on my 'to read' list....

No, you probably won't appreciate it, but what the hell.... looks like a fun book, it is apparently the original with a few insertions to the text to add zombie fun....

Holiday Reading....

Despite all the diving, I managed to read a couple of good books on holiday. The first, Grotesque by the excellent Natsuo Kirino is billed as a
crime novel, which in my opinion is complete crap (in the same way that War and Peace is an action novel). It starts with the narrator's younger sister, a prostitute being killed, followed a year later by a classmate, who had a highly respectable day job. The book flits between the narrator's opinions, diaries of both murdered women and court testimony of the accused murderer. The author manages to go into the lives of these people, hinting at their motivations and at the same time keep the story going. It works especially well as you slowly become aware of the bias of each story, especially the narrator's.

I also loved her earlier book 'Out'. Definitely an author I'm going to keep following.


My other Japanese author was Hitomi Kanehara. I read both Snakes and Earrings, her first, highly acclaimed (in Japan) novel. Similar to Ryu Murakami, it is a dive into counter culture of Japan. In this case piercing, body modification and tattooing. Unlike Murakami, the book could easily be set in London or New York. This and here second book Autofiction both deal with obsession (to the point of madness). I liked both books especially Autofiction, which steps back through a writer's life explaining, through events, how she came to be a very very clingy paranoid girlfriend. Both books I'm glad I read.

Just read....

I've just read 'Flowers for Algernon' by Daniel Keyes. Considering it is supposed to be a science fiction book, I thought it was very good (good in the way other people might get, not just good in the sense I find lots of geeky things). Turns out they also made an Oscar winning movie out of it in the '60s.

The book is written as a series of diary entries written by Charley, who is mentally retarded, but receives experimental surgery to make him smarter. As the book goes on Charley slowly becomes more normal (reflected by a gradual change in writing style). His intellect keeps developing, soon surpassing that of his doctors. From the beginning he is fascinated by Algernon (Al-gi-non) a lab mouse who used to prove the treatment works. Later in the book, the now genius, Charley watches Algernon's improved mind deteriorate and sees the mouse breakdown and become catatonic (no it isn't a talking mouse). Charley realizes that the same thing will happen to him and he will return to his original state.

I'm impressed by how well the book conveys the emotions of this arc. Firstly the really sad transition from 'retarded but innocently happy' to self aware. Charley discovers that the people he'd been working with aren't really his friends, they just like to laugh at him.

The second part of the arc, is also depressing, as Charley realizes he's loosing his mental faculties and soon everything he knows will be gone again. In some ways it is how I imagine neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's or severe mental illness. Knowing that you are going to degenerate to the level of a child makes it much more scary.

Just read....

Finished 'Gentlemen of the road' by Michael Chabon. Can't say I was overly impressed. Its kind of a simple adventure story set in around 990. It says a lot that the author admitted in some comments at the end of the book that he originally wanted to call it 'Jews with swords'. That pretty much sums it up.
Fortunately I wasn't greatly disappointed, as I didn't really buy this because I thought it would be a good read. (see next post.)

Also read...

I've also just read 'Popular Music' by Swedish writerMikael Niemi. The book is set in the cold, backwards, arse end of Sweden, near the border with Finnland. It gives flashes of teenage life from the 60s onwards. The author manages to convey the tedium and boredom of small town life, and also the effect of ultra-macho lumberjack Christians on their children, who want to drink, screw and listen to rock and roll.
I should probably start a more critical scoring system or something, because I seem to end all my reviews by saying what great books they are... perhaps another time. Read this as well

Just finished...

Got given 'Steal you away' By Niccolo Ammaniti (who also wrote the fabulous 'I'm not scared')

This is essentially a book about loosers. People who can't sort out their lives or control its direction at all. One of the things I love about it, is like films such as Magnolia, it is made up of a series of different stories, so doesn't really have a main character. The common link is the small village that they live in, or pass through. It works brilliantly, with some great segues as characters pass through (i.e. in a car, on a rainy night). Also it's a story about children and their parents (who often appear in different threads). This helps to highlight the inability of anyone to help themselves, an the tendency for children to be as screwed up as their parents. This is really a fantastic book, read it as soon as you can.

