Break the back of christmas

Howdy,

Well I feel like I'm over the most of Christmas now. I did get to read some. Picked up Boy in the Stripped Pyjamas on Christmas eve for myself and finished it Christmas day . Its a good book. The tag line being something like great trajedy seen through Innocent eyes. I think this will definitely get made into a move. Its not that long and reads really quickly and has an interesting ending. So yeah I could really recommend it but it probably won't change your life. I find so like of art changes my life anymore. Maybe that's because there's now so much of my life that I its takes more to change it. I think we may just get nudged around by circumstances. Perhaps that's why older men need something catastrophic (heart bypass) to change their habits. Anyhow.

Other than that I'm still wading through The Trial by Kafka which is quite short but slow going, but have that aside for A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Brave New World is I guess a futuristic novel written in 1932 about a Utopian society. It is interesting to see how much of everyday life he has gotten right. E.g. one of the female character was disappointed by a hotel on a recent trip to the north pole as it didn't have a telly in every room. You could kinda of tell this was supposed to be tongue in cheek, i.e. that people of the time should baulk at the idea of it, but now it is the case. Also I never knew where the word soma, which is one of the tracks on smashing pumpkins Siamese dream album, came from, now I get it. Soma is the drug they take in the future to ease peoples minds, seems pretty cool drug, you can take 1 gram to cal your nerves and give you a good feeling, take 4 or more and you're off into some cosmic hallucinogenic dream - far out man.

Back into it via Polysyballic spree

Well,

I just made a balls of my previous draft of this post and now I've to write it again so I'll forgo the excellent prose that filled the first version.

Basically I ain't posted in a while because I've been reading dickens Oliver. This is of course part of my trawl through literature. Only problem is once you get past the "please sir can I have some more" its all down hill and that's almost in the second chapter. And theres now "food, glorious fooood" song in the book obviously. Anyhow thats not to say that dickens didn't know what hes at. This was I think his second novel published as a serialised version in a paper. And it does actually read like that. You can just picture some toff getting the horse and carriage to work in the morning droolling over the dry wit of mr dickens. Essentially I've been doing the same on the luas. However this has meant that I have not been cycling and as a result perhaps not running and as a result, in addition to a lot of chrimbo excess have put on 2bls!!!!

Oliver was getting a little laborious and the thoughts of setting in Jane Eyre which is next on my shelf was not very appetising. Well cometh the time.... comeths the book. I was in waterstones trying to buy something for Michael when I noticed a book by Nick Hornby called Polysyllabic Spree. Its basically a compilation of articles he did for a literary magazine where he lists the books he bough and read (never the same) each month and give a rambling review of each. I was just what I needed because the whole point of the book is that certain books suit us at certain times and that we should be spontaneous in our reading and our purchasing of books.

I bought the book on Saturday, started reading it briefly before Tom and Talys and then got up early on Sunday morning and started into it. I had it finished by 10pm. Thats including a horrendous shopping trip to the blanch. (7000 car parking spaces, all full). So I've decided to put Oliver aside for a short while, I've only about 150 pages left and start something else on my list - Best of Sherlock Holmes. It was such a treat to start fresh into the book. Who knew Holmes did cocaine!, very topical.

Any how here's hoping the reading will go much more pleasantly now.

2 down lots to go

Well, I'm proud to say both tonight and Monday night I hoped off the bike and changed my top and went straight into my 2mile run. this was especially good Monday as it as raining, and also it was good as I cycled both days despite the rain.

Lets hope things continue as well

Marathon Man

Yes we in work have decided we are going to attempt the half marathon in Conemara next April. I don't think this will be such a big deal for some of them as it will be for me. Currently I am exactly 15st!!!! and although my cycles to work are good haven't ran in a good while.

I'm also worried that the last time I started running I tried too much too soon and got a really sore hip.

I'll down loaded some good training guides so I'll try to stick to that and obviously watch the diet. I'll keep a record here of how things go.

The first run was today, 2 miles. It was a killer stoped three times but once I got home I was delighted. I need to get a proper list of stretches!!!!

Long time no blog

Well Well,
its been quite a while since my last entry but I'm determined to keep at it.
Since then whats happened. Well on the book front I've read Gullivers Travels by Johnathan Swift. Yes we all know it with the guy who lands of the island first of the little people then the big people then go knows where. The book is very sedate and quite dull and was some what of a pain to read but something kept me going at it. One very interesting point that I gleaned from the book was that the premise of the book seems to be the extrapolation of scientific ideas into extreme circumstances.

Deep within the text the author makes references to large bones that are by times dug up by explorers and the current rational at the time (1700s) is that these must be of giants and that humans must indeed have been much larger in the past as scientist had rationaled b that stage that things buried in rock must be very old. The author therefore suggest that we will all become much smaller with time. In the first island with the small people they are a very civilised race, where the giant are much more barbarous and vicious, although interesting more honest.

The other islands play off the concept of magnetics and the occult and what might happen if these ideas are taken to extremities.
All said I wouldn't recommend it, only for the very hardy.

I then moved on to Tom Jones by Henry Fielding. This book is basically about a foundling, Tom Jones, who is taken in by a very rich guy and essentially raised by him as a son. The young Tom grows up to be a bit of a rascal but devilishly good looking. The story progress about how he grows up and various antics. The book is humours but VERY long ~700 very large pages of very small writing. This was serialised initially into over 20 books. I think you'd need a lot of time on your hands to get trough it. I got to about pg150 and gave up.

