Ancestor ~ Scott Sigler

You might think I’m a Scott Sigler addict, having read two of his novels recently and now reading Ancestor in tandem with his latest novel Nocturnal.

The Ancestor is a biological embryo,  implanted into cows, and grown to provide human ready organs for transplantation.  However, of course, things don't quite go to plan.  There is lots of blood and lots of violence, and if you love cows then don't read this novel!!

The writing isn’t first class, but it’s addictive and reflective of Sigler’s personality from what I can glean from the u-tube videos he’s posted. The characters are unbelievable but mostly fun, and there is plenty of real biology and science to make the plot plausible.

However,  I felt quite confused at the beginning of this novel, not really knowing what was going on, and I found the swearing a bit overboard this time.  The last third of the novel did border on silly in my opinion, even though I had suspended my disbelief, I kept thinking back to the movie Starship Troopers and how much the Ancestors reminded me of the bugs even though they were based on cows!

Nice try but this one didn't really work for me.

Maxine

2011 That Was the Year That Was

Well, we have another year just about done and dusted, and I'm sure a lot of people are with me in saying that this is a year we'd be happy to say goodbye to.  As I was packing my suitcase today in preparation for my Christmas holidays I was thinking about some of the books that I have read this year.  I can't count 2011 as my best year of reading as I didn't make my challenge of 75 novels, but if you consider that my list included Melmoth The Wanderer, Anna Karenina (nearly finished), several Charles Dickens novels and The Iliad (halfway through it), I'm pretty happy with my effort overall!

2011 was the year that I discovered Haruki Murakami, firstly with the strange Wind Up Bird Chronicle and then the beautiful Kafka on the Shore.  Dance, Dance, Dance was a little disappointing but I'm waiting in anticipation to next year when I'll be reading IQ84.  It's kind of funny but when I first joined a Book Club the genre I disliked the most was Magic Realism yet I find that the more I read, the more I enjoy it.  Murakami's novels are certainly unusual, but there's something about the characters that intrigue you; especially characters like Mr Nakata in Kafka on the Shore.  

2011 was the year that Earth Abides by George R Stewart was recommended to me by a fellow blogger after they read my review of Children of Men.  Isherwood Williams is a wonderful character, his love of the written word and his care of one of the last remaining libraries in his post apocalyptic world is very poignant in relation to today's e-book revolution.  The final chapter contains imagery that I don't think I will ever forget.  It's quite a novel, and probably one of the best in the genre.

2011 was the year that I became disillusioned with Michael Crawford after reading his autobiography Parcel Arrived Safely - Tied with String.  It taught me a lesson - if you admire someone then don't read about them!  He's way too full of himself and the fact that he had cheated on his wife totally finished me - I can't even watch him on TV now.  The realm of the autobiography is a dodgy one, in a way the author is re-inventing his own past for entertainment and that's not always such a good thing. There's something to be said for a little mystery when it comes to celebrities.

The highlight of 2011, for me, was meeting one of the best literary characters ever and his name was Owen Meany.  This diminutive little guy with the weasley face, big ears and high pitched voice was an unlikely hero.  But, hero he became and I just loved his outlook on life - he could not be put down, he had something to say and he said it loud and proud.  A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving is both funny, sad and a wonderfully put together novel. The ending is so unexpected, but the storyline had been building to just this the whole way through.  It's fantastic story telling and I totally recommend it.

So now I'm debating do I take a real book on my holiday or do I take my Kindle? I generally don't read much when I am away but I did recently pick up Cold Hand in Mine by the master of eerie stories Robert Aickman so that may make it's way into my hand luggage.

In 2012 I hope to be dabbling into a lot of Indie Horror, and have five more spots left on my list if anyone would like me to read and review their novel.  Details can be found here:

http://caffeineandchapters.blogspot.com/2011/11/are-you-on-my-2012-reading-list.html

I'll be off the air for around three weeks, so have a safe and happy Christmas everyone and I hope you find your next favourite novel in your Christmas stockings :)

All the best

Maxine

Disgrace, A Second Chance

Do you ever read a novel by a new author, find you don't like it and then don't bother with any more of his or her work?  I generally do.  It's not the same as reading a tried and true author and finding they've written a bomb.  You generally forgive  the disappointment knowing they are capable of better work.  When I was with my first book club we read Slow Man by J M Coetzee, it was a slow novel and I didn't see the point in it.  Coetzee has several novels on the 1001 list but so far I've bypassed them in favour of something else, Slow Man being too recent a disappointment for me.

However, I bought some books in a book sale last week and one of them was Disgrace by J M Coetzee.  I liked the cover and on reading that the edition was printed to celebrate the centenary of Harvill Secker and is only one of 250, 000 copies, and because this title is on the 1001 list, I thought I would give him a second chance - and I am so pleased I did - I can't put it down.  It's not long, only about 215 pages, but it's so concisely written and touches on so much emotion in so few words, it's brilliant.  Set in South Africa, the premise is about an aging University Professor who's a bit of a Casanova with the some of the young students.  He takes things too far and a student complains which leads to his resignation - a choice he takes rather than apologising for what he feels are his animal desires and which he doesn't want to keep in check. To avoid living amongst the scandal he decides to visit his daughter who lives on a small farm with boarding kennels.  They seems to connect quite well and he helps with the selling of the farm produce and looking after the dogs until one day they are savagely beaten and robbed by two black men and a boy....... His daughter had sold some of her land to a black man called Petrus who has also helped on her farm, but he is no-where to be found on the day of the attack, and  the professor thinks this is far too convenient.  Anger begins to well in him for what has been done to his daughter. This  novel is stark and brutal, but amazingly written.

