Lies Sleeping, book review (Ben Aaronovitch)

The 'Little Crocodiles' was a group of unlicensed practitioners of magic formed by the now deceased and not much missed Geoffrey Wheatcroft when he was at Oxford in the 1950s, and as some of those members have proved rather deadly in the past, tracking down those who may or may not have been involved and finding out what they did or didn't learn, seems as good a place to start as any if Peter Grant is ever going to find the elusive Chorley, and so, the hunt is on.
Lesley May is back - big time - assisting the faceless man, A.K.A Martin Chorley, who has made a bell that he thinks will summons Merlin, as long as he can fuel it with enough magic that is, which means sacrificing a god. So, as Lesley has a serious issue with Mr. Punch after he removed her face in book one, and Mr. Punch was given god-like status about 1500 years earlier, they can kill two birds with one stone, well, they could if it wasn't for Peter Grant, Nightingale and the ever-growing band of staff at the Folly - The Met police's HQ for all things squiffy - trying to thwart them.
Inquiries are made, plans are drawn, pubs explode, DI Stephanopoulos is shot - by Lesley no less - the goddess of the Walbrook is kidnapped - as is Peter - captured fae are freed and as is so often the case in Aaronovitch's River of London books, everything goes to bollocks!
As we race down London's streets and across its famous rivers, Aaronovitch speeds us through the books four hundred pages with deft skill and pace enough to keep you reading well into the night, and there's much to like, too. Characters that we've known and loved (some revered) since the very beginning, pop in and out with a healthy splattering of newer faces making welcome returns and becoming more entrenched in the narrative to good effect.
Peter Grant's pursuit of Chorley in an old Mk1 Ford Transit van is both riveting and hilarious - he's on a pushbike for starters - his temporary incarceration slows the narrative but still manages to move it along, which is clever, whilst foiling Chorley's plans, seizing and destroying his bells, time and again, before we reach the climax - and it's a good one, mark my words it is – where the tempo gets ramped to the max.
So, another thoroughly entertaining read from Aaronovitch then and one of my favourites so far. Four stars.
Oh (spoiler alert) Beverly is pregnant! Yeah.

The Sprout that Ruined Christmas. A festive yarn by yours truly.

The Sprout that Ruined Christmas

T’was a single sprout that sealed her fate,

As she walked down the hall, bird on a plate.

That poor little sprout, it did do its best,

Hiding in the room packed full of guests.

But knocked by the door it rolled in her path,

Stopping before her two feet from the hearth.

 And oh how she yelled, as she took a tumble,

A silence then fell, no murmur, no mumble.

For never a bird had finer been roasted,

No grander a feast ever been hosted.

And the bird it did fly! It arced overhead,

Whilst host and her guests looked on in dread.

For heading for Vicar it seemed to be,

This basted bird this, gigantic Turkey.

And hit him it did with an almighty thwack,

Clean off his chair, flat on his back.

So dinner was ruined the Vicar was hurt,

But all was not lost, there was always dessert.

Elevation, book review. (Stephen King)

A novella from one of my favourite authors is the subject of today's post and for what it lacks in length it makes up for in traditional King quirkiness.

The book opens with Scott Carey visiting Bob Ellis, an old doctor friend of his (long since retired) about an unexpected weight loss issue that seems to make no difference to his physical appearance.

The book starts with Carey weighing in at around 225 pounds. It's been a few years since he last weighed himself so he could have been losing weight for ages without realising it but, it's quickening and he's realising it now. (If this reminds you of the book, Thinner, don't worry, the two books are really quite different).

Aside from his continued weight loss and the various theories doctor Ellis comes up with, the main tension in the book is a spat between Carey and his neighbours (they are a married lesbian couple who have a restaurant in town which the conservative town's people frown upon) and it's all because their dogs continually mess on his front lawn, which they deny.

The characters and the setting (yes we're back in Castle Rock folks, which you may remember from previous King books like Cujo and Needful Things) are immediately likable and believable, and there’s just enough backstory and conflict for the reader to be entertained.

