Stephen Fry: Making History

Stephen Fry: Making History

This is one of those books I feel I can tell nothing about to someone who hasn't read it. It was marvellous. I enjoyed every moment of it. I still miss the feeling of not yet knowing what will happen in the last pages of the book. And I will definitely buy this book so that I can return to it whenever I want to (and I expect that will be quite often).


But I can't tell you anything about the plot. And almost nothing about the characters. It is a scifi-novel, but so very connected to our world I secretly think it could be true. It is set in two universtities, and the two main characters are Michael Young, a student of history about to return his thesis, and Leo Zuckermann, an older physicist.

I realize I have been writing short sentences about what I won't tell about the book, but it is seriously so good that just thinking about it makes me incapable of expressing anything. The last two fictional books of Stephen Fry's I have read have been good, but not amazing. This one is amazing. I truly feel how limiting my English is right now, I would like to praise this book with wonderful, exciting words, but I don't know any. Believe me, it is worth reading again and again.

GLBT Challenge: I don't want to spoil the ending by telling why this book is fit for this challenge. In my book it is, anyway.
British Book Challenge: Part of this novel is set in a British university, which is the very top of academic institutions for me. And since to me Stephen Fry is the very embodiment of Britishness, I can't imagine how this book could not be British.

Stephen Fry: The Stars' Tennis Balls

Stephen Fry: The Stars' Tennis Balls

Stephen Fry is a British comedien, actor, author and much more. I have watched some of his tv programmes, my favourite being QI, and listened to his podgrammes. I admire Fry very much, but I was actually a bit disappointed in the first fiction book of his I read, The Liar. But I think the problem was I expected something very different that what the book was.

The main character in The Stars' Tennis Balls is Ned Maddstone, a young, confident/selfish, handsome and popular son of an MP. He is madly in love with his girlfriend, who is madly in love with him, he has been to the most expensive schools in Britain, and he is perfect in many ways. The novel is very much about the plot, so I'm not sure what more I can say about it. The plot grabs you from the very first chapter, so revealing anything might take away part of the reading experience.

The themes I think I found in the book were the evil in human beings and revenge. Is it right to revenge for great injustices? How far can you go? Should people pay for things they did when they were young? If not, how can the person the injustices has concerned move on with his/her life?

The British Book Challenge: If I was asked to name the most British person alive I knew, I think I would say Stephen Fry. He is intelligent, has high education, is the master of the British humour, and I would be shocked to find out he doesn't drink tea. The Star's Tennis Balls is set mostly in Britain, and tells about the British upper class. The observations of it are told through Ashley Barson-Garland, a boy who is from a lower class and tries to blend in among the public school boys. I certainly think there is something very British about this novel.