NOS 4R2

I’ve just finished listening to the audiobook of NOS 4R2 by Joe Hill, wow what a ride, literally. Ably read by Kate Mulgrew, I started out at the beginning of the book only able to listen to it in short bursts, as the heroine Vic McQueen, then a child, discovers what exactly the Shorter Way Bridge can do. The mothering instinct in me was so desperate for Vic not to cross the rickety old covered bridge on her Raleigh bike, that starts out in a forest and ends wherever something that has been lost needs to be found. Each time Vic crosses the bridge she becomes ill and on one trip, when she meets someone on the other side who tells her she is not alone in her abilities and that some do not use their talents for good, it soon becomes apparent that her trips across the bridge are very dangerous indeed.

Fast forward to her late teens and Vic is one troubled teenager of a broken home, her bike is long gone and she has dismissed her trips across The Shorter Way Bridge as childhood fantasies, but when she finds her bike again, she goes looking for trouble and trouble finds her, in the shape of Charlie Manx. Manx has an inscape of his own, ‘Christmasland’, a land where it is always Christmas and he has been kidnapping children to send there, in his vintage Rolls Royce, with the number plates NOS 4R2, for years. Manx is intrigued to meet someone with abilities similar to his own.

Vic barely escapes with her life and the experience sends her into a series of mental institutions, but she eventually leaves, believing again that her Shorter Way Bridge is a fantasy. Vic has a child of her own and then Manx comes to collect him…..

This is such a fantastic book; there is a great cast of characters as well as Vic and Manx, there is Lou, who is sort of my favourite, the morbidly overweight sometimes lover of Vic and father of her son, a comic book nerd who wants to be a hero one more time and there is Bing, Manx’s ‘sidekick’ who sings pathetic little sing song songs and is desperate to go to Christmasland himself, some of the scenes between Manx and Bing are almost funny. Hill gets under the skin of all his characters, making you feel their needs and wants, immersing you in their world.

Listening to NOS 4R2 gave me that almost physical sensation that I only get rarely with a book, slipping into the story is almost akin to that sensation of slipping into a warm bath or between the sheets of a freshly made bed, it makes me want to curl into a little ball of pleasure, I feel almost sad having finished the book that I have finished it if you know what I mean, I am no longer in that world. Having said all that and however much I love NOS 4R2 I personally think it is not quite as good as one of Hill’s other books, Horns, which is up there in my hallowed list of ‘all time favourite books’ but really there’s not much between them, I think just the theme of Horns resonated slightly more with me than the theme (parenting) of NOS 4R2. Having said that though, NOS 4R2′s parenting theme was still incredibly powerful stuff.

***** (out of 5)

Conspicuous Consumption

My conspicuous consumption for May-June 2013

I’d been a bit of a fan of Kate Bingaman-Burt‘s work for a while, without knowing who she was (you know how it goes, you see something and you recognise it as being from the same designer of something else you like but you don’t know who the designer is) but then I read an article about her in Gathered, realised who she was and became fascinated by her work on consumption. Apparently in an effort to pay off her debts she would draw one thing she bought each day, she even drew her credit card bills! A book of her daily consumption drawings has been published and she’s also published What Did I Buy Today?, which is your own journal for you to record one thing you’ve bought each day and to keep an eye on your total expenses, as well as various challenges, such as ‘make your own coffee’or ‘be extreme with coupons and deals’.

I’ve been using What Did I Buy Today? for a month now, for two maybe three reasons; 1) like I said, I’m just fascinated by the whole idea 2) I would very much like to be able to control my money a bit better and 3) I would like to practice my drawing. I set out to draw the first thing I bought each day and you can see the results above (and that I really can’t draw 4 packs of coke) and just following the journal for a month has really made a difference. You can see from the first week that I have a tendency to be a little too free and easy with my iTunes account, although in my defence the previous few months had been a bit of a new music drought (and those Gabrielle Aplin and Jake Bugg albums are really good) but I did become aware of that first thing in the morning habit of listening to the radio and hearing a good tune or seeing something on Twitter or whatever and thinking ‘that looks like a good app’ and before I know it I’m typing in my iTunes password. So after that first week I did control myself a bit better. The number of times I’ve almost bought something this month and thought to myself ‘you’re going to have to draw that, do you really want to draw that? is it worth it?‘ and then thought ‘no’, not necessarily because I thought whatever it was was hard to draw (if that was the case I wouldn’t have bought that second 4 pack of coke) but because I think some purchases, I think at least for me, you’re almost not be aware of them, they go out of your awareness in a flash and the journal is a way of saying ‘yes I bought that, I have thought about it and I’m aware of the consequences’ (even if sometimes the consequences only become apparent when you see a pattern later on). It also became rather satisfying to increase the number of ‘no purchase days’, although I’m running out of ways to represent that.

