Hmm... Does anyone have a new copy of His Dark Materials, the one with Iorek (at least I presume it's Iorek, though it could just be a random polar bear) on the cover? Because I started The Amber Spyglass last night and found that there's a rather large misprint. They've printed chapters 1, 2, 3, then a page of 4 before printing 2, 3, 4 and onwards again.

After a few days of staying up much too late reading it I finished this late last night. I don't really have the adequate faculties to describe such a dazzling, beguiling piece of fantasy that completely blew me away. Nearly every page had some new idea that surprised me and the book managed to avoid pretty much all of the cliches of post-Tolkien fantasy. It's a wonderful feat of imagination and I can't wait to dive into New Crobuzon again.

But I'll have to since, following all the discussion of Blade Runner recently, I've finally cracked open my copy of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick.

Just put the voucher I got to good use...

Monarchy by David Starkey
The Python Years by Michael Palin
Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson

Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid was a great read, I think you'll really enjoy it. . . I love Bill Bryson

That was my company this morning on a deserted bus and then train... I love Mr. Bryson... Notes on a Small Country is one of the funniest reads ever.

Hey that was the first of his books that I ever picked up! Love it . . I own most of his books, with the exception of the African Diary, his two books on the English language and his short History of Nearly Everything.

I was ticked off I had just missed seeing him in NY when he was doing a book signing of The Thunderbolt Kid when it was released in Hardcover . .

Hope he pens another one soon . .I'd love to have him stay in NYC awhile and see what he comes up with there!

http://www.randomhouse.com/features/billbryson/flat/home.php

I'm currently reading my way through The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland, and enjoying it very much so far.

I bought that the other day in a Buy 1 Get 1 Half Price sale at Borders. It'll probably be ages before I get to it but I look forward to the time when I will actually read it.

Finished Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? the other day and it was good. Not as good as some of the other PKD books I've read and it's not as good as Blade Runner but it touches on a lot of the issues explored in that film and in Dick's other work and was entertaining to boot.

I've gone back to reading Jane Eyre now and I'm getting close to the end. I don't know why I stopped reading in the first place, it's really fantastic.

Jane Eyre is a fantastic novel, one of my favourites. I got to write an essay on it at university using Freud's theories of sexuality as a tool for interpretation. Very interesting and plenty to talk about.

I finished 'The Gum Thief', which was a great intro to Coupland for me - I liked the structure of the novel and the tender way that the characters' relationships develop, without ever being too saccharine or cliched. I'm now reading 'The Tenderness of Wolves' by Stef Penney and it's really engrossing. I spent 3 hours reading about two thirds of it last night instead of getting to sleep early. A great frontier novel set in the north Canadian wilderness in the 1880s.

That's on my 'to read' list. A lecturer used it as an example of how a book which has been written by someone who has never visited Canada but has been heavily researched can be as valid an account, if not more valid, than a book written by someone who has actually visited Canada.

It's really great writing - it switches from first person narrator, telling her personal part of the story, to third person narrative to fill in the other bits of the story - sounds like it shouldn't work, but somehow it does.

I have now read Galactic North. Only 14 months to act on that recommendation. It has to be one of the most engrossing short story collections I've read. Dilation Sleep was a bit poor (I assume that's what you're reffering to too) but he does explain that in the afterword. Great Wall of Mars and Glacial were both excellent. I think Weather was my favourite. I wanted the story to go on and on, what happened to Weather and Inigo? Did he become a conjoiner and go off with her? Did she feel the same about him? Did she even survive? Excellent.

Starter for Ten

*Warning, contains spoilers!*

I read through the last two-hundred or so pages of this last night, and I have to say I don't think I've ever read another book, that I've initially enjoyed as much as this one, that I've been so dissatisfied with the resolution.

The book tells the story of 18 year old Brian Jackson's attempts to get onto University Challenge, and also into the knickers of his stunning team-mate Alice. Along the way he is either helped or hindered by his assorted friends and acquaintances, including student activist Rebecca, who sets the ground for a classic love triangle.

The first half of the book ticks over really well, and largely concerns Brian committing the type of excruciating social blunders and misunderstandings that viewers of Fawlty Towers or the Office would instantly recognise, but then the book – inexplicably - takes its foot off the comedy peddle and veers into a sort of maudlin melancholy that it never really recovers from.

The main thrust of the story is supposed to be about Brian realising that knowledge doesn't necessarily mean wisdom, and just when it looks as though he is getting this message, he cheats, lies and ultimately drops somebody else in it to get out of trouble, which effectively turns his character from someone who had been generally likeable, but who keeps getting the wrong end of the stick, into a bit of a wanker.

