Summer Reading
I finished reading the new Harry Potter yesterday. The last 200 pages were read by the pool while working on my tan. And it’s made me think - of all the books I’ve read in the last few years, my favourites have all been the ones that I’ve read while sunbathing. It’s a beautiful, magical quality of books that you take from them what you put into them: the time, the location and how you’re feeling when you’re reading all dramatically effects your enjoyment of a particular book1.
This probably explains why I hate Wuthering Heights so much. Being stuck in a classroom and forced to learn rote analyses is never going to do a book any favours.
But some recent examples
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell - Suzanna Clarke
This is a dense, dense book. Each one of its 1000+ pages is packed to the brim with some of the most florid, beautiful English I’ve ever read. But as terrific as this was, it posed a bit of a problem. I’d been mainly reading it before bedtime and I was averaging maybe a page a night before my brain would just shut down. And after two weeks of reading, I was maybe 40 pages in.
But then we went on holiday to Rhodes. A totally relaxing holiday with nothing planned except spending at least a week lounging by the pool, sipping on little drinks with umbrellas in them. And, by Christ, I flew through the book. It was a bit unusual, being whisked away to a damp, grey Edwardian England while I was relaxing in the Mediterranean sun, but I still fell in love with this book. So much so, I bought a first edition hardback copy off eBay, just to treasure.
The Lies of Locke Lamora - Scott Lynch
I hate ‘high fantasy’ as a genre. What’s more, I hate ‘high fantasy’ books that run into long series. Yeah, I’m talking to you, Robert Jordan - you’ll never see a fucking penny from me.
But all those long evenings playing Oblivion on the 360 must have softened me up. I guess I was ready to dip my toe in the water, and a couple of things about this book grabbed my attention: Edge magazine had written some very favourable things about it. And then I found out that it started out as a bunch of blog posts before the author got a book deal on what he’d written, which was bound to endear me to it. So I bought the book as something to read while I was relaxing on the beaches of Cape Cod.
The Lies of Locke Lamora is an incredibly entertaining piece of fantasy, made all the more enjoyable (and accessible) by the author’s amazing gift for storytelling. When I don’t enjoy a book, I’ll speed-read it and skim over passages. With Locke Lamora, I made sure to read every word. I fell in love with it. And now, whenever I think of the book, I’m reminded of being on a beach in Harwichport and all the nice feelings associated with that (being completely relaxed, full of beer and lobster the whole time). And vice-versa - when I think of our holiday, I’m reminded of the fantastic book I’d read.
The only bad thing about it? It’s book one of a NINE-part series, with the second book coming out next week. I’ve started reading a series of fantasy books! (But let me reiterate my previous sentiment - fuck you, Robert Jordan, I’ll never read your books.)
So what about you guys? What are your favourite summer reads?
- Obviously, there are exceptions to this rule. Before Harry Potter, I spent a few days by the pool reading Stephen King’s Cell, and I fucking hated that book. [↩]
Happy Bloomsday!
STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN CAME FROM THE STAIRHEAD, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:
…
Oh, fuck it. Read the rest on Project Gutenberg.
I’ve never read Ulysses, and at this rate, I probably never will. Still though, as Sean Hughes says, “Great preface”.
Books - free to a good home!
We’re in the process of streamlining all our stuff for moving to Italy. We’ve gone trough our clothes, DVDs, books and games. The things we’re not taking to Rome are going to our mothers’ houses. The things that don’t go to our mothers’ houses are going to charity shops.
Before we start taking the books down to Oxfam, we figured it might be best to offer them around to our friends first.
First batch of books! If you want anything here, drop me a mail. Otherwise, it’s off to the charity shop or bookcrossing.
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Hearbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - Dave Eggers
Blockbuster - Tom Shone
Captain Scott - Ranulph Fiennes
Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction - Sue Tonsend
A-Z of Living Together - Jeff Green
Romanitas - Sophia McDougall
The Little Friend - Donna Tartt
Crusader Gold - David Gibbins (second-worst book I’ve ever read)
Seven Ancient Wonders - Matthew Reilly (worst book I’ve ever read - fascinatingly, perversely bad)
Tales of a Punk Rock Nothing - Himelstein
The Love of a Good Woman - Alice Munro
Mortal Engines - Philip Reeve
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World - Haruki Murakami
The Fuck Up - Arthur Nersesian
How to Make Love Like a Porn Star - Jenna Jameson
High Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Culture of Excess - Charles Fleming
Megatokyo vol 1. - Fred Gallagher
The Man Who Ate Everything - Jeffrey Steingarten
How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie
the Bagthorpe Triangle - Helen Cresswell
Monster Island - David Wellington
Freakonomics - Stephen D. Levitt
Newfoundland - Rebecca Ray
The Alphabet of Manliness - Maddox
Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit? - Steve Lowe
Howling at the Moon - Walter Vetnikoff
The Pope’s Children - David McWilliams
Notes on a Scandal - Zoe Heller
The World According to Mimi Smartipants
Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman - Phyllis Chesler
Short Hands, Long Pockets - Eddie Hobbs
City Chic: An Urban Girl’s Guide to Livin’ Large on Less - Nina Willdorf
All American Girl: Ready or Not - Meg Cabot
A Certain Chemistry - Mil Millington
Wicked - Gregory Maguire
Kiss and Tell - Alain de Botton
Vernon God Little - DBC Pierre
Urban Bikers’ Tricks and Tips
Mysterious Island - Jules Verne
Minor update
I’m still waiting for Irish Broadband to contact me about an installation date, so I’ve had four days away from a computer. And so much has happened.
