BOOKS 2013: August
76. Close Quarters - William Golding
"In a wilderness of heat, stillness and sea mists, a ball is held on a ship becalmed halfway to Australia. In this surreal, fête-like atmosphere the passengers dance and flirt, while beneath them thickets of weed like green hair spread over the hull.
The sequel to Rites of Passage, Close Quarters, the second volume in Golding's acclaimed sea trilogy, is imbued with his extraordinary sense of menace. Half-mad with fear, with drink, with love and opium, everyone on this leaky, unsound hulk is 'going to pieces'. And in a nightmarish climax the very planks seem to twist themselves alive as the ship begins to come apart at the seams."
77. Fire Down Below - William Golding
"The third volume of William Golding's acclaimed Sea Trilogy.
A decrepit warship sails on the last stretch of its voyage to Sydney Cove. It has been blown off course and battered by wind, storm and ice. Nothing but rope holds the disintegrating hull together. And after a risky operation to reset its foremast with red-hot metal, an unseen fire begins to smoulder below decks."
78. Turing: Pioneer of an Information Age - B. Jack Copeland
"Alan Turing can be regarded as one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century. But who was Turing, and what did he achieve during his tragically short life of 41 years? Best known as the genius who broke Germany's most secret codes during the war of 1939-45, Turing was also the father of the modern computer. Today, all who 'click-to-open' are familiar with the impact of Turing's ideas.
Here, B. Jack Copeland provides an account of Turing's life and work, exploring the key elements of his life-story in tandem with his leading ideas and contributions. The book highlights Turing's contributions to computing and to computer science, including Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life, and the emphasis throughout is on the relevance of his work to modern developments. The story of his contributions to codebreaking during the Second World War is set in the context of his thinking about machines, as is the account of his work in the foundations of mathematics."
79. The Various Haunts of Men - Susan Hill
"A woman vanishes in the fog up on 'the Hill', an area in Lafferton known for its tranquillity and peace. The police are not alarmed; people usually disappear for their own reasons. But when a young girl, an old man and even a dog disappear no one can deny that something untoward is happening in this quiet cathedral town. Young policewoman Freya Graffham is assigned to the case, she's new to the job, compassionate, inquisitive, dedicated and needs to know - perhaps too much. She and the enigmatic detective Chief Inspector Simon Serrailler have the task of unravelling the mystery behind this gruesome sequence of events. From the passages revealing the killer's mind to the final heart-stopping twist, The Various Haunts of Men is an astounding and masterly crime debut and is the first in a magnificent series featuring Simon Serrailler."
80. The Snow Geese - William Fiennes
"A beautiful and bestselling meditation on the meaning of home."
81. The Good Soldier - Ford Madox Ford
"The Good Soldier is a masterpiece of twentieth-century fiction, an inspiration for many later, distinguished writers, including Graham Greene. Set before the First World War, it tells the tale of two wealthy and sophisticated couples, one English, one American, as they travel, socialise, and take the waters in the spa towns of Europe. They are 'playing the game', in style. That game has begun to unravel, however, and with compelling attention to the comic, as well as the tragic, results the American narrator reveals his growing awareness of the sexual intrigues and emotional betrayals that lie behind its facade."
82. A Kestrel for a Knave - Barry Hines
"Life is tough and cheerless for Billy Casper, a troubled teenager growing up in the small Yorkshire mining town of Barnsley. Treated as a failure at school, and unhappy at home, Billy discovers a new passion in life when he finds Kes, a kestrel hawk. Billy identifies with her silent strength and she inspires in him the trust and love that nothing else can, discovering through her the passion missing from his life. Barry Hines's acclaimed novel continues to reach new generations of teenagers and adults with its powerful story of survival in a tough, joyless world."
83. Border Crossing - Pat Barker
"When Tom Seymour, a child psychologist, plunges into a river to save a young man from drowning, he unwittingly reopens a chapter from his past he'd hoped to forget. For Tom already knows Danny Miller. When Danny was ten Tom helped imprison him for the killing of an old woman. Now out of prison with a new identity, Danny has some questions - questions he thinks only Tom can answer.
