There are now nine people in the world who have walked on the moon, and unless something dramatic happens [...], it won’t be long before there are none. That might not mean anything to a lot of you, because you are, I am led to understand, young people, and the moonwalks didn’t happen in your lifetime. [...] But it means a lot to me, and Andrew Smith, and when the Apollo missions, the future as we understood it, become history, then something will be lost from our psyches. But what do you care? Oh, go back to your hip-hop and your computer games and your promiscuity. (Or your virginity. I forget which one your generation is into at the moment.)
— The Complete Polysyllabic Spree, Nick Hornby

A passing reference to Nick Hornby led to me picking up this book again and re-reading one of his columns. At random. And that perfect little précis of what happened to the future we were promised was buried in there. The whole collection is replete with such examples.

Now excuse me while I spend the afternoon reading.

Like a match struck in a darkened room.

There was something in those simple eight words for me. Some image. Some sense. Some rhythm. Something I still can’t identify, but something that instantly said to me this is a special book. As I read that line aloud now I can hear the brief scratch and then the hiss. I can see the bright white flare; the flare that leaves a faint yellow outline in the darkness, the darkness that suddenly seems all the deeper. And then the steady fade as the flame turns from white to orange and the match burns itself out.

There, in those eight simple words, is the entire novel.

From those simple words I was hooked.

This is one of the greatest books I have ever read: Lethem is now in the rarefied league of Graham Greene, and, well, not many others. Someone who can write a deep, lyrical, beautiful but entertaining story that moves you.

I wish I could capture precisely why this was such a good book but it feels indescribable. It’s a story of a boy growing up. In the only world he has ever known, a world where he feels like perhaps he should be special — but he’s not. It’s a world to which he doesn’t belong, a world that he will forever be outside. The obvious escape into a fortress of his own devising is, however, a far more dangerous trap.

In the writing, the tone and the pace the sense of growing up was captured as I’ve never read before. It’s like a street scene coming into focus as the rising sun burns the morning fog away. The story starts with everything obscured and dreamlike. The descriptions are as if Dylan (the boy) isn’t really there, as if he is reporting a story told to him, about him. Which is precisely what all our earliest memories really are. As the fog clears and Dylan himself comes into focus he moves from being an outside observer to a passive participant to someone in control of his life. As if the story is the focal ring of a camera slowly spinning him into the right place in his life. Almost. Almost placing him where he belongs. In focus along with his world. Almost.

The beginning of the second part very nearly disappointed me. It appeared the book was about to head towards a very predictable place. But Lethem steered gloriously clear. Leaving us with the tantalising possibility of fantasy, the possibility of belonging, and the reality of the best damn book I’ve read in a long time.

Fantastic Four, Vol. 1
J. Michael Strazcynski and Mike McKone

It’s been sometime since I’ve read any graphic novels or even comics. I read Watchmen because I knew the movie was about to open. I’d previously enjoyed both of the V for Vendetta comic and movie, but I wish I’d read it before seeing it, so I wanted to this one the other way around.

Impressive, both the comic and the movie. Though the movie was largely just a moving version of the comic, apart from that great title sequence. So, I’ll ignore the movie and talk about the comic. This is really a graphic novel. It is a work of fiction telling a story using the core elements of characterisation, plot and pacing to drive the single, coherent piece to its conclusion, it just happens to tell this through pictures as well as words. It felt like more of a graphic novel than V: it is far more focused, the characterisation is better and the pace is well maintained. V had a tendency (common to all serial forms) to bog right down. For an Alan Moore work, Watchmen is also surprisingly low on violence. Sure, there are some pretty gruesome parts, but not too many — or they are well used.

There are some interesting experiments with alternative ways of telling parts of the story. One chapter is told entirely from the perspective of a character who does not perceive time as linear. But the jumping through time is well used and not confusing. There are also long sections of prose at the end of each chapter, these provide another angle on the main events. It creates this sense that as well as following the story you are also seeing history unfold. Above all else this is a highly ambiguous work — I am still not sure what I think of the ending. And that would be about the highest praise you could hope for.

Fresh from this success and inspired by another book I read shortly after Watchmen, I finally read the Fantastic Four book that I bought some time ago.

And oh boy was that a mistake.

