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Book Reviews From The Bookbag (view source)
Revision as of 15:18, 1 October 2015
, 15:18, 1 October 2015no edit summary
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{{newreview
|author= Aldous Huxley
|title= The Genius and the Goddess
|rating= 4
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= So, three books in, I've now got to grips with the idea that Huxley doesn't so much want to tell a story as expound his ideas. Once you know that, it makes it easier to choose whether to read him or not. On balance, I have come down on the side of not – I won't be dashing out to work my way through the rest of his output the way I want to with, say, Nevil Shute, or George Orwell.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784870366</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Geoff Rodkey
|summary=War books and anti-war books, in my mind, have a lot in common and only a couple of easy things need be changed to turn one to the other. This is dressed as an anti-war book, but here is the lead character surviving against all odds – the platoon whittled down several times while he and his few friends go strong; here he is overcoming all kinds of difficulty and adversity and still coming out the other end; here he is doing proper heroic deeds – or his colleagues saving the day at the last minute – and the war carries onwards towards its inevitable end. The difference perhaps is in the minutiae of what those difficulties and deeds need be, with the anti-war book having a simple honesty about them and their overall worth that the gung-ho, militaristic piece would patently lack. And when you face the guts and gore of the kind of warfare on these pages, you don't really expect jingoism and 'hoo-rah!' attitudes. No, even if the DNA is pretty much the same, the result here is definitely, grimly and firmly anti-war.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297609769</amazonuk>
}}