Rant

Title: Rant
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Published: 2007 by Anchor Books
Genre: ...Palahniuk.
Pages: 314 plus list of contributors




A Dance with Dragons. It just never ends! And I kinda don't want it to, but it is a huge bloody brick, so when the SO and I went for a weekend trip, I picked up Rant for a re-read because I'd been thinking like, how good was it really when I read it the first time? When was it? 2008? Something like that.


And, damn it, it was all that really damn good. I mean, really, really good. Like, laughing out loud good. Like, coughing for the next half an hour good. That good. Yeah.


Buster 'Rant' Casey is dead, and this book is a collection, an oral history of his life by childhood friends, parents, friends and enemies. From fairly odd wonderchild -we're talking recognising people by the smell of their blood and spunk to being too friendly with venomous animals- in the middle of nowhere to a participator in the big city car sport of Party Crashing, Rant will drive you crazy. Because he will infect you with rabies. If he likes you.


Like with most of his books, Palahniuk has filled Rant with more wild ideas than you usually find in a whole series of books. It grabs you and keeps a tight hold until you bite into a thumb-tack or succumb to rabies. Personally I want to grab a car, tie the xmas tree on top -the season's pretty much done with, isn't it?- and go for a ride. Whee!




Shot Dunyun (Party Crasher): It wasn't only the boosted experiences that bothered Rant. It was dipshit kids done up as soldiers and princesses and witches. Eating cake flavored with artificial vanilla. Celebrating a harvest that didn't occur anymore. Fruit punch that came from a factory. A ritual to placate ghosts, or whatever bullshit Halloween does, practiced by people who had no awareness of that. What bothered Rant was the fake, bullshit nature of everything.

Milk, sulphate and Alby Starvation

Title: Milk, sulphate and Alby Starvation
Author: Martin Millar
Published: 1987 by Fourth Estate (this edition from 1994)
Genre: Humorous fiction
Pages: 152


Apparently it's Millar season for me! Was visiting the parental units while reading Suzy, Led Zeppelin and me, and since it was there, I picked up Alby after finishing Suzy. 

So, second time reading one of my all-time facourites in English, and I'm still loving it. (Here's my last report: linky!) Alby's paranoid towards everything and everyone, except for his hamster Happy, sure that people are after him for his invaluable comic book collection. Not to mention that they are literally ready to kill him because he gave milk a bad name. Really, there's an assassin after him!

Having read Alby straight after one of Millar's later works, it does have bit of a first novel -feel to it, but it still makes me happy, still makes me giggle, and even though I do pretty much remember everything by now, well, obviously I still want to go back to it. Again and agaaaaaaaain!


All this talk of hired killers worries me a bit at the time, though when I think about it rationally my fears diminish a little, I mean, surely the Milk Marketing Board isn't really going to hire someone to kill me? How could they hide the expense on their tax returns? 
   Maybe they wouldn't have to hide it. It might be a legitimate business practice under the Conservatices. They might even offer incentives.

The Cartier Project

Title: The Cartier Project
Author: Miha Mazzini
Published: 1987, English translation in 2004 by Scala House Press
Genre: Man on a mission.
Pages: 216


The SO and I went on a trip to Ljubljana, Slovenia this August, and I bought this puppy from a cool little mostly English book shop called the Behemot. Worth checking out if you're in town! And Ljubljana itself is really worth checking out, so while you're in the neighbourhood anyway...

The Cartier Project is set in times when Slovenia was still a part of Yugoslavia. Egon writes trashy novels and bums his friends and acquaintances for beer and other bare necessities of life. His one extravagance is his Cartier perfume, and guess what, that just ran out. Perfume costs money, though, but Egon is ready to fo whatever it takes to get some. Including stealing Playboys, blackmailing friends by threatening their, ahem, vegetable patches with the police, and publishing books.

Apparently this book's very Bukowskian: I can't say since I haven't popped my Bukowski-cherry yet. But it was fun and quick, even though Millar and Led Zeppelin distracted me, and Egon was a delightfully decadent narrator.


   "Are you coming?" I shouted. Ibro was bent over looking for something on the ground.
   "Fucking hell, I lost the dice!" he shouted and went on rummaging around like a chicken in the weak light of the streetlights.
   Through my drunken brain a flash of recognition. History is a circle, not of people, but of events which are repeated over and over. What once Caesar did was now repeated by Ibro.
   "Found them," reported Ibro, out of breath. We jumped on the bus. Sat on the front seats. The driver drove off. A fresh breeze pleasantly ruffled our hair. I was sitting next to Selim, squashed against the side of the bus. His shoulders took up a seat and a half. 
   Selim lifted the beer and me through the window of the dormitory.

Suzy, Led Zeppelin and me (again!)

Title: Suzy, Led Zeppelin and me
Author: Martin Millar
Published: 2008 by Soft Skull Press
Genre: Biography & gig review
Pages: 222


I actually gave away my last copy of this book, to a friend. Gosh, hope he liked it! Got an urge to read it again -and to have my Millar-collection whole again- so I bought a used library copy from the big book-store on the internets.

Here's what I wrote last time: link! The plot is still the same, big surprise, but this time 'round I knew more about the band, and caught the reference to The Good Fairies of New York (this one). I still really liked the book, and am again wishing for a good gig to come my way. Ahem, favourite bands of mine who are currently touring but are not coming to Finland and why not?


   It might be Elvis Presley, the Rolling Stones, or Public Enemy. Maybe the night you heard Kemistry and Storm DJ was the best night you ever had. The Manic Street Preachers, the Smiths, the Sex Pistols, Todd Terry, Marilyn Manson, or any number of people. The band who made life bearable when you were skulking in your bedroom with the rest of the world against you. At least one time in your life everything was perfect.
   Led Zeppelin in Glasgow. Before it I was frustrated and after it I was disappointed. But when the band played, everything was right.

Trainspotting

Title: Trainspotting
Author: Irvine Welsh
Published: 1993, this Vintage edition is from 2004.
Genre: Scotland takes drugs in psychic defence
Pages: 344


I know, I know, I know... sooo many other books to read, for the first time! But sometimes the urge to read Trainspotting gets too strong, and you gotta give in. I need to, anyway. It really got me through one of the most stressful weeks at work I've had in ages.

As many times as I've read this, one of my absolute favourites, this might well be the first time I've read it in the original lingo. At least it was the first time I've read this particular copy of mine. The Scottish dialect bits, I had to read those 'out loud' in my mind sometimes, before I understood what was being said, what was happening. Although I did already remember most bits by now...

Trainspotting! Update from last time, I did manage to convince my brother to watch the movie. He liked it.It's -both the book and movie- about heroin addicts in Leith, Scotland, and their messed-up lives. And it's just so fucking good. It's also ugly and parts make you cringe and gag, but Welsh has a way with his words, humour sharp as a needle, and you just keep coming back for one more hit. Luckily, once you've bought the book, and/or the movie, you don't have to pay: it's only the first hit that costs you. I'm sorry, I'm trying to be witty, but ah'm just a wee bit pished.


