Posted in Reviews on Jan 10th, 2012
Time travel ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. This realisation came as a bit of a shock to a lifelong Dr Who fan, particularly the latest Matt Smith iteration. Time travel ain’t all it’s cracked up to be if you work in the time travel industry and fix time machines for a living. More […]
Player One describes itself as a novel in five hours. It is subtitled “What is to become of us?” So what happens in those five hours, what is to become of us and what is it all about? My first thought upon finishing it was that it was constructed as a vessel for several themes […]
Posted in File under Personal, Food for thought, Reviews, Social media on Nov 15th, 2011
I know how I’m going to die. I know how I’m going to die because the Machine Of Death told me. I read about the Machine Of Death in a book. I heard about the book because it was an Amazon best seller. The book was an Amazon best seller because its self-publishers were able […]
Posted in Food for thought, Reviews on Nov 8th, 2011
Let your next book be a revelation. That was my plea to Bret Easton Ellis when I reviewed Imperial Bedrooms. We shall see whether the next book he writes is a revelation. What I can say is that the next book I read absolutely was. Here is a video of the author doing his best […]
Posted in Reviews on Nov 2nd, 2011
Empty. Empty is the feeling left by this book. It’s set in Los Angeles. I bought and read Bret Easton Ellis for the first time on a trip to LA in 1996. But that was American Psycho. Shockingly brilliant. Groundbreaking. Polarising. Impossible to ignore. This is Imperial Bedrooms. And, to be honest/harsh, it’s none of […]
Posted in Reviews on May 12th, 2011
Bleached white. Saturated turquoise. Vivid green. Disjointed fragments of story. Flashbacks. Elusive snatches of dialogue whispered into half-asleep ears. Portents. Licentiousness. Brilliant, evocative and economic storytelling. Heaven. Hell. Death (lots of death). Immortality. Irony. Poignancy. Allegory. And the odd LOL. That’s my word association tag cloud for The Lost Books Of The Odyssey. This book […]
Posted in Reviews on Jan 27th, 2011
I managed to get to the end of “C” without anyone asking me what it’s about. Which is just as well because it’s not a question that lends itself to a short answer. The answer to that question is usually a précis of the story and/or the high concept theme of the book. But “C” […]
Posted in File under Personal, Hindsight and experience, Reviews on Dec 23rd, 2010
Norman Mailer told me to stop being a fucking pussy. I went to see him speak at the book festival and asked him a question at the end. What did he most regret doing, what did he most regret not doing, and which was the bigger regret of the two? I figured that if learning […]
Posted in Reviews on Nov 17th, 2010
I’m reviewing this book before I’ve finished it. I’ve read just four out of thirty four “stories about people who know how they will die” but I can’t contain myself. Machine of Death is a book of revelations. In all sorts of ways. Firstly I don’t read short stories or anthologies. Mainly because I instinctively […]
Posted in Reviews, Social media on Nov 5th, 2010
So you think you’ve got a community huh? Does your community really give a damn whether you are making a living out of what you do? Would your community feel guilty if it felt it had done something to adversely affect your livelihood? Steve Lieber has this kind of community. Or rather, through his actions, […]
