🆕 blog! “Book Review: Red Side Story - Jasper Fforde”
★★★★⯪
Fourteen years ago, I read Fforde's Shades of Grey and my life hasn't been quite the same since. It was a magical tale, almost totally devoid of exposition, building in an fantasy world like no other. Fans have been clamouring for a sequel ever since. The first few chapters of the sequel do an excellent […]
Book cover - a red land with a spoon in the foreground.Fourteen years ago, I read Fforde's Shades of Grey and my life hasn't been quite the same since. It was a magical tale, almost totally devoid of exposition, building in an fantasy world like no other. Fans have been clamouring for a sequel ever since.
The first few chapters of the sequel do an excellent job of exposition - but this isn't the sort of book you can pick up without having recently read the original. I got a dozen pages into Red Side Story before I realised that I remembered nothing about the original. So I went back to read Shades of Grey. I'm delighted to say it was just as good as I remember - a delirious ride through a messed up world.
The second book is… more of the same. It slowly reveals more of the backstory and its grim origins. It builds to a rather satisfying conclusion. Along the way it gets a little tied-up in its own rules, and makes some weird pop-culture references. But never fails to be brilliantly perplexing in its structured surrealness.
In one my smarter moments I likened our era to someone arriving late to a concert, just as the final chords were hanging in the air.
If you like Fforde's inventive and bizarre worlds, you'll like this. But, I warn you, it really needs you to have read Shades of Grey first.
I’ve just finished The Next Big Thing by Anita Brookner which was a great and sometimes difficult read. It’s about Julius who’s in his 70s and is now retired. His parents and brother have died and his wife has left him. He’s living alone in central London, his adopted city after his family fled from Nazi Germany. He’s looking for the next big thing in his life, pondering his past and feeling concern for his failing health. Sounds gloomy, right?! Well, the insightful writing just carries you along and pulls you in before you know it and you’re hooked on this story of loneliness and regret in later life. I found myself, like I often do with Anita Brookner, rereading sections due to the beautiful prose. Here’s an example to give you a flavour:
“He raised his eyes to a rooffline bristling with television aerials , lowered them again to windows still blank before the evening lights were lit. The sky was already darkening; signs of spring were absent, and yet the chilly damp held a promise of greenness, of new life only just in abeyance. it was even possible to appreciate that sky; its opaque blue reminded him of certain pictures, though no picture could compete with this strange sense of immanence. With the crust of the earth ready to break into life, the roots expanding to disclose flowers, the trees graciously putting forth leaves. The impassivity of nature never ceased to amaze him. This awakening process was surely superior to anything captured on canvas, yet art made all phenomena its province.in its unceasing war with the effort of capturing moments of time art won this unequal contest, but only just. The majestic indifference of nature was there to remind one of ones place, and no doubt to serve as a corrective to the artist’s ambition. When the canvas was finished it was already a relic, outside change. And surely change was primordial; all must obey it. To ignore the process was to ignore the evidence of one’s own evolutionary cycle.’
Haunting, introspective and with a hint of dark comedy this was so good, just maybe one to approach with caution if yu’re about to retire! This novel was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2002. #bookstodon#AmReading#Braille#BookReview#nature@bookstodon
A TALE OF LOVE AND MONSTERS is a heart-stopping, action-packed fantasy adventure, a unique romance, and a deep, wise parable about self-sacrifice and family stories. Beautifully crafted kaleidoscope of distinctively new and classic legends. A MINUS
Read VENOM & VOW by Anna-Marie & Elliott McLemore if you love duel perspectives, enemies-to-lovers, warring kingdoms, secret identities, So Many Knives, badass mobility aids, genderfuckery, T4T romance, magical creatures, living castles, disguises, disability representation, being seen for who you really are.
(Also Vico Ortiz narrates the audiobook & gives an AMAZING performance).
Following my review of issue 1 from earlier in the week, here’s one for The Savage Sword of Conan #2. Conan shows a different side of his personality and the Solomon Kane story gears up for the finale.
