Invasion of the Body Snatchers – Jack Finney

Like most people, I was more aware of this story from the film version than the book, specifically the classic 1956 movie. The novel is a similar pleasure, a classic of its genre and a rollicking good story, suffused with sex and paranoia. Highly recommended, although the War Of The Worlds style happy ending (necessitated by the first person narrative, I guess) pales in comparison with the chilling finale of the movie: “They're here already! You're next! You're next, You're next...”

Little Dorrit – Charles Dickens

Gloomy and very long, this isn’t the first Dickens I would urge you to read but it’s worth getting through nevertheless. The central characters are sentimental idealisations rather than real people, and the plot is preposterous, but the stuff one reads Dickens for is all there; splendid secondary characters, peerless sense of place, tremendous storytelling verve.

First Abolish The Customer – Bob Ellis

A polemic against “economic rationalism” – i.e. modern post-Thatcherite capitalism – isn’t my usual choice of relaxation reading but this was lent to me so I gave it a go. Being an old-fashioned leftie, I was sympathetic to most of the arguments offered and the Australian perspective was interesting. The whole thing was rather undermined, though, by a failure to fully engage with any counter-arguments and a tendency to highlight personal bugbears like the cancellation of a Sydney-Gold Coast sleeper service.

A Year With Verona – Tim Parks

Neither the best nor the worst football book I’ve ever read, this has the selling point of being as much about Italian culture as about Italian football specifically. I learnt a lot about the divided nature of the rickety state and the ubiquitous corruption – the latter being especially important to the state of Italian football right now. Where the author really struggles is in trying to explain away the shocking racism of the fans as a semi-ironic declaration of independent-mindedness. No it isn’t, it’s racism.

Chinatown (BFI Film Classics) – Michael Eaton

One of my all-time favourite films and this is a good little summary of the main points. I dunno, maybe I’ve read too much about it already in thing like “The Kid Stays in the Picture” and “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” (both fantastic, btw), because most of the tales were already known to me.

Vernon God Little – DBC Pierre

I’m trying to fill in some major gaps in my reading and, in particular, I’m trying to get through a few more Booker winners.

This is a British take on the Southern Gothic genre (think Faulkner) full of sick humour and grotesquery. I enjoyed the lively narrative voice, but the reality TV satire that kicks in at the end is silly and already dated.

Pulp Fiction (BFI Film Classics) – Dana Polan

Oh dear. Most of the BFI books I have read are worthwhile, but this is horribly dated thanks to its trite and unenlightening focus on Pulp Fiction’s afterlife in what is referred to throughout as “cyberspace” or “the information superhighway”. Clang! This book managed the unusual feat of making it’s subject seem less interesting than it had before I started reading.

Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card

This is a book about a hero called Ender Wiggin being trained to fight aliens called buggers. Sounds to me like something Bart Simpson would make up. The nomenclature is a shame, because it’s an above average science fiction tale with some interesting ideas.

I like the fact that the characters are supposed to be young children but behave like adults, giving the whole thing a creepy undercurrent. Perhaps the most impressive thing, though, is the accuracy of some of the predictions given that the book was published in the 70s. The computer game that Ender plays in like something on a PlayStation, and the depiction of the media on “the net”(!) sounds amazingly like the modern blogosphere. It’s very impressive.

Will I read the rest of the series? Maybe not, but I’m glad I’ve read this.

The Swimming-Pool Library - Alan Hollinghurst

I suppose that when this book came out in 1988 as Hollinghurst’s debut it would have been shelved in the “Gay Literature” section of your LFBS, but as his reputation has grown, and particularly since winning the Booker with “The Line of Beauty” in 2004, his work has started being read by a mainstream audience. The most startling thing about this novel for a “general reader” is the explicitness of the sex scenes. If such things offend, then steer well clear. Sadly, this will also lead you to missing out on a brilliant, superbly written novel.

Most of the book is narrated by a promiscuous gay man called Will and details the London gay scene of the pre-AIDS early 80s. The anti-hero is also aristocratic, so I read the book as being about the consequences of having no responsibilities; he cannot have a family and he has no need to work. At the start of the novel, Will is good company but clearly an ethical hollow man, but following a number of revelations he has learned some sense of decency. Not a lot, mind.

