This year I shall be mostly reading

[legios]

Just finished a couple of quite good books. which couldn't be further apart in terms of subject matter:-

"The Twilight Watch", by Sergei Lukyanenko, the sequel to "The Night Watch" and "The Day Watch". I'm not usually one for urban fantasy (my prefered definition for this genre, I don't see it as horror no matter how the book shops opt to classify it sometimes) but this series has overriden my usual reading habits. "Twilight Watch" builds nicely on the universe created in the first two books, peeling back new layers to the characters (Olga and Gesar especially feel much more fleshed out) whilst maintaining the matter-of-fact tone that gave the first two their sense of reality. Lukyanenko does a wonderful job of rooting the books in a sense of a real Russia, so that the presence of magic, vampires, shapeshifters and whatnot has an air of credibility. Not as friendly as a jumping on point mind you - it assumes a certain familiarity with the characters. If you've seen either of the films and want to give it a go then I'd recommend starting with either "The Night Watch" or "The Day Watch" (it doesn't matter which, because of the way they are structured), but if you've read either of those then "The Twilight Watch" definitely feels like a worthy successor. (Not sure why the publisher insists on using the "The Russian answer to J K Rowling" on the covers for the paperback editions though. Rowling and Lukyanenko are definitely answers to different questions - they aren't even aiming anywhere near the same age group to be honest, let alone anything else.) Now I shall have to twiddle my thumbs a bit whilst I wait for them to finish translating "Final Watch".

My other recent reading matter has been David Simon's "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets", an account of the year that the former Baltimore Sun crime reporter spent shadowing a shift of homicide detectives in Baltimore. I've been trying to track a copy of this down for several years, and it was well worth the wait. Very well written, remaining factual, detached and non-judgemental (as much as any human being can) it is nevertheless an involving portrait of a potentially harrowing job and of the people who do the job. In some ways a bit of a historical artefact now (It was written in the late-80's and since then Crack has cut new and different scars into US inner cities) it is nevertheless genuinely eye-opening. It is often said that truth is stranger than fiction, there is certainly evidence here that truth is more surprising. It doesn't always make for comfortable reading - the book makes no bones about the fact that not every murder that crosses a detectives desk is solved (one in particular, a case involving a ten year old girl makes for particularly harrowing reading), and the discussions of the odds of a smart murderer being caught makes you somewhat glad of the observation that most murderers are anything but - but it certainly engenders a new way of thinking about the people who carry out these investigations. Very well written too - the six pages on how an interrogation works, on a psychological and tactical level is almost worth the price of admission alone. Worthwhile reading for anyone with even a passing interest in the nature of police work.

Karl

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Along with a load of Tolstoy, I read Casino Royale, Moonraker and Diamonds Are Forever this week. Moonraker's superb, possibly my favourite of the three - nothing at all like the film.

Martin

[Deleted]

Moonraker wasn't too bad while Diamonds are Forever goes up and down in terms of plot. There are some good parts but the end seems totally rushed with the villains all being killed off within a few sentences. Casino Royale however is my favourite of the three you mentioned with Bond uttering possibly the finest line in all of the Bond books right at the end.

[The Doctor]

New Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy book:
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7619828.stm

This enrages me more than words can say! Adams has passed on. Just what is the point? Arrrrrrrrrgh! FFS!

-Ralph

[Deleted]

I've just started to read Mostly Harmless and the thought of some new author continuing a classic book series just doesn't sit well with me. History is proof that these books don't normally work. After Ian Fleming died several new authors took over the role of author and, by all accounts, they just weren't as good as the originals while in comic book terms when Asterix writer Rene Goscinney died the illustrator Albert Uderzo took over the writers mantle and wrote several poor books.

[Andy Turnbull]

There are very few creations that should be tackled after their creator has shuffled off this mortal coil. Hitchhikers is one of those.

Andy

[The Doctor]

Read Hawkmoon by Michael Moorcock. Fast paced breathy tosh. A thumping good read.

I tried to read King Solomon's Mines by H Rider Haggard but I just couldn't get into it at all.

-Ralph

[Andy Turnbull]

Most of the Eternal Champion saga by Moorcock is like that - Hawkmoon as you could tell by the state of the cover is one of my favourites and is heavily read.

Andy

[The Doctor]

Mastering the Universe: He-Man and the Rise and Fall of a Billion Dollar Idea by Roger Sweet and David Wecker. Bit of a depressing read, this. Sweet claims to be the original creator of the 'He-Man' toy. Lots of other people also claim this. He states this is why he wrote the book (with assists from his nephew). Unfortunately, he has a large ego and isn't terribly likeable, often telling us how great he is and how other people aren't. Most of the book is taken up detailing what sounds like a horrible working culture at Mattel. Going by his account, it consisted solely of back-stabbing bastards fucking each other over every way possible. Sweet doesn't seem to have minded it much though. The book suffers from very poor editing, with a high amount of repition of the same facts/events, ie the meeting where the He-Man concept was first flouted is fully recounted twice!

