Brave New World

Title: Brave New World
Author: Aldous Huxley
Published: 1932, this Vintage edition is from 2007
Genre: Dystopia
Pages: 229




I've been lazy with updating again, and am now trying to get books read in February up here in February. This one, though, I finished about two hours ago. I've been wanting to read Brave New World for a long while, and a couple of weeks ago I found this and Brave New World Revisited at a second-hand book store. As I bought both, the owner said he'd only just put them on the shelves two days earlier.

This edition has two long introductions which I skipped in favour of jumping straight in to the ideal world. In the far away future, the population of the world is created in bottles, with genetic engineering and conditioning dictating whether you'll be 'born' an intelligent Alpha, a mass-produced drone worker of an Epsilon, or something in between. Everyone belongs to everyone, and everyone is told what to think and buy: everyone is happy, drugged and having sex all around. Well, most everyone. Bernard Marx is a bit of a loner, more interested in one special girl than all of them, and would rather talk than take the drug Soma. He gets a chance to visit a reservation where savages still live like the animals human race was in the days before Ford.

Some of the terms and ideas seem old-fashioned in today's world of crazy technology, but these things were impossible to predict back when Huxley wrote Brave New World. What's scarily accurate is how we're growing as a species into the happy consumers he created. I'm going to have to check out Brave New World Revisited as soon as my brain has mulled this one over. It's not written as a clear sequel to this one: Huxley visits the world he created after some years have passed and compares it to how our world has changed. Gonna have to read those introductions I skipped as well...


   'Charming! But in civilized countries,' said the Controller, 'you can have girls without hoeing for them; and there aren't any flies or mosquitoes to sting you. We got rid of them all centuries ago.'
   The Savage nodded, frowning. 'You got rid of them. Yes, that's just like you. Getting rid of everything unpleasant instead of learning to put up with it. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them . . . But you don't do either. Neither suffer nor oppose. You just abolish the slings and arrows. It's too easy.'


On a lighter note... there was an amusing similarity with Brave New World and Hot Valley. In HV, one of the main characters ends up working in a theater called Alhambra, where he and a few other men have to put up a secret sex show (they don't really mind!). In BNW, two of the main characters go to a feely at the Alhambra, a movie for all senses, which has pretty much the same sex-filled plot as the show in Hot Valley. I don't know if it was an intentional similarity or not, but it did make me giggle.

Hot Valley

Title: Hot Valley
Author: James Lear
Published: 2007 by Cleis Press
Genre: Historical porn.
Pages: 307




After finishing the Hexslinger books I didn't know quite what to read, and ended up starting three different books. This one I picked because I didn't want to leave the characters and their world yet, and Hot Valley is somewhat similar, as in it's set during the Civil War, and there's plenty man-on-man action. Like, all around. Cocks everywhere. Like, daaamn, there's just so much cock!


The only son of a wealthy family, Jack Edgerton has lived a pampered life. The book starts as he discovers, for the first time, some of the harder things of existence. And I do mean cocks here. He discovers hard cocks. So many hard cocks! Still, life is simple enough, even with the rumours of war, until the son of a freed slave, Aaron Johnson, comes (not like that, not yet) to work for Jack's father, and our young hero decides he's got to have that fine piece of ass. But war is imminent and, as Jack discovers, what he's been up to (all those cocks) are not as well kept a secret as he's thought. It's time to leave the safety of home and see what (cocks) the world and the war have got to offer.

As much as I enjoyed Lear's easy writing -always a joy to read- and Jack's realisation that life is not just a row of happy cocks, I didn't like Hot Valley as much as his other books, especially the Mitch Mitchell mysteries. I mean, I did like it, and happily finished it, but couldn't help feeling that there is such a thing as too much cock. But, oh! Having read Hot Valley means that there's only one book by Mr. Lear that I haven't read! I found this troubling and somewhat scary until, five minutes ago, I checked that there's a new Dan Stagg book coming out in September! Joy!




   I was furious, frustrated, filthy, covered in straw, sweating like a horse, and hard. I could not go back into the office; I could not, as Johnson apparently could, turn my feelings on and off like a faucet. I brushed off the worst of the dirt and, without really thinking about what I was doing, strolled back toward the boiler house where Italian Benny and his freckle-faced assistant were still banging away.
   "Need a hand?" I felt reckless.

Stonemouth

Title: Stonemouth
Author: Iain Banks
Published: 2012 by Little, Brown
Genre: Humorous drama
Pages: 434




After five years in exile, Stewart Gilmour is back in his hometown Stonemouth, to attend the funeral of old Joe Murston. The rest of the gangstery Murston family kind of wants him dead, or at least very inconvenienced, so he has to tread lightly as he visits old friends and family, and reminisces on his childhood and youth. Well, he's only 25, so when I say youth... the reason for Stewart's self-exile comes out little by little as we get to peek in on his memories. There are a few mysteries, a lost love, and a bunch of characters as odd as Mr. Banks can make them.

Bought this one used from Cardiff last summer, and picked it up two weeks ago after staring at the bookshelf for a while and deciding that I have to start making some kind of a dent in the Unread-shelf. Stonemouth was intriguing from the start: well worth being dragged around in a suitcase.




