Just in case the preponderance of waffling about Literature on here has led anyone to believe that I’m labouring under the misconception that I’m some sort of intellectual, I would like to share the following YouTube.com links to 14 minutes of early 1990s promotional music video material, representing four of my favourite compositions of all time:
SL2 - On A Ragga Tip
2 Bad Mice - Bombscare
808 State - In Yer Face
The Prodigy - Charly
They don’t make ‘em like that any more. (more…)
That’s not a hybrid. This is a hybrid.
Were I an eccentric and murderously insane multi-billionaire, I’d acquire an Oshkosh HEMTT A3, fill it with biodiesel, and use it to hunt down the Hummers I’ve seen driving around town lately, in order to crush those pathetic, fuel-incontinent symbols of insecurity by driving over them repeatedly with my gigantic carbon-neutral monster truck.
Luckily for the Hummer-drivers of Huddersfield, I’m currently neither homicidally crazy nor fantastically rich. But it’s only a matter of time, my friends, only a matter of time.
Julia Bell doesn’t like the idea of electronic book readers. She’s being silly.
The real nub of the issue for me is that screens will now mediate the text. The bound book comes to us with so many connotations of magic and learning, so it will be a cultural revolution of Caxtonian proportions to watch it replaced by a bland black tablet.
Undoubtedly there were hordes of scribes fulminating similar rubbish in the 15th century about all those newfangled printed bibles. The parallel doesn’t hold, though; electronic readers are not a development of similar magnitude to the invention of the printing press. It’s more like the idea of using page-numbers, or the discovery of a better method of book-binding; it’s a small incremental improvement in existing reading technology, not a revolutionary, epoch-defining technological thunderbolt. Incidentally, Bell has clearly suffered no lasting ill effects in adopting the true modern-day equivalents of the printing press: personal computing and the internet.
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Hooray! My friend Sue’s second novel Oystercatchers is out, and it got a good review from the Independent. I have ordered my copy and will jump it to the top of my reading pile so I can post the appropriate ramblings as soon as possible.
Like all of Dickens’s really big works, there is so much of interest in Bleak House that it’s hard to know where to start. It is, by turns and all at once, a detective mystery, a thriller, a social commentary, a satire, and a good old-fashioned storybook, and it would be completely beyond me to cover everything that is good in it; I’ll restrict myself to picking out the points that really interest me and leave it at that.
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This chart of an entire year’s worth of variations on the theme of “X is the new Y” snowclone is brilliant. (Spotted on Languagelog.)
Taking the instances out of context creates some pleasing apparent non-sequiturs, like “12 is the new 1″, “nepotism is the new polio”, and “October is the new December”. Intriguing. The section on technology and computing is also quite interesting, if you follow that sort of thing; hardware nerds will be pleased, I am sure, to note at least one literally correct inclusion: the Sempron really is the new Duron, the one line replaced the other. And it’s nice to see that the actual phrase “x is the new y” makes the list.
Writing about In the Days of the Comet brought to mind The Truth About Pyecraft, a wonderful little story written by Wells, which was the first thing of his that I ever read, when I was about eight, in one of those anthologies of genre stories (you know, for kids). Marvellous stuff, read it.
In related news, Lee Evans is going to be playing Mr Polly on the telly. Alongside Trigger from Only Fools and Horses. Yikes.
I love H. G. Wells. The History of Mr Polly is one of those stories that changes how you think; The Time Machine, War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, The First Men in the Moon, and The Island of Dr Moreau are all classics that I have returned to many times; I have enjoyed Kipps, and Mr Britling Sees It Through, and various short story collections, from which Country of the Blind stands out in particular as absolutely, chillingly horrible. He is undoubtedly a great writer, and even if you don’t enjoy reading his work the weight of his influence on other writers, and upon popular culture right up to the present day, is undeniable.
In the Days of The Comet is one of Wells’s utopian novels, and compared to everything else of his that I’ve read, it’s disappointing. (more…)
Further to my update the other day, I’ve just received a full reply from my MP regarding my letter about the unscientific codswallop being peddled to kids in UK state school science lessons.
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Whoever chose the cover for Hotel World wants shooting. It looks like something in which the shoe descriptions will have had more attention from the author than the characterisation or plot. If it wasn’t for the fact that I really enjoyed The Accidental, I’d never have gone near it. Hotel World actually deals with death and grief and a host of other non-chintzy themes; those expecting the sort of fluff that would be in keeping with the artwork are in for a bit of a shock, as you can tell from the Amazon reviews. I suppose marketing can chalk up a few extra sales, but they’re hardly going to get repeat custom that way.
It’s a shame, because this is easily one of the best books I’ve picked up in a long time. (more…)