ed_moore's reviews
289 reviews

The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius by George Orwell

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informative tense slow-paced

3.75

“I began this book to the tune of German bombs and I begin this second chapter in the added racket of the barrage”

Writing during an air raid in 1941, a poignant backdrop you can imagine Orwell at his desk to, Orwell writes ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’ as a long form essay arguing England’s patriotism, the struggles that Nazism would have to force the country to bend the knee, and that to win the war the establishment of a socialist state is a necessity. The essay argues that WW2 is proof that capitalism is a flawed system but due to focus on trade union heritage Labour too is unable to provide the socialist revolution. Orwell writes in his signature tone condemning totalitarianism and extremists while really effectively arguing his politics. I really appreciate his definitive and assured style and can see so many of these ideas bleeding into his novels. 
Why I Write by George Orwell

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informative slow-paced

4.0

“Every line of serious work I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism, and for democratic socialism.” 

Orwell’s ‘Why I Write’ I believe to be one of his best essays. In it he addresses his motivations for writing from an early age to the present self and looks at the basic principles of motivations to write. It establishes a clear idea of the duty of a writer, and that all writing is inherently political as the author is expressing a bias perspective on the social concern in question. It’s fantastically written, an easy read and provides brilliant insight into Orwell’s intentions to write against fascism. 
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

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emotional hopeful lighthearted reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

“Then youth will be delightful, old age will bring few regrets, and life become a beautiful success, in spite of poverty” 

I have struggled to rate Alcott’s ‘Little Women’, on the one hand it was a really sweet and wholesome read that I appreciated, but on the other hand it really wasn’t my thing. It is the tale of the four March sisters: Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, focusing primarily on their sisterly bond in childhood but in the latter half them finding love and marriage. It was charming and lighthearted, quite well written and with Jo as the central character a love of wider literature at its heart, but then also really digestible and readable. It is after all somewhat considered as a children’s classic. I really liked the character of Laurie, and also am headcanoning Jo as an autistic icon. There is no doubt she is on somewhere on the spectrum. I do have to say though despite how much of a free-spirited character she is I partly wish she would have stayed that way rather than eventually conforming to what society expects of her. In places ‘Little Women’ was tragic too and can be an emotional read, though it is brimming with positivity through and through. 

On an opposite line of argument I really struggled with this book in places. I wouldn’t say it felt ‘too long’ however it did take me a very long time to get through, and the story was too simple to keep me gripped at times. I can assume this matter wasn’t helped by the rare case that I had seen the film before reading the book, and also seen a theatre adaptation, hence was very familiar with the plot and nothing really surprised me as a consequence. It is also just not my style of book, with a focus on sisterhood, family and marriage dynamics, it lacks a lot of what I gravitate to in literature. 

It was sweet and light-hearted, doing its job in that department, and I am glad to have now read it, but thats about all it does for me. 
Atonement by Ian McEwan

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

“Villains were not announced either hisses or soliloquies, they did not come cloaked in black with ugly expressions” 

When a child Briony Tallis with the overflowing mind of a storyteller misinterpreted a scene in a library, she then shared this misconception changing the futures of all involved. McEwan’s ‘Atonement’ is a book about attempts to make amends set in the backdrop of the Second World War and Dunkirk evacuations. The characters in this book are so well established and descriptions are stunning. When reading about the house in the Surrey hills in the first part I was pretty sure this would be a five star book but as the scene changed and the focus became the war the charming initial writing style was lost. Don’t get me wrong it was still incredibly written and much of the imagery was haunting, though it just didn’t hit the same way. 

I loved the character of Robbie, empathised so much with him and saw myself in the occasional aspect of him. The novel’s backbone in intertextuality and depictions of literature is always something I enjoy in books. The ending did feel a little unresolved but in the same manner McEwan makes clear that such was intention and in a way it makes the book all the more tragic. Though bridging it quickly the ending was a tragic sucker-punch, but can’t help to think it would be even more effective if it had more time to breath and for the reader to have to face it, rather than the conclusion being summarised by Briony long in the future. 
Not Not Not Not Not Enough Oxygen And Other Plays by Caryl Churchill

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dark informative reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.75

“You’re not the first person to see horrors. We learnt to watch them without feeling a thing. We could see pictures of starving children and still eat our dinner while we watched. That’s what we need to survive.” 

Carol Churchill’s ‘Not Not Not Not Not Enough Oxygen’ is a dystopian play about a future for London where environmental apocalypse has led to space being limited and the city being coated in a thick smog, nature is absent and oxygen is a luxury that people must buy and spray out of a can. I picked this up as I have time to kill and filtered my TBR by shortest just to knock something off, and having written an essay on Churchill’s plays last year the short descriptions and blurbs of it I have read pretty much encapsulated the whole plot. The lack of empathy of the characters is interesting, establishing an apocalyptic reality where nobody cares for anyone else and charity is frowned upon, for a shortage of oxygen means childbirth is heavily sanctioned and others dying is only to the benefit of the self. Vivien’s scripted lines were repetitive, almost attempting at writing a stammer though I don’t know if this was Churchill presenting a disability or some sort of effect from an absence of oxygen and attempt to preserve words. It was very similar in mood to ‘Far Away’ and I liked it for that, though reckon critical reception of the play would be more engaging than the play itself, as I found with other of Churchill’s drama that I have read. All in all it was an easy knock off my TBR.
Happy Days by Samuel Beckett

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reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

“Words fail, there are times when words even the fail” 

