the amazing number of technical inaccuracies, which I feel really undermine the integrity of the author, particularly when they are key to the story [as two of these really are]. Some examples:

• The "GPS dot" - this is technically impossible; GPS doesn't work indoors; GPS doesn't work at all in the way described - it only receives; it does not transmit to a satellite. Impossible!
• Mobile phones tend to remember the numbers called, but they never keep a record of "code numbers" entered during a call. There are good [and obvious] security reasons why they don't. But Fache relies upon this feature. Also, French telephone numbers do not identify the exchange.
• One moment the Priory has a history "spanning more than a millennium"; the next we hear it was founded in 1099. A minor mathematical error.
• There's a reference to a "massive mainframe". I thought the book was set in the contemporary world.
• The big one: Silas is an albino. Albinos always have sight problems; often they are nearly blind. And yet he seems to be able to shoot people with sufficient accuracy.

Will I read more of Dan Brown's work? Don't know. Not for a while anyway.

I was quite shocked to see all the "backup reading" book you can get on The Da Vinci Code - are people really taking it seriously? There's one born every minute.

What I'm reading ...

I have started The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

Well, everyone else on the planet seems to have read it!

I got my copy by accident, not being very up to date with what's trendy on the book front. We were at the hospital and Linda was being re-admitted. She was a bit short of reading matter and I selected this off of a book swap stand. She read it and said that, although it was not really her thing, she thought I'd like it. A few chapters down and I think she must have been right ...

The World's Wife - by Carol Ann Duffy

The idea of this book is that each poem is about the wife of some famous person. In most cases, the wife wasn't a celebrity in their own right.

I guess my conclusion is that I should continue to steer clear of poetry. Although I did enjoy some of them [for example, Mrs Midas, Mrs Lazarus and Mrs Icarus] and found them amusing, there were many that I just didn't understand. Having listened to the Bookclub programme, I now know that one of them is about Mira Hindley [the Devil's Wife, I assume], but I could not have figured that out for myself. I don't think I have time to read stuff for which I need to do research before I can understand it.