23rd October '05
Jonathon Strange & Mr. Norrell- Susanna Clark

This jet black tome has been hanging around the place a fair while; a friend of ours lent me it about a year ago but despite Amazon’s best efforts to convince me that it would be right up my alley given my predilection for Terry Pratchett, Joss Whedon and Jasper Fforde, I never got round to starting it. Only when I ran out of reading material in English did I embark on the intimidating 800 odd pages. And then I never looked back.

Set in the early 19th Century, it’s about the return of magic to England after a long absence. This magic is wrought by the two central characters, Norrell- a fussy, bookish egotist and his relatively normal apprentice, Jonathon Strange. The book starts with gentlemen questioning a world where we can only read about theoretical magic, where ‘magicians’ can study spells but are unable to perform any. Practical magician Norrell soon steps in and performs some impressive feats. Shortly after, Strange becomes his adept apprentice and before long both titular mages are in the government’s employ helping the English battle Napoleon’s armies and gaining ever greater powers. That would be an entertaining enough plot, but JS & Mr N also contains elements of history, mystery and social comedy.

I hold that it would be quite remiss not to mention the narrative style and period detail shewed to the reader. Indeed, this is probably the closest I will ever come to reading Jane Austen. One word is never used when ten will do and if there’s an archaic irregular verb then it is boldly inserted. I often stopt to reread a sentence that contained words I’d mentally underlined in wavy red pen; However there’s no denying that it adds to the Georgian atmosphere and sense of otherworldliness.

I read aloud the first couple of chapters to Sita and she could not be doing with it all. Judging by other critiques of the book, it’s not to everyone’s taste. To enjoy this book you have to be willing to suspend your disbelief, enjoy tales of magic and care about people who do, frankly, sound incredibly pompous and English. Still that’s not too hard to get over, surely? The multiple plot threads will keep you spellbound and I personally can’t wait to hear about their further adventures.

/ 5

13th Jan '05
Red Dog- Louis DeBernieres
Charming little volume from the author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.

If this author didn’t have a bestseller or five already under his belt, I’d like to have heard him try and pitch this book to a publisher- “Well, it’s a collection of true stories about a flatulent red dog in Western Australia, and, along the way, we all learn something about human nature, the immigrant experience and the incipient stirrings of a new culture in the Southern hemisphere.” Luckily, Louis DeBernieres has enough money to do whatever he pleases these days and as a result we have this book of mythic vignettes from the life of one ‘Red Dog’.

Written in a style and vocabulary that wouldn’t challenge your average 12 year old, Red Dog relates stories as told to the author by people who actually knew the titular beastie. The Aussie dialect jumps off the page like a colourful episode of Neighbours as swagmen, kookaburras and ‘strewthing’ all put in regular appearances and bring the warmly described characters to life.

It won’t take you more than a couple of hours to read the whole book, but even so, I’d recommend reading it a chapter at a time over several days as its effects are subtle and you’ll be sorry you finished it so quickly. I can’t think of another book that covers this kind of ground so well.

/ 5

2nd Jan '05
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
Young autistic detective will keep you gripped

You've probably been recommended this book by at least two people and the good news is: they're right. They were completely wrong to recommend you `Vernon God Little', mind, but that's another story... When I was a teacher in an American high school we had a half-day training from the special needs department on Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism. Kids with Asperger's are often very high-functioning, bright kids, but are unable to relate to other people and have an extremely hard time understanding metaphors, sarcasm and facial expressions. We were taught how to adapt our classes if we had a kid with this condition in class. Had this book been written at the time it would have been a perfect introduction to understanding this fascinating mindset and learning about the daily struggles these kids, and their guardians, face.