Coupled with this, and I think this is most frustrating part of the book, several of the plot lines are never really resolved satisfactorily (what did happened to Spencer to cause him to go off the rails during his A levels? Has Brian finally gotten over the death of his Dad? Why doesn’t Brian see Alice for what she really is? etc). Annoyingly, most of the explanation and wrap up is handled in a 'six months later' style epilogue that is only a few pages long.

Perhaps I missed the point, but the way the book rambles around at the end, I don't think that was difficult to do.

A rather disappointing 6/10, and most of that is for the genuinely funny first half of the book.

Me want.

Bowie, Bolan & The Brooklyn Boy by Tony Visconti
Initially I thought the only interesting parts of this autobiography would be about Visconti's production work with Bowie & Bolan (and perhaps Morrissey), but the whole thing was totally engrossing, especially his growing up in New York and his move to London in the 60's.

When? When?

February 7th!

Synopsis:

In a world renowned even within a galaxy full of wonders, a crime within a war. For one brother it means a desperate flight, and a search for the one - maybe two - people who could clear his name. For his brother it means a life lived under constant threat of treachery and murder. And for their sister, even without knowing the full truth, it means returning to a place she d thought abandoned forever.

Only the sister is not what she once was; Djan Seriy Anaplian has changed almost beyond recognition to become an agent of the Culture s Special Circumstances section, charged with high-level interference in civilisations throughout the greater galaxy.

Concealing her new identity - and her particular set of abilities - might be a dangerous strategy, however. In the world to which Anaplian returns, nothing is quite as it seems; and determining the appropriate level of interference in someone else's war is never a simple matter.

Bank's read's a snippet!

Oh thank god it's next month. I was scared that it was being released this month and I would have to endure seeing it on bookshops shelves while I quietly cursed my skintness.

I finished Jane Eyre last night and it was very, very good. It's been a while since I've read a ''classic'' and I found it to be hugely enjoyable and terrifically paced.

I'm now starting on Girlfriend In A Coma by Douglas Coupland since I borrowed it from my sister absolutely ages ago and should probably actually read it at some point.

The Stainless Steel Rat

Ticking off another sci-fi classic, I finally got around to reading this after picking up a second hand copy late last year. Very well written, with good characterisation, but the plotting seems a little rushed at the end.

I've heard a lot of fans of the series say they want to see a film of it, but I'm wondering how they would do that given the lead character changes his appearance completely during the course of the book (not just facial features, but build and posture as well).

Given how the book seems to be set up for a series, I'm surprised it took Harrison the best part of a decade to turn out the sequel, but it's something I now intend to track down.

Ive gotta write an essay on theatrical moments in Shakespeare - good bits that are effective because of the medium of theatre or something... any tips? can come from any of the plays...

Predictable, but how about the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet?

Equally predictable, but the gravedigger scene in Hamlet is always a good choice.

Actually you're probably alright with most scenes in that play. Hamlet conversing with the ghost of his father for the first time is another good one.

What about Puck addressing the audience at the end of A Midsummer Night's Dream? Or the play-within-a-play in Hamlet?

Ah, the breaking of the fourth wall. Good one.

I can't remember anything about A Midsummer Night's Dream as I only studied it once during GCSE English. It's a comedy isn't it?

You can tell it's a comedy because everyone ends up married at the end. I think the 'Pyramus and Thisbe' performance is the funniest scene Shakespeare wrote.

I never studied Midsummer Night's Dream at school but I know the plot because both Gargoyles and Sandman used it as a basis for story arcs. Stealth Shakespeare always worked better for me than actually being taught it.

I really rate Harrison, I need to find some I haven't read. Incidentally, someone has picked up the rights for a movie adaptation of all the Rat books (dunno who).

I would agree, it's a wonderful scene. I'd also recommend the famous sleepwalking scene in Macbeth (Lady M doing her 'out, damn spot!' bit) and the scene where Macbeth sees the ghost of Banquo. Also the three witches for sheer theatrical-ness.

I'm rereading Microserfs right now. God I love his books.

I've become properly addicted to Girlfriend In A Coma now. I'm going to have to try very hard not to stay up for hours reading it since I've got to be up (relatively) early in the morning. It's fun spotting the Smiths references sprinkled throughout the book.

I finished Girlfriend In A Coma this morning and I thought it was absolutely stunning. The last 60 pages or so really spoke to me on a personal level and, I say with no exaggeration, I feel like it may have changed my view on life. Not many books do that but it really spoke to me and I've been mulling it over for a good couple of hours now. A beautiful metaphysical comedy that left me speechless.

I'm probably going to start on Amsterdam by Ian McEwan this afternoon.

Having read nothing about it in advance, I quite liked the strange "turn" it took. Probably my favourite Coupland...I think.

