Shades of Grey (Jasper Fforde)

Oh, hilarity, thou art a wily mistress! I can remember you, remember your strength, your cleverness, your vivacity. But ask me to give examples of this and I have limited material to work with. Thus, I go searching for the source of the pleasure you gave me with my best friend Google and I find myself at best underwhelmed by what I read. This is the curse you lay on me, in payback for the pleasure I experience in your hands. You allow me to laugh out loud and open your covers with glee, but, when I try to revisit the funny parts without committing to reading the whole book again, there is no help, no mercy.

READ THE BOOK AGAIN FOOL you shout. OR MOVE ON.

Hilarity, I think, would be a shouter. Misery is a moaner. Anger is any volume spoken with clenched jaw. Sadness is a whisper or a shouter, depending on how attention-seeking it is feeling.

All this to say that I can't quite remember why Shades of Grey was so freaking hilarious, just, trust me, it was.

A half-assed post, I apologise. I am still getting back into this blogging thing. I will try harder on my next post, I promise. If not, you, our dearly beloved readers, can draw and quarter me and offer up my body as a sacrifice to the blogging Gods.

Battle Royale (Koushun Takami)

And we're back!

Where have we been you might ask? Well I've been working, studying, and sometimes working and studying at the same time. Alcott has been flitting around Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Germany, Spain... basically she has had a much more exciting few months than me.

To ease myself back into this whole blogging thing (a post which

I may or may not have decided to write because there is laundry to be done) (and a room to be tidied). Anyway. I also thought I would share with you what I think is the most violent book I have ever read. What fun!

A little while ago I reviewed The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins - I'm sure you know it. Kids put in battle arena, given a few weapons, told to kill each other. Well I was raving about this book to a reader friend, who said "that sounds just like this Japanese novel I read, you should read Battle Royale". I promptly forgot this recommendation, read it a year later and proceeded to tell the same friend "You know, you'd really like this book Battle Royale".

Anyway, Battle Royale is indeed remarkably similar to The Hunger Games. Set in a dystopian future, where to keep the population in control, some kind of teenager-killing-teenager scenario is implemented. In Battle Royale it is called The Program, and each year a grade nine class is randomly selected to take part. Told they are going on an excursion, their bus is filled with sleeping gas and when the students awake, they have been fitted with metal collars. Metal collars that will explode for a variety of reasons. And then the men running the program pulls their teacher's head out of a sack he is carrying around. And a couple of students are shot before the game even starts. And then the students are each given a weapon (ranging from a machine gun to a banjo to a fork) and told to kill each other. And then they do.

And unlike in the Hunger Games, where teenagers kill teenagers in a very non-graphic way, Battle Royale doesn't hold back. I can't really bring myself to recount any of the violent scenes from the book, but to give you an idea of how affected I was, I couldn't read this book while I was eating as more often than not, something was going to make me feel ill.

My Battle Royale ramblings lead me to ask you this - what books have had induced a strong physical reaction in you? I'm not talking crying at the end of Goodnight Mister Tom (which I do), I am talking putting the book down before you're sick.

7/10

The Private Life of Books

Looking down the list of my draft blog-posts which never saw the light of day I can see that most of them start with "am feeling so guilty about not having posted in weeks/months/centuries" and then I start writing about a book and then my internet cuts out and I get fed up. Admittedly I have dodgy internet that does cut out a lot- normally when I am trying to balance laptop and dinner on my lap on the couch whilst watching Peep Show. I wonder if that has anything to do with it? Anyway, since I spend a lot of time writing about my guilt, I've decided to absolve myself of any guilty feelings and just get down to it.

This article in the Guardian about the private lives of books made me think of my favourite second-hand-book-buying story. I warn you now, it is a bit pretentious, but when you're talking obscure dyslit gems found in the south of France, how could you be anything but?

Picture this- my first year of university, I meet french learning, guitar playing, dyslit reading Russian. (Le sigh). Said Russian turns up to class to tell me he found copy of 1985 on the weekend. I gently correct him, saying "I think you'll find it's 1984". He looks at me like I am an idiot and says "Uh, no. 1985. Anthony Burgess' critique of 1984 which consists of a theoretical essay followed by his own fictional account of the future". I blush. Then spend years futile-ly trying to track down a copy of 1985- I love Orwell, I love Burgess... but I didn't love the Russian any more thus borrowing his copy was out of the question.

