Cold number two came with speedskating success

This week(end) has been a bit of a mixed bag for me. First of all I managed to get ill at the end of the week and have now developed a nice little cold (number two this year!). It feels like my head is full of cotton wool, my hearing seems to be a bit off and my nose is both blocked and runny. I have resorted to the dreaded cold-flu drinks with the chemical lemon flavour to see if this helps but so far it just seems to make me go "Eeeww" and do not much else. The good part of the week(end) has been watching the speedskating at the Olympics. I used to love watching the speedskating growing up and have fond memories of spending hours in front of the telly cheering on the skaters. I did the same in my living room this weekend.... accompanied by a nice slice of home baked cake. I have to say, it wasn't an entirely bad weekend.


#### SPOILER ALERT ####


Acid Row - Minette Walters
I had a race to the end finishing this one and at the end of it all I am not quite sure why that was.
I think part of the problem with this one is that there are two stories that are being told but one is so much stronger than the other that it makes the whole thing kind of unbalanced. 
The first story is where we meet the doctor with the good heart Sophie who tries to do her best for the people who live in Acid Row, a grim council estate where crime rates are high and people are afraid of their own shadows and of what lurks at the end of lanes and paths. Sophie is a feisty, young doctor who genuinely cares about her patients and believes that if she can try to make the lives of some of them better she may just give them or their children a better future. Being a kind hearted soul she agrees to go to a call for an elderly gentleman, new to the estate and in the course of that ends up in the middle of a full scale riot.
The reason for the riot has to do with the second story about a missing girl. Amy is a little girl whose mother seems to hop from man to man with a scary degree regularity and she seems to be equally blind to her daughter's faults. The family that mum has chosen to bring her little girl into is that of a bunch of disinterested people. Dad drives a bus and the kids are spoilt, arrogant and ungrateful. If I was mum or Amy I would have run a mile but as this is a novel they make the best of it.... or at least pretend to. When Amy goes missing people look for a scapegoat and, wouldn't you know it, Sophie happens to be visiting them.
The two men, father and son are an odd couple to say the least and throughout the story you find out just how warped their relation ship is. Unfortunately for them the mere fact that they are new to the estate proves them ideal candidates for having taken Amy and they become the obvious focal point for the frustrations with their lives the residents are feeling. Things go from bad to worse for Sophie as she tries to escape from the situation but help is coming. It is just that he is slightly busy trying to find his missus and her family... and shouting at people... and changing his character from a jailbird to a fine upstanding citizen. Don't get me wrong Jimmy is ok as a character it is just that he is so obviously set of as the "to be reformed" character of the book that I did not pay too much attention to the references made to his past or his actions in the present as I knew they were going to change him anyway. Well, good for him I guess.
As I said the downside of the book is that the two stories do not gel for me. The one with Sophie takes over and the one about Amy gets to feel intrusive and distracting. I am not sure why Walters felt the need to add it in at all? What else bugged me about this one? Well, mainly the fact that at times Walters puts distance between the story and the reader by going forward in time to tell you about how things ended whilst the main characters are still in the middle of it. It is distracting and I really would rather find out as we go along what happened to the main characters.
What was good? The main story with Sophie was interesting. She is likable enough, clever, strong and one of those people that does good because they really believe in what they do. The characters that she has to deal inside the house with are varying degrees of evil and till the end you are really not sure she is going to make it out in one piece. There are probably lots and lots of estates like Acid Row all over the world and the book does show you how little it takes for things to get out of control. There only has to be a little spark and it can set off a full scale riot that no-one would have been able to foresee. The people in the estate (although the characters are slightly one dimensional) show that they care about one another and are prepared to fight for what they think is right and are ready to stand and be counted when it matters most. It is nice to see the family and friend bonds that make sure the people of the estate survive the riot and it's aftermath.


Title: Acid Row
Author: Minette Walters
475 pages
Pan Books
ISBN# 0-330-48946-1

Books to be read: 138

Trip of a lifetime

As I seem to be whizzing through my present book I thought I had better do the review for the latest one I have read. Don't want to get behind.... again. In my defence I have been distracted by a new coffee shop that has opened in MK. They are called Bogota Coffee and they do one hell of a coffee! The cakes aren't too shabby either.

This one does not really need a spoiler alert as it is a factual book, no mystery involved in how this one ended.


