tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16404926981090692622024-02-21T07:23:03.384+11:00My Blog Loves a Bunch of AuthorsOne man's quest to expand his literary horizons, starting by reading every author mentioned in the Moxy Früvous song "My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors".Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10053598303114234920noreply@blogger.comBlogger47125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1640492698109069262.post-13401252703407952682013-01-16T08:30:00.000+11:002013-01-16T08:30:00.769+11:00Time to try again?So since the original Bunch of Authors reading project, I've gone quiet. Well...quiet on here, I mean. But perhaps 2013 is the year I try again?<br />
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The Choose Your Book Adventure was a good idea, but I feel like leaving the selection entirely up to other people was a bad idea. It felt a bit too random. Perhaps the problem was I just took the first suggestions, whereas it'd be better to select from offers. Maybe I shouldn't decide the whole year in advance? I could theme each month, perhaps?<br />
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Or I could find another list. Yet I have so many books here on shelves I've not yet read. I have two on the go at the moment - I'm almost finished The Hobbit (my first re-read of it in at least 20 years), and I'm also planning to finish George R. R. Martin's <i>A Clash of Kings</i> before the next season of <i>A Game of Thrones</i> appears.<br />
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I don't think I can manage to go back and write up the books I read in the interim (I kept a list of stuff I read but hadn't blogged, right up until it had about ten things on it), and there were some great ones in the last two years; some highlights include all three <i>Hunger Games</i> books (loved them right to the end), Jasper Fforde's <i>Shades of Grey</i>, and (finally!) a new <i>Pirates!</i> book from Gideon Defoe. I've tried to keep track of most of them over at Goodreads (which almost makes this blog redundant), but there's something I like about the theme and the freer experiential writing about the books I do here.<br />
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Let's say I count <i>The Hobbit </i>for January; then I can start writing about at least one book a month after that. As for what they will be... Maybe I will give you a few options, and you can vote to decide? That's more like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, anyway. Hmmm...perhaps I will choose two random books from my "not yet read" pile, and get you to pick which one I read next. That's getting a bit reality television...it'll need a new name. Watch this space! (For now posts for it are tagged "2013 project", but I'll come up with something better.)<br />
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In the meantime, so you know I've not been idle (even if I have neglected this blog), you might like to check out my new <i>Doctor Who</i> podcast, <i><a href="http://splendidchaps.com/">Splendid Chaps</a></i>. It's my main year-long project for 2013: a series of eleven live shows discussing <i>Doctor Who</i> with my friend John Richards (creator of ABC gay sci-fi fan club sitcom <i>Outland</i>) and special guests. Each show covers a specific Doctor, and also a broader theme. They'll be released on the 23rd of each month, January through November.<br />
<br />Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10053598303114234920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1640492698109069262.post-41935942490567797462011-03-01T00:04:00.000+11:002011-03-01T00:04:38.031+11:00"I'm evangelical about it for a reason!"<i>At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Minotaur has tried settling down i</i><i>n North Carolina. He's staying in a trailer park trading his expertise as a mechanic for rent, and working as </i><i>a line chef at a local restaurant, Grub's Rib. It's not a bad existence for an immortal being out of myth, but thousands of years of experience have taught "M" that nothing lasts forever - especially peace and quiet.</i><br />
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<i> </i><br />
<i> </i>Wow, I need to keep up. I haven't even finished the catch-up stuff and now I'm a couple of weeks late on writing up the first Choose Your Book Adventure book. (I'm having second thoughts about the name, and I'm not above changing it. Isn't that the beauty of a blog? That you can change whatever you want?)<br />
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Anyway...I finished <i>The Minotaur Takes A Cigarette Break</i> a couple of weeks ago. When I told Elaine (who suggested it) that I was enjoying it, she reiterated her evangelism, and I've already recommended it to a couple of people. I tried to avoid all mention of what was inside before cracking open the cover, and except for the basic premise - the legendary beast of Greek mythology is now living in modern-day America, working as a cook - I went in not knowing what to expect. What I found was a beautiful, melancholy story about the loneliness of being an outsider.<br />
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There's no denying that a sad story appeals to me, but one of the truly beautiful things about <i>Minotaur </i>is that it's not all sad; there's a core of hope in the Minotaur's existence. Though his existence is mundane - he lives alone in a trailer park, filling his days with work and chores to stave off loneliness and boredom (something I can certainly identify with) - he finds solace in it. Even though he knows things must go wrong eventually, and he will be forced to move on - is even surprised when it does not happen as quickly as he expects - he can't help but try to forge relationships, make connections. As is so often the case in these stories, the inhuman character is a conduit for something essentially human. Though he's a monster, the menace and horror once commanded by the Minotaur has been worn away by the millennia separating him from his years devouring virgins and slaying heroes in the labyrinth. He's now a stand-in for anyone who doesn't fit in.<br />
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More than that, he also represents those whose inner life does not match their outer existence. "M", as the Minotaur is known, has the same desires and needs as any human, but his peculiar form prevents him from making this known: he finds it hard to talk, his vision is bad, his horns sometimes get in the way. His is also a story of disability: he gets odd looks, children ask impertinent questions, bullies target him and he finds life in a world of "normal" people more difficult than the rest of us. But he does his best, and in his own way, triumphs a little. Most importantly, we're always empathising with him, even when what his actions don't seem quite right from a "normal" point of view.<br />
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This is magical realism at its best, I think; Sherrill doesn't try and build a realistic world and context for M. To the modern world, creatures of myth are just another kind of outsider, treated as a minority by a society who has no need for them any more. Stylistically, and I know I've said this about quite a few books reviewed on these pages, but the prose here has a poetic quality. It's not archaic, but it evokes a feeling of immortality, of age, through a rhythm all its own.<br />
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In short: I loved it. Maybe you will too.<br />
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I'm already a about a quarter of the way through <i>The Big Sleep</i>, which is next by dint of library availability; Coburg are still trying to find a copy of <i>The Ghost Map</i>, but I've managed to get <i>The Big Sleep</i>, <i>At Swim, Two Boys</i> and <i>A Dictionary of the Khazars</i>. My secondary objective for this round is to get every book from a library; so far I haven't had to stray further than the local Moreland Libraries, but I have cards for half a dozen or so Melbourne libraries, so that could end up an adventure in itself!<br />
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<b><i>The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break</i> by Steven Sherrill</b><br />
<b>Library:</b> Moreland (Coburg branch)<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>The Title:</b> appears in the text on page 198.<br />
<b>Fun Fact:</b> there's a movie in development, listed for release this year. I don't think this will translate well to the screen as is, so I expect it'll be more the concept that's in use.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10053598303114234920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1640492698109069262.post-57739114396479074562011-02-16T12:02:00.001+11:002011-02-16T12:02:53.499+11:00Comics! And the Choose Your Book Adventure beginsI've been to the library, and I'm now halfway through the first book of the new challenge: <i>The Minotaur Takes A Cigarette Break</i>. I won't say much yet, except that I'm loving it.<br />
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I also borrowed some comics from the library, for the first time in a year or more. None were terribly memorable, except Sam Kieth's <i>Batman: Secrets</i>, which was weird, and <i>Green Arrow: Year One</i>, which was pretty great. I've no idea what the original Green Arrow origin was like, but this version of the playboy-to-hero story - by Andy Diggle and Jock of <i>The Losers</i> fame - is very good. When written well, GA is one of my favourite DC characters, so it was great to see him broken and rebuilt at the start of his career. Based on this I might give <i>The Losers</i> a go, though it never seemed my cup of tea.<br />
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I now have a second pile, and have finished both the second hardcover collection of <i>Preacher</i>, and the first hardcover collection of Grant Morrison's <i>JLA</i> from the late 1990s. JLA is full of the usual big character team-up nonsense, but other than that it's okay. <i>Preacher</i>...well, I read it in one sitting. It's great stuff. Hopefully I can find the next one somewhere soon. I'm also looking forward to the second collection of <i>Mouse Guard</i>, which is next in the comics pile.<br />
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I'm also getting close to finishing the catch up series; three or four more books to go. I'll try and get those done before I finish <i>The Minotaur</i>, though I'm enjoying it so much I find it hard to put down for long. It's making me fall behind in my podcast listening on the daily commute!Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10053598303114234920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1640492698109069262.post-13239585732553949322011-02-11T14:31:00.000+11:002011-02-11T14:31:55.501+11:00Interlude: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul<i>Kate Schechter is running late for her flight from London to Oslo when her check-in desk at Heathrow erupts in a ball of flame. As Kate recovers from her injuries in hospital she briefly encounters the strange Nordic man who had held her up in the queue, miraculously unharmed despite being at the centre of the blast. Meanwhile Dirk Gently, holistic detective, sleeps in and misses an early appointment with his new client, a man convinced a green-eyed monster with a scythe is coming to collect on a contract - a man who has been decapitated in a locked room...</i><br />
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This was a quicker read than the first Dirk Gently book, possibly because there are fewer plot threads. There's one main storyline, though just like in the original, they don't all get resolved and combined until a handful of pages from the end.<br />
