Obligatory 'I've just been busy/lazy recently' post. I just need an empty day off.

Thompson on Kerouac

For what it's worth, I like both of them.

A Good Excuse...

I was on holiday in Greece for a week, so I didn't write anything. Got a couple to catch-up on now though. TBC...

Excitable Post

My pre-ordered copy of Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgramage by Haruki Murakami finally turned up today. After the brilliance of his last novel, the two-part (in the Western edition, anyway) 1Q84 released in 2011 I've been waiting impatiently for Murakami's next work. Now it's finally here it'll jump straight to the top of the to-read pile (which has about 40 books on it right now). I just have to finish my current in-progress review of World War Z, then finish reading my current main book (I usually have a back-up on the go, most often a book about science), Paul Auster's critical essay collection The Art of Hunger, which probably won't get a full review.  Then it's Tsukuru Tazaki a-go-go, baby.

I just felt I should write all this down for some reason.

If I were to change the name of this blog...

 

... it'd be to this.

One of those posts...

... where I make excuses for not posting in a while. Though, thinking about it, this nine day gap is much smaller delay than I used to cause on this blog, so I'm getting better. Truthfully the problem is I've barely sat down to read recently, thanks to a combination of work and a crippling addiction to Pokemon Emerald on the Game Boy Advance.

Since I finished The Book of Illusions I was so impressed by it that I haven't wanted to try and grapple with another heavyweight bout of surrealist literature again. I did pick up my copy of The Complete Short Fiction of Oscar Wilde, and I've read a bit of that but not much. I am planning to read the final available Haruki Murakami book I'm yet to read; Dance Dance Dance, but I read one chapter and never got back to it.

This hasn't helped my To Read pile problem. Just the other day I randomly looked in HMV and came across three first-hand cheap books by Bret Easton Ellis, Kurt Vonnegut, and Jean Cocteau. The day before that I randomly found Science of the Discworld IV in Tesco. Must start reading....

Stuff and Nonsense

This is one of those non-post posts where I feel lazy for not writing anything in a week or two, so I've opened up the new post page of blogger and am frantically tapping away at the keyboard in the vain hope that something remotely legible might appear. 

Since I finished Amaryllis Night and Day it took me a few days to start anything else. I eventually decided on Absolute Sandman Volume 4, something I've had sitting proudly on the to-read selection for a few months now. As it essentially finishes off The Sandman series (there is a volume 5 but it's just a money grabbing collection of miscellanea that I'm not going to buy), I left it there waiting in that curiously strange thing that readers do where they leave the last book in a series, or the last novel they haven't read by their favourite author for a far longer time than a normal person would. I call it Desmond Hulme syndrome.

Anyway, I need to force myself into writing various things by mentioning that I'm going to write them here, so here goes. Obviously the Discworld series will continue, though I took a break from it because the next one is Feet of Clay and I don't know how to approach it. Also I've got the Comics Snobbery series which I seemed to heroically give up on after two installments with another three to go.

Also I'm thinking about doing an Everything Else style semi-regular post, an idea I've ripped off specifically from the Every Day is Like Wednesday blog, probably my favourite blog on the net. It would just be mini reviews of the latest TV shows, films and other media stuff I've been indulging in recently. I'll probably never get around to it. Anyway, I think that's enough words to justify posting this.

Obsessive Compulsive Behavour

A few days ago, on not more than a whim, I decided to reorganise the few pictures I have on this blog; mainly saving them and uploading them rather than being lazy and hot linking. Well, my obsessive compulsive nature kicked in and I ended up spending far too much time visually rearranging them and adding a ton more, so if you go look at old articles (for some reason) you'll see a bunch of extra covers and author photos, all alligned fairly neatly to the sides of the page. I suppose I could've spent this time actually reading a book but leave me alone.

Also, while I'm here, my plans to write another Comics Snobbery article have been set back by the fact that I wasn't very happy with the last one, and my next topic is even more convoluted and snarky, so that's on temporary hold. Not sure what's next, to be honest, I started reading Goethe's Faust, but though I'm enjoying it as a classic it's not something I find myself constantly picking up, so I might just start something else to go along with it. I'll probably just write the next Discworld review next.

Thus ends this merry update.

Another Magnificent Update

So apparently Christmas/New Year isn't the best time to get the Internet sorted out in your new home, and it'll take about two weeks to be installed. Doesn't help that I went for the cheapest option, either.

I like my new flat though. Happy new year and all that.

A Magnificent Update

So, here we are, a new post. I don't actually have any literature reviews or opinions to give today, I just feel though I should probably update this blog more often in case people actually look at it. At least I'm honest.

Anyway, I'm moving house today, to a place where I haven't bothered to set up the Internet yet, so it could potentially slow down this recent blog momentum I built up, but then if I do write something I'll probably just go to the home of some poor friend or relative and post it there. Current schedule is roughly a Comics Snobbery one, a Discworld one, and a round-up one where I hastily review the few books I've read this year that I didn't bother reviewing. By then I might have finished reading Terry Pratchett's Dodger, which, spoiler alert, is alright. So far.

State of Affairs

I need to write a review for Phillip Pullman's The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. I also need to write about fifteen billion Discworld book reviews. At some point I'd like to write an L-Space update about all the comic book series I'm collecting in trade paperback format.

