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I got a lot of reading done this year (44 titles in all), surprise surprise. Anything in green is what I thought was a great book. Joe Hill | 20th Century Ghosts | 2005 | Joe R Lansdale | Bad Chilli | 1997 | Raymond Carver | Short Cuts | 1993 | Jeffrey Ford | The Empire Of Ice Cream | 2006 | Iain M Banks | The State Of The Art | 1991 | Rudyard Kipling | The Mark Of The Beast and Other Fantastical Tales | 2006 | Joe Haldeman | Forever Free | 1999 | Stephen Gallagher | Rain | 1990 | Harry Harrison | Stainless Steel Visions | 1993 | Gene Wolfe | On Blue's Waters (The Book Of The Short Sun 1) | 1999 | Gene Wolfe | In Green's Jungles (The Book Of The Short Sun 2) | 2000 | Gene Wolfe | Return To The Whorl (The Book Of The Short Sun 3) | 2001 | Guy Allenby | Ian Gawler: The Dragon's Blessing | 2008 | Chuck Palahniuk | Rant | 2007 | James Herbert | The Secret Of Crickley Hall | 2006 | Lance Armstrong (with Sally Jenkins) | It's Not About The Bike | 2000 | Ben Bova | Powersat | 2005 | Andre Dubus III | House Of Sand and Fog | 1999 | Jeff Smith | Bone: The Valley | 2004 | Robert Dean Lurie | No Certainty Attached: Steve Kilbey and The Church | 2009 | Luke Haines | Bad Vibes: Britpop and My Part In Its Downfall | 2009 | Aldous Huxley | Brave New World | 1932 | Augusten Burroughs | Running With Scissors | 2002 | Michael Moorcock | The Final Programme | 1969 | Michael Moorcock | A Cure For Cancer | 1971 | Vernor Vinge | A Fire Upon The Deep | 1992 | Kim Westwood | Daughters Of Moab | 2008 | Paul Haines | Slice Of Life | 2009 | Robert Harris | Pompeii | 2003 | Chuck Palahniuk | Choke | 2001 | Chuck Palahniuk | Snuff | 2008 | Bret Easton Ellis | Lunar Park | 2005 | Robert Harris | Imperium | 2006 | Peter M Ball | Horn | 2009 | Keith Stevenson (Ed) | X6 | 2009 | Mark Dodshon | Beds Are Burning (Midnight Oil: The Journey) | 2004 | Dr T Colin Campbell & Thomas M Cambell II | The China Study | 2006 | Thomas Harris | Red Dragon | 1981 | Ian McEwan | Amsterdam | 1998 | Robert Hood | Day-Dreaming On Company Time | 1988 | Cormac McCarthy | The Road | 2006 | Irvine Welsh | The Bedroom Secrets Of The Master Chefs | 2006 | Stuart Mayne (Ed) | Aurealis #42 | 2009 | Jay McInerney | The Last Bachelor | 2009 | Tags: geek-list, reading
Current Music: Tindersticks "Waiting For The Moon" (2003)
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Taken from Sean William's blog: There's an email going around from Dymocks to subscribers to its Booklovers program. It's calling for people to sign a petition encouraging the Productivity Commission to lift restrictions on book imports into Australia. If you think (like me) that this will cripple the Australian book industry and marginalise Australian writers even further than they already are, and if you're discomfited (like me) by the thought of protests occurring outside Dymocks stores (holding innocent staff accountable for decisions made much higher up the chain), can I suggest you unsubscribe from Booklovers program instead (if you're a member) and perhaps send an email explaining why? If subscribers drop by a significant amount, the bosses will recognise the loss of goodwill for what it is (a potential loss of sales) and may feel the pinch more directly. Spread the meme. This is important. (If you don't know what on Earth I'm talking about, have a gander at the Australian Society of Authors site. It'll fill you in.) ETA: the email to direct your protest regarding the mailout is members (at) dymocks.com.au. Tags: asa, reading, writing
Current Music: The Church "Pangaea" (2009)
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I got a lot of reading done this year (59 titles in all, but some of them are graphic novels), surprise surprise. Anything in green is what I thought was a great book.