Captain Scott - Ranulph Fiennes
This is the second book I have read about Scott and his journey to the Pole. I read Scott's diaries a while ago and this one covers some of the same ground. The great thing about this one is that it gives you a rundown of the first expedition to the Antarctic Scott did in 1901 as well as the later one in 1910. This is good as it gives you a bit more insight into how Scott prepared for both expeditions and how he used what he had learnt in the first trip to his advantage in the second trip.
One thing that is clear from the start is that Fiennes has an axe to grind to the Scott detractors over the years and I have to say I don't blame him. When I read Scott's diaries I was really impressed with how he led his expedition, how he went about getting to the Pole, what he invested in the science side of things and how he managed to balance the two. Sure Scott did not always come across as a a smiley happy person all the time but at minus 40 Celsius who would be? I certainly never felt that Scott was only criticising his men, constantly depressed and morose or a coward and an inept organiser. Far from it! For a man to achieve what Scott did and to endure the adverse conditions he faced makes me respect the man all the more. And not just Scott... any man that is willing to go on a trip that he knows he may not return from and still face every day anew deserves great respect and admiration.
The great thing about the book is that Fiennes is able to give a perspective that not many other "authorities" on Scott have been able to do. Fiennes has been to the pole, he has travelled in the cold and harsh climate and had to deal with the same issues that Scott has. From the descriptions that Fiennes gives it even seems that Scott came off better in some cases! Surely that alone is a testament to the spirit and ingenuity that Scott and his men showed. Fiennes comments on many of the criticisms made over the years and explains how he might have dealt with a similar situation of why he believes that Scott acted in the way that he did.
I really liked this one and enjoyed the added perspective that Fiennes brings to the story of Scott. He is not intrusive in how he approaches it. He merely gives his point of view when it comes to the critics' comments that have been made about Scott. He makes his point calmly and assuredly yet doggedly. you do get the feeling that perhaps Fiennes has had to hold something back and that he perhaps would like to have worded certain criticisms more strongly but to his credit he keeps it calm, contained and constructive.
Fiennes uses the words of other team members to illustrate his points and to show us how others at the time reacted to Scott as a person and to his actions as a leader of the expedition.
The story of Scott and his team still touched my heart the second time around. It still amazes me how these men fought on against all the odds, until the end when surely they must have known there was no hope of getting back alive. It amazed me to find out that on his first expedition Scott managed to get himself organised in only a year and a bit whereas it took Fiennes and his wife years and years to achieve the same. This to me is amazing, especially since we in the modern world are supposed to have not only the better technology but the benefit of hindsight as well. How could we fail where Scott, on some fronts at least, succeeded?
I found the book insightful, well written, well researched and Fiennes addresses the issues and faults raised by Scott's critics in a calm and rational manner. You can tell Fiennes is passionate about his and Scott's work. He believes that Scott is hard done by by all the severe criticism that has been levelled at him over the years and I would tend to agree with him. And if you don't... then perhaps you can chew on this: Why don't you try to show the courage under pressure that Scott had, the leadership under the difficult circumstances he faced and see how you do. See if there are no choice words directed at you, if your decisions are not challenged for men with their own agenda and see if you can stay standing in the midst of all of it. To Fiennes and to me Scott stood tall and strong and this is how I choose to remember him.

Title: Captain Scott
Author: Ranulph Fiennes
436 pages
Coronet Books
ISBN# 0-340-82699-1

Books to be read: 139

I just had to

After a weekend of planning a theatre trip, a lovely dinner and a good old catch up with my best buddy B, I am now ready to get on with the review for my latest read book... it's a corker!

#### SPOILER ALERT ####

The Mind's Eye - Oliver Sacks

I wish I could adopt Oliver Sacks or at least live next door to him so I could see him work and talk to him whenever I wanted. I absolutely love the way he writes and I love love love the subjects he writes about. He has a keen insight into the issues he studies and he is a people person. I was a bit surprised to learn that not only does he have trouble recognising faces of people he has know for ages, he has trouble remembering places, frequently gets lost and is terrible at directions! Funny though that may seem it has some real practical drawbacks if you are a well known person who frequently travels and meets new people. 

But enough about the fabulous and clever Mr Sacks... on to the book. It is great. Very entertaining, very interesting and best of all, it makes you think "What if...". Some of the things that Sacks describes in the case studies scare the living daylights out of me, some make me think "That would be unfortunate to have" and others do not phase me that much at all. Each story deals with a different aspect of what can happen when the information that the brain receives from the eyes gets processed incorrectly. All the stories interesting in their own right. The beauty of them is that Sacks tell the the stories of these people from a very human point of view. He tells you about the person and the condition they have. Then he tells you a bit about the history of the condition, gives you some other examples and shows you how the people that have them have coped, or not. It is not like reading a medical book or a serious report on a case study. Sacks has managed to make the science behind these conditions easily accessible, interesting and understandable.

Sight reading

This is the story of a woman, Lilian who can read individual letters but cannot read words. She sees the letters but cannot recognise any words. Strangely enough she can write! Also she seems to be unable to recognise normal everyday items. She has learnt to recognise things by colour, size shape, position and context and seems to be managing fine in her own environment. Once things are not where she expects them to be she struggles.Yet she can still play music and rearrange scores in her head. Those abilities are not affected until later on. Over time Sacks shows her that she deteriorates further, recognises less and less shapes even when she touches them and that her world becomes more and more restricted, she even becomes lost in her own apartment and needs more help in her day to day life.

