Just finished A Day and A Night and A Day by Glen Duncan. He is quickly becoming my favourite author. This relatively short tale features one-eyed, mixed race American Augustus Rose and his extraordinary and deeply uncomfortable story, with a fascinating supporting cast. The astonishing hurricane of events mingles with (for me at least) some pretty fundamental philosophical questions, none of which are exactly comforting. The inclusion of a further sub-plot involving a waif on a Scottish Island seems almost irrelevant, but nonetheless adds to the repeated shocks that totally submerged me in this book.
I absolutely loved it.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith.

Ninjas are also present... The original text - as far as I can tell - has been elided with references to the 'unmentionable' walking undead plaguing the country. On the whole he gets away with it, but the joke is perhaps wearing a bit thin towards the end; I couldn't help feeling that there should be more subtext, more plot, on the zombie front. Instead, most of the plot just follows that of the original and doesn't really rely on the zombies; they're just *there*, a passing hazard who might eat your entire kitchen staff, or, confused, a field-full of cauliflowers.

I'm undecided about the continuity errors: skunks and chipmunks in a Hertfordshire forest, and muskets which can be used repeatedly while somersaulting off the back of a horse - I wonder if that's just an American author rather than something a bit deeper - but they don't slow it down.

Nonetheless, an amusing afternoon or two, though perhaps better on a beach than in Hemel.

Nothing too high brow, but i have just finished reading Ozzy Osbourne's latest biography, and it is hilarious!

Obviously it's been a quiet couple of months in the literary world. Certainly I've been lazily re-reading old favourites rather than trying anything new.

I kicked myself out of that rut last week by going to Waterstones and asking the staff about a book which, "... I read about on the BBC News site yesterday. It's just been shortlisted for an award, but I can't remember which one. The title is two words with a comma between them and part of the plot is set in the 30s".

All hail Waterstones' staff, because on their very first guess they named Boxer, Beetle by Ned Beauman.

Kevin Broom's life isn't brilliant, he has a genetic disorder which makes him permanently stink of rotten fish, he lives in an ex-council flat about a fried chicken take-away which only attracts customers because the chef is selling dope and he has no friends saving those he's met through on-line forums for his hobby, collecting Nazi memorabilia.

Things don’t improve for him a great deal when he’s kidnapped by a Welsh assassin who has murdered his employer and who appears to work for the Thule society, the occult wing of the Nazi movement, long since thought defunct.

As Kevin tries to escape, alert the authorities or at least find out what his captor is looking for there’s a parallel plot running in the 1930s where Philip Erskine, an aristocratic fascist with an interest in eugenics, finds his life entangled with that of Seth ‘Sinner’ Roach, a talented but obnoxious and self destructive 9-toed Jewish boxer from the East End.

The plot is as daft as the cast list, with twists to take in artificial languages, swastika marked beetles, much homosexual coitus interruptus and bad town planning. All in it’s a very good first novel; page-turning, amusing (occasionally laugh-out-loud funny), well researched and intelligent. It’s not perfect, the modern day framing story is a bit lightweight and not closely enough tied to the 1930s tale (this is certainly no Cryptonomicon), but it’s more than enough to make me look out for Beauman’s next novel.

Bit of a strange one for the book review thread now, a book with no story (indeed very few words for its size) - Information is beautiful by David McCandless.

This is really more of a coffee-table book and uses innovative, clever and sometimes funny graphics to illustrate the world in which we live. From word clouds showing what the newspapers say causes cancer through Martini glasses that illustrate the distribution of worldwide wealth to diagrams showing the actors who trump Kevin Bacon in the six degrees of separation game all of human life is in this book.

It's an incredible read, even if you can't imagine that you'll enjoy what is, basically, 250 pages of graphs. My wife called me a sad nerd when I ordered it and then spent an hour reading it over my shoulder.

Amazon have the hard back version for a tenner (with free delivery) and, at that price, it's a steal.

Just finished A week in December by Sebastian Faulks. Basically a cynical observation of a group of (slightly cliche) Londoners whose lives are all interconnected. Slow in places and the stories of a couple of characters can be quite boring at times - Faulks likes to research them to the nth degree - but overall a good read, and I enjoyed the last third in particular. One annoying point: as in Birdsong, one of the characters conducts a deep psychological self examination during a conversation with someone which I didn't find believable.

I'm not normally a fan of sci-fi, but this week I've been reading a book recommended (and lent) to me by my boss, so I thought I'd best give it a go.

Hyperion by Dan Simmons is set around 900 years into the future. Mankind has colonised large parts of our spiral arm of the galaxy, thanks to faster-than-light spaceships and also 'farcasters', devices which warp space between them and allow instantaneous travel across vast distances.

Aside from mankind the explored universe appears to contain no intelligent species, but humankind does share their space with the Technocore - a collective of artificial intelligences, with its own agenda and god-like predictive powers - and the Ousters - humans who left civilisation centuries previously and have reverted to barbarism and adapted to life in micro-gravity.