   Ah hate cunts like that. Cunts like Begbie. Cunts that are intae baseball-batting every fucker that's different; pakis, poofs, n what huv ye. Fuckin failures in a country ay failures. It's nae good blamin it oan the English fir colonising us. Ah don't hate the English. They're just wankers. We are colonised by wankers. We can't even pick a decent, vibrant, healthy culture to be colonised by. No. We're ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us? The lowest of the fuckin low, the scum of the earth. The most wretched, servile, miserable, pathetic trash that was ever shat intae creation. Ah don't hate the English. They just git oan wi the shite thuv goat. Ah hate the Scots. 

Valentine Grey

Title: Valentine Grey
Author: Sandi Toksvig
Published: 2012
Genre: War and Victorian London.
Pages: 334 plus bibliography and such




I always love it when Sandi Toksvig is a guest on QI, she's just great and funny, so when I found this lovely thing at the bookshop -on the same trip when I found Maxie Mainwaring: that was a good, good day- I was just tickled pink! The book's about the Boer war, and life of gay people in the Victorian times, so I wasn't expecting a giggle a minute, but I have to say, I also didn't expect to have my heart torn to pieces! Wahh!!!


Valentine Grey, our heroine, spent her first ~15 years in India, as the apple of her father's eye. Things change drastically when she gets sent to her uncle's house in London, where she has to wear skirts and shoes and act the proper lady. Lucky for her, she gets along famously with her cousin Reggie, who takes her out into the city, and to meet his lover, the lovely Frank.


Then on comes the second Boer war against the Dutch, in South Africa. But instead of the dandy Reggie, it's Valentine who puts on the uniform and heads out for adventure! Cross-dressing fun and jolly war adventures, right? Nooo! Toksvig thankfully doesn't romanticize war and has tossed cliches aside. So, even though yes, my heart is still bleeding, I loved this book and its characters. Plus, there was the history lesson, which I always like. Even if it's on such an ugly thing as a war.




   Now Reggie was cross. 'Why must you be so adventurous, Valentine? Honestly, you scared me half to death. It's so unnecessary. Why can't we all just sit? Read a book or something? Do what English people are supposed to do and spend an hour on the weather?'

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Title: Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Author: Fannie Flagg
Published: 1987, this Vintage edition is from 1992
Genre: Historical aww
Pages: 395 plus some recipes!


Oh, this poor little book! Its previous owners have treated it so poorly, it has even been burned in places! Poor thing... you're safe now. Anyway! When I was a kid, I saw this movie with lots of women, Julia Roberts one of them, and for years I kept confusing that movie with Fried Green Tomatoes. But because of the first movie kind of made me go Ecch as I grew up, I never watched this one, not until last year/early this year when I realised what a mistake I'd made. And that's a damn shame!

The story is set in two times: we've got 1986, where, at the Rose Terrace Nursing Home, 86-year old Ninny Threadgoode starts telling about life in the thirties to Evelyn Couch, who just happened to sit beside her in the visitor's lounge. Evelyn and her husband visit his mother there every week, and since she doesn't get along with her mother-in-law, Evelyn soon befriends Ninny, who keeps telling her stories, happy to have someone to talk to.

And then there's the past, in a small railway town called Whistle Stop. Now, they've changed some things for the movie, but the book, guys, gals, it's got bees! And lesbians! In 1930's Alabama, no less! Two women, living together, raising a kid, and no-one bats an eye. And there's the great depression and the KKK and things are pretty bad for you in general unless you're a white man, but the book is still so full of hope and joy. It was just a pleasure to read.


   Ruth leaned down and whispered in her ear, "You're an old bee charmer, Idgie Threadgoode, that's what you are..."
   Idgie smiled back at her and looked up into the clear blue sky that reflected in her eyes, and she was as happy as anybody who is in love in the summertime can be.

Mysterious Skin

Title: Mysterious Skin
Author: Scott Heim
Published: 1996 originally: this was a Kindle-edit.
Genre: Drama
Pages: 4198 little mobile phone-size pages


This one's pretty hard to write about without spoiling plot points. And although the reader figures things out sooner than most of the main characters, I don't wanna spoil anything. Because y'all need to check this out.

So. Umm. Two kids, Neil and Brian, are in the same baseball little league one summer, that changes both of their lives for good. Yeah, that's good. The rest is spoilers.

I first saw the movie sometime last year. It was pretty good, darn good actually, and had Joseph Gordon-Levitt sexing up lots of men. So there is that, too. Then I found the book, for cheap, for the Kindle app, and bought it.

If this really non-descriptive babbling didn't make you want to read the book, at least check out the movie. Then you'll maybe want to read the book, too! Be prepared to come across some adult themes, though. In addition to Joseph Gordon-Levitt sexing guys up.

The Bell Jar

Title: The Bell Jar
Author: Sylvia Plath
Published: Originally 1965, this edition is from 1986
Genre: Semi-autobiographical
Pages: 258


I'm on my third book after finishing this one, so let's see what I can recall...  Esther Greenwood, a college girl, is working in New York on a summer internship, away from home and family and her something-of-a-boyfriend, who is in hospital with tuberculosis. She's young, free and in New York, but she can't enjoy herself. To her, the city isn't glamorous or exciting, and she doesn't seem to care what happens. When she returns home, she finds out that her plans for the rest of the summer fell through, and she ends up staying with her mother, becoming increasingly depressed.

The book is semi-autobiographical, with names and such changed from Plath's own life and experiences. I was semi-aware of this when I read the book, but I don't know what really happened and what didn't.

For a book about depression and how it was treated back in the days (electric shocks, ow), The Bell Jar was not a depressing or dark read. It was even humorous in places, even though the humour could be very dark.


   The same thing happened over and over:
   I would catch a sight of some flawless man off in the distance, but as soon as he moved closer I immediately saw he wouldn't do at all.
   That's one of the reasons I never wanted to get married. The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the coloured arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.

Maanantaisin suljettu

Nimi: Maanantaisin suljettu
Alkuperäinen nimi: Zavírací den
Kirjoittaja: Pavel Soltész
Julkaistu: Taifuuni, 1992.
Genre: Murhamysteeridekkaripokkari
Sivuluku: 285


Kuten jo aikaisemmassa päivityksessä mainitsin, joku pois muuttava naapuri jakeli kirjastoaan ilmaiseksi tuossa viikko pari sitten. Mukaan tarttui... piti käydä laskemassa. 15 kirjaa, plus kaverille kolme. Tämä oli yksi viidestätoista. En vain voinut vastustaa yhteen lempipaikkaani, Prahaan, sijoittuvaa dekkaripokkaria jännällä kannella.

