Back to the Blog!

Gosh I can't remember the last time I actually blogged about anything.  It's not that I lost interest in writing things, in my mind I would have these great blogs going on all the time - about my geeky life, my cooking and my reading - none of these things have stopped at all but my blogging about them died a few years ago and I was having some difficulty finding the energy to return to it.

Okay, I admit it, I got into a funk.  So much has been going on that it was hard for me to actually concentrate on the less important things in life - like what to eat, how to get up in the morning and how to make it to work on time, if at all.  Various ailments began to ail me, I was inflicted by numerous inflictions and ultimately, I didn't want to bore anybody with what I considered was my dull life.

Of course, my life was anything but dull and if I had written about any of it, I'm sure I would received more hits than the paltry few I was getting here before.  I don't actually really care anymore if anybody reads my words - that's actually never been that important to me.  For me, it was actually being able to be honest about what I was going through, what I was feeling.  For the brief time that I am here on this planet, I feel sometimes I need to remind myself what it is that I am doing, thinking, and reading.

So here we are in February 2016 and I still haven't finished that list of 100 books to read.  Do I feel like I've failed?  Fuck no.  What it actually did was spark within me a desire to read again, to write about it and to share with anyone who bothered to listen.  I haven't stopped, I just haven't shared anything on-line for about three years.  Unless you count Facebook, which is a place where I still regularly post inappropriate comments.  Well, inappropriate if you think that Facebook is like a public bar where you can never talk about politics and/or religion.  Yeah, that's me in the corner, drinking my cider and not being afraid ever to open my mouth and blurt out an opinion about that.

So here's me back again, ready to start telling you all about what I'm reading and how much I'm enjoying it.  I doubt I'll cover 100 books this year, but I'm aiming for about 50 at least.  I visit my local library here in Watford town every week now and pick up one of their "hot picks".  It's like going into a bookstore somewhere in outback Australia and checking out their top twenty books of the month.  They don't change very often and sometimes the pickings are rather slim - well, the library is seriously underfunded (as, sadly, most public libraries are nowadays).  What it does for me, however, is force me to read stuff that I wouldn't normally consider and I have to read them within a week as that is how long I'm allowed to loan them for (yes, technically I could renew them, but I'm not picking the Complete Works of Shakespeare, these are books that are meant to be devoured rather quickly).

I've read more than a few already and of course have written the reviews in my head, they just haven't managed to coerce my fingers to tap them out into this little space, but do stay tuned, I'm sure I will get something up fairly soon.  After all, I've managed to type out this little intro haven't I?

Odd dip into Koontz territory

I am not a massive Dean Koontz fan.  I am a big fan of the horror(/thriller?) genre (hello!! homosexual here!) but somehow Koontz never really did it for me.  David and I tend to pop him into the same basket as James Herbert, or Ramsay Campbell.  He is certainly not of the same calibre as Stephen King or Clive Barker (or Poe or Lovecraft for that matter) of that I was never in any doubt.
 
I've always found that Koontz always came at the supernatural from a very base level - the whole "if it's different then it's evil" kind of attitude.  Small town minds from small town folk who like their colloquial little ways to remain unchallenged and their traditions unchanging, filled with their worries and fears that there is always somewhere else, somewhere foreign, something alien out there which could destroy everything if it gains a toehold into their lives.  I just felt he was too old school and never really scary enough for my liking.  

"Goosebumps for grown ups," I said to David before I started reading what I thought was a one-off book about an apocalypse that the Barbican library was promoting in it's latest display featuring popular horror writers throughout the ages (yup, you guessed it, all of the books in the display are now on the list - well, they're popular, quick turnaround titles and were chosen by librarians... all of the elements that allow them to be included are there!).

After a few chapters it becomes clear that Dean has been writing a series.  In truth, I probably already had heard of it before as my cousin is a big fan of this particular genre and devours similar series quite regularly via her kindle.  I vaguely remember her telling me about how she was enjoying a series about a man who can see dead people and keeps in touch with Elvis.