This was bought when I realised that all the comics I was reading were from a certain niche of the market. I wanted to remain balanced and went looking for something from the traditional mainstream of comics. This was the first volume in a sub-series, was written by the highly respected J. Michael Strazcynski (he wrote the TV series Babylon 5, which I have never seen but is well-regarded in sci-fi circles,) how could I go wrong?

It went very wrong: the characters are childish, the plot predictable and laughable, even the artwork is disappointing – the female character almost never looks the same in any two panels. I read the entire thing — only an investment of 45 minutes or so — but by the end I was pretty disgusted. The most annoying thing is how much time is spent referring to past adventures. This is not because this story is part of some decades long arc, I am completely unfamiliar with previous stories but I could always understand the plot. Instead it felt like listening to that annoying friend of a friend down at the pub drone on and on about these great things that happened to him this one time. I am quite happily returning to my niche; I’ve dipped my toe in the mainstream and it’s polluted.

And to further reinforce that, I had a major comics success shortly afterwards. Comics are still firmly on my agenda.

This is the first work of literary criticism I’ve ever read, and after reading this I can’t see what everyone complains about. This wasn’t dry, inaccessible or self-involved at all. Well, actually, it was pretty self-involved, but in a highly engaging way.

Unlike some of my friends, I am something of a Nick Hornby fan. Yes, his books are very light, but he finds wells of depth in that lightness. Yes, he writes female characters pretty appallingly, but he does write sensitive, deeply flawed, but ultimately likeable male characters very well: they are weak, uncertain, confused, human. As an intelligent, sensitive, non-macho male I find that there aren’t many characters I can identify with. I can identify with Hornby’s, and hence I enjoy his books.

For two and and a bit years, starting in 2003 Nick Hornby wrote a kind-of-book-review column for the US literary magazine, The Believer, who I am glad to see are still around. The Believer is affliated in someway I do not fully comprehend with the consistently brilliant McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Anyway, Hornby’s column was called ‘What I’m Reading’, or words to that affect and was just a description of the books he’d read in the past month, that’s all. There was one further wrinkle: The Believer has a firm ‘no slagging’ rule. Works discussed in the Believer must be described positively, if you wanted to attack something there are plenty of other forums, all other forums in fact, but in the Believer artists would find somewhere safe.

Living in a cultural backwater, I haven’t encountered this magazine, but I’m looking now.

This rule apparently caused Hornby some trouble at first, until he settled on the technique of not naming or identifying books that he didn’t like. But, he also became careful about what he read, and his relationship with the books he did read. By being more careful, he ended up enjoying most of the books he read. There aren’t actually that many unidentified books in the end. By analysing his relationship more carefully he can identify when he didn’t like a book because of something in himself. His ill-fated experiment with reading sci-fi is a great example of this.

Beyond all that background, this is the collected diary over 28 months of the reading adventures of someone who deeply loves books and reading. And it is a mightily positive ride. This is a book to re-discover your love of reading by. If you’ve been burned by something bad recently pick this up and read a couple of months to re-discover your love. And if your tastes happen to match Hornby’s you’ll likely get some very good recommendations. Coincidentally, I read one of his more liked books shortly after reading this and it has been one of the best books I’ve ever read. More on that in a later post.

This has been one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read: it’s hilarious, engaging and surprisingly moving at times. I read it at a difficult time, it was a great escape and a very nice reminder of the things in life that are to be savoured and enjoyed.

I’ve been raving about and recommending it since. Count this as more in that vein. In a very trite turn of phrase, if you love books, you’ll love this.

A book club book. My reading has slowed down a bit recently: it seems that three out of my last four books by this stage have only been for the book club. It’s keeping me reading though. That seems worth it to me.

Slumdog Millionaire was a very enjoyable, easy read. I sat down and read it in a single sitting. Interestingly, it was a very hard book to get hold of. the movie had just hit the cinemas and was exploding. The book had been out of print in Australia for a little while, and none of the book shops had it in stock. They also didn’t seem to be aware that it had been rushed into re-print, with the new title. It was originally called Q&A, but my copy was titled Slumdog Millionaire to capitalise on the success of the movie, sot that’s what I’m reviewing it as. I hadn’t and still haven’t seen the movie. To be honest, though I enjoyed the book, reading it hasn’t made me desperately keen to see it.

