Author: latepaul

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6000 pages reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, Zone One – Colson Whitehead (pages 10016-10274)

Here’s a book that really tests my mettle as a reviewer. The reason being that I really didn’t enjoy it and yet when I try to figure out why I find it extremely difficult to say. Maybe I’ll have worked something out by the end of this post.

Zone One is the story of what happens after a zombie apocalypse. Some months (years?) after the outbreak of a plague that turns its victims into the walking undead we follow Mark Spitz, a member of a ‘sweeper’ team of civilian-turned-military whose job is to root out and destroy the remaining infected from ‘Zone One‘ aka Manhattan which has been largely cleared and walled off in preparation for re-inhabitation. By reclaiming the city it will be a symbolic act of civilization re-asserting itself.

Ostensibly the action takes place over one weekend but as with most novels that use this device it seems, we inevitably get a lot more history in flashback. Everything from his initial experiences of the plague his ‘Last Night‘ story (every survivor has one and the sharing of such has become a kind of ritualistic bonding experience) through his various travels and his ultimately joining the sweeper team in Zone One.

So why didn’t I enjoy it? It’s hard to say. Every possible answer I can think of gives rise to counter-examples. The first third has very little dialogue and is description-heavy. There are multiple flashbacks-within-flashbacks and overlapping time frames. These are things I noticed and didn’t enjoy but also which I know I’ve at least not minded in other books. All I can ultimately say is that it felt like a slog and it was with a sense of relief that I finished it.

This is one case where my score really reflects my own personal reaction. I’m very aware that it’s well written and others might really enjoy it. However since I found it so difficult to get through with little, to me, reward, I can’t give it a higher mark.

5/10 – a slow lumbering trudge through the world of the undead, sadly not in a good way.

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6000 pages reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, The Straw Men – Michael Marshall (pages 9520-10015)

(May as well get this out there now too)

After enjoying Killer Move so much I started reading The Straw Men as the next but one book. M. had raved about it to me years ago but I’d always avoided it due to potential gore, violence etc but having read Killer Move I figured I could handle it. Unfortunately it was the book I was reading when I went home to see my dad after his heart attack (he’s still fine btw) and somehow that created bad associations for me so I abandoned it and didn’t start again until a couple of weeks ago.

The Straw Men follows three story lines initially. There’s the latest victim of a serial killer known as The Upright Man, a teenage girl he has abducted and, if true to form, will kill within a few days unless someone can stop him. There’s the story of Ward Hopkins ex-CIA and ex-various other similar careers who returns home to deal with his parents death in a car accident only to find that things are not quite as they had appeared. Finally there’s the shadowy, possibly mythical organisation known as ‘The Straw Men’. Who exactly they are, what their aims are and how they plan to fulfil them ends up connecting the other two story lines.

This is another excellent thriller from Michael Marshall. I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as Killer Move but it’s still very good. In particular the plot is very clever, the way things join up, the way Hopkins for instance figures out something about his parents by the state they’d left their home in (which to all the world looks normal) was smart and satisfying if you like that kind of thing. Also the plot rattles along as you’d expect but still with enough space for characterisation and relationship. There are some tough moments violence wise, a little worse than Killer Move in my opinion (though still not up to David Peace gruesome). One of the worst was a description of what unedited news footage of a terrorist attack would look like. I think that affected me because I know that such footage exists.

I feel like I have to justify why I didn’t quite enjoy it as much as Killer Move. It’s M.’s favourite Michael Marshall book (her favourite ever book is his Only Forward written as Michael Marshall Smith). Anyway I think the reasons I preferred the later book are as follows:

  • I was slightly spoiled – partly by some indirect remarks of M.’s which I correctly deduced plot points from, but mostly by reading the blurb on the back of the next book in this series. If you plan to read this book stay away from The Lonely Dead (or The Upright Man in the US) as it mentions the big reveal on the back cover.
  • I preferred the hero of Killer Move. Hopkins was fine. He was sympathetic, clever and very competent. But he was also a little bit of a stereotype, the ex-military/cop/security services guy investigating some dangerous mystery. Bill Moore, as I said at the time was an ordinary annoying man thrown into a gradually more complicated and dangerous situation. Also Bill had a wife he loved and Ward was alone (in that sense, he had a friend/colleague).
  • One of the characters disses Buffy in the first few pages – ok mostly kidding about this. (mostly!)