I wonder if I should give William S Burroughs a scond chance??? Nah, I think I'll pass on that one!!

I finished Something Wicked This Way Comes and it was followed by a brilliant short story called A Sound of Thunder.  It's a sort of 'butterfly effect' warning about a time travel company that can take you back in time to hunt dinosaurs.  The only proviso is that you stay on the designated path and only shoot the marked dinosaurs as they would have died within the hunting time-frame anyway so that the delicate balance of cause and effect will not be disturbed.  Eckels, one of the hunters, however ignores the warning and on returning to the time capsule he steps off the path and crushes a butterfly........ it was really good.  I remember seeing some sort of movie with really bad special effects that was based on this. 

Now I'm listening to 20, 000 Leagues Under The Sea by Jules Verne and I'm sad to say I'm not enjoying it as much as Around the World in 80 Days or Journey to the Centre of the Earth.  So far, it doesn't have the fun factor that the other two have.  It's being narrated by Harlan Ellison who wrote Demon with a Glass Hand (which was the inspiration for Terminator) but he sounds like Bosley from Charlie's Angels which is putting me off a little bit!

Anyhooo, I'm in the mood for horror lately so I've just downloaded Robert Bloch's Psycho, and will try to get that listened to (along with Austen's Northanger Abbey) before bookclub next week!

Earth Abides

It's been a quiet week reading wise due to the passing of my father, but I have been re-invigorated thanks to a comment left on my review of P D James' Children of Men, in my Book Reviews blog.

I had finished and reviewed The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle which I thoroughly enjoyed, but I wasn't sure what genre I felt like reading next, but the suggestion of a Sci-Fi felt good and now I'm about a quarter of the way through Earth Abides by George R Stewart.  I have read several post-apocolyptic novels (most notably Stephen King's The Stand, Richard Matheson's I Am Legend, Phillip K Dick's Dr Bloodmoney and Cormac McCarthy's The Road) and initially I felt that this would be like I Am Legend.  However, it is not like it at all and as it was written in 1949 it was probably an inspiration for the novels above.  But, it does actually remind me of a TV program I watched recently which was a 'thought experiment' entitled Life After Humans.

The protagonist, Ish, is a student and a survivor of a plague but he is not a lone survivor.  After the initial shock he decides that instead of giving up he will utilise his research abilities and chronicle how life on Earth will continue on.  His observations so far indicate that most domestic animals will re-discover their hunting skills, though those pets that were bred purely for pandering by humans would not survive.  Sheep need a shepherd and will fall prey to the larger hunting animals, but other cattle should eventually survive after an initial struggle.

Some of the people Ish meets on his travels are trying to start their lives again by going back to basics - growing their own vegetables, keeping chickens etc whilst others have been so dependent on the big city life that there isn't much hope for them especially with Winter approaching and no way to heat their apartments.  This is a concern as nature has shown that certain species need to maintain a specific number or it may not survive in the long term...........  there is a huge amount of food for thought in what I have just read and I'm only a quarter of the way through it.

I finished Frantic by Katherine Howell, but have yet to review it, and it was a pleasure to meet her at our Caffeine and Chapters Social Book Club night.  Katherine's fifth book is almost finished and is due for release in February 2012, so watch this space as we may theme it and do a mini 'launch' on our club night for that month.

Portentous Sci-Fi?

The Day the Earth Stood Still

From floods to cyclones in Queensland and massive storms in America, the news has been like watching a disaster movie.  You know the ones, where they have the screens in the streets and the local inhabitants crowd around in horror as they watch major calamities unfold such as earthquakes, snow storms, asteroids etc  I think back to some of those early sci fi movies and some were very portentous.  Look at A Clockwork Orange – aren’t we living is such violent times?  Look at The Running Man by Stephen King – now that story showed enormous foresight (as well as The Long Walk) as there weren’t too many reality shows back then when that was written. 

One of my favourite Sci Fi’s is actually Starship Troopers!  The Robert Heinlein novel doesn’t bare much resemblance and I really struggled with it but the movie is a delight.  It does ‘corny’ so well, and the ‘bugs’ are brilliant.  Another Sci Fi I really love is Silent Running but I usually end up in tears over that one because of the ‘droids – I’m too sensitive. Alien and Aliens are a must on any DVD shelf, along with Predator and more recently Avatar.  But, it’s those movies that are set on Earth that are probably worth seeing again to see how we are living today – and maybe take in some of the warnings – The Day The Earth Stood Still would be a good place to start and maybe Soylent Green?!

However, all of the above has absolutely nothing to do with my current reading!  I’ve just started Violent Exposure by Katherine Howell as she will be talking to my book club this month.  I have not read anything by her before, and generally I don’t read much in the crime genre so I wasn’t sure what I would think of this.  I’m about 70 pages in and can honestly say it has hooked me.  I like the short snappy sentences; the descriptions are to the point with no messing around, and it feels like real life. We get the hook right away, and now the intrigue is to slowly unravel.