🆕 blog! “Book Review: Fallen Idols - Alex von Tunzelmann”
"History is not erased when statues are pulled down. It is made." Some people celebrated when Saddam's statue was toppled in Iraq. Yet those same voices condemn the felling of Coulson, Rhodes, and a dozen other statues. Why? Alex von Tunzelmann has a knack for getting to the heart of history in an accessible man…
Some people celebrated when Saddam's statue was toppled in Iraq. Yet those same voices condemn the felling of Coulson, Rhodes, and a dozen other statues. Why?
Alex von Tunzelmann has a knack for getting to the heart of history in an accessible manner. There isn't a hefty amount of ponderous academic theory to wade through - just well researched stories mixed with contemporary accounts.
Statues don't have human rights. But our primitive brains sometimes seem to confuse the icon for the individual. When we have a parasocial relationship with a historical figure, it can be distressing to see their "body" being attacked and beaten by a mob. But the statues are of men, not gods. They weren't infallible in life and deserve to fairly assessed in death. A statue is the physical manifestation of propaganda - they are adverts for a cause. Pulling down a statue is a direct response to unwanted and offensive advertising.
The only weakness is that there are no photographs or etchings of the statues in question. The descriptions are vivid, but there's no substitute for seeing the article in question.
Towards the end of the book, she mentions the Empty Library in Berlin. It is a memorial to burned books. And this is where my thinking gets confused. Burning an individual book does not destroy history, nor does it harm a cause, or directly threaten an individual. Yet I have and instinctive liberal disgust at the sight of a book burning. I'd say I'm no less repulsed by it that a reactionary is at seeing a statue being pulled down.
Could someone write a similar set of essays defending book burning? Are there arguments to be made that some books are a monument to evil and their presence in libraries is a symbol of oppression? Fallen Idols makes a convincing case that merely putting a plaque on the side of a statue to explain historic context is insufficient - is the same true for the preface of dangerous book?
Fallen Idols is an excellent and well-told set of history stories. Highly recommended.
Book review #30 for 2024 is Collin Dexter's The Riddle of the Third Mile. This time Morse and Lewis face the task of identifying a severely mutilated corpse. Their journey takes them into the lives of men and women with much to hide. The plot was interesting and entertaining, but I found the end uneven, convoluted even. ☕☕☕ cup review. #books#bookreview#fiction#collindexter@bookstodon@books@bookstodon
Book review #29 for 2024 is Collin Dexter's The Dead of Jericho. Another Inspector Morse installment. The characterization of Morse in this novel showed an uncertain and anxious detective who works to solve a murder of a woman that he was wanting to have a relationship with (affair is the better word). ☕☕☕ cup review #bookstodon#books#fiction#bookreview@bookstodon@books@bookstodon
A little late to the party, but my review of Titan Comics’ The Savage Sword of Conan #1 just went up at Grimdark Magazine. The new black-and-white Conan magazine is off to a good start!
ADRIFT IN A NEARLY DESERTED VENICE in the early months of the 2020 pandemic, a writer contemplates his native Nigeria, his life in Detroit, his love of travel, but most of all his complicated family. Beautifully crafted prose, distinctive story. B PLUS
"What a curious, quiet little book. Garner Hayes is a young man, working in an unnamed city as a waiter in an upscale Italian restaurant. Then he becomes aware of a beautiful dark-haired man... I readily embraced the book’s low-key quirky manner. 4 stars."
A DELICATELY HAUNTING THAI novel unfolds like a late-night story from its protagonist, a monk in his 90s telling tales of his youth in the remote jungles of the late 19th century, where tigers and crocodiles lurked in the darkness. Stunning. A MINUS
Neat Nick’s Big Mess is an adorable picture book focusing on OCD and anxiety.
Chad Otis’ illustrations and story are charming and warm. I just fell in love with this friendly big dog. It is a wonderful story full of love and friendship that young readers, especially dog lovers, will adore !
My #bookreview is brief/won't spoil, to spread good, great, & spectacular #horror#books far & wide.
💙📚 HOT DEMON BITCHES NEAR YOU from J.E. Erickson is an exuberant blast of gore & grue. The Horrors are heavy here, but balanced with deliciously devilish delights & a LOT of heart. (Lots of OTHER body parts, too.) You'll be disturbed, delighted, horrified- but also cackling. HELL, yeah! (Self-published)