Three years later, I was backpacking in Avignon, have run out of books to read and facing a six hour train trip the next day. I spent a little while googling until I found evidence of an English bookshop. I made a trek across town. I found a bookshop in the middle of nowhere. There I found found a copy of 1985... cue delirious excitement. I started reading and things became even more exciting. The previous owner of the book had some pretty strong views on some of the stuff Burgess wrote. Lots of underlining. Lots of '?!' in the middle of paragraphs. A couple of instances of 'ugh!'. My personal favourite, which made me burst out laughing during Burgess' musing on the state of socialism: a whole paragraph underlined and a single word "BALLS!" written in the margin. Fantastic. I do not know who Mr Millwood is (and that is my assuming the previous owner was a man) but I owe him a most exciting book find, and an entertaining read.

If you do ever come across a copy of the (obviously) out of print 1985, I highly recommend picking it up.

The Dead Tossed Waves (Carrie Ryan)

So, remember about eight months ago I read that zombie apocalypse book The Forest of Hands and Teeth which freaked me out, had a bleak, bleak ending and kept me up at night for fear there were zombies in my kitchen? Well I've just read the sequel. Seems I'm a sucker for punishment.

The Dead-Tossed Waves follows a girl named Gabry, daughter of Book One's protagonist Mary. She has grown up in relative safety in the town of Vista, shielded from the zombies by stone walls and ocean. These surroundings are far less disturbing than the isolated village ruled by scary nuns and surrounded by barbed wire that we were introduced to the first time around. At the beginning of the story, Gabry and a few of her friends jump Vista's stone walls on a thrill seeking expedition and are attacked by zombies. A bunch of her friends are locked up, the boy she likes is bitten, her mother runs off... not a great day for her. Lots of intrigue, mystery and killing...

All this sets up what is basically a mirror of Book One - Gabry retraces her mother's path through the Forest of Hands and Teeth from the ocean to the village that used to be run by the scary nuns. This time however, she is more scared of the various groups of humans chasing her than the zombies. I found this one a lot less disturbing than book one, but that could have a lot to do with the fact that I read it in the middle of the day in a brightly lit bookshop, as opposed to at 2 am, in a creaky house. That said, I did still jump a bit when a colleague came up from behind to say hello. The ending is slightly more hopeful than the first book- I am feeling much better about what I now know to be a trilogy after this second book. The story is rounding out more, loose ends which drove me crazy in the first book are semi-tied up, and I can only assume (or perhaps hope) that book three will conclude the story satisfactorily. I feel much more confident telling you to read the series now I see where it is going. I think...

Edit: Reposted 18.02.10 as original post had technical glitch and a big section of text vanished into the ethers. Hope review will make sense this time!

Dyslit: The Year of the Flood

So yes yes yes- I've been gone about a million years. Apologies.

Aside from getting used to being back at work and not flitting around Wales clutching my first edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (yeah... that's right. FIRST EDITION), I have been slowly slowly savouring the new Margaret Atwood.

A few months ago I reviewed the amazing Oryx and Crake as part of our dyslit section. Cut to August this year and my discovery that Margaret has written a follow on of sorts - you can imagine my nerdy excitement. Same plague stricken earth with a wiped out population, this time with added religious cult!

The God's Gardeners are a spiritual following devoted to the melding of science and religion. They believe in the preservation of all animal life and have a complete aversion to any written records. Their leader, Adam One, is an enigmatic preacher... with something kind of shifty going on. Since I am only three quarters of the way through the book I'm not sure what exactly he is hiding but I am suspicious all the same. The story is told by two different women, Toby and Ren, both from the Gardeners. Toby survived the plague by locking herself in a day spa filled with edible 'organic treatments'. Ren, an exotic dancer, was in quarantine when the plague struck, having been bitten, luckily enough, by one of her over excited clients. At first the characters seem completely unconnected to the original cast of Oryx and Crake, then halfway through the appearance of a young man named Glen (later re-named Crake) almost made me fall off my chair in excitement. The way Margaret has connected this story to her earlier one, weaving tiny details into the background is nothing short of amazing. Even though I'm not finished yet, I don't think I am remiss in saying it is just as good as Oryx and Crake.