My audio read is now Middlemarch by George Eliot.  I had started reading this as a physical book last year, read about 200 pages and then couldn’t renew it at the library.  I bought a copy but I keep slipping it under the next book on the pile next to my bed.  The only way to do it justice and read it was to download.  At the moment we are getting to know the inhabitants of Middlemarch.  Dorothea and Celia Brooke are two young ladies who live with their amiable uncle.  Dorothea has been proposed to by the much older dried up Mr Casaubon who may one day become a bishop.  Dorothea is old fashioned in her ways, rather condescending to her sister and those she dislikes, but she does want to do good for those less fortunate than herself. She feels that she can be a good wife for Casaubon, not wanting a man of her own age.  The Vincy’s are a manufacturing family and their son Fred is a likeable young man but idle and prone to build up debts with promises to pay based on his hoped for inheritance from his Uncle Featherstone.  He is in love with his childhood friend the plain Mary Garth but she does not respect him because of his ways and has refused his offer of marriage.  Lydgate, the medical man, is new to Middlemarch and will obviously provide a love interest, maybe to Fred’s sister the beautiful Rosamond.  Virginia Woolfe called this novel ‘one of the few English novels written for grown-up people’. I love these long novels, where the characters unfold and you get involved in their lives. 

I’m still ploughing through Melmoth the Wanderer.  The Spaniard’s story is a little convoluted and I guess it will come to the point but it has been interesting. However, I won’t bore you with it here J

I’m taking a rest from Jules Verne, but only briefly.  I enjoyed Around The World in 80 Days and Journey to the Centre of the Earth so much I absolutely must read some more soon.

Eh?

I don’t know.  I think I must have missed something with The Man in The High Castle.  In a way it was a bit like Carry Me Down – it had no ending.  The authors draw you into these peoples lives and situations, build it to a climax and then pull you out of it…… and then what?  You’re just left hanging and feeling like you’ve just wasted valuable reading time.                                                  

I thought I hadn’t downloaded the whole novel to my iPod.  I listened to the last disc twice, then again on my laptop – and nope, there was definitely no ending.  I ask you ‘what is the point?’!!

It was an interesting theme, and the various character stories, though not necessarily intertwining, were good.  I liked the idea of the ‘Oracle’……… but you don’t get that satisfied feeling when there are a ton of loose ends that need tying up.  I feel very let down.

I’m still giggling through Choke.  It really does evoke some funny (if not sometimes shocking) images.  Nurse Paige who takes care of Victor’s mother in the nursing home has read his mother’s diary and informs him that his mother believed that Victor’s embryo contained DNA from Jesus Christ himself.  Another patient at the nursing home recognises Victor (from a choking incident) and says that he has the capacity for great love and compassion.  Victor is terrified of this statement and needs re-assurance from his best friend Denny that he is in fact a degenerate loser!  So degenerate in fact, that they both spend a night prowling gardens and drinking the beer left out for slugs.  This really is a bizarre story, but it's extremely well written and is a very satirical slant on getting through life the best way you can.

I have started The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky which is about an impoverished and orphaned Prince Myshkin who has travelled from Switzerland where he was being treated for his idiocy (epilepsy) to St Petersberg to acquaint himself with the Princess Myshkin.  They are distantly related, and are both pretty much the end of the family line. The princess is not very keen on meeting him at first and is worried that he is an itinerant traveller who will require assistance; but she warms to him and so do her three daughters.  He is conversational, though he doesn’t seem to know when to shut up, and when he does he seems embarrassed about what he has just said.

At one point the characters are talking about Capital Punishment and Myshkin describes how he watched a man guillotined.  He felt it a terrible punishment as there was such a certainty of death in those last seconds from hearing the knife fall, there is no hope of getting away - an awful trauma for the soul.  He also talks about a man who was up before a firing squad, and how he felt that the five minutes he had left was actually a really a long time.  He could spend two minutes saying goodbye to his fellow prisoners etc but when he was reprieved instead of savouring the infintisimal minutes he now had, he wasted many of them. This is, without doubt, autobiographical and very haunting….. apart from the many Russian names and nicknames, I know I am really going to really enjoy this novel.

"Knackered" isn’t the right word but it’s the first word that comes to mind

I wasn’t going to sit in front of the computer tonight after being glued to it at work this past week, but if I leave it any longer I’ll finish these batch of reads without having talked about them J


The Man in the High Castle by Phillip K. Dick  is a Hugo Award winning novel, set in an alternate reality where Germany and Japan won the war.  America has been divided into the Pacific States and the Reich controlled states.  Germany has wiped out Africa and are still exterminating the few remaining Jews. It is more tolerable to live in the Pacific States as the Japanese are more cultured and less ‘thuggish’ in their daily dealings.

The High Castle is a remote mansion, inhabited by the author of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy.  This book, which is banned in the Reich States, tells of an alternative reality where Germany and Japan lost the war.

I’ve almost finished listening to this, but I can’t relate to any of the characters.  I like the premise, it is well written, but I’ve enjoyed other Dick novels more (Maze of Death and Dr Blood Money especially).

Choke on the other hand I love.  You are warned at the beginning that you won’t like the protagonist – but I do!  You can’t help it.  Victor is a sex addict, who works in an 18^th Century themed park, and pays his ageing mother’s hospital bills.

As his mother needs a feeding tube and the bills get higher and higher, Victor needs to bring in more money.  He does this by selecting a restaurant, and choking halfway through his meal.  He always finds a saviour who then will remember him yearly by way of an anniversary card and (usually) a nice cheque.  Victor sees this as helping other people too -  making them feel special, becoming a hero…..