Incidentally, here’s what the Observer profile of Hollinghurst said about it, which provides a useful contemporary commentary:

"The Swimming-Pool Library… was described by Edmund White as 'the best book about gay life yet written by an English author'. Exhilaratingly libidinous, full of pre-Aids pleasure, it appeared with a tremendous sense of shock. The novelist Philip Hensher was 22 when it was published and recalls its impact: 'I remember coming down from university to London to buy it as soon as possible. It was extremely important to my generation: before that, you couldn't imagine a gay novel about gay life appealing to anyone else.' "

The Big Sleep (BFI Film Classics) – David Thomson

David Thomson is often regarded as the foremost current writer on the movies, and quality of the writing in this is a step up from the other BFI Film Classics that I’ve read. He is also very insightful, making some really interesting points about the creation of Lauren Bacall’s persona, the disparities between book and film, and the impenetrable plot as a forerunner of the nouvelle vague.

The most startling point: in the novel, Marlowe wears a pastel blue suit. Surely not!

Ubik - Philip K. Dick

I‘ve read a fair few Dicks in my time, and his stuff is always worth reading. The prose style is functional, but the level of imagination and the brain-bending ideas more than make up for it.

Set in the far-flung future of, er, 1992, Ubik riffs on ideas about death and time travel to marvellously entertaining effect. I particularly liked the spoof ads for various products named Ubik that appear at the start of each chapter, usually ending with the disclaimer “Ubik is 100% safe when applied as directed”.

Maus: A Survivor's Tale - Art Spiegelman

This was intriguing: the life of the author’s father, who was a Polish Jew during the Nazi occupation. It is in the form of a graphic novel, and in a daring tactic the Jews are portrayed as mice, the Nazis as cats and the gentile Poles as pigs. The strange thing is that you accept this conceit very quickly, allowing Spiegelman to get on with telling the story, and it allows for some brilliant effects, as when Jews disguise themselves as gentiles by wearing pig masks.

It’s a harrowing tale, of course, one that is both familiar and well worth retelling. The biggest risk in terms of storytelling is that Spiegelman interweaves his relationship with his parents and the process of researching the book into the narrative. It works brilliantly, and adds another level of interest to this fascinating read.

Bride of Frankenstein (BFI Film Classics) – Alberto Manguel

This is a great wee book about a damn fine movie. With great economy, Manguel covers the development of the script, casting, production, reception and the film’s lasting influence. This is the best of all the BFI Film Classics that I’ve read.

Elsa Lanchester’s hair; the greatest wig in movie history?

Das Cabinet des Dr.Caligari (BFI Film Classics) – David Robinson

As always with this series, this is a beautifully produced book with excellent use of stills and other illustrations. However, the content covers detail more suited to the Caligari scholar rather than the casual reader such as myself.

1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die - Robert Dimery (Ed.)

This is a book you’re not really supposed to read cover to cover, but it’s been on my bedside table for a few weeks now and I ended up doing so. It isn’t half as good as the film version, but I enjoyed reading about both old favourites of mine and a few intriguing entries that I may well end up tracking down.

There’s also one called 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die – anybody read it?

Vertigo (BFI Film Classics)- Charles Barr

BFI Film Classics are really neat little books; monographs on a single film giving a new angle on a familiar text. Vertigo is possibly my vote for the best film ever made, so I enjoyed this book despite its shortcomings. Barr spends too much time describing what happens rather than why things happen, but the illustrations are excellent and some of the shot-by-shot analysis is enlightening.

The Final Solution - Michael Chabon

I really liked the central conceit of this novella – an elderly Sherlock Holmes investigates a crime in wartime England but is defeated by the reality of the Holocaust, an event that cannot be explained, or even comprehended, by Holmesian rationalism. The execution of the idea works well in parts, but in others it all feels rather forced, in particular a chapter narrated by a parrot.

Hey, this is my second parrot book this year – maybe I’ll get hold of a copy of Treasure Island. Any other parrot books? Isn’t there a parrot in Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening”?

