Welcome to NextRead.co.uk. After one year successfully posting news, comments, features and reviews on books I’ve read or would like to read on my personal blog I’ve decided to give my book passion it’s own place. And here it is. I hope you enjoy.
gav.
Title: The Stone Gods
Author: Jeanette Winterson
Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
Published: 27 September 2007
Price: £16.99
Review Copy
The Stone Gods is described as an ‘intergalactic love story’ set as man is due to colonise a new blue planet just like ours before we started using more than we put back.
Winterson starts well enough with the tale of Billie who hasn’t been ‘Fixed’, who is getting parking parking tickets even though she has a permit and has been asked to interview the robo sapien, Spike.
And as it progresses this storyline isn’t so bad and is an interesting take on how we might progress. Everything artificial, nothing to do but look young and have sex and be consumers. The problem comes when Winterson leaves this tale and all the fables she weaves into it and moves into parallels.
The other stories lack the initial engagement of the character of Billie and her relationship with Spike even though they are mentioned. And at this point I have a confession to make. I skipped and skim read looking for any threads to cling back on to.
This is the danger when you change the nature of the story. You loose your reader and what tentative links they’ve made. And Winterson lost me.
I’d recommend reading it for the opening novella but without the expectation of understanding or enjoying what follows. If Winterson had played it straight it would have been tighter and stronger and left room to explore sexuality as well as human evolution but I guess each writer tells the tales they want to tell.
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Jackson to produce Hobbit movies
Peter Jackson, Oscar-winning director of the Lord of the Rings movies, has signed a deal to produce two films based on JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit
I loved The Hobbit when I read it at maybe 10 or 11 and I was dreding a film version that was outside the cinematic landscape that Jackson made.
The Hobbit is Tolkien-lite and in my opinion much better for it. When I read The Lord of the Rings I couldn’t see the point of reading any more after Frodo dropped the ring in Mount Doom. I’m told that important things happened after but I’d had my fill of wondering around even if he was going home.
Tolkien is a brilliant world builder and creator but he could have done with a bit of fire under him when he was writing. A bit too self indulgent if you ask me.
It’s not over yet, but I can’t see any final revelations happening, unless you count Nintendo suddenly releasing a billion or so Wiis. So what I have got to say about the year? I haven’t got a clue but let us see what I can come up with.
Way back in January I wrote a post called ‘Support‘ where I said this year if I could I was going to buy more debuts. And as it turned turned out I was able to do a bit better by reviewing and promoting some great new voices. All starting with Anonymous Lawyer which strangely, or not, started off as a blog written by Jeremy Blachman. It’s a devilishly funny novel and well worth a read. From there I’ve been introduced to some excellent new writers like Chris Ewan, Brian Ruckley and Chelsea Cain who have started off a series of books that I want to read more of.
Mostly this year I’ve read writers who are new to me even if they’ve been around a little while like Charles Stross, Peter F. Hamilton, Charlie Hutson, Chuck Palahniuk, Paul Magrs and Jim Butcher. And I’m still finding new favourite writers. Each one has their own view on what the world is or what the world could be. I guess I’m more interested in writers with an imagination and skill for making alive their dreams.
I still have books that I’m yet to read from people new to me and old friends Here is a non-definitive or exhaustive list:
Wow, that’s probably next years reading right there if this years reading rate is anything to go by. All of them are in some way part of my taste in books - supernatural detection, detective stories, soft sci-fi, urban fantasy, and fable.
I do wish though that there were a bit thinner or by reading them I wasn’t committing myself to reading a long series. Actually that’s wrong I do love series as long as I don’t have to remember in detail what happened on page 321 of book two when I’m reading book nine page 840.
And if that back catalogue wasn’t enough there are yet more books that have just come out, about to come out, planned or books that I’ve not even heard of that are going be on a ‘want to read’ list by this time next year.
This all goes to prove that the book business as far as coming out with good and great books is a healthy one. New writers get a chance to shine but if you are looking to get published you have to be very very good. Literary fiction is best left to those who have a name or some background that supports the name they make for themselves. Genre is the way to go.
If I had to choose books of the year under gun point and on a lie detector I’d say that the ones to check out are (in no particular order):
The Dreaming Void by Peter F. Hamilton.
Heartsick by Chelsea Cain
Already Dead by Charlie Hutson
The Atrocity Archives/The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross
Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow
Never the Bride by Paul Magrs
I’ll probably change my mind tomorrow but those are the ones that are coming to the surface right now.
Right back to the surprisingly good-so-far The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson
Let’s see. It’s coming up to Christmas so you might if you’re lucky have time to read or even luckier have someone that wants to buy you books or might want to treat yourself. Well there are a few that are gathering my interest.