There is also evidence of, now extinct, alien life. Nine colonised worlds, all tectonically inactive, which are riddled with huge passageways. Of these 9 the most mysterious is Hyperion, which is also home to the Time Tombs, structures which are protected by distortions in time and also by the legend of the Shrike, an unstoppable alien killer.

The Shrike has become the stuff of legends and the centre of a vast religion, with stories that those who make the pilgrimage to the Time Tombs will meet it and it will grant one of them a wish and kill the others.

The book opens as the Time Tombs themselves start to open and an Ouster fleet approaches Hyperion. The Church of the Shrike assembles 7 disparate characters to make the final pilgrimage to the tombs.

En route the characters tell their stories to see if they can understand why they are the ones who have been chosen.

In almost every way this book is a very long introduction to the next book in the series and serves only to explain the state of the galaxy in the future and to set up the plot strands to be followed by Fall of Hyperion.

That said, it's not a bad book. It's well-written and keeps you turning the pages and there's a well executed flip of perspective in the closing section. It's also quite playful in places, from the structure borrowed from The Canterbury Tales, to the frequent Keats references, but I didn't really find anything in it to make me think better of sci-fi. It certainly didn't open my eyes to what can be done with the genre in the same way as, say, Jeff Noon's Vurt. I'm getting the next book tomorrow, so tune in in a couple of days to see if I'll change my mind.

You might prefer his two 'Troy' books: "Ilium" and "Olympus". Completely different, and I think much better books than the Shrike books.

Well my boss reckons that Hyperion and Fall of Hyperion are really just scene-setters for the next two, which he says are the really good books, so I might keep on going and see how it works out.

I quit at the end of 'fall' and haven't been persuaded to seek out the later ones.

Superb. My brother will love this - he's an ex SAS programmer turned Programme Manager for a big team of SAS geeks.

"Starman - the truth behind the legend of Yuri Gagarin" by Jamie Doran and Piers Bizony.

A biography of the first man in space, and a history of the Russian space program, from interviews in 1998 with the people who were there.

If you have any interest in space exploration, or any feeling for modern history, you should read this. It's well written, though there's a feeling throughout of 'made for TV' which is perhaps to be expected, given that the authors make TV documentaries, and it avoids the usual cliches to give an excellent view of the man with all his faults and flaws.

I picked this up after hearing a lecture by one of the authors (intended to illustrate the collection of original photographs currently on display at the Albert Hall; obviously he covered the material in the book, but the book is much more detailed than he could cover in an hour.

Recommended. Poyokhali!

My latest read is a bit of an odd one. As you might have noticed, I'm a big fan of Glen Duncan, author of I, Lucifer, Weathercock and A Day and a Night and a Day amongst other favourites, so I was pleased to see he'd published another book.
However, as its title suggests, it's a move into the realms of horror/fantasy - a genre I have avoided since devouring the Anne Rice Vampire Chronicles as a much younger (and almost certainly camper) man. So, I approached The Last Werewolf with some trepidation.
It essentially does what it says on the tin: it is the chronicle of Jacob Marlowe, who has been suffering with The Curse for almost two hundred years. Discovering that his lupine brethren have been hunted to extinction apart from him, Jake has decided he's had enough too and won't fight the shadowy self-appointed organisation that deals with his kind (and vampires - "boochies" - too).
Clearly, there's a bit more to it and once again, amongst the gore, Duncan uses Marlowe to philosophise about the meaning of life or otherwise and writes with his customary wit, humour and impressive knowledge.
As a fan of the author and of a good tale littered with blood, guts, sex (and sometimes all three), I thoroughly enjoyed it, in spite of a few convenient plot devices (we're talking about werewolves here, a little tinkering with coincidence is hardly an issue!).
Definitely recommended.

After a pause to get my breath back (and rinse the lycanthropic characters out of my mind) I've now just started The Snowman, by Jo Nesbo. It seems that Scandinavia is the new police/thriller Mecca, so I'm starting with this one on the recommendation of my Step-Mother-in-Law. Is that a term?

I absolutely loved A Day and a Night and a Day. I thought it was an even more gritty and honest insight into the human condition than Any Human Heart.

Currently reading The Junior Officers' Reading Club by Patrick Hennessey. A very honest and quite moving insight into life as an officer in the British Army through the Iraq and Afghan conflicts. Surprisingly readable, too.

Agreed, Jim, I was stunned by A Day and a Night and a Day. One of my all-time favourites, I think.

Might I suggest another recent read of mine (shameless plug ahoy)? A Better Basra, by Caroline Jaine. An account of mother-of-three Jaine's 100 days spent under fire in Iraq, whilst working for the Foreign Office as part of the British reconstruction effort in 2006.

Oh, alright, she's my wife, but it's still a rollicking good read. You can buy it on Amazon as well, but she only gets 40p...

Hmm - may have to follow up on "A Day..." as I enjoyed I, Lucifer and Weathercock

Obligatory warning: I'm something of a Neal Stephenson fan - in fact, I'd rate his Baroque series as one of the best written tales in the last twenty years.