Carey confronts the couple over the dog mess after photographing one of the incidents but gets rebuffed, so he devises a wager: If he can win the annual 12K charity run against Deidre, one of the dog's owners - who used to be a runner of almost Olympic standard - she will have to come to his house for dinner with her wife. If she wins, however, he will never mention the dog mess again.

The build-up to the 12k run is minimal but the run itself is truly epic, worthy of the time it takes to read the rest of the book alone and when the finish line comes into view and lightning rents the sky, rain lashing the town, Carey and Deidre are neck and neck, but who will win? Will one of them cheat? Will Deidre and her wife have to dine with Carey? And last but not least, will Carey ever stop losing weight?

Well, they're all fair questions, but to find out you'll have to read the book of course as you won’t get any spoilers from me and as it's only a hundred pages there's really no excuse.

Three and a half stars overall for Elevation then but if the 12k run was a short story on its own, it would get five – it really is that good.

Don't forget to search my blog for your favourite authors and books and if I haven't read them, message me with your recommendations.

Before Her Eyes, book review. (Jack Jordan)

There's a quote on the cover of this book that reads, 'I couldn't turn the pages fast enough,' which I agree with, but not in the way you might think.

A lot of people have read this book if Goodreads is to be believed, (There were 167 reviews when I last looked, with 46% being 5 stars and 30% being 4), but I have to ask - WHAT WERE THEY READING?

The idea that a blind woman could do the things Naomi (the main character) does, being a waitress, for example, is far-fetched, (to add context, I did think her having mapped out in her head the town she's lived in all her life, believable), but believing that she could escape a killer who had just slashed another woman's throat close enough for her to feel the blood splatter across her face, wasn't.

To make matters worse the police arrest Niomi on suspicion of murder, (there have been two and one attempted), and believe that she also tried to kill her own guide dog.

Then there are the coincidences: Naomi walks down an unfamiliar alleyway where the murderer happens to be slicing up victim number two. Later in the book she walks down the same road at the same time on the same day as the funeral procession of one of her alleged victims - this happens after she's been arrested and bailed so everyone thinks she's involved - and then things get even worse.

When a book is fast-paced you whizz through it and don't always see the end coming, (I admit, I got the murderer wrong), and you let a few things slide, but I couldn't with this one, the writing was just so bad, to the point where I wondered if it had been edited - I was reading the Kindle edition which doesn't always help.

It was repetitive too: a police officer finds blood on the carpet and a few paragraphs later we're told the same again. Naomi is confronted in the street by one of the victim's fathers who asks her 'why her being alive is fair' and then asks the same thing again a few sentences later. Then, my pet hate: hearts pounding against ribs and breaths wheezing in and out of lungs as if they can pound and wheeze somewhere else. URG!!!!
At one point Naomi had, 'Tubes slithered in and out of her', whatever that’s supposed to mean and is locked in a prison cell, in a police station?

I could go on but I think I've said enough. I rarely write about books that I don't like because I prefer to be positive, but sometimes the reader needs to know what they're letting themselves in for.
Only one star for Before Her Eyes then. Sadly disappointing.

After the Fire, book review. (Will Hill)

This book came to me by chance, a link from Goodreads I think, probably on the back of another book I'd read which an algorithm thought was similar: it was not. Although this book is told in the first person by a teenage girl (Hunger Games, Divergent, We Were Liars) the premise is quite different, which is refreshing.

The book follows Moonbeam's life (bear with me here) through a series of flashbacks and interviews conducted by Dr. Hernandez and Agent Carlyle. As the book progresses we get to hear more about what happened in the compound of 'The Lord's Legion' a religious cult that had isolated itself from the outside world until, well, until now, their perceived apocalypse.
Moonbeam and the surviving young members of the cult are in a hospital/gaol, exactly where Father John said they would be if they didn't sacrifice themselves for his god, so when they all meet in the rec room there are clashes: there is love, hate, fear and retribution which all adds to the realism of the narrative.
The book alternates between 'before' and 'after' chapters, which keeps the pages turning, and Moonbeam is both tough and vulnerable, never really believing the rhetoric of Father John but at the same time, doubting herself - wondering whether she should have died for his god.
I liked her internal battles: whether Dr Hernandez and Agent Carlyle could be trusted, whether her surviving would send her to hell, or gaol, or both, and as the novel moves on, we learn more about the changes that happened in the compound, the hardening of Father John's rhetoric, the increase in work and punishment that ended in Moonbeam’s mother leaving. Her sense of abandonment that follows, which inexorably leads to the grand finale, the battle between good and evil, is well executed, being fast furious and somewhat frightening, whilst retaining a good sense of reality.
So the characters are good, the story is different, has pace, so why only three and a half stars? It's silly things like Moonbeam's heart pounding in her chest all the time as if it might pound somewhere else, and when fire ignites everything the author adds, 'it came into contact with', which is totally unnecessary. If fire ignites everything, it ignites everything, you can leave it at that.

