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6000 pages reading reviews

6000 Pages, It’s Only a Movie – Mark Kermode (pages 3527-3846)

It's Only a Movie

So we’re on to book 11 (only 11! It’s November!!) and this is my first non-fiction. In fact it’s my first since I started doing these reading blog projects. The last non-fiction I remember reading was Danny Wallace’s Join Me which must have been pre-2006 and I didn’t finish that.

Mark Kermode is someone I enjoy on the radio on the weekly podcast of his movie reviews with Simon Mayo. It’s Only a Movie is a sort of autobiography. I say sort of only because it’s in more or less the right order but leaves lots out and jumps around – as he often does on the radio once he gets on to a tangent about a particular movie he goes with that.

What you end up with is a series of anecdotes about being a film critic. They are well told and funny and yet don’t seem to add up to a whole lot. Strangely it felt a lot like the radio show but I liked it less. I think the value of having someone to spar with, and someone who drags him back on topic is not inconsiderable.

6/10 – a light entertaining read but not much more.

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6000 pages reading reviews

6000 Pages, Scott Pilgrim – Bryan Lee O’Malley (pages 3239-3526)

Scott Pilgrim vol1 (of 6)

So, before I get into the review proper I need to get a couple of technicalities out of the way first.

Firstly, I read all six of the Scott Pilgrim comic books but I’m counting them as one ‘book’ for the purpose of this blog. Since we’re counting pages that’s largely irrelevant but it means you only get one review.

Second, I decided that the page count needed some adjustment. It would be flattering but a little unfair to count the pages as-is given the comic book form. So I added up all the pages and the time it took me to read and came up with a figure that maintains my approximate pages/hour count – which is 4 Scott Pilgrim pages=1 page from a regular book. Anyhow I’m happy with that and since the whole thing is arbitrary…

Scott Pilgrim tells the story of an early-20s slacker and his friends and their respective intertwined love-lives. As the story begins he’s just started dating a 17-year-old and you get the feeling this is because he enjoys the simplicity of just hanging out with someone who likes him.

He’s also in a band and they feature in the story too.

Of course if you’ve heard much about this, particularly the movie, then you’ve probably heard about is his new girlfriend’s “seven evil exes”. Oh when I say “new girlfriend” I mean the one he dumps his highschooler for not the 17year-old herself.

Oh and then there’s the fact that the story is told with the style and visual accompaniments of a video game.

There’s a lot to like here and I did. I think that when I was the same age as the characters I would have absolutely loved it. Anyway, I particularly like the way that despite some visual slickery and surreal story elements, the characterisation and relationships remain resolutely and realistically complicated. So it’s not in any way ‘dumbed down’ just because it uses relatively youthful pop culture references.

I found the pre-ending a little confusing (it’s better in the movie) but the ending ending was fine – hopeful, optimistic but not unrealistic.

8/10 – makes me wish I were young again (and in love/lust)

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6000 pages reviews

6000 Pages, Blacklands – Belinda Bauer (pages 2552-2897)

Blacklands, Belinda Bauer
Blacklands, Belinda Bauer

So, another crime novel and another book from the TV Book Club list.

Having said that, this is not your typical crime novel. It’s the story of a young boy, Stephen, whose uncle, Billy, was killed by a moors-murderers-style serial killer. Understandably this had a devastating effect on his mum, Stephen’s grandma, not least because the body was never found. Stephen’s mum, Billy’s sister, has grown up in the shadow of someone who was the favourite anyway but who she can now never compete with.

So Stephen’s family has some issues and he believes the way to fix things is find his uncle’s body. This leads him to start writing to the killer in jail.

I did really enjoy this book. I think it’s more about the impact this sort of crime has on a family long term rather than the usual trying to catch a terrible killer plot. So in that sense it’s not your normal crime novel. A couple of specific differences stand out: despite being quite gruesome the details of the crimes are not dwelt on as they sometimes are in books like this, also the killer is very definitely clearly “evil”. At first I thought this was a weakness of the book, thinking the characterisation was too simplistic. However as I read on more about his past was revealed and I think the line the author takes is to never make him a sympathetic character, to refuse to compromise on the idea that he did terrible things. Of course to some extent you do at least follow his story, so there’s a little sympathy/empathy there, but it’s very restrained which I think works in the end.

