Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami
Fantastically creepy. I’m still sort of amazed that books as surreal as Murakami’s sell so well over here. The plot unfolds pretty slowly, so it wouldn’t be helpful to try to outline it, but the book’s really about evoking a sense of isolation and disconnectedness. I’ve read some interviews [...]
Anansi Boys - Neil Gaiman
One of my favourite books of the year, and, I think, the best novel that Gaiman’s done. It borrows a character from American Gods - other than that the books aren’t really linked - and tells the story of a man discovering that his recently deceased father was really an African [...]
I’m breaking the book-review cycle around here, but you all have to go out and read Neil Gaiman’s new book, Anansi Boys, right now.
I’ll do a proper review later, but basically I think it’s probably the best novel he’s done, and the best book I’ve read this year. Get to it!
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign trail ‘72 - Hunter S. Thompson: Re-reading this for the first time in a while, and I think I’m enjoying it even more than before, mainly because by now I’ve got a bit more of an understanding of how the U.S. election system works. Bits of it still hint [...]
The Bourne Trilogy - Robert Ludlum: All three of the Jason Bourne books (Identity, Supremacy, Ultimatum) in a single volume. Having all 3 books together sounded like a good idea at the time, but after dragging this huge lump around for a couple of weeks, and trying to find any reasonable way to read it [...]
The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov. The devil comes to town as a stage magician in the atheistic 1930’s Moscow, accompanied by a choirmaster, an assassin and a giant cat.
There are a lot of different threads and viewpoints in the book, but it largely centres around the oppressive lifestyle in Russia at the time. [...]
An unintentional exclusively sci-fi/fantasy book diet recently…
Stamping Butterflies - Jon Courtenay Grimwood. This is more directly sci-fi than any of his previous books, though it has a very similar feel to his ‘Arabesk’ trilogy. It’s laid out in three intertwined, self-referential strands, and the structure is fairly reminiscent of M. John Harrison’s ‘Light’ even though [...]