There’s also a section each month to record two splurges as well; mine this month were the top and vest combo thing from Fat Face that I’ve already mentioned regretting buying in my Mission Maxi post plus a Hampton Court Flower Show ticket which I am most definitely looking forward to, so that was worth it.

I will definitely continue on; I’m hoping that next month there will be slightly less junk food drawn! And hopefully I can keep those iTunes purchases down.

Genus

Genus by Jonathan Trigell seemed a natural next book after Inferno, even though Trigell’s writing is in a completely different league but both look, at least in part, at the effect genetic alteration would have on society. Whereas Inferno was more about overpopulation and the transhumanist approach, Genus looks more at genetic alteration as an extension almost of cosmetic surgery. It is the not too distant future and the beautiful roam the Earth, which is not so good if you’re one of the few unaltered left. The unaltered congregate in the Kross (Kings Cross) and there’s a murderer on the loose.

Featuring a relatively large cast of characters; there’s a dwarf, a blinded soldier, a policeman with the best genes on the force, a family of identical gangsters, amongst others, Genus is an incredibly depressing book. Whereas Inferno was, well Dan Brown, Genus seems a lot more possible. A direct allegory towards today’s society and how we treat those who are ‘other’, you can easily see the future playing out like this.

I found Genus to be an evocatively written, in places very graphic (there were a few places were my stomach lurched) book, however there were lots of places were the text just seemed to be there just because it was so literary and it didn’t advance the storyline or how you felt about the characters, however I should say I’m not a massive fan of literary fiction and it wasn’t what I was expecting from the book blurb, so I’m just going to give this one *** (out of 5), in the hands of someone who appreciates literary fiction a bit more than I do, I suspect it’d rate higher.

Inferno (some mild spoilers)

Hmmm, as usual I’m somewhat hesitant before giving something a bad review, so I’m going to preface this review by saying two things

(1) I don’t think there’s a single Dan Brown book I haven’t read and I have enjoyed to some degree or other most of them.

(2) I totally do not think that every book on the market has to be ‘high brow’ and there is a place for good escapist, entertaining fiction.

And now I’m going to refute those two points in the case of Inferno, Dan Brown’s latest.

Inferno is another Robert Langdon story / this time advertorial for Florence and Venice. Langdon wakes up in a hospital room with a head injury and amnesia, when he realises that he’s totally not in the country he thought he should be in and that people with guns are after him, he flees across Florence with the ‘attractive’ doctor Sienna Brooks. Cue bug point 1, why, when you wake up in a strange hospital bed and shortly afterwards are fleeing for your life, do you even have time to notice how attractive the person you’re fleeing with is? That became a regular reoccurring thought as I read Inferno, ‘they’re fleeing for their lives / on an extremely vital hunt, why are they spending even a nano second sizing up whether if they could they would?’. It was particularly annoying when every character who met Sienna thinks she’s attractive, it later becomes obvious that this is a device to highlight a change in Sienna later on in the story, but talk about pushing your point a little too far Brown.

Bug point number 2 is on a similar vein to bug point number 1, in that they’re fleeing for their lives / on a vital hunt and yet Langdon has time to lapse into frequent deep internal soliloquies about art, architecture and history. It even gets to a laughable point where several times Sienna is almost literally waving at Langdon going “helllllloooo” as it’s obvious Langdon has drifted off somewhere completely different. I did find the art, architecture and history stuff interesting; I’ve only been to Florence very briefly, I know Venice a lot better, but I feel like Brown’s just given me a good tour round but at the massive expense of pacing, this book after all is meant to be a thriller.

