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Book Club - by Luke

Book Club - October 2006

The Silver Chair

October 31st 2006 07:14


'The Silver Chair' is the sixth book in C. S. Lewis' 'Chronicles of Narnia' series. It is also one of the few books in the series to not feature the Pevensie children.

Like most of the Narnia books I've read so far, I enjoyed this adventure immensely. Eustace (previously introduced to us in 'The Voyage of the Dawn Treader') goes to a rather horridly new age school known as Experiment House. Hoping to escape some bullies, he and his friend Jill run and hide in some bushes and Eustace tells Jill about Narnia. At this point, Aslan calls them to his own country - a high and beautiful land that overlooks all of Narnia and the seas surrounding it. Aslan has a quest for the two children, he asks that they find King Caspian's long-lost son.


And so the two children find themselves bound for the harsh Giant-dwelling lands to the north of Narnia, accompanied by a pessimistic but good-hearted Marshwiggle named Puddleglum. Lewis dazzles us with more fantastic peoples and lands... we meet the Lady of the Green Kirtle and her loyal and insane Black Knight, see into the less-than-pleasant homelands of the Giants, and also visit the Underland - a vast underground world of caverns and catacombs inhabited by dour and bizarrely-hewn creatures known as Earthmen.

Of course, there is also the obligatory lessons to be learned as Jill visits Narnia for the first time, and the Silver Chair of the title is only a brief (albeit important) part of the story. Puddleglum is a great character and I loved his hearty and resigned pessimism throughout the adventure. There were also a few aspects of the story that felt like setups for the final Narnia volume to come, especially the brief appearance of a sleeping titan known as Father Time, and I can't wait to see how it all ends.


I really tore through this one, read it no time. I was afraid I wouldn't like it as I knew the Pevensie children didn't feature but Eustace and Jill were more than apt substitutes, and the ending of the book back at Experiment House was brilliant (I'd love to say why I liked it, but I don't want to spoil it!). Bring on 'The Last Battle'.
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Posted By: Luke - Category: Fantasy
   


Hannibal Rising - the New Hannibal Lector novel

October 29th 2006 11:29


Well, looks like the whores of Hollywood have struck again! 'Hannibal Rising' - the fourth book to feature charming serial killer, cannibal and all-round hero to the masses Hannibal Lector, is being released in early December to coincide with the release of the film by the same name.

I can't help it, I'm a born cynic and I think this reeks of pure market demand... if Thomas Harris had any shred of artistic merit left in him (and I'm not saying he never had any talent - this is just about where he's at right now) then he'd be writing all kinds of books rather than just releasing a Hannibal book whenever some Hollywood executives decided to greenlight a new film about the popular screen character.

Okay... so I'm cool with the first two Hannibal Lector novels, 'Red Dragon' and 'Silence of the Lambs' were both written as books for a book-reading audience. Hannibal is a secondary character in these novels, and it wasn't until 'Silence of the Lambs' did so well that the character was given the majority of the limelight.

Anyway, Ridley Scott got it into his head that he wanted to film the next Hannibal novel. Harris had written 'Hannibal' some ten years after 'Silence of the Lambs', obviously bouyed by the popularity of his creation he decided to focus an entire book on him. Fair enough I guess, and fair enough if someone wants to film it because they know it'll be a hit, but when a story is written primarily as a vehicle for a character rather than a plot then I don't think it's really going to be on par with it's predecessors.

But as for this newest offering, 'Hannibal Rising'... it purely came about as film. Some producers wanted to squeeze some more money out of the 'franchise', so they decided to put together a prequel that would show Hannibal as a youngster and show how he became a monstrous killer. So I guess Harris was commissioned to write the novel... I don't know how much of it was his choice, but the main motivations behind this whole project was that someone wanted to make a film so Harris had to write a book for it to be based on.

Here's how I imagine the conversation to have gone.
HOLLYWOOD SCHMUCK: Ever thought about writing another Hannibal book?
THOMAS HARRIS: Nah.
HOLLYWOOD SCHMUCK: Well, we want to make a movie that would show the character's origins. Interested?
THOMAS HARRIS: Maybe.
HOLLYWOOD SCHMUCK: How bout a couple of million to write it?
THOMAS HARRIS: Actually, a prequel sounds like a great idea. I'm in!
HOLLYWOOD SCHMUCK: Awesome. Here, have a bag of coke.

