RIP Iain (M) Banks

Picture of Iain M Banks taken from the
Banksophilia site

I didn't get on with Iain M Banks writing; it was the phonetic stuff in Feersum Endjinn that really did my nut (I find it so hard to read), but my husband, and a lot of my friends, are big fans.

I particularly admired the work he did on The Culture, and he had a lot of people who felt the same way, as you can see if you have a look at his Fan Page, Banksophilia.  Apparently he created the first draft of Use of Weapons in 1974, so he'd been working on The Culture for nearly 40 years.  He'd managed to work out the workings of a utopian culture we might all actually be interested in living in.  Would you want to live in The Culture?

I always liked the look of Iain Banks.  He looks like someone  who could be funny and charming, and maddening too.  He looks like someone you might want to share a beer with.  I really liked the way he announced his forthcoming death while he and his new wife were on holiday.  Why deal with the discussion?  I'm sure he had discussed it enough.  I also liked the fact that he concentrated on enjoying his last days.  I'm sorry there were so few of them.

Iain M Banks' death is a tragedy for his family and friends, but it is a great loss for all of us.  He brought optimism to British Science Fiction, and snuck Science Fiction into Literary Fiction.  He helped make Science Fiction more popular, and more normalised, and he had some great ideas.

So maybe I should try again.  What Banks book do you think I should read?

Book Review: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

My first book review!  At last!

I didn't mean it to take so long, but it has taken me months to read this book.

You've probably heard of Cloud Atlas.  It's been chosen as a good read by Richard and Judy's book club.  It's been nominated for awards, and it's one of David Cameron's favourites (praise indeed).

It's lots of short stories in a chronological sandwich, and all the stories are connected by the characters being the same people in different lives (as demonstrated by a rather clumsy comet birth mark).  The characters refer to the other texts, which reminds me rather of Charlie Cook's Favourite Book by Julia Donaldson (which is a great kids book).

I enjoyed the middle of the book; the stories about Sonmi~451 and Zachry.  I really enjoyed the Sonmi~451 story, it's made me want to watch the film.  The Zachry story was good - I do love a bit of post-apocalypse, but it really annoys me when things are written phonetically.  I did get used to it eventually, but it was annoying, a bit like the marvellous Iain M Banks' book Feersum Endjinn, which is a great story, but I found it to be very hard to read (my husband found it easy, so it may well just be me).

I thought I should say, briefly, what the story is about, so I racked my brain and came to the conclusion I don't really know what it was about.  I read the blurb on the back to check and am none-the-wiser.  If there is a theme running through it it is of humanity's determination to underestimate certain sectors, whether it be on grounds of race, sex, education, employment, or any other kind of birth status.

This book is very popular, and, looking back at it, I can see that it's full of good ideas, and as I said, I did like the futuristic bits in the middle, but I found it a very difficult read.  While I don't think that characters need to be likeable I would rather they were engaging.  I found it very hard to care about the poisoning of Adam, the shenanigans of Mr Frobisher, or the ordeal of Mr Cavendish.  I'm usually a pretty quick reader but this took me months!  I bought Cloud Atlas just before Christmas and got lots of books for Christmas (and a few more since), so I've resented the time this has taken me.  Apparently Robert Smith (of The Cure) likes to read, but once he's started a book he feels the need to finish it.  He reserved special antipathy for a fan who sent him a dreadful book which he then had to wade all the way through. I'm not like Robert Smith, I have given up plenty of times, but I did feel I was wading through this one!  That said, I would really like to see the film.

Have you read the book?  What did you think?  Have you seen the film?  Is it worth a watch?

So I have a copy of Cloud Atlas to give away.  I know I've really sold it to you haven't I?  Would you like it?  Let me know.  I'm also wondering what to read next.  What do you think?  The choices are Trudi Canavan, JV Jones or George RR Martin (don't you love a choice that means I'm definitely going to get to read some fantasy :-)).  

A Silence of Three Parts

It was night again. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.

The silence of the wind not stirring the leaves, as the night around the inn becalmed; the silence of an empty bar, glasses cleared away, messes mopped, the last of the lost items put into the box to be claimed, or not, the next day; and the silence of Jeremy, the landlord, pretending to sleep.

He pretended to sleep while he watched the woman creep into his room, looking for something. Where she had hidden was something Jeremy did not know. He had certainly locked all the doors, and all the windows, so the woman had to have hidden somewhere. Why she had hidden Jeremy did not know either. He was watching her, and wondering: should he rise up and confront her? Or should he just whack her with something? Whacking her seemed like a good idea. Luckily Jeremy was not the trusting sort, and kept a whacking stick beside his bed. He rolled over, muttering to try to make it seem that he was still asleep; letting his arm fall off the bed (where he took hold of the whacking stick). She froze, poised, watching to convince herself he was still asleep, and then , after but a few moments, she continued her search. She was going through his drawers! Unlikely to find treasure there.

She worked her way through the main chest of drawers, and came over to the bedside cabinet. Jeremy forced himself to keep breathing, counting the seconds in and out to keep it regular. He got a firmer grip on his stick, and as she bent down to look inside the cabinet, he swung the whacking stick. Unbelievably fast, she reached behind herself and grabbed the stick, stopping it, and rolling, using the momentum of the stick to thrust Jeremy up, up and out of bed, and him in his nightclothes, through the air, like some fat, badly put together seagull, to crash into the chest of drawers. That hurt.

This had not gone according to plan. Who was she? What did she want? At the moment, it seemed to Jeremy, that his best bet was to find out what she wanted, and to give it to her, if he possibly could. He suspected that otherwise, he was likely to get broken. Or more broken than he already was at any rate.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is the result of a writing exercise wherein you take as your starting point the first sentence of a piece of writing you like, and then create your own story from there.  I cheated, and used the first two sentences from Patrick Rothfuss' 2007 book 'The Name of the Wind', which you can buy in lots of bookshops, and probably for your tablet too.  There is a second book in the trilogy out, called 'The Wise Man's Fear', and another one is being written.  Patrick Rothfuss' story is a lot better than mine, and doesn't involve anyone called Jeremy.

I've been wondering about the woman in this.  I think she might be one of the characters from my Chaptershill big story, but what do you think?  Who is she?  And what is she doing there?