Having said all that if I’d read it first and not known anything about it maybe I’d have preferred it. Either way it’s still a great read.

8/10 – another great crime thriller from MM(S).

One oddity worth mentioning. I read the ebook of this (as I do with most new purchases now) and the story ends, there’s a section of ‘Acknowledgements’ (thanks to …) and then a section which in the table of contents is called “ebook extra”. Thinking this was like a dvd extra, deleted scene if you will, I thought I could see why it wasn’t in the original. This was a kind of coda explaining more clearly what had happened and how various characters ended up – most of which you could infer from what had gone before.

Except that it was in the original. It came immediately after what I had thought of as the final chapter. The acknowledgements came after that. weird.

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6000 pages book reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, Wild Abandon – Joe Dunthorne (pages 9216-9519)

With less than two weeks of 2011 left I’m uncomfortably aware that I’m behind on reviews. Which isn’t a problem in some ways (more time to read) but it will delay when I can set out the conditions for the 2012 challenge etc. Anyhow…

I chose Wild Abandon to read by a slightly circuitous route. I’d enjoyed the film Submarine which was from Joe Dunthorne’s earlier novel. Rather than read it – though I was tempted – I thought it might be more fun to read something where I didn’t know the story.

Wild Abandon is the story of a commune and the family that forms the core of it. Both the commune and the family seem to be falling apart. Don and Freya’s marriage is showing signs of strain whilst their daughter Kate just wants to be normal and pass her exams. Albert, the son is pretty well adjusted – apart from his conviction that the world is going to end.

Wild Abandon was an easy and enjoyable read. It’s funny without being laugh-out-loud hilarious – though there were moments when a joke landed particularly well. It’s more the subtle character humour of well-observed small interactions between characters. Particularly the way Don reacts to those around him. He’s somehow turned from an idealistic purposeful leader to a bit of a pompous prat. His relationship with the older commune member Patrick who he patronises mercilessly was very much in this vein.

If I have a criticism it’s that the plot was a little more complicated than it needed to be. There was perhaps one too many coming or going in the comings and goings of people who’d decided to leave, then stay or vice-versa with the commune.

It does have a very effective and noticeably cinematic final scene which I enjoyed.

7/10 – more a gentle freeing than a wild abandonment.

(Now I’m only one book behind on reviews but hopefully by the time I go to bed tonight I’ll be back up to two!)

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diet L3 lesamy Less is More

L3 Week 40 – Only a Week (or Two, or Three…)

Good news first, I’m still going down. This is good because for sure I’ll bounce up this next week (a week today being Boxing Day). The lower I am before I start that the better. And in the grand scheme of things I’m really not too bothered if I have a week (or two) of gain which I then lose in the following week (or two).

The reality is that this week will have many occasions to indulge but by next there will be less, although if I happen to get food/sweets/alcohol as presents then I’ll probably be consuming during week 42. Which is why the key number I’m aiming for is the one on Jan 2nd.

Having said that I’m not bothered it would have been nice if Christmas had fallen differently. Have a look at this graph:

I’ve mentioned this before (twice) but never actually shown it to you. It takes L3 data and lines it up against Lesamy offset so that ‘week 1’ has roughly the same start weight. As you can see initially it was quite a similar pattern and then L3 flattened out (the whole ‘ten weeks‘ episode). One thing that cheered me though was that I passed the lowest point of Lesamy (lowest since records began) a couple of weeks back. Which means I am still losing weight at a point where previously it was starting an inexorable climb. I was destined to keep going down and intersect that orange line. Hurrah!

Except now that’ll happen a week or two later. But it will happen, I’ll make sure of it.