| Iain Banks | Walking On Glass | 1985 | | Grant Smithies | Soundtrack: 118 Great New Zealand Albums | 2007 | | Patricia A McKillip | In The Forests Of Serre | 2003 | | Cormac McCarthy | No Country For Old Men | 2005 | | Ewan Morrison | The Last Book You Read | 2005 | | Ian Gawler | Peace of Mind | 2002 | | Karen Miller | Empress of Mijak | 2007 | | Doug Chiang & Orson Scott Card | Robota | 2003 | | Angela Challis (Ed) | Australian Dark Fantasy & Horror 2007 | 2007 | | Don DeLillo | Cosmopolis | 2003 | | Robert Silverberg | Tom O'Bedlam | 1985 | | Stephen Dedman | The Art Of Arrow Cutting | 1997 | | Dan Simmons | Summer Of Night | 1991 | | Michael Swanwick | The Iron Dragon's Daughter | 1993 | | James M Cain | The Postman Always Rings Twice | 1934 | | Jeff Vandermeer | Veniss Underground | 2003 | | Paulo Coelho | The Alchemist | 1988 | | Audrey Niffenegger | The Time Traveler's Wife | 2004 | | Hal Clement | Mission Of Gravity | 1953 | | David, Furth, Lee, Isanove | The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born | 2007 | | Feist, Oeming, Glass, Booth, Stegman | Raymond E Feist's Magician Apprentice | 2007 | | Millar, Hitch | The Ultimates Vol 1 | 2005 | | Millar, Hitch | The Ultimates Vol 2 | 2007 | | Iain M Banks | Consider Phlebas | 1987 | | Jason Nahrung | The Darkness Within | 2007 | | Hugh Laurie | The Gun Seller | 1996 | | DBC Pierre | Ludmila's Broken English | 2006 | | Jeffrey Ford | The Fantasy Writer's Assistant | 2002 | | Graham Masterton | The Sleepless | 1993 | | Martin Powell and Daerick Gross | Brian Lumley's Necroscope | 1993 | | Stephen Donaldson | Reave The Just and Other Tales | 1998 | | Joe R Lansdale | Sunset and Sawdust | 2004 | | Ian Gawler | You Can Conquer Cancer | 2001 | | Michael Moorcock | Behold The Man | 1969 | | Michael Moorcock | Constant Fire (The Amazing Transformation of Miss Mavis Ming) | 1977 | | Michael Moorcock | Breakfast In The Ruins | 1971 | | Gregory Maguire | Wicked | 1995 | | Alastair Reynolds | Understanding Space & Time | 2005 | | Cormac McCarthy | All The Pretty Horses | 1992 | | Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neil | The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol 1 | 2000 | | Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neil | The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol 2 | 2003 | | Paul Kraus (Ed) | Surviving Cancer | 2008 | | Robert Harris | Archangel | 1998 | | Clive Barker | Books Of Blood I-III | 1984 | | Richard Beliveau & Denis Gingras | Foods That Fight Cancer | 2005 | | Joyce Brabner & Harvey Pekar | Our Cancer Year | 1994 | | Eckhart Tolle | The Power of Now | 2004 | | Vaughn & Alphona | Runaways | 2005 | | Clive Barker | Books Of Blood IV-VI | 1985 | | Paul Carter | Don't Tell Mum I Work On The Rigs | 2005 | | M John Harrison | Travel Arrangements | 2000 | | Paul J McAuley | Fairyland | 1995 | | Frederick Forsyth | No Comebacks | 1982 | | Martin Livings | Carnies | 2006 | | John Wyndham | The Seeds of Time | 1956 | | Alice Walker | The Colour Purple | 1983 | | Geoffrey Maloney | Six Silly Stories | 2008 | | Don DeLillo | The Body Artist | 2001 | | Jack Vance | Emphyrio | 1969 |
Tags: geek-list, reading
Current Music: The Mission "God's Own Medicine" (1986)
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I've recently finished Clive Barker's Books of Blood, both omnibus collections 1-3, and 4-6, published back in 1984-85. The first collection won the British and World Fantasy Awards. The stories themselves are for the most part novellas, running at around 40 pages in length. Although Barker's prose is always beautiful, and his imagery seductive and grotesque, most of the stories in volumes 1 - 4 are, to me, predictable or inevitable. Once the mystery is revealed, usually early on in the story, it plays out almost exactly as you'd expect -- there are no revelations, no further twist. This amazed me and made me question how the hell did the first omnibus clean up the awards and establish Barker? The stories in volumes 5 - 6 are deeper and darker, perhaps less gory. The sense of mystery and wonder stays until the story conclusions, and to me feel like the author is really getting the hang of what he is doing. They are, for the most part, excellent. The first piece of Barker's I ever read was Imajica, a magnificent epic, a very British piece of work in setting, tone and flavour -- unlike a lot of the Books of Blood which are set in America -- and I don't think Barker ever managed to scale back to the heights he set with that novel. (Having said that, I haven't read all of his novels, and have several on the bookshelf in the 'queue'). Tags: clive barker, reading, writing
Current Music: The Ruling Class "Tour De Force" (2008)