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Let's be clear: I like this book. It's fun. But it feels unfinished; there's a plot in here, yes, but there's not really a story with a beginning middle and end. Ideas are introduced and then forgotten about: early on Dirk discovers his deceased client has a young boy living in his attic, who breaks Dirk's nose, but we never find out any more about the boy. He discovers a vital clue - an envelope - at the same time, and then for no particular reason waits for most of the book to open it. Then, too, there aren't many clues as to the nature of some of the mysterious objects encountered; they're explained at the end, but there's no way to determine what they are by yourself beforehand. The main antagonists are almost throwaway characters, given exactly one scene of any substance and then dispatched (again in the last few pages) without ceremony.<br />
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Dirk at least shows up early this time out, and since he's actively investigating the events, has a much more active role than in the previous book. He's almost as unlikeable, but much more relatable; his tricks and misdirections much more commonplace.<br />
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Thankfully we have Kate Schechter. She's an interesting character, a good example of Adams' ability to write interesting women without resorting to cliché; she's likeable, has quirks we can get a handle on, and frankly investigates things in a much more satisfying manner than the actual detective in the book. She doesn't have any other women to talk to (all of Adams' books fail the <a bitly="BITLY_PROCESSED" href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheBechdelTest">Bechdel Test</a> for the same reason), but at least she doesn't fall in love with either of the male leads: she is wary of Dirk, and though is intrigued by Thor (the actual god, and the man at the check-in desk) she's never taken in by his charms.<br />
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But even Kate is abandoned once her part in driving the narrative is done, though that part seems a little arbitrary. It's never clear why Thor seeks her out, and he leaves her behind when he rushes off tofinally confront his father Odin - but then that doesn't really pan out either. I said the book doesn't have a beginning middle and end; what it has is a beginning, which is good, a middle, which is good, and then an anticlimax, which technically explains most of what's been going on, but leaves you unsatisfied.<br />
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The Dirk Gently books are a stab from Adams at writing a more traditional narrative, and remain laced with his great humour and clever ideas, but really they're probably the best evidence that as a novelist, he made a great writer of non-fiction. I love his work dearly, but I can't honestly say this is a great novel; it's very funny, and has great ideas, and I'll read it again some day and enjoy it, but the detecting is too slow, the resolution too sudden, and the bits left out too annoying for it to be on top of anyone's reading list.<br />
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But I still miss you, Douglas. I would love to know what you'd have written next. Well, aside from <i>Mostly Harmless</i> and (possibly) <i>The Salmon of Doubt</i>, I mean.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10053598303114234920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1640492698109069262.post-41879088105397513112011-02-10T00:56:00.000+11:002011-02-10T00:56:50.593+11:00Catch Up - Kraken<i>Billy Harrow </i><i>has a gift for </i><i>putting specimens in jars, his job </i><i>at the British Museum of Natural History, where the star attraction of the behind-the-scenes tour is a preserved Giant Squid. One day he brings in a tour group only to find it impossibly gone, tank and all. As weird as that seems, things only get weirder as Billy is drawn into a London underworld of cults and magicians he never knew existed. To some of them, the squid was a god - and its theft may herald the end of the world...</i><br />
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I'm new to China Miéville, so I thought I'd start with the one that appealed to me the most. Being a lover of all things Pelagic and Cephalopodan (I must have read an abridged version of <i>20,000 Leagues Under the Sea</i> about 100 times as a kid; happy birthday for earlier this week, Jules Verne!), after the first chapter I really thought this was a book written specifically for me.<br />
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As it went on I was less sure of that. <i>Kraken</i> has some great ideas, and I wanted to know more about all of them; the problem is that there are so many ideas none of them really get a great amount of page time. Billy, our protagonist, is one of those types all too often found in modern fantasy: an outsider to the world of the strange, who takes seemingly forever to succumb to his new world and admit there's more in heaven and sea than dreamt of in his lack of philosophy. He had me at "I work in a museum", though, so I forgive him a bit, though it is frustrating that to the reader it's clear that he's got something special from very early on, and it felt like I was waiting for him to catch up so we could get on with it. This feeling is made worse when in the second half we go through it again with Marge (short for Marginalia), a friend of Billy's. She's an interesting character, because like Billy she finds herself drawn into the world of occult London, but unlike him she doesn't find she actually belongs.<br />
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The rest of the cast suffer from being too numerous to get much limelight as well. There are so many good characters, but only a few get a real look-in. Dane, the security guard who turns out to be working for the Krakenites, is oddly sympathetic when you consider that he is essentially a fundamentalist soldier in a religious army, but as the driving force for our protagonists he's very effective. His friend Wati, who represents the familiars as a union leader, is a bit of a surprise; when getting his origin story I assumed it was far too hardcore to be a character we'd spend much time with. Then there are the occult cops; they're well drawn while still managing to exploit a few clichés (something they also do literally in the book), but we only really get to know Kath, the young talented magician with an attitude who's hard-as-nails. It seemed worryingly likely she'd end up as a love interest for Billy, but thankfully that particular cliché was one too many for Miéville.<br />
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Is it any good, though, I hear you ask? Well...yes. Story wise it has possibly too many strands, but they're all fun strands and worth having around for the laughs. Oh yes: it's funny too.<br />
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Many people said I should have read <i>The City and the City</i> as my first Miéville, since they think it his best work; to them I say nonsense. Why start with a book that means every other I read by the author is less good? I enjoyed Kraken, and I'll come back for more Miéville.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10053598303114234920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1640492698109069262.post-11048881362513101952011-01-30T13:44:00.002+11:002011-01-30T13:49:44.266+11:00Interlude: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency<i>Richard MacDuff, the software genius behind a program that turns corporate accounts into theme music, returns to old c</i><i>ollege at the behest of Reg, an eccentric old professor. He is startled to find a horse in the bathroom of Reg's rooms, then horrified that he forgot to pickup his girlfriend Susan, sister of his employer, and finally moved to climb up the wall to Susan's flat and sneak in to steal the answering machine tape on which he's left an embarrassing message. But all of that is just the beginning of a strange web of coincidences which will require the services of a certain holistic detective. </i><br />
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I was inspired to read this again by the upcoming BBC series, and also recently re-reading the first <i>Hitchhikers </i>novel for the first time in years. On a recent trip to visit my parents I retrieved my 1989 paperback edition from my grandmother's shed, along with a bunch of other stuff I intend to get around to re-reading, and all my various editions of <i>The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.</i> (At last count, I own five (soon to be six) of the first novel, three of the second and third, and two of the last two. Add an extra if you count the first volume of the terrible comic book adaptation; I don't.) I first read this book around the age of 10, and I was a bit young to take it all in properly, so it was a great pleasure to revisit.<br />
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Things I noticed this time around:<br />
<ul><li>The plot is much more coherent that I recall, though a few bits - notably the electric monk and the murder of Gordon Way - seem a little left in the cold compared to the main narrative. The main bits are still clearly cribbed from two of Adams' <i>Doctor Who</i> scripts - mostly <i>City of Death</i>, with a bit of <i>Shada</i> thrown in for flavour - but it's really just the skeleton that's been robbed.</li>
<li>Dirk himself isn't mentioned until Chapter Six, where we get Richard's version of his backstory; we don't encounter him at all until Chapter Fourteen, when he's a voice on a telephone; and we don't meet him in person until Chapter Sixteen. Once he arrives, however, he is the force that propels us to the conclusion, though frankly it's hard to get a handle on him and Richard is the real protagonist, inasmuch as the book has one. Dirk's fun, but it's hard to imagine him being the main character; I'll have to re-read <i>The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul</i> to remember how he fares there.</li>
<li>While there are some great funny lines in here, the book is remarkably serious; this is much less frivolous than <i>Hitchhikers</i>. Whole passages are amusing but grim, or amusing but poignant, and the greater grounding in reality gives the characters more weight. It's not just Arthur Dent rattling about reacting to an insane universe; there are only two truly eccentric characters, and everyone else is real and flawed.</li>
<li>The conclusion feels...rushed. Even knowing the basics of it, it seems half-finished, and I was amazed to find myself 20 pages from the end before a climax. And indeed, the conclusion seems to skip the climax entirely, going from crisis to having tea after the resolution in the space of a paragraph or two. Indeed, how the protagonists save the day is merely hinted at; the specifics are not revealed. It's a terrible way to end an otherwise excellent book.</li>
</ul>So great fun, but flawed. I can't imagine, based on the novel, how a television series about Dirk can possibly work, unless they invent new stories using just the idea of the character. Even then we're going to need someone who isn't Dirk around, because - while enjoyable - he's more-or-less an insufferable prat, despite his dubious talents. But I'll leave you with my favourite gag, from page 109:<br />
