Thursday, December 23, 2004
Wildly inaccurate Pick of the Year (part 1)
It's the time of the year when everyone looks back and selects their highlights.
Books of the Year. I've read a huge amount this year and there have been some fantastic surprises. Here are my favourites...
5). My Mothership Wreck - Claudia Zabrinski.
Cracking reworking of the mother/daughter/father/pony dilemma minefield. A wild goose/witch hunt from the foothills of Uruguay to the mean backstreets of downtown Bexhill-On-Sea.
The prose may be shocking but the muse hasn't left home. Ignore the critics who called it "grim, dour and boring" Zabrinskis work is masterful or should that be mistressful ?
4). Cruise Control - Barnes Thimbleton.
Renegade maverick MI9 Hyper Plod, Cruise Ducannon is back and twice as sarcastic. This latest adventure finds our hero teamed up with a rookie ex-supermodel heiress for a partner. One thing leads to another and before too long Cruise finds himself up before an industrial tribunal. Out on his ear, his journey back is both moving and thought-provoking though ultimately futile and pathetic.
3). FuturePastWorldImperfect. - Buzz Cliff Smithy.
Sci-Fi epic follows a family of rocket builders through 7 generations of war, travel and fucking. But mostly fucking. Rarely has the genre produced as believable worlds and character as those of the Zxyvual family. Class.
2). Never the Bridesmaid - Carlo Anderton.
Surely in any normal year this would have been top of the pile. Carlo' s invention Gus the Healing Dog is likely to remain ingrained in the soul long after the bedside light fades. I quite literally couldn't put it down, I had to throw it forcefully into the corner just missing the cat.
1). The Brothers Dimm - Quentin T Quinn.
Incredible first novel from the man tipped to be the next Gribble. You can practically taste the tension as brothers Jim and D'artagnan Dimm seek the avenge the killing of their guardians without the use of force or brains. The ultimate confrontation between the brothers and their legal team is shocking and starchy.
It's the time of the year when everyone looks back and selects their highlights.
Books of the Year. I've read a huge amount this year and there have been some fantastic surprises. Here are my favourites...
5). My Mothership Wreck - Claudia Zabrinski.
Cracking reworking of the mother/daughter/father/pony dilemma minefield. A wild goose/witch hunt from the foothills of Uruguay to the mean backstreets of downtown Bexhill-On-Sea.
The prose may be shocking but the muse hasn't left home. Ignore the critics who called it "grim, dour and boring" Zabrinskis work is masterful or should that be mistressful ?
4). Cruise Control - Barnes Thimbleton.
Renegade maverick MI9 Hyper Plod, Cruise Ducannon is back and twice as sarcastic. This latest adventure finds our hero teamed up with a rookie ex-supermodel heiress for a partner. One thing leads to another and before too long Cruise finds himself up before an industrial tribunal. Out on his ear, his journey back is both moving and thought-provoking though ultimately futile and pathetic.
3). FuturePastWorldImperfect. - Buzz Cliff Smithy.
Sci-Fi epic follows a family of rocket builders through 7 generations of war, travel and fucking. But mostly fucking. Rarely has the genre produced as believable worlds and character as those of the Zxyvual family. Class.
2). Never the Bridesmaid - Carlo Anderton.
Surely in any normal year this would have been top of the pile. Carlo' s invention Gus the Healing Dog is likely to remain ingrained in the soul long after the bedside light fades. I quite literally couldn't put it down, I had to throw it forcefully into the corner just missing the cat.
1). The Brothers Dimm - Quentin T Quinn.
Incredible first novel from the man tipped to be the next Gribble. You can practically taste the tension as brothers Jim and D'artagnan Dimm seek the avenge the killing of their guardians without the use of force or brains. The ultimate confrontation between the brothers and their legal team is shocking and starchy.
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
Bad Sex Award
"US author Tom Wolfe has been given the Bad Sex in Fiction Award for awkward descriptions of intimate encounters in his novel I am Charlotte Simmons".
One of his passages included the line: "...moan moan moan moan moan..." Now I'm no writer, but I reckon I could beat that.
