Hello everyone,

General:
I mentioned last time that Siobhan Cunningham, an author, might be coming to live in our village. Apparently she has arrived – and I look forward to meeting her sometime. If there’s anything interesting or informative to pass on, I’ll let you know. But no-one has admitted to reading any of her two (or three?) books.

I’ve just heard from Margie that she has had an unexpected problem which will take her out of the Alpha activities for a while. As soon as I hear from her again, I’ll let you all know immediately.

Challenges:
Ch 7 points: It seems that you can win a challenge by a mile, and get 3 points, or win by a single mark, from two and a whole pack close behind, and stll get 3 points. But that's what I intended with this system. Well done, Clare, and tough luck, Sally and Chris.

So the points this time are Clare 3 points, Sally and Chris 2 points; Tara 1 point, and Zena, Christine, Rosemary and Olaf a * each,

That makes the leaders:

Sally 17 pts and 2*
Clare 16 pts and 3*
Chris 16pts and 3*
Geoff 16 pts
Zena 15 pts and 1*
Chrsitine 14 pts and 4*
Celia 13 pts.

If any of you are aspiring bookmakers, what are the odds on (or against) Sally winning?

Dianne will be sending Challenge 9 around at about the same time as this.

Discussion Themes:
We’ve had some interesting discussion themes since the last Alpha Day. In particular, about the offer by Zena’s son for a special website for displaying our writing, has created a lot of points, some favourable, and some much less so. You will all have received my summary of those discussions. I’ve just heard from Zena that she’s putting your comments and my summary over to Ben while she goes away for a week. We can look forward to what Ben has to say.

The second theme has related to details about computer software and protection systems. It seems that McAfee gets anything but rave notices, while AVG gains a certain amount of approval. Nobody seemed to mention Norton, though this was inferior to McAfee when the latter broke on to the scene. And passwords? It seems that everyone has a different approach: I don’t change mine – I haven’t over the 14 plus years I’ve been using AOL, but I do keep one email name especially for communication with firms. That’s where I get most of the unsolicited emails, but even they don’t amount to more than 2 or 3 per week.

Is there a word for this?
Sometimes we come across something which is totally unexpected, virtually unbelievable. Is there a word to explain the one’s feeling/emotion at such a time? That ugly word ‘gob-smacked’ really refers to someone’s actions: words like ‘unbelievable’, ‘dumbfounded’ or ‘inconceivable’ seem inadequate.

The situation that gave rise to this occurred when watching the last of the natural history programmes from Shetland. Guillemots (if they don’t have them in the Southern Hemisphere, they’re sea-birds) were being discussed. Apparently they have one chick, and when the chick is old enough (but cannot fly), he jumps from his nesting place about 100 ft into the water. This was surprising enough, but we were then told that they then paddle with their fathers 200 miles to the Norway coast. I can accept lots of unusual scientific things, but I’ve thought of this several times, and cannot really find any word or phrase to describe the feeling that this information gave me.

Alfoxton House:
Alfoxton House came up in our email exchanges some time ago: you remember it’s the house in Somerset that the Wordsworths rented for a year in 1798/9, and where they spent a lot of time with Coleridge. My house is within the boundaries of the original Alfoxton estate.

Anyway, there’s a bit of a problem with the owner who was using Polish workers to renovate it. If you want to read about it, google on ‘Graham Bond Alfoxton’

Books read:
Last time, I mentioned books by John Grisham and H.E.Bates. Grisham came off worse in a comparison between the two. I also mentioned that I had another Grisham available to read, and I give you a review of this below.

The Appeal by John Grisham Arrow Books, 2008. 499 pages
John Grisham is an internationally acclaimed writer, his books automatically gaining signficant worldwide sales. Words flow naturally, and his work is an easy, generally undemanding, without ever threatening to be classic works in the English language. They are recreational reads, and thoroughly acceptable when considered in that light.

However, one expects from such reads that there is a reasonably original plot, and that sadly is not the case in this book. Read the opening chapter, and you’ll find it’s all about an industrial concern polluting the land which eventually poisons the drinking water and makes the local people ill. Does it sound to you like the opening of Ibsen’s “Enemy of the People”?

At that stage, I thought the remainder of the book was going to be legal arguments based in an appeal in an American court, and I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic. But no, it was all about getting the initial court ruling overturned at the appeal stage: legal arguments apparently have no place when the justice system is there to be bought. So the plot development proved particularly interesting, and was a compelling read. It concentrates on the methods used for buying justice, and it is well detailed so that one feels that it could really happen in United States (though I hope it couldn’t). Nevertheless, the development stage of the plot also parallels Ibsen’s, where powerful financial forces are pitched against the health and well-being of ordinary people.

Where the book falls down, though, is the introduction of an unexpected event as it proceeds to the final stage. It is akin to someone winning the lottery, and really diminishes the story by creating a false diversion. Surely Grisham could have done better than that? If he did get the original idea for the plot from Ibsen’s play, then he would have been well advised to study the ending in more detail. Ibsen does it better.

But for all that criticism, it is a good read. There’s a lot of detail about American politics, and the rights and wrongs of selecting supreme justices by popular voting, and how expenses for electioneering can be hidden. There’s very good tension in the middle part of the book, when you are waiting to see whether the bankrolled side of the dispute really will win through, although it does end in rather an amateurish anticlimax.

All Alpha members read books. If you’re like me, sometimes it’ll be several in succession, with other times quite long gaps. But what I’d like to see is one or two book reviews by Alpha members. Thinking objectively about a novel and its construction when you’ve finished it is an interesting thing to do, and writing a review in about 400 words, more or less, is very good marriage of critical analysis with constructive writing.

BCC:
Writers’ Conference, Winchester, July 2-4, 2010

I have now sent off my outline for my lecture to Barbara Large at Winchester, but I don’t yet know if she’s accepted it, or detailed a slot for giving it. As soon as I know, I’ll pass the info on.

That’s all, folks for this time,

- Olaf