Category: Books

This week, I finished the the first of three novels which are supposedly said to rival Tolkien for originality and depth of immersion. Written between 1940 and 1959, the unfinished series by Mervyn Peake captured the imagination of the public, and are widely known as the “Gormenghast” books. Good name for a Warcraft horde character by the way. Gormenghast is the name of the Fortress, and Titus Groan is its Earl. He was 1 year old at the end of the first book.

 

 

 

 As you might expect, compared to a modern book, it’s fairly slow moving and wordy, and there are chapters containing the most frustrating of exchanges between grunting and gesturing individuals. It’s all very peculiar stuff, and unpredictable enough to keep up my interest. Having said that, I place it in the same boat as Don Quixote and Jonathan Swift; once you’ve read their first book, the rest is much the same and so I don’t think I’ll continue with the the other two. I’ll watch the BBC DVD if I can get a hold of it. My reading life is too short now.

 

I bookmarked some particularly ethereal paragraphs for quoting here as I wanted to demonstrate what a struggle some sections were. Here’s an example, though it’s not typical of the rest of the book.

  “Through her, in microcosm, the wide earth sobbed. The starglobe sank in her; the colours faded. The death-dew rose and the wild birds in her breast climbed to her throat and gathered songless, hovering, all tumult, wing to wing, so ardent for those climes where all things end.”

  Traumatised by his World War Two experiences, Peake later contracted Parkinson’s disease and died in 1968 whilst working on the early parts of the 4th in the series. I give him 3 stars for this one. Very original. What will become of that devious Steerpike character?

No worthwhile photos, but we made an outing to Clunes on Saturday for the second annual Booktown event. Having been to Hay-on-Wye 10 years ago, my hopes weren’t super high and I’m glad, because I thought it was a bit of a failure really. I don’t know what I expected, but it certainly wasn’t that 40 of the 50 booksellers would sell non-fiction military titles, mostly from the 60’s to 80’s, and that there would be only 2 smallish stores that sold relatively modern paperbacks. In some ways, I should have just gone to Book Affair in Carlton, as there was more range in that one shop that what I saw at Booktown. I was trying to buy a copy of “Crime and Punishment” and failed. 50 shops. Sheesh. I walked out with a single secondhand paperback that cost me $13. I love the idea of old towns finding ways to revitalise themselves, and perhaps the wide streets take a lot of filling, but even at the peak of the day at 2pm Saturday, the common areas felt half empty, whilst mostly elderly folks elbowed each other for bargains that barely existed. I don’t think I’ll go again.

I’m 20 pages from the end and already I’m preparing to give “The Adventures of Christian Rosy Cross” the worst review I’ve given a book in years. It pains me because I like how David Foster is such an original, devilishly irreverent spirit whose other books have confused, challenged and delighted me, but this one is essentially unreadable. I haven’t read Voltaire’s “Candide” which the cover blurbs claim it’s an interpretation of, but this shortish story has jumped all over the place, from people suffering mercury poisoning to Christian catching his oversized cock in a gate. There are a ton of themes that flew over my head, and the disjointed sharp dialogue and mixture of in-jokes makes it like a willfully obscure Life of Brian script to a story I don’t know in the first place. Thoroughly confusing. 1 star.

It seems like awhile since I finished a book, and now I’ve read two. One – “The Trout Opera” by Matthew Condon, a bit of an Australian epic, which supposedly took 10 years to write; the other a best selling “unleash your mind” bunch of odd stories called “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell which I borrowed off my sister. Both were satisfying.

 

Condon’s tome took me awhile to gather some hunger for, but increasingly the tension and story – particularly that of the young Wilfred, and the drug-addicted Aurora and her scarily-familiar deranged ex-boyfriend became really gripping. The life-weary disk jockey and centenarian kidnapping aspects were not quite so believable. I was still very satisfied with this book though. 4.5 stars. If you’re interested in learning more about dealing with addiction, the story touches on the challenges and transformation that occur when individuals like Aurora seek help at a cocaine rehab clinic. If you’re curious, there is some valuable information that you may want to know. Click here to find out how long weed stays in the system.

Blink was a completely different proposition. Packed with “gee wow” moments and insights into warfare, body language, relationships and police procedure, it described “thin-slicing”, a technique used by many professionals in their fields to make fast decisions based on limited facts. There were numerous diatribes about how being in possession of too many facts could breed complacency or delay and confuse the decision making process. I’ve noticed for a long time that this is how insurance and mobile phone companies (hey why stop there – ISP’s / governments!) have made it hard for consumers to compare products or make a decision. I can’t say I’m any better at judging whether my relationship is in trouble, or if a tennis player’s serve is going to be a fault or a valid play based on reading this book, but boy I enjoyed some of the examples. Particularly interesting were the observations about a high heart rate and (bad) decision making, and that one cop per patrol car has a lot lower death / incident rate than two cops. Aren’t humans strange animals. 4 stars.

