some books i’ve been reading lately

i’m a big reader. i’m almost insatiable to tell the truth.

lately, i’ve been going through a few different phases. whilst on my recent trip to korea, i brushed up on a classic, hell’s angels by hunter s. thompson (it was a classic penguin title and therefore small enough to fit in my bag). while not a rabid thompson fan, i’ve always seen the appeal. i like hell’s angels primarily for thompson’s near-wide-eyed slips between following the sheep and paranoid fear. his cynical depictions of fellow journalists and the study of the very thin line between police and their prey is also something i find attractive about this book. in australia, we seem to accept that fine line very easily and the idea of cops and crims having near-social lives with each other doesn’t appear too fanciful here, so i enjoyed reading some of the comments the police made in thompson’s reports.

another book i’ve been re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-reading for the zillionth time is roadmarks by roger zelazny. i read this one an awful lot. it’s one of zelazny’s best in my opinion. while a huge fan of his work as a whole, it is this book which has always firmly gripped my fascination bone. it’s a fantastic novel, and the idea of the roads just leading to different times, places and alternate realities is almost like being dished up a fifteen-course meal and feeling a little overwhelmed as to where to begin – you know there’s something there that you should start with, but you can’t for the life of you see it for all the snacks. recently, reading one of steven erikson’s books, i was looking at the way erikson tied dragons into his world and i thought a lot about roadmarks. i think that’s why i’ve been reading this simple masterpiece.

science fiction tries very hard these days. it has to compete not only with the visuals of star trek and a billion other flashy computer-generated zombie-inducing films, it has to compete too with an ever-growing fanbase of science nerds who feel an awful need to point at some numbers which make what the writer is presenting to be “not very realistic.”

as far as i’m concerned, running around with a laser sword which gets erect whenever it’s fightin’ time while a little green man bounces around like a gerbil on speed talking about some mystical all-knowy magical force is about as “not very realistic” as you can get, but they’ve built a whole community around analysing and explaining a work of fiction in scientific terms – as though physics itself can “prove” the “reality” of star wars.

it’s mind-boggling.

books, for me, are the last bastion for creative and energetic thought. reading a book can (provided you leave that top 10 list well alone) open your mind to some incredible worlds, and generate a million fantasies which will keep you smiling longer than that simple one involving that vulcan chick in her catsuit (admittedly that’s a good fantasy, too, but there’s only so many things you can do with a vulcan chick before she gets tired of you and uses that very “realistic” vulcan neck pinch thing on you). i’ve always loved a book which can draw you into its world and leave you feeling you’re just a breath away from being there. movies never really do that for me. they feed my eyes, my ears, and seem to lull my mind rather than open it.

roadmarks is one of those books which is “not very realistic” but blows my mind anyway.

naturally, this leads to that other magnificent book i finished reading, dust of dreams. when i see erikson’s got a new book out, i know already i’m going to get something which is going to peel my mind like a dry onion. it’s going to rev my inner engine and make me feel like a super-powered reading god as i consume its pages with all the ravenous joy of a werewolf let loose in a locked locker room full of cheerleaders. i know by the time i’ve finished reading, i’ll be in a state of near-ruin as i’ve lived and died with a cast of characters so human and so intense that losing them feels i’ve lost all power of speech. i know the last few chapters will leave me shaking and bouncing in my seat as all manner of warcraft is served up on my plate in all its desperate glory. i will be laughing, crying, swearing, shouting, wailing and wowing more than an 11-year old given a battlenet account and a few months off school.

and while i truly enjoyed dust of dreams, i must express my personal loathing of the creator of this novel. mister erikson, wherever you are: i hate you with all the passion of my soul because, dammit, i wish i could write half as good as this. i love the humour, the eccentricities of the characters, the powerful action and the ever-rising pressure of each book which always culminates in an explosion of violence and death at the end of every single book. how he can do this for so many books so quickly just simply defies belief. so, steven erikson – i hate you, you mad man. please keep writing!

while in korea, i visited a korean bookshop, in hope i could find some of my favourite books translated in korean. this way, i thought, i could share more easily some things with my wife. my hope was for erikson’s novels (a faint hope, but you never know!), and though i couldn’t find that, i did find a copy of william gibson’s ever-important and groundbreakingly fun, neuromancer. i bought it for her as she had been watching the matrix. “stuff that,” i told her. “try this – the real thing.”

i since had to re-re-re-re-re-re-re-read this one, too, for myself (in english, though – my korean is so terrible i still have problems saying hello), and found it just as inspirational as it always was. the reason i find it so inspirational is it really is a product of its time, yet still speaks of our future in a way that shows the author wasn’t sticking his head up his own ass to make up complicated physics-related terminology just to appease kids who’ve watched too much star trek and think “anomaly” is an acceptable scientific term to use when describing something. how something can be an anomaly is beyond me. i prefer red dwarf’s “it’s a red swirly thing in space.”

anomaly is such a cop-out.

in any case, neuromancer’s strength lies in its simplistic prose and the fact that the fantastic is made more accessible by the words chosen than by trying to impress everyone with some rather drab and well-used scifi clichés.

finally, in a change of pace, i’ve been reading a recently released collection of poems by dorothy porter, called the bee hut. i’m a fan of good poetry, and dorothy porter’s has always been of great appeal to me. as we head closer to the anniversary of her death last year, i felt it even more appropriate to brush up on her words. particularly chilling and poignant is the very last poem – the last poem she ever wrote – which describes the magnificent view from her room and the fact they seem to have given her a room she rather likes, and says, finally, something in me / despite everything / can’t believe my luck.

it really did give me chills to read that, and also made this old grown cynic feel slightly emotional about the whole collection. no, that wasn’t a watery glint of sadness in the corner of my eye – that’s just a precurser to a murderous rampage, so take a few steps back, please.

i recommend poetry, if you haven’t really gotten into it. it can be as diverse as those who write it. if you don’t like romantic pap, then you can always burn your copy of wordsworth and buy something a little edgier. i recently picked up a copy of obscenities by michael casey, and thought it brilliant – tightly wound and rough to be sure, but brilliant nonetheless.

for my next set here, i will talk about the next books i have on my list of reads, including robert rankin’s retromancer (which i was pleased to get an advance copy of – yay for working in a bookstore!), andersen prunty’s the beard (i really really really loved zerostrata, so am looking forward to this one), bateman’s murphy’s law (finally available in australia in the cool black covers), and an odd book which has slipped into my possession called the red wolf conspiracy by robert v.s. redick (i know nothing about it at all). i’m also re-reading a collection of lovecraft’s short stories and might pop a mention of those.

in the meantime, i will end this little presentation of the books i’ve been reading by sharing with you a poem from casey’s book, called slickness. i really like it for the way it just rolls down the page in the same way the event probably just rolled with bravado and how these little things always go. the book is a collection of experiences through the vietnam war by casey – then a military police officer. it’s a bizarre little collection at times, but i like it anyway.

so here it is (i hope you don’t mind, mister michael casey if i reproduce it here): slickness

You
Think
You’re slick
I says to him
You
Think
You’re tough
Go ahead
Go head
Hit me
Hit me
Hit me
And the ass-hole
He hit me

Tags: books, fantasy, library, my library, review, scifi