June 2009
Monthly Archive
10 June 2009
A book recommendation for those cold Christchurch winter nights – the Times Literary Supplement calls it “A glorious piece of work… The narrative has a splendid ripe momentum, and each descriptive touch contributes a pang of vividness.”
Don't be fooled by the manky cover! This is a good read!
That is the review given to Angela Carter’s book called Nights at the Circus. Far be it for me to agree with the critics but this 1984 winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize was an entrancing read.
This novel focuses on the life and exploits of its main female character, known as Fevvers. Fevvers is – or so she would have us believe – a Cockney virgin, hatched from an egg laid by unknown parents ready to develop fully fledged wings. The story takes place in 1899 at which point she is a celebrated aerialiste, an outrageous performer who captivates the young journalist Jack Walser during an interview. Walser runs away with the circus to better pursue and understand his fascination with Fevvers but falls into a world that he is ill prepared for.
This novel contains an assortment of weird and wonderful background characters: a sisterhood of prostitutes, a one-eyed madam who dresses as Admiral Nelson, side-show freaks, circus performers, prescient pigs, contract writing chimps, dancing tigers, shamans and escaped female inmates of a Siberian prison, to name but a few.
Read this! Your regrets will be few and your wonder tangible!
9 June 2009
Circle of Dreams: Starweaver by Linda McNabb is the third in Linda McNabb’s Circle of Dreams series after #1 Runeweaver and #2 Timeweaver. I would recommend reading the previous two before embarking on the third, as there is a wide range of characters and arcane mythology surrounding runes which takes a while for the new reader (even old ones like me) to absorb.
Young Zaine the starweaver is caught up in a battle to prevent time slowing to a complete stop, while at the same time trying to assist Princess Guyan with the struggles in her overcrowded world of Zhan. Zaine, Guyan and his sister, Maata slip through the dream circle to Zhan where they meet Dom the finder and her little sister, Jelena and cat, Choo. The king has been poisoned by his brother, Eldric who lusts after the throne, so Zaine’s knowledge of herbal medicine is needed desperately.
As if this isn’t enough bad news, the storm dragons – previously thought to be immortal, are falling sick. Without them, all worlds will fall apart, as they keep time in balance. And the home front isn’t much happier – Queen Trianna refuses to behave warmly towards her son and Zaine despairs of ever being accepted by her.
This tale will suit confident boy and girl readers of about 10 and above. Fantasy fans and magic enthusiasts should start with Runeweaver and see where it takes their imaginations. I have been trying to get one of my book club boys to read it so I can get a child’s perspective on it, but despite my best efforts there were no takers. This surprised me because I think the cover is particularly appealing. But they seem to be more interested in Zac Power and Beast Quest at the moment.
I tried shelfari and librarything, but it doesn’t exist according to shelfari and it is only on librarything because I added it to my list! Time will tell.
9 June 2009
In Argenta by Stephanie Hills Anquin the bird boy lives on an inhospitable planet called Argenta. He hasn’t seen his parents for years and he is sick of collecting tuskerweed to feed the Clan. As if that isn’t enough to ruin his day, Grandmother Cormar has given him very bad news – because he is a special hatchling he won’t be going on a Mission, like his parents and the other adult birds. He must stay and guard the eggs and pass on special knowledge to the new generation. Anquin doesn’t want to be special, he wants to have adventures. So he takes an adventurous and totally prohibited step and flies towards the Forbidden Zone. What he finds there changes his life for ever, in ways he never expected…
Meanwhile, on Earth, Martin dreams of saving the Earth from the Gorgozoids and being a hero. The summer holidays are pending and the most exciting thing in his life is his mother’s protest to save some local bush from mining. But things change when a casual walk among the trees brings him face to face with a real life alien…Before he knows where he is,the alien is his friend and they’re working together to save both their planets from the evil Dorgazoids.
This is a fun story that will appeal to boys and girls of about 8 to 12 years. It mixes science fiction and fantasy and both main characters are lively and engaging. It has themes of rebellion and the dangers of conformity, but isn’t preachy about it. A good read for chilly winter nights
8 June 2009
The Fallen
I’m a big fan of Gok Wan’s Fashion Fix on TVOne Friday nights. One of the designer wearing divas he pits his styling against each week is called Brix Smith-Start. Somewhere is the vestigial recesses of my brain I thought “hang on, wasn’t Mark E Smith of The Fall married to a Brix? Could it be her?”. And Oh my Gok, Wikipedia comes through and indeed tis one and the same.
So read on, maybe she will star also in The fallen : Searching for the missing members of The “Fall” by Dave Simpson.
Or Gok Wan: the Biography! – both coming soon …
Gok
8 June 2009
OK, so I subscribe to too many email lists, but that is no excuse to have lost in the shuffle the fact that Margaret Mahy has won the Picture Book category of the 2009 Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards!