There were numerous examples of this throughout the book and suffice to say it took the edge off of things. Sometimes, less really is more.
After the Fire isn't amazing then but it does have something worth exploring and as it's neither apocalyptic nor mystical/sci-fi, it differentiates itself from other Y/A books, which is good.

The Colour Purple, book review. (Alice Walker)

A recommended read from my wife this one, and now it is a recommended read from me too, but a word of warning - this book plays with your emotions. It is not an easy read.
The pain of what Celie goes through in the book, the trials of a life with a father who rapes her, a husband who beats her, loves another woman, can only be described as a hard, wretched life, but forsaking all of this, Celie pulls through. She has her God and there is joy in friendship, love from family and music in her soul.

Born poor, black, and down south, Celie has little going for her, even her sister manages to escape her fate by having a good head on her shoulders and the ability to learn quickly, something Celie finds hard, and so, barely a teenager, Celie gives birth to her first child, fathered by her dad, and it doesn't stop there.
Told in a series of letters written by Celie, firstly to her God and then to her sister, Nettie and eventually from her sister back to her, The Colour Purple is a fiercely compelling book that has you at times on the edge of your seat. The letters from Nettie come from Africa where she has ventured as a missionary, and these were some of the highlights for me.
Not knowing whether Nettie would succumb to infection or disease whilst in Africa, whether Celie would ever see her sister's letters - her father intercepts them for many years - or whether Nettie would ever find out what Celie has had to endure in life, keeps the narrative flowing and the pages turning fast.
By reading this book you open yourself up to a roller-coaster of emotion: there will be tears, you will feel fear, hatred and anger, but as the book comes to a close you will feel a deep, deep respect for the main character and the author, for this is a journey that feels so real it could be autobiographical.
Praise be then for The Colour Purple. Four stars.

The City of Mirrors, book review. (Justin Cronin)

How do you review the third book in the trilogy of what is one of the greatest stories ever told? With great difficulty!
It is six months since Homeland was liberated and The Twelve destroyed (Carter being the only survivor). Amy - the new Amy - lives with him in the hull of a long forgotten ship and Alicia is pregnant, but her baby won't survive.
Twenty years on and the people have left the old fortress city and repopulated the surrounding areas. Farms have popped up, townships are thriving, life is far from back to before virus but the threat has gone - or so they think.
ZERO. Fanning. The first to be infected in the jungle and brought back to Greer's lab and tested, mutated, angry. For the last hundred years he has waited at Grand Central station for the return of his beloved Liz who, we discover by flashback, died way before the virus hit.
ZERO. Ready to finish what The Twelve could not. The extinction of the human race.
The build-up in this book is excellent, the flashbacks informative, (albeit a tad too long), but then we're back in the year 122 A.V (after virus) and Zero's army is coming, forged from the unfortunate people who moved to the outlining townships. Michael (Circuit) has spent the last twenty years rebuilding a ship he’s hoping to escape on, but will it be ready? The virals are massing, the gates to the Homestead are closed once again, Carter has woken and Amy walks amongst the people once more, but then . . . all hell lets loose.
The ground rumbles, the virals break through and panic ensues, and it is here, as the narrative flicks from one character's peril to another, that the book takes off, and as the pages pass in a blur, the tension builds, characters we have known since the beginning fall, Carter's army clashes with Zero's, Amy tries to save Alicia, and the rest of the human race fight their way to Michael's ship, that you realise that this story really is one of the very best you've ever read.
With only a few hundred souls on board the ship sets sail and Amy, Peter, Michael and Alicia take their leave, going in search of Zero, and compared to the frenzied battle that raged in Texas, New York is spookily quiet, but not for long.
So, a big fat five stars for the conclusion of this epic trilogy then? Er, no, not quite.
The ending, the very ending, was completely unnecessary. I won't give anything away here but having such a climatic conclusion and then continuing was never really going to work, so if you do read these books, and I thoroughly recommend that you do, skip the epilogue on this one and you'll be more than satisfied.
Four and a half stars then for, The City of Mirrors, but The Passage got five and that is all you really need to know to start reading.

