#5 "Saturday" by Ian McEwan

Hello, it's been 8 days since I started blogging and I have posted about 6 novels. My blog title did state "Bookinthroughbooks" and that's what I plan to do. "Booking" is a term I remember from the 80s which means moving fast. If I read 1 book a week, 52 weeks in a year, I should be done at the beginning of the year of 2032. I will be 55 years old. That means I have completed 0.00599401% of my objective thus far. I can't wait to complete a whole percentage, that will be a reason to celebrate. Right now I am a long way away. Hopefully I still have all my faculties in working order. Who knows, maybe one day we will be able to download all that information into our brains like in "The Matrix" and this feat will be null and void.

Looks like a military thriller

The point of this whole post besides rambling is to talk about "Saturday" by Ian McEwan which is a story of a day in the life of a neurosurgeon. If any of us were to write about one day in our life we wouldn't write about that day we laid around in our pajamas and watched old movies while we ate a pint of ice cream.  Perhaps if that ice cream were chocolate moose tracks, mmm...I still wouldn't want to read it. Well, Henry Perowne the neurosurgeon's day however was more exciting. Besides doing some surgery, playing, as I could tell, racquetball, running into some thugs, and seeing a protest of the Iraq war his day was like any other day.

Ian McEwan

I like the idea about writing about a day in a person's life but I don't think I would want to write about a neurosurgeon playing racquetball or doing surgery. Just not that thrilling. I can however see why they included this novel on the list of, "The 1001 Books to Read Before You Die". The concept of the novel and the details of the inner workings of the brain while Henry was working on his patients were interesting, however the rest of the story wasn't enough to make this a great book for me. Running into some thugs sounds exciting but it was toned down. "Hey, give us your money!", "No go away!", "Okay, have a good day!". Not exactly as it happened but that's how I felt while reading it. Where's the panache?



They will eat you alive!

I did enjoy reading his thoughts when he was doing surgery. I won't bore you with the details though, but since I have a daughter with a neurological disorder and have taken 2 anatomy and physiology courses (that I did well in) I am familiar with the neurological terms used in this novel. The neuro part of the story wasn't over my head but the part discussing poetry did lose me. I don't get poetry. It's beautiful like when I've read "The Song of Solomon" in the Bible. I would love to tell my wife her hair is as beautiful as a donkey's and stuff like that but I just like to tell her, "Your hair looks gorgeous today!"

What I've noticed about these types of novels is the focus on providing the reader with intellectual information with a story to entertain. One of the authors objectives I imagine is to kindle a fire to the point that the reader will desire to learn more about it's subject matter. In this attempt the novel failed. The flame was doused with gallons of water to never burn again. That sounded kind of harsh. Sorry Mr. McEwan!! 1 1/2 thumbs down, 1/2 up because I like your last name.