I didn't think this book was terrible.  It was typical Koontz work in that it is filled with cliches and yet still manages to weave in some weird science and Nikola Tesla to boot that makes it worth your while reading it until the end.  It will not tax you.

Having come in at book 5 and I will now go back and read some of his earlier segments so I won't go into too much detail about the series now, suffice to say that the book is about a man, Odd Thomas, who comes from a small town and who has a unique ability to see dead people.  Odd can communicate with them, although the spirits have to convey their words via a bizarre game of charades every time....  Koontz, having clearly exhausted this as a plot direction has introduced Odd, along with his traveling companion to a house where very strange things are going on indeed.

Every now and then as I was reading I would stumble into a spoiler from the previous books, and I was quite fascinated to see how adept Koontz is in massaging the series narrative into the main plot, giving just the right amount so fans of the series would be sated with their regular dose of Oddness and newcomers could still enjoy the book as a standalone story.  Prolific writer that he is, I now see that Koontz is more than just a hack when it comes to churning out his many many works.

I've got the first three books on order now.  They'll take me a day or two to read each one (as I said, they're really not that taxing) so I look forward to getting to know this character a little better.  I'm sure it would have helped carry me through the more formulaic parts of this particular work, which you can get from here if in the UK, or here if you're reading in the US.

Both sources are selling for penny + postage so clearly this is one of those throwaway titles that won't date very well (it is filled with so many popular references that will become meaningless within a decade or so for any future readers) so I highly recommend that you borrow these from a friend or a local library if you can to avoid the clutter.

Gaiman is Pure Gold

That's about all I need to say, really.  That, and go read his latest book.

Another new addition to the list via the local libraries "Hot Pick" table, David and I devoured this book over the course of a week and managed to return it the following Sunday without any trouble whatsoever.

It is, simply put, a gorgeous fairy tale of a story - but in this work, Gaiman does what he does with most of his books - he manages to weave the fairyness into the modernity with such ease you actually start to SEE the story unfolding before you like you were the main protagonist within it.  Not that he is writing a screenplay, in fact, most of Gaiman's vision is just way too elaborate to ever truly be captured as a series of photographic images - his works require massive canvasses with multiple layers applied with detailed brush work - whole exhibition halls would fill up with image upon image upon image that you would spend days wandering about and even then you wouldn't be able to see them all.

So I've loved Gaiman probably from before I started reading John Constantine comics (many, many years ago for all those non-geeky folk out there who have no idea who John Constantine is).  I think the first actually novel that made me truly fall in love with this Gaiman's work was Coraline - but of course so many of his works have become movies (some of them even quite good considering my earlier comments about how impossible it is to truly do his work justice via this medium) but there is something truly magical about his writing that just makes me want to gush like the fan that I have now become.

Clive Barker once made me gush like this.  I'm hoping he will one day again (soon I am hoping as I hear a new novel is being published as I type) but for the moment, Gaiman is King of the fantastical mixed with the mundane, the bizarre world seeping into the ordinary via the lost collective memories, now long since forgotten, allowing us to briefly glimpses the realms much much larger than any of us currently can imagine ever existing within.

For EU customers, order The Ocean At the End of the Lane from Amazon EU here.
For US customers, order it from Amazon US here.

Or borrow it from your local library, you'll find it on the "Hot Picks" table :-)

Books Read:   10

Winter is coming - I'm still reading, and it's from the list (well, the amended list anyway)

So that was Summer eh?

As I come in from the drizzle I realise that it has been some time since I actually wrote an entry, in this or any blog.  My life has, of late, been filled with all things work.  I even had to give up Facebook for a while there.  Sadly, I also had to give up reading.

I'm not sure if the "work project", as we'll call it, actually allows me to postpone the timing of this little reading project or whether I should just cancel the whole thing and just start reading any old book that crosses my path.  Either way, I probably won't stop blogging about it.  I will try to read 100 books though, before April next year.  I think it's possible, especially now as the darkness descends upon us.  Winter is coming, and it's probably time to finish those George R R Martin books (now hereby decreed added to "the list" because of necessity - the televised series has actually passed the place I got up to in the book!).

