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Book Club - by Suhaili

Book Club - January 2007

The Bartimaeus Trilogy comes to Film!

January 31st 2007 08:58


Well, at the moment there seems to be no shortage of children's fantasy novels coming to the screen. Following the success of the last four (soon to be five) Harry Potter films, we've had a film adaptation of 'Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events', 'Eragon' and the soon-to-be-released 'Inkheart'. Also in the works is a big-budget film version of the awesome 'His Dark Materials' trilogy.


And now, getting in on the action is the first book in the Bartimaeus Trilogy, 'The Amulet of Samarkand'. Sydney Pollack is producing, and Mirimax is the studio pushing it. No actors have been announced, but a director is currently (albeit not officially, and these things can and do change) attached to the project. This director is the Oscar-nominated John Madden, most well-known for 'Shakespeare in Love'. An interesting and possibly inspired choice, if he ends up doing it (for a comparison, the 'His Dark Materials' film currently being made had no less than four or five different well-known directors attached to direct at different points, including American Beauty-director Sam Mendes).

For those of you in the dark on this one, the Bartimaeus Trilogy is a wonderful work of speculative fiction. A kind of anti-Harry Potter that shows us an England ruled by a tyrannical class of right-wing magicians who get all their power through the enslavement of various demons. Bartimaeus is a droll djinn conjured up by Nathaniel, an abused magician's apprentice looking to get revenge on a high-profile magician said to have stolen the powerful Amulet of Samarkand. The trilogy is a complex and risky work of fantasy, set roughly over a decade, and propelled by a mostly unsympathetic protagonist and fabulously dark wit. For a full review, go here. A film version of this could be very exciting... if done right.


As usual, I'm trying not to be too cynical. I'd hate for this to become a cartoonish CGI-ladden affair and for Bartimaeus to become a wisecracking Eddie Murphy/Robin Williams-style animated character. I'm struggling to see how else a big budget film would tackle this though. I suppose I shouldn't be too critical when so little has been announced about this film... 'Harry Potter' and 'His Dark Materials' have both attracted a huge range of impressive talent, hopefully 'The Amulet of Samarkand' can do the same.
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Posted By: Luke - Category: News and Miscellany
   


The Handmaid's Tale

January 30th 2007 08:06


'1984'. 'A Brave New World'. 'Farenheit 541'. 'The Handmaid's Tale'. These are the classics of dystopian science-fiction. Visions of a future not entirely fictitious to our minds, reflective of our current existence as a perversion of ideals. Warnings of what could come forth from the right wing or ultra-conservative stances of our contemporaries. The ultimate in terrifying literature.

When I recently read Margaret Atwod's critically-acclaimed and multi-award winning novel, 'The Handmaid's Maid' I was completely blown away by her unique but scarily familiar vision. It could be as if '1984' was written by a woman. I don't mean to diminish either '1984' or 'The Handmaid's Tale' though, they are both incredibly important works of literature in their own rights... to the extent that I fear to cheapen either of them by comparing them here (but not enough to make me delete this paragraph, ho ho). To put it simply, this book = wow.

The handmaid of the title is Offred, one of the first wave of handmaids established in Gileadian society. This is the near future, a sizeable portion of western society is sterile, and the nation of Gilead has established itself in North America after the en masse assassination of the President and his cabinet (via a mysterious act of terrorism). It is a totalitarian theocracy engaged in various wars with other religious groups or countries (it isn't exactly clear), and it's oppression of the population is fundamentally tied to women. With the abundance of sterility, women have become all but useless in the eyes of Gileadian society.

The best women are designated Wives, and allowed to marry high-profile men. Older women are designated as 'Marthas', they do all the housework and cooking. Women with no use are designated 'Un-women' and sent to the Colonies - hell-ish areas of Chernobyl-like pollution in need of a clean-up. Women who are still fertile are designated as Handmaids, they are given to the lucky households for three-year terms, where it is hoped they will produce a child with the husband of that household. If they do, that child becomes the child of the husband and wife, and the handmaid moves on to another household. Handmaids are said to do a noble task, but almost everyone is resentful of them and they are given almost no rights whatsoever. The handmaid of this tale, Offred, narrates her story in this society.