I find the whole idea to be pretty shitty. Do we really need to see where Hannibal comes from? I don't know about you fearless reader, but I always felt that the best thing the character had going for him was his mystique. The guy's meant to be a superhuman genius... the more we know about him the more human he's going to seem, and the less cool and enigmatic he'll become. And does anyone really even care to see the character played by someone other than Anthony Hopkins these days anyway? I predict either a very brief run at the cineams or a straight-to-dvd effort. The whole thing sounds about as appealing as the recent straight-to-dvd prequels for 'Carlito's Way' and 'Dumb and Dumber'.

Thomas Harris has apparently been commissioned to write two books, of which this is the first. Does this mean that we're to suspect another Hannibal film will be on it's way after this one? It's not as if Harris is rolling in fresh and interesting ideas... he wrote one non-Hannibal book in 1975, had two hits with 'Red Dragon' and 'Silence of the Lambs' in the 80s and has only pumped out the last two market-driven Hannibal stories since. If he was more than a one-trick pony he might've written something else in the decades since he first created the periphery character of Hannibal Lector. Blah.
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Posted By: Luke - Category: News and Miscellany
   


Maximum Rock And Roll - The Story of ACDC

October 26th 2006 11:23


I think it's fair to say that the Motley Crue autobiography, 'The Dirt', opened a lot of doors for band-based biographies. Previously, music biographies were things reserved for long-dead bands and highly revered singer-songwriters. Walk into the music section of your local bookstore and you'd find about a dozen Beatles books, five or so Elvis books,a book or two on Bob Dylan, maybe a book on Johnny Cash, and about ten large format picture books about the Rolling Stones. And that was it.

Motley Crue's 'The Dirt' was a sensational tale of sin, debauchery and rock 'n' roll flavoured adventure and it was a smash hit. People who didn't normally read were interested in it, just to read about the infamous hi-jinks that the Crue got up to in their glory days. People who didn't even like the band's music were reading it for the same reason. All of a sudden the publishers realised they had a bigger market for this stuff than they had previously thought, and all manner of pending submitted biographies were given the greenlight, and previously out-of-print books were given a second life as well.

And so, finally, thanks to books like 'The Dirt', we have a proper biography of AC/DC - the worldwide kings of hard rock. The life of the band AC/DC could probably fill several books, and it's amazing that a proper biography about them has never been written before. I'm very happy and was very excited when this book turned up in bookstores this week... I had no idea it was even coming!

I'm also excited because Murray Engleheart (along with some chap named Arnaud Duriex) has written it. Engleheart is probably Sydney's foremost writer and journalist when it comes to home-grown hard rock... he lives and breathes it and can often be found behind the hard rock column in the Drum Media (Sydney's music street-press), amongst other things. I read the introduction of this book today and I'm feeling very enthusiastic about it... there's nothing better than reading an in-depth biography written by someone who is passionate about their subject. Good shit.

I'm hoping this biography helps keep the doors open for future biographical accounts of other big rock bands too. Recently we got a Midnight Oil biography with 'Beds Are Burning'... but I'd love to see a proper 'Guns n Roses' biography, that would be really ace, and I'm sure an in-depth account of Metallica's glory days would be a good story too.

Expect to see a review of 'Maximum Rock and Roll' sometime in the nearish future.
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Posted By: Luke - Category: Music
   


The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

October 25th 2006 06:23


The 5th book in the Chronicles of Narnia, 'The Voyage of the Dawn Treader' once again features the Pevensie children and is set only three years on from the events of 'Prince Caspian'. Of the five Narnia books I have read so far, I think this one is perhaps my favourites.

Edmund and Lucy are whisked off to Narnia (their older siblings are now too old to go there) once again, this time via a magically-realistic painting of a ship. Along for the journey this time is Eustace Scrubb - their cousin, a rather bothersome and rotten boy always out to spoil other people's fun and ready to moan and complain about anything and everything.

On their arrival in Narnia, the Pevensie children and Eustace find themselves aboard the Dawn Treader, a ship under the command of King Caspian (from the previous novel). He is on a double-quest, of sorts. He is sailing east to explore the various islands - discovered and undiscovered alike - in the hopes of finding seven loyal lords that his treacherous uncle had sent away some years previously, and (mainly at the behest of the valiant mouse Reepicheep) aims to sail as far east as possible - to see what lies beyond their maps, and maybe to find Aslan's country.

