Tagged: Bookshelf

re:View – The 2015 Bookshelf
April: From Sin City to Russia

Sinners, superheroes and comrades. It’s been another random month for the Bookshelf, filled with the kinds of books I don’t normally read but should definitely pick up more often.

2-015-bookshelf-april

Sin City: The Hard Goodbye by Frank Miller
I loved the first Sin City adaptation for its stunning visuals and it’s in-your-face-ness and reading the novels has been at the back of my mind for years – and I kept pushing it further to the back because I’ve never been very keen on comics. But my surprisingly enjoyable experience of V for Vendetta last month made me take the plunge into graphic novels and of course this seemed the best place to start. I was thrilled to find that the visuals and story lines from the film were basically taken directly from the books, making this a very familiar reading experience, but adding a level of intensity that – I think – comes from the reading rhythm and that the film can’t match. I loved the film for being gorgeous from the first frame to the last, and loved the book more for allowing me to linger on my favourite frames for as long as I liked. It’s a brutally beautiful graphic novel all around.
Pens: 4 out of 5

Watchmen by Alan Moore
What a blockbuster of a graphic novel! And there I was, thinking that, being a comic book, it’ll be a quick read and put me back on track for this year’s reading challenge. And so, a week of intense reading later, I emerged having learned a new book lesson: that comic books can be just as complex as a normal novel made only from words. This epic story, which chronicles the rise and fall of a group of superheroes in an alternative past, asks important questions about what it means to be human and superhuman, about the moral rights and wrongs of trying to create a perfect world. The story gets very complex in time, especially as the various sub-plots jump back and forth in time to explore each character’s history and the various alliances that form and unravel between them over the decades – so definitely not a quick comic book, but a rich and hugely enjoyable piece of literature that you can really get lost in.
Pens: 4 out of 5

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
This is Mikhail Bulgakov’s devastating satire of Soviet life, written during the darkest period of Stalin’s regime, according to Goodreads. I enjoyed the bits of satire that I understood, but overall I definitely know too little of Russian culture and history to really get this book. Which means it was a bit of a tough read and I probably missed out on a lot of the enjoyment a more educated person will get out of the book. It does have one of the coolest feline characters I’ve ever come across in literature, though.
Pens: 2 out of 5

Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov
A bittersweet little satire from Ukraine, Kurkov’s first novel deals with isolation and the pointlessness of life in a political system that doesn’t really give you much in the way of choice. An obituary writer who lives with his pet penguin sleepwalks through life until it dawns on him that his newspaper work is nowhere near as harmless as it seemed, and that he’s been drawn into an elaborately manufactured political trap from which he may not escape with his life. By far the best element to this book is the penguin, a silent and yet strangely expressive character who at the same time lightens the mood and adds a heartbreaking kind of sadness to the story.
Pens: 3 out of 5

A re:View special for World Book Day

Happy World Book Day from Zanne and the Scooby!

scooby-book

I was going to tweet a photo of my favourite books, but then realised that most of them aren’t in my bookshelf because they’re circulating among my friends. So I’ll have to write this up instead…

These are just a few picks from the huge pile of wonderful books that have enriched my life over the years, because it’s good to look back and remember what a particular book has given you – especially if you have a habit of speeding through books the way I do. I’m sure there are plenty more that I can’t think of right now, but those can be for next year.

In no particular order – except for number one, which is very special.

Continue reading

re:View – The 2015 Bookshelf
March: Worlds of (Mostly) Meh

Well, March wasn’t my best month for reading. I only (just) made it through four books, and one of them was a graphic novel so comparatively quick to read. That’s what happens when I pick up a book that doesn’t draw me in – I go into procrastinate mode and do everything else instead. (Although I did make a bunch of pretty DIY t-shirts in all that time I didn’t spend reading books.)

Anyway, with some delay here’s the Bookshelf for a rather meh-y March.

2015-bookshelf-march

Continue reading

re:View – The 2015 Bookshelf
February: the apocalypse and beyond

Perhaps unsurprisingly, January’s reading journey to dystopia has led me on into the apocalypse. I guess the two often go hand in hand – certainly in the case of Maragret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy, which forms the central part of my February reading.