The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

"She was moving down the corridor toward them with long, fluid strides...a haunting certainty to her gait."

There are so many things wrong with this sentence that it’s difficult to know where to start. In no particular order:

- “a haunting certainty”; what on earth does that mean?
- The three dots...why?
- Isn’t gait a word usually associated with horses? Brown uses it here to introduce the heroine/love interest.

Okay, so it’s hardly original to criticise the prose of this book, but I’ve encountered more stylistic zest in a photocopier manual. The clumsy exposition, the bizarre choice of adjectives, and the unconvincing dialogue – they all made me laugh out loud at their ineptitude. I confess I enjoyed some of the reheated conspiracy stuff despite its unoriginality, but you have to wade through pages of turgid travelogue masquerading as plot to get there. It takes nearly 200 pages to get out of the Louvre for crying out loud.

This book is a failure as entertainment, in terms of ideas and as an artistic endeavour. Is this really the world’s favourite author? God help us.

ps This post caused quite a stir in when I wrote it in a reading group of which I was briefly a member. Check it out.

Freakonomics - Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

I loved the first chapter of this book, which dazzles the reader with some amazing ideas on how the world really works, rather than how we think it works – or how we’d like to think it works. The manifesto of the book is to apply economic analysis to various unlikely problems and come up with unlikely solutions, from selling your home at the best price to cheating in sumo competitions. Unfortunately, the book slows down considerably after it’s lively start and many of the rest of the book drags slightly, but largely retains its interest due to the strength of the ideas proposed. I’ll read the inevitable sequel.

The Moviegoer - Walker Percy

The title deceived me a bit, because this features very little stuff about movies. Instead, it’s a Faulkneresque tale of emotional repression and family dysfunction in Louisiana. I thought that the demands made on the reader weren’t really rewarded with any pay-off. Then again, it’s regarded as an American classic, so perhaps I’m missing something.

A Wizard of Earthsea - Ursula K LeGuin

I'm reading a lot of classic stuff at the moment, but I'm trying to throw in a fair bit of genre material too. This is a classic in fantasy circles, and I can understand why. Your enjoyment will depend on your tolerance of dragons, wizards and suchlike, but in essence it's a simple and pleasing coming of age story.

Rabbit, Run - John Updike

Since I became a father a few months ago I have been especially vulnerable to any stories that include bad things happening to small people. That’s why the final tragedy of “Rabbit, Run” hit me like a brick to the head. Until then, I had felt this to be a slightly dated, finely written but very glum portrait of male inadequacy and suburban ennui. By the finish, it strikes me as both very powerful and despairing. Surely the most depressing book ever to have the word “rabbit” in its title?

Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie

Dazzling stuff, this. It won the “Booker of Bookers” in 1993, so I’ve been meaning to get around to it for some years and I’ve finally managed it. The sheer density of ideas in this fantastical novel make it a difficult read but a highly rewarding one. Events are foreshadowed, then occur, and then resonate backwards, so if you miss something you’ll be left bemused. If you can concentrate though, this book will reward you with literary dazzle and genuine human warmth.

Incidentally, I am trying to find a good readable history of modern India. Does anybody have any suggestions? Thanks.

The Bridge of San Luis Rey – Thornton Wilder

I picked this up at my library because it's on the Time top 100 novels list, I guess it's more famous in the USA than in the UK or Australia because I'd never heard of it before. I was delighted to find that, yes, it's a brilliant novel.

It is fascinating to read a novel which engages with the great themes in such a brief form (under 100 pages). If I were writing a book about the existence of God and the unknowable nature of fate and death I would be tempted to write something long, worthy and portentous. Instead, Wilder takes the death of 5 people in a bridge collapse as his starting point for asking why such things happen, and why these individuals rather than someone far more deserving of ill luck than these flawed, but very human, characters. The book packs in love stories, humour, pathos and tragedy, and it works on every level. Frankly, there's no good reason not to read it.

