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Book Club - by Suhaili

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Book Club - April 2007

New Doctor Who books

April 13th 2007 05:41

I'm a massive Doctor Who fan. When I say that I don't mean that I am physically massive, I mean that I really, really like Doctor Who. Anyway, the recent revival of Doctor Who on television has seen the show become more popular than ever. In keeping with this, BBC books have been releasing a few original novels each year in conjunction with each new series. These books aren't as dense or in-depth as the old lines of Doctor Who novels published in the 90s and early 00s, they're aimed at a more mainstream audience... they're still fan-friendly, but they're also friendly to new watchers of the show too. Anyway, here are the upcoming titles for this year...

Made of Steel by Terrance Dicks
Released March, 2007
The first book for this year sees the Doctor and his new companion Martha go head to head with the new and improved Cybermen from last year's series. The writer, Terrance Dicks, has been involved with Doctor Who since the 60s and worked as script editor on the show between 1968 and 1974, and is known affectionately by some fans as 'Uncle Terry' (or 'Tewwy', depending on how kind they're feeling about the way he speaks).

Sting of the Zygons by Stephen Cole
Released April 2007
Rumours were rife that popular one-off monsters, the Zygons, would be featuring in the upcoming third series of the new Doctor Who. The announcement of this book did little to quell the rumours, with many fans seeing this book as a possible promotional tie-in. The writers of the new series have, however, gone on record to say the Zygons will not be featuring in any upcoming episodes this year. The cover isn't available yet, so maybe there's some substance to fan speculation despite this.

Wooden Heart by Martin Day
Released April 2007
Here's the write up for this one...
On a large silver spaceship, seemingly deserted and spinning slowly between the stars, Martha and the Doctor make a horrific discovery. Is this really a floating tomb, and why has a stretch of wooded countryside suddenly appeared in the middle of the craft? Things become even more mysterious as they explore the woods and find a village within - a village traumatised by missing children...

The Last Dodo by Jacqueline Raynor
Released April 2007
Here's the write up for this one...
After a trip to the zoo, the Doctor and Martha go in search of a real live dodo, and are transported by the TARDIS to the mysterious Museum of the Last Ones. There, in the Earth section, they discover every extinct creature up to the present day - billions of them, from the tiniest insect to the biggest dinosaur, all still alive and in suspended animation. Preservation is the Museum's only job - collecting the last of every endangered species from all over the universe. And for millennia the Museum has been trying to trace one elusive specimen: the last of the Time Lords...

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Posted By: Luke - Category: Science Fiction

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Kurt Vonnegut dies

April 12th 2007 13:54

I just heard that Kurt Vonnegut has died at the age of 84. This is terrible news, he was pretty much my favourite author. I'm speechless, I don't know what to say... I thought he would be around for a while longer, that we might even get one more book out of him. He died a few weeks after he fell in his home.

He left behind nearly 20 books and short story collections, and will be remembered for his unique contribution to American literature.

I feel very sad right now.

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The Eyre Affair

April 12th 2007 05:40

'The Eyre Affair' was first published in 2001, and yielded an exciting new path into speculative fiction. Part comedy, part crime novel, part fantasy and part love note to classical literature, Jasper Fforde's debut novel couldn't have been more original or readable. It undoubtably left a few bookstores scratching their heads... I've seen it placed in the literature section almost as much as in the fantasy/sci-fi section. 'The Eyre Affair' is the first book in Fforde's Thursday Next series. A fifth novel in this series is due for release later this year.

It's 1985 in an alternative version of our planet. Where we idolise the stars of sport, music and film, the people in this reality worship literature - in particular, the names behind the classics... Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen and, of course, Bronte. The Crimean War rages on some 135 years after England and Russia first went to war over the penninsula, and Wales is a Socialist Republic, hidden from England behind an iron curtain. Enter Thursday Next, a willful and no-nonsense Crimean veteran who now serves in SpecOps as a LiteraTec. SpecOps is a covert heirarchy of various special groups who take care of cases too unusual or tricky for regular police... the branch that Thursday works within is mainly responsible for monitoring and policing the high volume of frauds, fakes and scams that proliferate the literature market. And so we have our set up.

Thursday is called upon to temporarily join a more secretive branch of SpecialOps to deal with an enigmatic man she once knew, Acheron Hades. He is listed as the third most dangerous man alive, bullets don't hurt him, and he commits heinous and villainous crimes just for the thrill of it. So when he steals the original manuscript of Martin Chuzzlewit and holds it to ransom, things begin to look pretty bad. And when you throw in the shady Goliath Corporation (who seem to have more power than the government), an escalating situation with Russia, and a valuable device that makes it possible to travel through the very barriers of fiction, it looks like it can only get worse.

