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Chasing the Devil - Tim Butcher
by eilidhcatriona
Some time ago I read and reviewed Tim Butcher's Blood River, about his journey along the Congo River, and I'm afraid to say I wasn't terribly complementary about it. I didn't like his style or attitude, and thought I would rather find other books on Africa. Yet when I learnt about his recent book, Chasing The Devil: The Search for ... Africa's Fighting Spirit, I found myself keen to give it a go. Perhaps it was the African journey again which drew me in, but I have to admit there was also a hope that I might enjoy Butcher's writing more second time round.
Chasing The Devil is Butcher's account of a journey across Sierra Leone and Liberia. Like Blood River, he is again recreating an earlier journey, this time the trip made by author Graham Greene and his cousin Barbara in 1935. As a war correspondent, Butcher spent time in both countries, and had a death threat against him in Liberia. He decided to return and get to know the countries better, and see how they were faring in peacetime. Butcher travelled through Sierra Leone by road, and then walked across Liberia (and a small section of Guinea, just as the Greenes had done) along with David, the son of an old friend. With the pair are Johnson, their guide, and Mr Omaru, who carries their luggage by motorbike.
Sierra Leone and Liberia are countries of which my knowledge is embarrassingly little, so in addition to hoping to enjoy Butcher's journey, I was hoping to learn something too. In this respect Chasing The Devil was certainly successful: in addition to sharing his own experiences of both countries in war, he had clearly done his research as the book is full of history and culture. Butcher writes these sections well, with a clear and easy to follow narrative yet not making it simplistic. Not only does he cover the two countries wider history and culture, but he focuses on smaller or more personal aspects of it as well, the account of what happened to the best hotel in Freetown being a good example.
Yet while the history included in Chasing The Devil is interesting, as a travel book (albeit one with a more unusual destination than most) the key element is the journey and the author's account of it. It was this side of things which had bothered me about Blood River, so I was uncertain of what to expect from Chasing The Devil.
Good news though - I really enjoyed it. I didn't find Butcher's attitude off-putting as in Blood River, and I found him to be a good narrator of his experiences, enabling me to picture the places he was visiting. There is no major change that I can put my finger on in Chasing The Devil: perhaps it is because this seems to have been a more personal journey for Butcher, given his wartime experiences in Sierra Leone and Liberia, and those of his colleagues, or perhaps it is because he is following in the footsteps of an author rather than an explorer (Sir Henry Morton Stanley, whose 1874-1877 journey Butcher retraced in Blood River). Or perhaps I simply took entirely the wrong view of Blood River - maybe I should give it another go.
The journey through Sierra Leone and Liberia was not packed full of excitement or danger, but there were some sinister threats which hung over Butcher and his travelling companions. There are secret initiation rites in both countries, known generally as the Poro, which outsiders are never supposed to witness or even know of. The group would have been in great danger had they stumbled across a Poro in the forest, or learnt too much. Additionally, there are hunters in the forests known as "heartmen" who take the hearts of their victims. With these threats hanging over them, there was often an element of tension to the book, as you felt that this danger could be waiting behind the next tree for the group.
In addition to covering his own journey and the history of the region, Butcher also writes quite a bit about the Greenes. He covers the experiences of their journey, which he is aiming to replicate as closely as possible, and also other aspects of Graham Greene's life. Having never read anything by Greene, this didn't mean as much to me as it might to a fan of the author, but having read about the journey he undertook, I am interested in reading not only his account of it (Journey Without Maps) but also some of his fiction.
So perhaps I was wrong about Blood River - or perhaps not, and Butcher's second book is simply better than the first. Either way, I am glad I decided to give him another try, for whatever reason - Chasing The Devil is an enjoyable and truly interesting read, and recommended to all travel fans or those with an interest in Africa.
This review was originally published on www.curiousbookfans.co.uk. A review copy of the book was provided by the publisher through Curious Book Fans.
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Allotment Month by Month - Alan Buckingham
by emmachilcott
Growing our own vegetables has always been an ambition of ours but the outside space that we used to have never allowed us to produce anything more than a plate of salad, however, when we moved house a while back we finally had the space to grow something a bit more substantial. Unfortunately in our first year we quickly realised that ... there was an awful lot that we didn't know and we ended up with very little at which point the Allotment month by month book entered our lives and things have been a lot simpler since!
Printed by Dorling Kindersley the book entitled Allotment Month by Month is written by Alan Buckingham and it has been an absolute bible for us in the last few months. The front cover has changed since above photo was taken and it now boasts simple salad vegetables and a strap line of "how to grow your own vegetables" which says it all really! This is not a run of the mill hardback book - the sturdy cover contains a spiral binder and the pages are made from thin card and the months of the year are tabbed on each section.
The introduction of the book lays out the reasons why growing your own is so popular, and all of these reasons resonate with me - fresh, seasonal and local are important yet subsidiary reasons that make me want to do it - my main reason has got to be economic and also the pure satisfaction of pulling something out of the ground that I have grown and nurtured. The introduction runs you through plot layouts within your space and bed systems, crop rotation, composts and fertilisers, tools and equipment, and climate and seasons. After reading the introduction, this alone pointed out some of the places that I had been going wrong in the past - it is laid out in such a way that the information is easy to digest and photographs alongside make it even easier to understand, for instance I knew what a cloche was, but to a complete novice gardener the picture makes it obvious. The photographs throughout the book are generally close up and of a good quality and scattered enough on the pages to draw your interest.