<blockquote>What kind of tie would you wear if you were a private detective? Presumably it would have to be exactly the sort of tie that people wouldn't expect private detectives to wear. Imagine having to sort out a problem like that when you'd just got up.</blockquote>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10053598303114234920noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1640492698109069262.post-65024891001910485122011-01-29T13:59:00.002+11:002013-01-16T02:29:20.453+11:00Catch Up - The Chronicles of Amber<i>Amnesiac Carl Corey awakes in a private hospital, and soon senses he is not like other men. He eventually recovers his identity as Corwin, lost Prince of Amber: a member of the royal family who have walked the magical Pattern and gained the power to walk among the infinite shadow universes that echo the one true reality of Amber. But as Corwin reunites with his brothers and sisters, both friend and foe, and makes his own claim for the throne left vacant by his father, it soon becomes clear much more is at stake: a traitor wishes to destroy Amber and everything it stands for...</i> <br />
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Long ago, in my university days, I was introduced to the world of Roger Zelazny's <i>Amber</i> - as I suspect many were - through the roleplaying game. <i>Amber Diceless Roleplaying</i> is something of a touchstone, an indie game before there were really any other sort; as the name suggests, it uses no dice, with the game master deciding all outcomes based on the narration of the players. Famously it also involved an auction, in which the players - portraying a new generation of the royal family of Amber - bid points to rank themselves in four attributes.<br />
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This all seemed to work pretty well, but reading the game book it was clear that it was all based incredibly closely on how the author - and indeed Zelazny - felt things worked in the fictional world of Amber. Now, more than a decade later, I've finally read the series that inspired the game.<br />
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I'm going to do all five of these in one go, since they form one big story, and they're all pretty short novels. They're written in an odd style; Amber and its denizens are very much cut from the cloth of medieval fantasy, with castles and doublets and swords, but Corwin - who tells the entire story in the first person - often uses modern vernacular (well, modern for the 1970s). This works just fine in the beginning, since for the first half of <i>Nine Princes in Amber</i> Corwin has no memory of his true identity and has just spent centuries on the shadow that is our Earth, but once he regains his memories and identity it puts him at odds with the rest of the world he inhabits. It'd also be fine if it was a character decision, but it's just a stylistic one; he acts as you would expect a Machiavellian prince to act, but then describes those actions in the same way someone would in <i>Starsky and Hutch</i>. It's a little off-putting; hearing characters like Random, Oberon and Merlin spoken about in what one imagines to be a New York accent seems kind of weird.<br />
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As a protagonist, Corwin is more-or-less an anti-hero; he starts off ambitious and scheming, seeking the throne for its own right, but even then his time on Earth seems to have softened him a little. Like most of his brothers and sisters, he's also presented as much larger than life; he is superhumanly strong (but at a pulp fiction level rather than superheroic: he can lift a car, not throw a battleship) and a masterful fighter and tactician (he can best any mortal in combat), though his main attribute is just being tough: he survives and recovers from incredible hardships. He and his siblings are also constantly comparing themselves to each other, which makes the ranking system and attribute auction from the roleplaying game seem like a logical conclusion rather than a bit of genius game design.<br />
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Of the five books, the first three are the strongest; though many of the truths and secrets behind the story are not revealed until the last two, they lack the pace and interest of the beginning. Zelazny never spells things out to his readers; this is fantasy, a magical universe whose rules are known but not necessarily understood. You pay attention, picking up how things work initially through Corwin's re-learning of his world, and then through his education in how it came to be, something previously kept hidden. With so many brothers and sisters, all larger than life and with important (if sometimes small) roles to play, it was tempting at times to refer to the RPG for guidance, but using Corwin's voice was a smart move on Zelazny's part, since he always reminds us who's who through his opinions.<br />
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It's a clever, fun, and not too deep but deep enough story; I enjoyed it but wasn't swept away in it, though it's easy to see how people became obsessive enough to turn it into a very true-to-the-source roleplaying game. It does show its age a bit - mostly in the language, but also no-one ever uses a computer or a mobile phone, which seems odd given the Amberites can find anything they can imagine in shadow - but that's easily forgivable. Most fans agree the follow-up series, involving Corwin's son Merlin, is much inferior, but I'd be willing to give it a shot some time.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10053598303114234920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1640492698109069262.post-88512478365324130892011-01-27T21:36:00.003+11:002011-01-28T17:00:32.997+11:00The new list is shaping up!Well, I finally asked people to suggest books via Twitter, and the suggestions are rolling in. As promised, I'll put the first 12, one from each person, that I haven't read on the list for 2011. (I had revised it down to 10, given I'm starting later and also joining a book club, but I'm enjoying the suggestions too much.)<br /><br />So far, the list is:<br /><ol><li><i>The Minotaur Takes A Cigarette Break</i> by Steven Sherrill, suggested by Elaine via the blog. "I'm fairly evangelical about this book."</li><li><i>The Ghost Map</i> by Steven Johnson, suggested by Loki via the blog.</li><li><i>The Big Sleep</i> by Raymond Chandler, suggested by Matt ("galactichand") via the blog. "It's good stuff."</li><li><i>At Swim, Two Boys</i> by Jamie O'Neill, suggested by Richard via the blog. "The book I recommend to everyone ... It's poetic, convoluted, heartfelt and beautiful."</li><li><i>The Dictionary of the Khazars</i> by Milorad Pavic, suggested by Patrick via the blog. "I, of course, recommend [it]. You can borrow my copy; it's hard to find otherwise." </li><li> <i>Palimpsest</i> by Cat Valente, or "if you don't mind YA cooties", <i>Liar</i> by Justine Larbalestier, suggested by Danika via the blog. (As per my original rules, it's only one book per person, so I'll find out a bit about these and make a decision.)</li><li><i>Mistborn: The Final Empire </i>by Brandon Sanderson, suggested by Jessica on Twitter. "As long as none of the books are Twilight that's fine." (I shouldn't mention that I'm doing a marathon of the films this weekend then...?)</li><li><i>The Voice of Seven Sparrows</i> by Harry Stephen Keeler, suggested by Rob on Twitter. "Awesome book. You'll love it."</li></ol>A couple of great suggestions were also made which won't go in, because they're for great books I've already read. Dan suggested <i>The Count of Monte Cristo</i> by Alexandre Dumas, which is an all time favourite of mine; likewise Sarah suggested <i>Breakfast of Champions</i> by Kurt Vonnegut, not my favourite Vonnegut (that's probably <i>The Sirens of Titan </i>or <i>Slaughterhouse 5</i>) but a great, weird read nonetheless.<br /><br />So there are still a few slots left. I should say though that this might not be the final list; if I find out one of these is a twelve hundred page tome, I reserve the right to put it off until the year is over!Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10053598303114234920noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1640492698109069262.post-65719028219004864332011-01-27T17:30:00.002+11:002011-01-30T14:01:13.017+11:00Catch Up - Titus Groan<i>In the ancient halls of Castle Gormenghast, ritual and tradition rule with an iron fist - even over the Earl of Groan, Lord Sepulchrave. As his son, Titus, is born, and the rivalry between Groan's manservant Flay and head cook Swelter comes to boiling point, the forces of order which have held sway for centuries </i><i>seem strained to their limit. Into this atmosphere steps</i><i> </i><i>Steerpike, a young man with ideas far above his lowly station as a kitchenhand.</i><br /><br />Having <i> </i>only a passing familiarity with Gormenghast, I came to <i>Titus Groan</i> not even aware that Peake wrote it in the 1940s. It seeks to evoke and indeed seems to have been written in a much earlier age; the prose is beautifully constructed, as much architecture as literature.<br /><br />The world it describes is fantastic: an enormous castle sparesly populated by a handful of nobles and perhaps a few score servants, all descended from lines which stretch back hundreds of generations. In every direction lies inhospitable terrain; the castle and its kingdom are isolated. Its history, once rich, is now tired and predictable; this is summed up early on by the ritual of the bright carvings. These glorious wooden miniatures, created by the otherwise listless peasant folk who dwell in the castle's shadow, are presented to The Earl once a year; he selects a favourite and the rest are burnt. The winner, however, is only slightly better off; it is placed in the "Hall of Bright Carvings" and the only eyes ever to lay upon it are thos of Rottcodd, a servant as forgotten and isolated as the hundreds of carvings he dusts each day.<br /><br />The cast is small, and exquisitely drawn; each has a life and personality that leaps off the page. Few are truly sympathetic, though the Earl himself, who suffers severe depression and later delusions, and his daughter Fuschia, at least by the novel's end, come closest. Keda, one of the bright carvers who becomes Titus' wetnurse, has a brief and tragic existence, mad bittersweet with a dash of romance and mystery. Probably my favourite character, though, was Flay. I recognise that this is in part because the BBC television adaptation (which I've not seen; it incorporates <i>Titus Groan </i>and the second novel, <i>Gormenghast</i>) features Christopher Lee as Flay, but his stoic attitude, obedience and eagerness to please somehow endeared themselves to me. As for the title character, he is born in the first pages, and the book closes with his crowning as the new Earl, still a baby. Despite these two events he is hardly involved in the affairs of the book at all, and all the other major characters have parts to play in the narrative; there's no real protagonist, though it is true that Steerpike drives much of the action through his machinations. He's a brilliantly dislikable character; clever in his limited fashion, selfish and mean.<br /><br />There's an element of the fantastic about Gormenghast; the world makes little distinction between ritual and superstition, and there's no clear line between metaphor and extraordinary truth. The bright carvers, for example, are said to lose all their youthful appearance and vitality immediately upon coming of a certain age; this may be poetic, but it is written as fact, and nothing about the world of Gormenghast makes such a biological impossibility hard to believe. Whether it sits on our Earth or some other world makes little difference to Gormenghast: it is a pocket of existence with its own endless rules and regulations, and any other world is of no consequence to it.<br /><br />I don't think there's another book quite like <i>Titus Groan</i> - well, except perhaps its two sequels. But I did try starting <i>Gormenghast</i>, and almost immediately something struck me about it as not quite the same. I'll come back to it at a later date, though interestingly I've received reports from fans that the series never reaches the heights of the first book again, and that it builds to a very satisfying climax at the end of <i>Titus Alone</i>. I'll be finding out for myself.