this week during free moments, i've carnivorously devoured information to compensate for the numbing tedium of constantly revisiting the change in atmosphere between Yalta & Potsdam, or the differences between dr. faustus and the tempests final soliloquies.Finished Mcewan's Solar and feel that broadcasting my opinion on it won't amount to much as its generally conforming to that of everyone elses. Whilst it might have been an entertaining challenge for him as an author to craft such a loathsome, vapid and egotistic protagonist as Micheal Beard who sustains his repugnance for 300 pages, for the reader stuck in the company of this slothlike aging, balding, serial philanderer it is a lot less enjoyable. The general effect is roughly analogous to being hemmed in by the window seat next to such a person on a train who proceeds to declare their innermost thoughts, however superficial or unfit for public testimony, on their mobile phone to the entire carriage at great volume for the duration of their journey. Also, to again slavishly regurtigate an often cited criticism of McEwan, the research taken for the novel often appears to be stitched onto the story as an afterthought; however meticulous the authors acquired knowledge of quantum theory, and environmental physics might be the passages which exhaustively release this don't actually contribute that greatly to the plot apart from to further add to the readers growing antipathy towards Beard. Out of the McEwan i've read i found his novella Amsterdam (which similarly deals with the plight of two antiheroes caught in extensional dillema's) a lot less overwrought and much more satisfying. The partitionment of the book into three separate timeframes during the noughties did give him a vehicle for some welcome social criticism.Ultimately then Solar left me recovering from that anti-climatic hangover you are burdened with after leaving an unsatisfactory novel that is strangely absent in the case of a film or record. I think its the intimacy and commitment of a read that leaves you faintly resentful towards the writer who leeched of your time, whilst you persevered on through compelled by a sense of obligation to see through what you've begun.

No such feeling was apparent in the Godfather however which my zapper-finger remained monogamous to for the entirety of the 3 and a half hour running time. Having overcome the preliminary discomfort with what sounded to be an emphysema blighted Marlon Brando i preceded to find it gripping, funny and stylish. Its the moments of cinematic lunacy and flagrant extravagance that made it such a thrill. Such a scene in Mikey casts a fleeting glance at his newly beloved getting to grips with the steering on a voluptuous black 1930's chrysler as she laughingly skids on the gravel and he makes to go inside having being recently informed of his brothers death at the hands of a rival gang. Then, as he draws his lingering glance away the camera shifts to rest on a sheepish looking gangly youth taking a backward glance on a runaway down behind the veranda. Just as we twig it's the mob the shiny black curvature of the vehicle with its jubilant brunette inside is engulfed by an enormous explosive fireball, and before the ring of the BOOM has disappeared with unintentional pathos the shot is faded into another of a ballroom. etc etc...