Elizabeth is Missing, book review. (Emma Healey)

Confused.

That's how this book made me feel, confused. Let me explain.

The style is easy but the subject matter, dementia, is tough but handled well.
Our main character, Maud, is slowly losing her way in the world, wondering how one grows marrows and where her friend Elizabeth is. She is both warm and lovable, as well as damned right annoying, like your own Nan/Mum, maybe, and you feel for her.
She gets on the bus but can't remember why, goes to the shop to buy food she already has, driving her daughter Helen, mad, and she has a fixation on her friend Elizabeth, being missing. There are subtleties and quirks to her character that are very believable and you quickly warm to her, worrying that she might get lost or worse, injure herself.

I like the back story too - Maud's sister goes missing when she is a teenager - and the decisions she makes when she was still a child felt plausible and realistic, and I thought the narrative when she is older and confused, forgetting things that have just been explained to her, is well written and convincing, but for me the book jumps from the past to the present too much. I would have preferred the book to have been in parts rather than chapters. Let me explain.

Every chapter is split between the past and the present, and there are a lot of chapters in what is a relatively short book, and it is here that I think it would have worked better if there had been a run of chapters focusing on the past, and then the same for the present, so one could get more involved with the characters of that time, and what was happening to them, before hopping back and forth; other than that, the book was an enjoyable read.
Three stars then for Elizabeth is Missing.

Heart of Darkness, book review. (Joseph Conrad)

Sitting on a cruising yawl (a sailing boat to you and I), in the Thames estuary, waiting for a flood to subside and the tide to turn, Marlow - a seaman of some repute - recants the epic journey he once took into the heart of the African rain forests; to the heart of darkness.

Just getting a commission was hard enough, until a wealthy benefactor stepped in, and his passage from England to Europe and then on to the African continent, took weeks, all before he had to battle his way through the dense jungle of the Congo to discover 'his' steamer a wreck.

A month or two pass whilst he repairs his charge, making her seaworthy again, and then finally, he is able to press on, up the Congo River in search of the legendary explorer and ivory thief, Mr Kurtz.

With every mile travelled, the forest encroaches, the air thickens and the natives get bolder. As a reader you feel the tension build, the exhaustion and the sweat running down their backs, you hear the call of the birds, feel the humidity, as if you are right there in the jungle, and you get nervous when you see, through dense undergrowth, eyes staring back at you.

Heart of Darkness is a short book but the writing is as fierce as the mosquito filled heat soaked African rain forest, and as every meander in the river is traversed, the intensity rises and the tension builds, leaving you somewhat exhausted by the end but wanting more.

Three and a half stars for this one then, as it is good, builds tension well and has you on edge for a fair chunk of the book, but I did feel a bit lost sometimes, which might be me, but there you go.

Dolores Claiborne, book review. (Stephen King)

Dolores has a story to tell, her story, but don't think she's about to admit to killin' that bitch Vera, 'cause she ain't, she din't; she did however kill her husband, but everyone's known that for years, haven't they?