A pretty weird feeling reading the latest from an author famous for writing fairly grim portrayals of poverty in places like Peru and the Dominican Republic, and finding it to be light and junk-foodish. Delightfully so. I gobbled up this tale by Mario Vargas Lhosa about a masochist and his “bad girl” in only a few days, with a real life example (not mine!) in my mind about the allure of a haughty, unrepentant, and essentially insecure woman in my head to remind me that it really could be a true story. I think it sort of fell away at the end, and it felt awkward at times, but overall a delicious read, even though it will never be considered one his his better ones. 4 stars.

I was thinking about how harsh I’d been about the previous book, before I’d even finished it. The ending really threw me because I felt I hadn’t understood what had happened. Did the Trey character take over Eric’s body, or had Eric himself been freed to join his smiley-face-tattoed soulmate? Either way it still felt like fluff to me. I know hardly anyone else my age (or anyone) who shares my taste in books and sometimes I wonder if mine is a willing and deliberate divergence. I find myself enjoying writings by older writers – books that describe people who come to terms with disappointments or tragedy. Is this what I need nowdays? Such a book was Alex Miller’s forgettably titled Landscape of Farewell which I consumed in a day or so. It’s a sister novel to Journey to the Stone Country I think. The major themes described were ones of kinship, dignity, coming to terms with events of the past, and finding wonderful things about the everyday. Universal stuff I suppose. The contrast between this and the previous book was a huge relief to me. Despite listing these ideas, I’m not sure in a week’s time that I’ll be able to remember much of it either, but for me it was like laying in a warm bath. The pages just flicked by effortlessly. It’s so lovely to discover another Australian writer whose back catalogue I can seek out. 4.5 stars.

Gee I’m reading a crap book right now. It’s called The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall, and it is covered in accolades. It has the depth and complexity of a Ghostbusters video, and I know it will be completely gone from my head within an hour of finishing. Apart from a fledgling romance with a girl called Scout (swoon), I’m fairly disinterested and gunning for the end now. Lots of crazy ideas but it feels like a teenage book to me. 3 stars.

I’ve always stayed pretty clear of genre fiction because the sameness becomes annoying to me. This time around I was tempted by the non-typical front cover; the publishers are trying to get the lit-crowd to read “a sophisticated crime novel”. And let me just say how silly both the cover and the title of this book are. No relevance I could see to the story at all. Despite this, Peter Temple’s “The Broken Shore” was worth it – the story was pretty good. A flawed, hardworking policeman, recovering from a terrible accident is reassigned to light duties in far south-west Victoria. There’s a touch of non-mushy romance, and plenty of tawdry criminal elements to keep you distracted from the real culprits. Some nice attempts at weaving in some small town, low-income rural Victorian issues and portrayal of thuggish clans. There was a lot to like, though I continually thought of how it would have been done in a mini-series for TV, which was offputting. 4 stars. Within a few days, I’d bought and read The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, inspired by long-term email compadre PoutineQ. It was right up my alley, utterly depressing (and hence redemptive!) but fascinating for its sense of danger and unrelenting bleakness. After awhile, I came to the conclusion that it was a bit of a one-trick pony show, because the same scenes were repeated again and again. The search for an end, or for “good people” was filled with minimal dialogue between a father and son, which, at least for me was fairly unremarkable and unrevealing. Perhaps I expected a little more after reading the pages of thrilled reviews, but it still had it’s moments. The horrifying scenes of cannabalism were offset with the stark “beauty” of the surrounding landscape. The sparse and direct language spoken in times of despair. The primal protectiveness of a father for a son. 4 stars also. It was very hard to put it down.

I went on a buying spree last week and grabbed 5 books in a single session. Most of them were fairly different from my usual picks, having crime or horror as their themes. I finished Under the Skin by Michel Faber after a passionate 4 days and was completely enthralled by it. I don’t want to give much away, but suffice to say that when I described it to Kim she was fairly sickened and didn’t want to hear much more about it. The minutae of the day-to-day life of Isserley, a female driver who picked up only muscular male hitchhikers was gradually revealed in all its horror. There were shades of James Herbert and Jonathan Swift and the pacing was superb. Not for the squeamish though. 4.5 stars. I’ll be reading more of his for sure.

I showed a little too much enthusiasm for my last Vonnegut book, and so Kim bought me Bagombo Snuff Box for Christmas. It’s a collection of his earliest works – submitted to magazines in the 50’s, and I was about to give it the worst review ever, but the last 5 stories saved it from being a disaster. The stories are surprisingly moral and conventional, and usually they deal with topics like the dissatisfied wealthy or couples who don’t communicate or understand each other very well at all. On the positive side, it was a quick read. 1.5 stars. Onto the next..