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Adventures in Bookland: The Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko

28 March 2016
Edoardo
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Categories: Book review

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Having tried American vampires in The Passage I thought I’d take a look at their Old World rivals: the vampires, shapeshifters, magicians and witches of Russia. (Also, I was away on holiday, and the place where we were staying had this book in its small library and there’s few things I enjoy more than the bibliodipity of thrown together book collections in out of the way places – there’s no telling what you might find there, since this is where books go to die. As many of the characters in the book are undead, it was all the more appropriate.)

So, how do these Russian vampires compare with their American counterparts? Considerably better personal hygiene and a marked tendency to break the action for long discourses on philosophy, in particular the emptiness at the core of human (and vampiric) experience. The American vampires just want to eat people. And, yes, the Russians drink more. Much more.

The Night Watch is much shorter than The Passage. There are more stories. The world does not end.

Go with the Russians!

 

Adventures in Bookland: The Passage by Justin Cronin

27 March 2016
Edoardo
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Categories: Book review

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OK, let’s get one thing clear from the start. If, by any chance, you ever find yourself on a military appropriations committee and someone appears before the committee to ask for the funding to create a race of super soldiers that, by the way, happen to derive their powers from psychotic vampire bats, just don’t do it! Seriously, just say no. No, no, no.

This is the biggest draw back to the first part of Justin Cronin’s mega blockbuster vampire apocalypse: can you really believe that anyone, even the most jingoistic of patriots, would really say yes to such an idea? What’s more, after giving these potential super soldiers ‘the shot’ – distilled super vampire bat essence – these new super soldiers (who are all, incidentally, condemned killers just to add some human darkness to the vampire brew) all hunch up in corners, eating rabbits raw while producing rows of new razor teeth. Now, come on. Suppose you’d been mad enough to let things go this far, you’d still decide, being a ruthless sort, that the time had come to bring a curtain, a terminal curtain, down on all this.

But no. You leave it too late and the vampire super soldiers escape and – well, not to put too fine a point on it, eat the world (or at least America, the two being pretty well synonymous for the purposes of the book). And that’s just in part 1!

So, despite the slightly (well, completely) ludicrous premise, the story rips along and I really enjoyed part 1. But then, we reach part 2 and it pretty well all stops for about 200 pages. Yes, this new, post-apocalyptic world is all very interesting, but come on, do we really need to hear ALL the backstory? I think not. I have a life, commitments and lots of other books to read. So, I skimmed and I advise you to do the same. You can do so safely: I suggest taking a quick look at every fifth page, just to get an idea of what’s going on, and then continuing. The story does get going again, but it takes some 300 or 400 pages to do so. And then, you get to the end, and find that’s just the end of part 1. I mean come on! So, getting to page 872, or whatever it was, I faced a question: how much of my life did I want to devote to this story? Now, it’s true some stories can illuminate an entire life but The Passage isn’t one of those. I’d suggest limiting yourself to a week’s reading time on this one, while hoping that Justin Cronin employs a more aggressive editor for part 2.

The obvious comparison is Stephen King’s The Stand. Is The Passage as good? No. Despite The Stand being even longer (although it does finish the story within the confines of one book) at no point reading it did I start skipping – I wanted to read it all. With The Passage, I wanted to know what happens in the end, but preferably without having to plough every furrow along the way.

 

On the Radio

19 March 2016
Edoardo
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Categories: Things You Never Knew

This is deeply scary. I’m going to be on the radio, talking – live (!!!)( eeekkk!!!!) – with Jumoke Fashola about London: A Spiritual History on Sunday 20 March at about 8.40am. Here’s the link to the show. If I do well, leave reassuring comments; if I don’t please pass by in sympathetic silence.

Jumoke Fashola
Jumoke Fashola

Update: If you want to listen to me, wind the programme forward to 2 hours and 43 minutes. I’m on for about eight minutes after that.

Adventures in Bookland: North York Moors & Yorkshire Wolds by Mike Bagshaw

11 March 2016
Edoardo
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Categories: Book review

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I spent over ten years writing and editing guide books for Time Out, so I know a good guide book when I see one – and this is a really good guide book.