[Apple to use Intel Microprocessors beginning in 2006](http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/jun/06intel.html)
Christ.
This had been rumoured for a couple of weeks now (and a couple of years before then), but still… wow. John Gruber suggests that [Apple may not transition to x86 chips](http://daringfireball.net/2005/06/see_you_intel). But then again, he also [discounted the possibility of Apple releasing the iPod Shuffle](http://daringfireball.net/2004/12/flash_gordon) and last week attempted to [debunk the rumours of Apple switching to Intel](http://daringfireball.net/2005/05/intelmania). But this is so completely *huge* that it’s easy to understand why he was a litle skeptical. Apple say they’re looking at completing the transition to the Intel chips by the end of 2007.
[Nintendo Revolution’s classic Nintendo games will be free](http://www.joystiq.com/entry/1234000843045537/)
Nintendo, who have been keeping quiet in this round of “Our console will have hi-def” “Ours will massage your feet while you play!” have dropped a bombshell in the form of massive amount of backward-compatibility for free! They will be releasing almost every game they published for their previous consoles as a free download, available from the launch of their new console, the Revolution. This includes things like *Ocarina of Time*, *GoldenEye*, *Perfect Dark*, *Zelda II* and one of my favourite games, *Uniracers* (*Unirally* over here). Miyamoto (the creator of Mario and Zelda) has said that he’s tired of sprawling epic games and is appealing to developers to create something unique and fun (but not neccessarily *huge* or *big-budget*) for the Revolution. I guess this is Nintendo paying attention.
**Update**: [Full list of games available for download](http://www.cubed3.com/viewnews.php?storyid=3958)
My copy of [Difficult Questions about Videogames](http://www.publicbeta.org/dqav/) was waiting for me when I arrived in work today. This should give me plenty to chew through for the next couple of days, at least until [GTA:SA](http://www.rockstargames.com/sanandreas/) and [God of War](http://us.playstation.com/Content/OGS/SCUS-97399/Site/main.asp) arrive and start soaking up all my free time.
**Update**: A few pages in, and I’m convinced of something that I’d always suspected - [Kieron Gillen](http://www.kierongillen.com/) needs to find himself an editor.
Everything Bad is Good for You
I’m almost finished moving to my new apartment. It’s not quite time to crack open a beer and relax, but almost. In the meantime, I’ve taken my pastimes out of their temporary hiatus and once again started playing games (the beautiful, memorable [Cruise for a Corpse](http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=252) via the wonders of [Dosbox](http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/)) and reading (Steven Johnson’s [Everything Bad is Good for You](http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0713998024/qid=1117535500/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/202-3786381-6615801)). Although I’ll probably end up writing something about Cruise for a Corpse later, I’ve got a couple of things I’d like to say about Everything Bad is Good for You.
The last book I read before the move was Kevin Lynch’s [Image of the City](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0262620014/ref=pd_sxp_f/102-4206398-0567330?v=glance&s=books), a book about the theory of town planning. Most of that book is spent teaching us new ways to look at cities and helping us develop a new vocabulary for describing cities and town planning - most memorably, it introduces the idea of a city’s [imageability](http://interconnected.org/home/2003/12/19/in_the_image_of_the_city). Dan Hill took this concept and applied it to videogames in his amazing essay [Los Angeles: Grand Theft Reality](http://www.cityofsound.com/blog/2004/12/los_angeles_gra.html) - I would encourage everyone to read this, regardless of whether or not you are interested in videogames.
Stephen Johnson does something similar in Everything Bad is Good for You (EBIGFY). Like Lynch, Johnson also tries to teach us to look at videogames in a new way and give us the vocabulary to describe video game concepts. Johnson accurately and eloquently sums up the positive aspects of videogames beyond the oft-repeated “improves hand/eye co-ordination” nonsense, such as teaching us the art of making sense of chaos in order to achieve a game’s objectives (he calls this practice “telescoping”). He also describes, on a physiological level, why we enjoy playing games in spite of the fact that they tend to frustrate us for 90% of the time.
Although his section on videogames is barely 35 pages long, it provides a more succinct and lucid essay about the merits of video games than I’ve yet seen from actual [videogame](http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1841151203/202-3786381-6615801) [commentators](http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0349107238/qid=1117540158/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_2_1/202-3786381-6615801).
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