Starting with a new favourite, Mr Charles Stross. Tor are issuing his The Merchant Princes series in the UK starting with The Family Trade. It’s fantasy this time with Knights on horseback wielding machine guns and world-skipping assassins. Though being prolific Mr Stross has another book out in January called Halting State from Orbit and it’s back to sci-fi but with the twist that it’s in the second person. And I’m hoping it”ll persuade me to like a second person narrator
This is a bit of a surprise release as when I last looked the Bram Stoker Award winning Dark Harvest by Norman Patridge wasn’t listed as a British release but it came out just in time for Halloween.
‘…he rises from the cornfields every Halloween, a butcher knife in his hand, and makes his way toward town, where gangs of teenage boys eagerly await their chance to confront the legendary nightmare. Both the hunter and the hunted, the October Boy is the prize in an annual rite of life and death.’
Sounds creepy to me.
Brian Aldiss has been asking, ‘Why are science fiction’s best writers so neglected?’ and he sounds a little bit bitter about the fact that only the time reviewed his latest novel, Harm. Strangely he fails to mention writers like Stephen Baxter, Iain M Banks and Peter F. Hamilton. But never mind he also has an anthology from Penguin called A Science Fiction Omnibus, it sounds like a good collection works from the last 65 years.
Speaking of science-fiction writers Light is now out in paperback. My only exposure so far to M. John Harrison is his collection of stories called, Things that Never Happened. As with most collections I’m only a few stories in but I’m intrigued enjoy to want to read something a little longer. Plus the synopsis sounds good:
‘On the barren surface of an asteroid, located deep in the galaxy beneath the unbearable light of the Kefahuchi Tract, lie three objects: an abandoned spacecraft, a pair of bone dice covered with strange symbols, and a human skeleton. What they are and what they mean are the mysteries explored and unwrapped in LIGHT, M. John Harrison’s triumphant return to science fiction.’
I’m a sucker for a good cover and here is a another great one from Gollancz. Black Man (Thirteen) by Richard Morgan is a wonderful graphic cover and by all accounts (see here, here and here) the contents isn’t bad either.
‘When a thirteen escapes from exile on Mars and apparently goes on an insane killing spree, Carl Marsalis, a soul-weary freelance thirteen hit man, is hired to help track him down. Morgan goes beyond the SF cliché of the genetically enhanced superman to examine how personality is shaped by nature and experience’
Garth Nix’s Abhorsen Trilogy is one of my all time faves and with Across the Wall he returns briefly to the Old Kingdom as well as tales based on the Arthurian legend, a war story, a western, a traditional tale with a twist and a hilarious choose- your- own- adventure spoof. I’m still waiting to dive into the Keys of the Kingdom:
‘Arthur Penhaligon is not supposed to be a hero. He is supposed to die. But then he finds a key, discovers a mysterious house and meets the sinister Mister Monday… Prepare for seven breathtaking adventures as Arthur fights to save his world.’
And finally, for now, what is turning into a British institution, Schott’s Almanac. It’s a wonderfully eclectic mix of Britishness (or German or Americanness depending on the edition). Packed full of useless, and not so useful but no less interesting information. Great to dip into at anytime of the year.
OF Blog of the Fallen: Yet another post on reviewing epistemology
Reviewing a book is an inexact science. In many ways, reviews are idiosyncratic and they reflect the reviewer’s personality and his/her take on reading. While some might argue that reviews are a take ‘em or leave ‘em affair, many have commented on what they call a “bad” review. When I say a “bad” review, I am not talking about whether or not a book was well-written or not, but rather whether or not the work being reviewed ever really was “reviewed.”
This blog post raises a few interesting questions and it addresses things I do and don’t do in my own reviews. My reviews fall into what this post calls the ABCs (”A) Plot Summary, B) Liked it/Disliked it, C) Short Wrap-up, with nary a citation for those opinions.”). Well I hope I’m a bit more expansive about point C but they pretty much fit this pattern.
I try hard to avoid spoilers because most of the books I read have an element of speculation and intrigue and they are strong part of the enjoyment of the book and I don’t want to flag those in the readers mind more than I have to. The whole Fool Moon is full of potential spoilers so it’s hard to say much about the plot further than what is on the blurb of the book.
And I don’t know if I want to analyse and dissect something unless I’m being negative and need to explain what I had issues with. Reading for me is mostly indulgent and has nothing to do with me wanting to be literary, though I can and often do have literary thoughts. I just don’t think that the types of books I’m interested in need that level of examination. And the books that do have to work on first reading and stand on their own initial merits.
Do reviewers need to be more critical? Should we be justifying ourselves more? Explaining more? What do you think?
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