Pygmy - Chuck Palahniuk

And so to my latest update - again a long time in the making. Perhaps my reading has been distracted by the endless hours of work - but more likely the technological delights of twitter, spotify and the iPlayer have been soaking up my time away from reading. I miss not riding the bus to work as this provided ample reading time, I am tempted into buying some kind of eReader or iPod touch to facilitate audio book listening on the morning stroll to work

But enough with the distractions of modern life and to my latest book review

I'm a fan of Chuck Palahniuk (not an obsessive fanboy however), when anyone asks me who is my favourite author then he is the answer I give. His books have plots I like full of crazy situations and occasional twists, but more than that he develops a rhythm in the writing that becomes a kind of shorthand as the book progresses

His latest book is Pygmy. In it we are presented with agent number 67, nicknamed Pygmy by the American family who take him in under the guise of an exchange student. Throughout the book we are shown flashes of Pygmy's training in the home country and his and the other agents attempts at infiltrating American society in order to set up Operation Havoc. But for me this book became not about the story but the reading of it. As we are told the story through the eyes, thoughts and words of Pygmy we are presented with some very twisted broken English. To start with I couldn't get my head around the language, couldn't get a grasp on what was happening. I normally devour a Palahniuk swiftly and with great relish but this was something new to me. I put it aside after the first chapter for a day or two as I didn't want to get frustrated. When reading it at my parents house I found that by treating the text almost as poetry I was able to get through it much easier, working with the punctuation the rhythm of the writing became clear and as the story began I started to really enjoy it, phew!

There is plenty of satire here on modern American culture and in particular the school system and its pupils, the use of language is great but I found it to have a slight anticlimax the great ending for me never came.

This is a short book, not as short as his previous novel Snuff however, but it took me a long time to read. If you are new to Palahniuk then this certainly is not the place to start, I'd recommend Lullaby or of course Fight Club but if you are interested in books that play with and almost create their own language like Clockwork Orange then give this a try

Reasons for not reading - web suggestions

Well there has been one major reason why I have not been reading a lot recently and that reason is Spotify

If you are looking for a way to waste your time then you could do a lot worse than investigate this streaming music service

also I highly recommend this reading resource Fantastic Fictionfor helping you find out more about your favourite series and also finding new authors to explore

Selected Works of T.S. Spivet

It's a long time since I've posted anything to the blog and it feels as if I haven't been reading that much but one book I really had to blog about was The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet



There is something about this book, it has a certain charm that I can't explain - I've been describing it to people as an American The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time They both concern special young men who go on a journey borne out of their own idiosyncrasies. Spivet may or may not be autistic but he is certainly extremely intelligent and talented



The book is peppered throughout with annotations, maps, drawings and diagrams which go someway to explaining how he thinks. You see T.S. Spivet draws maps and charts of everything, whether that be mundane activities, geographical features or incidences of people walking alone he charts, maps and records all these things and analyses what they mean



When he is invited to take up a post at the Smithsonian Museum (put forward by his friend Dr. Yorn) little do they know he is only 12 - and he has to travel across the USA the only way a 12yr fugitive can - on the railroad.



I thoroughly enjoyed this story and you do really get behind T.S. and are immediately on his side - you are frustrated with his parents, angered at those who use him and you want a happy ending to come - it does of sorts but leaves lots of questions open - you want there to be more but more may harm what you have just read.



The pleasure in the book is in it's overall presentation, it is different in size to a normal hardback and the annotations mean the text is broken up so you are never bogged down in one piece of story for too long. Quirky is good and here is hoping that Reif Larsen can keep a good level of quirky going onto his next book

19th Wife - David Ebershoff

I did enjoy this book. Sometimes it is good to just start a review with a qualifier. My mark of a good book is whether I would want to read another book by the author and The Danish Girl looks quite tempting

The 19th Wife presents the reader with two tales - one set in the present day of an excommunicated young gay Mormon guy trying to prove the innocence of his mother - a 19th Wife. The other are historical documents and such relating to another 19th Wife the famous Ann Eliza Young

The book opens up with the modern day and I was immediately drawn into the world of of Jordan and his back story. I feared from this point on that the 'history' aspect of the novel would drag and not be interesting however the opposite ended up being true. Towards the latter part of the book Jordan's story became a tad irritating - he as a character was fine but what I found unconvincing was his relationship with a fellow gay ex-Mormon and the hint that he was a changed character towards the end.