Told in one long continuous monologue, with no chapter breaks, breaks in the text, and with no interruptions from the policemen and woman who are present at her confession, this novel is a masterpiece.
Dolores is a normal, run of the mill, wife, mother, carer and all around nice person, but when Vera Donovan dies and she . . . better not give the story away here . . . the locals start to talk, point the finger at her. After all, Delores was the last person to see Vera alive, the person that spent the last few decades looking after Vera, listening to all her vile diatribe, and the person whose husband mysteriously fell down a well some years earlier.
As Dolores recants her story we fall under her spell, and so sincere is her confession that you don't think to question what might be true or false, whether her husband really was that bad, whether he really did hit on her, do the things she says he did to . . . well, we just have no way of knowing, we just trust the narrator and go with it, believing all that we are told.
It wasn't until later, whilst making notes for this blog post, that I realised this, that not once whilst I was reading the book did I question what Dolores was saying, that it might not be true, and here in is the cleverness of the author, making me question it, think about the story, the characters, days and weeks after I thought I'd finished.

Of course that question is still there, did she or didn’t she do it, and every now and then I will turn it over in my mind and wonder.

Four well deserved stars then and another King favourite.

Mark Haddon. (Author focus)

For my third author focus, I have chosen Mark Haddon, author of, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time: the all-time classic, multi-million selling book, translated into untold languages and made into a West End play, but his first book is not all that he's good for, he's not just a one-trick pony.

     I first read, The Dog in the Night-time, some years ago now and then, when some of his other books came my way, I felt the need to delve deeper, explore a little more and I'd encourage you to do the same, because, A Spot of Bother is both funny, scary and sad all at the same time, and his exploration into family life, how they interact, clash, fight, envy, love, is spelled out in his third novel, The Red House, which again, is well worth a read.

     Then, his latest book, the collection of short stories that is, A Pier Falls, (not my normal fodder), was quirky, inviting, strange and damned right weird, but still had a certain something about it.

      Haddon has a very unusual writing style, which at first may seem strange, for there is a distinct lack of commas, semi-colons and other punctuation, but his characters, his settings, his prose, soon encapsulates you, pushing you through the stories, and I think it is his grasp of the mundane, the quirks of human beings, the simple every day, that make his books so readable, so down to earth and memorable.

     If you want a more in-depth review on the horrors of, A Spot of Bother, see my 25/04/17 post, family life in, The Red House can be found at 05/12/16 and if you've got the energy for more, The Pier Falls was reviewed on 30/08/16, so whatever you do, don't just leave it at, The Dog in the Night-time, a book that I will have to reread before giving you fine folk an honest an up to date review.

Enjoy.

Ready Player One, book review. (Ernest Cline)

Is sci-fi your thing? No.

How about something apocalyptic, geeky '80's retro? Four hundred pages about gaming?
No! Still not on board?
Well, you’re gonna miss out on one hell of a good book then because, Ready Player One is fantastic.
It is 2044, we’ve used all the oil, there's widespread famine and poverty, but hidden in the OASIS, (a computer generated universe consisting of thousands of worlds), there's hundreds of billions of dollars waiting to be won. All you have to do is solve the riddles set out by its deceased creator, Halliday, find the keys to the three gates and it’s yours. Some seek the fortune for good, to prosper, not only themselves but others, but the IOI Corporation wants it for itself and will stop at nothing it seems to get it, including murder.
Living at the top of a twenty story stack of mobile homes with limited aspirations, other than to win the fortune, Wade Watts, aka, Parzival spends all his spare time logged into Oasis, trying to solve the riddles.
When he stumbles upon the first of the three gate keys, he becomes instantly famous, a target, once he's made it through the first gate, he's on borrowed time. His aunt and the trailer where they lived, are blown to pieces, there's coercion, a feigned suicide, proposed kidnappings and more.

As riddles get solved, an epic game of Pacman is played, tempers fray and trust issues arise, you forget you’re in a fictional world within a fictional world and get pulled along for the ride, and all the while the characters in the book are, for the most part, avatars in a computer game.
Parzival is super geeky, but he's educated himself through the OASIS school system, his fellow gunters, (people who spend their time in OASIS looking to solve Halliday's riddles, but who haven't sold out to the corporation of IOI), all bring something different to the narrative, some more than others, of which we find out at the end of the book!
The author’s love of the 1980's was right up my street and some of the games, the computers, and most of the films he makes reference to - Parzival flies around in a DeLorean for goodness sake's - had me reminiscing, and there's always a sense that something's not quite right, that one of the gunters might not be telling the whole truth. With that in mind, the sixers (derogatory name for those who spend their days trying to crack the riddles in OASIS for IOI), gradually close in on Parzival and his friends but, can they beat them to Halliday's Egg and win the prize - Ownership of the entire virtual word, the Oasis?.