Oryx and Crake was the first Margaret Atwood book I read, and I remember thinking to myself over and over 'This is SO weird and amazing'. After almost reading her entire backlist, she still dazzles me with this new offering. And take a look at the author photo from the book jacket- how could you think this woman would produce anything short of brilliant madness?

The Year of the Flood: 10/10

Chaos Walking 1: The Knife of Never Letting Go (Patrick Ness)

So I've just re-read this book in preparation for reading and reviewing book two which has just come out; I now remember how completely brilliantly amazing it is and so I thought I should spread the love a little. This is another one of those young adult / adult crossovers, except that this is perhaps the only one wherein the crossover is really justified. Twilight - adults could really just read a Mills and Boon to have the same experience (albeit vampire free ). The Forest of Hands and Teeth - probably too adult, too scary, too zombie-y - I have yet to sell this book to an actual young adult. The Knife of Never Letting Go, on the other hand, should be read by... well... everyone. Part sci-fi, part dystopian future (you see what hooked me!), reading this book is an experience worth having.

The novel is set on a completely different planet (we've messed Earth up so much that it is verging on becoming uninhabitable), where the first human settlers arrived about 25 years before the book starts. Todd Hewitt (our hero) grew up in Prentisstown, surrounded by a constant barrage of other men's 'Noise' - that is a stream of conscious thought constantly broadcasted to everyone around, unstoppable, unblockable, and quite uncomfortable. There are no women in Prentisstown and when Todd finds a girl (!) surrounded by a patch of silence (unheard of in a town full of Noise) his world is shaken... BUT the Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Pastor.... (anyone in town with any kind of authority that may now be challenged by Todd's discovery) are unhappy. To put it mildly. To put it less mildly- they chase Todd out of Prentisstown with rifles and follow him halfway across the country determined to silence him.

I don't really want to give much away because this is the kind of book where the revelations about the history of the New World were so shocking, so unexpected and so well crafted into the story that I don't want to spoil it. Suffice to say, I love it.

I realise this review is written COMPLETELY like I am selling the book to someone, but I swear it's not copied and pasted from one of my newsletters. (If a review of book two shows up, I cannot make the same promise). I just feel like telling EVERYONE that this is a book you should read.

9/10

Dyslit: We and 1984

So according to this article in the Guardian, George Orwell took his 1984 plot from an earlier Dyslit novel, We by Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin. The article compares the main characters, plot development and ending of the two novels, does some nifty detective work to prove that Orwell read We just before writing 1984 and comes to the conclusion that he got his plot from it. I could have saved them the trouble of going through that whole process by saying "Well yeah...Orwell did get his plot from We. In fact after reading it he said he was taking it as the model for his next novel." (I tried to be extra tricky and get the reference for Orwell's quote from another dyslit gem 1985 wherein Anthony Burgess discusses Orwell, Huxley and Zamyatin but I couldn't find it in my skim re-reading so you'll have to make do with wiki.)

I agree with the conclusion to which the article comes - that it doesn't matter if 1984 was inspired by an earlier book - as a work of literature it is amazing, and some might argue more accessible than We. The cultural impact of Orwell's works is undeniable, and perhaps without We we wouldn't have the most significant of those - 1984. There. Wasn't that a nice diplomatic way of sorting things out?

For a little added interest: Anthem by Ayn Rand and We are so similar in themes, descriptions, and dystopian societies of the future that my mind boggles that no comparison between the two was raised in the article. Both deal with societies where the collective is of the utmost importance. In both books there is no "I" only "we". In both books individuality is erased and people are numbered not named. A strikingly obvious difference is that Anthem is one of the only dyslit books I have ever read with a 'happy ending'.

Go read 1984, We, Anthem, and chuck in Brave New World for good measure (another book said to have borrowed from We) and see what you think.

The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins)

It has happened again, only this time you get to catch me right in the midst of a midnight freak out. Remember about a month ago, I read that zombie book and couldn't sleep for fear there were zombies in my shoe closet? Well this time it's much more sane, not zombies but... crazed teenage reality TV contestants on a murderous rampage. And seeing as I am MUCH too wired to sleep, I thought I would kill time by letting you know what I thought of it:

Awesome. Awesome. AWESOME.