I've found another addendum to the list, a regular one that is give by our local library in Watford.  I love this place, it's a pretty darn fine library to have on your doorstep and one of the positives about moving house is that we'll probably move closer to it.  I've always wanted to be close enough to a large enough selection of books.  Anyway, I've decided that any item that is marked as a "hot pick" is allowed on the list automatically.  These are books that are (a) popular (b) reasonably short and (c) only allowed a 1 week loan.  I have technically found a way of getting around this problem (by using the libraries automated return system one can simply re-borrow the book approximately 2 seconds after returning it) but I've also found another way of getting around this short loan period which is just to read the books very quickly.  As quickly as possible. 

Last week I borrowed Ian Banks' latest (and last, very sad to have to say) book - it really was fantastic and I will be sure to write a review about this beauty before long.

This week I borrowed a couple of books and I'm now well into the second one, so maybe next week I'll go for three of them and see if I can manage that for a few weeks.  I've kind of lost count of how many books I've read so far, I'm sure a few will come back me, I know I didn't review all of the ones that I had read before I stopped and started spending every spare moment working (or simply relaxing and spending some time with our boy Zack, whose year with us is coming to an end now), but I wouldn't be surprised if I've still got about 80 books to read in just under six months if I'm to read 100 as I had originally planned to.  

Anyway, it's late, I need to sleep because I'm about to change my shift again and start to work normal hours so my mornings won't be sleep filled but caffeine filled instead.  I'll get to that review shortly.... Neil Gaiman.... yeah.... that was probably the one that broke the ice.  A "hot pick" at the library - David spotted it as I was off paying my late fees at the library for all the books that I'd stopped reading because work was taking up all of my time.  He read it in a day and I took about three but we managed to return the following week without need for a sneaky re-borrow.

But I digress again.  It's late, I need to sleep.  It was good though, that Gaiman book.  REAL good - nay, pretty much excellent.

More on that later.

First Full Moon Report

Full moon update!

Here I am about to go to bed and read a little bit more of Brian Cox's Wonders of the Universe.  Thursday is science day, after all.  I started reading Stephen Hawkings in the first week of the challenge, and now that I am done with his dense tome, I need something else.  Thankfully there are many many pictures in Cox's version.  And explanatory diagrams.  Note that Hawkings didn't have any pictures, it's just that his pictures didn't actually make it any easier to understand what he was trying to say.  With Cox, you can almost hear his soft Lancashire Lilt as you read the text, and you can see his pretty face, and then you picture him dancing to Things Can Only Get Better and suddenly you have to reread the page from the beginning again.  Clearly I'm easily distracted when it comes to science books.  Jokes aside, I do like his book.

I really wanted to have finished 10 books by the time I got to the full moon.  There was no chance I was going to finish Dickens' Copperfield or Steve Jobs biography over the weekend but I needed something new to read on Monday and I picked up Beryl Bainbridge's The Bottle Factory Outing which she wrote in 1974.  It was Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Guardian Fiction Prize.

At less than 200 pages long I felt this would be a doddle to finish in a day... but I was wrong.  Not a doddle.  Actually I thought it might be down to Mondayitis that I just could not concentrate on the prose, but David has just called me from Cornwall (he's been at a conference) and he's just started it, 50 pages in, and he too is finding it difficult to get into the rhythm of it.  Certainly by 100 pages (where I got to by Monday night) you are well acquainted with the characters enough to begin to enjoy the read, but there is a point at the beginning where it is all a bit muddled, as if Beryl wants us all to pay very close attention to what she is saying, else we might as well just pack up and leave if we aren't going to concentrate.

For DAvid it may be that he has just finished The Snow Child.  We gushed a bit about that one on the phone for a while there. I did so much enjoy Eowyn Ivey's novel.  And to think this is her first novel.  Wonderful stuff.  But I digress.....

So I didn't get to finish Bainbridge's book on Monday, and Tuesday was Cloud Atlas day.  I very much am enjoying reading this, but I got to within 100 pages of the end of it and I just could not read any further.... I was so tired!  I was practically falling asleep trying to read on. I stopped.  So Tuesday, no luck, still the book remains unfinished and still I had only finished nine books!