Reluctantly, Tom is drawn back into Danny's world - a place where the border between good and evil, innocence and guilt is blurred and confused. But when Danny's demands on Tim become extreme, Tom wonders whether he has crossed a line of his own - and in crossing it, can he ever go back?"
84. Double Vision - Pat Barker
"Provocative, intense and deeply moving, Double Vision is a powerful story of one man's quest to find redemption amidst the horror of twenty-first-century war. Returning to Afghanistan after his photographer friend is killed by a sniper, war reporter Stephen Sharkey seeks release from his nightmares in an England seemingly at peace with itself.
Questioning man's inhumanity to man both abroad and at home, and whether love really can be the great redeemer, Double Vision is a searing novel of conflict in modern times."
85. Stuart: A Life Backwards - Alexander Masters
"‘Stuart does not like the manuscript. He’s after a bestseller, “like what Tom Clancy writes”. “But you are not an assassin trying to frazzle the president with anthrax bombs,” I point out. You are an ex-homeless, ex-junkie psychopath, I do not add.’
This is the story of a remarkable friendship between a reclusive writer (‘a middle-class scum ponce, if you want to be honest about it, Alexander’), and Stuart Shorter, a homeless, knife-wielding thief. Told backwards - Stuart’s idea - it starts with a deeply troubled thirty-two-year-old and ends with a ‘happy-go-lucky little boy’ of twelve. This brilliant biography, winner of the Guardian First Book Award, presents a humbling portrait of homeless life, and is as extraordinary and unexpected as the man it describes."
86. Hannah Matchmaker's New Skates - Delilah Des Anges
"Short story: Hannah Matchmaker is struggling to make progress as fast as she'd like at Rollerderby, until she gets her hands on some new skates..."
87. Saint Grimbald's Men - Delilah Des Anges
"A short story of most perfidious cruelty and otherworldly horror, set in a monastery."
There's... a theme here, and if you can see what it is you're either a REALLY COOL DUDE or an unfortunate enough to follow me on Twitter. Thumbs up or commiserations as necessary.
It's taken me eight years, but I've finally read the entire To the Ends of the Earth trilogy. I've made at least three efforts to do this since 2005 when the miniseries showed on the BBC, efforts which were interrupted variously by books going missing from libraries, laziness, etc., and it's taken the arrival of the aforementioned television series for me to sit down and finally finish the job. I think overall I preferred the miniseries. I like the books, and I love what a total twat Talbot is - though he begins to redeem himself over the course of the books -, but he is terribly verbose, and this is naturally stripped down in the series. Both are very unromantic views of the sailing ship life - lots of vomiting, drinking, fucking, sodomy, pestilence and cabin fever - and I appreciated this because lbr being stuck on a ship, any ship, never mind that is physically and psychically decaying, for a year is probably a lot of fucking balls. It's Golding, so it's miserable and about people at their worst, but it's also very funny, and the miniseries benefits from a sex scene that is essentially an 18th Century bootycall which made me laugh so hard I had tears in my eyes (you can find it on YouTube, if you are into that sort of thing.) Anyway, very good, both to read and to gaze longingly - in my case - at.
Stuart: A Life Backwards is another excellent book with an excellent television adaption. In another writer's hands this story could be unbearable but Masters has a streak of nastiness he doesn't try to hide which prevents the book becoming preachy or self-congratulatory. A very funny, moving book that is essentially a buddy story, it goes into more specific details about the reasons Stuart became the man he did than the film which might make it more upsetting for some people, too. It's excellent anyway, but caution is necessary if you're the type of person who might need it.
Saint Grimbald's Men is one of those stories where afterwards you think "what the fuck is wrong with the author??" In this case, I know the author and think she is awesome; nevertheless the thought still passed through my head. Loved it, want to draw pictures of it, can't do anatomy well enough to do it justice. Sadface.
Re-reading A Kestrel for a Knave and oh, it's even better than I remembered. It's more or less essential where I'm from to have read this and seen its film Kes but I don't think I'm biased loving it. It really is amazing. I love the written accents, how easily my brain slips into the rhythm, how immediately after I read it I talk with the voice of my youth which has otherwise been necessarily softened in the past few years. It's also remarkable for how closely the film adaption follows it: I can't imagine anyone walked out of the theatres complaining that *~they ruined everything~* because it's pretty much identical.