Sigh.

-Ralph

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Planning to buy and read Bernard Cornwell's 'Azincourt' first chance I get in 2009.

Martin

[Bogatan]

I always get confused which Bernard Cornwell books I've read apart from the Sharpe novels. I think I've started them all but never think to dig them out before I go to buy a new book. Is Azincourt a new series/stand alone?

I discovered just before Christmas that I had not read all of George R Martins A Game of Throwns series (or what ever the series title is) When I read that there were four books published I thought that was counting book three in two parts. So I shall be picking the fourth book up sometime this year in the (foolish) hope that book five is finally published.

And I discovered I need to buy one more Discworld novel for the set.

Andy

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Azincourt is a new standalone novel about the Battle of Agincourt (immortalised in Shakespeare's Henry V). It's had good reviews, and I'm about due for some well-written historical warfare.

I've just read the first several Sharpe books and the Grail Quest trilogy to date.

Edit: Whoops. Change of plan. The Azincourt paperback's not out till 1 June 2009. I shall bide my time after all.

Martin

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Machiavelli's 'The Prince' and 'The Art of War'

Martin

[legios]

Can't speak for the particular translations, as I don't have those particular editions but they are both quite interesting books."The Prince" is probably the more readable, forming as it does one of the longest job applications in history but "The Art of War" is far from impenetrable (and wouldn't have survived this long if it was I tend to think).

For my part I think that this year I will be making a concious effort to track down one or two of C J Cherryh's novels which have so far eluded me. Other than that I will be mostly reading whatever takes me fancy over the weeks and months to come.

Karl

[Deleted]

well I tend to just read books on the trains/stations etc so I'll be reading an entire book series ths year "Anita Blake Vampire Hunter" theres like 17 books or something stupid like that

[Philip Ayres]

Just reread 2010 after seeing the film on New Years Day - very good, well worth a read,.

[Deleted]

I'll be finishing off the rest of my Ian Fleming James Bond collection. I've only got the last four left to read and after that I'll probably seek out the other James Bond novels written by other authors.

[The Doctor]

I have 'Von Bek' by Michael Moorcock, a 'Best of' Moorcock short story/novella collection and 'The Complete Chronicles of Conan' by Robert E Howard to kick the year off with. An article in the Guardian has convinced me that 2010 may be the year I finally tackle Tolstoy's 'War and Peace', though not until I get through that lot!

-Ralph

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Ooh! Ooh! Where?

*does search*

www.guardian.co.uk/global/2010/jan/06/leo-tolstoy-greatest-writer
www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jan/06/leo-tolstoy-the-last-station
www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/jan/06/more-to-tolstoy-war-peace

Next month also sees the UK premiere of The Last Station, an accomplished new drama about Tolstoy's final days. Starring Helen Mirren, Christopher Plummer and James McAvoy, this witty biopic recounts the eventful last two years of his life.

Kick ass.

Martin

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Haven't started the Machiavelli yet. Will be taking that with me on my March holiday, along with some of Karl Marx's writings and a book of Charles Dickens' ghost stories.

A few minutes ago I completed my main activity of the week, which was to read Boris Pasternak's 'Doctor Zhivago' from cover to cover. 'Twas the logical next step, after reading the big four famous Russian novels of the 19th Century, to read the most famous Russian novel of the 20th Century.

The first part of the book is extremely disjointed and hops about seemingly at random, and wouldn't be worthy of the likes of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. However, I was warned about that in advance and urged to stick with it, and indeed it picks up tremendously after that, with a wonderfully atmospheric protracted train jouney into Siberia, and a real sense of the turmoil and instability of people's lives through the years following the communist revolution. Civil war, random arrests and deportations, families broken forever, people snatching days of insecure happiness when they can, knowing that tomorrow may bring a fateful knock on the door. (It's obvious why it could only be published outside the Soviet Union.) And all the characters are rich and human.

Unlike Tolstoy, we don't get to see events through the eyes of all Pasternak's main characters, but just through those of the title character. Various key events are skipped over, including the falling in love events, so it's much less like 'Anna Karenina' than I had anticipated - which is a good thing. It has a style and originality of its own. But at the same time it shares that unmistakable Russianness with the 19th Century greats.

Martin

[bertie]

... 50s and 60s Sci-Fi shorts and books with interesting covers from Oxfam. It's been too long since a Sci-Fi fan has read actual Sci-Fi.

I have Two from Brian Aldiss (Canopy of Time and Earthworks) and Man Plus by Fred Pohl.

bert.

[Deleted]

I'm virtually halfway through reading the James Bond novel On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Like most of the Ian Fleming Bond books it is a nice enjoyable read but sometimes you have to have an understanding of casino games to fully enjoy some chapters. An early chapter in this book is no exception where Bond is playing one such casino card game in France and all kinds of casino lingo associated with that particular game is bandied about. Fleming also knew his French and some of the characters in the casino speak only French (which is to be expected because the chapter is set in France) but becuase I'm not up to scratch on casino terminology and the French language I found that chapter quite hard to understand.