Christopher is the `gifted', teenaged narrator of this story which starts with the murder of their neighbour's dog. He sets out to investigate who killed it and along the way learns family secrets and travels far outside of his usual comfort zone. His strangely ordered thinking and lack of shades of grey in his emotions make his narration unique. His reasoning is impeccable but weird and even the most mundane goings-on are rendered bizarre through Christopher's eyes. The more red cars he sees in a row on the way to school, the better day he'll have and if he sees yellow cars, then he won't talk, eat or communicate with anyone for potentially days. He wont't eat any food if it touches a different food on his plate yet he can do all the Rain Man mathematical tricks.

At one stage, he ends up going on a solo journey, recording people's bewildered reactions to him as he goes. As a reader, you're caught up in worrying about him and at the same time amused at the gentle fish-out-of-water comedy that will be familiar to you if you've read Iain Banks' `Whit' which has a naïve but preternaturally smart member of a Scottish cult leaving home for the first time to complete a holy mission in the outside world.

The lack of verbiage and insistence of the plot makes this highly readable. It's a great read for a plane or train journey, or maybe even a long tube ride if you skip the mathematical sidetracks. If you know someone with this condition or are likely to encounter someone in your profession, you'll gain a lot of insight through this well researched and gripping novel. Even if you don't, you'll enjoy your travels with Christopher and maybe pick up some 'A'-Level maths along the way.

/ 5

5th November '04
Untorn Tickets- Paul Burke
70's Coming-of-age klepto antics

Nice little book about two friends from a dodgy part of London who bond at their grammar school, go on to work in a cinema where they soon start conning the corporate owners out of cash to fuel their extracurricular activities. This book won't change the world, but has some nice observational humour about relationships, 6th form college and the 70s music scene.

/ 5

21st October '04
Thinly Disguised Autobiography- James Delingpole
No-holds barred confessional

if you like Hugo Young's How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, this'll be right up your alley. It's a weird book, in that the author behaves like a tosser throughout, but because he's brutally honest about his life, you have to admire him. Some incredibly accurate chapters on bad drug experiences had me almost having a panic attack by proxy. not often you can say that about the paperback you're reading.

/ 5

19th October '04
Monstrous Regiment- Terry Pratchett
Terry phones in latest paperback installment

I'm still slightly ashamed of enjoying the Discworld™ novels as mush as I do. I started reading Pratchett when I was 14 and I've read all his books in order since then. I burned through this one in two days and I don't know if it's the fact that they're practically all made up of conversation, have "chapters" than rarely span more than three pages or because they don't require much in the way of deep thought that makes them so readable.

Anyroad, this one is about a young lady who goes to war disguised as a bloke and how she shapes the history of her nation. Although there's the usual Discworld characters- Werewolves, Trolls, Vampires, etc., this one's quite light on the magic, concentrating more on gender politics and the inherent absurdity of war.

If you've read Pratchett's other books and liked the ones with wizards and Rincewind best, this may be a tad disappointing. If you've never read any of his books before, this isn't the worst place to start, as you don't need much in the way of a backstory and it'll introduce you to his esoteric style. If you've read lots of his other books, then you'll need no persuading for this one; I've never met a person who's just read two or three discworld novels. You're either a fan, working your way through all 30 or so, or someone who can't be doing with worlds carried on the back of elephants and turtles and footnotes on every other page. So, in summary, not his funniest, nor most thought-provoking, but still undeniably enjoyable reading.

/ 5

12-September-2004
Something Rotten- Jasper Fforde
To read or not to read? Easy...

This is the fourth book in the Thursday Next series, books set in an alternative world where literary debate often ends in street riots, time travel is frequent, Wales is an independent socialist republic and dodos exist but air travel doesn’t. Our heroine, Thursday Next, works for various government bodies concerned with regulating the world of fiction and safeguarding books but this doesn’t make her a glorified librarian rather a well-rounded, all-action intellectual.