It’s a fun read, but the main character, Ram Thomas Mohammed, is a complete everyman character, and not even a particularly interesting one. I couldn’t care less about him: his life and his love interest just didn’t grab me. His friend though, who disappears off-screen for most of the book, he was interesting. It felt odd, like sitting at a table where someone close by just keeps droning away at you. From down the table you keep catching fragments of a much more interesting story, but it’s getting drowned out by the bore in front of you.

I wanted to interrupt Ram/Thomas/Mohammed just to get him to shut up. I wanted to reach into the book just so I could shove him aside and hear the story of his friend. I’ve read a few by Rushdie and his microcosms of India are far more interesting. He is simply a better writer, so it’s a little unfair, but that’s why you read good books.

I’m cheating. I’m going to catch up by writing short reviews of all the books I’ve read in the last six months or so. And from there I should be able write real reviews for books again.

Without further ado, here’s six months worth of books in three sentences, or less.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Ian Fleming. Part of the book club, I wanted to get a feel for actual Ian Fleming Bond books, before reading Faulks’. Fun, enjoyable, if you can avoid hurling the book across the room in the first 20 pages out of frustration over the blatant misogyny. I managed – just – and found it got better.

Devil May Care, Sebastian Faulks. The actual book club book – a Bond story, set in the ’60s, but written just last year by Faulks, in the style of Ian Fleming. Less misogynistic and generally offensive, but a lot less enjoyable. I frequently got bored and would put the book down, forgetting to pick it up again for a little while.

The Road, Cormac McCarthy. Another book club book – this one was brilliant, some thought it was depressing, but I found it uplifting. The ash and the grey bleakness practically leaches onto your fingers out of the page, which is nothing on the handful of images in this book that you will probably never forget. It’s a fantastic book, but be warned.

The End of Mr Y, Scarlett Thomas. A potential contender for most pretentious book I’ve ever read, possibly even beating Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, but don’t let that put you off, it’s actually pretty good. It a tour through literary criticism and modern physics with a significant dash of metaphysics tossed in – it felt inspired by Pynchon. Quite original though, and recommended.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Another book club book – chosen because, well, he’d just died. An absolutely great book, and a deserved classic, I have essentially no complaints and instruct you all to read it – it’s short, funny and a very easy read. However, apparently this book inspired many in the west to embrace communism, and that I just can’t see.

A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess. A book club companion book, for One Day In the Life…, chosen because it was a banned book, and coincidentally it features a lot of Slavic inspired slang, without any explanation – which was actually surprisingly cool. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen the famous movie. The book was a good, but a little weak.

Seize the Day, Saul Bellow. Because of all the short books, I went for another companion book – this one was a ‘day in the life’ story. Fellow book clubbers felt that our last two books (The Road and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich) were very depressing - but this, this is depressing. Every single character is deeply detestable, not just in nature and behaviour but also in past: this is a book to attack your opinion of your life and make you doubt everything. Be warned.

Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein. A monster sci-fi classic from the golden age of science fiction, regarded as serious, deep and important. Also, utterly hilarious, and quite irritating. The funny comes from Heinlein’s sexism: he simply could not conceive of any kind of female equality that wasn’t some kind of weird submissive promiscuouity. That and the long discourses on various aspects of science are also very irritating: please don’t put incidental exposition in dialogue, it’s trite.

Twilight, Stephenie Meyer. Book club again – vampire chick-lit was the required genre and this hit it. Very readable, but I was hoping that something would happen. I guess I was never a teenage girl.

The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman. Excellent: just the right line between a fun story and something that felt just a little darker and deeper. It’s a re-writing of Kipling’s The Jungle Book, though this is subtle. While it is a ‘young adult’ novel, read it and enjoy it, a very good book.

Odd and the Frost Giants, Neil Gaiman. A very short $2.50 novel that I read in 45 minutes. Cute.

The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides. Wow, one of the best books I’ve read in a very, very long time. It’s different, it draws you in, you become part of the story; in a very engaging way. Shortly after reading I saw the movie: and also wow, a very faithful to the spirit rendering.