‘Happy Days’ focuses on Winnie, a woman with her legs buried on a huge mound who relies on her non-communicative husband Willie, just to know what someone is listening to her. It is a play made of of a repetitive cycle of mundanity, but like I mentioned previously this works a lot better in Beckett’s plays as oppose to his prose. There is a foreboding sense of finality throughout however despite Winnie’s sweet but also sad optimism in life. Her dependence on Willie is desperate and she finds joy from him even saying a word to her each day, but in some way as Winnie is trapped in the mound Willie too is trapped with her, in a loveless marriage and circumstance. In Beckett’s usual tone it is an absurd setting which you could read so much meaning from, alike to the other works I have read by him in the last couple of days I am focusing on the aspects of dependency as a consequence of disability in my analysis of it. I was a little disappointed by
the role of the revolver however, the stage directions expressed an importance of this prop yet it failed in conforming to ‘Chekov’s gun’.
Instead the play remained stagnant in its conclusion, a typical Beckettian absence of hope or change. 
Rough for Theatre I by Samuel Beckett

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dark lighthearted fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

“Unless we join together, and live together, till death ensue” 

‘Rough for Theatre I’ is a short play by Beckett that looks at dependency dynamics between a blind man and a man in a wheelchair, who come together in a liminal apocalyptic setting and offer one another joint-dependence to better function. In its short duration it treats this dynamic as a satire, and looking at the futile futures of the men A and B as they have no capacity to earn and therefore contribute in the economy and wider society. Hence the exist in their own enclosed space, placing value on the irrational and ponder why despite having no function to society they continue living. 

I did quite enjoy this little read, though it is extremely barebones and more so than other Beckett’s as it is solely in draft. The ending seemed to play into the satire but also didn’t really make sense with the tone of the rest of the play, or what exactly is happening in the plays conclusion being clear at all. It does however look like it’ll be extremely helpful for my essay. 
Molloy by Samuel Beckett

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challenging slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.75

“Not one person in a hundred knows how to be silent and listen, no, not even conceive what such a thing means” 

This book was basically comprised of the feeling of emptiness that makes up Beckett’s short plays mixed with the stream of consciousness style of the modernist era. ‘Molloy’ read with the same struggles I have with Virginia Woolf and the excerpts of ‘Ulysses’ I have attempted. Not only was the read difficult though; nothing happened. ‘Molloy’ captured Beckett’s essence of futility and absence within his short plays, but it works and is impactful in them because they are short plays. ‘Molloy’ lacked any of that impact and was extremely repetitive and hard to follow. It looks at the protagonist Molloy’s disability as he struggles to walk and forgets a lot, but in forgetting with the stream of consciousness form there is often a lot that just isn’t described. There was an instance with the protagonist of the second perspective, Moran, where he said “I was violent with my son that night but have forgotten the details”. Beckett did however choose to include details in numerous scenes of masturbation however… 
The characters who we were stuck in the heads off weren’t even very interesting. Molloy was insufferable and Moran was just such a flat and dull character. 
I did not have a good time with this one though did appreciate the references to Dante.
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

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dark sad tense medium-paced

4.0

“It was the cold and calculated slaying of so many ounces of silver against so many ounces of blood” 

Murikami gave me remorseless cat murder, Capote gave remorseless dog murder. ‘In Cold Blood’s focus however was the lives of Perry and Dick, the murderers of the Clutter family, following their brutal raid and shotgun murder of the family during a November night in Kansas, 1959, narrating the actions of the killers following their deed and trial and eventual execution. Capote played with the readers sympathies to an extreme degree in his narrative, the murder so heartless and yet framing Perry to seem so led on by his remorseless partner in crime and regretful of his actions. Then you remember that this is a true crime, this happened and these two men hung and you find their actions sick and harrowing, Dick especially you loathe with your whole being Capote does him no favours, but somehow Capote keeps toying with your sympathises. 

With this being true crime yet written in a novelised format of the thriller the plot twists and draws were interesting. The murderers were established from early on, it was never a question of who was the killer, but instead the desire to learn the motive. Admittedly this motive was a bit disappointing when it came to it after so much build up, but its true crime hence this is only providing the true motive. Some bits of background and interviews I found dragged a little as Capote attempted to flesh out the narrative though also at points despite its genre was so beautiful and poetic in its writing, and particular descriptions are simultaneously incredible and harrowing: I note the scarecrow with the dead woman’s dress, the counting of coyote corpses and Perry’s nightmares about the gallows. I also particularly loved how Capote traced the ripple effect of the crime and its impacts on the thoughts and actions of those close to the victims and the inhabitants of their village. 
Not I by Samuel Beckett

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dark reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

“prayer unanswered… or unheard… too faint…” 

‘Not I’ by Samuel Beckett is a short play that consists only of a monologue performed by a floating mouth. It is the rare outburst of a woman who lives most of her life mute, triggered by some ambiguous event to relate her sufferings. Like most of Beckett it is bleak and has so many possible interpretations yet no clear explanations, but it does really get you thinking. The disembodiment of character is effective on so many levels, with the fractured speech and the role of the speech disability, an ongoing buzzing, the mouth being the only visible body part and a character narrating who seems to exist on the plain between life and death. It was a really fascinating short read but weighing it up against the others of Beckett’s short plays I have read I would say I preferred it to ‘Krapp’s Last Tape’ and ‘Footfalls’ but is nowhere near as disturbing and thought-provoking as ‘Rockaby’. The bleak images and stagecraft in each thought are equally seared into my brain. 

Though in final note … why … were there … so many … ellipses …