2015bookshelf-february-1

Continue reading

re:View – The 2015 Bookshelf
January: a journey to other worlds

New year, new bookshelf! After finally picking up The Handmaid’s Tale I fancied some more alternative reality kind of stuff, so my reading journey throughout January took me from dystopian to prehistoric to post-apocalyptic worlds…and back again. Also as a new feature this year I’m trying to do Bookshelf on a monthly basis. I’ve still got quite a bit of otherworldly reading lined up so expect a similar theme for February.

As well as the books below I also read Emily St John Mandel’s Station Eleven, which has certainly been my book of the month and is, quite possibly, already my favourite book of the year. It’s so good it has earned its own dedicated review post. Check it out here – I really can’t recommend this book enough.

2015bookshelf1

Continue reading

re:View – Station Eleven, the first must-read book of the year

I usually do my reviews in batches, but here’s a book that deserves its very own post. I read it purely because it was Waterstones’ book of the month for January and by the time I had read the free first chapter on their website I was drawn in enough to order the book straight away. That says a lot for the first chapter; usually I stay well clear of the latest books being hyped by the booksellers.

station-eleven-cover
Couldn’t pick my favourite cover so you get them all…

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel is the story of a theatre company travelling across a post-apocalyptic North America performing Shakespeare’s plays for communities of survivors, interwoven with an account of a pandemic that wiped out civilisation and the first twenty years of the surviving one percent of humanity dealing with the aftermath. What starts out as a collection of seemingly unconnected subplots following different characters’ lives, spanning the continent and some forty years in time, eventually comes together as a powerful narrative of surviving the end of the world and being catapulted into a new reality where all the rules have changed.

Mandel’s writing is poignant and perfectly timed, creating a page-turner that moves deeply without being sentimental. She imagines a post-apocalyptic wasteland that is filled with dangers but strangely inviting, and populated with characters and relationships that are fragile, flawed and utterly human. What I loved most about this book is how it explores the practical day-to-day realities of surviving in a worldwide ground zero, where resources are as sparse as law and order, where despair breeds fanaticism and where a moment of mercy could cost your life.

It makes you stop and think about just how fragile our civilisation really is; it makes you wonder whether you’ve got what it takes to survive, all the while also reminding us just how difficult it would be to re-build a world that’s even remotely as safe and comfortable as the one we’re used to.

Devastating and yet beautifully optimistic, and filled with literary beauty, this is without a doubt my favourite book of the year – and I’m confident enough to say that already in January.

Pens: 5 out of 5

re:View – The 2014 Bookshelf VI

Just to tie up the loose ends, here’s the last of the 2014 Bookshelf – books new and old by some of my favourite authors. While some of these guys never fail to impress (Ellroy, Pratchett, I’m looking at you!) others didn’t exactly blow me away this year.

I’m currently reading Ruth Ozeki’s All Over Creation but this will be one for next year’s shelf. Which means my Goodreads challenge closes at 106% or 55 of 52 books.

2014bookshelf6

Continue reading

re:View – The 2014 Bookshelf V

This summer I went on a bit of an Edith Wharton binge after being stuck on a journey without a book and finding a collection of her complete works on Kindle. I think by now I’ve made my way through all the novels and most of the novellas, but I’ve still got thousands of pages of stories, poetry and non-fiction ahead of me. This is my favourite author after all. Which means I will read EVERYTHING by her. Eventually.

So here’s the 2014 addition to the Wharton bookshelf. Now somebody just needs to go and publish shiny editions of all her books. Folio Society, I’m looking at you.