This book has her trying to save Hamlet, avert an apocalypse, survive multiple assassination attempts, un-erase her husband, save George Formby’s life and get Swindon to win the international Croquet championships. So if this sounds like your cup of tea, read on…

The last book, The Well of Lost Plots was a little disappointing; it was full of ideas but not as action-centred, almost as if Thursday’s losing her husband made her and the author less focussed. This book, however, has Fforde back on form and delighting in the possibilities of his alternative universe for literary exploration, (principally Hamlet) and amplifying the Goliath Corporation’s capacity for evil. Also, having fictional characters do cameos in the real world make for better adventures than seeing them careering around the fictional world where they belong. The incongruent fish-out-of-water humour can be a lot more arresting than the subtle observations of how characters behave in books.

Although you can read this as a stand-alone title (it has a glossary in the prologue of everything you need to know), you’ll do yourself a favour if you start with the first book, The Eyre Affair, since Something Rotten contains many references to previous events’s endings and you won’t find yourself wondering “What the BeJeezus is the Toast Marketing Board”.

Great book, great series. I just wonder if Fforde can keep up this level of invention in future books, as he’s churning out almost two a year. Terry Pratchett is another writer I’m fond of who’s just as prolific; but Pratchett takes a theme and runs with it, whereas Fforde’s imagination explodes with new possibilities on every turn of the page. Long may Ms.Next’s adventures continue. top

/ 5

29-August-2004
This is your life- John O'Farrell

It’s a far-fetched ending, with a heavy-handed approach to the morality of it all, but, you know what? I enjoyed it. It's about a TEFL teacher from somewhere like Bournemouth who ends up becoming a celebrity thanks to a series of lies he invents to get famous. Disappointed after reading letters he wrote to himself as a fifteen-year-old about how his adult life would be, this bloke pretends to be a successful comedian who never lets on where or when he’s doing his act. The finale’s based around his first ever appearance live on national TV.

It's not a hugely funny book, but you have to keep reading to find out how it all turns out and will keep you entertained enough on a long journey. If you liked O’Farrell’s last novel, The Best a Man Can Get, this is very much in the same vein, a compelling plot coupled with the type of everyday comedic observations you’d hear from one of your mates down the pub. top

/ 5

1-August-2004 Fraud- David Rackoff
Full review not coming soon

He does go on... I don't think I'm going to be able to review this one. I finished it, I promise. It's just the minute you finish one of his stories, it's already fading from your mind. I'd be hard pressed to remember more than 2 chapters in this collection. And probably fewer tomorrow. He's Canadian, has been to Japan (& takes every opportunity to mention he speaks Japanese) and has had some crappy jobs and illnesses. In the parlance of our times, "sucks to be you, Mr.Rackoff". top

/ 5

18-July-2004 Vernon God Little- DBC Pierre

Glad it's over

This was a struggle. At one point I was considering writing a short essay on "My feelings on not finishing books" rather than reviewing this, then at around two thirds through it picked up and became more event-driven and quite engaging and the ending almost made the whole book worthwhile. There's no doubt that DBC Pierre (an odd nom de plume, that one, it stands for Dirty But Clean, apparently) has created an important work, it's just hard to read.

What put me off was the narrator, a teenaged Texan from a dysfunctional family, Vernon "Insert contrived literary device here" Little. It's told in a first-person confessional style through the eyes of this maladjusted kid during the aftermath of a high school shooting, capturing his confused, frenetic thoughts well. You're not meant to like him, you're meant to feel sorry for him, he has everyone and everything stacked against him from the start. I didn't like his speaking style and had trouble keeping a Texan accent going in my head. Trainspotting was easier to follow. Like Catcher in the Rye the closer you are in age to the protagonist, the more keenly you'll feel for him, but it's hard to empathise too much as for the most of the book, you're trying to work out his exact role in the school shootings.

There's plenty to like once you get over the style of the book. The supporting characters are grotesquely well depicted, you get a good impression of how the American media circus chews up lives and there's plenty of room for musing on the nature of society and religion.

