Review: A Book and a Movie

[sheepherder]

I just today received a book order straight from England, "The 'K' Section", by the same author as the book(s) above, which is a sequel to "The Officer From Special Branch" and has most of the same characters, and the same subject (reading from the dust cover)...

I haven't read it yet, but the dust cover promises that "This is a violent book"...That's good enough for me!!!

[sheepherder]

I finally finished "The K Section", and it is a very different book from "The Officer From Special Branch" even though it has many of the same characters...

In this book, our hero from "Officer From Special Branch" is now in a neighboring country about to move from British control to local government. This is complicated by the many local tribes who are close knit and don't mingle with each other. The problem facing the British authorities is to try to make sure that the colony adopts democratic principles rather than fall under Communist control. The Special Branch undertakes a campaign to place their own local people in high places in the trade unions, as these are the organizations that will control the coming elections.

This book was a lot more complicated, politically, than the first book. I admit that I still don't understand many of the machinations described, partly because some of the practices detailed in the book are foreign to me. (Some are not; for instance, trade unions telling their undecided (or uninterested) members who to vote for)...

Not too much violence in this book, mostly behind-the-scenes maneuvering to place men in positions of influence. Blackmail, assassination, terrorist acts. Whether such methods were actually used in Malaysia during & following "The Emergency" is left to the reader's determination.

A book worth reading, but like some others, I may have to read it a couple times to fully grasp the ideas and ideology being portrayed...

[pitsword]

The 7th Dawn is my favorite movie of all time. I know that I have watched it at least 10 times. William Holden was my favorite actor. I first saw the movie in 1965 IIRC. Soon after returning to Pearl Harbor from a joint Submarine mission with Brit Boats that were stationed in Kuala Lumpur. That movie, although set at an earlier date, had a great sense of reality for me in many, many ways.

[sheepherder]

Originally Posted by pitsword

The 7th Dawn is my favorite movie of all time...

It was based on the book "The Durian Tree" by Michael Keon, which I have never been able to find, in the past...Amazon now shows it as a used book from 1961...Hmmm, they have a Limited Edition DVD of the movie listed as well...

The tree seems to be a meeting place, although I don't recall it ever being directly referred to in the movie...

[pitsword]

The Durian tree was/is the same as our "great oak trees" in the park. Beautiful, full tree giving shade. The fruit was enough to make you puke, it had a really horrific smell.

[sheepherder]

Originally Posted by pitsword

The fruit was enough to make you puke...

Aw, now you got me thinking about food...Specifically, shrimp fried rice...When I was on Okinawa in '71, you could walk into Kin Son ville and get a dinner of 'shlimp flied lice'...

It was delicious...Nice big shrimps, lots of fried rice, in a flat wooden box [bamboo?] with a fried egg spread over the top of the rice...Chopsticks...Pepsi [in a Japanese bottle]...Man!!!

(I had to go out just now and get some Birdseye Steamfresh Chicken Flavored Rice and a can of Campbell's Chunky Beef w/Country Vegetables soup to pour over it)...

Campbell's doesn't make a Shrimp w/Country Vegetables...

[sheepherder]

Originally Posted by pitsword

The Durian tree was/is the same as our "great oak trees" in the park.

The book "The Durian Tree" that "The 7th Dawn" was based on came today...Paperback...Published in 1961...

It's in pretty good shape...hardly read...but it's...browned...and dry...

I'll read it eventually...but I think it will probably be the last read for this old paperback...