First, it fulfills the primary role of a guide book: it guides. When we visited the North York Moors in February, the book showed us where to go and what to see and, being published only last year, the details were all correct. But the mark of a really good guide book is when it goes beyond the basic guide book function and this one does. Reading it before we left, it made us even more eager to visit, by unveiling all sorts of places that we would never have known to visit, from the stepping stones across the River Esk in Egton Bridge to loneliest pub in England, the Lion Inn atop Blakey Ridge, to which we repaired for some much needed hot food as the wind blew spindrift over the snow fields atop the moors. And looking at the book after we have returned has helped us appreciate even more what we saw, as well as firing a determination to return again.

Mike Bagshaw fills the book with the sort of detail that comes from many years intimate knowledge of a place and its people – I was particularly struck by the story of his late neighbour, a true Yorkshireman, who through all his three score years and ten never once set foot beyond the county’s boundaries.

Having seen the demise of Time Out’s guide books – which were pretty well the best city guides out there – it’s good to see a publisher, Bradt, that is still prepared to invest in producing a high-quality, well written guidebook. Well done Bradt and well done Mike Bagshaw!

 

Adventures in Bookland: The Touchstone by Andrew Norriss

9 March 2016
Edoardo
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Categories: Book review

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Go on ask me a question. Any question. You know you want to.

It can be anything, anything at all, and I’ll tell you the answer. Which stocks to buy, who will win the league, how to build a destructor death ray shooting pink plasm. All you have to do is ask, and I’ll tell you the answer.

I reckon I’d like to be able to do that – but then, I’m the sort of person who likes quizzes. My dream job would be as the Chaser on The Chase (which, if you don’t know it, is a daytime quiz programme where a team of four attempt to escape the Chaser, a professional quizzer, as the Chaser hunts them down: each time the contestants get a question wrong and the Chaser gets it right, he draws closer).

Sadly, I don’t even know enough to be the Chaser, let alone the Touchstone. Because the Touchstone really can answer any question you ask it. Any question at all. Including the one about how to make a destructor death ray shooting pink plasma.

Ah. So, perhaps not the sort of thing you want to give to just anyone. Quite right. But, the question is, who should you give it to? The Guardians? (They are, in fact, the Guardians of the Galaxy, only this version does not feature talking raccoons and ambulant trees but rather a somewhat ruffled civil servant.) Now, this is the first of Andrew Norriss’s books where I don’t think I agree with the answer. I’m not sure any institution could guard such knowledge since the knowledge would, in the end, corrupt the institution, leading the, in this case, Guardians, to see themselves as more important than that which they’re guarding, ie. everything else. It’s what happens to institutional bureaucracies over time. I’d much rather have Douglas, our 12-year-old hero, in charge of the Touchstone than the Guardians. I sort of think I’d even prefer the gung ho adventuress who gives him the Touchstone to have it. But then, there is one question that will answer with surety what your attitude to the Touchstone would be, and it’s the same question that was posed to Achilles: to have a long and happy life, or a short and glorious one.

When I was fourteen, I posed that question to my classmates and, to my surprise, received a unanimous reply: long and happy. I was the only one, at the time, who wanted glory and fame. I suspect that was because, to that point, I’d never really been unhappy, and, when you’re 14, the prospect of dying at 28 seems just as dim and distant as dying at 78.

The Touchstone is for those who want a long and happy life and, as I’ve got older, I have come to appreciate that much, much more. But, in our increasingly safety conscious world, I fear we lose something by giving no avenue for the young glory hunter: in previous ages he could sail off to strange lands, now there’s no such opportunity.

Another thought: with the internet increasingly omnipresent and omniscient, have we, in effect, given a Touchstone to everyone? If so, it’s chief effect seems to be a proliferation of cute cat videos and the further loss of personal memory; if everything can be called up, why bother to recall it? But, I suspect, memory is an underappreciated aspect of intelligence. We are currently applying a worldwide test to see if we can do without it. I suspect the answer will be no – and I don’t think I need the Touchstone to tell me that.