Offred intersperses her life in this regime with snatches of her life from before it. Gradually we put together a picture of how this society came about, how each line of escape was cut off from women desperate to leave before it became too late, and how Offred came to be a handmaid. Her personal viewpoint of this world is what makes it so terrifying... to a certain degree, Offred accepts the terrible position she has come to inhabit, and it feels normal. She gets used to the incredible restrictions she lives under... even as she is forced into an compromising position, she comes to accept it as something she can do nothing about. Everything has been taken away from her... her husband, her child, her freedom, her future. She has no hope.

Atwood builds a brilliantly distorted perversion of our society. Strong themes of conformism and power through knowledge permeate nearly every paragraph. Offred yearns for any kind of information and the small degrees of power this can give her... she is starved of power. She hungers for any kind of choice or freedom. Even as a male I could feel the nightmare of this world of religious intolerance and brutal conservatism... this ultra-conservative all-American society leaves so little to the realm of women that their already paltry roles must be split up into 'reproductive', 'household' and 'wife' categories. And these little worlds they are granted are incredibly closed-off thanks to the restriction of information allowed to women.

As I mentioned early on, this is a true classic. It's every bit as important as '1984' or 'Brave New World'. This is the best freaking book I've read in ages. Atwood demonstrates perfectly and poetically how the terror of power and the restriction of knowledge can make an underclass of people (EG. Women) into hopeless slaves. It's beautifully written, expertly crafted, full of amazing ideas, increasingly relevant in our current post-9/11 climate, and absolutely terrifying to the soul. I highly recommend this to anyone who hasn't read it.


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Literature
   


Monster Blood Tattoo 2

January 29th 2007 08:55


Not too distantly in the past I read and reviewed a chidlren's fantasy book called 'Monster Blood Tattoo: Foundling'. It was a brilliantly original and atmospheric start to what will hopefully be a very memorable series, written by an Australian author, the multi-skilled D. M. Cornish (the books are awash with his wonderful illustrations as well).

You can see the official website for the book here - Monster Blood Tattoo. It's a pretty snazzy website and you can see some of his drawings on the various pages.

Anyway, the reason I'm talking about this today is because I was 'surfing da net' and I came across Cornish's blog (see here - Monster Blog Tattoo) and he has revealed that the second book is finished. It will be called 'Monster Blood Tattoo: Lamplighter', obviously following on from where the last book left off with Rossamund becoming a lamplighter (a very dangerous profession in the Half-Continent). Cornish also revealed that this next book is substantially longer than the first, and runs at a rather sturdy 33 chapters and will include another Explicarium (though hopefully this time this appendix is nowhere near as long). If you follow the above-mentioned link to his blog you can also see a new illustration from the forthcoming book.

For the moment, it looks like 'Monster Blood Tattoo: Lamplighter' will be released around May. You can never be too sure about release dates in the book world though, but with the author being finished and all there shouldn't really be any delays (I hope!).

Looking forward to it.
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Posted By: Luke - Category: Fantasy
   


Turtle Island

January 26th 2007 06:49


'Turtle Island' is an obscure-ish book I picked up about a year ago for two bucks. It's a book about Ascension Island, namely the study and research of the Green Turtles that emigrate there year after year. I imagine it would be classed as a travel book. I also imagine not that many people would've been falling over each other to read it, owing to the book's esoteric nature. Well, I last read about Ascension Island with this book, and it's something I've come to have an interest in so I thought - what the hell, it's only two bucks. A year and a bit later and I'm heading off to the beach in Bulli and I need to take some beach-reading with me, and this book looks all tropical and evocatively travel-ly so I thought I'd bring it along. It turned out to be quite a nice little read.

'Turtle Island' reads as a kind of travel diary, the author has been invited along to Ascension Island for a month-long stay by some university-based scientist-friends. They are travelling to the island in the hopes of proving or disproving some theories on the Green Turtles that flock to the island every year. Their main motivation is to discover where the Turtles go when they aren't laying eggs, and - if possible - why they come back to the same island every year, and how they navigate their way there. Thankfully, the Turtle-research parts of the book account for less than a third of the text. The author isn't a scientist, he is only there for the experience and to see the island, and so we only get a running commentary on the Turtle studies and the misadventures of the trio of scientists as they attempt to attach radio transmitters to the creatures.