Recalled to Life

Next we meet a woman who went into a coma after a blood clot in her left hemisphere and can then only mime, point or gesture to indicate what she wants to express herself. We see the struggle that Pat goes through to make herself understood and how she manages to cope. We also see that although she has lost a lot of movement (her right side is completely paralysed) and freedom (she is placed in a rehabilitation facility) she has gained a better insight into people by listening to their tone of voice, facial expression and gestures. Pat learns to express herself better with the help of her very own word bible and gestures and mime. Her story shows that with the right help, will power and guidance you can still find a way to express yourself even if the damage in the brain is extensive.

A Man of Letters

Here we meet Howard (who is a writer by profession) who gets up one morning, picks up the newspaper and finds out that he can see the lay out of the text in the paper but cannot read a single letter in it. Letters look strange to him. After some tests it is show he has had a stroke and he has a blind spot in the upper right of his visual field and trouble recognising colours, faces and everyday objects. He found that he could still write but not read what he had written. Howard slowly recovers some of the abilities he had before and through sheer dogged persistence gets his writing career back on track. He learns to use his imagination more and plots out stories in his head before committing them to paper this way he is able to be a writer once again.

Face-Blind

In this tale we find out a bit more about the face blindness Sacks suffers from and the fact that he does not do well with remembering locations and finding his way around, even if he has lived somewhere for years. Meeting people out of their expected context confuses him and if he has to deviate even slightly form a familiar route he gets hopelessly lost. It seems that he is not the only one in his family with these issues which suggests there is a genetic link with these symptoms. There is a funny story where Sacks' assistant arranges for him to meet a colleague who suffers from the same things as Sacks does. Apparently they did manage to meet up but I would have given anything to be there when they first met! I guess it sounds funny but I think not recognising people or places can be quite unsettling and confusing and you have to develop coping strategies for it. sacks recognises his neighbours by the dogs they have, not the way the people look! It seems that there are two extremes on this scale. There are those who cannot even recognise their own spouses or children and there are those that can recognise someone they saw fro a few minutes 30 years ago. Most of us stumble along somewhere in the middle of this bell curve without a care in the world.

Stereo Sue

This one deals with the stereoscopic, three dimensional world that we live in. Losing the vision in one eye can make you lose this way of looking at the world and be experienced as a great loss. Even Sacks himself has experience with it as we find out later. We meet Sue who had problems with her eyes and has only recently started to experience the joys of stereoscopic vision. All of a sudden things seem to pop out of nowhere and he world is the richer for it, she is constantly surprised by things "sticking out" of the world as she knows is and is fascinated by it.

Persistence of Vision

This is the story of how Sacks loses the vision in his right eye and how he tries to cope with the confusing things he does see, and those he can no longer see. It is a very personal and touching story of what happens to him and how he copes whilst also kind of treating himself as a case study. Sacks loses his stereoscopic vision and the ability to see depth and distance but gains some weird "visions", ways of overlaying patterns from the missing visual field in his right eye. However, on the plus side, he is now no longer afraid of heights.

Later on he also has to cope with the loss of his right visual field as a hemorrhage in the bad eye destroys the vision in it completely. Now apart from the visions he has to cope with people on his right side just disappearing and things popping up out of nowhere from the right hand side. Not an easy task but Sacks learns to adapt as best he can to the "large nowhere" in he right visual field and brain.

The Mind's Eye

This one deals with visual memories, seeing and the loss of it.

It seems that when some people go blind they lose the essence of seeing in the mind as well whereas others still say they have a very visual way of "seeing" and imagining things even if they are blind. some people keep images off when they could still see in their heads and can almost see their hands on a the keyboard of a computer or piano. There are people who learn to manipulate object in their minds, become engineers and even able to re-roof their own homes just by being able to imagine what they are doing, visualising it in their heads! For others sound becomes more important and they can even use it to "see" their way around the world. How sound bounces off object can tell them what something looks like and what shape it is. 

Sacks then also delves into the area of visual imagery and visual perception. Some people are really good at imagining images, manipulating them in their heads and then using them to build things or test theories. Others are good observers but had only a sort of passive knowledge of the objects they see. They do not have the ability to manipulate them and take them apart in their heads.

I totally loved this book. The stories were interesting and the applied linguist in me really likes to learn about all the crazy stuff that can happen to people when the brain malfunctions. I hope never to get any of the things that Sacks describes in his book. I cannot even begin to imagine what I would feel like if I found I could no longer read.. let alone write.

Title: The Mind's Eye

Author: Oliver Sacks

240 pages

Picador

ISBN# 978-0-330-50890-2

Books to be read: 140