Bookmark Five

Hello. It's been a while since we last spoke. Anything of note happen in the interim that we should be discussing? Geopolitically, like?

Bonjour Tristesse

and A Certain Smile

Françoise Sagan, 1954, 1956 [Heather Lloyd, 2013]

(August 2015)

Oh so very Gallic. Gamine young women; passionate affairs with older men; existential ennui: it couldn't be more French if it created continent-wide wide travel chaos through aggressive industrial work-stoppages whilst eating a wheel of cheese and listlessly smoking a Gauloises inside a Gitanes.

The Dangerous Type

Loren Rhoads, 2015

(July 2015)

  

Awesome cover, dreadful title. The story itself hovers somewhere in between the two, if, unfortunately, closer to the latter than the former. Fighting and fucking, basically: the SF equivalent of a summer bonkbuster. And it’s a good thing I read it on my holidays, as if I hadn’t I probably wouldn’t have finished it.

Summer Lovin’

Well, that was an abortive attempt at a summer. It’s been the wettest, shortest, and sickest that I can remember in a long time. And now I’m back in school.

Autofiction

Hitomi Kanehara, 2006 [David James Karashima, 2007]

(April 2014)

Try as I might I cannot get it out of my head that Kanehara is, at least partially, the real-life inspiration for Fuka-Eri in 1Q84. And that, you’ll understand, creates all sorts of associations and images in my head, very few of which are anything other than uncomfortable.

We

Yevgeny Zamyatin, 1924

(January 2014)

Well, this is all very dramatic and… Exciting! The narrator is conflicted! Torn! Shaken to his moral… And emotional… Core! We know this because… He uses many ellipses… And exclamation marks! On every page… And paragraph! Constantly! It quickly becomes very tiring! Reading every! Sentence! With a mental rising… Intonation!

  

Happy New Year

Yeah, I got nothing else.

Wallowing

Having kids makes it worse, I think. It's a cliché to say that "they grow up so fast," but it's true, and that can't help but emphasise the passage of time and the long absences it entails. These are the choices we make though.

I'll get over it. Back to the schedule and everyday mini-challenges. The trick is to watch the saplings grow and also keep half an eye on the forest stretching out all around you. Anyway, here's a slightly too trite song that still manages to make my throat catch a little every time.

Blackbirds

Chuck Wendig, 2012

(February 2013)

I wanted to like this. I needed to like this. After all the fractured narrative, unreliable narrator, non-linear, multiple viewpoint, worldbuilding nonsense I’ve gone through recently this promised to be a straightforward but fun urban-fantasy thriller, with a bit of edge and a strong and spunky heroine.

Loups-Garous

Natsuhiko Kyogoku, 2001 [Anne Ishii, 2010]

(January 2013)

“Computers were viewed strangely for too long,” Shizue said. “Clearly the excessive illusions about computer technology wrought confusion at one point, and society thereafter attempted to adapt a midcourse, and these thoughts overflow in this generation of people who can’t let go of their outmoded ideas.”

IT’S ALL LIKE THAT.

Snakes and Earrings

Hitomi Kanehara, 2004 [David James Karashima, 2005]

(December 2012)

You remember when you were in school and had to write an essay, but knew you really had nothing to say? How you’d try to make it seem like it was longer by writing really big, double spacing, and leaving even more space after the margin than there was before it (I know, handwritten essays, how terribly 20^th century)? Well, that’s exactly what the publishers have done with this book.

Fuck Halloween

Seriously, fuck it. Fuck it right up the arse with a pointy stick.