But the character in the book that I most enjoyed following was Stephen. Smart for his age and having had to take on a lot more than he should, you cheer on his efforts even perhaps when they are misguided – like writing to the killer. There’s some stuff about his family that felt it was laid on a little heavily, but overall it was well done.

8/10 – a gripping read. You’ll be anticipating the next letter as much as the characters.

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6000 pages reading reviews

6000 Pages, A World Out of Time – Larry Niven (pages 2296-2551)

A World Out of Time by Larry Niven

It’s going to be hard to separate a real review from a personal, autobiographical account of this book. I’ll probably not try.

This is, uniquely since I started 25 books much less 6000 pages, a re-read. I felt I needed something familiar, something I knew I’d enjoy.

There’s a section in Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity where he talks about listening to the Beatles because it’s music that he first heard as a child and it isn’t (for him) associated with love, loss and chasing girls, it’s associated with a more innocent, less complicated time and as such it’s comforting.

A World Out of Time is a little like that for me. I didn’t first read it when I was a child. In fact I was 22. Although…

OK. Let’s go back to when I was a child – 11 or 12 – and first discovered book shops. I knew I loved to read but faced with a choice, my own choice, of what to read I was a little stumped. So I went with what I knew. I knew I liked Dr Who so I figured that meant I liked SciFi so I went to the SciFi section. I’d already devoured HG Wells and some other classics so I wanted something a bit more up to date. What I eventually chose was a book of short stories by Larry Niven. I must have enjoyed them because over the next several years I read most of his “Known Space” books including the Ringworld ones.

Anyway one of the stories was called “Rammer” and was the story of a man awakened from frozen sleep to discover he’s being trained to be a spaceship pilot. A World Out of Time’s first chapter is a slightly modified version of this story.

What I like about this book is its ideas. A lot of science (which may well have been superceded since it was written). It has a huge scope – the main character travels to the centre of the galaxy and back and his story spans 3,000,000 years (though his personal timeline doesn’t due to relativistic time effects). There’s discussion of how in this future the solar system was adapted by moving planets around. Red Dwarf played this for laughs but here it’s done seriously with what looks like a plausible stab at the science needed.

It’s also a rolicking good story. The earlier part of the book is about Corbell’s exploration of the galactic hub and his return to what he believes is earth. The later part is almost one long chase scene. Certainly I found (then and now) that the pace keeps you interested.

The characterisation isn’t much to write home about. Emotionally it’s a little cold I guess. Corbell and the other few characters act mostly in ways dictated by logic. And the logic is applied to these huge events such as what will happen if/when the earth is moved again. But I can forgive it that. I’m not looking for insight into the human condition here. What I get is a good story, interesting scenery and big ideas.

Also – maybe this is not entirely irrelevant – the plot of the later part of the book concerns the hunt for immortality. The scientific secret of which has been found but lost.

I can’t necessarily recommend this unless you have the same set of idiosyncratic tastes as me, but it is a guilty pleasure.

7/10 – good old fashioned ‘hard’ scifi. Full of ideas.

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6000 pages reading reviews

6000 Pages, Sacred Hearts – Sarah Dunant (pages 1816-2295)

Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant

Here’s a book I couldn’t imagine myself reading until I actually did. A story of nuns in 16th century Italy.

But it came highly recommended in two book clubs – the Ship of Fools one and the TV one. I guess I was looking for something a little different and it’s certainly that.

So a bit of a gamble – did it pay off?

Yes. This is a really enjoyable book. It opens up a world I never really knew existed. I knew of course the convents existed. I hadn’t realised that in those days the existence of dowries meant that well to do families could usually only afford to marry off one of their daughters and so convents became dumping grounds for the others – the less good looking, or more independently-minded or intelligent, or generally just less marriageable. Dumping grounds is a little unfair but what it meant was the the convents were full of women who hadn’t so much chosen a vocation as become resigned to a fate.