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 Check out the latest Best Of from Brimstone Press. Got a great contents listing and includes my nasty Father Father (originally published in c0ck): "Surrender 1: Rope Artist" by Deborah Biancotti "Tarans" by Simon Brown "The Sidpa Bardo" by Nathan Burrage "Empties" by Jay Caselberg "Finding the Words" by Steven Cavanagh "The Garden Shed Pact" by Shane Jiraiya Cummings "Dead of Winter" by Stephen Dedman "Cheat Light" by Terry Dowling "The Red Priest's Vigil" by Dirk Flinthart "Father Father" by Paul Haines "In the Service of the Flesh" by Robert Hood "Under Hell, Over Heaven" by Margo Lanagan "Hieronymus Boche" by Chris Lawson "Cold" by Kirstyn McDermott "Pain Threshold" by Jason Nahrung "The Bat's Boudoir" by Kyla Ward "Iron Shirt" by Susan Wardle "Ache" by David Witteveen Tags: reading, writing
Current Music: Pale Saints "Flesh Balloon" (1992)
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I'm always a little worried (with adult eyes and writer's knowledge) of reading fiction from the era that formed my love of speculative fiction as a young teenager. (anything from 1940-1970 I think). And now that I'm doing it in part to learn my history and in part to read the classics, well... When I read Phillip K Dick's "Minority Report and Other Stories" a couple of years ago, I really struggled my way through the collection. The ideas weren't particularly stale (a rebellious individual's paranoia in a submissive society controlled by a manipulative government for the most part), but the execution clunky and, for a lot of the prose, badly written. I excused it of course, as the work is from 1955-64, and he is a founding father of SF that has made it to the big screen. I had also struggled through his "The Man Who Japed" (1956) last year for the same reasons. I've just finished JG Ballard's collection "The Voices of Time" (1963). Nothing to excuse here. The prose is beautiful, clean, the construction clever and complete, and the stories, for me, had not dated at all. And we have very similar themes running through these stories too. It was also my first concentrated experience with JG Ballard (although I will have read work of his before in various short story anthologies in my youth and forgotten them) and a wonderful one. I have his complete short collection on the shelf and in the queue. It's been there a while though, as have most things... Tags: jg ballard, phillip k dick, reading
Current Music: Psychic TV-Dreams Less Sweet (1983)
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I just finished reading Ben Peek's Twenty-Six Lies / One Truth.
I'm not an academic and I don't have, or are working through, a Creative Writing Degree so I can't offer a review of the work, but I can tell you what I think of it.
But I sort of know Ben, so I can't really say that without bias, can I? I've exchanged honest and open correspondance with the man and I like him. I don't know him well enough to call him a friend, but I'd like to.
The novel is Ben's "autobiography of a man who has been nowhere, done nothing and met nobody". It interrogates truth, and how we perceive truth, in particular with what is written down on the page and presented as truth when the reader knows something about the truth of the author involved. And how we feel about the truth on the page when the truth of the author is revealed to be a lie.
So here's what I think:
Brilliant. I loved it.
This is a clever, moving, funny and insightful book. I laughed, and I would have cried, but I'm too fucking hard for that sort of shit. See, I understand, relate and empathise with a lot of the truth in this book, the truths I know are true.
It felt true. And that was enough.
And, Ben, if and when you read this, no, I don't think you wussed out.
But, then again, I don't really know you at all...
Twenty-Six Lies/One Truth, written by Ben Peek, illustrated by Anna Brown, cover by Andrew Macrae.
Buy it from Amazon, buy it from Wheatland Press. Tags: reading
Current Music: Bloc Party "A Weekend In The City"
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From a reply to a comment about my 2006 reading list from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) zarabee:
Went to a book sale today -- one of those abandoned warehouse, container shipment ,advertised on tv with guy yelling at you while they flash $4.99 over and over on the screen -- you know the sort, normally a pile of shit scattered over a square block and nothing can be found amongst the teetering dog-eared piles... And if there ain't the 1st two Greg Keyes books there in nice big fat Trade Paperback for $4.99 each. And a couple of Jeff Vandemeer's and Jeffrey Ford's, an Iain Banks, a Jasper Fforde, a China Mieville, a Gene Wolfe, Brett Easton Ellis (Luna Park, Macca!). Unfortunately I was carrying Isla in a front pouch and if I started walking too slow to examine a lot of the books she'd crack it until I walked fast again.
So I bought a couple of extra Jeffrey Ford's for Adam Browne too. (Cos I'm trying to be as nice as him -- Adam, not Jeffrey. I don't know Jeffrey). Tags: reading
Current Music: Primal Scream "Echo Dek"
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