I've never read any Tom Wolfe, he certainly has some critics. When asked if he disliked Wolfe because of his popularity John Irving said, "I’m not using that argument against him. I’m using the argument against him that he can’t write … It’s like reading a bad newspaper or a bad piece in a magazine. It makes you wince." He added that on any page of any Tom Wolfe book, he could "read a sentence that would make me gag."
Personally I think he could learn a bit from Nicholson Baker.
Some people seem to have a special talent for writing bad sex scenes - Wendy Perriam has been nominated four times and won in 2002. [Hey Alistair, can't you give her some tips?]
I realise that these authors are not always trying to be serious and I've had enough terrible sex to know that it's not always the way we'd like it to be in reality.
I've completely lost the thread now...I was thinking about all that terrible sex and the great sex...oh...moan moan moan...
"US author Tom Wolfe has been given the Bad Sex in Fiction Award for awkward descriptions of intimate encounters in his novel I am Charlotte Simmons".
One of his passages included the line: "...moan moan moan moan moan..." Now I'm no writer, but I reckon I could beat that.
I've never read any Tom Wolfe, he certainly has some critics. When asked if he disliked Wolfe because of his popularity John Irving said, "I’m not using that argument against him. I’m using the argument against him that he can’t write … It’s like reading a bad newspaper or a bad piece in a magazine. It makes you wince." He added that on any page of any Tom Wolfe book, he could "read a sentence that would make me gag."
Personally I think he could learn a bit from Nicholson Baker.
Some people seem to have a special talent for writing bad sex scenes - Wendy Perriam has been nominated four times and won in 2002. [Hey Alistair, can't you give her some tips?]
I realise that these authors are not always trying to be serious and I've had enough terrible sex to know that it's not always the way we'd like it to be in reality.
I've completely lost the thread now...I was thinking about all that terrible sex and the great sex...oh...moan moan moan...
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
Are They Related?
Whenever I wander into the newsagent, which I do quite a lot to avoid working and I see the cover of the latest Q magazine, I wonder what Harry Enfield is
doing grinning at us from the cover in his Smashie guise.
It's actually that nice young Tom Keane fellow - they sure look a like - could they be related, if so, who's the mum?
Whenever I wander into the newsagent, which I do quite a lot to avoid working and I see the cover of the latest Q magazine, I wonder what Harry Enfield isdoing grinning at us from the cover in his Smashie guise.
It's actually that nice young Tom Keane fellow - they sure look a like - could they be related, if so, who's the mum?
Bananas and Computers
You know when you put a banana in your bag to eat maybe at work or on the way home, then you forget about it for perhaps 3 or 4 days then you put your laptop in your bag forgetting that you have a quite soft banana already in there then you carry your bag, with now the banana and the laptop in, to and from work for a couple more days not using the laptop, then on the train home you think maybe I'll do that bit of work I was supposed to do a couple of days ago and you get your laptop out and there's mushy banana all down one side and right inside the floppy drive yeah? It's rubbish that, isn't it?
You know when you put a banana in your bag to eat maybe at work or on the way home, then you forget about it for perhaps 3 or 4 days then you put your laptop in your bag forgetting that you have a quite soft banana already in there then you carry your bag, with now the banana and the laptop in, to and from work for a couple more days not using the laptop, then on the train home you think maybe I'll do that bit of work I was supposed to do a couple of days ago and you get your laptop out and there's mushy banana all down one side and right inside the floppy drive yeah? It's rubbish that, isn't it?
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Hospital Superbug Madness
"MRSA is killing people at the rate of at least 5,000 if not many more every year."
I honestly hadn't realised that the numbers were so high. That's just the ones who are dying! That's more than the amount of people who die on the roads each year in this country.
So what are we going to do about it? Get more cleaners apparently.
Yeah, that ought to do it.
"MRSA is killing people at the rate of at least 5,000 if not many more every year."
I honestly hadn't realised that the numbers were so high. That's just the ones who are dying! That's more than the amount of people who die on the roads each year in this country.
So what are we going to do about it? Get more cleaners apparently.
Yeah, that ought to do it.