Opiskelija Martin Vencu (toim. huom. En osaa lisätä tsekkinimien päälle kaikkia mahdollisia pikku-v -merkkejä ja pallukoita. Bear with me...) on luvannut esitellä ystävättärensä Veronikan jazz-bändin isänsä tuttavalle, joka voi kiskoa nyörejä ja saada bändin jonkunlaiseen musiikkikatselmukseen. Hakiessaan Veronikaa jazzkapakka Banjoon, jossa bändillä on illalla keikka, selviää että joku on käynyt tonkimassa paikkoja Veronikan kotona. Ei kestä kauan ennen kuin alkaa löytyä ruumiita. Martin ei saa kovin hämärää sotkua mielestään, ja päätyy selvittämään mysteeriä, lähinnä juttelemalla Banjon erikoislaatuisen asiakaskunnan kanssa.

Maanantaisin suljettu oli ihan jännä pikku mysteeri, mutta jokin kirjassa oli että... en osaa ihan selittää, mutta olen ekoista sivuista asti yrittänyt miettiä mikä kirjassa on niin... no, se vain on vähän... outo. Sekin vähän hämmensi että vasta sivun 120 hujakoilla selvisi edes se, mille vuosikymmenelle tarina sijoittuu. Mutta kirja oli nopeaa ja ajoittain hauskaakin lukemista, eli ihan kiva etta nappasin sen omaan hyllyyn.


   En todellakaan halunnut enää ajatella asiaa. Hetkisen vielä mietin, mikä kumma minut sai kysymään Rousista, käsilaukusta ja veden keittämisestä, mutta pakotin itseni heittämään ne mielestäni. Menin huoneeseeni ja paremman puutteessa rupesin siivoamaan sitä.

Maxie Mainwaring, Lesbian Dilettante

Title: Maxie Mainwaring, Lesbian Dilettante
Author: Monica Nolan
Published: 2013
Genre: Pulp fiction!
Pages: 281


 Whee! I had just been thinking that I need/want to read Lois Lenz (linky link) or Bobby Blanchard (the link) again, as they're fun and great summer reading, but then I happened to find this one in the book shop! Joy of joys!

Third of Monica Nolan's series -I hope there'll be a looot more- set in the late fifties, early sixties, we've already met Maxie in the first book as a minor character, living in the same boarding house as our other heroines. And now it's her turn to shine! Maxie's an heiress to a rich family, but when she's caught -by her mother! Gasp!- in a country club's powder room, getting to know another young girl very personally, she's told to either move home from the big city, or make it on her own. Maxie chooses the latter, and sets out to find a career for herself. Jobs aren't as easy to keep as one would think, but luckily there are plenty around. Girlfriends are not so easy to keep either, especially since there are so many other pretty girls around! Maxie is particularly interested in Lon the laconic loner, who seems to be mixed up with the Scandinavian mobs running the darker side of the city.

Oh, oh, oh, that's another thing. Alliteration. I love alliteration, and Ms. Nolan does as well. It makes me happy and helps to set the pulpy tone for these lovely books.


   Maxie burst into the Arms full of her new job and her new discovery. "Hallooo!" she caroled, when she reached the fifth floor. "Where is everybody? I've got news!" How the girls would exclaim when she told them that Kitty, the new girl, was playing the innocent student while spying on all of them in order to write a supposedly serious sociological study of the Sapphic sisterhood!


I might just re-read Lois and/or Bobby anyways.

The Liar

Title: The Liar
Author: Stephen Fry
Published: 1991
Genre: Humour!
Pages: 388


And after Sarah Waters' first book, here's Stephen Fry's! The Liar follows Adrian, an exiled bastard prince turned international jewel thief who, purely by accident, ends up killing an important head of state. He really only meant to steal their priceless signet ring, to bring it to the head of the Moscow mob, to save his long-suffering, cross-dressing lover! In a wild attempt to save his own skin long enough to save the lover, Adrian hops on the Trans-Siberian train, and ends up in a very Agatha Christie -like whodunnit, in a hurry to find a murdered before the murderer -or the mob killers!- get to him. And if you think that's wild, just wait till the ufo's --- oh, now I'm spoilering it.


Full of Mr. Fry's witty and smart humour, and I must admit, as much as I liked the book, which I did, very much so, I am only s-m-r-t so some bits went flying over my head. They whistled pleasantly as they did so. But since not a word of it was true, I just sat back and enjoyed the ride. The ending... ha! "Wait, was that the end? But that was--- oh. Oh! Ohhh! Ha!"


   He was always doing that in these days. Everything he saw became a symbol of his own existence, from a rabbit caught in headlights to raindrops racing down a window-pane. Perhaps it was a sign that he was going to become a poet or a philosopher: the kind of person who, when he stood on the sea-shore, didn't see waves breaking on a beach, but saw the surge of human will or the rhythms of copulation, who didn't hear the sound of the tide but hears the eroding roar of time and the last moaning sigh of humanity fizzing into nothingness. But perhaps it was a sign, he also thought, that he was turning into a pretentious wanker.

Tipping the Velvet

Title: Tipping the Velvet
Author: Sarah Waters
Published: 1998; this was a poorly edited e-book
Genre: Historical romance
Pages: 472, at least in proper book form


Mom: What are you reading?
Me: Umm... it's called Tipping the Velvet (don't ask don't ask don't ask)
Mom: What? How do you tip velvet?
Me: I don't know. I... think that it's a... an old English saying. Or something.
Mom: Must be. Weird.
Me: ...yeah. Weird.


This is Sarah Waters' first book, set in Victorian London -one of my favourite places!- and it's about Nancy Astley, an oyster girl from Whitstable who falls for a music hall star, drag king Kitty Butler. Nan soon becomes Kitty's dresser and follows her to London, where her role in Kitty's life and show grows.

Tipping the Velvet is a fun book, pacing's great, I love the characters... I just really like this book. This is the second time I've read it, first go was in... 2007, so before I started this blog. This time I read it as a very poorly edited e-book, which was full of typos. Typoes? Still, I kept reading until my phone's battery ran out.

There's also a pretty decent 3-part BBC adaptation out there, which I recommend! Might watch it again myself one of these days...


   I didn't listen: I was too taken with the gay girl's story. She was saying now: 'We flat fucked for a half-an-hour; then tipped the velvet while the gent looked on. Then Susie took a pair of vampers, and -'
   I looked again at Florence, and frowned. 'Are they French, or what?' I asked. 'I can't understand a thing they're saying.' And indeed, I could not; for I had never heard such words before, in all my time upon the streets. I said, 'Tipped the velvet: what does that mean? It sounds like something you might do in a theatre...'
   Florence blushed. 'You might try it,' she said; 'but I think the chairman would chuck you out...' Then, while I still frowned, she parted her lips and showed me the tip of her tongue; and glanced, very quickly, at my lap. I had never known her do such a thing before, and I found myself terribly startled by it, and terribly stirred. It might just as well have been her lips that she had dipped to me: I felt my drawers grow damp, and my cheeks flush scarlet; and had to look away from her own warm gaze, to hide my confusion.