There is a huge amount of info-dump throughout this book, which gets a bit annoying but with the epic battle at the end, the tense week that preceded it, the journey through the various challenges, great characters and (for me anyway), the books effortless mix of nostalgia with a possible future and superb researching and originality, it easily earns four stars.

I just hope the film doesn’t let it down.

Don't forget to search my blog for your favourite authors and books and if I haven't read them, message me with your recommendations

The Hate U Give, book review. (Angie Thomas)

There is a lot of love out there for this book, on Instagram, Goodreads and the likes but I only found some of it; let me explain.
Going to parties is not Starr's thing, and we soon find out why. Shots are fired, a teenager is killed, and in the mayhem that follows, she and a friend, Khalil, manage to escape, only to be pulled over by a cop a few streets away.
The premise of this story is that when Khalil leans back into his car to ask Starr if she is alright, (the cop having given no reason for stopping them), whether the cop felt he was a conceivable threat, or just shot him because he was black.
The shooting, the emotions that follow, the characters in general and Garden Heights, where Starr and her family live, are all very believable, but there’s other aspects of this book that are even better, more realistic.
When Starr's friends' find out she’s dating Chris, who’s white, there are all sorts of accusations, and when her father finds out - something she and her mother have deliberately kept from the dad - the shit hits the fan, albeit temporarily, and this I thought was very clever, because as we all know, the reality is that there is a fear in any ethnic group of outsiders, strangers, and although that fear can sometimes be overcome by being civil and wanting to learn, it quite often boil over into the hate that this book draws its name from, racism.
The protests, the verbal and physical threats that follow Starr through the book, are both edgy and believable, but the scene that created the most tension for me, that was genius in its simplicity, was when Starr's father is made to lie on the pavement by two cops in broad daylight, in front of his children and neighbours, for nothing more than a perceived argument. Again, as is so often the case, less is more.
So the author handles riots well, convinces us of the injustices of law enforcement, uses a subtlety around emotions, and has believable characters, so, why not five stars?
Two reasons: Firstly, this book has the story the characters and the trials and tribulations of a Y/A novel, but it's littered with far too much profanity. Call me old if you like but, The Hunger Games dealt with death, torture, maiming and worse, but never felt the need to use the F-word once, let alone the many times you see it here. Secondly, the 'N' word. We're told not to use it, that it is racist, defamatory, ugly, all sentiments I agree with, so why is it here? For an adult book, fine, go for it, knock yourself out, but for Y/A, I say no.
So, four stars then, for this tightly written rollercoaster book of emotion, fear, racism and understanding.
I hope the film is half as good.

IT, book review. (Stephen King)

My 1st edition and film tie-in copy along with themed T

O! M! G!

This book is hard for me to review objectively because IT and I have history. (See what I just did there?). I've read it before you see, twice in fact. The first time, when I was young, closer in age to the kids in the book, I saw things from their perspective and then, as I got older, I related to the adults more, and now, on my third visit, well, I just feel for them all.

This epic book runs to one thousand one hundred and sixty-six pages and has such depth, not just in the characters but in the history of the town in which they live, that in spite of its length, it has pace, firing you out from one chapter to the next.

You read the first fifty pages and you're hooked, the next two hundred pass in a blur of excitement, of reunion, of horror, and then, before you know it, you're half way through but still, new things are happening. Like the shootout in front of the pharmacy in broad daylight, where half the town came armed and ready to kill. The explosion of 1906 that killed 88 kids on an Easter egg hunt. The great flood that washed half the town away decades before and of course, the realisation that every twenty-seven years kids go missing, die left, right and centre, but with no one seeming to noticing, seeming to care. And why don't they notice, why don't they care?

IT . . . that's why.

IT has a hold over the town of Derry. People turn a blind eye, forget, dismiss, delude themselves that the missing and the dead left town, were trouble makers, fell out with their families, anything but admit the truth, but in the summer of '58', just as they break for summer vacation, seven kids become friends, become The Losers, and one of them, stuttering Bill, who lost his brother in the fall of '57', has a score to settle, a score that may well take him twenty-seven years to fulfil.