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10053598303114234920noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1640492698109069262.post-20477413159477563052011-01-12T22:55:00.005+11:002011-01-27T17:50:56.171+11:00Catching up - and the next thing?I'm writing this from the Gold Coast, in my parents' house, where I'm currently on holiday. I'm fortunate to be in one of the few places in south-east Queensland that isn't under water at present; if you haven't heard, there's massive flooding going on in the Sunshine State, and also the part of New South Wales where I grew up: the far north coast. You can find out more, including how you can help, at the <a href="http://qldfloods.org/">QLD Floods web site</a>.<br /><br />All this has given me some time to sit back and think about things for which I've been too busy of late. For example, here I have a list of eight (soon to be nine) books, ones I've read and not written about. It's been a time of change in the life of your humble author, but that's no excuse - a blog is for life, not just for Christmas, after all! I will soon update the site with many of these books, and more as I have more time for reading now.<br /><br />But the question now remains, what will I attempt as a book project in 2011? I'm going to throw it open to you, in something I'm going to call my "Choose Your Book Adventure". (I might change that later, we'll see.)<br /><br />Name me a book you think is great, of any genre, from any era, fiction or non-fiction. (The only real restriction is it must be in English, since I am monolingual.) I'll ask others to do the same in other places where I'm online. The first 12 books that I haven't read will form my list for 2010, but to keep things sane I will only take one book from each person (you can still suggest more than one), and only one from each author. I also reserve the right to ignore ones I was intending to read anyway, since I will still read books I choose myself this year as well.<br /><br />I'm going to have an arbitrary cut-off date of, let's see, January 26. That gives you two weeks, and me the best part of a week in January to get started.<br /><br />UPDATE: I neglected to <span style="font-style: italic;">tell </span>anyone I was asking this, so I'm extending the deadline until...well, until I feel like it. But since I won't have twelve months - and since I'm joining a book club group with some friends as well this year - I'm going to limit it to 10 books. And the first one's already taken!Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10053598303114234920noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1640492698109069262.post-15442468919535293922010-05-27T14:12:00.003+10:002010-05-27T14:28:20.305+10:00The library's the thingAs usual these days, it's been a while between drinks here at the Bunch. But I've not been idle; a Comedy Festival has come and gone, and I've been reading and writing scripts and jokes and all manner of things. Just not that many books.<br /><br />I am currently reading the first of Mervyn Peake's <span style="font-style: italic;">Gormenghast</span> novels, <span style="font-style: italic;">Titus Groan</span>, and thoroughly enjoying it, though it's been a largely interrupted read. It'll appear here before long, though.<br /><br />You'll notice, if you're visiting the site, that I've done a bit of winter cleaning: I've updated the layout (though I reserve the right to keep tinkering with that!), and I've also switched from Shelfari to LibraryThing for my little widget showing pictures of the books I've read.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.librarything.com/">LibraryThing</a> is a favourite web site of mine, even though I've neglected it of late; buying a lifetime membership should have cured me of that, so expect to see all the future Bunch of Authors books appearing in the widget at right. I prefer it to Shelfari for a number of reasons, chiefly for the LibraryThing's more community-oriented tone; I don't get foolish emails from strangers asking if they should read books in my collection (as if I can advise someone I don't know of that!), and even better, it has all the right covers for the Australian or English editions of books, which are generally the ones I own.<br /><br />I think the links take you to Amazon, but don't feel you need to buy them from there: I don't have any kind of affiliate link, so there's no kickback in it for me.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10053598303114234920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1640492698109069262.post-4881885833930663942010-04-01T13:28:00.001+11:002011-01-30T14:00:32.274+11:00Culture Jam<i>For years the fanatical Idirans have fought a war against the all-inclusive Culture, a liberal, progressive, moneyless society composed mainly of humanity - in all its myriad forms - and sentient machines. An especially gifted Mind, one of the super-intelligent machines which pilot the Culture's ships, has narrowly escaped destruction by hiding on Schar's World, a memorial to a destroyed civilisation held sacred by the almost god-like Dra'azon. Both sides want the Mind, and it falls to Bora Horza Gobachul, a Changer agent freshly rescued from an undercover mission, to try and reach it for the Idirans.</i><br />
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One of my closest friends bought me <i>Consider Phlebas</i> as a belated birthday gift last year, as I had been lamenting the fact that I haven't read any "proper" science fiction in ages. I'm not entirely sure what I mean by "proper", but whatever it is, Banks' novel fits the bill. It's a sweeping space opera, complete with daring spaceship battles, big dumb objects, a galactic war and plenty of social commentary, though its largely bereft of weird aliens. The Idirans - tripedal, near-immortal giants - are the only non-humans to feature much, and though we meet two or three individuals, they do come across as a fairly standard example of the "fanatic warrior race" archetype.<br />
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This isn't hard sci-fi, either; this is firmly in the grand sweeping epic camp. Plenty of the stuff that happens is pure fantasy, but since it doesn't pretend to be anything else, I've no quibbles with that. Indeed the book was extraordinary fun: I found myself turning thirty to forty pages at a sitting, reading well into the night, needing to know how Horza was going to get himself out of his current ridiculous predicament. He's a curious character - very much a hard bastard anti-hero with a (sort of) heart of gold - but since he's almost always up against more evil bastards, we never want to see him fail. Interestingly for the novel that introduces the Culture - and there are several more following this one - our main protagonist hates them, so much so that he works for the Idirans seemingly out of spite. There are asides in which a high-up Culture advisor relaxing on holiday is trying to plan the best way of capturing Horza, but these are very far removed from the action, so it's fascinating to see a society described largely by people outside it.<br />
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If I have any quibble with the novel, it's only that the ending seems to come quite abruptly. There's an epilogue detailing the outcome of the Idiran-Culture war, and of a few of the surviving characters, but it managed to leave me fairly unsatisfied. There are also some odd conventions; the humans in the book speak with English vernacular (though they aren't speaking actual English) and despite their wild genetic diversity - one has short fur, while Horza, as a Changer, is able to alter his build and features and grow biological weapons - are generally like us both physically and emotionally, yet at the end of the book we discover the War took place in Earth's medieval period, and that these "humans" have nothing to do with Earth. All of which left me feeling a bit...confused? Not cheated, that's too harsh, but certainly feeling a bit...odd.<br />
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Anyway, I finished this a couple of weeks ago, and I'm now a hundred or more pages into <i>Titus Groan</i>, the first volume in Mervyn Peake's <i>Gormenghast</i> trilogy. It's my first foray in Peake, having taped but never watched the BBC miniseries; and at first blow I'm loving it. There's something oddly right about a novel which begins with the titular character's birth, but who - nearly halfway through - is still only a baby. I look forward to seeing where it all goes, but in the meantime I'm loving the prose and the world which Peake has built. (That may be the role-player in me...)Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10053598303114234920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1640492698109069262.post-56761957201577542352010-02-12T22:13:00.005+11:002011-01-30T14:01:13.019+11:00There's life on Mars, Jim, but not as we know it<span style="font-style: italic;">Aliens: once just a modern stand-in for the leprechauns and goblins of the past, our culture is now awash with them. Despite their use in popular fiction and the ramblings of conspiracy theorists, it's respectable - indeed inevitable - for modern science to accept the likelihood of their existence. But SETI is doomed to failure and the UFOlogists are clearly wrong, because if there truly is life out there, it's not going to look like anything on Earth - and we might not even be able to recognise it at life...</span><br /><br />Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen are quite the double act. They refer to themselves in their co-authored books (and both have been published independently) as Jack&Ian, and their writing has a distinct style of its own. I was introduced to them via their association with Terry Pratchett, with whom they have written three volumes of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Science of Discworld</span>, but ever since I saw the title <span style="font-style: italic;">What Does A Martian Look Like?</span> in their list of previous works, I wanted to find and read it. It took a while; I'm not sure it's still in print. I eventually found it in that prince among warehouse bookstores, The Book Grocer. In the meantime though, I'd read Stewart's <span style="font-style: italic;">Flatterland</span>, a sequel to <span style="font-style: italic;">Flatland</span> which, among other things, contains one of my favourite explanations of string theory, and convinced me to pick up the large format <span style="font-style: italic;">Annotated Flatland</span> for which he wrote the notes.<br /><br />So there was quite a build up to reading <span style="font-style: italic;">What Does A Martian Look Like</span>, and I have to say, it was a bit of a disappointment.<br /><br />It's not a bad book, but I admit I'm baffled as to its intended audience. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Science of Discworld</span> books are among the best popular science books I've read: they're accessible, written with great humour, they cover broad topics, where possible they relate them to everyday life of the reader, and they're as much about the idea and practice of science itself as they are about scientific subjects. This book has shades of all that, but more than anything else it reminds me of Darwin's <span style="font-style: italic;">Origin of Species</span> - it goes to great length to explain and justify a position, so great in fact that it says the same thing many times over in different ways. This is all the stranger when their main point is very simple: aliens will not be like any life on Earth, and certainly not like any of the aliens we've imagined in fiction.