Lost: 0.8lbs
Lost so far: 59.2lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 1.48lbs
Weight: 245lbs (17st 7lb)

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6000 pages reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, Girlfriend in a Coma – Douglas Coupland (pages 8935-9215)

Here’s a book I haven’t read for a long time, not long after it was published in fact (a year or two). That being the case I’m not going to attempt to keep spoilers out of the review of a book that’s nearing 15 years old. Fair warning.

Girlfriend in a Coma is I suppose a ‘millenial’ novel, whatever that is. OK I know what it is, or what I mean by it. It’s a novel that came out as 2000 loomed and it deals with fears about the state of the world and the possible end of it.

It begins with a couple of 17 year-olds, Richard and Karen, who’ve just made love for the first time and are about to go to a party. It’s 1979 and Karen is about to go to sleep for a very very long time. She is the ‘girlfriend’ of the title.

The book is in three sections. The first deals with Karen going into a coma and it then tracks Richard and her other close friends through their lives for the next 17 years. The second section deals with the period from when Karen wakes up to an apocalypse of sorts. It’s a very gentle, serene apocalypse where people simply fall asleep and fail to wake up until Karen and her friends are the only ones left living. The final section of the book follows this group for a few weeks about a year later seeing how they’ve adapted to the end of the world.

I remember liking this book a lot when I read it in 1999/2000ish. I liked seeing how Richard’s life developed, how he aged during the 17 years of Karen’s coma. I also felt like Karen when she awoke had some interesting insights into how people were – how they were so proud of how efficient technology was but she didn’t feel things were better and that everyone had no time for anything but work. I tired a little of the post-apocalyptic stuff because it was  a bit odd and I didn’t know what to make of it. But – this is how I recall it – it wasn’t overly long compared to the book as a whole.

Memory’s a funny thing. It’s been nearly as long since I read it since the gap between Karen going into her coma and awakening. Like Richard I looked back but wasn’t able to quite put myself into the mind of my former self.

Firstly I was surprised how short the first section was. I had remembered it as going on for most of the book but it’s a third if that. The bits of insight about growing older were there but they were literally the couple of clever sentences that I’d remembered anyway.

The second section also finished sooner than I remembered. The best parts of that were the dynamics of Karen awakening and the logistics of her getting to talk, walk and live again; the insights she had on seeing the new world appear as if, to her, overnight; and the setting up, playing out of the end of the world stuff.

Still when we reached the third section I couldn’t recall enough stuff to fill the 70-odd pages that remain, so this section did feel like it dragged more. I also realised that what I had taken as a basically realistic what-if type story that gets a bit weird towards the end, was always something of a parable and so some of the more sureal, fantastical elements fit into that.

I’m glad I re-read it, I didn’t enjoy it as much this time around but it was still worth the time.

7/10 – interesting and entertaining not to put you, or your girlfriend, into a coma.

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diet L3 lesamy Less is More

L3 Week 39 – Christmas Looming

Another healthy loss, another good week. However I am aware that Christmas is fast approaching, which means work ‘dos’ and meeting up with people and of course the day itself. So I have a number in my head, and it’s maybe a higher number than you’d think, but not too high. It’s what I might weigh on Jan 1st. I’m not telling you what it is but I will tell you on the 2nd whether I made it or not. If I tell you then it’ll maybe seem like an excuse to slacken off. My aim in the next couple of weeks is to enjoy the communal events but not to let myself have the whole period ‘off the books’. If I do that then hopefully I’ll hit the number.

Anyway, enough of that for now. I’m enjoying the continued success.

Lost: 2.2lbs
Lost so far: 58.4lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 1.5lbs
Weight: 245.8lbs (17st 8lb)

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diet L3 lesamy Less is More

L3 Week 38 – Four Stone Down We Meet Again

For a long time the password on one of my computers was ‘fourstone’ because that’s how much I had lost at the time I set it. Well, here I am again and it’s good to be back. The trick now is to keep going down.