And it turns out it could be not such a bad one. Inside the walls of the nunnery there was a certain amount of freedom and independence. A fraction of the money that would have gone to a husband’s family went to the convent and this meant they were in some way indebted to powerful families – so that conditions for those nuns at least were kept tolerable.

The shadow in the background is the coming of a tightening of restrictions based as a consequence of the Council of Trent. Santa Caterina, the convent of the novel, has so far avoided this clamping down but the desire not to draw undue attention to itself is one of the motivations for a key character in the book.

For about the first half, the book is mostly scene setting and getting to know the characters. I’ve seen people describe this as slow but I didn’t find it so. We follow Serafina, a new novice, who has joined very much against her will, and through her eyes we learn about the world of the convent. We also follow Suora Zuana – the convent’s dispensary sister. She’s a fascinating character – she has in many ways a more modern, sceptical, rational outlook but she is still a product of her age.

About half way through a major incident occurs and what follows in a gripping thriller, the pace quickening and not letting up until the end.

9/10 – a surprisingly gripping read, and a glimpse of another world.

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Nation, Terry Pratchett

Nation by Terry Pratchett

This week I listened to a radio adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s ‘young adult’ novel Nation.

It’s the story of Mau – a boy from a Pacific island tribe who is returning from a rite of passage and so misses a tidal wave that destroys most of the rest of his tribe, the ‘Nation’. He meets Daphne a minor English royal whose ship is wrecked by the same wave. Together with a few other refugees they begin to build/re-build a life, and I guess, society on the island.

I enjoyed this. I liked the relationship between Mau and Daphne. She has a slightly irritating habit of being the sensible down-to-earth straight-talking girl whilst all adults and most males are silly and/or stupidly wrong. He has the annoying habit of sounding a bit twee – an attempt to make his language seem unsophisticated but not stupid I think.

The strangest thing about it is the relationship with the supernatural. On the one hand there’s a story thread about how Mau doesn’t believe in the gods, he thinks that they are stories made up when we don’t know or can’t find out the real reasons for things – he does come to the conclusion that whilst they may be fiction, they can be a useful fiction because they allow you to stop asking big questions about why are we here and get on with doing the things you need to do to survive. On the other hand there’s Locaha – the spirit of Death – and the voices of the dead (the ‘grandfathers’ speak to Mau and the ‘grandmothers’ to Daphne) and they appear to be real. So you have this odd juxtaposition of Mau talking about why he doesn’t believe in the gods shortly after having returned from a visit to the land of Locaha. I think those arguments get a little lost.

However near the end a character observes that no matter how much science we study we still speak of ghosts – so I guess he’s just being consistent in the idea that we always want supernatural in our stories.

7/10

In case you’re wondering I’m not counting this toward 6000 pages because I’m not doing that with audio books this year.

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6000 pages reading reviews

6000 Pages, One Day – David Nicholls (pages 1027-1474)

One Day - David Nicholls

When I first started doing reviews on this blog I decided that unless something was very new I wouldn’t constrain myself to not revealing spoilers. However up until now I don’t think I’ve given away anything.

Up until now because I don’t really feel I can talk about One Day by David Nicholls, and the impact it had on me, without talking about the ending. Just in case there is anyone out there who has alighted on this review and doesn’t want to be spoiled I’ll be using the WordPress click-here-for-more thingy.

So anyway – here goes.

I first came into contact with David Nicholls work when I saw the movie Starter for Ten which is based on his book of the same name. I enjoyed the movie – it’s a comedy of love, romance and University Challenge set in the 80s – but never read the book. However when I saw this book in the bookshop I was intrigued and so bought it (although I got the ebook version for my Kindle).

It’s about the relationship between two friends – starting as they’re just leaving Uni in 1988 – told in a series of chapters that take place on the same day of consecutive years. This is a device that works well I think. It gives a structure to the book even if it then feels a little episodic. But like the episodes of a good TV show they have their own stories, things to enjoy, whilst developing on-going plotlines and characters. There’s a sense in which you see these two people grow up and mature. If that sounds a little dull it’s not. I found it both funny and touching – but then (as has been mentioned before) I’m at the right stage of life to be considering things like how my life has developed so far.