Looking up, I'm startled by how many books I read this month because it feels like all I've done is watch DVDs and read fanfiction. And oh, the fanfiction I have read. The Sherlock fandom just keeps on giving but I think I have found a favourite author. Merripestin's work is amazing for the writing, its humour, but most importantly because of her keen understanding of people. Her stories make me laugh out loud, for lines such as "Almost immediately, Sherlock's investigations gained running monologues delivered to John. He paraded. He positively strutted. It started to feel like a mating display -- Sherlock offering John crime scenes like the world's creepiest bower bird" and "Sherlock in bed was like a heavy duvet stuffed with hat racks", and then suddenly the mood alters and I'm crying, and possibly hugging my Kindle. Yeah, I've started downloading fanfic to my Kindle. This is a dangerous situation, thus the astonishment that I've managed to read actual books. My favourite fics by this author have been Safe Distance, which is probably the most in-character John/Sherlock I've read so far in that John actually really really struggles with the whole gay thing and never quite gets over it and it's handled so deftly I want to kill things from envy. If you're the sort of person who is touched by romantic laboratory animal euthanasia, this is the fic for you; I may have "awwed" out loud. The other is Comorbidity which is... necrophilia fic. Normally I'd give this a wide berth but I saw it recommended, saw the author, and read it anyway and oh my god. So good. It's not a kink fic; rather, it's a story about two people who love each other very much but are totally sexually incompatible. It's about finding compromises in a relationship. It's not about fucking dead bodies, none of which actually appear in the story. If you're not convinced, read the reviews (which, considering it was only posted in the past week or so, are rolling in), read the story, then tell my I'm wrong. So, so good.
(It is getting harder and harder to convince myself, anyone, that I am not a John/Sherlock shipper. I'm not, honest, I just really really love some of the fic! And intense, antagonistic, same-sex friendship. I really love that too.)
"In a wilderness of heat, stillness and sea mists, a ball is held on a ship becalmed halfway to Australia. In this surreal, fête-like atmosphere the passengers dance and flirt, while beneath them thickets of weed like green hair spread over the hull.
The sequel to Rites of Passage, Close Quarters, the second volume in Golding's acclaimed sea trilogy, is imbued with his extraordinary sense of menace. Half-mad with fear, with drink, with love and opium, everyone on this leaky, unsound hulk is 'going to pieces'. And in a nightmarish climax the very planks seem to twist themselves alive as the ship begins to come apart at the seams."
77. Fire Down Below - William Golding
"The third volume of William Golding's acclaimed Sea Trilogy.
A decrepit warship sails on the last stretch of its voyage to Sydney Cove. It has been blown off course and battered by wind, storm and ice. Nothing but rope holds the disintegrating hull together. And after a risky operation to reset its foremast with red-hot metal, an unseen fire begins to smoulder below decks."
78. Turing: Pioneer of an Information Age - B. Jack Copeland
"Alan Turing can be regarded as one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century. But who was Turing, and what did he achieve during his tragically short life of 41 years? Best known as the genius who broke Germany's most secret codes during the war of 1939-45, Turing was also the father of the modern computer. Today, all who 'click-to-open' are familiar with the impact of Turing's ideas.
Here, B. Jack Copeland provides an account of Turing's life and work, exploring the key elements of his life-story in tandem with his leading ideas and contributions. The book highlights Turing's contributions to computing and to computer science, including Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life, and the emphasis throughout is on the relevance of his work to modern developments. The story of his contributions to codebreaking during the Second World War is set in the context of his thinking about machines, as is the account of his work in the foundations of mathematics."