But I do need The Touchstone for another take on how to write a book without a single excess word or spurious phrase (like that one!).  Read it, tell others about it, answer questions on it. Make it your touchstone, if not your cornerstone.

Adventures in Bookland: Mr Fitton’s Prize by Showell Styles

23 February 2016
Edoardo
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Categories: Book review

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I remember it exactly. The first time the natural physical insouciance of youth was cracked. I was on the hovercraft crossing the Channel – back then, there was no tunnel, and the quickest way across was by the giant, car-eating hovercraft that roared over the strait – and, naturally, on boarding I had rushed to the front, where the seats looked out past the captain’s bridge to the approaching shore – and the choppy waves of the Channel. Setting off, I discovered something unexpected, although hardly unforseeable, about hovercrafts: since they hover, they follow the line of the waves, rather than ploughing through them. Oh, how I laughed with glee as the front of the hovercraft rose up towards the crest, opening up a prospect of sky and foam, then dropped, precipitously, into the trough beyond, changing on the instant from clear blue sky to roiling green water. The other passengers sought calmer berths further back, but we youngsters stayed at the front, revelling in this natural roller coaster. Or some of us did. After about twenty minutes, my exhilaration began to feel a trifle… forced. Something seemed to be forcing its way upon me. Unfortunately, it was my lunch.

I just about made it to the toilet in time.

I had not known before that I could get sea sick. Turns out, I’m about as bad a sailor as ever turned green over the big greeny blue. Further confirmation was supplied when learning to dive in Australia (did you know, they even have barbies on boats – not that I was eating anything).

So it must be the nautical equivalent of rubbernecking that produces my fascination with naval literature, in particular stories set in the heyday of the Senior Service during the Napoleonic Wars. Patrick O’Brian, CS Forester – you merely have to point me at a ship of the line and I’ve cast off hawsers and settled down to read.

But I’d never heard of Showell Styles and now I must give thanks to Faber Finds. It’s stated purpose is to restore to print great writing across every genre of fiction and non-fiction – and with Mr Fitton’s Prize it has succeeded. This is a masterclass in writing, its apparent effortlessness concealing a real mastery of the craft. Looking up the author, I find that he wrote over 150 books in a 50-year career, both fiction and non-fiction. In fact, I find that he was what I want to be. Plus, he has pretty well the coolest name ever. So, Mr Styles, may you sail home, and be my guide.

Showell Styles (1908-2005)
Showell Styles (1908-2005)

 

Acceptance notes – no.15 in a series

23 February 2016
Edoardo
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Categories: Acceptance Notes
What I think of this review.
Me, when I receive an acceptance note.

Dear Edoardo,

Thank you for sending us your excellent story, “Spellman Mathers’ Travelling Show & Zoo of Ordinary Creatures”. We love it and would like to publish it in an upcoming issue of See the Elephant Magazine. The pay rate is 6c/word with a maximum of $200 for print, electronic and audio rights. Please email me at […] to let me know if this is agreeable. If so, I will follow up with a contract. It might be a while before I get to that phase of the process, as I need to finish issue two, but I wanted you to know that your story is definitely in for either issue three or four.

Best,
Melanie Lamaga
Publisher/Ed. in Chief

Adventures in Bookland: Railhead by Philip Reeve

2 February 2016
Edoardo
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Categories: Book review

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In this day and age when the old shames, for good or ill, no longer embarrass, when I can go to dinner with old friends and be told, apropos of nothing, that their son is gay and the conversation move on as if nothing more remarkable has come up than that he has switched jobs, there yet remains one love that dare not speak its name. I would not speak of it myself, where it not for the fact that someone I know is subject to this-this compulsion. But the time has come to face society’s scorn and incomprehension, to take on the last prejudice and say it.

Say it loud.

My son’s a trainspotter and I’m proud.

There, I’ve said it.