This is probably the most epic of the Narnia books so far... the story follows a quest format, our heroes travelling from island to island and encountering all manner of strange, disturbing and wonderful phenomena. We meet dragons, dufflepuds, sea serpents and retired stars, witness the Island Where Dreams Come True (a rather nightmarish sequence) and see a kingdom of merpeople. Most memorable of all is the book's final sequences, which I won't spoil here.

My favourite character in the Narnia books so far would have to be the fearless mouse Reepicheep, a more fitting end to such a moving (and amusing) hero could not have been written. Aslan only features a little in this book, but his words - as always - are steeped in Christian-like parable and never has C. S. Lewis' Christian agenda been more apparent than in one particular sentence spoken by Aslan here, but I think it's forgiveable because Lewis still manages to be a little bit subtle about it and it's only a brief part of the book. The character of Eustace makes for some of the book's more interesting sequences and his eventual redemption (which I suspected was coming from the start) is one of the more touching chapters in the entire series so far.

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Posted By: Luke - Category: Fantasy
   


Jonestown... Alan Jones and Homosexuality.

October 24th 2006 06:00


Well, it's a big week for books


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Posted By: Luke - Category: News and Miscellany
   


Schapelle Corby writes a book?

October 23rd 2006 09:45
It appears that a biography of some sort is due for release on November the 10th. I've seen signs in two Angus and Robertson stores now, both proclaiming that they will have this book in stock in the near future.

I know very little about it but here's what I do know


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Posted By: Luke - Category: True Crime
   


What is the difference between literature and general fiction?

October 22nd 2006 12:38
Walk into a bookstore, almost any bookstore, and you will probably notice that the fiction books are divided into sections. You have your science-fiction and fantasy sections (usually together), your crime/mystery section, sometimes a romance section, and then you'll have the general fiction section and a literature section.

A question I am often asked is... what is the difference between literature and a normal book


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Posted By: Luke - Category: News and Miscellany
   


The Legacy of the Da Vinci Code

October 20th 2006 04:45

Now, you might wonder what all these books down the left hand side here have in common. If that's the case, I might just as well say to you "This isn't Sesame Street, none of them isn't just like the other, and it's not a freaking IQ test either". It should be obvious that they all share some kind of similarity, and if you didn't pick that well maybe you're not reading the right blog. These books are just the tip of a fastly emerging iceberg of literature that has remained at our sidelines for many years now. For their emergence, I think we can thank the eminent Mr. Daniel Brown and his hugely popular thriller 'The Da Vinci Code'.

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Posted By: Luke - Category: News and Miscellany
   


The Alphabet of Manliness

October 19th 2006 11:08


Maddox (real name George Ouzounian) is perhaps best known for his phenomenal website 'The Best Page in the Universe' - a satirical, side-splitting and completely politically incorrect series of articles, cartoons and rants aimed at pissing on the moronic, overtly left-wing, easy offended, conservative and pretty much anyone else you can think of (The Best Page in the Universe). To put it simply, he's my kind of guy


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Comedy
   


Monster Blood Tattoo

October 18th 2006 06:07


This is a new-ish book by one D. M. Cornish (I thought this was a pen-name at first, but some rather shallow digging on the internet proved that it probably isn't). It's a 'childrens' fantasy book (oh how I loathe that classification!)... well, to be more precise, it's a trilogy of books, this one that I've just read is only the first and is called 'Foundling


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Fantasy
   


More new releases

October 17th 2006 12:41
Some current new releases that have caught my eye.

The Harsh Cry of the Heron - Lian Hearn's follow up to the 'Tales of the Otori' trilogy. This book is set around 16 years after the original three novels and promises to tie up some of the questions left unanswered in those books. There is a lot of room for Hearn to explore lots of different aspects of the realm she created in her previous books too... should be good


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Posted By: Luke - Category: News and Miscellany
   


Truckers

October 15th 2006 12:47


'Truckers' is the first book in a trilogy of children's books by Terry Pratchett written in the early 90s. They're a few of the handful of books that Pratchett has written not set in the Discworld universe. 'Truckers', whilst being a fairly slight book and written in a manner that makes it possible for people of all ages to enjoy it, is very amusing and a cracking good adventure too


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Fantasy
   


Fantasy and Science-Fiction resources

October 12th 2006 12:10
Was doing a bit of trawling across the web today... looking at a bit of this, and a bit of that, and ended up collecting together a fair bit of sci-fi and fantasy sites (often under the more open-ended name of 'speculative fiction' - a good title as far as grouping the genres together goes, but I doubt it will ever take off from a marketing perspective).

