[Sorry this is all text; I will add some pretty pictures later.]
Ok, well I’ve
sort of done my best and worst films of 2012, so now it’s time for the books.
But before that, I’m writing a few days before the Oscars winners are announced
and looking down the nominations I see that once again I have not seen any
films on the list. I even somehow managed to miss the mini-Simpsons short which
is nominated in Best Short Animated Film; but seeing as I love The Simpsons
[the first ten years or so, at least], I hope this wins in its category. Then
it might be on the telly again!
Right, to
the issue of the day. My best novels of 2012; I’ve sorted them into rank, with
1) being the best. Again, please note, these novels weren’t all published in
2012, they were just published in a limited edition in my brain in 2012. Here
we go. My favourite novel that I read in 2012 was;
1) THE DEAD ZONE [1979] by Stephen King.
Unusually for a Stephen King title, I didn’t know a great deal about this
before I read it; neither had I seen the film adaptation. There’s a link here
> See
all my reviews where there’s a long and spoiler-ridden review of mine for
the book. THE DEAD ZONE is a great book, and the psychic supernatural stuff in
it isn’t necessarily [NOTE TO SELF: learn how to spell] the best thing about
it. Superb writing and excellent characterisation here. It is certainly among
the top notch of King’s novels I have read, and I even read a fair chunk of it
after a drinking session, when I usually forget how to read, such was its
excellence. Highly recommended to anyone who enjoys good writing.
2) MOONFLEET [1898] by J.Meade Faulkner.
I was first given this book to read at school in English, and, like most books
at school, I didn’t like it. Boring, old-fashioned, can’t be bothered to read
it. But something must have stuck, and over the years I found myself
occasionally thinking about it, and when I saw a falling-to-bits copy in a
charity shop I snapped it up and left it on my shelf for five years. Last year
I finally read it; what an exciting, dramatic, compelling boys-own adventure
story! The plot concerns a young boy and how he gets mixed up with smugglers
and pirates treasure in the English coastal village of Moonfleet. It is an
absorbing novel, and reading it made me feel like an excited boy again, instead
of an old grumpy bugger. Very highly recommended, to boys of all ages.
3) A WRITER’S LIFE [2011] by Eric Brown.
This is a short [107 pages] novel masquerading as science-fiction, but in
reality has tendrils of Lovecraftian horror throughout. It tells the story of Daniel
Ellis, a writer and prolific reader who comes across a couple of books of
Vaughan Williams, an author whom Ellis had not previously heard of. Ellis finds
much to admire in the novels, and seeks out more by the author, slowly
unravelling a mystery connecting three writers from different periods, and a
bit of research and a series of coincidence soon guide Ellis to Williams’
isolated cottage, where local myths of strange events and hauntings abound.
Will Daniel Ellis discover the truth, or will he find too much? This is very
good, very readable and compelling and had me trying to guess the mystery, and
I thoroughly enjoyed the journey of it. It’s a perfect book to get pulled into,
and you could read it in one sitting.
4) OF MUSCLE AND MAGIC [Published 2012]
by Jonathan Strickland – Yes, this one’s by my friend Jonny, but wait a minute,
it’s not a shameless plug [well, ok, it is a bit]; this short novel has made it
into my top five on its own merit. The book was called THE TERROR ON THE ISLAND
OF PAGZUIRE when I read it, and it takes the form of a classic sword’n’sorcery
tale in the style of Fritz Leiber or Robert E Howard. It reminded me very much
of Michael Moorcock’s 70’s novels, Corum, and Hawkmoon and all that; exciting,
action-driven easy to read fantasy. OF MUSCLE AND MAGIC is about the same size
as those Moorcock novels too, at around 40,000 words. The story concerns a
demon who is devouring hearts, and the warrior Calin who attempts to destroy
it. It is action-packed and is full of bright characters, sarcastic demons,
imaginative monsters and real-ale drinking. It is only available as an e-book
on Amazon or Smashwords for a dollar or two, but Jonny has very kindly put half
of it [self-contained] on Smashwords for free. Why not download this for free,
and see what you think. Truthfully, it could do with a little polish to make it
gleam, but the occasional spelling mistakes and typos do not get in the way of
the fantastic story. I loved it!