Lost: 2.4lbs
Lost so far: 56.2lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 1.48lbs
Weight: 248lbs (17st 10lb)

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6000 pages reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, The Necropolis Railway – Andrew Martin (pages 8704-8934)

The Necropolis Railway was a book I bought in a second hand bookshop on a whim a few weeks ago. It’s a murder mystery set on the turn of the 20th century steam railways. Specifically it concerns the Necropolis Railway of the title. This was a real thing which was set up during the mid-19th century as a way of dealing with the overcrowding in central London cemeteries by moving funerals and burials to a large graveyard outside London. The transport to do this was the Necropolis Railway.

This book is set in the winter of 1903 when Jim Stringer, a humble porter from Yorkshire moves to London having accepted the offer of a job as an engine cleaner working for the London Necropolis Company. This he hopes is the start of a career path leading to becoming a driver being the pinnacle of achievement in his view. However almost from the start he comes up against hostility from the other men working on the railway. He also discovers that there have been a number of mysterious apparently accidental deaths. Further intrigue, and deaths follow and he finds himself investigating what he’s now sure is a series of murders.

The thing I should say straight away is that I’m not particularly a steam train fan. Martin clearly is and that’s OK. One of the delights of reading is to put yourself in the head of someone who thinks differently to you, likes things you don’t etc. However I had thought that I’d learn something as I went along but Martin pretty much assumes you know an awful lot of the technology, as well as some of the period details. My policy these days with books is to plough on and assume it will all become clear. This is a book where I might have benefited from pausing to check Wikipedia every now and then. Or perhaps not, I got the gist.

I can’t comment on the accuracy of the period feel but I can say that it was recognisably different from the modern day. So that awful thing of 21st century people projected back into historical contexts that you sometimes see wasn’t a problem here.

The plot trundles along quite well. I found it a little slow to start but it picks up about a third of the way in. The romantic interest when it turned up was well done I thought. Again, different to modern eyes but not a cliche either. The murder mystery plot was pretty good though I guessed most of the reason behind the killings. There did seem to be a lot of explanation in the last couple of pages which left it feeling like the next book (there’s a series of these) might continue the story, but from what I gather despite having the same hero it’s its own story.

7/10 – not enough of a steam buff to really love this but had fun anyway.

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6000 pages reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, A Fisherman of the Inland Sea – Ursula K. Le Guin (pages 8490-8703)

Some time around the middle of the year I started reading collections of short stories as a break from lengthier books. I’ve still got a few on the go but this is one I both started and finished this year[1].

I’d never read any Le Guin before but was aware of her reputation and had thought about reading one of her more famous novels. However I decided this would be a better way to discover if I liked her style or not.

There’s a range of stories here, all except one in a SciFi or Fantasy vein. A couple are little more than jokes. There’s one that’s a parable about gender roles. The final three – including the one the collection takes its name from – all take place in a connected universe. This irked me slightly whilst reading the first one. I like things to be self-contained. When the world is already alien and you’re having to learn about new technology, races, cultures and planets it seems to annoy me when some of that is not relevant to the current story. However I do acknowledge that this is a quirk of mine and in other contexts I don’t expect stories stripped down to just the essential for the current narrative.

I enjoyed these stories although it seems my favourites were the ones, according to the introduction that Le Guin was least happy with herself, or saw as less substantial. In particular the parable one, The Rock that Changed Things, she felt was a little too on the nose and preachy. I also enjoyed the jokes. The others contained things that were a little strange. Sometimes strange and beautiful, sometimes just odd.

She’s clearly a gifted writer but I don’t think I’ll go back to her for a while.

6/10 – Probably most enjoyable if you’re already a fan.

[1]Which leads to a dilemma about whether I ‘count’ the others if I finish them next year.
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diet L3 lesamy Less is More

L3 Week 37 – The New New Low (that’s not so Low)

Still going downwards, so a new new low. And I avoided a rise due to a night out on Saturday, though less by being sensible and moderate and more by it being only one night with a couple of days to recover before weigh-in.

Not a lot more to say except that I went to bed early last night with a headache so sorry for not updating this then.

Lost: 0.8lbs
Lost so far: 53.8lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 1.45lbs
Weight: 250.4lbs (17st 12lb)