Still Life, Louise Penny. Wow, one of the worst books I’ve ever read. Seriously, this is absolutely abysmal. Murder-mystery in genre, but pure rubbish in execution. All the way through the book I had to keep putting it down to avoid the hurl-across-the-room feeling. For example, first chapter identifies the murder victim; second chapter goes back in time a couple of days, to the victim talking to a friend in a café, she reveals that she saw a crime. And then without any pretense, the description the crime is skipped. I mean, come on! Gee, do you think that could have something to do with her death? But then, in a few pages you find out what happened anyway. And! In the end, that crime has nothing to do with the murder. Christ. After this and The Blind Assassin Canadian literature is dead to me. Oh, and this was a book club book as well.

Altered Carbon, Richard Morgan. A tip: if you read something really bad, read something light that you know you’ll enjoy very quickly afterwards or your brain will start to tell you that the hours you have to put into a book are a bad investment. This was a good counter: a really cool sci-fi noir story. Most interestingly, this was a novel centred around a highly socially disruptive technology, but in the window before the tech becomes ubiquitous and available to all. That window is interesting. There are also some Banks-ian characters, without quite the same detail in the characterisation, please read if you like sci-fi.

Pomegranate Soup, Marsha Mehran. Again, thanks to the book club, this was a simple story, and just plain nice. It wasn’t particularly well written, there wasn’t a great deal that happened and the characterisation was just plain atrocious, but in the end I enjoyed reading it and I found the story was… nice. Apart from the transparently good vs evil characters, a major criticism is the lack of direction: there are frequent, unexpected changes in direction. She almost redeems herself with a glimpse into the past of the main villain, but it just doesn’t seem to go anywhere. Still, … nice.

And the funny thing about all that? It seems to be much easier to write something about bad books than good books. That would say something the reviewer, I think. I shall work on that.

You would have heard of the movie for this one. It achieved some fame when the two Afghani child actors had to be smuggled out of Afghanistan for their own protection. Apparently, acting in a rape scene put their lives at risk. I haven’t seen the movie, I’d be interested to hear what people thought of it.

This book is in two parts. The first part is a child’s impression of living in a relatively stable and developed third-world, feudal country before the rest of the world decided to use that particular patch of ground as a World War-by-proxy. The first part continues with a story of poor outsiders attempting to make a new life in a very different world. This part of the novel is very, very good: it’s a charming view into a destroyed world that we don’t hear much about it, and certainly nothing good. Continued with a very real feeling tale of making the best of a potentially unpleasant world, and building a new life there.

My recommendation is to read this first part and then stop. I’ll tell you what, send me your copy of the book, I’ll remove the second part and then it back to you. Because the second part is just plain terrible.

The second part is a long sermon on how damaged Afghanistan is now. I don’t have a problem with being told this. I do actually think us cozy, safe residents in front of our TVs need more confrontation of the destruction done on our behalf. And I’m not uncomfortable with placing blame: the entire first world and all the individual citizens therein, are responsible. But, oh my God! Is this ever preaching! Yes, Afghanistan is in a very bad state. We see that, we know that. The real effect and impression of the damage done comes not from preaching, but from the contrast of what we hear and see with what we read in the first part of this book. Beyond the preaching, there is also a monotonous tone and freaky coincidences to wear you.

My advice again, read the first part and then stop. Pretend the book is over. You’ll enjoy it better that way, trust me.

Like Wrath of a Mad God this is fantasy too: but this is a completely different proposition. This is good, very, very good. Good enough that I will recommend this to non-fantasy reading friends. Ahhh… A breakout hit – the dream of fantasy authors the world over. Well, here’s a tip: instead of sucking, try writing high quality, original, funny and genuninely moving stories, like, say, this.

The poignancy. It’s not cloying, there’s no preaching. Not even any condescension, patronisation or pity. This is a tale of those who fall through the cracks. Those you don’t notice around you; the other nation outside, in the words of Billy Bragg, sleeping in the street. A tale of the disenfranchised, the dispossessed. told so well. So clearly, so directly, with no pathetic efforts to tug at the heart strings that, for me, this became the most moving story since Greene’s The Quiet American.

But it’s fantasy. How can a fantasy novel seriously be mentioned in the same breath as Graham Greene? Well, I’m going to have to try to justify that. On the surface, and the back cover, Neverwhere is a fantasy adventure set in a strange, fantastical world at once beneath and entwined within everyday London. This world intersects with London through the streets and the homeless. Richard Mayhew is pulled from our world into this other place. Forced onto a quest all he really wants is to be able to return home.