White Night

Title: White Night
Author: Jim Butcher
Published: 2007 in book form but this was an audio book
Genre: Noir urban fantasy
Pages: 416 says Wikipedia.


Ooh, I had two weeks of summer holiday, and finished three books! Yay! I also re-organised my bookshelves, and they're now pretty and colourful. Except for the black and white one. And just when I had finished with that, some neighbor abandoned their books, free to a good home. Sooo. I ended up with several new books. ...yay!

Book #9! James Marsters is still reading 'em, so I'm still listening to 'em. A year has passed since Proven Guilty, and Harry is asked to check out a suicide. After some further research, it turns out that there is a serial killer of magic using women running amok around Chicago. After some more research, Harry and Co -including his now-apprentice, Molly- end up with suspects enough to share.

It's been about two weeks since I finished White Night, so I can't really remember what I wanted to say about it. Without spoiling things, anyway. The book jumped straight into action, and didn't slow down until the end. If I remember correctly, there's maybe three more books read by Mr. Marsters. Maybe I'll skip to reading them after those are done.

Quote courtesy of Wikiquote.


Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it's a big part, and sometimes it isn't, but either way, it's part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game. Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you're alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another.

Dune

Title: Dune
Author: Frank Herbert
Published: 1965, this edition is by Ace from 2010
Genre: Science fiction
Pages:794, 883 with appendixes and afterword


Ooh. Dune. One of the masterpieces of science fiction! I've mentioned before that I'm not so well acquainted with sci-fi, but I've wanted to read Dune for a while. I might have seen the movie when I was a kid, not sure. I've been wanting to see it now, but wanted to read the book before I do that. For one ~800 pages long, it was a surprisingly fast read!

15-year old Paul Atreides moves with his father the Duke, mother Jessica, and their court to the desert planet Arrakis, to rule over the planet and the collection of expensive spice, per imperial command. The previous rulers, the Harkonnens, are not very happy to part with the riches of the world, and have long planned for a warm welcome. And Paul, well, he's not your average teenager by a long shot, and becomes less so in his new home.

There's politics and nature issues and all kind of things going on, I'm fairly sure I missed many things.The book felt kind of... clinical most of the time. People's actions and motivations are explained, but they still feel distant. Some kind of futuristic stiff upper lip? I don't know. That being said, I still enjoyed the book and wanted to see what happens next. Even though the reader is informed of certain plot points, you still keep reading, to see how they play out. Will be checking out the rest of the series, at least the next couple of books, sometime in the future.


   "On Caladan, we ruled with sea and air power," the Duke said. "Here, we must scrabble for desert power. This is your inheritance, Paul. What is to become of you if anything happens to me? You'll not be a renegade House, but a guerrilla House-running, hunted."
   Paul groped for words, could find nothing to say. He had never seen his father this despodent.
   "To hold Arrakis," the Duke said, "one is faced with decisions that may cost one his self-respect." He pointed out the window to the Atreides green and black banner hanging limply from a staff at the edge of the landing field. "That honorable banner could come to mean many evil things."
   Paul swallowed in a dry throat. His father's words carried futility, a sense of fatalism that left the boy with an empty feeling in his chest.

White Teeth

Title: White Teeth
Author: Zadie Smith
Published: 2001 by Penguin Books (orig. in 2000)
Genre: Family chronicle kinda thing
Pages: 542


 Ooh, I've been wanting to read this one for yeaaars. Why I haven't gone and bought it off the big internet book store I don't know, but I finally found it in a used book shop in Helsinki. Yay! The miniseries from this came out in 2002, and I saw it when it was shown on Finnish telly. So, about ten years. Yeah.

So, in White Teeth, we get to follow two (no, wait, three!) families through two-and-then-some generations, from Jamaica to India through poorer parts of London. There's the Joneses, and the Iqbals. Archie Jones and Samad Miah Iqbal met during WWII, and 30 years later end up living in the same neighbourhood, with their new, young wives. White Teeth is a great book about mixing and clashing cultures, families and religions, leaving your roots and trying to plant new ones, and how all this affects not only the one building a new home but also the generations to come. But it's also very funny and sweet, and I'm already missing the characters. Recommendations, and I'm gonna have to check out Ms. Smith's other books as well!


A dark line would now be drawn underneath the whole incident, underneath the whole sorry day, had not something happened that led to the transformation of Archie Jones in every particular that a man can be transformed; and not due to any particular effort on his part, but by means of the entirely random, anventitious collision of one person with another. Something happened by accident. That accident was Clara Bowden.

Lords and Ladies

Title: Lords and Ladies
Author: Terry Pratchett
Published: 1993 by Corgi
Genre: Humorous fantasy
Pages: 382


Ah, Terry Pratchett. Light of my teenage years, the merriest of christmas presents. Many were the christmases when I opened a hard present and found one of these lovelies. But this one, Lords and Ladies, is special, since it's one of the first books I ever bought and read in English. In August 1994, apparently. That's 19 years, people. 19. Years. Shit. I'm 300 % sure, though, that most of the puns and other funnies went waaay over my head on the first read-through. Now I giggled mightily.

Diskworld, Lancre, Midsummer. The line between here and there, the world of the... I guess I dare say it now, elves, is thin. They want to break through and wreak havoc on poor little Lancre. The three witches Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg and Magrat Garlick are three no more, after the King Verence has decided to marry Magrat at Midsummer. Without asking her. Royalty from all around, plus some familiar wizards -and a librarian- from Ankh-Morpork, are arriving to celebrate while Granny and Nanny do their best to stomp the elf-invasion.

Laughing out loud makes me cough and choke, so this one nearly killed me. But it was worth it!


   'This is the bridge, in fact, where--'
   Ridcully turned around.
   'Are you coming or not?' said Casanunda, with the reins in his hand.
   'I was actually having a quality moment of misty nostalgic remembrance,' said Ridcully. 'Not that any of you buggers noticed, of course.'
   Ponder held the door open.
   'Well you know what they say. You can't cross the same river twice, Archchancellor,' he said.
   Ridcully stared at him.
   'Why not? This is a bridge.'

That one. That one made me cough for two hours straight. :D

Invisible Monsters Remix

Title: Invisible Monsters Remix
Author: Chuck Palahniuk
Published: 2012 by Vintage
Genre: Palahniuk.
Pages: 301


I've been itching to read Invisible Monsters again for a while now, and decided to finally get the Remix. Oh, joy! It's basically the same book as before, only a 'director's cut', with the chapters organised like one of those Choose your own adventure -books. Every chapter ends with a request to Now, please, jump to Chapter X, but if you don't get lost every once in a while you miss all the extra bits in between! There's more insight to the characters, plus Chuck's comments on writing the book, some of its backgrounds, and other materials that were totally worth buying the book again.

Umm, is there anything I can say about the book I haven't already... (First and second reading) I'm pretty sure this is my second favourite Palahniuk book by now, if it hasn't quite pushed Lullaby from its Numero Uno spot.IT has grown on me, and always makes me think a lot. It's good to think sometimes.