Bug point 3; again related to Brown pushing the point a bit too much, yes we know Langdon is claustrophobic. Brown pushed this point so much I’d have put money on there being a scene in the finale where Langdon has no choice but to go into a very enclosed space, it didn’t happen, which now makes me think that must have been a cut scene, otherwise why was Langdon overemphasising the claustrophobia?

Bug point 4; the plot twists, about two thirds of the way through the book everything changes as the real allegiances of the cast of characters becomes apparent, now I like a good plot twist as much as anyone but most of the twists in Inferno seemed incredibly forced, there was only one twist which made me go “oooh!” instead of “ugh?’.

Bug point 5 (this one not really Brown’s fault); as Langdon and crew hone in on what they were looking for, they have a clue in a video that the villain wants to release to the world, this gives Langdon an indication of the sort of place they’re looking for. The description of the place from the video really reminded me of somewhere I’d been on holiday, so whenever I imagined those scenes I couldn’t help transplant my memories of that place with the description of the place on the video. I didn’t think it was the actual place, then guess what, it did turn out to be the actual place. Made me wish I could have transplanted myself into the story and gone “You know it really looks like x” and then that would have shortened the story by a good third and it would have done everyone a favour.

Bug point 6; the science, there’s a good bit of population theory, genetics and stuff about the plague, I have a background in biology; microbiology and genetics to be precise and most of the stuff rung true (although the population stuff was on the alarmist side, in my opinion I don’t think over population could cause an extinction event for the human race but I do think it could cause the population to decrease what with increased disease due to over crowding and antibiotic resistance, resource shortages, wars over resources and increased climate change events) but what really bugged me was the scene towards the end of the book with the PCR machines. Now yes it has been a good 9 years since I last used one and the rate of progress in genetics is fast but even taking that into account, I don’t think they quite do what they did in the book yet and even if they do do what they did in the book (sorry for being vague, trying to keep spoilers to vague setting), what they discovered, so what, there is what they discovered everywhere anyway, the result didn’t mean anything (sorry that last sentence only means anything to someone who’s read the book). In fairness to Brown I think he may have been shortening the science to provide a spot of dramatic tension but still.

Bug point 8; the end of the book was incredibly preachy, Brown is obviously a bit concerned about over population and advances in genetics.

So in summary, am I going to automatically go and buy the next Dan Brown book, as I’ve done for every Brown book for years? No, Inferno has cured me of that habit.

** (out of 5)

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

I think this is the first time I’ve blogged about a book that I’ve just re-read, that’s because as I rule, I don’t re-read books (unless you count the books that the kids’ like, in which case I re-read those again and again for them). I always think there’s too many new books out there to devote time to something I’ve already read, but I had run out of Audible credits the other week and didn’t have anything to listen to (and didn’t fancy listening again to one of my growing pile of audiobooks, I’ve had an Audible account for a frighteningly long time now, 2o09 I think!), so I raided Girl Lacer’s audiobooks again and started listening to Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Since then my Audible credits have been topped up and I have two good audiobooks waiting for me, plus a third I bought the other day whilst it was on special offer, but I haven’t listened to any of them because once I started The Philosopher’s Stone, I surprised myself (a little bit anyway), I didn’t want to stop. Now of course the Harry Potter series is one of those aforementioned books my kids’ get me to read over and over again, Girl Lacer is a true fan and is old enough to read them herself now comfortably (something she does with a regular occurrence, I’ve just asked her how many times she reckoned she’d read each book in the series and she said at least three times each, can well believe that) and now it’s Boy Lacer’s turn to discover them afresh. Not that it’s that fresh for poor Boy Lacer, whereas we had a rule when Girl Lacer was reading the books for the first time, that she wasn’t aloud to watch the particular movie until she’d read the book, of course Boy Lacer has seen at least glimpses of all the movies, but not that much seems to have sunk in, so every night when we read the books to him, we’re met with cries of “Don’t stop! It’s exciting!”, he’s lucky to have a Potter fan for a sister because Girl Lacer then goes on to read more to him after they’ve gone to bed. It’s interesting seeing the difference between reading the books to Girl Lacer and Boy Lacer for the first time, Boy Lacer is obsessed with knowing what the meanings of any long words are, so he regularly stops us asking us to explain, Girl Lacer never did that but as JK Rowling doesn’t exactly dumb down her language there must have presumably been words that Girl Lacer didn’t understand back when she was 7 but she must have let them skim over her.