I was really ready to shun The Hunger Games as it was the first on the Stephenie Meyer endorsement train, but as far as adrenaline packed teen reads go - this is a winner. the novel is set in a *dystopian* future (you know how I love those!), in a country divided into 12 districts which is ruled by a powerful government called the Capitol. Just to remind everyone who is boss (and to quash any rebellious thoughts... there was a big problem with the no-longer-in-existence district 13) every year the Hunger Games are held. Each district must send a boy and a girl aged between 12 and 18 to the games which are held in a big open arena. They are given two days of training then they go in and fight to the death.

Oh god.

Narrator girl spends a lot of time hiding in trees and creeping around so I was convinced there would be a baddie around every corner. (Baddies were the contestants who wanted to be in the games because they have insane blood lust). There were many moments when I thought my heart was going to beat out of its chest, which would be an especially bad thing seeing as one contestants in last year's games had a fondness for eating the hearts of the other kids he'd killed. (Though cannibalism is generally frowned upon.)

Anyhoo... I realise this is a weird review - blame it on the fact that it's nearly three in the morning and I am only just calming down. Go read this book, if you scare easily, maybe read it during daylight hours. Also, it's the first in a trilogy and to anyone out there who HAS read it... how jealous of me are you right now if I say I have a a proof copy of the second book? Quite jealous I'd say.

8/10.

Dyslit: Never Let Me Go

I made a new friend the other night in Soho. We were having a chat about this and that and then she suggested (with a slightly manic glint in her eyes) that she grab us a 'bottle' to share.

"Of course." I said eagerly, because I'm that kind of girl.

My new best friend does not, as I expect, bring a bottle of wine back to the table. No no. It was a bottle of rum.

Not even good rum.

BUNDY.

"Ummm, I'm not sure I can drink half of that..." I hedged, but she waved off my protestations and began pouring.

A quarter of the way down the bottle she announced "I've only ever been in love once."

Half-way down the bottle she decided the table was wobbling, took her chicken fillet out of her bra and shoved it under one of the legs.

Three quarters of the way down the bottle I was having trouble concentrating when she said seriously, leaning in close like it was a state secret.

"I'm not at all sure Keira Knightley will be good in Never Let Me Go."

I don't remember much else from the night. My new friend quite happily continued on clubbing whilst I stumbled to my accomodation for the evening, forgetting for a moment I lived in London and giving the cab driver my address in Sydney.

As you can see... rough night. HOWEVER (and this post IS about books, I just needed a lead-up!) I am completely on board the concerned boat when it comes to the casting of Keira Knightley in the film adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. I can't remember the ensuing conversation we had about this but I am certain I agreed with her and empathised with her concerns.

For those of you who have not read Ishiguro's re-imagining of Britain in a time when human clones are created to act as organ donors for the rest of the population I seriously recommend it. This isn't "slap you in the face" dyslit of the kind Margaret Atwood normally produces. For the first part of the book the reader has no idea that the children's boarding school we are reading about is actually priming them for their lives as donors. Ishiguro has a masterful yet subtle touch to his writing that creates stories so imbued with emotional wallops I have to take breaks whilst reading them. Either that or I allow myself to get completely lost in the story and for days afterwards will feel shaky, disturbed and wary of people who smile too much in the street.

Never Let Me Go is narrated by Kathy, which is the part I thought would go to Knightley. However, my great friend IMDB actually informs me Knightley is playing Ruth, who is the annoying, controlling girl in the small group of friends. This makes more sense, as she has more personality than Kathy, who always seemed a bit distant even though it was she who was telling the story.

I just hope Knightley uglies up for the part a bit. Even when she's trudging around with Sienna Miller in wellies she always looks quite poised and elegant (ridiculously pursed lips aside) and all the girls in this story are just meant to be normal, plain, slightly eccentric schoolgirls. However, lately she's been putting in some solid acting efforts so you never know. I guess the best I can do is say this to Keira: "No pressure, but DON'T STUFF IT UP. This is a very, very important book. DO NOT LET THE READERS DOWN."

IMDB has also told me Knightley is set to play Zelda in a film adaptation of The Beautiful and the Damned. Ye gods, I don't know if I can stomach the stress of what butchery might occur.

Rating: 9/10.

Rant (Chuck Palahniuk)

Ah Chuck, where would I be without you? Who else can enthrall and repulse me with a single, perfectly crafted sentence?