   Jump to this one time, nowhere special, just Brandy and me in the speech therapist office when Brandy catches me with my hands up under my veil, touching the seashell and ivory of my exposed molars, stroking the embossed leather of my scar tissue, dry and polished from my breath going back and forth across it. I'm touching the saliva where it dries sticky and raw down the sides of my neck, and Brandy says not to watch myself too close. 
   "Honey," she says, "times like this, it helps to think of yourself as a sofa or a newspaper, something made by a lot of other people but not made to last forever."


Oh, I also read Chuck Palahniuk's Phoenix, a Byliner short story about a cat, her owner, his wife, and their blind daughter. Rachel has gone on a long business trip and keeps calling home from her hotel room every night, to talk with her daughter, but the little girl, April, is upset with her and refuses to say anything. Her silence grows to such extent that Rachel becomes convinced that something's wrong at home, that this goes way beyond a little kid's annoyance. At only ~260 little Kindle pages, it's a really short story, but still captivating and just as twisted as Mr. Palahniuk makes 'em.

The Graveyard Game

Title: The Graveyard Game
Author: Kage Baker
Published: 2001 by Tor
Genre: Historical timetravel science fiction yay
Pages: 298


It's the fourth Company-book! Yay! And where I had trouble reading the last one, Mendoza in Hollywood, because of pacing and reading schedule, this one I could barely put down. Might be because I prefer Joseph as a character to Mendoza, or because this one was hopping around in time and place, with Company politics and fresh visions of the future of our world.

The Graveyard Game follows Lewis, one of Mendoza's very few friends, and Joseph, her something of a father figure, as they try to figure out what exactly happened to her at the end of the last book. This isn't easy without alarming the Company, who are able to monitor their employees around the clock and world. Time is moving swiftly towards the year 2355, where the Company's recorded history ends, and more than one of the immortal cyborgs have gone missing lately.

Like I said, this one was hard to put down. I'm still reading Michelangelo and American Psycho -which I don't really care for much, it turns out- but I kinda want to jump straight into the next one of the series. Maybe I will.


   Joseph sighed. "We may not be able to do anything for her. Even finding out where she is will be dangerous. I may have some chance, on my own. What I do, what we do, depends on what I turn up. But I may not turn up anything for years. You see what I'm saying?"
   "Yes, I do." Lewis set his chin. "But you have to understand my position. There she was, about to walk into tragedy, and I knew it but there was nothing on earth I could do."
   "Oh, I think I know how you felt," said Joseph bleakly.

Pikku Prinssi

Nimi: Pikku Prinssi
Alkuperäinen nimi: Le Petit Prince
Kirjoittaja: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Julkaistu: Originaali 1943, tämä painos WSOY:ltä vuonna 1970
Genre: Lastenkirja
Sivuluku: ~95 sivua kuvituksineen


Vähän rauhoittavampaa lukemista muutaman viimeisen jälkeen... en mene vannomaan oliko eka kerta kun Pikku Prinssin luin, voi olla että olen sen lapsena lukenut/se on minulle luettu, mutta kaunis (ja nopea) oli lukea nytkin. Tämä kirpparilta löytynyt opus on tekijän kuvittama. Kaunista se kuvituskin.

Kertoja joutui tekemään lentokoneellaan pakkolaskun Saharan viidakkoon, ja korjatessaan konettaan hän saa äkkiä yllättävän vieraan: pienen, pieneltä planeetalta maahan päätyneen prinssin, joka vaatii kertojaa piirtämään hänelle lampaan vietäväksi pienelle planeetalleen. Tarinan kuluessa selviää miten pikku prinssi oli lähtenyt matkaan pieneltä planeetaltaan, ja kuinka hän päätyi maahan monen muun yhtä pienen planeetan kautta. Kirjassa on lapsille ja aikuisillekin monia opetuksia, ja kummastelua siitä miten outoja aikuiset voivat olla.

Ehkä sitä nyt jaksaa taas aikuistenkirjoja. :)


Pikku prinssi meni takaisin katsomaan ruusuja. 
- Ette te olekaan samanlaisia kuin minun ruusuni, te ette ole vielä mitään, hän sanoi niille. Kukaan ei ole kesyttänyt teitä, ettekä te ole kesyttänyt ketään. Te olette aivan samanlaisia kuin minun kettuni oli aluksi. Se oli vain aivan tavallinen kettu, samanlainen kuin satatuhatta muuta. Mutta minä tein siitä ystäväni, ja nyt se on ainutlaatuinen maailmassa.
Ja ruusut olivat hyvin noloja.

The Wasp Factory

Title: The Wasp Factory
Author: Iain Banks
Published: 1985
Genre: Mommy I'm scared disturbed...
Pages: 244



There's this guy, Frank, 16 years old, who lives with his rather odd father on a small island in Scotland. His older brother Eric is in a looney bin, and his younger brother Paul is dead. Because Frank killed him. Him and two other kids, but that was just a phase he was going through. Eric likes to set dogs on fire, and guess what, he just broke out of the bin and is coming home!

Queasy book. Really queasy. I almost gave up when there was just cruel, pointless violence towards animals, but even though it disturbed me more than many things I've ever read, Mr. Banks' (Banks's? I never remember/know...) writing keeps you going. There's dark humour to all of it, and I can honestly say I had no idea what would come next. There are a few pages of critic's comments from newspapers and such in the beginning. Can't say critic's praise, since most of them say Don't read this book. No, really, don't. I, for myself, might add, that it is a very bad idea, I repeat, VERY. Bad. Idea. To eat while reading the chapter What Happened to Eric. Oh. My. Good. Giggly. Googly-eyed. Gollum. I couldn't even read all of it.  I had to peer at it through my fingers, taking in a few words at a time, trying hard to keep dinner down. And that visual will haunt me.

But still. All that, and I couldn't put the book down. I read half of it in one sitting, all of it within three days or so.

Damn. I need a children's book or something next...


"All our lives are symbols. Everything we do is part of a pattern we have at least some say in. The strong make their own patterns and influence other people's, the weak have their courses mapped out for them. The weak and the unlucky, and the stupid. The Wasp Factory is part of the pattern because it is part of life and - even more so - part of death. Like life it is complicated, so all the components are there. The reason it can answer questions is because every question is a start looking for an end and the Factory is about the End - death, no less. Keep your entrails and sticks and dice and books and birds and voices and pendants and all the rest of that crap; I have the Factory, and it's about now and the future, not the past."

Death of a Chimney Sweep

Title: Death of a Chimney Sweep
Author: M.C. Beaton
Published: 2011
Genre: Murder mystery
Pages: 228


One more of the Hamish Macbeth -books! Wohoo! One of the newest ones, becaaause I read the list the wrong way. D'oh.

The book opens with an English Captain Davenport found stuffed into the chimney of his house. Not very much alive. The obvious suspect is the chimney sweep, working in the house that day. And then the bodycount starts to go up faster and higher than I've rarely seen outside of war or disaster movies. I honestly lost count. Deaths per page ratio is very high with this one.