This book is divided up into the twelve months and as stated, the pages are tabbed for quick reference. At the start of each month it states which crop is in season and then moves onto which crops should be sown - the book says how the crop should be planted (outdoors, indoors, greenhouse...) and in what form (seed, plant, bulb etc) and it also reminds you to keep an eye on the weather, for example, broad beans can be sown in January so long as the ground is not frozen. Each crop has its own page of instructions and tips but at the bottom of the page there is an at-a-glance box which lists the crops which is useful if you know what you are doing but just want a quick reminder. Next within the month is the jobs that need doing - weeding, watering, hardening off seedlings, potting on, and many many more but most importantly of all, harvesting - the list is seemingly endless and there are obviously more jobs in some months than others. Spring and summer is a busy time in the garden so these sections of the book get bigger, but the information is still not overwhelming and if some jobs are not applicable to you, it is easy to skim over them and move onto the next section as there are large sub headings.
The pests and diseases that might affect your crops are listed for the month, but you have to flip through to the back to find the trouble shooting guide on how to deal with them. The guide is listed in alphabetical order and again, very easy to use and I have found this section very helpful as I have identified several issues that I have had from the use of this book (flipping leek moth will be the death of me!) - It states the name of the pest/disease, the crops affected, symptoms and tell tale signs and how to deal with it. There are photos alongside this section also which show the issues and so it is easy to cross reference to see if you have the same problem. The index at the end of the book makes all of the information easily accessible and I especially like that the main page for the subject that you want is written in bold so you can go straight there rather than leafing through pages that only have that specific word on them.
Overall this book has been a godsend to me in the garden and really has given me a great beginner's crash course in growing my own fruit and vegetables. I have referred back to this book on countless occasions and is has always given me the answers that I need. At the last count we have nineteen varieties growing and I hope to push up this count during the coming years. This book has given me a new found enthusiasm for cultivating my own crops so I would highly recommend it, it shows that you do not have to have a massive plot to ensure that you have fresh food all year round and even though it is entitled "allotment" this could easily be changed to garden if you have sufficient space. The information is well laid out, easy to understand and not at all overwhelming and you don't have to have green finger in order to read it!
My copy came via The Book People who leave their books in offices and clubs and I paid £8 for it which I think is a bargain considering the quality and the wealth of information that it offers, but I see that it is even cheaper on their website now at £6.99. On Amazon it is currently £11.21 with free delivery which is still a good reduction on the RRP of £19.99. ISBN 978-1-4053-9136-8
Also posted on Ciao under my username chilcott1
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Perfect Victims: Slaughter, Sensation and Serial Killers: An American Criminal Odyssey - Bill James
by darren55
Perfect Victims - Slaughter, Sensation and Serial Killers: An American Criminal Odyssey is a non-fiction look into the reporting of crime during American history. The book was compiled by Bill James who is a baseball reporter in the states and not to be confused with the Welsh writer who writes contemporary crime fiction (I think, though ... they may be the same person because I couldn't find a clear biography of this Bill James in the book or online).
Anyway the book sets out to review in chronological order how violent crimes were reported in the contemporary press and to give a review of how the reporting was altered by the crime which altered future crime reporting from that point on. The author has a clear preference in the book for starting his chapters with rather sensationalist beginnings nearly all starting with the initiation of the crime this person is reported missing on this date and his/or more likely her body was found a few days later. The first third of the chapters tend to be a plain depiction of the cases, how the cases were reported by the papers, or any spin-off book. The author then tends to review the case and in most of the cases discuss the official findings of the police force, so was it the person they thought or was he or she innocent. The author does try to be even handed but some of the conclusions are a little airy and are clearly firm beliefs of the author.
The best parts of the book are in truth the depictions of the crime, the author has a nice if that's the correct term for depicting murders and kidnapping way of describing the action and the characters of the principal people involved. He does get bogged down in the discussion of the depictions of the crimes, this does become more stolid as the book progresses especially when we hit the crimes from the 60's onwards where there are books written on the cases. It was hard for this reader to accept that this investigation into the crime is better than this one and the author does tend to favour the books and newspaper journalists who have theories similar to his own. The success and failure of the book is largely the interpretation of the crimes so he has interesting views on famous cases such as the fate of the Lindberg baby, JFK, the Boston Strangler, OJ, Ted Bundy and others and they do tend to occupy his mind which I was grateful for because he does discuss American crimes which I'd never heard off and assumes the reader is fully conversant with at least the bare facts.
There is a social or ranging aspect looking at the impact of crime on society, the impact of reporting on society and some rather speculative thoughts on improving the penal service and court proceedings. This aspect of the book left me confused at times, obviously as a non-American some of the terms were unknown and I had no real clue about the arguments he was pursuing but somewhere interesting, as crime reporting and crime impact occurs in this country as well. I was also confused by the writers political or social bias, occasionally I thought he was left wing or liberal especially when discussion prison reform and sometimes extremely right wing when discussion lengths of prison sentences but I guess you're allowed to have different views on different things. The biggest fault is the speculation on crimes for which he has solely based his views on the things he's read, so to speculate on why Boston strangler wasn't the Boston strangler basically on a few newspaper reports and a couple of cops who told him informally that they were convinced they had the wrong man was at best a weak argument and at worst sloppy journalism.
So a strange book compelling at times but other times a little slow and dull, the best are the depictions of the crimes and the twists and turns in the investigation, the worst the rather unlikely conclusions of the author and the social commentary on the whole American legal system.
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