<br /><br />Early on they have some reason for a mounted attack on established knowledge; they justify throwing out most alien-based science fiction, and also explain how their concept of xenoscience is different from astrobiology of the sort practised by NASA. But the rest of the book seems to think it is struggling against a cemented notion in the head of the reader that aliens will look like humans with bumpy foreheads or giant anthropomorphic cats, or lizards, or beetles etc. But honestly, no-one willing to read a dense (the type is very small!) 350 page book about the scientific realities of alien life is going to believe that. The science in the book isn't all that basic, either; lots of concepts are introduced and explained (all with the authors' usual flair for analogy, it's true) in short order.<br /><br />For me, who already felt this way - I get a bit annoyed when yet another sci-fi story talks about "alien DNA" or worse, splices it into our own (aliens will not have DNA, though they will probably have something that fulfils a similar function) - the whole exercise became a little tedious. I found myself thinking "Yes, I know they won't be like us, give me some more ideas of what they <span style="font-style: italic;">might</span> be like!" Even the little bits of fiction that introduce each chapter are vague and fast, leaving little idea of what the tourist aliens cataloguing Earth-life are supposed to be like.<br /><br />This is sounding very negative, which is disappointing because I've enjoyed Jack&Ian's other work so much. There are some interesting discussions of what forms life might take, though they justify their decision to give precious few examples by repeatedly stating that aliens will not look like anything they - or any human - can imagine. They do a good job of explaining where popular myths of aliens come from (the clue in that sentence is the word "myth"), and likewise their discussions of the problems with various ideas of aliens in fiction and the various bits of about the staggering variety of weird life on Earth are fascinating. But it was a bad sign, I think, when I was looking forward eagerly to their summaries of major works of science fiction more than their next point, included so they could be discussed with those who've not read them. (That said, this often led to a different kind of disappointment when a particularly interesting book, tantalisingly summarised, was included only so an off-hand reference could be made in a single paragraph.)<br /><br />It was a long slog getting through <span style="font-style: italic;">What Does a Martian Look Like?</span>, but it wasn't all bad. I am well-equipped to argue with people who believe in UFOs, or who think the <span style="font-style: italic;">X-Files</span> was the most realistic portrayal of aliens on television. But here's a word to the wise: don't title a factual book with a question you have no intention of answering. I was really expecting some interesting case studies on what kind of life might exist in different bizarre environments, and that forms such a small part of the book that it would have been more honest to title it "Why Won't Aliens Be Like in the Movies?"Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10053598303114234920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1640492698109069262.post-63436592733547451402010-02-12T20:28:00.007+11:002011-01-28T11:44:50.044+11:00"Spilled some dressing on Doris Lessing, these writer types are a scream!"<span style="font-style: italic;">In the time of Nero, a Roman historian has been given the task of unravelling a collection of documents purporting to tell the true origin of humankind. According to this history, humanity began with a colony of water-bound women in the shadow of a great cave by the sea, known only as The Cleft - a name by which they also knew themselves, in reference to their common anatomy. But after unknown generations of women spontaneously giving birth to women, the Clefts begin to give birth to more and more "Monsters", human like creatures with a common deformity: the first males.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The Cleft</span> is the last book on the list, and once again, it's not really like any of the other books I've read. For starters, Lessing is telling not just a story of her own devising, but an alternate origin story for the human race; what's more, she's writing in the specific voice of not just any historian, but one from a specific era (Nero's reign lasted 14 years, and if I were more of a Roman scholar I'm sure I could have a stab at the specific year from comments made by the historian in the book).<br /><br />This narrative decision is interesting for a number of reasons: for starters, it means the story of how all humans began in a society composed only of women is told by a man, and quite a sympathetic one. As in Atwood's <span style="font-style: italic;">The Blind Assassin</span>, the framing narrative has a story of its own, though here our experience of the historian's life is slight. Perhaps more importantly, choosing a Roman historian allows a perspective that is both scholarly and yet credulous, something a more modern choice of narrator would not allow.<br /><br />That's not to say that our historian isn't critical; he often discusses the material he has to work with, wondering how accurate it can be given its oral distribution, and how much his understanding is dependent on concepts that did not exist for the Clefts. He editorialises about the first rape - also the first (adult) murder - not excusing it, but trying to understand how the first males would have understood it. Later, when the first consensual sex occurs, he is prompted to one of the longest asides in the book, explaining the personal experience that led him to interpret the event through the first realisation of gender in children. He frequently explains when he is attributing what he feels are reasonable emotions where none are recorded.<br /><br />The origin story itself is fascinating, though like the most interesting such stories there are a lot of questions left unanswered. The history begins, naturally enough, with the Clefts and their society; the question of where they came from is left alone. The story is given a great deal of weight by the historian's conflicting sources, though in the main the stories agree. As a result its not a pretty tale, nor one with clear heroes or villains. The Clefts are, at first, terribly cruel to the newborn males, whom they term Monsters. They leave them on the "Killing Rock" on the top of the Cleft, where they are supposed eaten by eagles, and disfigured many of them, pulling or cutting off their penises. Though this is terrible, the men are not victims for long, committing rape and murder of the first Cleft to find their secret society away from the shore. And so the story goes, each side making mistakes and committing terrible acts, while all the while the younger members of each group come to understand that they somehow need each other.<br /><br />It's a fascinating tale, and even though by the end the men seem to be largely in the wrong, its an iconic kind of wrong; they long for adventure and newness, and the unspoken effect of this drive - aside from the heartache it causes the women they leave behind - is that they drove society away from its simple beginnings towards the success of the Roman era. The men of the story exhibit traits that have come to define "male": they behave like adolescents, thinking more of desires and goals, understanding little of consequences. The story is largely bereft of supernatural elements, the only really classic mythological tropes being the portrayal of animals: the young Monsters are rescued by giant eagles, who carry them away from the Killing Rock to a safe place, and they manage to suckle the newborn Monsters on friendly does. (The historian himself draws a comparison with the myth of the founding of Rome, with the wolf who suckles Romulus and Remus.)<br /><br />In the end, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Cleft</span> feels like a "real" creation story, and like such stories it provokes as many questions as it answers. It's ending leaves no clue as to how the early humans, finally beginning to properly integrate men and women into one society, progress to what we would know as civilisation. There's also never much of a clue as to where these human beginnings occur, though the historian speculates it must have been on an island.<br /><br />It feels somehow just right that the Bunch of Authors journey should end with an origin story, since by now this blog has a new beginning too. I'm going to keep blogging about the books I read (there are two more coming up very soon), and I hope you'll stay with me.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapters:</span> None<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Page count:</span> 260<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Book's title mentioned on page:</span> 9<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Best name encountered:</span> Maire and Astre are two of the few named characters; special mention to Horsa, since it's almost the same name as the protagonist of another book I'm reading, <span style="font-style: italic;">Consider Phlebas</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">New words:</span> None (the language is purposefully simple)<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Inner Five-year-old score:</span> 2 (I loved mythology as a kid, but I think I would have preferred the kind with gullible giants and wicked dragons)<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fun Wikipedia fact:</span> Despite being almost universally pigeon-holed as a feminist author, Lessing is greatly disillusioned with mainstream feminist movement, concluding that they "want people to make oversimplified statements about men and women". (Perhaps she should talk with <a href="http://bunchofauthors.blogspot.com/2009/05/leave-on-light-for-bell-hooks.html">bell hooks</a>?)Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10053598303114234920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1640492698109069262.post-23383075755516702822010-01-30T17:35:00.006+11:002010-01-30T20:24:52.758+11:00"Ondaatje started a food fight, salmon mousse all over the scene"<span style="font-style: italic;">In a field hospital in an Italian villa, Canadian nurse Hana has remained behind during the German retreat to care for a patient burned beyond all recognition in the care of Bedouins, his identity unknown save for his English accent. The pair are joined by Caravaggio, a thief and old family friend, who soon becomes enthralled by the patient's secrets. Soon after sappers arrive clean to the town of mines, and Kip, an Indian expert in bomb disposal, moves into the villa as well. This unlikely family attempts to heal the wounds left by the war, moving on past tragedy to find love and peace.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://bunchofauthors.blogspot.com/2009/11/doin-some-readin.html">As I said early into the book</a>, <span style="font-style: italic;">The English Patient</span> is very poetic; Ondaatje, another Canadian and a poet as well as a novelist, arranges phrases in a sentence like lines in a stanza, building a picture through small details rather than direct description, and the result is prose which is entrancing in places. The plot too builds with pieces falling into place; the situation is poetic too in its way, and like a poem the pieces never seem to jar as they come together, even though they are disparate.<br /><br />Each character is a story of their own, all people broken by the war and revealing their histories in different ways. The other three characters orbit around the Patient, who has a weight of tragedy and mystery greater than the others; the only clues to his identity are his accent, his fragmentary memory and his dogeared copy of Herodotus' <span style="font-style: italic;">Histories</span>, filled with scribbled diary entries chronicling his past. Hana, whose recent past is not mysterious, cares for him seemingly from a desire for continuity and perhaps a stubborn refusal to allow one more preventable death, while Caravaggio - having had his skills pressed into service in the war, and suffering horribly for it - comes looking for both Hana and her patient, having some suspicions about his true identity.