Now I've written this I'll have to do it, obviously. Self-motivation!

Murakami vs. McCarthy

Looking at the technical (ha) back end of this site and its statistics, I see someone found me on Google by searching for Haruki Murakami vs. Cormac McCarthy. Well, that person, this is your lucky day, for I am here to answer that conundrum using the type of technical know-how and analysis that this blog is famous for.

The answer is Murakami, via fatality. That one where Sub Zero rips out your spine, specifically.

Argh I Must Write Something

This is one of those posts that's designed to make the writer write something for god's sake, since it's been about a week. In my defence, I did move house again which kind of threw me off. Plus, after reading Breakfast at Tiffany's I took a while to pick up another book. That turned out to be Underground- The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche. It's a non-fiction work of investigative journalism, as my favourite author of modern fiction analyses the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo underground railway that occurred in 1995.

I'd never heard of it before. It's not something I'd rush to read if it had the name of any other author on, either. So if I ever finish that, I'll review it. And I'll do Lords and Ladies. At some point.

A Quick Shout Out...

As the title suggests, I just wanted to give a quick shout out to another blog that, through the magic of blogger stats, I discovered linked to my stupid little site. If I had one of those link-column-things that runs down the side of the page listing my favourite blogs then I'd add it, but until I get around to that, everyone (all ten of you) go visit The Genteel Arsenal. It's a really good book blog, with reviews and thoughts and stuff, including plenty of Pratchett book reviews.

Self-Peer Pressure

I was ill for a bit, and after I recovered I increased my hours at work, plus I'm lazy. Anyway, in the hope of some organisation, the following is a list of all the books I need to review to catch up;

Paul Auster- Timbuktu
Paul Auster- Leviathon
George R. R. Martin- A Feast for Crows
Soren Kierkergaard- Fear and Trembling
Darren Shan- The City- Book One- Procession of the Dead
Norman Mailer- An American Dream

I'm pretty sure that's it. That and about 30 Discworld books.

These things.

To be done, for my own sanity;

Cormac McCarthy- Blood Meridian
Haruki Murakami- A Wild Sheep Chase
Ray Bradbury- The Silver Locusts
Norman Mailer- An American Dream
Yann Martel- Life of Pi.
 .
*Edit* Yay, I did it

Busy/Lazy

I'll get around to writing something new here at some point, I've just been really busy/lazy recently. I've got the next Discworld book and some Cormac McCarthy to catch up on.

Michael Crichton- Pirate Latitudes

Pirate Latitudes

Harpercollins

Michael Crichton
2009

Back in around 1994, at the age of 8-years-old, Michael Crichton introduced me prematurely to the world of grown-up people's fiction with his magnum opus, Jurassic Park. Being an impressionable young lad with a passion for all things dinosaur, I loved it immensely, and proceeded to re-read it at least once a year for about ten years. In the meantime, I gravitated towards many of his other novels, and while I didn't enjoy any of them as much as I did Jurassic Park, that's not to say that I didn't get enjoyment out of them. Books like Congo, Sphere, The Lost World and Timeline were great adventure stories wrapped around a frame of pseudo-science, eventually made into sub-standard movies. Unfortunately at some point, I feel, Crichton lost his spark a little, and his more recent novels such as Prey, State of Fear and Next were all lacking in ingenuity and  character for me. Then, in 2008, Michael Crichton suddenly died. The man who played a major part in my personal literary development was no more.

One year later, Pirate Latitudes was published, having been discovered on Crichton's hard drive, fully formed. Apparently he'd been working on the book for around thirty years, but clearly was never happy enough with it to publish it. Posthumously he didn't have a choice. Pirate Latitudes, as the title suggests, is a book about pirates (yargh!), set around the Caribbean in the 17th Century. Unlike most of Crichton's work, this isn't a sci-fi parable regarding the misuse of technology, it's purely an adventure story, about a motley group of pirates led by a fearless captain out to do some piracy on the hated Spanish navy. To be honest, it's not a complicated plot, relying more on character presentation and scenes of action and adventure more than anything else. Captain Charles Hunter is Crichton's lead protagonist, and, even though he sticks to many pirate stereotypes, he's a typical Crichton lead in that he's brave, intelligent, and ultimately takes the moral high ground. The other characters are all cliche variations on typical pirate motifs.

Ultimately while I hesitate to condemn Pirate Latitudes as bad, unfortunately there's not really much to endorse, specifically nothing that helps the novel stand out amongst the deluge of new and old adventure fiction available. It's certainly better than the shit that Clive Cussler produces, and it has its moments of excitement and amusements, but it's lacking the incisive sharpness and general masterly feeling of control that Crichton's best quality works contain. At his best the man was a master of the thriller genre, combining a solid presentation of interesting science (not being a science-minded person I can't tell you if it was at all realistic, but it did seem authentic in context) with solid, gritty characters and some great plot twists. Pirate Latitudes doesn't live up to his standards, which is undoubtedly why he didn't send it for publishing while he lived. Readers who enjoyed Crichton's previous work and read all of his best should consider this, but anyone looking to try it for the first time would be well advised to pick an earlier effort.