Then yesterday I cracked a book in a day.  I picked up James Carnac's The Autobiography of Jack The Ripper.  Clearly this is a work of fiction, but it is packaged as if it is a real manuscript.  Whatever, given that it supposedly dates back to the early twenties it is probably one of the very first novels to be written about an actual serial killer who has no motive to kill his victims other than he enjoys it.  Oddly enough, found amongst the personal papers of the creator of Larry the Lamb.  Perhaps he had a dark side?  Who knows.  It was published last year, although it came to light a few years previously.  I found it quite enjoyable, but then I do like a bit of a murder mystery thriller.  Funny, really, as to why Jack the Ripper became so famous.  I guess it has something to do with him being one of the first serial killers, although if you read Colin Wilson's excellent treatise on the subject you'll find that there were others, previously, although they were quite rare.

So I managed my 10 books by the Full Moon.  AND I am well into 7 more.  At this rate, I will have no problem completing the challenge.  Mind you, I've still got that Dickens to get through.... and another 89 books as well!!

Days Left:    335

Books Read:   10

On the challenge of reading the wrong Dickens.....or Ficken Dickens Schmicken!

So the challenge continues.....

I've noted that others are becoming inspired and starting to read their own lists. Australia has a massive bookstore called Dymocks, it became a chain in 1986 but I first noticed it in Melbourne around 1995. They have published their own list, and it's a kind of cool list indeed, of 101 most popular books as chosen by their customers.
 
+kym brown  and our daughter have started their own reading quests. I'm hoping that they will, from time to time, blog and tell us all about them. I will certainly provide some links here.
Last Tuesday was, indeed, Cloud Atlas day. Wow. The book truly is different and yet very similar to the movie. It does highlight how friggin' ace those Warchowski siblings are to be able to turn it into a filmic experience. Yeah, they added bits, massive bits that weren't in the book, but I'm long over the whole "You must replicate this book exactly" feelings that I used to have as a child. I remember explaining this to my daughter around the Harry Potter Three movie.

Movies are different entities, they need to be treated as such by the viewers. For a start, they use pictures to convey a message, and not words. You think that this is obvious until you really start to think about what that actually means. A 5 page detailed description of a setting can be snapped in a few seconds in a movie, but how difficult is it to convey a person contemplating a momentous decision involving internal dialogue? So I never judge a movie adaptation based on the book that it was based on. I always give it plenty of room to be it's own story.
 
On Wednesday, I finished Piers Morgan's diaries. The years 2001 - 2004. It was a struggle, not because they were dull, they're not (although, in places where he discussed football (soccer to the non-European crowd) I would literally skim) but they are quite detailed entries and I found I'd lose my concentration if I actually sped read them. I was also incredibly tired by Wednesday - far too many late nights and early mornings. So methodically I pushed through these years.
 
By 2001 onwards was particularly interesting especially after 9/11. Suddenly Piers started acting and behaving pretty much as David and I had during the lead up to the war on terror. It really was a very crazy time and Bush and Blair were such blatant liars with their desire to move the war into Iraq. I remember pointing out that it really wouldn't solve anything at the time, that they would never find WMD, that it was all about oil. I don't feel vindicated that I was right about all of this. Piers didn't either. We just felt sad. Sad that the world could actually be manipulated in this way. Sad that folks like Bush and Blair could do this to the world so easily, and even marching 1 million strong against it would just be ignored.

So I end up realising that Piers and I would get along pretty well at a dinner party. We'd annoy the crap out of stale stuffy conservative folk with their circular arguments. Mind you, that would be a dinner party that we had both gatecrashed.... probably after a pub crawl... or perhaps it would be a conversation overhead in a restaurant as there are not that many stuffy conservative dinner parties that I'm likely to be invited to anytime soon.
 
On Thursday I finished Stephen Hawkings A Brief History of Time. Well I feel good in that I have finished this. I mean, I can now say I've read it. Yes, I've read the words, no I didn't quite understand about a third of it. Actually, probably about half of it. There were times I was thinking "What is he on about" and then suddenly I'd be like "Aha, of course, I know this". My intense love of Science Fiction helped me to get through this. I still laugh because I honestly thought this would be 1,000 pages long, the way folks have gone on about it. Most people don't read it to the end. I did. Yay me.