Victor never knew his father, but his mother is keen to tell the story to Victor but unfortunately she does not recognise her only son even though he visits her regularly – she sees him as one of her defence lawyers from her shady past!  Victor is also the bad guy from the all the elderly patients' pasts.  He accepts all their abuse as he thinks that it makes them feel better about what happened to them, and it’s not worth arguing the point with them.

It’s a very unusual novel and very quirky.  I like the way Palahniuk sums up the previous paragraph by saying: for example: “Freedom” isn’t the right word but it’s the first word that comes to mind.

The Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker isn’t overly fantastic.  The writing is a little amateur.  Adam Salton has come to England from Australia to stay with his elderly uncle.  Whilst there he learns about the region they are situated in, which was known as Mercia in Roman times, and also known as the Lair of the White Worm - the worm being some monstrous snake or dragon.

There is something Lovecraftian about it, but it’s not on the same level.  I will persevere with it however.

That pretty much sums up my reading for this week.  I’ve got The Idiot by Fyodor Doestoyesdky lined up on my iPod (another 1001), though it’s only half downloaded from Overdrive, so I need to work out how to finish it off otherwise I’ll be downloading it as an EBook instead!!

Until the weekend then........

A Bit of a Mind Bend

Finally I finished The End of Mr Y.  In the end all that metaphysical talk got on my nerves and bored me.  I enjoyed the first half, and it was well written, but I didn’t like the character of Ariel Manto. She was self destructive and I think I got the message by her lifestyle choices, but the obscene language got a bit too much in the end – it was unnecessary.  It was a bit of a mind bend, but became pretentious, annoying and too long.

But, one thing I like about reading is: one book generally leads to another.  In this case I have been led to Edwin A. Abbott’s Flatland. I had heard of this book in another novel, but for some reason I thought it was made up for the storyline.  Having heard of it again I thought I would see if it was at the library.  It is and hopefully I can pick  it up on my way home tomorrow night.  Apparently Carl Sagan liked this book so much its ideas were utilised in his series Cosmos.

Book of the Dead ~ Diogenes' plans all went to hell, but he still managed to cause death and destruction beforehand.  The mysterious Constance has realised that he has played her for a fool and is pursuing him with the intention of assassinating him.  However, Pendergast is fast on the trail……. I like the way story has panned out.  At the beginning we’re under the impression that we’re in for a ‘curse of the mummy’ style novel when it’s not like that at all.

Harry Potter & the Order of The Phoenix ~ The trio are back at Hogwart’s but where’s Hagrid….?  Hermione, Ron and the loathsome Draco have been made prefects so I expect we’ll be having some fun with that throughout the novel!

I need to find out what is going on with i-Tunes.  It’s listing the bookmarks on each disc I'm uploading as 1, 10, 11, 12……19, 2, 20, 21………  it’s driving me nuts!!  I’m starting from scratch loading individually. It’s taking me all night. Help!!

Y is Annoying Me!

I’m not so sure about The End of Mr Y now…. it’s starting to annoy me to the point I wish it would finish.  I don’t like the character of Ariel Manto (apparently an anagram for I’m not real) it’s just ‘blithering’ on and I’m losing interest!  I was hoping to finish it today whilst I was cleaning the house but my iPod went flat (again) so I’m giving it a good charge whilst watching the Federal Election results on the Teev.

The Book of The Dead is heading towards its climax – it seems Diogenes is planning his big crime at the grand opening of the Tomb of Senef which is also being broadcast so that the exposure to his crime will be tenfold; and apparently it all relates back to a terrifying experience from his childhood. 

I actually feel like I have been bogged down by these two books, I haven’t ticked anything off the list for a little while so I hope to remedy this next week with some exciting reads lined up.  BUT I am enjoying Book of the Dead, it’s easy to read at the end of the day…….. I just seem to have trouble finding the actual time to read it!

Lemming is on the Teev in a minute and I remember that it got really good reviews but it wasn’t on general cinema release so I didn’t get to see it, so will sign off for now.

Mousing Around, by Coincidence!

Well I paid the price for having a break from the office yesterday to attend the QHA 125^th Anniversary Luncheon at the Hilton.  I was absolutely flat out all day.  Too busy in fact to even attempt listening to Harry Potter.

Mr Y is becoming most unusual and intriguing.  It’s very sexually orientated, but  it also dips into Quantum Physics, Wave Theory, religion and drugs.

Ariel finds the missing page from the book whilst packing away her mentor’s office.  It flutters out of a book that he’d told her to forget using for her thesis indicating he was actually giving her a clue.  The page contains the recipe for the elixir and after some research into the archaic instructions, homeopathic remedies and some trial and error Ariel finds herself in the ‘Troposphere’.  Her first experience is quite frightening as she finds herself sharing the mind of a mouse that has become caught in a Perspex trap.  The mouse is terrified and thinks of her nest.  Later Ariel finds herself in the mind of a cat that is ready to kill a mouse.  She is able to interfere and confuse the cat giving the mouse enough time to disappear.  She loves the feeling when the cat gives up and leaps up onto a wall.  When Ariel 'comes too', she thinks that she has been dreaming but when she goes into her kitchen she notices one of her humane mouse traps contains a victim and she remembers how it felt to be so frightened that she sets it free then and there. Their eyes meet for a couple of minutes and there is a spark of recognition before the mouse scurries away.