This is a very fun book. The set up I just described is only the tip of the iceberg... the entire novel is jampacked with subplots and characters and fantastic left-field ideas. It's very clear that Fforde was setting himself up for a series of novels with this book as he introduces a huge cast of characters and one or two unresolved plotlines, it's a little distracting at first as you find it hard to keep track of who is who and whether they'll reappear in the novel or not, but once you get into the swing of things and just go along with it you tend not to care too much... I stopped worrying the moment I liked the book because I know I'll probably read the rest of the series now, and I'm sure I'll see all these characters again.

I have to admit, I probably would've enjoyed this book a bit more had I been more familiar with Jane Eyre or the classics in general. But rest assured, even with a minimal knowledge of these books, I still thoroughly enjoyed 'The Eyre Affair' so I guess a working knowledge isn't absolutely neccessary. The chief villain of the book, Acheron Hades, is a good foil for the heroine and I wish he'd featured a bit more extensively in the bulk of the text, or that the book's main plotline had incorporated him more heavily, but I guess that's just niggling. Anyway, I enjoyed this novel a lot... Jasper Fforde has his own sort of genre going on, but if I had to mention some other names he could sit next to on the bookshelf I'd probably say Robert Rankin, Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams.

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Posted By: Luke - Category: Fantasy

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Some book reviews

April 10th 2007 05:01

A bit busy at the moment with other projects at the moment, thought I'd just chuck up some quick links to previous reviews you might've missed on this blog.

Cheers, Luke.

Incompetnce - funny and original comedy/sci-fi/detective novel from Red Dwarf co-creator Rob Grant.
The Reluctant Republic - a look at Malcolm Turnbull's book on why Australia should become a Republic.
Perfume - Patrick Suskind's modern classic of olfactory decadence and adventure.
Charles Bronson Superstar - a hilarious 70s biography of Charles Bronson, features a great quote from Bronson on how he lost his virginity.
Tomorrow When the War Began - the first book in John Marsden's famous Australian speculative teen-fiction series.
The Van - Roddy Doyle's wonderful Booker-prize nominated novel about unemployment, fish n chips, and mid-life crisis.
Watership Down - one of my all-time favourite novels.
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold - John Le Carre's classic and influential spy novel.
The Infinitive of Go - inventive and pulpish hardcore science-fiction novella.
The Life of Pi - a wonderful and great novel, winner of the Booker Prize for 2003.
Grendel - a brilliant piece of fantastic literature well deserving of more attention.

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Posted By: Luke - Category: News and Miscellany

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What the Last Harry Potter book looks like!!!!!!!!!!!!!

April 9th 2007 05:00

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Posted By: Luke - Category: News and Miscellany

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The Raw Shark Texts

April 5th 2007 11:20

'The Raw Shark Texts' is the debut novel from Stephen Hall, and is getting huge tractor-loads of hype from all over the place. The Australian-release of the book itself is covered in a litany of overflowingly positive reviews... Nicole Kidman allegedly wanted the author to change the protagonist from male to female so she could star in a film adaptation, and Mark Haddon (the celebrated author of 'The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time') called it "The bastard love child of 'The Matrix', 'Jaws' and the 'Da Vinci Code'". And it doesn't end there.

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Posted By: Luke - Category: News and Miscellany

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The Removalists

April 4th 2007 09:14

I thought I'd review something a bit different today. In my hot little hands I have this play by David Williamson, 'The Removalists', a rather sharp and snappy piece of Australian rhetoric that I picked up out of a bargain bin. I like reading plays sometimes... they're so easy to get through. It's all dialogue, and it usually only takes an hour or two at the very most. I don't particularly like watching plays as they're performed, I just prefer reading them as the themes and ideas and great dialogue seems to get absorbed right into your head... like a direct line through your skull. This play in particular is quite good too, it helped send David Williamson on his way to becoming Australia's greatest modern playwright (and possibly our greatest playwright of all time) and the beauty of it is that it's accessible to nearly everyone too. No flowery language, no boring scenes, no esoteric conversations

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Posted By: Luke - Category: Literature

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The Lovely Bones - The Film

April 3rd 2007 08:16

Spiralling into reality is the forthcoming film adaptation of Alice Sebold's popular literature book 'The Lovely Bones'. Angus and Robertson currently rank it within their Top 10 books (alongside 'The Da Vinci Code', 'Lord of the Rings' and 'Memoirs of a Geisha'), so it's no small fry in the literary world. And who will be helming this adaptation? Well, it's none other than Oscar-winning director Peter Jackson

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Posted By: Luke - Category: News and Miscellany

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New Crime Fiction Releases for early April

April 2nd 2007 07:54

6th Target by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
This is the sixth novel in James Patterson's popular Women's Murder Club series that, so far, is made up of the following novels - '1st to Die', '2nd Chance', '3rd Degree', '4th of July' and 'The 5th Horseman'. Set to follow this latest installement is '7th Heaven', due for release next year. As with the previous two books in the series, this one is 'co-authored' by Maxine Paetro, a journalist who also wrote some romance novels in the 1980s

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