It's a good book, about interesting subject matter and rightly won several prestigious awards, but takes too long to get going. I wouldn't recommend it as a light read. top

/ 5

1-July-2004 Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim- David Sedaris

First off, I'm a fan. I joined Audible just to get the This American Life episodes Sedaris stars in, went to see him read at my local theatre, have all his books and consider Me Talk Pretty One Day to be one of the funniest collections of stories on self-loathing and misanthropy ever committed to paper. Suffice to say, I've been looking forward to this book for a fair while…

Every one of the stories here will make you laugh. And if you're particularly susceptible to black humour, some will make you choke on your food. Here I'm thinking, among others, of the story where he's house hunting in Europe and finds the perfect location for him and his partner- the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam. His family, as usual, comes in for some of the harshest scrutiny and makes for hilarious subject matter though. Somehow his love for them still shines through though there's a section on how they have all become more guarded, only too aware that their smallest action could prove to be fodder for a new best-selling novel.

Still a great book, and I'd give it 4 and a half if Amazon could deal with non-integers, but it's not quite as good as Me Talk Pretty. The observations and anecdotes have not quite gelled together in the same way; they are a little episodic in nature and some stories feel forced in trying to contain the disparate elements within one theme; like he has a whole notebook full of entries and has tried to shoehorn them in where they don't necessarily fit. Something that, from a comedic angle, makes not an iota of difference, but does detract from the book's stylistic whole.

I get the feeling that with a little more rumination some of the stories could have been even funnier still. But then I'd have had to wait longer to read this, and the instant-gratification-seeking now ingrained in me from 4 years living in the US means that's not an option. If you're new to Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day is the place to start, but long-term fans will not be disappointed with Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. top

/ 5

25-June-2004 The Cutting Room- Louise Welsh

Not my usual read, but really gripping… It's about a Glaswegian auctioneer who gets involved in trying to work out the provenance of some old necrophilic photos he finds in an old mansion. These photos unite unsavoury deeds from the past with present day ills and our protagonist deftly manages his investigation despite (and sometimes thanks to) his own set of vices and dubious acquaintances.

Welsh's style is reminiscent of fellow Scot, Iain Banks, but her prose is more poetic with more frequent allusions to literature, beginning chapters with dark little quotes from figures such as Poe and Rimbaud.

Once you get into this one, you'll burn through the pages. An intelligent, original novel. top

/ 5

16-June-04 Narcocorrido- by Elijah Wald

It was reduced, got a nice review on NPR and I'm all for learning more about Mexican traditions. Sita might be able to squeeze a dissertation out of it one day...

UPDATE: 25th June 2004. Nowhere near as interesting as this subject matter should be. Like being cornered by your (boring, history student, sober) friend and being told all about his field research in Mexico. Arse. Anyway, suffice to say I didn't finish it. Even the photo pages are dull. Don't follow the link to Amazon, just pay me the postage and it's yours. (hardback)

UPDATE: 23-August-04 SOLD IT! at a Family Student Housing yard sale. 50 cents... top

/5

6-June-04 All Over Creation- Ruth Ozeki

My year of spuds

If you gave up eating meat after Ozeki's last book/anti-carnivore treatise, then prepare to go organo-vegan with this thoroughly enjoyable romp. The jacket reviews say it's about nature's continual capacity for rebirth, and that's certainly the underlying theme, lesser motifs include the perils of starting smoking again, and that America has a crusty movement too- they just say "dude" more. top

/ 5

29-May-04 The Da Vinci Code- Dan Brown

Really didn't expect much from this one... priests, artists and French police... but my mate Roberto lent it to me and it was pretty hard to put down. It leads you by the hand through a murder mystery with clues full of classical allusions fully explained at every step. There's little room to ponder what's coming next and puzzles and conundrums are solved within pages of their occurring. Which is fine, and along the way there's plenty of heavy-handed conjecture about Opus Dei and the cult of Mary Magdelene. It's no Name of the Rose (4 1/2 Lulus). top

/ 5

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