On Ariel’s second attempt with the elixir, she finds herself in the mind of a very angry German homosexual .  As she is privy to his thoughts and memories, she realises with horror that it is Wolfgang, her neighbour.  She tries to leave his mind immediately but is unable too…. That is as far as I have got.

Book of The Dead ~ Pendergast has been liberated from his maximum security prison and Diogenes is wooing the mysterious Constance.  She is taken in by his suavity but we know that he has an ulterior motive.  It’s a bit of a coincidence that this novel also contains a mouse.  In the future my memories of these books will probably become merged!

Have you had a coincidence with your book choices? I recently read The Testamament of Gideon Mack and Gideon made references to his late wife reading Bleak House, and I was also reading Bleak House at the same time. Last year I read Of Human Bondage and my audio book choice was Philip K Dick's Dr Bloodmoney where one of his characters was also reading Of Human Bondage – so there ended up being plot spoilers for me!

At the End he was Nobody, but at the Beginning he was known as Mr Y

Ariel has read all but the last chapter of the book (minus the page that was torn out of course).  Mr Y has gone to the Goose Fair and whilst taking in the sideshows, he comes across a ‘doctor’ who gives him a strange elixir to drink.  Upon drinking this he finds himself in a place where he can enter the minds of other people (a bit reminiscent of Being John Malkovich?).  Once he returns to reality he is standing alone, it is late, dark and the fairground has packed up.  He cannot get this experience out of his mind and he burrows into various books trying to discover what the elixir could have contained.  Mr Y has an ulterior motive you see…… he is in the drapery business and his competitor, who is up to date with the modern methods of production, is rapidly putting him out of business.  Mr Y wants to enter this mans mind, find his inner most secrets and blackmail him.  Desperate to obtain the formula he finds the fair which has since moved on and speaks with a fortune teller whom he has been told is the doctor’s wife.  At first she denies this, but the doctor appears because he has read the mind of Mr Y and knows what he wants.  The price is thirty pounds – all that Mr Y possesses.  He refuses and leaves, but the next day returns with the thirty pounds hidden in his shoe.  Because the next page of the book is torn out, Ariel is left wondering what happened at this second meeting as the following page states that this was the beginning of the Mr Y’s downfall.

Back in the real world, Ariel has been informed that she must share her office at the University with a couple of ‘refugees’ from the collapsed Newton Building.  Ariel isn’t terribly happy with this news, as the office is her warm refuge from her cold empty flat, plus she needs to hack into her mentor’s computer to see if he kept notes on The End of Mr Y so that she can find out what was on the missing page……… You know, I would not have thought this novel would be as good as it is considering the author’s first name is Scarlett, which put me off several times when picking this up off the library shelf, plus the blurb on the back doesn’t do it any justice. I only selected it in the end as I had very little to choose from.

In The Book of the Dead our dapper pommie Egyptologist Wicherley appears to have been taken over by some entity…… he had been asked to go into the exhibit by Menzies (Head of Anthropology) in the wee hours of the morning…… I think Menzies might actually be our bad guy Diogenese because early on in the book Menzies killed a woman in her hospital bed (she was a survivor from the 2^nd book of the Pendergast trilogy).

The Time Traveller’s Wife, I’m taking very slowly – when you get chapters headed Henry is 36 and 9, or Henry is 15 and 15 you can’t rush through it! It has yet to completely grab me, so it’s just my pick up put down book for now.

I have also just started listening to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix whilst working on my own in the office.  Up to chapter five and it’s so nice to be back.

It was a glorious morning this morning, spring is on its way.  Mind you we don’t really get spring.  It’s a flick of the switch – winter or summer, like our evenings… no dusk; it’s either light or dark!!  Anyway, I digress; I just wanted to share this photo which I took on my back deck whilst feeding my little darlings (Black Death and Big Red) about 7am this morning as the hot air balloons flew over.  If you are wondering on the names, it’s just their nicknames.  Black Death is actually Tenshi, and Big Red is Missey.  Tenshi actually lives up to her nickname; she also gets called Pestilence and Spawn of Satan, but I love her all the same.

Missey & Tenshi

Would You Go Out of Your Way to Read a Cursed Book?

I’m rather annoyed at myself today.  I really wish I would take more care when selecting audio books from the library and make sure that they are the unabridged books and not the radio plays.

I have listened to some excellent radio plays, the BBC’s are unbeatable.  Solaris was amazing, with a wonderful score.  The Kraken Wakes was another notable one, and the brilliant Woman in White with it’s original haunting musical score.  I don’t complain about any of these but I can’t tick them off my list if they are plays!!  I started listening to The Time Machine and the fact that it was only three discs should have alerted me………  oh well, I will listen to it at some stage but I really wanted the book. 

So..... I started listening to the End of Mr Y instead by Scarlett Thomas. So far I am LOVING IT (although it does contain a bit of swearing and for some bizarre reason it’s offending me slightly.  Now I’m no prude, I read Clive Barker and Stephen King for God’s sake and they’re full of expletives.  I think the reason is it’s a very English female narrator and it just doesn’t sound right rolling off her tongue!).