The history aspect of the book was surprisingly compelling - whether the unknown area of polygamy kept me going or whether it was the quality of the writing I'm not sure, but it was well written.

I think the success of this novel lay in my expectations, to say I had none to begin with would be false, I anticipated that I would not enjoy the book and at over 600 pages it appeared to be a slog but the modern aspect was my lead in and my initial enjoyment of the contemporary story ultimately led me to dislike it's apparently easy conclusion.

Would the book have been better had the author just focused purely on the historical aspect - a merely fictionalised biography of a historical figure? I don't know - It probably would have sold fewer copies. And certainly the contemporary story wasn't strong enough to stand on it's own

But to return to my original qualifier I did enjoy this book and would and have recommended it - I guess the expectations I had at the beginning of the book which were overcome were replaced by new expectations - ones which were a little too high at the end - it's never a good sign when you want a book to end

So let's see if I can pick up a copy of The Danish Girl somewhere. Is it better to read something before it becomes a film?

I've referred to the characters as Mormons - In the book the modern day characters are part of a sect referring to themselves as Firsts these are an offshoot of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The historical characters are set in a time when the religion was in it's relative infancy so no division is made. I don't understand religions, I really don't.

Up A Tree In The Park At Night With A Hedgehog

So this is my review for it, and even as I type I'm still undecided on what i actually think about the book

While I was reading it I kept feeling like a needy chick asking questions...What is the point? Where is this all going? Can this guy's friends and family really be this odd?

This isn't really a story, and it doesn't really have a plot it is more a loosely connected series of 'funny' moments. OK I feel bad putting funny in inverted commas there are some humorous moments mainly involving physical harm happening to people

This book would be good for readers of things like Nuts magazine I would imagine as it is written in short punchy segments and features physical harm and sexual relations with virginal Koreans

I just didn't really get the point of it all, maybe the point is above to appeal to Nuts readers. Jasper Fforde has described it as page turningly odd and it is a page turner and it is certainly odd but I'm not sure that Mr Fforde is being entirely complimentary

I don't regret reading this book - and I very well might read another P. Robert Smith should a free copy come my way and I have a train journey to make and I'm not reading another book

Hater by David Moody

So here it is the first review - I've just got back from the cinema after seeing Frost/Nixon so I'm doing several bad impersonations of Richard Nixon or at least Frank Langella doing Richard Nixon. And the weather is pretty much a blizzard here right now - anyway I digress

Hater by David Moody

This book was originally self published by the author a few years ago and there is a new edition coming out by Sci-Fi and Fantasy imprint Gollancz in February 2009

Danny our protagonist is not an unlikeable guy but he's more lazy Joe than average Joe but his kids, now there's another story they make me thankful I don't have kids they are just so annoying

Set in the UK Danny is witness to a violent attack of an old woman by a businessman but soon the violence escalates and man is attacking it's fellow humans and the reasons are never clear. Infact no reasons are given in the book, characters speculate but I liked the fact that the reason for the sudden and violent attacks is never fully explained

Danny's story is punctuated by vignettes of violence that are raw and brutally described and they really help to heighten the tension - there is a particularly nasty scene set in a hospital involving a scalpel but I shall say no more- but it may make some men a little queasy

In the last quarter of the book the story takes a turn and moves quickly towards the end - which has been left open for the forthcoming sequels - how the story can and does continue I'm not sure but if it is as succinctly written as this book it should be no slog to get through

The film have apparently been bought by Guillermo del Toro and I look forward to seeing how this is brought to the screen. Yes there is horror and gore here but it is the ordinariness, the banality that makes it shocking. del Toro says 'Hater will haunt long after you read the last page' while it didn't haunt me the adrenalin from the last quarter certainly kept me up at night

This is a blokey book but should appeal to those who enjoyed the films Dog Soldiers and 28 Days Later, but be warned this is not a Zombie book

Welcome

Hello all!

This is the relaunch of the blog that I started to write over a year ago with a review of Vulcan's Forge by Jack du Brul. I don't blame him or the book for it not going any further than that first review

My aim is to type reviews of everything im reading and hopefully embed some youtubery of visual reviews of the books

If you've got any suggestions of books you think I might like then drop me a line and I'll mull them over - my reading isn't as eclectic as I would like to think but anything modern and contemporary I give a try

So see you soon