Tag: novel

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25 books reading reviews

25 Books, Book 10 – Starting Over – Tony Parsons

Starting Over is another very readable, ‘funny’ book where I don’t quite get the humour but don’t mind. It’s by Tony Parsons who I’ve read before but can remember almost nothing about the last book of his I read. I bought Starting Over on the way back from a visit to M.’s to read on the train and partly out of frustration with my then current book (The Book Thief, now officially a Set Aside I guess).

Starting Over is the story of a forty-something man whose life is pretty good apart from his congenital heart problem. He has a good job, a lovely/loving wife and good relationships with his kids. Then he has a heart attack, a heart transplant and has to rebuild his life. He almost doesn’t manage it.

And the reason he has to rebuild his life is not because he has to re-gain his health, it’s because, having been given a new lease of life and health he almost wrecks what he has.

This book is all about what it means to be young, to be old and to ‘grow up’. Whether to ‘settle down’ means abandoning your dreams or whether ‘following your dream’ can actually be immaturity and lack of responsibility. It raises these questions and gives the answers that you probably think that it does – which is to say it doesn’t try to answer them to explicitly but as far as it does comes down somewhere in the middle.

I enjoyed this book, though it pushed some of my buttons given that I’m slightly younger than the main character and slightly older than his wife – but unlike him I’m pretty much on my own.

Anyway that aside, I think it’s a good book. It’s not terribly profound but it’s readable and occasionally funny. It feels like it has rather too many ‘meaningful’ scenes towards the end and the very end is a little predictable (or do I mean comforting?)

7/10 – good but not amazing.

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25 books reading reviews

25 Books, book 6, The Great Gatsby

I’ve owed you this review for a while. I finished this about… (checks) …over a month ago.

Before I get into the review proper, a few sentences about book choice. Part of the reason for “25 books” was to encourage me not only to read more but to read more widely. However what this initially seemed to mean was ploughing through long books I didn’t particularly enjoy. So I decided to add in a few books that were a) shorter (so I could catch up) and b) classics – which would hopefully mean they were enjoyable. The Great Gatsby was the first of these, look for Catcher in the Rye sometime before the end of the year (if I ever get that far).

Well this sort of worked. Certainly it’s a short book. Did I enjoy it? It was ok. Someone on Goodreads called it “The eh Gatsby” and I know what they mean. As a story it was ok. Some of the prose stood out as well put together. I think I can see why it’s hailed as the great American novel because I can see parallels between Gatsby as a character and the US as a country. However my literary appreciation skills are limited and so a book really has to get me with story and or characters. This didn’t, well not much. There’s a fairly interesting soap opera plot about affairs of rich people and the poor people who get caught up in the cross-fire. There’s some intrigue about who Gatsby is as a person and the truth when it comes turns out to be less than inspiring – which I think is the point. He also turns out to be less than sympathetic – well to me, to the narrator he apparently was. So I found that a little odd.

Put it this way, I’m glad I’ve read it because it’s a classic but I don’t think I’d go back to it in a hurry.

6/10 – a little so what? but at least it’s short.

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25 books reading reviews

25 Books, book 2: I am Legend

I had a dilemma as whether to include this book or not in my 25 Books list. You see I didn’t actually read this, I listened to an audio book version of it. An abridged version as broadcast on Radio 7. However since I’m lagging seriously on my books (I should be onto book 5 or 6 by now) I’m allowing it. After all it is a book and I spent the time to “read” (i.e. listen to it). But I’m adding a rule that I can have a couple of audio books.

By the way on that whole “I’m way behind” thing look for an upcoming blog post, hopefully later today.

Anyway to this book.

I first became aware of “I am Legend” in the credits to the 1971 movie “The Omega Man”. The movie, based fairly loosely on the book, is about a man living alone in a world devastated by a world-wide plague that killed 95% of the population and left the remaining few as pale-skinned… well what they are is an interesting point but let’s just say they can only come out at night and they’re no longer quite human, and definitely not friendly.