The story is told by Ariel Manto who is doing a PHD at University.  On the day that we meet her The Newton Building on the campus has collapsed into a disused tunnel.  Unable to collect her car due to the dangers of further collapse she must take the bus or walk.  Opting to walk she pops into a second hand book shop on her way home and discovers a rare copy of The End of Mr Y by Thomas Lumas, a nineteenth century writer she has been studying.  The book apparently is cursed and whoever has read the book has disappeared, including Lumas himself.  It might seem that her mentor has read it too as he disappeared a week after she started her PHD (which he had talked her into). She reads the preface of this book, and it asks the reader to consider the work as a piece of fiction only… which has got Ariel intrigued.  So far she has just flicked through the book and noticed that one of the pages has been torn out........

In The Book of The Dead, we’ve had a rather nasty killing in the museum.  Two people went missing – the computer whiz and his offsider who were setting up the special effects for the Tomb of Senef Exhibition.  The offsider was found in the sarcophagus, ripped open with his entrails dumped unceremoniously into a couple of large canopic jars.  After sealing off parts of the museum the ‘murderer’ was apprehended, naked and covered in blood.  However once the blood was wiped away from his face – shock, horror, gasp - it 's the computer whiz. This is quite good fun!

Poor Lovecraft has taken a backseat.  His is my lunch break book and I haven't really had time for a proper break recently.

Talking of lunch breaks though, on Wednesday I have been invited to a Luncheon (through work) at the Hilton Hotel!  It's an industry thing BUT the food should be really good.  It will be nice to get out of the office for a change.

No Such Thing as a Vampire

Phew, it’s nice to have five minutes to write again.  I’ve been pretty busy at work and at home.  I’ve just done my weekly shop on-line, and now I want to talk BOOKS!

I was quite amazed that the last time I logged into my profile at the Book Army site, my last log in was a year ago and I was just about to head off to the UK after 18 years.  So, I spent a couple of evenings updating and reviewing and at my sign off my position as being most read was 150.  I’m not sure out of how many, but I was 222 before my update.  So as well as getting through the 1001 book list, I also want to be in the top 20 by the end of next year!  Might have to start reading some 100 page books instead of the 600 I like to sink my teeth into…… oh well!

With this is mind and a boring task that took me all day at work, I put on my iPod Nano and listened to some of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.  As usual, I’m really enjoying the plot line and characters.  The plot is simple but not, I can understand why it’s been so popular with our younger generation as they can relate to the school-theme and the general goings on.  Most of the story revolves around that, but it’s the dark subplot that is always so clever.  I’m about half way through it now.

I’ve almost finished Dean Koontz’s Darkfall, and it’s a heap of nonsense.  It could be a short story but he’s filled it up with pretty mindless dialogue to pad it out to novel size.  I’m disappointed Dean…… in the forward he says it’s a variation on a theme.  What theme?  I’m still trying to work it out.  In my minds eye it’s a load of gremlin type creatures that are being controlled by the voodoo……?

Now, Button Button by Richard Matheson.  These stories are simply told but I’m loving them!  I read two last night – No Such Thing as a Vampire which has the most wonderful twist at the end, and the other was Pattern for Survival.  I read that one twice, it’s brilliant.  It’s about an author and the pattern of people his manuscript goes through to the final publishing and the first customer who buys it.  However at the end you realise that he has played the role of all those people himself, because he is the sole survivor of a nuclear holocaust!

Midnight in the Garden of Good & Evil by John Berendt is still enthralling me.  I lament my lack of a lunch break today as I really wanted to read some more.  The extremely wealthy Jim Williams has shot the young man who lived with him.  It turned out that the young man was his lover.  A scandal for some, but not for others who were close to them.  The young man was very volatile and a drug user and some say it was just a matter of time ….. Williams is indicted for murder…….. will he get off?  I must get the movie out some time. I wasn’t particularly interested in it when it was first released, but now I know this is all true, I’m fascinated.

Last night I uploaded a couple more books to my iPod Shuffle in the hope that I finish Darkfall as soon as possible! These are A Tranquil Star by Primo Levi and The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas I’m looking forward to starting them.

I’m also still reading the odd page of Book of the Dead by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, the characters are just opening up an old Egyptian Tomb exhibit in the basement of the museum and they have read aloud a curse from the Book of the Dead…. Well, we know what’s going to happen now don’t we?  Oh well, it had better be good and blood thirsty…….

Until next time……

Thoughts on Therese Raquin

I finished Therese Raquin today.  I thought that it was a wonderful read although it did drag out towards the end and became repetitive.  However, the whole feel of the novel was one of oppression and darkness, and to keep that imagery going throughout the whole book I thought it was very well done..

Therese felt oppressed in her marriage to Camille, by her overbearing aunt, in the dark shop and then by what she and Laurent had done.

Laurent felt oppressed having to work every day waiting for his father to die so he’d have his inheritance and live the idle life, but when he can live the idle life after murdering Camille and  marrying Therese, he is oppressed by it because then his thoughts always turn to Camille, as he has nothing else to occupy them.

Madam Raquin never recovers from the shock of Camille’s death and declines into an invalid state to the point where she can only move her eyes.  Eventually the truth of the murder slips out and Madam Raquin is in a state of perpetual torture, being cared for by the murderers of her beloved son.  Unable to tell anyone of this dreadful truth, trapped in her own body, all she can do is wish for death.

I won’t divulge the ending as this really is worth reading.  The first half of the novel was very well done, but the second half as I said dragged on a bit.

I’m enjoying Button, Button by Richard Matheson. These stories are very easy to read and I look forward to the twist at the end of each.  Dying Room Only is the best so far, although I was disappointed with the ending on this one as it fell at bit flat.