Viewed as a fantasy creation, this other world is a joy. Full of magic, grand quests and the most imaginative etymologies for major London landmarks: I certainly wished I knew London better. To get the right feeling I was able to transplant Sydney in place of London. Enough wandering in the City, Surry Hills, Pyrmont and Balmain and you have the feeling that there is history, and history on history here. And beyond that, it’s dark. Frighteningly, unexpectedly dark.

Like Midnight’s Children though, I read Neverwhere in two ways. As well as the straight forward fantasy interpretation, you could also see this as a story told by an unreliable narrator. What if the weird, fantastical world beneath London’s streets doesn’t exist? I mean, not even within the world of the book? What if that entire world is inside of Richard Mayhew’s mind and he just doesn’t know it? And for me, that possibility made this a touching, poignant story. A story genuinely of those who fall through the cracks; into a world that is both magical, frightening and very dangerous.

Unfortunately, to make you believe I’ll have to cite specifics. Without spoiling, I’d point at the third quest for the Blackfriars. When you read that scene think about alternate explanations.

Pure crack for fantasy geeks and about as high quality. I’ve been reading Feist since a friend recommended Magician to me when I was nine years old; in grade four, back in 1988. My friend’s name was Paul Reid and that was 20 years ago now. It’s also long since I realised that I’m pretty much only reading Feist because reading Feist is what I do.

As his books get steadily worse that becomes a weaker and weaker reason. He does have some redeeming features: he doesn’t forget where he put the plot; his sagas actually finish; he manages to avoid appearing a total right-wing fascist. After the disappointment of Martin and the betrayal of Jordan those are very good things to a recovering fantasy geek. He is still one of the reasons that I haven’t completely given up on fantasy. And of course, Gaiman.

Why am I now so disappointed? His first three books (Magician, Silverthorn and A Darkness at Sethanon) were really great fantasy epics. Magician even managed that rarest of fantasy firsts: a self-contained, single, enjoyable novel. What was so enjoyable? A rich, consistent, well-thought through world, with a deep and fascinating history. The sort of thing that makes Tolkein so popular. Those books sold well, Feist proceeded to mine that world and his characters in countless sequels. And like the fools we are, us fantasy fans lapped those sequels up.

You may think you want the blank spots in the story filled in, you may think that those tantalising glimpses are only a fraction of the glory that is fully formed, but hidden, in the author’s mind. But. You are wrong. The back story you build, the worlds you imagine around the glimpses? Those are the real joy in fantasy. Do not burn those worlds to the ground by demanding ad reading endless prequels and sequels. Let the great stories stand alone.

Feist is a great example of this. It turns out that he didn’t really have anything to surround those brief histories and as he writes more and more he’s starting to change things. Sometimes for the better, but many times the things I’ve loved have died.

I see two things here: the world is not meant to change, even if it does make things easier for someone; and, you don’t want to know your heroes too well. Even if they are only characters in a book.

Why couldn’t the blogger just leave us all in peace? Why this attempt to appear that he hasn’t just gotten bored or too lazy to update? Why this empty post tantalising and teasing with a promise; only to disappoint with more deathly silence.

Yep, this is one of those posts.

But! I actually do promise to post something real soon. No! Really!

And, in a desperate attempt to appear trustworthy, here’s a short overview of what’s been going on.

• Switched from the horror of FreeBSD I now have a brand new MacBook Pro as my primary computer. After nine years I’m finally being paid to use the platform I stayed loyal to throughout the dark years. Hopefully the new computer, well set up, will actually help me write more here. It got me writing this.

• New project. Can’t talk about it. Cool though. Has inspired some general problem solving that I can talk about though. There will be some technical recipes on here for the first time.

• Briefly had a fish tank on my desk at work. It was very nice. The tank did well, but then I had to move desks. Probably worth doing, but you’d want to be more sure of where you were sitting.

• Joined a book club. Read quite a few books. And yep, that means reviews. There will be some of those coming soon.

• Still annoyed at various parts of my industry, enough to rant.

Hopefully, all that and more to be posted.