Hamish, again, has to try and solve the murders before there are more, and to do it so that he won't get a promotion out of his beloved Lochdubh. And it's not easy, not with such a ruthless and inventive murderer.

These books are so fast and fun to read! And they're pretty cheap, even in the local book shops. And I've still got over 20 more to read! Lovely.


   "He swept the horizon with his binoculars, first towards Western Fearn Point on the Kyle of Sutherland and across the kyle to Creich Mains and then focussed them on the burnt-out wreck of a car far down one of the braes below, just before he was preparing to put the binoculars away.
   His eyes sharpened as he adjusted the focus. He could see a black mass inside the wreckage which looked like a body; a little way away on the heather was one shoe."

The Catcher in the Rye

Title: The Catcher in the Rye
Author: J.D. Salinger
Published: 1951, this edition is pretty new but has the original cover which is pret-ty!
Genre: Alienated angst
Pages: 214



Holden Caulfield is sixteen, and he's just been kicked out of yet another school for not applying himself. Such a phony phrase. He has a row with his roommate and decides to leave on Christmas break a few days ahead. There's no way he's going to go home and listen to his parents rant and rave over his latest failure, so he checks in at a cheap hotel in New York City, and narrates his way through the next few days and all the people he meets. 

As happened with Slaughterhouse 5, I only intended to take a peek at the first few pages and see about this classic, and then realised I'd read the first 30 or so pages. I mean, I was reading four other books as well at the time (down to three, now). But yeah. It wasn't as earth-shattering as I had expected. I feel like I might've gotten more out of it if I'd read it when I was younger, but I could still identify with Holden's feelings of alienation from most of the human race. Insert the smiley which is poking its tongue out in a way that you can't really tell whether the user is trying to be funny or... not.

I just read that Salinger wrote the book for adults originally, but over the years it has become popular with teenagers, and also 'challenged' over ... what? Really? Swearing? Saying goddam a lot? And sexual content? Right. The alienation and Holden going slightly off his rocker were far more important and bigger issues.


"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."

The Hound of the Baskervilles

Title: The Hound of the Baskervilles
Author: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Published: 1902. That's one hundred and eleventy years ago.
Genre: Detective fiction
Pages: 359 according to Wikipedia. Didn't seem that long on the Kindle app.


Aah, help, I've been starting new books left, right and center all willy-nilly and without finishing any of the ones I'm already reading! But there are so many I want to read...

Okay. The Hound of the Baskervilles is one of the few (four?) novel-length Sherlock Holmes -stories Sir ACD wrote, and instead of London, a fairly usual setting for the Holmes-stories, it's set in Dartmoor, in England's West Country. Sir Charles Baskerville has died under mysterious circumstances, leaving his house to his only living relative, nephew Henry Baskerville, who has been living across the sea since he was a kid. I can't remember whether it was in Canada or the United States, or both. Anyway, a family friend, doctor Mortimer, comes to Holmes and Watson, to ask the great detective to figure out what the hell happened to the late Sir, and why there was a huge paw print next to his body.

I think I've mentioned my obsession interest for the BBC series Sherlock. One of the episodes/movies is a modern-day version of this, and even though the names are same, people and places, with some updated changes, the story is different enough that I really had no idea who was the bad guy while reading the book. Which was nice.And now I want to continue with the short Holmes-stories again...


"Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!"

Janitsaaripuu, lukukerta 2

...eli toista kertaa luvussa tämä: Janitsaaripuu

Vietin Pääsiäistä vanhempien sohvalla maaten, pashaa syöden ja tätä lukien, koska, no, teki mieli, enkä saanut American Psychoa enää mahtumaan matkakassiin. Janitsaaripuu löytyi mukavasti hyllystä, ja oli leppoista ja myös jännittävää seuraa. Ajoittainen outo latominen ja aaaika monet kirjoitusvihreet häiritsivät edelleen, mutta ne on vaan kosmeettisia virheitä. Tarina itse ei niistä kärsinyt.

Viime kerrasta ollaan edistytty sen verran, että sarjan kakkososa, The Snake Stone, löytyy edellisen Lontoon matkan jäljiltä kirjahyllystä. (Sarjasta on tosin tähän mennessä ilmestyneet myös osat Kolme ja Neljä.) Se on nyt helppo napata lukuun kun on maailmanaika ja hahmot muistissa. Ei kovin hyvässä muistissa, mutta kai tuonne päähän jotain jäi kiinni... vyötärölle jäi ainakin muistot pashasta. Perhele.

Olin muuten KOKO maaliskuun kirjanostolakossa, kokonaisen kuukauden(!) koska tammi-helmikuussa tuli raahattua parikin kassillista kirjoja lähidivareista. Lukulista sen kun kasvaa... kirjahylly taas tuntuu kutistuneen.

Skagboys

Title: Skagboys
Author: Irvine Welsh
Published: 2013 by Vintage, originally in 2012.
Genre: Drug drug druggy fiction
Pages: 548


The amazing time-traveling paperback! According to Amazon, this puppy don't come out till April 11th, but here we are. All read. Honestly, I didn't even know Welsh was writing a prequel to Trainspotting until I saw this sitting on the bookshop shelves. Christmas came early this year!

Prequel to Trainspotting? Really?! Fuck the hell yes! It's the early 1980's, and the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Alison are just discovering heroin. Some friends of theirs, like the already psychotic Begbie and sporty Tommy don't care for the drugs, but they have their own worries in a time when unemployment numbers are rising to record heights. With nothing else to do, it's easy to turn to drugs. Or violence. Or both.

I could go on and on about how barry it was to read about some of my favourite characters again, even though the thick Scottish accent gave me trouble in the beginning, but I think I'll just quote one of the comments from Mr. Welsh's Facebook page... "Skagboys is ace as tits" - Barry

Going to have to put Trainspotting and Porno on top of the Want To Read Again -pile. 


   Renton appears tae consider this for a bit. He's daein the junky pose wi his airms wrapped around himself even though it isnae cauld. Skaggy fucker will draw mair polis heat than Nicksy, rattling away like that in public, and in front ay a copper. - Does it? Get easier, I mean, he asks urgently.
   The cop shakes his heid. - Does it fuck; it gets bleedin worse. All that happens is that the expectations you have of life fall. You just get used to all the shit.
   Renton looks as perturbed as ah feel, and we gaze at each other and realise that the cop isnae fucking joking. Ah think about poor Spud. Renton looks starkly at Bacon boy. - What if ye don't get used to it, what it ye can't get used to it?
   The copper looks back up tae the flats, shrugs his shoulders and curls his bottom lip doon. - Well, that window's still gonna be there. 

Everything

Title: Everything (a book about Manic Street Preachers)
Author: Simon Price
Published: Umm... good question. Doesn't really say... 1999!
Genre: Music biography
Pages: 265, + discography, list of websites, and index.