Anyhow I enjoyed the film – though it was a bit dated – and always intended one day to go back to the book. I intended this even more after the recent Will Smith remake of the film – which I’ve not yet seen. And now I finally have read/listened to the book.

I enjoyed it but it wasn’t the big step up from the movie that I thought it might be. It was better in some ways but less satisfying in others.

This kind of story – last man left alive – has always appealed to me, both as a reader and a writer. In fact I did, during Eurofiction, write a story that was compared by the judges to I am Legend. It was one of my two highest scoring stories but not one I was particularly proud of. I think the appeal – which is obviously not unique to me – is that one can easily imagine oneself as alone in the world. Being alone aside from hostile not-quite-human creatures can easily become a metaphor for “No-one really gets me, I feel as if I’m all alone”.

The book was written in 1954 and it betrays its era in a couple of ways, notably its handling of sex. It’s actually quite coy on details to a modern eye/ear whilst maintaining a tone that suggests it knows it’s being shocking – which I guess it would have been. At times it felt like what I imagine an old-fashioned bodice-ripper would be like – lots of “heat rising in his loins” and so on. There’s a discussion of Neville’s frustrated desires, but absolutely no mention, nor even implication, of masturbation as a release.

One thing it does, which I imagine was fairly new in 1954 but has become almost a cliche since, is to give us a “scientific” explanation of a classic mythical monster. And this is where it diverges from the movie (ok, more properly the movie diverges from the book) because it explicitly calls the plague victims “vampires” whereas in the movie they’re not – at least I don’t recall any fangs or bloodsucking. I actually quite enjoy this trope and Matheson does it well, though it has been done better since.

The story is fairly slow-moving. There are some fast paced moments of fleeing from or fighting his vampire foes, but there are also long passages, discussions of how he survives, of his scientific theorising, in which not a lot happens. I actually didn’t mind but I can imagine some readers being impatient.

The ending is another area where the book differs from the 1971 movie (and the 2007 one is different again I believe). I actually think the movie ending is the better one – but I won’t spoil either.

6/10 – enjoyable but a bit dated and not quite a classic.

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writing

Hold That Thought

I’m a bit backed up with blog posts, which is odd considering I’m off work right now and (theoretically) have oodles of free time. I should be reviewing either Merlin ep 2 (more of the same as ep 1 really), the Chuck season 2 opener (spent too long re-establishing the premise) or The Man in the High Castle (what the hell was that about?). Also I watched The Island on TV the other night and felt like blogging (i.e. whinging) about how if they hadn’t tried to make a big dumb action movie they’d have made an only slightly dumb, if derivative, Sci Fi flick. Oh and there’s always Buffy Re-watch to get back to.

But instead of all that I’m going to talk about writing and my on-going love/hate relationship with it.

I’ve just signed up for two big writing commitments. The first is Slingink’s “Eurofiction” competition, which is a short story is due every two weeks for twenty weeks. Points are awarded and whoever has the highest total score at the end wins a prize (and much glory and bragging rights obviously). I actually entered a similar competition that’s just finishing – The Write Idea’s “Whitaker Prize” – however after I failed to enter in round 3 and 4 I just bailed on that.

Second commitment is NaNoWriMo. As you may have noticed I’ve changed my blog theme again, apologies for that I’ll try to stick with this one for a while. This is partly because I wanted one where I could add tabs across the top and have NaNoWriMo with links to my profile and progress etc.

So I am officially getting back on the writing horse and shouting “giddyup” in a nervous and slightly excited way.

Which brings me to my main topic. A new twist on the perennial “do I really hate writing and does that mean I’m destined not to be a writer?” question. As I sat at the keyboard last night, not typing, remembering how much I truly hate this part, the beginning part, the part where you think that every shred of imagination or trickle of inspiration has fled far far away – as I thought on this I was reminded of something I wrote in a forum at the beginning of this year:

What actually happened was that I started 10 minutes late, stared at the
challenge requirement for 10 minutes before coming up with the germ of
an idea. I then wrote for about an hour, producing 850 words of pure
drivel. That idea, that cute little, perfectly formed concept of my
imagination had become this crap on the page because I lack the skill to
put it into words, apparently.