A Study in Scarlet - Arthur Conan Doyle

This is the first of the magnificent Holmes and Watson mysteries, which I unabashedly adore. This is one of only a few which could be said to be novel-length (novella, really) and is a real joy to revisit. Most of the expected Holmes trademarks are there from a start – the drugs, the brilliant deductions, the violin – whilst the plot keeps you guessing nicely. There is a long middle section set in Utah likely to offend Mormons, who are portrayed as a villainous bunch, but I’m sure everyone would enjoy the London-based parts. What’s not to love?

Does anybody know of any other genre fiction of this era which they would suggest? Cheers!

To The Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf

This is one of those worthy books where I really admire what the author is doing intellectually but I remain entirely unengaged emotionally.

The book is structured in 3 sections, like 2 rooms connected by a corridor. The first and last sections are interior monologues with varying perspectives on a middle-class family and various associates. The central section, entitled “Passing Time”, is brief but encompasses the deaths of 3 major characters as well as World War One – disposed of in a sentence, although it permeates the entire book in other ways. Woolf does fascinating technical stuff with narrative structure, grammar, shifting points of view and so on, but ultimately I cared not a jot for the characters being depicted. Are we supposed to? I think so.

If you are interested in Virginia Woolf I would say she’s well worth the effort, but to begin with Mrs Dalloway, which has a more approachable human face.

Exodus

I mean Exodus as in the second book of the Bible/Torah, rather than the Leon Uris novel. I have a plan to read the Bible in its entirety. I’m not religious but I think the Bible is a must-read for its importance, its wonderful stories and the astonishing poetry of the King James Version. Where possible I am reading the great Pocket Canon books from Canongate – o.o.p., I think, but still knocking around on Amazon.

Anyway, from a secular point of view it’s a book of great beauty and strangeness. Iconic occurrences such as Passover and the parting of the Red Sea are covered briefly but resonantly, but far more time is spent describing the building of the Ark of the Covenant and so on. Arguably this is the most important book of the Old Testament and as such its well worth being familiar with whatever our beliefs.

Incidentally, Exodus 4:24-26 is particularly inexplicable. I’ve had a read around it and apparently it’s a contentious passage theologically. It made me sit up, that’s for sure.

The Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens

Dickens’ first full-length novel betrays its roots as an episodic narrative rather too obviously but remains a major work of humour and humanity. It’s essentially a variant on Cervantes’ Don Quixote but Pickwick is so beautifully drawn that he stands independently as a figure of huge warmth – he’s great company for the reader throughout, as is his sidekick Samuel Weller. There’s no plot to speak of, more like a sequence of events that serve as opportunities for comedy or lively characterisations. There are signs of the rage at the era’s iniquities that are so prominent in Dickens’ later, greater works, but the overall tone is one of fun and entertainment.

The Silent Traveller in London - Chiang Yee

I raced through this, a charming travel book about London written by a Chinese academic in 1938. It's lovely to read about one's home city from a totally different perspective, and some of his comments were real eye-openers, particularly in the chapter about London's statues. My only problem is the author's over-fondness for exclamation marks, a horrible tic best avoided. A feature is the unsettling sense of impending world trouble, exacerbated by asides about the China-Japan conflict and Chiang's great grief over the recent death of his brother.

Flaubert’s Parrot – Julian Barnes

I remember the hype about this in the UK after it was published (1984) but I had never got round to reading it, largely 'cos I wanted to read Madame Bovary first, which I eventually managed last year. Sadly, it was a bit of a let-down. It seems rather slight and neither as smart or as funny as I'd hoped, barring one or two good gags. If you're interested in Barnes, I'd suggest "A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters" as the better bet.

Welcome

Hi,

Welcome to my book reviews blog. On the one hand this is hopelessly egotistical, but I know that lots of people enjoyed following the 100 book challenge thing, so I figured that folk might also be interested in what I have read subsequently.

The first few books will be posted within a few days of each other, as they are being done retrospectively. I did start a thing on LiveJournal called the 50 Book Challenge and I made a hash of it, but I can reheat some of the entries on that community for this blog. After I've uploaded that material, I'll add each individual book as I read them - hopefully that'll be one or two a week.

Please leave comments if you have anything interesting to say - or anything dull to say for that matter.

And remember kids: There's more to life than books you know, but not much more.