Ghostwritten - David Mitchell
Mitchell’s first novel feels a lot like a warm up to him writing Cloud Atlas. It’s got approximately the same format of a series of globe-spanning short stories, each linked through some connection of the characters involved, but it doesn’t have quite the same impossibly-intricate, Russian-dolls structure of the subsequent book.
It’s [...]
The Christmas period meant lots and lots of books.
Spin - Robert Charles Wilson
Spin manages an interesting balancing act. It’s a hard Sci-Fi novel that works in some genuinely interesting - although not always entirely believable - character development, and some musing on human crisis response at family- and global-scales.
The “Spin” in question is a planet-engulfing [...]
This Morissey quote may be apocryphal, since it’s gone round every website in the world with no trace of the original source, but it’s a fine sentiment nonetheless:
Interviewer: Did you hear t.A.T.u.’s version of “How Soon Is Now?”
Morissey: Yes, it was magnificent. Absolutely. Again, I don’t know much about them.
Interviewer: They are teenage Russian lesbians.
Morissey: [...]
Ah, dear reader. You find me looking over the burning wreckage of 2006 and flicking it the V’s whilst holding an emptied petrol can and flaming torch. Come, let us reminisce!
Favourite books of 2006 (that mostly didn’t come out in 2006):
World War Z by Max Brooks
The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Nifenegger
Fragile Things by [...]
It’s been a bit over a week and I’m just about ready to admit that 2007 has arrived and refuses to be postponed. To start with, here’s a big ol’ list of lists of what other people liked in 2006:
10 great opening sequences for movies (with YouTube versions of each.)
100 things we didn’t know last [...]
World War Z - Max Brooks
My thinking goes like this: If you can, while browsing around a book shop, come across a book entitled “World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War” and somehow not buy it, then you probably shouldn’t ever try to talk to me. We just fundamentally wouldn’t be able [...]
As fun as being in the nosebleed galleries at the top of the Albert Hall during a Flaming Lips show was, it turns out it can’t really compare to seeing them whilst jammed into the second row at the Hammersmith Apollo. Having a crazy-haired man in a 70’s suit crawling above your head in [...]
Oh Internet, I love you so. Without you I would never have realised that Winger - yes, that Winger. ‘Beavis and Butthead’ Winger - are still around and releasing albums with gloriously, life-affirmingly terrible artwork.
How did I ever survive without you, Internet?
The final part for a while, fashionably late. All of these were strangely hard to write about, partly due to a three day long headache which feels like an angry badger trying to burrow through my right eye, but mostly cuz im dum.
Glasshouse - Charles Stross
(Sorry for the U.S. link. The book isn’t out in [...]
Pushing Ice - Alastair Reynolds
I’m never really sure what I’m going to get with an Alastair Reynolds story. He wrote the fantastic Revelation Space space opera series, and interspersed it with the ho-hum Chasm City and Century Rain. He also published a volume collecting the dull-as-ditchwater Turquoise Days alongside one of my favourite short stories [...]
More book reviews, ignored until I realised that the pile was getting worryingly huge again. More to follow!
The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin
For some reason I managed to miss this during my utopia/distopia reading binge as I started University, and it’s often cited as one of the great utopian novels, despite never actually seeming [...]
This is the final communiqué from London Branch. When next you tune in, the broadcast will be coming from a new top-secret underground bunker in deepest, darkest Surrey. Normal service shall be resumed shortly.
Toodle-pip!
No time to read but want to sound knowledgeable and self-important at dinner parties? You need John Crace’s bluffer’s guide to this year’s Booker Prize nominees.
Having access to the Internet means never having to enjoy anything yourself when there are other people around to enjoy it for you.
You must go and see:
Little Miss Sunshine
Because it’s the most unimaginably wonderful film you’ll see this year. Really. If you haven’t seen it yet, then stop reading this post right now and book a ticket. It’s basically a family road trip movie, but deals with depression and suicide and death, and is hilariously funny even [...]
Filmcritic.com chooses its “Top 50 Movie Endings of All Time”. Sadly, I’ve only seen about 30 of the films on the list, so I’ll just have to take their word for a lot of them…