What’s more, I’ve done it. I’ve spent endless hours on windy platforms, warmed only by a thermos flask of tea, while my son has jumped up and down in excitement as a Black Five has gone steaming past (see, I even know the terminology now), or a class 66 has trundled through, pulling a long train of troublesome trucks. So I’ve been there, I’ve got the anorak (a vital accessory at some stations, where there really is no protection against the wind).

So, now, after all this time spent alongside railway lines, whether I would or not, what do I really think of trains?

They’re all right.

Get you from London to Birmingham pretty well. Or, in Philip Reeve’s new book, from one planet to another. Only, in the future, the trains talk. They’ve got guns. And some even fall in love. So, on the face of it, a little different from the 8.14 First Capital Connect service from Harpenden (or First Crapital Connect as commuters, not particularly affectionately, called it).

But, standing on the platforms, surreptitiously looking at my son, and the other spotters, shining faces turned to the tracks, I realised that, in fact, it’s true. Trains do talk; they do sing and maybe some even fall in love. Only, most of us are too blind to see it. Only those derided blokes in the anoraks down the end of the platform get it. Someday, they will catch that 7.37 service to the Greater Magellanic Cloud that departs from Euston.

Although Philip Reeve keeps it quiet, I’m willing to bet he has his own anorak hung up on the back of a door, and a thermos flask ready to go. Only a trainspotter, closeted or otherwise, could have written this book and it’s time Philip Reeve joined me in coming out of the closet.

Come on Philip, say it loud.

We’re trainspotters, and we’re proud!

The future is arriving, and it’s coming on rails.

Adventures in Bookland: Ancient Sorceries by Algernon Blackwood

22 January 2016
Edoardo
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Categories: Book review

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Some people are christened to their art: parents beware, when you start flicking through that baby name book, you might be doing more than just choosing a name, you might be fixing the pole to which your child’s life is forever aligned. Put Chanelle around her neck and, I’m afraid, the best she will ever aspire to is coming third on Big Brother. Usain Bolt – well, what else. And the parents of Algernon Blackwood had clearly decided they wanted their son to write weird fiction – particularly when they added in to the cocktail of potential the combination of genes that meant little Algie grew up to look like this:

Algernon_Blackwood

Luckily – although that may not be quite the right word – Blackwood turned out to have the literary and imaginative gifts necessary to write ghost stories – and other fictions, that skate around the edge of the supernatural and indefinable, hinting at things that, if seen, would either shrivel in the light of sight, or shrivel sight in the light of seeing.

In The Willows, one of the stories in this collection, and the best known, one of the characters says:

‘All my life I have been strangely, vividly conscious of another region – not far removed from our own world in one sense, yet wholly different in kind – where great things go on unceasingly, where immense and terrible personalities hurry by, intent on vast purposes compared to which earthly affairs, the rise and fall of nations, the destinies of empires, the fate of armies and continents, are all as dust in the balance; vast purposes, I mean, that deal directly with the soul, and not indirectly with mere expressions of the soul…

[He continues] ‘You think it is the spirit of the elements, and I thought it was perhaps the old gods. But I tell you now it is – neither. These would be comprehensible entities, for they have relations with men, depending upon them for worship or sacrifice, whereas these beings who are now about us have absolutely nothing to do with mankind, and it is mere chance that their space happens just at this spot to touch our own.’

 Now, this is pretty well what I think. Our seemingly so, so solid world is cut through by other realities, most of which are completely beyond our reck. But, sometimes, things slip, in the thin places, the rubbed through areas, and worlds that were not meant to meet, mix, for a while, before the wheels of creation drive them apart again.

So, I loved this collection of short stories. While Blackwood might not have the wit (or sheer talent) of our best known contemporary writer of weird fiction, Neil Gaiman, he has one great advantage: he knows he’s dealing with something more than mind stuff, and that imbues his work with the edge, the bottom, to use an old-fashioned word, that Gaiman lacks.

But at least Gaiman isn’t subjected to the dubious talents of whatever artist drew the cover illustration for this book: isn’t it dreadful. Blackwood must be blue.