My copy from 1986

To label this book would be an injustice, to label it horror would be plain wrong, because it's a, coming of age, thriller, horror, murder mystery, sci-fi, history book, all rolled into one, and I bet you can’t say that very often, and the other thing, the worst thing about this book, (there always has to be a 'but' it seems), is that once you've raced through the first nine hundred or so pages and the end is nigh, you want it to slow down, because deep down you know, that when you turn that last page, read that last paragraph, you're gonna be left with a massive hole where those Losers where and the biggest book hangover you've ever had.
To give this book a star rating any less than six out of five would be a travesty, but as we're governed by convention I will have to settle for five.
If you haven't yet taken a journey to Derry, never been to the Barrens and met Henry Bowers, been in the thick of an apocalyptic rock fight, smelt the scorched remains of the Black Spot, been chased from 29 Neibolt street by a leper, a werewolf or Pennywise the dancing clown, you’ve never really lived.
Put simply, one of the greatest books I have ever read.

The Trial, book review. (Franz Kafka)

Errr! Lost in translation, or, maybe not!

Okay then, Kafka's, The Trial, was exactly that to read, a trial; of my patience, my sanity and my time.

If this was dystopian or Sci-Fi, it might make more sense, but as far as I could tell, the book was set at the time it was written and in Europe, not some skewed alternate universe, which was how the book read.

Josef K is arrested at his home but not told by the guards why. Nor is he told by their supervisor or anybody else for that matter, so he goes through the entire book not knowing who has accused him of what and with no idea of how to defend himself.

He meets random people in lofts (court chambers that double as people’s bedrooms), an advocate who's been working on another man's case for five years with no resolution, a priest who seems to know him and his case, but not enough to actually tell him anything useful, and several women who are all attractive, and become instantly attracted to him!!!

On top of this, you get paragraphs that extend to over a page where two or more people are talking about multiple topics, and I had to wonder, if anyone else wrote something as disjointed as this book, whether they would they ever get it published? (That’s a No by the way).

I know that some of you might take umbrage at my views, that some of you are far more intelligent than me, (or smoked the right drugs), and will say that I just didn’t get it, but I would question, what is there to get? To me the whole thing was just one big confusion, where no-one seemed to know what the hell was going on, and another thing, everyone seemed to be poor, even Josef K, a successful banker, lived in a small rented room in a tenement building, as did the advocate, which again, made me wonder whether this book should be dystopian.

Anyway, in conclusion: don’t bother with Kafka’s, The Trial, read something else.

Ian McEwan. (Author focus)

With, The Children Act, hitting the cinema this week, I thought it apt to do my next author focus.

So, for this post, Ian McEwan, author of the aforementioned, and such books that you may recognise from previous visits to the cinema as, Enduring Love, with Daniel Craig and Rhys Ifans, On Chesil Beach with Saoirse Ronan and of course, Atonement with Vanessa Redgrave and Keira Knightley, and, let’s not forget last year's excellent BBC adaptation of, The Child in Time, with Benedict Cumberbatch.

So, it's fair to say that at some time or another, most of you would have come across something written by this author, but, how many of you have actually read one of his books?

I confess that the extent of my reading is what you see in the picture on the left, so, no Atonement then, and I've yet to read his latest novel, but most of what I have read, I have enjoyed - some more than others of course.

Solar, was one that I didn’t really get on with, along with, The Daydreamer, but Sweet Tooth was excellent, capturing the dim, smoke filled offices and soot covered buildings of the 1970's very convincingly and along with Saturday, which takes us through one particular Saturday in the life of an eminent neurosurgeon, from a mundane traffic collision, through an epic squash match, to a climax that had me reading at double speed, they rank as my favourite McEwan books to date.

His novels aren't long, (so no excuses), with most not even making three hundred pages, and they can lack a bit for their brevity, but what you do get is an intense ride, intense characters and in some cases - Enduring Love being the one that really stands out for me - something that sticks with you. (The appendix in Enduring Love is worth buying the book for alone).