If I have criticisms it’s when the current episode isn’t as funny/moving/interesting in and of itself. That may be a sense of humour thing. This could be another of those comedies I like but don’t laugh at.

The characters are likeable – surprisingly so in one case. I felt my sympathy more with Emma, the female main character, rather than Dexter. But Dexter does some terrible things and you still like him – which is how he’s supposed to be.

I dithered about what to score it. On Goodreads I gave it 4/5 stars so I guess it should be 7 or 8. I’m giving it a reluctant 8.

8/10 – might have been higher but for… well see below if you don’t mind being spoiled.

Pages read so far: 1592

Pages in completed books: 1474

Continue reading “6000 Pages, One Day – David Nicholls (pages 1027-1474)”
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6000 pages reading reviews

6000 pages, The Way Home – George Pelecanos (pages 718-1026)

The Way Home is a book I picked because of a recommendation on TV Book Club and because George Pelacanos is one of the writers on The Wire – a show I’ve never seen but heard consistently good things about so often that I probably will one day.

The Way Home is another book about crime that’s not really a crime thriller. It follows Chris Flynn who as a young teenager gets himself in trouble with the law and finds himself in a youth prison. Later as an adult he becomes involved once again with the world of crime but this time attempts to keep away from it.

I enjoyed this book. It builds slowly but by the end I was gripped. What could have been written as a straight-forward crime thriller became a brooding meditation on the effects of crime on young boys and men – and their families.

But that sounds a bit analytical. The thing I enjoyed about this book was that it put a crime story in the context of a person’s relationships. It wasn’t just a question of “what will happen? will they get the bad guy?” it was “what’s this going to do to his mum, dad, girlfriend?”

I did get the feeling there were cultural references I was missing and the street language was unfamiliar to me. Which was fine but left me definitely feeling I was on the outside of this world looking in – as Brit, a white guy, a middle class man who’s never had or been in that kind of trouble. Maybe that was the point – after all reading is about looking through someone else’s eyes into their world right?

The ending’s one of downbeat optimism if that makes any sense – which it may if you read it.

8/10 – interesting read which gets better the nearer to the end you are.

Pages Read so far: 1026

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6000 pages reading reviews

6000 pages, The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold (pages 1-328)

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold is one of those books that I’d never have read a few years ago. And I’m not even talking about how I expanded my tastes after reading mostly SciFi/Fantasy about 10 years ago. I’m talking about the last couple of years when I’ve tried more ‘literary’ fiction.

However I remembered good reviews of The Lovely Bones and heard that Peter Jackson was making a movie so I thought it might be worth a look. It was.

The Lovely Bones is narrated (mostly) by Susie Salmon, who is 14 and is raped and murdered in chapter 1. She looks down on her family and friends from ‘her’ heaven and watches as the effects of her loss is felt.

The important thing to note about this book is that it’s not about solving Susie’s murder, or finding her body, it is about the relationships and the connections between her family and friends and how they are revealed by their corporate and individual grief. The times when I forgot that, when I felt the ‘murder-mystery’ plot was taking over, were times that I was setting myself up for disappointment.

But I did enjoy the family interaction and the slow coming to terms with Susie being gone.

I’m not entirely sure the device of having Susie narrate the book, with all the metaphysical baggage that requires, added much. Except that without it one of my favourite sections near the end wouldn’t have happened. I can’t be more detailed without spoiling it so I won’t.

7/10 – a good read, but if you’re looking for a murder-mystery, these are not the bones you are looking for.

Pages Read so far: 328

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25 books reading reviews

25 Books – 18 is *nearly* 25 right?

So this is the official “25 books“ 2009 wrap-up post. I nearly wrote it last night but in the end I only had time to collate the stats and work out the points. But we’ll get to that.

As you can see from the title the magic number was 18. I read 18 books in 2009. Not quite 25. Not even 20. But still quite a few more than I would have read and therefore an achievement. Instead of a book every two weeks I read one every three (roughly, on average).