But back to me ‘re-reading’ The Philosopher’s Stone, what surprised me a little was how listening to it for myself was such an unbridled pleasure, it’s been a long time since I first read the book for myself (in 2001, on a plane back from New York) and what’s great this time is reading it, after knowing how the series ends, how much of what happens in later books is set up or hinted in the first book, I am even more in awe of Rowling’s abilities at plotting and world creation. And of course, back in 2001 I wasn’t a mother, there are some bits of those books which I ‘get’ far more now that I am. To me the Harry Potter world is a world that you can sink into, as comforting as a hot bath, where the characters feel like old friends, I will be raiding Girl Lacer’s audiobook collection again, she doesn’t have all of them yet, the later books are very expensive and they’re not on Audible (if they were I’d have sacrificed my credits to get them all a long time ago) but maybe with me listening to them to, Girl Lacer will complete her collection just a little bit quicker.

***** (out of 5 – of course)

The Alchemyst

I’ll admit the main reason why I read The Alchemyst was because I was looking for a new series to some how tear Girl Lacer away from Harry Potter, so although I normally love reading kids’ books, I preface this review with what I normally write when I’m about to give a kids’ book a not particularly complimentary review, I am possibly too old to ‘get’ this book.

As well as trying to find new reading material for Girl Lacer, I was attracted to The Alchemyst as it had John Dee and Nicholas Flamel in it, two real life historical characters who’ve I’ve encountered in other books I’ve read over the last few years which I’ve really enjoyed. I did not particularly enjoy their appearance in The Alchemyst, I thought John Dee, the villain of the piece, was pretty two dimensional.

So what’s The Alchemyst about? The Alchemyst opens in a fight scene in a book shop in San Francisco, between the book shop owner and John Dee. Josh is working there over the summer and gets drawn into the fight. Over the road in a coffee shop is Josh’s twin sister Sophie and the book shop owner’s wife Perenelle, who rush over to the book shop when they realise something is happening. An important book gets stolen during the fight, well most of the book gets stolen and when Dee realises he doesn’t have all of the book, the bookshop owner and the children have to flee. Cue warrior maidens, sinister crows and rats, ancient goddess’ and Shadowrealms. There are a few good absorbing scenes in the book, particularly towards the end and I liked how it was set up for the rest of the series but most of the time something about the book made me almost painfully conscious about the writing and you know what they say, if you’re aware of the author’s writing, they’re not doing a great job. I think also because not only do I like stories with Dee and Flamel in but I also like stories where, as in The Alychemyst, myths and legends turn out to be true, I had a lot of my favourite stories to compare this to and it didn’t hold up well. But I think my reading background (as well as my age) is possibly making me a harsh critic, my opinion of the book is certainly not going to stop me recommending it to Girl Lacer, she may very well like it (although then again me recommending a book to Girl Lacer is normally the kiss of death).

** (out of 5)

View On The Way Down

The View On The Way Down by Rebecca Wait is one rather depressing book, telling the story of a family torn apart by the death of the eldest son, Kit. The youngest son Jamie has cut all ties and is now hiding in Sheffield whilst the baby of the family Emma, is being bullied at school. The mother, Rose is desperately unhappy and seeking solace in creating an artificially happy family home, whilst the dad Joe hides out in the shed.

The book shows a very in depth portrayal of depression and the effect it has on families. I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone looking for a relaxing read however this book is important as we need more stuff like this in the media to show exactly what depression is. A key part of the book occurs because the family don’t understand / have misconceptions around depression and that’s because it is so often hidden away. However I would say, if you yourself are in a fragile state of mind, don’t read it but if you have a friend / family member in that situation, do.

*** (out of 5)