Recenter Reading Roundup

I think I'm going to start doing this sort of thing regularly - a fortnightly run-down on the books I've read and the films I've watched. It's sort of the blog equivalent of reality television, without having to resort to pimpage or thieving content from elsewhere.

Books:
Stickleback, Ian Edginton & D'Israeli (2007), first appeared in the comic 2000AD. The title character is a Victorian crime lord, initially presented as a mystery to be investigated by half-Turkish Scotland Yard detective Inspector Valentine Bey. But it's all a plot because Stickleback is trying to defeat the City Fathers, a druidic brotherhood which has secretly controlled London since the Dark Ages. In the second story in this volume, Stickleback is the hero - well, antihero - as he prevents some eldritch horrors from taking over the earth after they've stolen the last dragon's egg. Some mysteries are left unexplained - Stickleback's real identity, for example. Excellent stuff.

Rocketman, Nancy Conrad (2005). See here.

Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004), I liked less than I had expected to. It was shortlisted for the Booker, Nebula and Arthur C Clarke Awards, and won the British Book Awards Literary Fiction Award, so I had high hopes of it. Unfortunately, I thought the sf elements were clumsily done - a post-apocalyspe story written in debased English... yawn. And the transcript of an interview with an uplifted clone in a corporate near-future Korea - hardly a ground-breaking idea - which is spoiled because the clone actually speaks in purple prose. Having said that, the book's structure of six nested stories was a neat idea, and the writing was generally very good. Unfortunately, the whole didn't quite add up to the sum of the parts, and the links between the stories often came across as forced. A noble failure, I think.

On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan (2007), I was unsure about reading. I hadn't really enjoyed his previous book, Saturday, so I wasn't going to shell out money for his latest. But I managed to blag a copy of On Chesil Beach for nothing on bookmoch.com. And I'm glad I got it for nothing. It's typical McEwan - well-written (and excellent in parts) - but his formula has long since lost its shine: i.e., a leisurely build-up to a decision, the wrong choice is made, and the rest of the book shows the consequences of that choice. A new plot would be nice.

The Tar-Aiym Krang, Alan Dean Foster (1972). See here.

The Levant Trilogy, Olivia Manning (1977 - 1980), is, I think, better than The Balkan Trilogy. Admittedly, I'm interested in the period it covers - World War II in Egypt - because of the Salamander and Personal Landscape groups, two groups of poets and writers active during that time, which included Manning herself, Lawrence Durrell, Terence Tiller, Bernard Spencer, John Jarmain and Keith Douglas, among others. In this book, Guy Pringle remains mostly unsympathetic and Harriet Pringle still incapable of recognising what the people around her are really like. Sadly, the television adaptation Fortunes Of War didn't handle this half of the story as well as it did The Balkan Trilogy - too much was missed out. The fact that the books are better should come as no real surprise. And this might well be one of the best books I've read so far this year.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll (1865), is a book I'd never actually read as a child, although I'd picked up the story through cultural osmosis. Unfortunately, it seems to be a book you should read as a child. As an adult, I found it patronising and simplistic. Ah well. At least I can cross it off the Guardian's 1000 Must-Read books list.

The History Man, Malcolm Bradbury (1975), is another of the books on the Guardian's 1000 Must-Read books. Which is why I mooched a copy and read it. It took me two goes to start, and the second time I was on a coach heading for London, so I couldn't really put it down and pick up another book.... And I'm glad I forced myself to read it. It takes a while to get going, but once you've clicked into the narrative, it's an excellent read. The committee meeting alone is worth the price of admission. Now I want to see the 1980 BBC television adaptation....

The Custodians, Richard Cowper (1976), is a collection of four short stories by the author of the excellent White Bird of Kinship trilogy. In fact, The Custodians includes the prequel short story, 'Pipers at the Gates of Dawn', for that trilogy. The other three stories are very much of their time and place - very considered British science fiction of the 1970s, with some good writing, some creaky ideas, and a mostly slow narrative pace.

Films:
Show Me Love, Together, Lilja 4-Ever and A Hole in my Heart, dir. Lukas Moodysson (1998 - 2004), are all in the Lukas Moodysson Presents DVD boxed set which I bought when it was on sale. Show Me Love, a sort of Swedish Skins - misbehaving teenagers - in which the most popular girl in the year first victimises the class lesbian then falls in love with her, is good. Together - battered wife takes her kids to join her brother in his leftie peacenik vegetarian commune - is less gripping, although a more gently affectionate film. Lilja 4-Ever is the best of the four - fifteen year-old Lilja is left behind in Russia when her mother emigrates to the US. Abandoned and in desperate need of cash, she becomes a prostitute... and finds herself a new boyfriend who promises to take her to live in Sweden. When she gets there, she's kept locked up in a flat, and escorted by a brutal minder to have sex with other men. Oksana Akinshina is superb as Lilja, and Artyom Bogucharsky is very good as her friend Volodya. A hard film to watch. A Hole in my Heart is also difficult to watch, but for different reasons. It takes place entirely in a single apartment, in which a man is making amateur porn films while his teenage son hides in his bedroom and listens to music. It's one of those films where the director's intentions are clear, but he's not been entirely successful in presenting them.

City Lights, dir, Charlie Chaplin (1931), should be familiar to everyone. Chaplin's cheeky tramp saves the life of a rich businessman, who rewards him by showing him the high life. But he does so when he's drunk. When he sobers up, he forgets who Chaplin is. It might be eighty years old, but it's still very funny.

Walk On Water, dir. Eytan Fox (2004), proved a surprise. A Mossad agent returns to Israel after assassinating a Hamas leader to discover his wife has committed suicide. His boss gives him an "easy" assignment while he comes to terms with his loss: he is to act as guide to a German who is visiting his kibbutzim sister. Their grandfather is a Nazi war criminal who was in South America but has recently disappeared. The Mossad agent is tasked with discovering if they know the grandfather's location. The story doesn't quite progress the way it seems as though it might, but never mind. A good film. And apparently inspired by a true story.

Serenity, dir. Joss Whedon (2005), was a rewatch. I was never in to Buffy, and I thought Firefly was too much "Cowboys in space" - not to mention ripping off the Traveller role-playing game - to really appeal. Even on rewatch, Serenity seems too dependent on Firefly, and while its story does explain some things about Firefly's universe, it still feels too much like a sequence of set scenes. Oh, and the bit where River kills all the Reavers is just silly.

Smilla's Sense of Snow, dir, Bille August (1997), was another rewatch. One of these days I'll have to reread the novel by Peter Høeg on which it was based. Julia Ormond manages to make the prickly Smilla a sympathetic protagonist, but the opening mystery surrounding the young boy's fatal fall from the roof of the apartment block feels mishandled - as if something else were driving the plot, and it was just being carried along for the ride. I still like the film, though.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - the only thing I can say about this is, "Oh dear". George Lucas must have decided that since his fanbase is greying, he needs to drag in the kiddies. Which explains some of the gloriously ill-considered mis-steps in this mess of a film. Anakin Skywalker is given a wise-cracking teenage girl as a sidekick, who manages to spend the entire film irritating the audience. The plot doesn't make sense - rescue the (disgustingly cute) baby son of Jabba the Hutt, because the Republic needs access to the Hutt's trade routes. Eh? A minor gangster on a backwater world suddenly controls half the galaxy? And so the Republic decides to send a single Jedi, plus teenage girl, to effect a rescue? It's not so much that Lucas jumps the shark in this, as if he's running the 400 metres hurdles over sharks. Definitely a film to avoid.