<br /><br />The most interesting character, though, is Kip. His story, which takes almost as long to recount as the patient's, is probably my favourite part of the book. The passages in which he is defusing a bomb, feeling its heart, matching wits against an opponent who is distant in both geography and time, are the best and most vital descriptions of the art of engineering ever written. His training too also evokes the same love and understanding of engineering; it can be an artform like any other, terrible or beautiful, simple or complex. Kip feels like the true "hero" of the novel, and the ending - which I won't give away - wouldn't be nearly as effective without him.<br /><br />Like any good novel it's about journeys, but here only one character is actively in search of something, and even for Caravaggio the Patient's identity seems almost an afterthought. For a novel with such a small cast I was incredibly engaged, though I do wish I had understood Hana more. It's not inappropriate to the story, but despite being ostensibly central to the plot she really only serves as a catalyst for much of the story, listening to the Patient, padding silently through the deserted villa. She does go on a journey, but it's probably the least satisfying since it's the common "woman finds love" that seems somewhat dated now.<br /><br />Though I've not seen the film - just as I've not seen <span style="font-style: italic;">Field of Dreams </span>and hadn't seen <span style="font-style: italic;">The Godfather</span> before reading it - I did know that Caravaggio was played by Willem Defoe, and I admit that seems like natural casting. I believe the film concentrates on the patient's storyline more than Kip's, and I'm not sure I'd like it as much for that reason - towards the end of the book, it was Kip's story that I loved the most.<br /><br />So that's the penultimate book; I'll try and get to <span style="font-style: italic;">The Cleft</span> tomorrow.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapters:</span> 10<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Page count:</span> 324<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Book's title mentioned on page:</span> I'm not sure it is; in the novel they generally refer to him as "the patient", since he's the only one left in the villa<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Best name encountered:</span> Carravaggio is pretty great, but I've a soft spot for Madox, one of the men in the patient's memories<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">New words: </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loggia">loggia</a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Inner Five-year-old score:</span> 2 (it's a complex adult novel)<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fun Wikipedia fact: </span>One of Ondaatje's thirteen books of poetry is titled <i>There's a Trick With a Knife I'm Learning to Do.</i>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10053598303114234920noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1640492698109069262.post-91291020271835971472010-01-23T21:40:00.007+11:002010-01-23T23:13:11.471+11:00"Who needs a shave? He's Robertson Davies!"<span style="font-style: italic;">Hector Mackilwraith, logical and driven in his career as a teacher of mathematics, has served the Salterton Little Theatre well as treasurer for six years. On the eve of promotion to the Department of Education, however, his usual rational behaviour goes askew as he decides the theatre owes him a part in its latest play, a pastoral production of </span>The<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>Tempest<span style="font-style: italic;">. The usual politics of community theatre are amplified and complicated by the first stirrings of love within Hector, though the rest of the cast and crew have more than enough problems, even without Hector's foolishness.<br /><br /></span>The blurb for <span style="font-style: italic;">Tempest-Tost</span> is all about Mr Mackilwraith, but truth be told he's not much of a central character. I don't mean there's anything lacking in him; indeed, he's a fascinating man, led by his family history to a life devoid of passion or feeling but steeped in ambition and drive. But it's misleading to say that <span style="font-style: italic;">Tempest-Tost</span> is about him any more than it is about many of the very colourful characters who are drawn into the Salterton Little Theatre.<br /><br />Now, I'm an actor and comedian, and though I generally get paid the world of community theatre is no mystery to me. Davies captures the extreme end of that world perfectly: the politics, the characters, the process are all a little larger than life, it's true, but not so far that they're not instantly recognisable. It's telling that I enjoyed it so much, too, because I'm not generally a fan of fiction about my own industry, but here the production of The Tempest - of whose performance we see very little, and whose rehearsals almost less - is really just a backdrop. The focus is on the people, but the theatre is vital in providing a very specific kind of social and political framework, and also in supplying such a cast of disparate characters.<br /><br />Aside from Hector, the protagonists are uniformly wonderful, and better, they all come with families of yet more wonderful characters, drawn with care and wit and depth. The entire committee of the Salterton Little Theatre is populated with older, set-in-their-ways stage-struck types, some of whom still command a spot in the cast, and others who dream of glory through other means, but all instantly recognisable to anyone who has spent any time in a small community organisation. The cast and crew are no less interesting. There's Hector's love interest - not that she's aware of it for most of the novel - Griselda Webster, a local rich girl who scores a major part in the play since her father's estate will be the performance venue, and whose younger sister Freddy secretly brews champagne from apples in the groundskeeper's shed. The director is Valentine Rich, a professional director and prodigal daughter of Salterton, back in town to take care of her deceased grandfather's estate. Both of these women are pursued with equal lack of success by Solly Bridgetower, a sarcastic, cynical young man enslaved to his domineering mother despite attending school in Cambridge...and on and on. If this were made into a film or play it would require quite the ensemble cast.<br /><br />(For the record, my personal favourite is definitely Humphrey Cobbler, the local organist recruited to perform the music for the play. He doesn't play a big part, but he spouts wisdom and joy in equal measure in a voice that sounded in my head like a cross between Brian Blessed and Ian McKellan. Imagine that with dialogue such as "I am full of holy joy and free booze", "It is very wrong to resist an impulse to sing; to hold back a natural evacuation of joy is as injurious as to hold back any other natural issue," or "Now there is nothing I enjoy more than talking about music in terms of painting." It doesn't hurt that his whole family are musical and joyous, and thus remind me of my beloved and her clan.)<br /><br />It would be remiss of me to talk about the characters of the book without mentioning Salterton itself. <span style="font-style: italic;">Tempest-Tost</span> is the first of the "Salterton Trilogy", all set in the town, and it is an invention of Davies; you'd be forgiven for thinking it real, however, since it's drawn with such detail and love. My experience of Canada is sadly limited to the very touristy Niagara Falls, Ontario, but Salterton paints such a vivid picture of life in Canada that I feel as though I have been there.<br /><br />There are few books I have enjoyed so much as <span style="font-style: italic;">Tempest-Tost</span>; the characters, the wit, the pace are all so finely wrought as to make this a near perfect comic novel. Every scene, from the casting of the play to the "donation" of Valentine's grandfather's books to local clergy to any of the very normal yet politically and socially charged lunches dinners and parties are all equally well drawn. This is all the more extraordinary when you realise that <span style="font-style: italic;">Tempest-Tost</span> was Davies' first novel! If I have any misgivings, it is only that the otherwise timelessness of the story and characters are ruined by the few reminders that the book was written in 1951; the phrase "working like a black" appears in the prose, though I suspect - or hope - it was just a common expression at the time, and his depiction of women, while mostly surprisingly progressive, still sometimes typical of the 1950s.<br /><br />I'll be reading more Robertson Davies. You can count on it.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapters:</span> 7<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Page count:</span> 284<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Book's title mentioned on page:</span> 2 (it's a quotation from <span style="font-style: italic;">Macbeth</span>, not part of the novel itself)<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Best name encountered:</span> They're all good, though special mentions go to Professor Vambrace - it just has a great ring to it - Griselda and Freddy (Freddy's nickname for Griselda is "Gristle"), and Valentine's dead grandfather: Dr. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Savage">Adam Savage</a>!<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">New words:</span> I don't think there were any, but the words I already knew were used in such marvellous ways...<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Inner Five-year-old score:</span> 3 (I'd've loved the humour and the theatre stuff, though much of the social and sexual politics would have escaped me)<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fun Wikipedia fact: </span>Davies lifelong companion was Australian stage manager Brenda Matthews, whom he met in London while working as an actor. They were married from 1940 to his death in 1995.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10053598303114234920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1640492698109069262.post-53696994990693115802010-01-21T18:58:00.003+11:002010-01-21T19:05:36.763+11:00Update!I've finally started catching up on the main Bunch of Authors posts, so you can find the post for Margaret Atwood's <span style="font-style: italic;">The Blind Assassin</span> under "<a href="http://bunchofauthors.blogspot.com/2009/10/who-brought-cat-would-margaret-atwood.html">Who brought the cat? Would Margaret Atwood?</a>" It's dated from when I started writing it...which is frankly embarrassing! Still, expect the last three books in the series very soon.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10053598303114234920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1640492698109069262.post-86193053400569002010-01-14T15:21:00.010+11:002010-01-21T19:06:06.205+11:00Six of Five<span style="font-style: italic;">When we last left our "intrepid" "heroes" - Arthur Dent, Trillian Astra, Ford Prefect and Arthur and Trillian's daughter Random Dent - they were being destroyed by Grebulons on the last version of Earth still extant in the Multiverse, lured there by the evil Vogon-owned Mark II version of </span>The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy<span style="font-style: italic;">. They have not suffered, however; the bird-shaped, psychic, time-travelling </span>Guide <span style="font-style: italic;">has plugged their minds into itself, allowing each to live out an entire lifetime in the seconds they have left in the real Universe. But now the </span>Guide's<span style="font-style: italic;"> batteries are running flat and it's time to go back to inevitable doom. Or is it? In what seems to be becoming a habit, Zaphod Beeblebrox arrives in the </span><span>Heart of Gold</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> to save them, though that salvation is short lived and they soon need rescuing by a familiar surly immortal. While tensions between and within our protagonists mount, we soon discover that - despite the lack of Earths - it seems there are still surviving human beings - and the Vogons already know about them...