The book is fairly brief, mostly made up of three or four-page chapters, each one dealing with a different aspect of life on the island - it's history, it's people, it's traditions, it's wildlife. Almost everything you could possibly want to known about Ascension is touched on within this book. For instance, we learn that Ascension is home to (according to the Guinness Book of Records) 'the worst golf course on the planet'. The author also makes several allusions to the island's similarity to the moon - mostly in it's remoteness and the lack of vegetation or landmarks on the bulk of the island. In fact, the island is so much like the moon that NASA test-ran their moonbuggy there! These are just two of many interesting little stories with which this book is jam-packed. Anyway, it's a freewheeling narrative that slowly builds a picture of the island's intriguing history piece-by-piece whilst the author relates to us his month-long stay amongst the other transient residents.

Written by an Italian Doctor, Sergio Ghione, and translated into English, the text is fairly straight-forward. It's never flowery or over-the-top, it's short and to the point and is reflective of it's author's broadness of mind, which seems to stem from the vast variety of places he has travelled to (he mentions a few varied and distant locales in passing). Incredibly informative and interspersed with the occasional moments of wry humour and Idiosynchratically-Italian observation, this is a book for anyone who ever had a passing interest in remote and colourful places seldom visited by tourists. The book also comes with a substantial reference section of weblinks that corresponds with each of the subjects discussed in the book's many chapters.

For more information on Ascension Island, check out this blog here

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Posted By: Luke - Category: Travel
   


Infernal Devices

January 25th 2007 05:26


'Infernal Devices' is the third book is Philip Reeves' wonderfully futuristic adventure series, 'The Hungry City Chronicles' (of which 'Mortal Engines' is the first novel). 'Infernal Devices' picks up around 16 years after the events of the previous novel, 'Predator's Gold'... past characters return, the story is advanced, a new sequence has begun. The first two books in 'The Hungry City Chronicles' (the previously mentioned two highlighted in bright-blue) could be said to form a loose duo, whereas 'Infernal Devices' and the last book in the series, 'A Darkling Plain', might be said to form a second duo that acts as a sequel to the first. Does that make sense? I don't know. Either way, there's a big gap between the second and third books in the series, and as a result 'Infernal Devices' feels like it could be the start of a whole new (seperate) adventure


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Science Fiction
   


Three forthcoming new releases

January 24th 2007 07:40
Just a short heads up today, here are three new releases of interest that'll be coming to our shores sometime in the near future.

Due March/April 2007

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Posted By: Luke - Category: News and Miscellany
   


The Holy Thief

January 23rd 2007 06:45


'The Holy Thief' is the true crime tale of Mark Borovitz. Borovitz started life as your average Jewish kid (who was, no doubt, destined for greatness), who went down that path of easy vice and easy money. In short, he became a con man. It was a long journey for him, but eventually he came out the other side as a Rabbi. He now helps those trying to reform. This is his story


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Posted By: Luke - Category: True Crime
   


Top 5 per Genre Pt. 3

January 22nd 2007 11:29
This is the last part of the Angus and Robertson Top 5s by genre. Read on!


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Bestseller Stats
   


Top 5 per Genre Pt. 2

January 19th 2007 10:55
Continuing on from yesterday's Angus and Robertson Top 5's, here's a further bunch.


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Bestseller Stats
   


Top 5 per Genre Pt. 1

January 18th 2007 10:22
Here are some recently updated Top 5s for each book section in Angus & Robertson... based on sales analysis and customer feedback and all that junk.


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Bestseller Stats
   


Perfume film trailer

January 17th 2007 10:32


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Posted By: Luke - Category: News and Miscellany
   


Taronga

January 16th 2007 09:48


'Taronga' is probably the most well-known book by English-Australian children's fantasy/science-fiction author Victor Kelleher. Kelleher has written close to 30 children's and teen novels throughout the 80s and 90s, and has won various awards for his efforts, including the Australian Children's Book Award. 'Taronga' is a bleak and memorable tale about survival, pacifism, bravery and holding onto ideals in the face of death. It was first published in 1986 and has been in and out of print every since, and can still be found in a lot of bookstores today - more than twenty years later


