Book Club Selection for November 09
The book club selection for November is ' Carl Sagan: A Life’ by Keay Davidson .
I guess I'll start out this set of comments (hard for me to call it a review) by saying that I rarely read biographies. Three Cups of Tea was sort of a biography, but it had a notional story line also. I think I mentioned this to someone, but the last biography I read before this one was an autobiography by Allan Sherman. So let's see of I can decipher the little bookmarks I have made in this tome. Overall I liked the book well enough; it was apparent that Davidson did a huge amount of research on Sagan. There were a few stylistic quibbles I had: I got tired of reading early on in the book "more about this later" (there was even one page (130) where the device was used twice...arrgh). Another cliche he recycles is "...a series of misunderstandings..." It is used earlier in the book and on page 385. Perhaps the frequent asides to deliver personal thoughts into the story is commonplace for biographers; Davidson seemed to disrupt the flow of the narrative to take a pot shot at William F Buckley ("strange facial expressions...", p 371) and Ronald Regan ("deep box of newspaper clippings..." p 357).
All in all, a worthwhile read. Someone who reads more biographies can give a better assessment on how it matches others in this genre.
I guess I'll start out this set of comments (hard for me to call it a review) by saying that I rarely read biographies. Three Cups of Tea was sort of a biography, but it had a notional story line also. I think I mentioned this to someone, but the last biography I read before this one was an autobiography by Allan Sherman. So let's see of I can decipher the little bookmarks I have made in this tome. Overall I liked the book well enough; it was apparent that Davidson did a huge amount of research on Sagan. There were a few stylistic quibbles I had: I got tired of reading early on in the book "more about this later" (there was even one page (130) where the device was used twice...arrgh). Another cliche he recycles is "...a series of misunderstandings..." It is used earlier in the book and on page 385. Perhaps the frequent asides to deliver personal thoughts into the story is commonplace for biographers; Davidson seemed to disrupt the flow of the narrative to take a pot shot at William F Buckley ("strange facial expressions...", p 371) and Ronald Regan ("deep box of newspaper clippings..." p 357).
All in all, a worthwhile read. Someone who reads more biographies can give a better assessment on how it matches others in this genre.
posted by Bill Rock | 6:07 PM
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