I received some comforting words about turning a deaf ear to my inner critic, who to be fair is pretty fierce, but I think I’m developing a theory about the way I write. When I look at the most successful, and by that I mean the most well-received, pieces that I’ve written, they are either flashes or stories where I took the time to re-work them significantly after the initial draft. I recall I had to write a story-within-a-story piece for a challenge and I went through 3 versions of the inner story before I finally committed. I found it painful and difficult. Real work in fact.

Secondly almost always the first draft is complete crap. Not only that but my inner critic will scream at me that it’s not even worth finishing and I should just ditch it and start on something new. Sometimes I listen to this. I have a limited amount of time to give to writing and I’m not a fast writer. I wish I could sit down with an idea, toss off 1,000 words quickly and treat it as an experiment. I can do that but the 1,000 words may take a couple of days.

You see there are ways to overcome that initial block, that blankness of mind and page. I find simply writing what I’m thinking (complete with negative commentary) works for me. Each time I start anew I have the fresh fear that this time nothing really will come but it usually does. An idea, a bright shining little spark, lighting the way to the story as a whole. And for a brief moment I’m excited and engaged, if it’s a good idea, or at least charmed with the possibility enough to want to give it a try.

But I find that spark is usually a single flash. A moment’s illumination during which I need to memorize as much details as possible because once it’s gone I’ll be groping along in the dark relying solely on my recall of the features around me. And it’s at this point that the fear and doubt kick in. I wish I could simply get that first draft down on the computer whilst the light is still fading and the after images burned clearly on my retinas. If I could only do that then I would have something, a draft, something I can tweak, edit, re-write, even rip the guts out of and re-work structurally – but a place to start. But often I can’t get that far because the light of inspiration has long since died and I’ve allowed all the criticisms of the idea to come in. “It’s not that original/plausible/interesting/clever.”

So I think, for me, a major skill I need to learn is to holding on to the initial thought, that idea that got me started, for the duration of the task of writing, at least the first draft. Since my attention span seems to have a radioactive half-life that’s not particularly easy but it’s something I want to develop. Half the battle is turning off, drowning out, the inner critic but that is only half the battle. The other half is holding on to the idea. I think that’s why I’ve had more success with 250-word flashes where I can write the thing in an evening. I’ve also had some success with longer stories but where I was prepared to really work at maintaining the vision. I had to keep reminding myself what the story was about, even if I secretly doubted that that “what” was worth doing. I haven’t written a novel (yet) but I imagine that holding the thought for weeks and months will be one of the biggest challenges involved.

So anyway that’s what I’ve been thinking about. And it’s why I think NaNoWriMo will be very very good for me.

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Uncategorized

Time

M. got me a couple of books on writing for Christmas. In the introduction to “A Novel in a Year” Louise Doughty asks

Think what you are prepared to sacrifice. Writing a novel takes many, many hours, and those are hours you could spend planting roses, raising children, earning money — or even just having a nice life. What, in your life, is going to disappear, to allow you the time to write a book?

Well, I’vc got no roses to plant or children to raise, but nevertheless that hit home. Mostly because I think, I’m aware a) how much time I seem to waste doing nothing, and b) how long it seems to take me to write things[1]. And then, even within the general category of ‘writing’ there’s a lot of activities I might undertake:

  • AFO reviews and critiques
  • AFO challenge stories
  • both of M.’s books are work-books, books with exercises I can work through
  • blogging – which itself is many categories (more later perhaps)
  • reading – everything I read on writing says to read more, and I read a lot less than I once did. And a lot of what I read is other amateur writers – which is fine but I’d like to start exposing myself to really good writing.
  • Big Serious Writing Projects – not even sure what these will be yet. Maybe they’ll be short stories I want to get published, or a novel, or even a screenplay

So what is going to disappear from my life to enable some or all of this? Well first let me clarify that it may only be ‘some’. I’m going to keep an eye on it but I may scale down my involvement in AFO. At the moment I’ve been reviewing virtually every new story, which has been taking hours. I can’t blame anyone else for that, it’s partly an ego thing that I want to be seen as a good citizen and partly a procrastination thing – 90 mins reading and reviewing a 3,000 story is “writing time” without me having to do the really hard work of my own writing. But I’m still pondering. I need to give it more time, see how things develop.