79. The Various Haunts of Men - Susan Hill
"A woman vanishes in the fog up on 'the Hill', an area in Lafferton known for its tranquillity and peace. The police are not alarmed; people usually disappear for their own reasons. But when a young girl, an old man and even a dog disappear no one can deny that something untoward is happening in this quiet cathedral town. Young policewoman Freya Graffham is assigned to the case, she's new to the job, compassionate, inquisitive, dedicated and needs to know - perhaps too much. She and the enigmatic detective Chief Inspector Simon Serrailler have the task of unravelling the mystery behind this gruesome sequence of events. From the passages revealing the killer's mind to the final heart-stopping twist, The Various Haunts of Men is an astounding and masterly crime debut and is the first in a magnificent series featuring Simon Serrailler."
80. The Snow Geese - William Fiennes
"A beautiful and bestselling meditation on the meaning of home."
81. The Good Soldier - Ford Madox Ford
"The Good Soldier is a masterpiece of twentieth-century fiction, an inspiration for many later, distinguished writers, including Graham Greene. Set before the First World War, it tells the tale of two wealthy and sophisticated couples, one English, one American, as they travel, socialise, and take the waters in the spa towns of Europe. They are 'playing the game', in style. That game has begun to unravel, however, and with compelling attention to the comic, as well as the tragic, results the American narrator reveals his growing awareness of the sexual intrigues and emotional betrayals that lie behind its facade."
82. A Kestrel for a Knave - Barry Hines
"Life is tough and cheerless for Billy Casper, a troubled teenager growing up in the small Yorkshire mining town of Barnsley. Treated as a failure at school, and unhappy at home, Billy discovers a new passion in life when he finds Kes, a kestrel hawk. Billy identifies with her silent strength and she inspires in him the trust and love that nothing else can, discovering through her the passion missing from his life. Barry Hines's acclaimed novel continues to reach new generations of teenagers and adults with its powerful story of survival in a tough, joyless world."
83. Border Crossing - Pat Barker
"When Tom Seymour, a child psychologist, plunges into a river to save a young man from drowning, he unwittingly reopens a chapter from his past he'd hoped to forget. For Tom already knows Danny Miller. When Danny was ten Tom helped imprison him for the killing of an old woman. Now out of prison with a new identity, Danny has some questions - questions he thinks only Tom can answer.
Reluctantly, Tom is drawn back into Danny's world - a place where the border between good and evil, innocence and guilt is blurred and confused. But when Danny's demands on Tim become extreme, Tom wonders whether he has crossed a line of his own - and in crossing it, can he ever go back?"
84. Double Vision - Pat Barker
"Provocative, intense and deeply moving, Double Vision is a powerful story of one man's quest to find redemption amidst the horror of twenty-first-century war. Returning to Afghanistan after his photographer friend is killed by a sniper, war reporter Stephen Sharkey seeks release from his nightmares in an England seemingly at peace with itself.
Questioning man's inhumanity to man both abroad and at home, and whether love really can be the great redeemer, Double Vision is a searing novel of conflict in modern times."
85. Stuart: A Life Backwards - Alexander Masters
"‘Stuart does not like the manuscript. He’s after a bestseller, “like what Tom Clancy writes”. “But you are not an assassin trying to frazzle the president with anthrax bombs,” I point out. You are an ex-homeless, ex-junkie psychopath, I do not add.’
This is the story of a remarkable friendship between a reclusive writer (‘a middle-class scum ponce, if you want to be honest about it, Alexander’), and Stuart Shorter, a homeless, knife-wielding thief. Told backwards - Stuart’s idea - it starts with a deeply troubled thirty-two-year-old and ends with a ‘happy-go-lucky little boy’ of twelve. This brilliant biography, winner of the Guardian First Book Award, presents a humbling portrait of homeless life, and is as extraordinary and unexpected as the man it describes."
86. Hannah Matchmaker's New Skates - Delilah Des Anges
"Short story: Hannah Matchmaker is struggling to make progress as fast as she'd like at Rollerderby, until she gets her hands on some new skates..."
87. Saint Grimbald's Men - Delilah Des Anges
"A short story of most perfidious cruelty and otherworldly horror, set in a monastery."
There's... a theme here, and if you can see what it is you're either a REALLY COOL DUDE or an unfortunate enough to follow me on Twitter. Thumbs up or commiserations as necessary.