Bubble-Trouble is a tongue-twisting picture book that describes how Baby gets wafted away by a bubble, blown by his sister Mabel. It begs to be read aloud, although no-one can read it with more tongue-twisting-alacrity than Margaret herself. Margaret has already written two Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Honour Books – The Changeover in 1985 and Memory in 1988.
In other Mahy-News, in May she was uninvited from appearing on Radio Rhema after staff decided her new non-fiction book “Awesome Aotearoa” was too “disrespectful”.
She wasn’t fazed though, saying, ”I don’t feel upset by it. You just become reconciled that not everyone is going to read the text in the same way. That’s the mystery of reading.”
5 June 2009
The latest in the Terminator “franchise” (I hate that term, makes the movies sound like a Nandos Chicken outlet) blasted it’s way on to movie screens in New Zealand this week. As an unabashed fan of Terminator and Terminator 2, and not much fussed on the third, I didn’t have very high expectations for this film despite the presence of Hollywood heavyweight and sometime drama queen Christian Bale.
As it turns out the film is a non-stop barrage of gunfire, explosions and death-defying stunts…and I love that kind of thing so I was happy. Unfortunately David Mamet doesn’t tend to write dialogue for blockbuster action movies so it’s no great shakes in that department but that’s not what you expect from this kind of movie is it?
When you throw a lot of money at a film this big you do get some pretty spectacular stunts, high-tech design and scary looking futuristic robots though. Which is why I’m considering checking out The art of Terminator Salvation…not in the hopes of catching a picture of Christian Bale with his shirt off…at all.
5 June 2009
Christopher Fowler started off as the author of horror and fantasy short stories and novels and his imaginative skills made for first rate fiction in a genre that is regarded rather sniffily in the literary world. He turned to mysteries and combined elements of his fantasy work in a series of delightfully zany mysteries featuring two oldish sleuths, Bryant and May, usually operating in wonderfully evoked London and South England landscapes. The books would make a first rate television series but as they don’t involve forensics they will probably never reach the screen.
His very English quality comes from his background as an only – and sometimes lonely – child growing up in a working class area of South London in the early 1960s. His parents are solid decent folk but they don’t have a lot of imagination and they have ended up with a son who has imagination by the truckload. Reading books and comics, making lists (ah, the sign of all of those who had anorak childhoods), movies at the local Odeon, games and kit sets, the ludicrous horror novels of Dennis Wheatley, it’s all here.
Even if your childhood was a New Zealand one, you will recognise a lot of what he is talking about as Kiwis still talked of “home” (i.e. Britain) then and English newspapers and magazines were the staple of every bookshop. Does anyone remember the weekly compilation editions – with the brassy yellow cover – of the Daily Mirror? I loved this book for its nostalgic evocation of the British cinema (the decade before it descended into witless sex comedies featuring Robin Askwith and two decades before it was all country house Merchant Ivory films) when most films were full of character actors who could be relied upon to be much the same in every production. It’s hard to think we will look back on Ray Winstone and co with the same warm fuzzy feeling we had for the likes of Hattie Jacques and the Carry On crew. It’s not all nostalgia, however, as he tempers the book with his adult awareness of some of the sadness of his parent’s life.
And…libraries come out of this very well as young Fowler recognises how much they’d helped him: “the printed page had not imprisoned my thoughts but had given them shape and set them free.” He speaks highly of the East Greenwich Public Library where “I caught glimpses of a world beyond my experience” and was helped by a librarian who inspired his reading. She sounds just great and not all the dull stereotype we get so sick of. The latter appears in the next book I read, a bloated doorstop thriller, “A simple act of violence” by R.J. Ellory where “the lady at the desk looked like a librarian, sounded like one too.” She speaks in “hushed tones” (of course!) and peers at the detective “over half-rimmed spectacles.” she’s about as believable as the plot in this ridiculous conspiracy thriller.
5 June 2009
At the risk of sounding callous, it’s been a bad week for Davids. Fantasy writer David Eddings passed away earlier this week and this morning brought news of the death of veteran actor David Carradine.
Carradine is probably known for three things; being a Carradine, a family that could out-Baldwin the Baldwins in terms of actors per square foot, as the titular character of Quentin Tarantino’s ambitious but genius Kill Bill films, and as Caine, the forever wandering Kung Fu student in the television series of the same name.
I have to admit that Kung Fu never grabbed me. All that dour wandering about in the Wild West didn’t really interest me as a child. I thought he brought just the right mix of menace and gentility to the role of Bill in the aforementioned Tarantino films though and this was an experience that he wrote about in his 2006 book The Kill Bill diary : the making of a Tarantino classic as seen through the eyes of a screen legend.