Anyway back to what will disappear? Here’s what I’m thinking so far

  • time not really doing one thing or another. I spend a lot of time half doing things. I’m watching TV but also surfing the web. I’m supposed to be writing but I’m fiddling with computer settings. If I can reclaim even a little of this ‘noodling around’ time I’ll be doing well[2]
  • Watching TV – much as I hate to say it, having spent a good part of the last year establishing what is now a really nice MythTV system, I spend too much time watching TV. So on stats alone, since it’s a large proportion of what I do, it’ll need to be a large portion of what I need to give up. Fortunately that’s not too hard (I think). A lot of what I record on Myth is might-be-good-let’s-record-on-the-offchance crap which I then watch just so I can delete it and keep the disk from filling up. I think I’m going to stop doing that. Or at least I’ll set it to auto-expire and if I don’t get around to it before it does, oh well.
  • Surfing the web – same rationale as the above. It’s what I spend a lot of time doing so there’s a lot of scope to cut back. This will actually be helped by the fact that I’ve gone a little cold on SoF (which used to account for many many hours online), now I mostly check it through habit. A lot of what I read I’ve seen before in some other form now. Interestingly, M., who I met on SoF, feels the same.
  • some late night chats with M. – ok, a slightly delicate one, since I haven’t actually mentioned this to her yet. It’s not the chats per se I want to cut back on, just some of the lateness. M. and I have the ability to just talk and talk, which is wonderful and the sign I think of a close friendship, but sometimes we try to live up to that even when we’ve not got a lot to say – so somehow there’s a feeling that all’s not well if we only chat for half an hour. And the lateness causes tiredness which makes things like sitting down to spend an hour writing a challenge. I know it affects M. too. What I want to do is to actually do stuff which we’ve talked about in the past such as having a limit to how late we talk on week-nights and not trying to force it when we’ve neither got much to say.

How much time that will realistically net me I’m not sure. However I’ve put together a vague plan of how I might spend my “writing time”:

  • Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays – an hour of “writing” time and half an hour of reading. The writing time will usually be AFO related. I’m going to try to make sure I alternate between reviews and my own writing.
  • Saturdays – two hours writing time spent working through “A Novel in a Year”. It’s got a weekly structure and I don’t want to get ahead so any “spare” time can be spent on AFO/other projects. At least half an hour reading.
  • Sundays – three hours writing time (probably in 2 90min sessions) working through “Creative Writing – A Workbook with Readings” with is a pretty serious textbook (also a present from M.) Half an hour (or more) reading – although Creative Writing has readings in it.
  • Mondays and Fridays – these are “writing optional” days. I deliberately worked in some flexibility into the system. I can write if I want to, feel inspired. Or just have the night off, start/end the weekend if I’m tired. I’d probably write my blog on a Monday or a Friday. BTW I want to start blogging at least once a week. What I’m going to blog about is best left to another post I think (this must be pretty long by now[3])

Anyone who’s noticed that this looks suspiciously like New Year’s Resolutions is right but I’m not going to get too hung up if I don’t stick to it. If I miss it one day, I’ll get back to it the next. If I only half-keep to it I’ll be doing a heck of a lot better than I have done.

2008 is the year of me taking writing seriously!

[1]On monday I wrote a 2,000 word story for AFO. It took me two hours to write, another two to re-write/polish and it still felt like a rough draft when I was done.

[2]I think some noodling time is essential otherwise I’ll feel like I’m too regimented.

[3]Eek! Just check preview and it’s very long. Oh well. You read to here didn’t you?