I'm still stuck in the Manics-groove (I quite like it here...), and bought and read this as well. Everything (a boastful, yet quite accurate title) tells the story of the Welsh band Manic Street Preachers, all the way from their bored childhoods to the publication of their 1998 album This is my truth tell me yours. There's your basic history, some interviews (snips and whole ones), plenty of photographs and even analytical essays on all of the members, the fans and other important aspects. Like hoovering. There's also a lot of commentary and backgound on the albums and songs, which is always interesting to read.

For most of it, Mr. Price was there for the ride, and the rest of the info comes from other sources. It's not the whole truth, it's not the complete truth, but it is his truth. And it's written so that, whenever I thought to put the book down, I was always tempted (unless I had to get off a bus or go back to work) to read juuust one more paragraph. Chapter? Five more minutes!

An interesting book on one of the most interesting bands out there.


(From interview with Steve Lamacq)
RE: 'Because when you're at school, you're led to believe that music is going to change your life, you hope a band's gonna reflect the way you feel, and they don't. All they do is just reduce you to a shit second gear.'
NW: 'You do get this feeling of total depression. And there's nothing you can do to control it, to smash your walls. And that's what we're trying to articulate.'
SL: 'You couldn't find that in any music, any album?'
JDB: 'In each other. It sounds a bit soppy, but...'
NW: 'We really do love each other.'
SL: 'So what would you say your chief motivation is?'
RE: 'To write music, obviously, and to make people address issues that are really important.'
NW: 'But James wants to write brilliant songs anyway. He's a talented person.'
JDB: 'I just want to create the greatest record ever... boring old tepid muso, aren't I?'
RE: 'It's really hard for us to convince you... that we're for real.'

(RE = Richey Edwards, NW = Nicky Wire, JDB = James Dean Bradfield)

The Hobbit

Title: The Hobbit
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien
Published: 1937, this edition in 1974
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 279. I made it to 180.


Am I giving up on The Hobbit? Am I really giving up on The motherfucking Hobbit? Apparently I am. At least for now.

Lord of the Rings was the biggest thing to hit me since learning to read when I was a kid. For years it was my favourite book. I read it long before reading The Hobbit (in Finnish) for the first time, and preferred LotR to The Hobbit. Still, I liked Bilbo's adventures.

When I was living in the UK, I found this old edition with a cover drawn by Tolkien himself, a sketch for the Death of Smaug. I was looking forward to reading it, before going to see the first Hobbit-movie.

That was my mistake. Seeing the movie. I really, really liked the LotR movies from a decade ago. I saw all of them, several times, in the movie theaters. Back when I was a poor student!  And I was really looking forward to The Hobbit -movie, since it's full of my favourite actors. EVERYONE is in it! I love Martin Freeman, he does make a perfect Bilbo. And hey, it's that vampire guy from Being Human! Sir Ian McKellen! HUGO WEAVING! Glee all around! But oh gods! The movie!

The beginning was great, the rest not so. And I get that they had to add stuff in, and Gandalf was going on about the Necromancer in the book again and again, but I just didn't like it. It was pretty and beautiful and I didn't like it. Gollum was great. When Thorin went all "Bilbo, my bro!" after the eagles? And that stuff before the eagles?! I contemplated beating myself unconscious with my empty soda bottle. I'm not looking forward to the next two movies. (Two? Two?! Three 3-hour movies from a 280-page book?!) Even if they're throwing in Stephen Fry and Benedict Cumberbatch. I don't know. I just don't know anymore...

And that is how I lost all will to finish the book right now. The movie made me want to cry, and not in a good way.

Richard

Title: Richard
Author: Ben Myers
Published: 2010 by Picador
Genre: Fictional biography
Pages: 6095 little Kindle app pages


So, umm... this isn't the truth, but it is what might have happened. This is the story of Richey Edwards, or Richey Manic, the fourth original member of the Manic Street Preachers, who disappeared 1st February 1995. 18 years ago. I personally don't remember reading/hearing about his disappearance -I do remember the 4 REAL thing though- at the time, but I was as out of current affairs then as I am now. I started to listen to the Manic's music around This is my truth tell me yours, which is still one of my favourite albums ever. Lately I've been listening to a lot of their music, and got curious.

Myers has based Richard on facts known about Richey and the Manic Street Preaches, but by his own words he has taken a lot of artistic freedoms with the story. I don't pretend to know enough of the band's background to comment on what's real or what I think is real, but I do know that this fucking book caught me by the throat and kept a tight grip until the very last page. A touching and sad story of a young man struggling with himself. Well written, too. The feelings and pain are real, even if the story isn't.

Apparently Espedair Street started some sort of a music biography trend for me: I've got two others on the To Be Read -pile.


   What once fuelled me - what drove this band of ours forwards - is now that which cripples me and renders me impotent in all ways: creatively, socially, sexually.
   Intelligence, boredom, sensitivity and despair are a deadly combination and it took weeks in an expensive rehab to tell me that all the drinking and the cutting were merely ways to stave off the deadly strain of boredom that arises when a creative ming is not put to use.
   Now that the drinking and the cutting have mostly stopped things are infinitely, noticeably, painfully worse; there is simply nothing left to stave off the boredom now. There's no brief drunken giddiness to fill the void and no hangover to drape my day over. No boozy, carefree nights out to romanticize later and get nostalgic about.

The Extra Man

Title: The Extra Man
Author: Jonathan Ames
Published: 1999 by Scribner.
Genre: Aww.
Pages:333


 Louis Ives is a young teacher in New Jersey who wants to both be a young gentleman and to wear women's clothes every now and again. He is relieved of his job when he is caught wearing a colleague's bra. Not knowing what else to do, Louis finds a room for rent in New York and moves to the big city to start a new life. His roommate is an aging writer called Henry Harrison, who moonlights as an extra man, a kind of a date to elderly rich ladies who pay for his company with food.

The big city and its wonders soon start to drag Louis off the straight and narrow, to transvestite bars and their beds. A second life which no one, least of all Henry, can find out about.

Despite all these potentially very seedy elements, The Extra Man is a very sweet book. Both Louis and Henry are intereting characters, as is their very messy apartment with letters in the fridge and cockroaches in bed. Oh, there's apparently a movie made of the book, but it hasn't gotten very good reviews. Might check it out anyway one day. As a book, I really liked this one. I was reading two other books at the same time, and all three were equally interesting and hard to put down.

It's a rough life I lead.


   "You want to live with me? Be my husband?" she asked.
   I figured that she was high on what she had snorted and that it was making her feel overly romantic. "I have a very inexpensive room right now," I said, avoiding her proposal. "I don't think I can give it up."
   "If you want to be my husband you have to live with me," she said. I didn't know what to say, so I tried to touch her again and again she pushed my hand away, and then covered her breasts with her top. Here she was proposing that we live together, but I still hadn't touched her.