It was the same with me. Apart from a few hints from other people I had no real idea about what would happen and it came as a quite wonderful surprise to me.

I like ‘Amsterdam’ an awful lot (shocking), particularly the ending. I loves a bit of satire I do.

I’m currently zipping my way through ‘Misfortune’ by Wesley Stace. It’s ever such a jolly romp. I was intrigued by its blurb. A book set in the early 19th century, about a foundling boy, raised as a girl, by the richest man in the country, in a misguided attempt to replace his dead sister and secure his family an heir, immediately appealed. Half way though I’m not disappointed, it’s lots of silly gothic fun; expressively written, well paced and full of comic grotesques.

Coupland's books are constantly doing this to me. I've said it a number of times that it seems I've read them in the most perfect order and that each book had a particular resonance for whatever stage of life I found myself in when I read it.

Basically, I heart Coupland.

I'll have to give the copy of JPod I recently purchased a try.

Have you read Microserfs already?

No, I've not read any of his books.

I might read JPod sooner than I originally intended since, having read the plot synopsis, it looks like it might bear more than a casual resemblance to my place of work.

I'd recommend you read Microserfs first, if you can. It's not that Jpod is a sequel, exactly. But there are elements of the writing that will make more sense if you read Microserfs first. As well, it's a fantastic book on it's own. I find it particularly interesting to read something that was really written at the dawn of the internet age and to see where everyone postulated computer science would take us in the future, namely now.

Because it's a waifer-theen novel (or is it a novella? Is there a particular page limit for novels/novellas? I mean, The Mist is a novella and it's longer than, anyway...) I managed to finish Amsterdam in one day, and my, my, was it good. I'm glad I didn't actually know anything about it before reading it since the whole thing took me by surprise; a deliciously dark book, meticulously constructed so that events and decisions of the two principal characters slowly converge and intertwine, creating a terrible trap for them forged of their own bastardliness. A quite brilliant story, is McEwan capable of delivering a bad one?

Strange Piece of Paradise by Terri Jentz

The most incredible book I have read. Fascinating true story of the author's near murder & her search for herself and the culprit 15 years down the line. I'm not terribly good at description so I've stolen this description from someone else:

"Start this book & you won't stop. Memoir, detective story, travelogue, time capsule, horror movie come to life (and swinging a hatchet), obsessive manhunt, a tale of American innocence dashed and left for dead - Terri Jentz's Strange Piece of Paradise has the narcotic force of a nightmare that won't let go its grip until the truth is found and set free. In synopsis, SPoP sound like pulp fiction: 1977, two Yale students - hopeful & buoyant - embark upon a bike trip across the country's 'most scenic blue roads' only to be brutally attacked at a campsite by a psycho stranger in cowboy boots who drives off into the desert night. But the story is true, the locations real, the scars left on the author's body bearing the track marks of her trauma. As if to perform reconstructive surgery on her psyche (to reconcile the adventurous young woman she was with the 'scarecrow self' that has haunted her since), Jentz returns to the scene of the crime to conduct an epic investigation as shadowed in grief and as stricken by violence as Truman Capote's Kansas in In Cold Blood."

The Mist by Stephen King

I caught a trailer of for the film while watching Monster HD. It looked pretty scary, but since films based on Stephen King stories tend to be shit, I decided to read the book. I finally get the book from the library and see that it's a tiny little thing. It was a novella originally published in Skeleton Crew. I didn't know that! I've already read this. But it's okay, but I don't even remember reading it, much less what happens.

I have to say that this is pretty damn scary! Very tension-filled and pretty gory at points. My only quibble is at the end. He ends up in a hotel but where is everyone? This thing came on pretty quick, so there would be people in there like there was in the supermarket. Where did they go? Also why would the gas pump be locked? I'm sure no one had the mind to lock it...they wouldn't have had the time

And I've just bought it.

On YOUR recommendation.

It had better be good missy . . .

Skeleton Crew is on my to read list so I'm not going to read the spoilers. However, I have heard that the end is a bit weak and you'll be interested to know that the film has a different ending which, according to a lot of reviews, is superior to that of the novella.

I also wouldn't agree that movies based on Stephen King stories tend to be shit. I subscribe to Mark Kermode's theory that movies based on Stephen King novels tend to be shit, with the notable exceptions of The Shining, Carrie and The Green Mile, but that movies based on his short stories and novellas (Stand By Me, Shawshank Redemption, Apt Pupil, all of Different Seasons, basically) tend to be good.

Simultaneously reading and listening to Alan Bennett's Talking Heads 1 & 2, which are brilliant, obviously.

It's not the ending itself I have a problem with, just a couple things that are brought up or occur during it.

It won't let you down, I just finished again. Lovely, lovely stuff.