So, whether you like books narrated by a foetus, a child who time travels, young married couples who fear intimacy, or raving madmen who become infatuated, there seems to be something for everyone here, and hopefully, as long as McEwan keeps writing, we’ll get some excellent viewing pleasure too.

So, the film: Emma Thompson in the lead role, Ian McEwan as the writer, set in my old home town of London, what more could I want? (Maybe I'll let you know once I've seen it).

All Hell Let Loose, book review. (Max Hastings) (Warning! Content some may find upsetting).

I don't know about you but I don't tend to read a lot of non-fiction, but there are exceptions, this being one of them.

Along with, James Holland and Antony Beevor, Max Hastings is one of only a few non-fiction authors I have read more than once, and for good reason. His narrative is a mixture of cold hard facts, the death, destruction and destitution that comes with war, spliced with first hand testimony of those that fought in the fields, the streets, on the landing grounds, and with growing confidence and strength in the air, (thank you Winston), so our island, Europe, and millions of others around the world, could be free from tyranny.

The author also gives voice to those who never took up arms, the housewives, the land girls, WRENS, and some of the millions of refugees, and although I'm not going to discuss the cruelty that fellow humans inflict on those with the wrong bloodline, ethnicity, creed or beliefs, in this blog post, (you can read the book for that), what I will say is that Max Hastings' writing and research is truly amazing, humanising a book that is so full of depravity, that at times I questioned whether I wanted to continue.

This book charts the whole of World War II, from the phoney war of 39’ – 40’, to Japan's capitulation in 1945, from the tiniest islands in the Pacific, to the blood drenched streets of Stalingrad, and it is horrific beyond imagination. To put some sort of perspective on that, I'm going to ask you to visualise something.

Think back to the last time you sat in a packed cinema, the last football game you attended, rock concert maybe, and picture the crowd. How many people were there? 500? 2000? Maybe it was a stadium with 50,000, or a music festival with 100,000. Whatever the amount, fix that crowd in your mind.

Now, picture this: Between the 3rd September 1939 (the day Britain and her allies declared war on Germany remember) to the 14th August 1945, that's 2172 days, (or 5 years, 11 months and 11 days), and with your crowd in mind, how many people do you think died for every one of those days, on average?

Not maimed, or injured, raped or beaten, not starved or displaced, but killed.

Twenty seven thousand! That's, twenty seven thousand people dying, every day, for two thousand seven hundred and seventy-two days, consecutively.

If you takes just one thing from this book, it's how powerful the human spirit is, that when there is no hope, when there is mass genocide, rape, torture, starvation and deprivation beyond anything we can ever imagine, men, women and children manage to cling on and survive.

LET US NOT FORGET THAT SHALL WE. LET US NOT DO THIS AGAIN.

Where do you edit? Confessions of a serial editor!!

Editing.

Oh editing!

I could write a lot about editing: how it sometimes makes sense, where other times it doesn't, how it gives and takes, highlighting your mistakes one minute, underlining the quality of your work the next, but where would we be without it?

When I reread some of the things I've written in the past, they make me laugh, some even have me squirming; some make me wonder what illegal substance I must have consumed when writing them, because from a literary point of view, they make such little sense, but, getting your work down, scribbling those notes whilst on the train in the morning, during your lunch hour, adding a memo on your phone, or taking a photograph that will jog your memory later, are all so, so important, because a novel, a poem, the short story or novella that you are nursing, isn't going to write itself.

So, where should you edit?
For me, it's in the backroom, the lounge, kitchen or bedroom, the car, the common, or in a field. It's at work, on holiday or in the dead of night and because we all lead such busy lives, (some more so than others), I find those little moments wherever I can, so when people ask me how I find the time to write, (after all, ninety thousand words don't just fall onto the page), I can tell them.
I confess that I don't watch the television much, that I'm able to spend most of my lunchtimes undisturbed, and if you add in a few hours here and there, on a Sunday or a day off, it all adds up.
It's not as much as I would like, (will it ever?) but I take what I can get, and I'd encourage you all to do the same, 'cause once it's on the page, set down for you to see, you can start the real writing . . . the editing.
Good Luck.