2014bookshelf5

Continue reading

re:View – A Vision of Fire doesn’t spark any hope for Gillian Anderson’s literary career

Let me start by saying that I never, ever wanted to love a book as much as I wanted to love this. Having spent my life looking up at Gillian Anderson as a role model, inspiration and feminist icon, I really desperately wanted to add her to my list of favourite authors. Which is probably why the disappointment was quite so crushing when I read her first novel. Although, to be fair, she co-wrote it with author-ghostwriter Jeff Rovin, so I’m not sure who to pin the bad writing on.

visionoffire

Billed as “a science fiction thriller of epic proportions” by the publisher, A Vision of Fire is really more of a spiritual drama of little thrill, very little sci-fi and limited proportions, I’m afraid. There’s a little bit of psychology, a little bit of medicine, and a whole lot of dabbling with mysticism from various eras and corners of the globe, but it fails to come together in a coherent narrative. There are some good ideas in there, but they are too vague, dealt with in passing, and not given a chance to develop any real depth or complexity.

The writing is clumsy and seems a bit forced, lingering too much on unnecessary details and not giving enough attention to the important thoughts. The characters are one-dimensional stereotypes and the story is pretty predictable and completely fails to engage. Anderson has said from the outset that the book – eventually to be extended into the “Earth End Saga” – will be adapted with her in the lead. And it actually very much reads like she thought up her perfect screen character and then constructed a story around it.

Much as I love all of Gillian Anderson’s other work to date (as an actor, screenwriter, director, producer…), I just can’t find anything to like about her literary collaboration. It may have worked if the authors had skipped the novel and gone straight to screenplay – and yes, of course I’ll be watching the movie – but I’m certainly not holding my breath for the sequel to the book.

That said, she’s still one of the most awesome women on the planet.

re:View – Going back to the future with James Ellroy’s Perfidia

So James Ellroy is writing a new L.A. Quartet and this is a BIG FUCKING DEAL because the original L.A. Quartet is easily the best thing that ever happened to noir crime.

After covering the brutal, corrupt world of the L.A. Police Department from the late 1940s to late 1950s in The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential and White Jazz, and then going on an international scale with the political history of the 1960s and 1970s – from JFK to the Cuban Revolution and Vietnam – in the Underworld USA trilogy, the master of noir has circled back to 1941 in the first of four L.A. Quartet prequels.

The place is, of course, L.A. and the time is Pearl Harbour. Ellroy’s new 740-page monster Perfidia follows four characters through the chaos of early-days war in December 1941 as they converge, collide and set in motion the relationships and conspiracies that create a densely intriguing back story to the four existing novels. We have Hideo Ashida, the only Japanese-American on the LAPD’s payroll, a brilliant and obsessive forensic who finds his identity turned inside out by the new ‘anti-Jap’ hysteria. And we have Kay Lake, megalomaniac dilettante and police world hanger-on, as well as Ellroy’s most infamously corrupt and charismatic character, Dudley Smith, and the real-life police caption William H. Parker – who will all go on to play central roles in the original L.A. Quartet.

What starts as a routine investigation of the slaughter of a Japanese family on the eve of Pearl Harbour soon pans out into a mind-blowing tangle of narratives which reach from the very heart of the L.A.’s underworld all the way to the federal government, and where coercion, betrayal, mass internment, eugenics and cold-blooded murder serve as means for personal or political advancement for individuals and the agencies that run the nation. And while your mind still struggles to keep up with the whodunnit of the quadruple homicide of the early chapters, you find yourself in the middle of an epic tale of international espionage, the birth of the Red Scare of the 1950s and the formation of a host of police-underworld alliances that will come to dominate the city throughout the later books.

Perfidia is pure Ellroy skill, refined over the years and condensed into the essence of what makes his writing so utterly breathtaking: it’s tough; it’s fast; it hits you with a constant crossfire of names, facts and connections that leave your mind screaming and desperately clawing its way through this barrage of information to get a grip on the truth before you are dragged under by the immensity of this man’s dark and twisted imagination.

I’ve said recently that I would quite like to be inside James Ellroy’s mind when he writes one of his novels, to figure out how he can stay on top of this overwhelming, interconnected narrative he has created over the past two and a half decades. But, to be very honest, I think that after five minutes inside James Ellroy’s mind, my brain would melt out of my ears.

Pens: 5 out of 5

…plus gold stars to Waterstones for publishing this gorgeous beast of an edition:

james-ellroy-perfidia