I then moved on to Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Yeah a girls book. But how and ever I went in with an open mind and was pleased to say I flew through it and thoroughly enjoyed it. The main charm of the book is the main character Lizzy who is a head strong twenty something female in a house of girls all trying desperately to get married. Of course this book has the famous or infamous Mr. Darcy which women seem to go weak at the knees over. So it was nice to find out what was it about this guy that all the fuss is about. And basically it just adds to the argument that women like bastards but I suppose the added attraction with Darcy is that underneath it all hes a big soft and in love with Lizzy. Ah.

So now I've moved on to Oliver Twist. Having read the intro it appears this was Mr Dickens second novel which was first published as a series of newspaper stories. Having read the first few chapters it certainly reads like so but the further I get into it the more I like his sense of humour which is very dry.

So that's us up to date, I'll keep ya posted.

Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows

Well Well,

the last harry potter book, at last. I started reading these when the fourth one came out, Colm had been reading them from the start, brenda having the inside info as a primary school techer knew about them before the got real big.

Anyhow, as for the series the first two are fairly juvenile but from then on they get good. The third four fifth we very good, the sixth ok and this one is only really good because you know you're going to find out what happens at the end. I don't really think it needed to take 600 pages to tell the story, there's an awful lot of harry camping out in the woods feeling miserable for months on end.

The ending was cliched yet satisfying and you could see how it'll make a god film.

Anyhow, sin sin with harry potter, I'm gonna stick to the list now and keep going.

Cheers more later

Treasure Island

So after the Odyssey I started Rober Louis Stevensons Treasure Island. Although not exactly in order I wanted to read it because I wanted soemthing a bit more lightweight. And at 200pgs its a great read. I picked it up in a second hand book sale in the mall in mullingar - It was the first in the series of Childerens books given out in the independant a couple of months ago, it was free so there was a heap of them which people obviously ditched.

Anyhow its a good read, its written from the point of view if Jim Hawkins a young boy who helps out his dad in thier seaside hotel the Admiral benbow, one day a mysterious old sea dog checks in and from there on a journey of revelation. Jim gets whisked up in a series of events which sees him travelling to Treasure Island (an undisclosed location even in the book). The best character by far is Long John Silver, the wooden legged pirate.

Its a very easy book to read and you can really see where the the goonies and pirates of the carribean came from, adventure on the high seas par-excellence.

Thats it for now guys

The Odyssey

So after the Illiad, we come to the Odyssey. I had always wondered about the name of the illiad, the odyssey seems obvious enough because its about the journey of Ullyssess, written and refereed to as Odysseus in the books. The illiad is called thus because Troy is known as Illium. So the illiad is the story of Troy, although not very much of it, rather 4 odd days spread out over a couple of hundred pages of really small writing.

So back to the Odyssey, really I had to read the illiad before it because some of the main characters of the odyssey are in it. Odysseus is one of the best characters in the illiad. But the Odyssey is by far the more readable book.
Where the illiad is a drudgery the Odyssey is a delight. There is less of the adventure on the high seas than I imagined. It starts out with his son on the island of Ithaca awaiting his much delayed return from the Trojan war, at this stage hes ten years late. Back in ithica, where he was king there are now a heap of jokers trying to get it on with the queen, they are a gang of about 60 odd of these "suitors" laying about waiting for the queen to give up hope of odysseus coming home and to choose one of them as her next king, mean while they're eating them out of house and home.
In any event, the son goes off to get help or word of his dad, that doesn't work out, so he hangs about on some of his dads war buddies islands. Meanwhile we hear the story of Odyessus, which is very good, but he arrives home say about 3/4 of the way through the book and the rest of it is spent coming up with a plan to get rid of the pesky suitors.

So all in all a good read, drags a bit at the end and a little slow to start but I don't see why anyone couldn't read it

cheers

I'll get to it yet

So, the illiad,

but first a review of the car racing, yes went back there this morning it was very good, real festival atmosphere, sounded like its back after an absence, I think its cool becuase it so easy for people to come and see it, its free and its good craic.

So the Illiad, anyhow its very slow read. It goes into painstaking detail on all aspects, most annoyingly about characters who have ust died. Giving you all thick back story about how some guys dad came to wherever the hell and raised some sheep etc and then raised his son blah blah blah only for him to say he was then killed an no other mention of the guy!!!!!

The end isn't really that satisfying either because it doesn't end with the end of the war or the horse etc. So thread wearily into this my friends.

Cheers buds

more later

The Illiad continued, what a saga

Well the gig was great last night. Would really love to play trumpet in a band like that. We have them provisionally boked for the weeding. They are soooo much better live than the samples on the website.

This morning we walked into the park to preview the Pheonix Park Rally which is taking place today and tomorrow. I'll post pictures tomorrow

Gotta go now, more later

The Illiad

The Illiad -

Well its a bit of a monster. Its by no means the longest book I've ever read or even the slowest to read. I think the devil is in the detail. The whole books is basically cast over 4 days of the Trojan war.

I thought this book was going to be just like the screen play for Troy but its more like about 20mins of the film spread over 400 pages. No trojan horse, no sacking of troy, no death of achielles.

gotta go to the a gig of my buddy Eoin Graces soul band in the Blue Note bar on Capel St.
Looking forward to it
later

tbc.........

Gerrys First Blog

Well here I am entering the blogosphere.

It'll mainly be a reminder/review of the gigs, books, shows, trips, restaurant etc

I was thinking of this because over the last while I'd decided to start reading books from the start. So I bough the illiad and the oddessey and away with me. I had previously read other classics as Don Quixote, the Grapes of Wrath, 1984, and loved them. I got me thinking why waste time reading mediocre john grisham novels when there are these great works of literature out there.

So hopefully I'll bother to keep this going