</span><br /><br />Yes, today I finally finished Eoin Colfer's <span style="font-style: italic;">Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy </span>sequel, <span style="font-style: italic;">And Another Thing</span>..., which follows on from the end of <span style="font-style: italic;">Mostly Harmless</span>. It's left me feeling pretty ambivalent, to tell the truth.<br /><br />For one thing, it feels like fan fiction. Well written, sometimes funny, and novel-length fan fiction, I grant you; but it's still a sequel to a much loved cult series of books, radio programmes, television series and feature films, and as such there's a ring of the "why bothers" about it. Adams himself joked that he'd killed off all the characters at the end of <span style="font-style: italic;">Mostly Harmless</span> so he'd know where to find them all when he wrote a sequel, but a sequel never seemed as much on his mind as further alternate versions of the main story (many of the new ideas in the surprisingly good 2005 Hollywood treatment were his).<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Mostly Harmless</span> itself, published eight years after the other four books, shares quite a bit in common with <span style="font-style: italic;">And Another Thing</span>...: it's a direct sequel picking up from what seemed a perfectly good ending in the previous book; it has more-or-less a single storyline, rather than being a string of disparate sequences; it develops a small number of ideas further rather than throwing a hundred ideas at the reader for as long as they're funny; and most fans of the series won't like it. (Now I think of it, almost all of those things could also be said of volume four, <span style="font-style: italic;">So Long and Thanks For All the Fish</span>, but everyone likes that one.) So it seems a bit unfair of me to be so indifferent to Colfer's effort, especially when - at age 13 - <span style="font-style: italic;">Mostly Harmless</span> was the first hardcover novel I ever bought, almost as soon as it was released, and devoured on the car trip back from somewhere with a bigger book store than my home town.<br /><br />If I'm honest, that emotional connection to the last of Adams' books in the series - it was the first thing of any kind I ever knew and cared about before it existed, back in the days before the Internet made waiting for things that don't yet exist almost inevitable - is probably a large part of why I like it so much more than most fans, but I guess it's also why I wanted to give Colfer a chance. But the deck is stacked against him, not least because he loves the series himself. References to the originals drip from every paragraph; hardly a single Guide entry in the novel doesn't use a planet, species or character name invented by Adams, and there are precious few characters in the book who we've not met before, with only one - the fairly unlikeable Hillman Hunter, nominally the man in charge of the last human settlement in the Galaxy - getting much fleshing out.<br /><br />A notable absence, though, is Ford. He's hardly in it. Whole scenes go past in which he is in attendance but has no input. While I appreciate that describing Ford Prefect as a protagonist is like calling Peter Garret a champion of the environment, he's always been my favourite character, so having him around but doing nothing is much worse than his absence in <span style="font-style: italic;">So Long</span>. (His return in <span style="font-style: italic;">Mostly Harmless</span> was yet another reason I enjoyed it.) There's also relatively little for Arthur to do, although he gets a fair bit of moping in, almost as though he hadn't spent the previous novel dealing with what he'd lost in the one before that. Zaphod dominates the narrative, though for some reason without one of his heads (the smarter one, in fact, though there was never any indication that he had two personalities previously), though Trillian, Random and a couple of previously minor characters from the series also feature heavily.<br /><br />No-one would argue, I think, that Adams was a master of plot or characterisation; it was his prose and his ideas and his wit that made him wonderful. Yet his successor is Eoin Colfer, whose prose is witty, whose jokes are (mostly) funny, and whose plotting is pretty good. I'm not sure he was the best man for this job, but then I'm not sure this was a job that needed doing, and in the end I think I can safely say that while I enjoyed <span style="font-style: italic;">And Another Thing...</span> - enough that I'd give Colfer's other books a go - it's not all I hoped it might be.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10053598303114234920noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1640492698109069262.post-74495262116800526772010-01-11T22:37:00.006+11:002010-01-11T23:23:50.660+11:00Jews With Swords<span style="font-style: italic;">A thousand years ago </span><span style="font-style: italic;"> in the Caucasus</span><span style="font-style: italic;">, two "gentlemen of the road" - the giant </span><span style="font-style: italic;">Abyssinian </span><span style="font-style: italic;">warrior and </span>shatranj<span style="font-style: italic;"> player Amram and the gaunt Frankish physician Zelikman - have just pulled off their usual con, a staged duel. Before they can collect their ill-gotten gains, fate brings to them a young boy, last survivor of a slaughtered noble family, and they are quickly swept up into pursuits far more noble than those to which they are accustomed. </span><br /><br />Today, as Melbourne sweltered in 45 degree heat, I finished my first book of 2010, Michael Chabon's <span style="font-style: italic;">Gentlemen of the Road</span>, including the afterword in which Chabon reveals its original working title, <span style="font-style: italic;">Jews With Swords</span>. It's one of the most exciting books I've read in ages, and perhaps the most fun; a real adventure novel, short (under 200 pages) and pacey. This may well be partly due to the novel's serialised origin, but I think it's just as much to do with Chabon truly embracing the genre he has chosen.<br /><br />This isn't just a swords and sandals adventure romp, though; it's placed in a real historical context, around 950 AD, and the situations and nations in the book are all based on the real world. There's no evil wizard, no bizarre monsters, but they're redundant when Chabon is able to paint just as vividly the contemporary wonders of war elephants, the marauding Rus, and the bizarre weapons of his protagonists (Amram carries a rune-covered northern axe, while Zelikman's blade is custom-made and resembles nothing so much as a giant needle). The characters are instantly likeable and have a depth perhaps surprising to those not familiar with the genre, but above all it's the wit and intelligence with which the prose drips that makes this such an enjoyable read.<br /><br />It's only the second novel of Chabon's I've read, and it was a world away from <span style="font-style: italic;">The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay</span>. If Lieber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser books are anything like this, I'll have to check them out too, though I can't help but think Chabon's novel is a greatly improved version, not just informed by his predecessors, but building on them and adding in his own particular form of literary genius. He dedicates the book to Michael Moorcock, another author whose work I have heard much about but have read little; indeed, my only experience of him is <span style="font-style: italic;">Stormbringer</span>, one of his earliest novels featuring his most famous creation, Elric of Melniboné. I need to read more of him, too.<br /><br />I know I've still to catch up with the last of the Bunch of Authors books - I will get around to it. I suppose now, though, I'll have to finish <span style="font-style: italic;">And Another Thing</span>; if it sounds like I consider that a chore, well, that's not quite how I feel, but it isn't quite the glorious fun I was hoping for either. There are some nice ideas in it, though, and the characters, while they don't quite feel like the Adams originals, are at least going somewhere new, though there's far less of Ford than I'd like. Still half a novel to go, though, so who knows? I do feel that I'm reading for about half a dozen people though, since several of my friends can't bring themselves to read it and are waiting for my report from the field...Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10053598303114234920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1640492698109069262.post-75441291825782451162009-12-29T19:26:00.007+11:002010-01-11T23:28:01.253+11:00"and she threw the book at me"It's done! I just finished <span style="font-style: italic;">The Cleft</span>, and it was pretty good. I know I've not yet made good on my promise to catch up on the full blog entries, but I have at least come to the end of the Bunch of Authors quest.<br /><br />Well...the end for now. I intend to keep reading, and to keep blogging about what I read. (I'll probably finish <span style="font-style: italic;">And Another Thing...</span> for starters.)<br /><br />Thanks to anyone who may have joined me, however briefly, on my journey. It will continue. And I will write up the last four books soon!Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10053598303114234920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1640492698109069262.post-49382309876303070022009-12-17T13:59:00.003+11:002009-12-17T14:45:20.712+11:00The Rapid UpdateOkay, it's been way too long, but I've just arrived back home after three weeks in the US, and I need to let you know that I finished <span style="font-style: italic;">The English Patient</span> and I'm about two-thirds of the way through <span style="font-style: italic;">The Cleft</span>. I was somewhat distracted by Eoin Colfer's <span style="font-style: italic;">And Another Thing</span>, the sixth Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy novel, but I abandoned it halfway through to get back on track.<br /><br />Over the next few days, as I recover from jet-lag and see James Cameron's <span style="font-style: italic;">Avatar</span>, I'll endeavour to complete my backlog of posts - I still owe you <span style="font-style: italic;">The Blind Assassin</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Tempest-Tost</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">The English Patient</span>. But at least I'm on target to finish the list by year's end.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10053598303114234920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1640492698109069262.post-56561671269891008042009-11-04T13:22:00.003+11:002009-11-04T13:26:51.801+11:00Doin' some readin'This post is a bit of a catch-up; I'm two books ahead of the blog now. Yesterday I finished <span style="font-style: italic;">Tempest-Tost</span>, and I'm already 30+ pages into <span style="font-style: italic;">The English Patient</span> (already it feels like it was written by a poet, and indeed Ondaatje has some poetry anthologies listed in his "also by this author"). There's a draft of the <span style="font-style: italic;">The Blind Assassin</span> post sitting in blogger, and I promise to finish it this week.