If you only know Chuck as 'that guy who wrote Fight Club', then let me tell you my friend, you are missing out. If you've yet to delve into the messed up world that is Chuck Palahniuk's imagination, then Rant is an awesome place to start. A weird place, but an awesome one.

Meet Buster Casey, known as Rant, the worst Patient Zero in the history of disease. A 'superspreader'. A guy who is addicted to getting bitten by various animals, insects and spiders. A guy who infects hundreds of people with rabies. He turns a Halloween horror house into a real horror house. He single-handily manages to destroy the economy of his hometown. He is so cool.

Rant is written as an oral biography, and we learn about Rant reading anecdotes from various people who knew him - childhood friends, his parents, policemen, a used car sales man and various party crashers / nighttimers. (Just to clarify- a party crasher is someone who goes out driving and crashes into other party crashers for fun. Not an uninvited guest. A nighttimer is someone who is only allowed out at night. Nighttimers are the section of the population who are initially overcome by the rabies epidemic.)

Aside from his crazy crazy spectacular imagination, Chuck is amazing because of his super detailed, ridiculously graphic descriptions - no one else can describe a smell and actually make you feel queasy. Just like reading Fight Club is like getting punched in the face, reading Rant is like getting rabies in the back seat of a car that has just driven off an overpass. *Sigh*

Rating: 9/10

Dyslit: Oryx and Crake

So don't blame me for the huge gap between announcing cool new segment and it actually being posted. Alcott was all 'I'll start with Never Let Me Go' and then just didn't so I held off posting so as not to step on anyone's toes. And then I gave up waiting because I was rawther excited about this new segment. As Alcott mentioned, I love dyslit, and what better way to start the segment off than with the book that turned me into a dyslit girl- Oryx and Crake. Ahhhh.....Where can I begin?

How about this sentence, lifted from the back cover, which perfectly summarises the opening scene: 'A man, once called Jimmy, now calls himself Snowman and lives in a tree, wrapped in old bed sheets, eating mangoes'. Awesome. Jimmy lives in some kind of post-apocalyptic world, although the exact nature of the apocalypse is revealed tantalisingly slowly throughout the story. Really, in Oryx and Crake you get a double dyslit: you get Jimmy now as Snowman, in the wastelands of earth, and you get Jimmy as Jimmy, growing up in a strange, strange society. Genetic modification not only takes place, but it essentially rules society. Get a job working for OrganInc or HelthWyzer and you are set for life. (OrganInc - the guys that brought you the pigoon - kind of like a pig, but fatter to allow space for the 4 or 5 human kidneys they've got growing inside them). Hungry? Try a bucket of chickie-nubs - kind of like chicken nuggets, except the thing they came from looks nothing like a chicken as we know it.

The great thing about this dyslit is that none of the technology is really out-there fantastic. Instead, what has changed (and messed up society a lot) is genetic modification. This is the first book I ever read and thought 'That was a ten out of ten.' While opinions about Margaret Atwood can be polarising, I think everyone who want a fascinating book to start (or just develop) a dyslit obsession needs to read this one. And just to tantalize you a little bit more - I think Oryx and Crake has THE best ending of a book I have ever read.

10/10

And now for something completely different...

There was an article in the Guardian this weekend on Ayn Rand and how sales of Atlas Shrugged have jumped since the economic downturn. Take a gander at the article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/mar/14/books-news-ayn-rand-sawday

This article got me thinking about how many dyslit novels I have read, which is a disturbing number. Earhart has read even more, so between the two of us we are rapidly approaching the lunatic fringe.

Dyslit? Qu'est-ce que c'est?

Dystopian Literature is a genre of books which are set in a future which is so dysfunctional as to be the antithesis of a utopian future. Also known as cacotopian literature, it is not to be confused with anti-utopian literature, which opposes a perfect society.

If this all seems a little too much like hard work, think of it this way. These would be the books Tyler Durden reads. And who doesn't want a little piece of that?

The genre covers such comforting gems as nineteen eighty-four, Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World. Most of the time they are SUPER depressing, creepy and upsetting.

Earhart and I LOVE them.

Thus, I go on to announce a new regular post... monthly we will have a featured dystopian novel. We hope that this will not only generate a greater interest in the genre, but will also contribute a few more passionate (yet SEDENTARY) anarchists to society.

This month will be Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, which I will post shortly.