Busytown: Holiday reading lust
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This is about the fourth recommendation of Hilary Mantel I've come across this month.
Haven't read Wolf Hall yet but will throw in a recommendation for Beyond Black.
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More than a few years ago I started reading Beyond Black, but ended up putting it down as I couldn't get into it. But this has spurred me to try it again, as well as A Place of Greater Safety.
And more Mantel actually, because she's been quite prolific.
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But I picked up a biography of William Golding with some of my Christmas book vouchers.
The life itself is a bit boring - writers by and large just sit at desks and write - but the discussion of his work has sent me looking at some of his other books.
That's the problem with biographies of writers. Unless, of course, they're alcoholic fuck-heads who can't keep their pricks in their trousers or their hands to themselves, then it becomes very interesting indeed for all the wrong reasons. Continuing my biography kick, I'm about half way through Carol Sklenicka's life of Raymond Carver, I writer I admire enormously. I'm beginning to wish I hadn't, because his treatment of his first wife and children is frankly nauseating. A user with a massively engorged sense of entitlement is putting it mildly, and I don't know if any book is worth that kind of human wreckage being left in its wake.
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My literary discovery of the holidays - years and years late - is William Golding.
Re Lord of the Flies ... I always loved the description of Simon floating out to sea in the phosphorescence. And the ending!
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Just finished Wolf Hall and it's fair dripping with atmosphere, and eloquent turns of phrase. I wonder if it'll mean a flurry of readers deciding that maybe historical fiction can be literary or vice versa.
next on the reading list is the new Jasper Fforde - "Shades of Grey". His Thursday Next books are bloody good fun.
I want to read Cormac McCarthy's The Road too (before the movie comes out) and to listen to Nick Cave and Warren Ellis's soundtrack which sounds to be suitable sparse and moody.
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next on the reading list is the new Jasper Fforde - "Shades of Grey".
Oh, I'd LOVE to know how that goes - I am a huge fan of Jasper Fforde but found the last Thursday Next a bit wanting - love the Nursery Crimes books though.
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Oh, I'd LOVE to know how that goes - I am a huge fan of Jasper Fforde but found the last Thursday Next a bit wanting
Me too. I gave my daughter The Eyre Affair to read a couple of nights ago, and she necked the whole thing in one sitting and wants more right about now, please.
I did really enjoy the last Thursday Next, but towards the end, there was something making me feel a little dissatisfied, that I couldn't really put my finger on.
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It felt forced to me. It didn't have the air of effortless entertainment and cleverness that his other books seem to exude.
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Our PM who is a nice enough guy but needed speech therapy and remedial english classes as a kid and Tolley who needed an education have gone and taken the sector down this rocky road to no-where.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/3288378/Government-offensive-smacks-of-desperation
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Gordon Campbell at Scoop and Colin Espiner at Stuff had very good columns on this debacle-in-the-making too.
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The above are John Hattie's views. In light of his status as an advisor to John Key, they are very interesting.
Why the rush?
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Blitzkreig, Cecelia. Gives time for opposition to build otherwise.
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He seems at odds with Tolleys policy.
Interesting how the accomodated (excluded) figure 27% fits into the 30% failure rate expected in a normal distribution, but with such jiggery pokery would create a success rate of over 80%.
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My (extended) holiday reading lust has been killed by Doctorov's City of God. Great book but either I don't have the brainpower and patience or I've read myself out. Back to the library it goes. I need a beguiling book to get me back on the reading bandwagon. Get me a science fiction maybe? Or perhaps I'll find Sydney Bridge Upside Down so lauded in The Listener.
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Get me a science fiction maybe? Or perhaps I'll find Sydney Bridge Upside Down so lauded in The Listener.
I'm in the middle of re-reading The Earthsea Quartet. The second drags a bit, but overall I am reminded of how compelling well-characterised and evocative prose can be. You start to sort of believe in magic.
It makes a stark contrast to that blue movie I finally saw the other night. I suspended my disbelief like a piñata from the ceiling, and Cameron duly smashed it into a million fluttery little 3D air anemone.
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Or perhaps I'll find Sydney Bridge Upside Down so lauded in The Listener.
Read this in just over a day this weekend - which for me at the moment is impressively fast.
Read it, y'all. It's that good. I'm writing a review of this and The Graveyard Book (Neil Gaiman) in the next couple of days and I'm almost embarrassed at how I'm loving every book I read at the moment.
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Hope nobody minds if I relieve a bleak news week with some escapist thread necromancy.
The recent sci-fi genre bunfight here has finally led me to Joe Haldeman's classic The Forever War - got it today and can't wait to get started. Apparently Ridley Scott is filming an adaptation in 3D right now as well.
And, this just in, for Auckland-based Pratchett devotees who like a bargain, the secondhand bookshop in St Kevin's Arcade presently has a fair whack of the Discworld series available in almost-mint paperbacks for $10 each (I think Truckers and Diggers are there as well). These don't even look secondhand - they're very recent reprint editions, with the original Josh Kirby artwork for bonus points.
Might be a nice way to complete a collection, or if you prefer to buy new or already have the whole series in first-edition hardbacks, you could pick up one or two as gifts and pass the Pratchett addiction onto new fans-to-be...
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And, this just in, for Auckland-based Pratchett devotees who like a bargain, the secondhand bookshop in St Kevin's Arcade presently has a fair whack of the Discworld series
Thanks Sam. I was hoping you could delete the tip, copied above, so I could race in and get it first, but too late for that now.
As for the forth in The Earth Sea Trilogy, Tehuna, it seemed to be the longest, but almost all the relevant action happened in too few pages for my liking. You have to wonder what she was trying to achieve after 18 years between 3 and 4. I've read some intersting reviews and opinions on this, including this from a Doctoral Thesis. And now they tell me there are two more books besides. The Tales of Earthsea and The Other Wind.
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On the topic of LeGuin, does anyone know where I might beg or borrow a copy of The Word for World is Forest, referenced in this superb blog post? It isn't in Auckland City Libraries (probably long since pruned and sold off) and I would quite like to have a look at a copy.
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Sam F - "The Word for World is Forest" is one of my favourite Ursula Le Guins - my copy is upstairs. I think I know where there is another accesible copy (in Oamaru, where I'll be next week.) If it's still there,
I'll drop you line - this offer because, that blog post *is* superb (and bookmarked.) -
Thanks! That'd be wonderful. Have just sent you an email.
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If that doesn't pan out, Sam, it is held by about eight other New Zealand libraries, including North Shore, so you could probably interloan it.
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This is me being real generous because until you linked to that Blog I hadn't thought of getting it, but now I really want one too.
But for the sake of my Karma, there's one on Trademe right now.
Good luck.
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If that doesn't pan out, Sam, it is held by about eight other New Zealand libraries, including North Shore, so you could probably interloan it.
Ha - I'd forgotten you could do interloans at public libraries for some reason (although I did a heap for my thesis via the UoA Library). Will see how I go.
Thanks for the tip, recordari; Trademe is blocked here (fair enough too!) but will look when I get home.
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Trademe is blocked here (fair enough too!) but will look when I get home.
Being in charge of these things, I suppose I should put in place some filtering to prevent staff spending time on FB, Trademe, Twitter and PAS, but then what would I do?
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