[Deleted]

I've just finished reading On Her Majesty's Secret Service and although it was a good book the ending was hastily put together. Bond had got a few very vague clues as to what Blofeld was doing but couldn't pin a single criminal activity on him. The British Secret Service then put their heads together and jumped to the conclusion that Blofeld was starting biological warfare on Britain and Ireland. They were of course correct but I was really disappointed by this spot of conclusion jumping despite only having very vague clues that didn't really convict Blofeld of any wrongdoing.

Anyway, tonight I will start re-reading The Chronicles of Narnia books starting with the very first one (chronologically) - The Magician's Nephew.

[Andy Turnbull]

Just started the big massive Necronomicon - the collected works of H.P Lovecraft. Similar affair to Conan book.

Damned atmospheric stuff. Reading a story a day and pacing myself and enjoying it all the more for it.

Andy

[Deleted]

It's been a while since I first read the Magician's Nephew Narnia book but what strikes me is the first chapter. The titular character in the book is a young boy whose uncle is a very mad old man who believes himself to be a magician or sorcerer of some kind and its this uncle who is quite a worrying character if you look too much into it. The dialogue of the mad uncle can easily be misunderstood as him giving hints that he is a paedo! It is very unlikely though that C S Lewis wrote the character as such considering that the book was written about four decades or so ago and the author himself was a church man.

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Finished Machiavelli's 'The Prince' and 'The Art of War'. The former was an interesting read, and a foundation for pragmatism over ethics in modern politics (though apparently some think it is intended as satire). The latter was much duller, basically being a detailed account of how to arrange Roman legions on the battlefield (all of which becomes obsolete with the invention of firearms).

Also finished a volume of Charles Dickens' ghost stories, which was highly entertaining, ranging from a whimsical tale in which a man acquires gloomy haunted rooms and talks the resident ghost into going and haunting somewhere more pleasant instead, to some seriously chilling and moving lengthy pieces such as 'The Signalman' and 'The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain'.

Now half way through some selected writings of Karl Marx. Interesting stuff so far.

Martin

[Grand Moff Muffin]

Felt like having lunch in the pub today but not currently reading or planning to start reading any pocket-sized books at the mo - the next ones on my list are quite hefty tomes. So I did something I should do much more often - browse my bookshelf for something I haven't read in ages to dip into but not read properly.

My hand lit upon 'Hidden Words', a collection of serious poems by Spike Milligan. I'm no judge of poetry - unless it rhymes, I can never tell whether or not the verse form is actually justified over saying the same thing in eloquent prose, or just being pretentious. But I found myself moved by many of the short verses - many of them written during his periods of manic depression, others just making his views felt.
_____

Pass by citizen
don't look left or right
Keep those drip dry eyes straight ahead
A tree? Chop it down - it's a danger to lightning!
Pansies calling for water,
Let 'em die - queer bastards -
Seek comfort in the scarlet, labour saving plastic rose
Fresh with the fragrance of Daz!
Sunday! Pray citizen;
Pray no rain will fall
On your newly polished
Four wheeled
God.

Envoi

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Get it out with Optrex.

- Easter Monday 1967
_____

What are you saying
Supermarket shopping lady
In the scarlet telephone box.
Full of labelled pollution with secret codes
What are you saying?
Is this your dream booth?
Are you telling some plastic operator
You are Princess Grace
And can he put you through
to Buckingham Palace?
Two decimal pence
Is very little to pay for a dream in Catford.
If only the label on the door didn't say
'Out of order'.
Shouldn't it be on you?

- 1972

Martin

[Deleted]

I've just finished reading the James Bond novel You Only Live Twice and the last two chapters bring an odd twist to the series. The penultimate chapter is an obituary to James Bond from M that was actually printed in the Times newspaper around the same time that the book was originally released. In this obituary it claims that the James Bond novels were actually written by a close friend of Bond's who worked in the same department as 007 and got to know quite a bit about his missions over the year. This person romanticized Bond's adventures and then had them published. It also goes on to say that as far as M is aware Bond has no living relatives which largely blows clean out of the water the plot of a kids novel published in the late 60's called James Bond Jnr which starred a Famous Five-esque nephew of James Bond.

The final chapter in You Only Live Twice sees Bond struck down with total amnesia after his escape following his successful killing of Blofeld. A native island Japanese girl called Kissy Suzuki then tries to convince that Bond is her lover and, in his amnesia-stricken state gets him to impregnate her!

An okay story with a totally off-the-wall ending.

[Grand Moff Muffin]

I finished Herodotus this week
The first historian of exploits Greek.
Compared to '300' (the movie version)
The book is more balanced re: empire Persian.
A rich account of war's ebb and flow -
To my Scottish benefactors thanks I bestow!

Martin

[The Doctor]

I recently read by Bill Bryson his book 'At Home',
I must say it was an entertaining tome!
I particularly enjoyed the chapter on the history of what we call the stair,
They are dangerous indeed and we must beware!

-Ralph