   I stand and wait for him to finish, but he's tsking and tutting and shaking his head and keeps standing up and looking like he's about to take his shot but then changing his mind and squatting down again, closing one eye and sighing.
   I just have this feeling that he's waiting for me to try to take my shot so that he can claim I've got in his way or jostled his elbow or something, so I decide waiting patiently is the wisest course. After about five minutes of this shite I sigh, and pull my phone out to check the time.
   'Aye? What?' the wee guy says suddenly, all edge and aggression. He's staring at me.
   I look at him. 'Excuse me?' I say, with a sort of formal smile. Oh, shit; I already don't like the way this is going. 
   'Whit the fuck?' the wee guy says shrilly, as though when I said 'Excuse me?' he somehow heard, 'Fuck your junky whore of a mother with a rusty fire extinguisher, you clit-nosed cuntface.'

Frankenstein

Title: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus
Author: Mary Shelley
Published: 1818, this ed. from 1977
Genre: Horror
Pages: 242




Of the three books I started almost simultaneously after finishing the Hexslinger books, I honestly thought I'd finish Hot Valley first. Nope, not even halfway through. Fahrenheit 451 and this one stole my daytime attentions. Spent most of yesterday reading the 'last' 150 pages of this one!

Published originally in 1818, this might well be the oldest book I've ever read, and it is a famous one. Most people are familiar with the scary shape of the movie-Frankenstein's monster if not the film itself (I've only seen Mel Brooks' Frankenstein Junior, and that's years ago). Still, I didn't know what exactly to expect once I started to read the book. The beginning didn't quite catch my interest, and until young Frankenstein started to build his monster I was wondering whether to quit reading. And then I was hooked.

The language in the book is obviously old, but Shelley describes the nature beautifully, and the experiences of both Frankenstein and his monster quite tragically. There were a few times when I wanted to slap young Victor for being an idiot. Dramatic little git... but yes! I only meant to read a few chapters yesterday, and 150 pages just went like whoosh. Beautiful story.


   I suddenly beheld the figure of a man, at some distance advancing towards me with superhuman speed. He bounded over the crevices in the ice, among which I had walked with caution; his stature, also, as he approached, seemed to exceed that of a man. I was troubled: a mist came over my eyes, and I felt a faintness seize me; but I was quickly restored by the cold gale of the mountains. I perceived, as the shape came nearer (sight tremendous and abhorred!) that it was the wretch whom I had created. I trembled with rage and horror, resolving to wait his approach; his countenance bespoke bitter anguish, combined with disdain and malignity, while his unearthly ugliness rendered it almost too horrible for human eyes.

Fahrenheit 451

Title: Fahrenheit 451
Author: Ray Bradbury
Published: Originally 1953, Kindle edition in 2013
Genre: Dystopia
Pages: 243 on the Kindle, with plenty of essays and such




Oh, now this was a scary dystopia! And not just because of books being burned! Our main character, Guy Montag, is a fireman in a large city. But the firemen of his world do not put out fires: they start them. They burn books that are illegal, books that are considered dangerous. And that's all of them. They make people think, make them worry, fill their heads with thoughts, and that's not a good thing.

Montag's wife, like most people, sits at home, watching her 'family' on the three wall-televisions in their living-room. Montag is a good fireman, but having seen books burn and the reactions of their owners first-hand, he has become curious to find out just what's in the illegal things.


Fahrenheit 451 was short, a quick one to read, but one of those books that doesn't leave your head quite as fast. It hasn't -at least yet- haunted me as badly as 1984 did, but it's... scary how real life is starting to resemble this fiction. We're not burning books yet, but considering how much just this one has been banned here and there, chopped and altered even these days, well, feels like we're not far off!



   It was a pleasure to burn.

A Tree of Bones

Title: A Tree of Bones
Author: Gemma Files
Published: 2012 by ChiZine, same for the Kindle
Genre: Weird Weird West!
Pages: 400


Oh no, it's over! What... what do I do now? (Start reading 3 different books at once, apparently.)

I'll steer clear of Spoiler Territory as much as possible, and say that all in all, this was one damn enjoyable trilogy, with a lot of new words and ideas. Not to mention a setting almost completely new to me -American Civil War- and plenty of old gods I knew almost nothing of previously. It was fun, fast and even a little heart-breaking, and oftentimes I had no idea where the story was going. I don't mean that it was all over the place or hard to follow, no: it was fresh and free of cliches. No obvious turns. And characters I miss already.

As mentioned, I bought the Kindle Omnibus while I was still reading The Book of Tongues. In addition to the trilogy itself, the Omnibus has three short stories at the end, telling us what happened to some of the main cast afterwards. The books got so intense at points, it was nice to meet them during (slightly) calmer days. Plus, reading the short stories meant that I didn't just have to quit the characters cold turkey. Which was nice, since I do miss the fuckers. 


   "You do know how he ain't the only bent creature in this world, though, right?" Chess asked. "Or me, neither?" As the man shifted even further back, visibly uncomfortable, Chess leaned in, confiding: "Hell, there's even ladies like ladies, if you could credit it. Or them who take what's given, without pledging any sort'a allegiance at all - all manner of strange creatures, roamin' 'round out there in the dark! And any given one of 'em might sometime want a drink, a plate or to just set a while, without some drunken moron runnin' their mouth."
   "Uh, I . . . don't know nothin' on any of that, Mister Pargeter. I just . . ."
   "Run a bar, yeah. Need the custom, no matter who brings it. So I'm gonna make sure no fool like Sam Holger ruins your prospects on that score, ever again. Now, how'd that be?"
   ". . . good, I guess . . ."

Oh, one more thing: I did very much enjoy all the swearing. And the fact that the author herself calls the books blood-soaked gay porno black magic horse opera in this one's dedication.

That was some damn good blood-soaked gay porno black magic horse opera right there.