For more information on the life and death of David Carradine go to -
4 June 2009
Book signing
76 years old and on his 27th book, Richard Holloway nicknamed the “Barmy Bish” has been for me a minor revelation. I can’t say I had massively high hopes, at The Auckland Writer and Readers Festival, of super enjoying an hour listening to an ex-Bishop burble on but hey, as always I was wrong. No burbling, not much religion, tears, laughter and a full-house.
Holloway resigned from the postitons of Bishop of Edinburgh and Primus Of the Scottish Episcopal Church in 2oo0 and now terms himself an “after-religionist”, a label he prefers over the more loaded title agnostic. He still values the role of religion but is if anything even keener now without his mitre, he threw it in a river, to ponder the big existential questions and explore the nature of humanity both good and bad.
Holloway’s latest title Between the Monster and the Saint: Reflections on the human condition looks to explain and rate the differing responses to the “big questions” and he sees four major categories: those with strong religious conviction, those with a weak religious conviction, after-religionists like Holloway himself and those that just don’t get religion at all or are even hostile towards it. Of course Mr Richard Dawkins does in Holloway’s view fall into the latter category adding that “Dawkins needs to go back on the prozac and chill out a bit”. Holloway does see a role for atheism in combatting false idolatry; likewise he strongly emphasised the importance of writers, artists and general creativity in ridiculing authority figures to expose and temper corruption.
On forgiveness
He talked briefly about his energetic little dog Daisy and his sadness that the Christian church denies animals souls. He suggested that heaven might in fact be full of homicidal turkeys, chickens, cows and pigs all looking for revenge, having suffered to make us fat. Equally unappealing to him is the stereotype heaven with endless masses and choirs of angels.
The overriding message Holloway seeks to share, and he became quite emotional at this point, is the need for pity and the role of imagination in engendering empathy. Encounter with others is an essential part of understanding and with understanding comes a true humanity. At the end of the session Aotea Centre volunteers had to almost forcibily eject several members of the audience, myself included, who had started impromtu conversations with complete strangers raving about the barmy bish, his courage and kindness.
4 June 2009
David Eddings, the master of sagas such as the Belgariad, Malloreon and Elenium has died at the age of 77. Not being a fantasy fan I asked a couple of colleagues about him, but they proved somewhat lukewarm. I then trawled library resources which lead me to Books and Authors from our Premium databases and this quote from the author
“My advice to the young writer is likely to be unpalatable in an age of instant successes and meteoric falls. I tell the neophyte: Write a million words–the absolute best you can write, then throw it all away and bravely turn your back on what you have written. At that point, you’re ready to begin.
When you are with people, listen; don’t talk. Writers are boring people. What are you going to talk about so brilliantly? Typewriters? The construction of paragraphs? Shut your mouth and listen. Listen to the cadences of speech. Engrave the sound of language on your mind. Language is our medium, and the spoken language is the sharp cutting edge of our art. Make your people sound human. The most tedious story will leap into life if the reader can hear the human voices in it. The most brilliant and profound of stories will sink unnoticed if the characters talk like sticks.
Most of all, enjoy what you’re doing. If you don’t enjoy it, it’s not worth doing at all. If hard and unrewarding work bothers you, do something else. If rejection withers your soul, do something else. If the work itself is not reward enough, stop wasting paper. But if you absolutely have to write–if you’re compelled to do it even without hope of reward or recognition–then I welcome you to our sorry, exalted fraternity.”
Then I went to Wikipedia as you do and gleaned the following – his wife Leigh Eddings, was uncredited as co-author on many of his early books, but he later acknowledged that she contributed to them all. She was a credited co-author starting in the mid-1990s. He also accidentally burned down his office and his treasured Excalibur sports car by tossing a piece of paper into a puddle of water and petrol to see if was still flammable – an act he described as “Dumb”
Other sites I found indicated that Eddings, who based his novels on an imaginary world he mapped out, has a keen following of fans. Perhaps some of those fans are out there and can talk about his work.
Update: Another colleague,good librarian that she is, has compiled a list of authors you might like to read if you’ve read all the David Eddings books.
to go next. If you’ve read all of David Eddings, and are looking for more, here’s a list of similar authors and series:
Terry Brooks - Shannara
Kate Elliott – Crown of Stars
Raymond E Feist – Riftwar Saga
Barbara Hambly – Winterlands
Robin Hobb – Tawny Man Trilogy
Robert Jordan - Wheel of Time
Fiona McIntosh – Trinity
Tad Williams - Memory, Sorrow and Thorn
Janny Wurts - Wars of Light and Shadows
Plus how could I miss the mega source of lists – the library’s Fantasy and Science Fiction lists
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