<br /><br />Life is exceptionally busy: work is at a critical point in a big project, I've gigs coming up, there are registration deadlines looming for various festivals, and I'm going to America and Canada in under three weeks. I'll do my best to catch up before I go, but I feel on-track: two months left, and two books to go.<br /><br />I'll return soon, I promise!Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10053598303114234920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1640492698109069262.post-84037550390341506682009-10-19T20:19:00.008+11:002010-01-20T22:50:40.981+11:00"Who brought the cat? Would Margaret Atwood?"<span style="font-style: italic;">Shortly after the Second World War, Iris Chase's sister Laura drove over a cliff to her death. Some say she did it on purpose. A few years later her strange, slightly risqué novel, </span>The Blind Assassin<span style="font-style: italic;">, made her a famous iconoclast. Now Iris, living on her own in her Canadian home town of Port Ticonderoga, has decided to write down the story of her family, encompassing two wars, the Great Depression, and of course the mystery of her sister's death.</span><br /><br />This book is like an ogre: it's full of layers, by which I mean layers of storytelling. First, there's Iris's reality - what's happening to her now, at the end of the twentieth century. She's telling us about it, writing in an almost conversational style, though it's not clear why or who for until the end. After a while she also tells the story of her parents, followed by her childhood. Iris's writings are interrupted by both historical documents - newspaper stories and the like - and extracts from Laura's novel, in which a young socialite meets clandestinely with a writer of science fantasy stories for pulp magazines. The final layer of the story occurs within the novel, as the writer tells her a story of his own devising - this is where the titular blind assassin comes in.<br /><br />The book starts out as a slow burn - Iris is an engaging enough character, but her life as a lonely, elderly woman, and one seemingly ill-equipped to deal with her own twilight years, isn't immediately gripping. There's also a strange disparity between her wit in writing and her real life business, both in her current life and her earlier history; her internal monologue is insightful, even biting, but when the narrative includes her in scenes of her life, she's disappointingly passive and dull. Perhaps this is part of the point, though: Iris, a child of the First World War, exists in a world where privilege, knowledge and choice in general is denied to women. The Chase sisters are schooled at home by a succession of terrible tutors in subjects that teach them nothing of any use. Not that much later, in one of the more harrowing sequences of the book, Iris, still barely a woman, is married off to a much older businessman to secure his purchase of the Chase family business in the hard times following the war.<br /><br />It's a pretty miserable life, though the narrative is very matter-of-fact about it in that sense. Iris's father is the best example of this attitude: he's neither demonised or deified, instead presented as an almost featureless cipher before the war (and before Iris was old enough to truly know him), and as a broken shell afterward, acting on some internal compass that's clearly cracked.<br /><br />I have to admit I found <span style="font-style: italic;">The Bllind Assassin </span>pretty hard going in the middle, and it was largely because I thought I knew where the main story was going, but I desperately wanted more of the pulp narrative of the blind assassin. After all, we already know that Iris ends up old and alone, her sister having driven off a cliff. Obviously there's some hidden truth coming, but it takes its time; indeed, it's barely addressed explicitly, though Iris does acknowledge what her intended reader has no doubt discovered before she reveals the secret. It's not spoiling anything, I think, to say that she reveals something quite unpleasant, but by the time it comes it seems not to have quite the sting it could have had. (I'm famous among some of my friends for wanting stories to begin at that point, to see what happens after; since, as you might expect, the revelation and how its handled is what leads to Laura's demise, there's not a great deal of story left afterwards.)<br /><br />But despite the above misgivings, I really liked <span style="font-style: italic;">The Blind Assassin</span>. Though I found Iris frustrating through the lens of the 21st century - modern, elderly Iris is so knowing, it's hard not to be shouting "why couldn't you be like this forty years ago?!" as she describes her passive young self - her story is truly tragic, and there's a lot of detail in the book. It's description of life in a small industry town through the huge changes of the 20s, 30s and 40s is fascinating, with the fortunes of her father's factory, the radically different sexual politics and the attitude of businessmen to Germany in the lead up to World War II all worthy of novels of their own.<br /><br />Still, I can't help thinking that if I could, I'd buy a copy of <span style="font-style: italic;">Amazing Stories</span> if it just had the story of the real blind assassin...or even a copy of Laura Chase's book. It's the ultimate literary frustration to read a novel which depicts a fictional novel you suspect you'd enjoy just as much, if not more.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapters:</span> 15<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Page count:</span> 560<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Book's title mentioned on page:</span> 240 (sort of)<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Best name encountered: </span>Iris Chase (it just resonates for the character)<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">New words:</span> [I'll have to find it and look them up; there were one or two]<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Inner Five-year-old score:</span> 4 (for the story within the novel within the novel); 1 (for the novel; waaaaay to intense for a five year old!)<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fun Wikipedia fact: </span><span style="font-style: italic;">The Blind Assassin</span> is considered an example of "Southern Ontario Gothic", a sub-genre of gothic fiction first described in 1973 but sometimes derided by critics.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10053598303114234920noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1640492698109069262.post-9840047685832720912009-10-15T11:01:00.005+11:002009-10-15T14:09:55.208+11:00In Another Dimension of Space...Quick update today: last night I finished <span style="font-style: italic;">The Blind Assassin</span>. I'll get time for the full post in the next few days, but the short version is that it took a while to get into, and the journey was more important than the destination, but I really enjoyed it.<br /><br />I did finish reading <span style="font-style: italic;">The Graveyard Book</span>, and it didn't disappoint. I saw some negative feeling towards it because it was nominated for a Hugo, despite being a book for younger readers, and some comments were tossed around that it was unworthy. I admit I'm not up with the current standards of science fiction and fantasy literature, but I reckon it was a worthy nomination; I certainly enjoyed it as much as I did any of the Bunch of Authors books so far.<br /><br />For those interested, I'm now reading my beloved <span style="font-style: italic;">The Lord of the Rings</span>, because she loves Tolkien and it's about time I put some effort into sharing it with her. I am one of those who loved <span style="font-style: italic;">The Hobbit</span> as a kid, but didn't make it more than a third through <span style="font-style: italic;">Fellowship of the Ring</span>; I've met many like me since. I have famously proclaimed that I liked the films better, since I did try <span style="font-style: italic;">Fellowship</span> again after seeing the film (though my plan to read each book after seeing each film never came to fruition). This time around, with my love to guide me, I'm getting into it much more, and I'm amazed how little I remember of the book.<br /><br />I've also started (as in I got about three pages in this morning before leaving for work) <span style="font-style: italic;">Tempest-Tost</span> by Robertson Davies, and it's shorter, but in small print. Three more books, two and half months left in the year. Time to step up!Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10053598303114234920noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1640492698109069262.post-46004257177220754522009-09-10T13:59:00.004+10:002009-09-10T15:20:11.029+10:00A spoonful of sugarIt's been a slow start for <span style="font-style: italic;">The Blind Assassin</span>. Judging from the first 30 or so pages, it's going to reveal its plot and characters slowly over time; at the moment all I have are fragments which I can only vaguely piece together. I hope this isn't the sort of book that should come with a notebook to record names and dates and places...<br /><br />Another reason for the slow start is Neil Gaiman, and more specifically the copy of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Graveyard Book</span> that I borrowed from a friend. I'm about half-way through, and enjoying it immensely on two levels: it's a bloody good book for children that assumes they're smart, and I've also found a new way to enjoy reading to my beloved.<br /><br />On the first point, I like books for kids which just get on with it. (Truth be told, I like this about books in general, unless there's a particular point - artistic or otherwise - to be made by doing things otherwise.) Too many modern books for chlidren and young adults hold the reader's hand, explaining everything as though the reader will be too dim to work things out from context. <span style="font-style: italic;">Skullduggery Pleasant</span>, though fun, had this problem: it's explanation of its world was a little too "here's how everything works" for me. I recently had a conversation with about older children's books, and how they treated kids with respect for their intelligence. A. A. Milne was a major example, and I was delighted to learn (for though I did read some of them, it was probably 25 years ago and I've forgotten) that Beatrix Potter used words like "soporific" in her stories, without explanation, but with the meaning clear in context. <span style="font-style: italic;">That's</span> how you build a vocabulary!<br /><br />The new reading method isn't anything spectacular. I was recently scandalised by the revelation that my sleepy beloved falls asleep while I'm reading to her, and has no recollection of large bits of the books I've read to her (the mainstays of which are Gideon Defoe's <span style="font-style: italic;">Pirates!</span> books, which are hilarious). After our first stint with <span style="font-style: italic;">The Graveyard Book</span>, she revealed how little she remembered, and asked me to summarise what she'd missed. After the second stint, I kept reading by myself after I realised she was asleep, and have kept up the updates each morning.<br /><br />We both enjoy my little retelling of the story, which is also a good way to keep it in my head between reads, and I think the best part is she'll probably want to read the whole book for herself later. Certainly it'd make a pleasant antidote to <span style="font-style: italic;">Brideshead Revisited</span>, which she's slogging through at the moment, and finding awful. I've not read it myself, but it's tale of privileged, chaste but nonetheless deeply depressed young men sounds dreadful...Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10053598303114234920noreply@blogger.com1