5) THE WOMAN WHO WENT TO BED FOR A YEAR
[2012] by Sue Townsend – I have loved Sue Townsend’s books since I was about
twelve and first read THE SECRET DIARY OF ADRIAN MOLE AGED 13 ¾ . THE WOMAN WHO
WENT TO BED FOR A YEAR is witty and clever social commentary; a fictional look
at popularity and a celebrity-obsessed society. Mum Eva, after sending her
twins off to University, after years of looking after them, feels tired and goes
to bed, and decides to stay there and see what happens, relying on her family
and complete strangers to see to her needs. She soon becomes a local celebrity,
and it seems everyone wants a piece of her, when all she wants to do is have a
good lie down. Funny, relavant, insightful, realistic, and humane. It’s not the
best Sue Townsend [the ADRIAN MOLE series or THE QUEEN AND I are her best work;
fantastic stuff], but it’s well worth a read.
And there we
have my five novels of 2012; now for the bad books I read. I don’t really
believe that any book is really terrible and a waste of time, so these aren’t
worst books, as such, more disappointing ones. Often even a really bad book can
be instructive to a writer. It can tell you how NOT to write, and it’s often a
huge boost to read something [especially by a big-name author] and think, “That’s
crap. I can write better that.”. It’s inspiring; if they managed to get that
crap published, then there’s hope for you yet. It’s also good karma to check
reviews of bad books on the interweb, and when you see that others too thought
that particular book not very good, you can get the satisfaction of being
correctly able to distinguish between good writing and bad.
The most
high-profile “bad book” I read last year was ODD THOMAS by Dean Koontz. Again,
there’s a lengthy review on my Amazon page, but briefly; it’s clichéd, slow,
meandering, and full of just plain bad writing. Not bad writing in the sense of unskilled, but
bad in the sense that Koontz is trying too hard to impress. His sentences, his
dialogue in particular is ridiculous and pretentious; it is some of the most grammatically
perferct yet viscous and difficult prose I’ve ever encountered, like reading
treacle. Read this;
"The air flash-dried my lips and brought to me
that summer scent of desert towns that is a melange of superheated silica,
cactus pollen, mesquite resin, the salts of long-dead seas, and exhaust fumes
suspended in the motionless dry air like faint nebulae of mineral particles
spiralling through rock crystal."
Woah, right. What a sentence! What about dialogue; read
this, say it aloud;
"I've listened with my heart for so long I've
periodically had to swab earwax out of my aortal valve."
Who talks
like that in normal conversation? Do you talk like that? I bet you don’t. It’s
just too clever, or it thinks it’s too clever. This is not just one pretentious
character who speaks like this, but the whole bloody lot of them in the book.
For me, it killed any realism; I had to struggle to finish the book. Incidentally,
the story concerns a bloke who can see dead people, and is barely interesting
as it is, without the awful prose to wade through. But what do I know; ODD
THOMAS has become one of KOONTZ’ most popular characters and he has written
half a dozen sequel novels, with a feature film due out sometime shortly. On
Amazon or Goodreads, it gets potty reviews calling it the best book ever; there
are some nay-sayers like myself but in general they are shouted down by the
masses.
It’s not
that I dislike Koontz. I have read and really enjoyed MIDNIGHT, THE TAKING,
LIGHTNING, THE VOICE OF THE NIGHT, HIDEAWAY, MR MURDER and more. But it seems
in his more recent novels he has changed his voice to this awful, dragging,
difficult style. I started LIFE EXPECTANCY a few years ago and couldn’t finish
it; I have half a dozen or so of his fairly recent books sitting on my bookshelf,
as yet unread. I don’t think I’ll be trying them anytime soon. Yet ODD THOMAS
would have sold shedloads, and continues to do so, especially with a film
coming out. Well, fairplay to Koontz, but ODD THOMAS was most definitely that,
ODD!
