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arbieroo

Arbie's Unoriginally Titled Book Blog

It's a blog! Mainly of book reviews.

Currently reading

Station Zero
Philip Reeve
Progress: 220/282 pages
The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition
Ursula K. Le Guin, Charles Vess
Progress: 749/997 pages
The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry
Robert Chandler
The Uncertain Land and Other Poems
Patrick O'Brian
Progress: 8/160 pages
The Heptameron (Penguin Classics)
Marguerite de Navarre
Progress: 152/544 pages
The Poems and Plays of John Masefield
John Masefield
Progress: 78/534 pages
Poems Selected
Emily Dickinson, Ted Hughes
Progress: 4/50 pages
Selected Poems
U A Fanthorpe
Progress: 18/160 pages
The Penguin Book of Scottish Verse
Mick Imlah, Robert Crawford
Hainish Novels & Stories, Vol. 2
Ursula K. Le Guin
Progress: 133/789 pages

Herge's Adventures of Tintin, Vol. 5, Herge

The Adventures of Tintinvolume 5 - Hergé

The best things about Tintin are:
1. Snowy.
2. Captain Haddock's cursing and insults.
3. Total preposterousness.

 

The worst things about Tintin are:
1. Patronising/offensive racial stereotyping.
2. Patronising/offensive national stereotyping.
3. Annoying cliff-hangers at the end of books.

 

The above are all present and correct in this volume but since the cliffhanger ending is in the Seven Crystal Balls one can move straight on and find out what is going on in Prisoners of the Sun. The solution came as a big surprise!

 

Snowy, besides being cute, interestingly, also: is helpful; tries to be helpful but actually makes things worse; gets in deep trouble; causes completely irrelevant mayhem. The best character by miles. Haddock's alliterative curses and insane malapropism-insults are on excellent form here. Billions of blue blistering barnacles in a thundering typhoon! You belemnite!

 

As for total preposterousness, Tintin is a globe trotting 13 yo reporter who can drive, shoot pistols and rifles and, after the first couple of books, never seems to actually hand in a story. 'Nuff said - but one could go on forever.

 

Interestingly, that other famous kids' comic, Asterix, also features copious quantities of national stereotyping - but it's hilarious rather than distasteful. Why? I think precisely because in the case of Asterix, it's obviously a joke and the authors are as happy to poke fun at France and the French (i.e. themselves) as they are any and every other nation on Earth.