Anyway, here's some sites I found


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Fantasy
   


And the Booker Prize winner is...!

October 11th 2006 06:41


Well, it looks like Kate Grenville didn't win. Oh well. Instead, the prize went to Kiran Desai, for her book 'The Inheritance of Loss', an epic novel about family and globalisation, telling parallel and connected stories in New York and the Himilayas


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Posted By: Luke - Category: News and Miscellany
   


The Kite Runner

October 10th 2006 08:53


'The Kite Runner' is considered to be the first Afghan novel written in English. It was written by Khaled Hosseini, an Afghan who emigrated to America in the late 70s in the wake of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. This book was published in 2003, and tells a moving story of friendship, betrayal and redemption against the backdrop of Afghanistan's ongoing struggles under various regimes - the stable Monarchist-ruled Afghanistan, the ill-fated Republic in the mid-70s, the brutal militaristic rule of the Russians, and the devastatingly insane Taliban regime of the 90s


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Literature
   


The Man Booker Prize

October 9th 2006 07:34
The Man Booker Prize is probably the most prestigous of the various book prize competitions alive and kicking today. Whereas the Pulitzer is only available to Americans, and the Costa (previously the Whitbread) award is only for UK residents, the Man Booker prize covers denizens of the Commonwealth and Ireland... so that means the UK and Australia, plus various other members of the Commonwealth, and I think India is counted as well and maybe Canada. Amazing!

Anyway, this year's prize winner is due to be announced tomorrow. The shortlist is


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Posted By: Luke - Category: News and Miscellany
   


Prince Caspian

October 8th 2006 10:32


'Prince Caspian' is the 4th book in C. S. Lewis's 'Chronicles of Narnia' series, though it was originally published second (and written third!). The Pevensie children from 'The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe' are once again the main stars of the action and find themselves whisked away back to Narnia some time after their original adventures there


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Fantasy
   


Neuromancer

October 6th 2006 05:12


Few writers can claim to have been as pivotal to a subgenre as much as William Gibson can in regards to 'cyberpunk'. Gibson virtually invented all the stylistic hallmarks of the genre, as well as coining many terms (including 'cyberspace') that have now become part of our everyday language. His early 80s work in fiction can be regarded as prophetic in this respect


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Science Fiction
   


Flogging a dead writer until money bleeds from their wounds

October 4th 2006 12:54
Virginia Andrews


Okay, so this has been irritating me for quite some time now. There's this author, Virginia Andrews... she wrote this book in 1979 called 'Flowers in the Attic'... it was quite famous, a big bestseller, and was even turned into a film. She followed it up with four more books in the same series, one of which was released posthumously (and with a bit of editing). All in all, she wrote about 6 books while she was alive... she died in 1986, just seven years after having her first book published


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Posted By: Luke - Category: News and Miscellany
   


Brilliance of the Moon

October 3rd 2006 07:25


'Brilliance of the Moon' is the third book in the Tales of the Otori series by Australian author Lian Hearn and rounds off the initial trilogy that the books form. It's a lot faster paced and to-the-point than it's predecessors and I found myself tearing through it rather quickly, eager to see how it all wraps up


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Fantasy
   


Red Dwarf books

October 2nd 2006 09:51


'Red Dwarf' is a great science-fiction/comedy television series that ran for around 10 years in the UK. It concerns one Dave Lister, a lowly technician aboard the mining ship Red Dwarf. He smuggles a cat onboard the ship for company, but the offence manages to get him put into stasis (suspended animation) for 18 months as punishment. Meanwhile, while he's frozen in time, his annoying bunkmate and superior - Arnold J. Rimmer - accidentally causes the deaths of everyone on the entire ship. The radiation levels that result from the accident make it too dangerous for the ship's computer, Holly, to let Lister out of stasis. So Lister stays frozen in time for 3 million years. When the radiation finally dies down enough for him to be let out, he finds he is now the last human left alive in a lonely universe, and that the ship is a long way from home


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Science Fiction
   


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