REAMDE (yes, that's how it's spelt) tells, over a thousand pages and twenty days, of Zula, who has the poor taste in boyfriends that leads to her kidnapping by the Russian mafia in an attempt to decrypt a file being held to ransom by chinese virus writers operating through a massive online multi-player game.

Al Queda (or some reasonably facsimile thereof), the CIA, and MI6 are courtesy details. The story is without doubt a caper - think Jason Bourne - but it does hang together. Most of the characters are sensible and thoughtful without being supermen, and the plot doesn't hang on deliberate character stupidity - though some of the henchmen are less than brilliant.

All in all, a damn good thriller. Recommended.

Well, I finished the Jo Nesbo; not that impressed. It almost felt like a parody of Girl With A Tattooed Hornet's Nest. Weak, clichéd characters, absurd, unsurvivable "action" sequences and ludicrous plot. Avoid.

Oh blimey Jim, I could have told you that, I found Nesbo / Snowman terrible, as you say incredibly cliched and a daft story, however not being put off by one of her books, I tried another one. It was just as bad!!

Jims United on this one!

I'm currently half way through Locked In by Kerry Wilkinson. It's a police procedural and is the first of a trilogy featuring newly-promoted DS Jessica Daniel - based at a station in Manchester - and her attempts to catch a murderer who leaves his apparently unconnected victims in houses that are locked and have seemingly no forced entry.

It's ok, though lacks a bit of polish. There's something a little bit amateurish and tiresome about the lead character and the storytelling, though now it is getting into its stride, I'm enjoying it more.

I am fairly convinced that it is self-published and printed on demand - nothing wrong with that these days - the clue being in the slightly higher level of typos and mistakes than you would see in a professionally proof-read offering and a rather floppier cover. I could be a detective, me.

I gave up on Birdsong and Sebastian Faulkes at the same time. Not often I give up on a book, but this did nothing for me at all. Slow and boring do spring to mind though.

I gave up on Birdsong and Sebastian Faulkes at the same time. Not often I give up on a book, but this did nothing for me at all. Slow and boring do spring to mind though. [/quote]

Same for me.

Funny that, I loved it.

I really wanted to like it, but just couldn't engage with it.

It took a bit of getting going, but worth the effort.

Now anything by Ian McEwan n the other hand.....utter turd. Why use one word when you can fill half a page...

I agree with you on Ian McEwan.

Hurray, I've read something for the first time in a while.

In fact I've read Snuff by Terry Pratchett.

Alarmingly next year is the 30th anniversary of the publication of the first Discworld book, The colour of magic, the novel that introduced us to a flat world carried through space on the shoulders of four mighty elephants who, in turn, stand atop a great turtle who swims through the endless void.

What started out as a fantasy series with a few jokes in, a sort of Douglas Adams meets Lord of the Rings, has become a complete world as its geography, politics and history have been mapped out over the course of (to date) 39 novels.

On the Discworld 8 is a magical numbers; there are 8 days in a week, 8 seasons in a year and 8 colours in their spectrum. It therefore seems fitting that the 8th Discworld book, Guards! Guards! should have introduced one of its most enduring heroes; Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork city night watch.

Thirty-one books ago Vimes was the drunken and cynical captain of a night-watch which had dwindled to only 3 members, unemployable elsewhere in the city, until a new and eager recruit kindled his downtrodden pride and set him on the road to becoming the commander of a revitalised watch, a national hero, a Duke, a father and a blackboard monitor. Snuff sees him taking a holiday.

To be fair the rise of Vimes has made it increasingly hard to write novels about him. He commands a large and efficient police-force, which means that while he's in Ankh-Morpork at least it's hard to imagine him going toe-to-toe with many criminals. Hence we've seen him sent abroad (The Fifth Elephant), to war (Jingo!), down into Dwarven mines (Thud) and even back into his own past (Night Watch). In this novel he's out in the countryside, visiting his wife's ancestral home.

Naturally he finds crime there; a big crime hidden in plain view. Equally naturally he is drawn to investigate, despite being out of his jurisdiction and under his wife's watchful eye.

As a skewed police procedural this isn't a bad story, but it groans under the weight of supporting Sam Vimes. Too much of it revisits places that he's been in the past ... equal rights for a despised species, yup did that in Feet of Clay, class war, that would be Jingo, intelligent, cunning and deadly foe who Vimes understands a bit too well for his own comfort, sounds a lot like Carcer from Night Watch, etc.

Add to that the lack of any real peril (underlined by the lack of Death from the pages) or mystery in the story and you've got a rather disappointing outing for Discworld's favourite policeman. However, it's redeemed by a few good lines, including a brilliant closing line, and the warmth and feel-good factor that Pratchett always adds.

So, not a great addition to the cannon, but an OK read to pass a few hours. I bought another William Boyd book yesterday (Ordinary Thunderstorm), so I'll try to get that reviewed before Easter

Now you are just playing with me. I need to know -

What is it like to see this eighth colour?

The 8th colour is octarine, the colour of magic, visible only to those who are sensitive to magic. It's generally described as a sort of greeny-purple.