My Life As A Fake - Peter Carey

In theory a book heavily influenced by two of my favourite novels - Shelley's Frankenstein and Nabokov's Pale Fire - should be a treat, but unfortunately it turned out to be a bit of a slog. The tangled narrative of literary intrigue and shifting identities swallows its own tail, resulting in a confusing and unengaging story. For a writer of Carey's usual ebullience, it's also a strangely humourless work.

Jonathan Wild - Henry Fielding

Fielding's satirical intent is to show the contrast between those who are humbly good and those whose wickedness leads them to being labelled GREAT. His vehicle is the rollicking tale of the rise and fall of our eponymous anti-hero, a compelling character who is swaggering, charismatic and utterly without scruple. The narrator feigns admiration for him and disparages the noble Heartfree for such "vices" as modesty and altruism.

As is always the way the good character is pretty forgettable, but Wild himself is tremendous fun and his adventures, both sexual and criminal, are highly entertaining.

The Light of Day - Graham Swift

Swift is always worth reading for the classy prose and understanding of human nature, but his plot development can be much more hit and miss. Waterland is an out-and-out masterpiece in which multiple, achronological strands intertwine intricately and resonate to stunning effect. The Light of Day tries a similar approach but the whole plot is clear about a third of the way in and somehow the different threads merely get tangled instead of creating a more complex tapestry.

Shepperton Babylon - Matthew Sweet

This idiosyncratic history of British cinema is a bit of a mess and a somewhat frustrating read, but I learned a lot about some of the less remembered byways of the story such as the silent era and the intriguing sexploitation movies of the 1970s.

The book veers between elegaic whimsy and scandal-mongering which often jars, although I suppose both have their place. The writing is at its best when most impassioned, as in his assessment of the radicalism of the great Ealing comedies. Any book that makes me want to track down a copy of naturist classic "Naked - As Nature Intended" must be worth a look.

Also - best title ever?

The Devil's Pool - George Sand

A curious amalgam of rural romance, dark fairy tale and sociological study. The plot is the kind of thing that Trollope would take 10 times as long to get through, but the extra elements make it all rather baffling.

Contains the sentence "And what a wimple!".

Illywhacker - Peter Carey

This is a self-conscious attempt at Australian myth-making, taking in such ocker icons as the outback, poisonous snakes, Vegemite, immigration and, most importantly, the larrikin. The scope is epic (covering 4 generations of one family) as is the length (600 pages).

Language and ideas are thrown around with great abandon by our narrator, the confessed con-man and liar of the title. The effect is often very exciting but at times wearying, and the feeling is as much of wrestling against the text as much as with it. By the end I was knackered, but full of admiration.

Doctor Sally - P.G. Wodehouse

The stageplay origins of this short novel are very obvious, but the comic delights far outweigh the structural shortcomings. I could read this stuff forever - daffily entertaining characters, amusing farce and dialogue of sheer, hilarious brilliance.

Lush Life - Richard Price

I'm a huge fan of The Wire and I admire Price's work in the medium of TV and movie screenplays. My overwhelming thought while reading this was "I'd rather be watching a DVD".

A pointless and banal death in a robbery gone wrong sets course for 450 pages of socioeconomic description of Manhattan's Lower East Side. So much momentum is wasted on describing every minor character in precise socio-ethno-fashion terms that a new genre is created; the plotless thriller.