Some Numbers

So since we’re talking numbers let’s do the stats thing. No point in keeping complicated spreadsheets and not doing the stats thing right? In 2009…

  • I read for a total of 98 hours and 23mins, or 16mins a day
  • My reading speed was 50pages/hour
  • I read a total of 4924 pages, or 13 pages a day
  • Since I read 18 books this means the books had an average of 274 pages each
  • I read one book every 20 1/4 days on average but…
  • I only read on 71 out of the 365 days meaning that…
  • I averaged 1hour 23mins on days I actually read
  • I read an average of 69 pages on those days
  • There were long gaps between bouts of reading. The longest was 54days. The next three longest were 40, 35 and 35 days respectively. So there really were isolated but intense periods of lots reading and literally weeks of not.

Enough Numbers What Have You Learnt?

Patience. How about I tell you about how well I did with regard to the “rules” of the challenge? You know the points?

Fair Enough – So How Did You Score?

Here’s those rules:

“1. Read at least 25 books before the end of 2009”

I read 18 books.

“2. No more than 3 (of the 25) can be books you’ve read before. If you read more than 25 can you re-read others.”

I didn’t re-read any books.

“3. You should read at least 3 books by authors you’ve not read before.”

Of the 18, 12 were by authors I’d never read before – Richard Matheson (I am Legend), David Almond (Skellig), W.E.Bowman (Rum Doodle), Stieg Larsson (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), F. Scott Fitzgerald (Great Gatsby), Brian Aldiss (Hothouse),Cally Taylor (Heaven Can Wait), J.D. Salinger (Catcher in the Rye), John Lindqvist (Let the Right One In), (Beowulf), David Peace (1974), Paul Torday (Girl on the Landing)

“4. This should include at least 2 new authors (i.e. not just 3 books by 1 new author)”

See above

“5. At least one book must have been published (for the first time) in 2009”

Heaven Can Wait, Juliet Naked and Girl on the Landing were all new in 2009.

“6. For each of the targets 1-5 deduct a point if you miss it.”

Even though I only read 18 books that’s only one target missed so

-1

“7. If you read a book from a genre you’ve never read before add a point”

I read Horror, Travel Parody, Literary Fiction, Chick Lit., Crime/Thriller, Espionage. That’s six

+6 = 5

“8. If you read a book that you wouldn’t have read but for a recommendation add a point.”

My sister recommended Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I bought and read Skellig because it was on a display advertised as “recommended by Nick Hornby”. Rum Doodle was a secret santa present I wouldn’t have bought for myself.

+3 = 8

“9. If you read a book that can only be bought second-hand add a point.”

Hothouse is out of print.

+1 = 9

“10. If you read a book first published more than 50 years ago and still in print add a point. For books first published more than 200years ago add 2 points. For books published more than 500 years add 3 points and for books written over 1000years ago add 4 point.”

Beowulf dates from somewhere between the 8th and early 11th century. 1026 is the latest date associated with the manuscripts. I’m going to go with the probabilities and call it a 1000+ book.

+4 = 13

I had no 500+ or 200+ books. (Though I would have had if I hadn’t set aside Persuasion) but I had 4 50+ ones – Great Gatsby, I am Legend, Rum Doodle and Catcher in the Rye.

+1 (x4) = 17

So I scored 17points. Which is a fairly meaningless number without something to compare it to.

Speaking of Scores…

Almost forgot, the average score a book received was 7.0 – which means I basically enjoyed most of the books. That’s a little higher than I expected. I guess I remember the few low scoring ones.

So Any Conclusions?

I’ve learnt that given where I am right now, it makes more sense to read stuff I know I’ll enjoy rather than try to force myself to expand my horizons too much. Having said that I also learn that I enjoy genres I didn’t think I would like crime and horror. I also learnt that I tend to read a lot in little bursts – a few hours a day for a few days. I’d like to spread that out a little but honestly I think some of that coms from the way reading works – if you get into a good book you want to read it more.

All in all I feel pleased. By setting myself targets I read more that I would otherwise I and enjoyed most of what I read. I also read things I might not have considered.

I was going to wrap this up by setting out goals for 2010 (no, they’re not the same) but this post is long enough already.