It's taken me eight years, but I've finally read the entire To the Ends of the Earth trilogy. I've made at least three efforts to do this since 2005 when the miniseries showed on the BBC, efforts which were interrupted variously by books going missing from libraries, laziness, etc., and it's taken the arrival of the aforementioned television series for me to sit down and finally finish the job. I think overall I preferred the miniseries. I like the books, and I love what a total twat Talbot is - though he begins to redeem himself over the course of the books -, but he is terribly verbose, and this is naturally stripped down in the series. Both are very unromantic views of the sailing ship life - lots of vomiting, drinking, fucking, sodomy, pestilence and cabin fever - and I appreciated this because lbr being stuck on a ship, any ship, never mind that is physically and psychically decaying, for a year is probably a lot of fucking balls. It's Golding, so it's miserable and about people at their worst, but it's also very funny, and the miniseries benefits from a sex scene that is essentially an 18th Century bootycall which made me laugh so hard I had tears in my eyes (you can find it on YouTube, if you are into that sort of thing.) Anyway, very good, both to read and to gaze longingly - in my case - at.
Stuart: A Life Backwards is another excellent book with an excellent television adaption. In another writer's hands this story could be unbearable but Masters has a streak of nastiness he doesn't try to hide which prevents the book becoming preachy or self-congratulatory. A very funny, moving book that is essentially a buddy story, it goes into more specific details about the reasons Stuart became the man he did than the film which might make it more upsetting for some people, too. It's excellent anyway, but caution is necessary if you're the type of person who might need it.
Saint Grimbald's Men is one of those stories where afterwards you think "what the fuck is wrong with the author??" In this case, I know the author and think she is awesome; nevertheless the thought still passed through my head. Loved it, want to draw pictures of it, can't do anatomy well enough to do it justice. Sadface.
Re-reading A Kestrel for a Knave and oh, it's even better than I remembered. It's more or less essential where I'm from to have read this and seen its film Kes but I don't think I'm biased loving it. It really is amazing. I love the written accents, how easily my brain slips into the rhythm, how immediately after I read it I talk with the voice of my youth which has otherwise been necessarily softened in the past few years. It's also remarkable for how closely the film adaption follows it: I can't imagine anyone walked out of the theatres complaining that *~they ruined everything~* because it's pretty much identical.
Looking up, I'm startled by how many books I read this month because it feels like all I've done is watch DVDs and read fanfiction. And oh, the fanfiction I have read. The Sherlock fandom just keeps on giving but I think I have found a favourite author. Merripestin's work is amazing for the writing, its humour, but most importantly because of her keen understanding of people. Her stories make me laugh out loud, for lines such as "Almost immediately, Sherlock's investigations gained running monologues delivered to John. He paraded. He positively strutted. It started to feel like a mating display -- Sherlock offering John crime scenes like the world's creepiest bower bird" and "Sherlock in bed was like a heavy duvet stuffed with hat racks", and then suddenly the mood alters and I'm crying, and possibly hugging my Kindle. Yeah, I've started downloading fanfic to my Kindle. This is a dangerous situation, thus the astonishment that I've managed to read actual books. My favourite fics by this author have been Safe Distance, which is probably the most in-character John/Sherlock I've read so far in that John actually really really struggles with the whole gay thing and never quite gets over it and it's handled so deftly I want to kill things from envy. If you're the sort of person who is touched by romantic laboratory animal euthanasia, this is the fic for you; I may have "awwed" out loud. The other is Comorbidity which is... necrophilia fic. Normally I'd give this a wide berth but I saw it recommended, saw the author, and read it anyway and oh my god. So good. It's not a kink fic; rather, it's a story about two people who love each other very much but are totally sexually incompatible. It's about finding compromises in a relationship. It's not about fucking dead bodies, none of which actually appear in the story. If you're not convinced, read the reviews (which, considering it was only posted in the past week or so, are rolling in), read the story, then tell my I'm wrong. So, so good.
(It is getting harder and harder to convince myself, anyone, that I am not a John/Sherlock shipper. I'm not, honest, I just really really love some of the fic! And intense, antagonistic, same-sex friendship. I really love that too.)