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Science Fiction
   


Robin Hobb

January 15th 2007 11:33


Last year I took the plunge and read some Robin Hobb. This led to me reading all Robin Hobb. She's that good. Part of me is sad that I didn't read her Farseer novels when they first came out - that I wasn't interested because I wrote it off as 'uninteresting fantasy' (I wasn't much into fantasy back then, unlike now). Another part of me is glad of this as it meant I got to enjoy her books for the first time recently, especially at a more understanding age


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Author Profiles
   


The Spook's Secret

January 12th 2007 10:32


'The Spook's Secret' is the third book in Joseph DeLaney's excellent and horrifying series, 'The Wardstone Chronicles'. Like the previous two books, ''The Spook's Curse' and 'The Spook's Apprentice' (click for reviews), 'The Spook's Secret' lays the atmosphere on thick and wastes no time in launching straight into the action. It also continues to draw on various facets of British folklore, obscure and otherwise, to great effect


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Fantasy
   


Australian Discworld Convention

January 11th 2007 10:05


A heads up for Terry Pratchett fans (though chances are, they all probably already know about this) - Nullus Anxietas is taking place in Australia on February 9th to February 11th. Here are the details


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Posted By: Luke - Category: News and Miscellany
   


Kid's Top 50

January 10th 2007 11:49
Just a quick round-up of the Kid's Top 50 at Angus & Robertson today... this list is pretty much an indication of the biggest-selling 'kids' books, and I think it's a pretty fair summation of some decent books.

Counting down


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Bestseller Stats
   


High Society

January 9th 2007 08:15


'High Society' is one of comedian-turned-novelist Ben Elton's more popular and resonating books. From my perspective, which is by no means a definitive one, I'd say it was the point where Elton became (primarily) a writer. Sure he'd written quite a few books before, and good ones too, but it was this book's widespread success that marked the height of his talents... he pretty much reached his pinnacle as an author on this one, and has enjoyed commercial success with each novel he has released since


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Comedy
   


New Books: Gideon The Cutpurse

January 8th 2007 05:03


Gideon the Cutpurse is a new children's science-fiction novel, 'being the first part in a trilogy' (the Gideon trilogy), that involves time travel and 17th century thievery


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Science Fiction
   


The Power of One

January 6th 2007 00:36


If Bryce Courtenay is Australia's biggest selling author, and 'The Power of One' his biggest selling, most popular and enduring book, does that make 'The Power of One' Australia's biggest novel? Australia's habit for appropriating other country's products (EG. Crowded House, Russell Crowe, Mel Gibson) aside, I'd be inclined to say no, if only because it's so completely a novel of South Africa... of South African origins and about the country itself - it's history, it's people, it's problems and it's hopes. It's tantamount to Courtenay's talent that the novel transcends these nationalistic ties and speaks to readers everywhere on a private level, charting the human condition in trying times and connecting with it's audience by tieing us to the protagonist's epic journey to manhood


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Posted By: Luke - Category: Adventure & Historical
   


Top 10 - The Bestseller Lists

January 5th 2007 09:24
I thought I might start bringing you the Top 10 Bestsellers for Australia every now and again. Here are the current Top 10s for the two major bookselling companies in the country.

ANGUS AND ROBERTSON TOP 10
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Posted By: Luke - Category: Bestseller Stats
   


Harry Potter 7's title revealed! (with Pics)

January 4th 2007 10:22
Well, I wrote out this big long blog about Harry Potter 7 and how I missed the announcement of it's title a couple of weeks ago but I had to be a real daft bugger and go and delete the whole thing before I even had a chance to publish it. I'm so stupid sometimes. Grrrr!

Anyway, the long-awaited title to the last ever Harry Potter book is


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Posted By: Luke - Category: News and Miscellany
   


An Obsession

January 2nd 2007 11:11
Well, it's well and truly a new year. 2006 has passed into history and 2007 lays stretched ahead of us like an empty sheaf of paper, our potential poised over it like a pen ready to write what will be written and forever known. Or something like that.

A little about myself


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Posted By: Luke - Category: News and Miscellany
   


New Harry Potter movie

January 1st 2007 00:30

Harry Potter trailer - click to watch


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Posted By: Luke - Category: News and Miscellany
   


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