Books I am looking forward to in 2010

Tell-All by Chuck Palahniuk - Chuck tackles the real life story of  Lillian Hellman lover of Dashiell Hammet 

Havoc by Chris Wooding sequel to the frankly marvellous Malice - why have they been keeping me waiting for a whole year???

The Road, Bad Blood and Chasers - the first three Being Human books.  I've never been tempted to read a Doctor Who novel but having been a fan of Being Human from the pilot stage it only seems right to read these

Bridge of Clay by Markus Zusak - The Book Thief was a joyously depressing read can this one live up to it?

Play to Kill by PJ Tracy - The mother and daughter writing team bring the Monkeewrench gang back after an absence of about 3 years - what took you guys so long?

Where are the Na'vi's genitals?

I didn't really want to see Avatar.  Like Titanic the hype of people claiming it to be the greatest film ever and its huge box office success sort of put me off.  I didn't want to see Mamma Mia for the same reasoning.  I think that I may be a snob in that case and may need to see someone about that.  But an invite to go to the cinema with a good friend and my first 3D experience since Children In Need 1993 and their Doctor Who Special Dimensions in Time, prompted me to see Avatar

And so to the film, well it's good, not bad at all.....greatest film ever?  I doubt it.  What struck me most while watching it was how it reminded me so much of other things.  Aliens is one of my favourite films so I couldn't help but see some of the similarities - the loaders have morphed into gun toting marine outer armour, there is even a classic bitch line 'GET AWAY FROM HER YOU BITCH'  is lovingly replaced by 'YOU'RE NOT THE ONLY ONE WITH A GUN BITCH'.  The plot, bad guy infiltrates the enemy only to find himself on their side and also falling in love with one of them in the end is not original and certain plot points fly out of no where but what truly sells the film to you is the visuals.  The world of Pandora is beautiful and fully realised. The venus flytrap plants on a grand scale, the masses of Na'vi and their language, the floating islands, the animals, all in all very good

Other things that Avatar made me think of was Billie Jean (Jake and Neytiri walking on dayglo moss), Can You Feel The Love Tonight (Jake and Neytiri running through the jungle at night), the animals made the noises of the velociraptors from Jurassic Park and other have pointed out similarities to Fern Gully and Dances With Wolves, but enough about the actual film what about the viewing experience of 3D

Here's a picture of me wearing the rather fashionable Real D glasses. Well the 3D was impressive, the Real D 3D trailer was most impressive and as the film progressed you did get lost in the 3D and towards the end it was less noticeable.  But I found the 3D glasses most uncomfortable both to wear and on my eyes.  I'm hoping that I will get more used to it as I think that 3D cinema is a good experience but how will it translate to the DVD market.  Surely most of Avatar's massive takings is down to people wanting to experience the 3D effects, has home 3D technology caught up enough to allow people to truly experience it on their screens at home?  Time will tell

Until the next time

Spotify Playlists

One of my greatest distractions in life seems to be Spotify.  I was one of the lucky few in England to get spotify with free membership during the window they had open.  Now you can only get it through premium membership, or get the free version that I have by being invited by someone who pays for premium.  So unfortunately I have no free memberships to invite you with.

However if you do already have spotify then you will know how flaming marvellous it is and one of the grand features is that you can create your own playlists and share them with others, so I thought I would take this opportunity to share some of my playlists with you

1980's
1990's
and finally my Dance playlist

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.