Still enjoying being introduced to the bizarre inhabitants of Savannah.  They are funny, but rather alarming at the same time! I've just been introduced to The Lady Chablis.  What a character!

For my next audio read I decided on something light, and I know my daughter will be annoyed that it’s not Harry Potter (I’ll read the next one soon, I promise!), so I’ve chosen Darkfall by Dean Koontz.  It started off okay, but the banter between the cops is annoying me already!!

I’m also reading a few pages now again from the Book of the Dead – it’s obviously a sequel to another novel but I will continue with it, it’s about a museum that decides to open up an Egyptian exhibit that has been closed for some time to distract the public from a scandal that has loomed over the museum’s Management.  It’s easy to read, and I don’t mind it so far for a bit of distracting ‘fluff’.

Kindred Spirits?

It is interesting that I have picked up Thérèse Raquin to read after Madam Bovary. Only a few chapters in, there are similarities with their disillusionment with life. Madam Bovary turned to adultery, and retail therapy (which eventually sent Charles broke) but Thérèse will turn to murder……

Poor Charles, Homais the apothecary (whose arsenic Emma had deliberately ingested) and close friend of Charles became distant as the gap in their social status widened. Charles was broke, he found out about the lovers and eventually died from a broken heart. Bovary’s daughter Berthe was farmed out to relatives and eventually went to work in a cotton mill. Her life could have been so different, poor kid!

Thérèse on the other hand lost her mother when she was very young, and was left with her aunt by her father who eventually died overseas. Living with her overbearing aunt and her sickly cousin in a cloying atmosphere she finds herself stifled, unable to run free and happy. It is always expected that she will marry her cousin Camille, even though they have no feelings for each other, and her life after marriage remains the same except that she now sleeps on the right side of their home instead of the left.

Camille decides one day that they will move to Paris, and his mother insists on making all the arrangements so that she can ensure her own future. She purchases a dowdy haberdashery shop in a dingy Arcade in Paris. When Therese moves in she is dismayed, and turns inward into herself. She has no interest in re-papering the rooms above the shop or to look for new carpet, she has completely given up…… until one day when Camille brings home Laurent, a work colleague, for dinner. Feeling the fluttering of attraction, Therese is always present when Laurent visits after work to paint Camille's portrait. Finally, when the portrait is finished, Camille goes out to buy Champagne and her Aunt/Mother-in-law goes to prepare dinner, and they find themselves alone. Thérèse gives herself to Laurent totally.

That’s as far as I have got, and loving how it is written. There’s more narration than dialogue so far, but the oppressiveness of the shop, the dingy Arcade and Thérèse's life are very well described. This one is on the list which is a bonus.

I finished Heart Shaped Box finally, and the worse thing was that my mind started wandering at the end, and when I realised it had finished (it was on audio) I had to go back a whole chapter and listen to it again! Talk about prolonging the agony!!

"It is inescapable and highly intractable."

Benicio bears no relevance to my current thoughts, but he's soooo dreamy I felt like including his image!!

Oh well, back to reality........ I've just come back from Seaworld Resort where I had a fantastic buffet, where I gorged myself on oysters and smoked salmon.  I'm still feeling a bit uncomfortable after too much dessert, so whilst it is all digesting I'll have chat about a couple of books.  I finished Solaris and can honestly say I loved it.  It was beautifully imagined and I did read somewhere that Lem was not happy with the English translation and can imagine probably that English may not encapsulate some of the images that he conveyed in Polish.

You don't have to like Science Fiction to enjoy this novel, though there is plenty of scientific theory throughout.  The premise is the question of whether human beings can make contact with the one living entity on Solaris - being the all emcompassing ocean.  The ocean has made contact with humans, but in such a way that it has frightened them.  It has created living images of humans from the sleeping minds of the scientists, and has so unnerved them that they try experiments to get rid of their 'visitors'.  Kelvin however is visited by the image of his beautiful late wife who is in some way better than the wife who committed suicide.  After questioning her own existence and knowing that she is part of a bigger picture that is frightening the station crew she chooses to be destroyed aided by Snow, one of the other scientists.  When she has gone Kelvin realises he cannot ever leave Solaris as there may be a chance that he will see her again. This is a true love story.

The asymmetriads and the mimiods that the ocean creates are such a wonderfully imagined idea that I would really love to see one and can almost believe that they exist.  I lament my own lack of imagination when I read something as wonderful as this.

Anyway, the real reason for this blog tonight is identified by my title.  It is a line (one of many) that has made me laugh from The Third Policeman and is spoken by Seargent Pluck in a deep resonant Irish accent (well, that is how the narrator makes it sound in the audio book).  Seargent Pluck is going to hang our narrator for murder, our narrator having stumbled upon this strange Irish community where people can turn into bicycles and Eternity is reached via a lift.

Our narrator really is a murderer but Seargent Pluck doesn't know this at this stage, he's charging him because  of some incontrovertable rules about people with no names as our narrator cannot remember his name since arriving at this strange place.

Knowing that he is gonig to be hanged within 24 hours our narrator asks Seargent Pluck about certain strange goings on at the Police Barracks and about measurements that are taken daily with regards to levers.  Pluck takes him to a building that leads to Eternity where he is weighed before taking the lift downwards.  When they arrive he finds a room that is full of little doors, and the room following from there is the same.  Pluck takes a bicycle from one of the doors, and opens the main door to the next room and there is a bicycle there too in the same position and they suppose that if they open a door from there onwards and so on........ our narrator asks for some gold and also some jewels which they are able to obtain from one of the little doors, but when he asks to leave Eternity he's told he can only go in the lift if he weighs the same as when he first arrived and he has to leave his loot behind much to his distress.

