Review: Flashman (The Flashman Papers #1) by George MacDonald Fraser

First published in 1969 by Herbert Jenkins, later versions available by various publishers.

First off let me say that I shouldn't love it, but I do.  The writing is truly excellent.  It is also, I'm told, historically accurate in terms of events/timelines etc...

The title character of Harry Flashman is a genius creation, the kind of character you just love to hate.  You should hate him, he is quite the worst anti-hero you could possibly imagine, an unutterably awful character with absolutely no redeeming virtue whatsoever.  He is most definitely not a likeable character at all, and does the most terrible things throughout this book (and the others that follow it).  However you can't help but enjoy the ride he takes you on.

George MacDonald Fraser has taken Flashman from Tom Brown's Schooldays and fleshed him out into the lead character in his own series.  Thomas Hughes' book sees Flashman expelled from school for drunkenness and it's at that point that Fraser picks up Flashy's story, which has been reproduced as just discovered memoirs written by an elderly and brutally honest Flashman.  Flashy goes home, seduces his stepmother then threatens her when she refuses his subsequent advances.  His father ships him off to life in the Army, and rather than ending up in the cushy regiment he envisioned he finds himself on active duty in India and then in the middle of the first Anglo-Afghan war (with seductions and a shotgun wedding, rape, flogging, beating and all forms of cowardice on the way).  Each time he finds himself in the middle of the action he manages by a combination of blind luck and sheer yellow-bellied cowardice to not only survive impossible situations but actually is perceived as quite the hero.  Flashman is an intelligent character who has an instinctive knowledge of military strategy and it's obvious to readers that had he an ounce of bravery about him he'd either be a great leader, or possibly dead in the battlefield.

There are some brilliant reviews on Goodreads, and I encourage a read through of some of them!

There are 12 Flashman Papers novels in all, and while I have loved this I am not sure I am ready to read on just yet, I wonder if Flashman would get tiresome after a while.  Certainly I need a break between stories.

If you are thinking of reading this I urge you to get a physical copy of the book and not the Kindle version as I did.  The book is heavily footnoted, and not being too familiar with this period in military history I found it a pain to keep going to and fro on the kindle.  I may re-purchase this in time in paperback, and if I read more then it will definitely be in physical book form.

Mr B's Reading Spa number 2 & book haul

Last week while on holiday I took a day out from my family to visit Bath and one of the best independent bookshops I've ever come across...  I made a day of it and had a book spa in the morning, spent the day walking around Bath and went to an Author event in the evening at the same bookshop.

Let me just say that I am not affiliated with Mr B's in any professional capacity other than as a customer and a fan of their brilliant service!

A book spa basically involves having a chat with one of Mr B's booksellers about books you love.  They love books too, so it's a great feeling to sit back and chat about what you like to read.  I so want to do a spa in the winter when the fire is on!  After about 20 minutes or so of talking about your likes and dislikes, preferences and reading goals the bookseller, in this instance Emma, will leave you in peace with a drink and a slice of cake.  You can browse their eclectic shelves or pick up a book to read while they search out a huge pile of books that they think you'll like. They'll then sit with you and go through their suggestions explaining why they've selected each book and why you'll like it.  You're then given time to choose whichever books you want, no pressure or obligation.  The cost of your book spa does include a set amount to spend on books, so you know you can walk away with some.

The first time I went I wanted a general selection of fiction, but this time around I wanted to explore SF/Fantasy a little more, which is great because this is Emma's favoured genre and she was able to make some interesting suggestions.

I turned a few down that I already had in my TBR list, or had already read, but here's my fabulous haul:

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente - I finished this book yesterday, and it is sublime.  I loved every word of it.
Quesadillas by Juan Pablo Villalobos
The City & The City by China Mieville
The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon
Heap House by Edward Carey
Dreams and Shadows by C. Robert Cargill
Dark Eden by Chris Beckett
The Explorer by James Smythe
The Panda Theory by Pascal Garnier
Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

There were a few more books that I turned down, simply because my budget wouldn't allow it.  It's my ambition to go there one day with no budget to stick to...

I'll discuss the Author Event (Juan Pablo Villalobos) in my reviews of Down The Rabbit Hole & Quesadillas.

Playing around

I'm going to be playing around with the format of the blog a bit in the next few days (weeks?) and so please bear with me while I get myself sorted.  I'm kind of bored with the clean unfussy layout, I want widgets, colour, words and pictures galore!

Top Ten Tuesday # 18

This weeks Top Ten Tuesday is set in that perfect world where the books we love are not butchered by Hollywood or the Silver Screen, and instead are all handled brilliantly as TV shows or Films!  Most of the books I've enjoyed lately are either already movies, or are about to be adapted, so this was a hard list for me, and I didn't quite make it to 10...

So here's my list, as always a little artistic licence has been taken.

Though I haven't read them all, I am very very grateful that the Game Of Thrones series is being made as a TV series, though if I could change one thing, it would be to make it a Soap Opera so I could watch it every week, and not have to wait a year between batches of episodes.  I think there's enough material :-)

My new favourite book of 2013 would be wonderful - The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente.  It's just magical.

The London based police procedural stories featuring trainee wizard PC Peter Grant, written by Ben Aaronovitch would make a great alternative Crime Drama series (TV or film, either format would work in my opinion).  Rivers of London, Moon over Soho, Whispers Underground and Broken Homes...

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman - I can see this as a film, with incredible settings and heartbreaking story.

The Dark Is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper.  Of course they'd have to re-do the previously released Dark Is Rising movie...  No Bad Thing!

Dark Matter by Michelle Paver.  I think this would be wonderfully creepy as a supernatural chiller, though I have a terrible fear that it would be mistreated and turned into a slasher/horror movie.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce.  This is going to be made into a film, so I'll be  praying to the God of Book to Movie Adaptations that it gets handled well.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, definitely a film rather than TV series, and I have no idea how Death would narrate it, but I think it would be wonderful.  I'd watch it, I'd buy it, and I'd sell it to everyone who'd listen.  EDIT: I just read that this will be a film, OMG OMG OMG OMG!

And finally, reversing the focus of the list so far, I'd like to see the recent Tom Cruise film Oblivion as a book.  It started out as an idea for a Graphic Novel rather than a book, but I think it could make a great book if fleshed out a bit more.

Where in the literary world?

I have been whisked away from home by a wind and his faithful leopard of little breezes to Fairyland, where I am attempting to catch a velocipede to speed me on a quest aided by various magical creatures.