Mona Lisa Overdrive

William Gibson, 1988

(January 2018)

The last of the Sprawl trilogy and, ironically, a rather contained affair. Though I am writing this a couple of months after reading, and my memory isn’t what it was. It all takes place in a derelict factory and the wider fields of cyberspace, which I suppose is the point—the disconnect between the physical and the virtual.

It’s not one of Gibson’s stronger works, to be honest. All the loose ends seem to get wrapped up rather too neatly, to the point where the reappearance of certain characters seems to verge on fan service. Which reminds me that Molly Millions plays a significant part and that, actually, quite a lot of stuff happens in London and other cities so my opening line was touch unfair. Still and all, it does eventually boil down to a guy on a gurney wired into the matrix, so I wasn’t all wrong.

Swann’s Way

Marcel Proust, 1913 [Lydia Davis, 2002]

November 2017

OK then. Yes. What to say about this, apart from that the very act of reading it is something of an exercise in eating my own words?

Red Girls

The Legend of the Akakuchibas

Kazuki Sakuraba, 2006 [Jocelyne Allen, 2015]

(June 2017)

Red Girls is a family saga, spanning sixty years in the town of Benimidori. It’s a company town, built around steelworks owned by the titular Akakuchibas, and we follow the family’s rise and, if not decline, then stagnation, as three generations of its women (and the town itself) exemplify the experiences of post-war Japan as a whole. This fictional community, it’s probably worth mentioning, is located on the very real, very provincial San’in coast of Chugoku, which is not so very far from where I live now.

Ninefox Gambit

Yoon Ha Lee, 2016

(January 2017)

I think I’m becoming more nostalgic in my middle age, and especially so when it comes to my reading. More and more I find myself harking back to the things I read as young(er) adult, not so much conceptually but emotionally. Part of this is the natural passage of time and experience, I think, but the more comparators you have for something the harder it becomes for it to raise its head above the herd.

Kolymsky Heights

Lionel Davidson, 1994

(January 2017)

A surprisingly nostalgic reading experience, this. A ripsnorting thriller praised by a number of authors I like (Philip Pullman, Alastair Reynolds) and which, despite being set in the early 1990’s, has a distinctly Cold War feel that threw me right back into the Tom Clancy novels I ploughed through as a teenager. It’s also utterly ridiculous.

The Wicked + The Divine / Sex Criminals

Volume 2: Fandemonium

Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie ,et al, 2015

Volume 2: Two Worlds One Cop

Matt Fraction, Chip Zdarsky, 2015

(July 2015)

I really should stop pairing these two up when I read and write about them. It's not doing me or Sex Criminals any favours at all. Don't get me wrong; SC is pretty good, even if Jon continues to annoy the everloving shit out of me. WicDiv, however, is astonishing. I know I mentioned this last time, but it really does seem almost intentionally set up to push my personal buttons in the best possible ways. I can't recommend this one highly enough; if you're not reading it you should be.

The Wicked + The Divine / Sex Criminals

Volume 1: The Faust Act

Kieron Gillen, Jamie McKelvie ,et al, 2014

Volume 1: One Weird Trick

Matt Fraction, Chip Zdarsky, et al, 2014

(January 2015)

A double header this time, featuring two of the more buzz-inducing new comics of recent months. It is, of course, grossly unfair to compare them to each other simply because they turned up in the same Amazon shipment, but that’s exactly what I’m going to do here. I am a fickle and capricious god, as all worthwhile ones are.

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.

Lyra’s Oxford / Once Upon a Time in the North

Philip Pullman, 2003/2008

(March 2014)

  

I read His Dark Materials about 13 years ago now, and I absolutely adored them, and I will never read them again.

Books That Stay With You

It’s that awkward dead space between Christmas and New Year. No bugger’s going to read this anyway so here’s some unashamed filler to keep thing ticking over, with a grateful nod to Pep at Two Dudes (whose own list is charming and erudite and definitely not filler, I should point out).

Anyway, here are ten books that still stick in my mind, presented in a rough order of personal chronology. It’s noticeable that a lot of these books stay with me due to the circumstances in which I read them, rather than just for the stories themselves. Context is everything, in case there was any remaining doubt.

So This Is Christmas

 Fried Chicken!

Illuminations!

Santa on a Cross!

Tacky Commercialization!

Irreligion!

Heathens!

Barely Concealed Racism!

I think that’s everything. Please let me know if I’ve missed any of the traditional expat tropes. It is frightfully difficult to keep track.

  

Too Shocking Even for Channel 4

Bright lights, big city.

Growing up in rural Middle-England it’s fair to say I didn’t have much exposure to the seedier aspects of the human experience. I mean, sure, there was the village tramp who everyone viewed with a sort of tolerant condescension and the church committee would give a hamper to at christmas.* Looking back, the guy was clearly suffering from at least one sort of mental illness, but talking about these things isn’t done so the fact his lifestyle choices included living under an upturned bath in a cave was publicly attributed to nothing more than good old-fashioned English eccentricity.

A Leisurely Stroke

This Year’s Hot New Metaphor

I am slightly too fond of the occasional high-falutin’ metaphor. I could, and probably have, go(ne) on about how they’re an essential function of how we explain – and maybe even perceive – the world around us, but more than anything else they’re useful. This is especially true in my position as a teacher and a trainer of teachers. We’re into that time of year when it’s all a little more hands-on, so if you’ll forgive me I’d like to give another one a test-run here. Thank you for your continued patience.

The Nao of Brown

Glyn Dillon, 2012

(February 2013)

This is just gorgeous. Here, have a look at some panels other people have uploaded in far better quality than I could hope to reproduce. The actual book has two hundred watercolour pages that work perfectly.

His Music is Better than it Sounds

2.    I’m just diggin’ you now

So then, Mr. Charisma Man, good luck to you, I say. Go forth and dip ye wick whilst ye may, because who wouldn’t? As long as all concerned are consenting adults, what business of mine is it how other people chose to employ their genitals for their own amusement (cf. Gay Marriage. Why the fuck do you care)?

Johnny Come Lately

My supplies are running low. Pretty soon I’ll be calling up my bro to arrange another shipment. It’s not something I like doing. It’s awkward for him and I’m always worried about exactly how customs will react, but needs must. There just aren’t any decent local suppliers and anyway, I’m really not sure about the quality of the locally available product.

Microaggression

Apparently this is a thing now. Who knew?

A Storm of Swords

Part Two: Blood and Gold

George R R Martin, 2000

(April 2012)

I started reading the Song of Ice and Fire books last year, in all the excitement surrounding the TV series. They’re very good, but catching up on all the published ones in a dash meant they fell prey to Box-set Syndrome a touch. More than that though, I actually started then stopped reading this book last August, before picking it up again recently (TV hype once more). The reason for that hiatus has less to do with reading them all at once and more to do with girls in bikinis and Kim Bauer.

You should be aware than in the course of explaining that, I’ll be pissing spoilers everywhere. Pissing them like a nervous toddler taking his first swimming lesson.

Künstlerroman

On Saturday I’ll have kept this blog going for 6 months, which is about 5 more than I thought I’d achieve when I started. Well done me. After 3 years at my last school, I also got transferred to a new one this month (which is why my comment responses have been a little sporadic, new schedule and all). Given all that, it seems like a good time to take stock, give some thanks, and indulge in a little bit of self-absorbed introspection. Like that’s not what this isn’t all about anyway.

There's something I've been meaning to tell you...

One of Those Days

Not only did I manage to bake a banana loaf with a whacking great hole in the middle, I couldn't even focus the camera well enough to get a decent shot of it.