I like non-fiction, and generally prefer it to fiction.
I get annoyed when I buy a non-fiction book, and it is written in a trashy or tabloid style.
Examples:
The Yamamoto Dynasty (title?), can’t remember the author, ostensibly a history of Japan’s royal family. Yuk! Gossip magazine quality.
Brighter than the Baghdad Sun, by Shyam Bhatia and Daniel McGrory. This is supposed to be on Iraq’s nuclear weapons programme. The book is filled with imaginary conversations and re-creations of meetings (“Saddam smiled when he saw the plans, and rolled his hand over the model of the bomb” - not verbatim, but that sort of thing). The author lingers over reports that Saddam was sodomised as a child. Pure garbage.
I don’t understand the need to spice up non-fictional works with that sort of rubbishy style of writing.
I am currently in the middle of plowing my way through the extremely annoying Mi Moto Fidel by Christopher Baker. He sees everything, and he sees nothing. He says he sees no poverty in Cuba, but at every hotel and restaurant, cafe, everywhere, there’s nothing to eat but Spam sandwiches, and he’s “never seen a fat Cuban”. He doesn’t seem to get the connection.
It takes him by surprise when a beautiful woman comes up to him on the street, takes him by the hand, walks around town with him for a while, and then leads him to a hot-sheet hotel. Surprise! She’s a prostitute. Boy howdy. I get the impression that (a) he thinks he’s really hot stuff, big red Beemer bike and all, a natural target for every Cuban female between the ages of 12 (yes, 12) and about 80, and (b) gorgeous women cannot be hookers.
He makes a really big deal out of telling us exactly what shade of brown or black each beautiful woman’s skin is, and what her ethnic identity is. Especially the darker colors, which are very important to him.
And I have no idea why I’m still reading it. Hoping he’ll get a clue, I suppose.
If I may be more general – Beware bad biography. There are some biographies out there that don’t deserve to be called “non-fiction.” Some are absolute crap. There was a biography of Cary Grant that came out about ten years ago that was appallingly bad, not only in so-called “facts” but in the terrible writing.
‘The Maker of Modern Japan, the Life of Tokugawa Ieyasu’ by A.L. Sadler. This was some of the most horrible writing I have ever seen, full of run-on sentences and terrible grammar, I swear every page I read had at least one glaringly bad mistake. There were several places where I simply could not understand what the author was trying to say because he didn’t know how to construct a readable sentence.
I entirely agree. There have been many good biographies - I read one about Rommel not long ago, which was excellent, and have my eye on one entitled the Three Roosevelts (Teddy, FDR and Eleanor). But they seem to be evenly matched by horrible biographies - a whole batch (well, three) of Elvis biographies were recently published, and although I’d be interested to read a factual, unbiased account of his career (he did some goofy things), the reviews of these books (I think it was in this month’s Vanity Fair) suggested that I leave well alone.
Perhaps its just me, but when it comes to historical non-fiction, I don’t think a book can go too far into academia at the expense of entertainment. I read recently the book “Stalingrad”, on the battle of Stalingrad. I was tedious at times, but at least it was factual and accurate and I learned something from it, as well as being occaisionally engaged by the writing.