When our narrator was younger he broke his leg so badly in six places it resulted in him having a wooden leg.  In this strange community he meets a robber but he also has a wooden leg, and he pledges his allegiance to our narrator and promises not to rob him.  Whilst waiting for the hangman's scaffold to be built he watches the carpenter who drops his hammer. Joe (our narrator's soul, with whom he has internal conversations with) mentions that the carpenter didn't even flinch when the hammer dropped on his foot. Our narrator calls out to the carpenter and asks if he has a wooden leg, he does indeed and he also knows of the robber and has other wooden legged friends, and he agrees to get hold of them immediately to save our narrator from the hangman's noose.

I wish I had the actual hard copy book here so that I could flick through the pages and type out some of the wonderful lines.  There's something magical about Irish humour and this book is full of it.  When our narrator (I don't think he's been given a name yet?) first arrives in this wierd community it is via the house of the man he had murdered.  He has gone there three years after the event, to look for his cash box which was the original motive for the murder.  Everything changes when he pulls up the floor boards to get the box and the murdered man is in the room with him and when they talk the murdered man answers everything in the negative.  It is a very funny and very clever scene.  I listened to it twice.  In fact throughout this book I have gone back to re-listen to passages as it is quite a strange narration that it needs to be savoured a few times to be fully appreciative of its cleverness.

There is a downside to the novel and that is the use of a lot of footnotes relating to a man named De Selby, who is the initial cause of all our narrators troubles.  I have found them pretty irrelevant so far and very annoying!  HOWEVER, I am loving this read and even more so when I realised the other day it is on my 1001 book list.

I went to the library this morning and I spent an hour at the audio section checking out all the titles I hadn't read!  There aren't that many when you discount all the Danielle Steele's lined up there.  I did pick up four books though which I'll listen to at a later date:

Carry Me Down by M J Hyland
North & South by Elizabeth Gaskell*
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick (this will be my September read for book club as the theme is A Man's Home is His Castle).
A Tranquil Star - Primo  Levi (17 short stories translated from the Italian).

*Another one for the 1001 list.

Well off to bed now, I think my all you can eat seafood buffet has begun to settle and I might be able to sleep without too many nightmares!

Oops, here he is again.... sweet dreams for me tonight then.......

Thoughts on Solaris by Stanislaw Lem

So far I am really enjoying Solaris. It’s more psychological than anything. The protagonist Kris Kelvin has gone to Station Solaris to find out why there is no response from the three scientists there. When he gets there, one scientist is dead, one won’t leave his room and the other is nervous and paranoid.

The ocean on Solaris has created living physical beings based on their memories. So far we don’t know much about the other ‘visitors’, but Kelvin’s visitor is the image of his dead wife Rheya. Rheya won’t leave Kelvin’s side, if she loses sight of him she panics and exhibits superhuman strength to reach him. Initially Kelvin is appalled and frightened as his wife had committed suicide a few years before and he knows exactly what she is but as time goes on and she asks questions about her existence he begins to fall in love with her.

I like the way this story has been set up. We are given the history of the early explorers to Solaris, the written works on the subject of Solaris and it’s ocean, and , the imagery of the Mimoids that the ocean creates – “……the mimoid resembles a town, an illusion produced by our compulsion to superimpose analogies with what we know”.

Snow, the paranoid scientist, tries to reason with Kelvin when he doesn’t want to try the x-ray bombardment of the ocean to stop the ‘visitors’. He reminds him that if his ‘visitor’ was an old hag then he would be quite eager to be rid of her. At the moment we don’t know who Snow’s visitor is. Sartorius, the scientist who locks himself in his room appears to have a child visitor, and Gibarian who has committed suicide has a large Negress who is found wandering the station or lying with him in cold storage, which is quite creepy.

I will try and finish it tomorrow, sum up my thoughts and write a review.

I finished Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban, was almost sorry to say goodbye to Hogwart's until I read the next one.

I've also just started The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien.  So far it's bizarrely funny.......

Solaris

Well, the library inadvertently made the choice for me. I received an email to say that Solaris by Stanislaw Lem has finally come in. This will be an interesting read as although Lem can read fluent English he was not involved in the English translation and is apparently very unhappy with the published version. It is however on the 1001 book list so the translation can’t be all that bad from the readers’ point of view? I recently listened to the BBC Radio Play which was beautifully produced, with a wonderful haunting musical score. This inspired me to buy the movie starring George Clooney which was good but it only focused on the love story. The Sci-Fi element was totally disregarded. I’m looking forward to starting it as soon as I finish the Moonstone (which I’ll review in my club Newsletter)... it’s been okay (plus it’s on the list) but it’s only really worth the read for its value as being the first ever detective novel. Bleak House was written before Moonstone and that also contained a detective but I guess The Moonstone is specifically a detective story?

I couldn't get my iPod Nano to work today, so in desperation I got out my iPod Shuffle where I had a stand by book ready to go - Shutter by Michael Robothom.  I like to finish what I start, so Harry Potter will have to wait a week!

I'm full of cold which I must have inherited from my lovely daughter, so I'm off to bed now with a hot water bottle and will try to get through a few more chapters of The Moonstone.