After Dark

Title: After Dark
Author: Haruki Murakami
Published: 2004, and in English 2007.
Genre: Surreal fiction
Pages: 201




It's four to midnight, and Mari Asai is sitting alone in a diner when a young musician on his way to an all-night practise session joins her. They've met before, through Mari's sister Eri, who's back at home, sleeping. She's been sleeping for two months straight, now.


Mari's peaceful reading is interrupted soon again when Kaoru, who runs a love hotel comes in, asking for her by name, to come and help translate for an injured Chinese prostitute. After Dark follows Mari, the musician, Eri and the people at the love hotel through the night, the darkest hours and what they bring out of people. As usual with Murakami, things look normal on the surface, but there are strange things and coincidences just beneath, lurking in the night.


Darn, now I want to read Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World again... I like Murakami's strange, poetic worlds. The SO and I went to Italy for a holiday last week, and this was my flight-treat. Read most of it on the way back, drowning out the endless babbling from the two ladies behind us. I swear, they didn't stop for breath.





Mari thinks about what Korogi said. "I do feel that I've managed to make something I could maybe call my own world... over time... little by little. And when I'm inside it, to some extent, I feel kind of relieved. But the very fact I felt I had to make such a world probably means that I'm a weak person, that I bruise easily, don't you think? And in the eyes of society at large, that world of mine is a puny little thing. It's like a cardboard house: a puff of wind might carry it off somewhere."

Espedair Street

Title: Espedair Street
Author: Iain Banks
Published: 1987 for the first time, this edition in 1999
Genre: Biography
Pages: 249




There was a sale towards the end of last year at the local fantasy book/comic store: buy at least 4 books, and you get them for the price of one. This is how I ended up with five Iain Banks books at once, including this. Then I dragged a friend along for another round.

Daniel Weir is, at 31, a retired world-famous musician and songwriter, who is living as an unknown hermit under an alias after the band broke up, pretending to be the caretaker of a large church/townhouse he owns himself. Espedair Street follows him through his stumbling anonymity every other chapter and from a stuttering no-one to a star at the top of the world in every other... other chapter. Mr. Weird tells his story himself, and he's a very truthful and even cruel narrator. Still, there's plenty of humour and crazy rock-star antics all around.


"So I've done all that, and I got fed up with it. My dreams came true, and I discovered that once they did, they were no longer dreams, just new ways of living, with their own problems and difficulties. Maybe if I'd been working on new dreams while the old ones were coming true I could have kept going, heading for even greener hillsides, even newer pastures, but I guess I just ran out of material, or I used it all up in the songs."

Rum Punch

Title: Rum Punch
Author: Elmore Leonard
Published: 1992, then 2011 in ebook format
Genre: Crime and punishment
Pages: 4132 little Kindle pages


It's my unwritten yearly new years' resolution (well it was until now) that I'll read more books than I did last year. Because reading is fun and all that. It's 13th of January now, and I'm down two books! Not bad, considering how much work I've also done in the last two weeks...

Rum Punch is probably better known as its movie version Jackie Brown, directed by Quentin Tarantino. One of my favourite movies. As it turns out, it makes for excellent reading as well. I didn't find out until I was about 75% through with it that Rum Punch is actually kind of a sequel to another book where we first meet the characters of Ordell Robbie and Louis Gara. I'm gonna have to check that out sometime.

There are of course some differences between the book and the movie, but I think that they both work pretty well. Or then I just don't want to say anything bad about a movie I've liked so much for so many years. But, even though I've seen it plenty of times, I was still hooked to the book, knowing what would -most likely- happen next. Leonard's writing is pretty straight-forward, not much with the pondering of deeper motivations and such, but the characters still come through clear. Plus, there's plenty of humour.

My one and only disappointment is that the line "What the fuck happened to you, man? Shit, your ass used to be beautiful!" is only in the movie. (It's "What's wrong with you, Louis?" He said, "Shit, you use to be a beautiful guy, you know it?" in the book so I don't really mind all that much.)

Making History

Title: Making History
Author: Stephen Fry
Published: 1996, this edition in 2011 by Random House
Genre: What If history
Pages: 572 + acknowledgements


Santa, who had obviously reading my Wish list carefully, brought me this. And I loved it.

Michael Young, a student in Cambridge, just finishing his history thesis, runs by accident and whirling winds to an old Jewish professor, who takes great interest in his thesis subject matter: the big bad himself, Adolf Hitler. As they become frieds, Michael ends up helping Leo with the old man's obsession: a world without Hitler. But messing with history is never a good idea, is it?

Mr. Fry sure knows how to put words one after another, and Making History was so much fun to read I didn't want to put it down even when I was falling asleep or meant to get off the bus. Or back to work. I was complaining to the SO yesterday that I have only 200 pages left, it's almost over! But it was so worth it. And the ending made be let out a big Awwww! Or it would have,had I not been sitting in a bus.

But what do I do now that it's over?


He takes possession of the fat bundle of tyre-marked, torn, scrunched and grit-pocked papers and places them carefully on the table, gently smoothing out the top page as he speaks. 'So Michael Young. Would you say that you knew more about the young Adolf Hitler than anyone else alive?'

THE BLOODY LIST

After dark - Haruki Murakami

Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

Animal Farm - George Orwell

Bad dirt - Annie Proulx

Book of Human Skin - Michelle Lovric

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

Bury my heart at Wounded Knee - Dee Brown

Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

Cat’s Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut 

Christopher and his kind - Christopher Isherwood

Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess

Company-books – Kage Baker (what I haven’t read already)

Dracula - Bram Stoker

Dune - Frank Herbert

Foucault’s pendulum - Umberto Eco
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell

Gormenghast - Mervyn Peake

Hypnotisoija - Lars Kepler

If on a winter’s night a traveler - Italo Calvino

Interpreter of Maladies - Jhumpa Lahiri

Jonathan Strange ja Herra Norrell - Susanna Clarke

Matkakirjeitä Maasta - Mark Twain

Meren katedraali - Ildefonso Falcones

Mysterious Skin - Scott Heim

Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

Ole luonani aina - Kazuo Ishiguro

Oman elämänsä sankari - John Irving

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Poikani Kevin - Lionel Shriver

Puhdistus - Sofi Oksanen

Pyat books – Michael Moorcock

Querelle - Jean Genet

Rum Punch - Elmore Leonard

Ruusun nimi - Umberto Eco

Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie

Sinuhe Egyptiläinen - Mika Waltari

The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

The Children of Hurin - J.R.R. Tolkien

The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

Try - Dennis Cooper (I’ve TRIED to read this twice. It keeps fighting me)

Tähtien Turvatit - Zachris Topelius

Täällä Pohjantähden alla - Väinö Linna

Ulysses - James Joyce

White Teeth - Zadie Smith

Bold – I own this book already.

I've surely forgotten one or many, but this is a good start! The bolded ones aren't the only books I own that I haven't read, but... it's a good start?

Please, feel free to add your recommendations in comments! :) Edjucate this idiot!