Just read

Just finished reading 'On Beauty' by Zadie Smith. It is easily my favorite of her three books. It tells the story of two, often warring, families in a preppy New England college town. One thing I love about the writing style, is the way the book is often written between important events (i.e. an affair) which serves to focus your attention on people's reactions to the situation more (while you try and work out what has happened). I was slightly disappointed at the end, although I'm still not sure whether this is because of the ending, or simply because the story had finished.

Currently Reading....

Borrowed 'Plan B' by Jonathan Tropper from mum while she was visiting. Its quite a light, entertaining book about disfunctional thirty year olds (aren't they all). A group of friends decide to help their famous Hollywood friend kick his cocaine habit by kidnapping him.... Great fun, very easy reading, and quite entertaining... Quote of the day:



"Sex is like air, it isn't important unless you aren't getting any."

Currently reading...

One of the things I'm reading at the moment is 'Persepolis' by Marjane Satrapi. It's a great, moving graphic novel about the author's life, growing up in Iran during the revolution and Iran-Iraq war. Like Maus, it is a serious, often very moving novel, which tells a gripping story. I've just seen that they have made a movie of it. (Trailer)

On Chesil Beach

I've just finished reading 'On Chesil Beach' by Ian McEwan. I really enjoyed it. The story is set in a small seaside hotel, where a young couple spend their wedding night. The description of the awkwardness and embarrassment with which the couple approach their first sex is painful to read. It's quite strange, I read the first chapter of this in The Guardian, and it felt like it could have been set in the 19th century, but in fact it is placed in the early 1960s and shows how different things were before the sexual revolution of the swinging sixties. I found the story somewhat depressing, especially how sexual innocence and lack of communication can damage things so easily.

Just read....

Just finished reading 'The Raw Shark Texts' by Steven Hall. I really liked this book. I was slightly skeptical at the beginning, the protagonist wakes up lying on the floor with no memories and no idea who he is. He receives a series of messages from himself, with hints of who he is. He discovers from a psychiatrist that his girlfriend died in an accident and he lost his memory after this. I admit thinking at the start of the book that this was going to be somewhere between a book version of Memento and the Bourne Identity (neither of which would have been too bad). In fact the book rapidly takes several more Kafkaesque turns and gets pleasingly strange. I don't want to ruin the book by explaining it more, but it is really worth reading. I also love some of the type setting in the book. Which really adds to the feeling of it. Especially near the end (you'll know what I mean when you get to it).

Buy it, read it, share in the hallucination.

Quote of the day....

I'm reading (almost finished) Atomised by Michel Houellebecq, I like it all in all, a story about two disfuctional guys living two disfunctional lives. Just read this part....

"People often say that the English are very cold fish, very reserved, that they have away of looking at things - even tragedy - with a sense of irony. There's some truth in it; it's pretty stupid, though. Irony won't save you from anything; humour doesn't do anything at all. You can look at life ironically for years, maybe decades; there are people who seem to go through most of their lives seeing the funny side, but in the end, life always breaks your heart. Doesn't matter how brave you are, or how reserved, or how much you've developed a sense of humour, you still end up with your heart broken. That's when you stop laughing. After that, there's just the cold, the silence and the loneliness. You might say, after that, there's only death."

hmmm..........

recently read....

Troll: A Love story by Johanna Sinisalo
A fantastic book which Minna recommended. A pretty surreal romance with some interesting observations on how we exploit nature and tend to treat people like animals and animals like people...





Crooked Little Vein, by Warren Ellis
A great, but highly highly weird book. Journeys through the stranger parts of American counter culture (especially strange sex fetishes). Hard to explain it in a way that does it justice, but I liked it....

Things I'm reading....

Notes from an even smaller island
A Bill Bryson like series of anecdotes written by a British guy who lived in Singapore for five years. I borrowed this from Thomas and its quite fun to dip into every now and then. Its written for both expats and Singaporeans, providing funny tales of strange Singaporean behaviours, customs and encounters, as well as a fair few 'dumb Ang Moh' (dumb white guy) stories.

Also explains some aspects of Singaporean behaviour like Kiasu (something like fear of failure, often at the expense of others)



In the Miso Soup, by Ryu Murakami
I got this partly because I've had good experiences with Japanese writes called Murakami...
I'm only halfway through now, but its quite a gripping wander around the seedy sex districts of Tokyo, which isn't something I immediately associate with Japan. Liking it so far...