Well, that
turned into a bit of a rant, but never mind; prime blog material.
I read a
critical book on fantasy novels last year; MODERN FANTASY:THE 100 BEST NOVELS
[1988] by David Pringle. The 100 novels that Pringle selected were an
interesting list, very eclectic and varied, and unusual choices. The problem
was, that the short piece [1-3 pages] on each book told you the entire plot,
often including the ending, and discussed them in a needlessly highbrow and
subtextual way. There were books there that I may have read at some point, but
now Pringle has told me the plot, I may not bother. I really like books about
books, but this one was really disappointing.
I read a number of trashy creature-feature novels every year;
nature on the rampage, killer bugs, fish, scorpions, budgies etc, that kind of
thing. They are often not very good, but I’m fond of them. Anyway, this year
was a bad year for creature-features; THE CATS by Nick Sharman [1977] has an
MOD-backed experiment into a new bacterial weapon go awry. The bacteria is
injected into test-subjects, a laboratory full of cats, which, when the
temperature rises, begin to turn into mad, crazy, but highly intelligent
carnivorous pussies. Before you can say “Whiskas”, those couple of dozen
animals have somehow turned into thousands of the furry blighters and go on the
rampage. Cue vignettes of caricatured characters who get killed by the cats,
then larger scenes of full-on action where vast oceans of cats gain ground
against helicopter bombings and flame throwers (!), climaxed by a quick but
drawn-out ending that equally makes little sense. Sharman appears to know or
care little for cats as they are entirely lacking in any character or feline
traits. The vast hordes of creatures he writes about are entirely
interchangeable; he could have written of dogs, foxes, frogs, or rabbits with
very minimal changes. I got the impression that Sharman didn’t actually like or
respect cats much, and chose his “creatures” simply because they sounded so
similar to RATS, which indeed they could very easily have been. Sharman’s human
characters also are stereotypes, with questionable motives, and even more
questionable dialogue, and I found it difficult to differentiate between them.
In fact, I just generally found this book difficult; it is full of action, yet
boring, and at a slim 160 pages, seemed to take ages to read.
I first read THE PIKE [[1982] by Clifford Twemlow] when I was
still at school, and enjoyed it. It’s a novel [of only about 45,000 words] that
is best read in your teens, and perhaps kept there. Where something like THE
RATS retains its power and depth, THE PIKE, unfortunately, has lost its bite.
Story; something is attacking and killing swans, fishermen and tourists on Lake
Windermere. Surprisingly, bearing in mind the title of the book, this turns out
to be a giant pike. A journalist, a trio of adventurers and a Scottish
stereotype join forces to hunt it down and destroy it, while local traders try to
hamper their efforts with a few fisticuffs. This is JAWS with flaws; this is
basic, unimaginative story-telling. Exposition-heavy attempts at character are
made, but in the end the players are one dimensional, and interchangeable; only
the giant Scot, Ulysees, is at all memorable, and the climactic finale turns
out to be both a bit of a cheat, and a damp squib. One event, on the final
pages shows a bit of life, but it’s all too little, too late.
THE PIKE isn’t really a very good book, yet I am quite fond
of it. It reminds me of hunting through piles of paperbacks on windy market
stalls, and finding a book such as this, would give me a happy delight. I
rather liked this as a teenager, and this time round I read it in less than a
day and on holiday in the Lakes, hoping for extra atmosphere, which I didn’t
receive. Oh well, not all killer fish books can be brilliant, can they?
The cover of THE PIKE proudly promises “Soon To Be A Major
Film”; alas, it was not to be, despite celebrity author Twemlow and star Joan
Collins trying to rustle up the funds for it.
Blimey, I’ve
waffled on about books for 2200 words. I could have been farting about with my novel in that time. Congratulations if you’re still reading.
Curiously, have any readers [curiously, have I got any readers?] got any particularly bad books to unreccomend.
And yes, I know I can’t spell recommend. Although I may just have. Oh-kay, Next
Time Gadget...