On Friday, I finished Eowyn Ivey's A Snow Child. I just loved this book. Easy to read, but not simple in any way. I truly loved her characterisations, her ability to get me teary, especially during the first half of the book. As the story continued I found myself far more emotionally stable... but then she got me at the end. It is based on an old Russian fairy tale, and it beautifully encapsulates this into a real flesh and blood drama. I HIGHLY recommend this one. Brilliant stuff
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Then yesterday I continued reading Dickens. Another 50 pages. I read 50 pages last Saturday so at this rate it will take me about 3 months to finish it!! It's not that Dickens is hard to read, but the plot is kind of all over the place, with intense characterisations of minor characters that just don't seem to actually be really very necessary. It's a little bit gratuitous... nay... it is a LOT so. All my actor luvey friends (the older ones, the ones that worked with Olivier and his ilk.... most of them are dead now come to think of it.) All of them used to go on and on about Dickens and how wonderful he was. Well, at 100 pages into David Copperfield with about 800 to go... I fear that I may have picked up the wrong one. But on the list it is, and so continue reading it I will.

Mind you, it wouldn't be a challenge if it wasn't at least a little bit challenging, and the whole point of taking on a challenge is trying to overcome the possibility that you may actually fail in the end. I'm sure we won't, we'll read all night for the last few months if we need to, or at least I will, David has now read 7 books AND he started about a week after I did. Here is his latest review on The Godfather. He thoroughly enjoyed that one. I'm starting it on Friday as I need another Friday book after finishing Ivey's fairytale.
Today, it's clearing up the backyard, going shopping and reading a bit (a lot) more of Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson. I'm enjoying it, but again I wonder how long it will take to actually finish it.  I chose these big books to read on the weekend because I figured I would have more time to actually read them. Turns out that isn't the case when the sun starts to shine. I should have guessed, really
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Days Left:    339

Books Read:   9

Being distracted from Buchan by Rob Bell

I'll admit that I picked up this book because it was slim.  At just over 100 pages I was certain to be able to complete it today.  I wanted a short book because yesterday I struggled with continuing to read Steve Jobs biography and at the rate I am reading it, it will take me about 6 days to do so.  So I wanted something short, something I could get through in half a day.  I figured John Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps would be just the ticket.  However I hadn't quite figured that I would be a little distracted today.  Mainly because I had pre-booked tickets to see Rob Bell at the launch of his latest book.

This also meant that David and I had to have an impromptu meal at Carluccio's Islington branch prior to the event, so it all ended up eating into our reading time as well (David is currently reading Mario Puzo's The Godfather).

After the event, mainly because Rob ended up being an excellent orator (not that anyone was surprised by that as it's kind of why we went in the first place) I didn't really want to do all that much reading on the way home, because there were things to discuss, like just what Rob Bell thought his philosophy actually was about and how far he's come from the evangelical pastor to the man with a Buddhist-like desire to really see the world for what it is: a wondrous miraculous sparkling mass of energy.  He still wants to see it through Christian tinted glasses, but hey, it's where he's come from.  We can forgive him that much.  Many other Christians are much harder to forgive.

Moving onto to Buchan's book, I can see why it is on The Observer's list of 100 influential books.  It is probably the precursor to just about every spy thriller ever written after 1915.  To sum it up in under a paragraph, the main protagonist discoveris a secret that so dangerous that he must run in order to stay alive. If he stops running, those that want to silence him for what he has learnt will catch him and kill him.  Thankfully he has a military background and is rather good at regional accents.  He also has learnt more than just a little conversational German, and given that all those chasing him speak this language it comes in very handy indeed.

I haven't quite finished the book, I'll do that in the next hour once I've published this and crawled into bed.  However I will finish it today, so check it off the list I must.  

Tomorrow is Cloud Atlas day.  Yay!!

Days Left:    345

Books Read:   6