Week Eight: The Spaceman of Bohemia

What a great book. This is the kind of Sci Fi I really like, it's not about science OR fiction, it's centered on big ideas that you can only come to via a story that uses both these things to show more about reality from a surreal angle.

Ostensibly it's just a story, similar in plot to Gravity, but instead of Sandra Bullock, this is a protagonist flawed and deeply scarred, though not aware at all. Until he runs and falls to ... well no spoilers, but it's well done.

A story of love, revenge and pirates (no wait, thats the Princess Bride)... it's surprising and light, logical and deep.

Loved this.

Easy to read, easy to immerse yourself in someone else's tragic backstory and marvel at the author who weaves a complex, intersecting web of real people into a simple narrative, with an extraordinary premise.

So yeah. Loved it.

Week Seven - The End of Mr Y

Started promisingly enough, ended poorly. In the authors own words it could have been viewed as a Shaggy God Story.

Because it was.

Tarted up in Philosphy and Pseudo Science.

Well written and constructed in one or two different ways, and I'm sure it appeals to some others, someone reccomended it to me some years ago and I never got into it. Hence on my list for another reading year.

I can see its appeal.

I can also see it's conceit and pretention.

Oh well, I was a conscious effort to read and as such it worked.

Week Six: The Three Body Problem

The first book I think I have read cover to cover on my phone as an E Book.

I have a IP7 Plus but even so it was a bit of an ask... anyway.

The book was intriguing at first and the more I go into the mystery of it the more intriguing it got. The book started to fall apart when it became less mysterious and the explanations were forthcoming, then it started to be annoying.

Motivation carries a lot of weight, and in the case of this you have to suspend disbelief a TON to make the story work. Not because it's Sci Fi, and not because the premise is hard to fathom, but because human beings don't just act like this, well not to this scale anyway.

And aliens, don't act like humans do they? I mean as a trope they do, but this seems like the perfect opportunity to explore possibilities that don't require everyone to be dicks.

Sigh.

But. Part one of a three-parter and I kinda want to know if they fix that in the end?

Warning: A lot of Math and Physics and Philosophy that does kind of make sense, but doesn't really. Nothing new there, I guess.

Week Five: My Name is N

Well that was disappointing TBH.

Not sure why all the fuss, just because the protagonist (who's not really because everyone is not who they say they are... sigh) is Gay or Bi or Metro or just a Sociopath who can't make up his mind?

Too convoluted. Too coincidental. Too planned. Too clever by half.

Or it tries to be all these things, but isn't good enough to be any of those that well.

I mean it was ok, but it was mostly just blandly trying to be the Usual Suspects.

All the furuore when it came out was probably just to hide that averageness of it all.

Not a waste of time, but not necessarily a good use of it.

Week Four: Night School

I have now read all of Richard Wiseman's books and as ever they are elucidating and entertaining non fiction without the dry and hard to follow sections.

Loads of fascinating stuff and if you want to know more about sleep, dreams and performance I would highly recommend it.

Also extremely good to remind yourself why it's not good to just accept your sleep patterns and to do something about them

Lots of very interesting tips for dealing with issues for adults and children and how little hacks can improve almost every part of your life.

The most fascinating is 'If you have a stressful day - deprive yourself of sleep, if you have a great day - go to bed early.'

If you have a bad experience a good sleep embeds it in your memory, whereas lack of sleep helps you forget. Yes it's more complicated than that, but still interesting none the less.

Week Three: How Not to Be A Boy

How to be amused, very amused and enlightened and then miserable - all in one book.

Helps when you like the writer certainly, and the other half will get a look in at some point I'm sure, but for now this book was so beautifully heartfelt without being cloying or posing too much.

Webb has a style and a voice that comes through in every sentence, so even the most cringe-worthy  embarrassments read like sketches and you can't help but smile and be amused. Contradictory to this is the facts, the heartbreaking facts of life, love and death that often sneak up and belt you from nowhere.

Laugh then cry, then laugh again and feel the pain healing for him and you as the reader.

Honestly I can't recommend this book enough for my female friends, maybe not how every guy's mind works, probably the minority.

But any one who does think like this and ends up in the same point by the end is worth getting to know as a person (not a Boy or a Man, or a not-Woman - a Person).

Read the book.

 

Week Two: Orphan X

Finished a book on Day One of this year, (even though Google thinks I'm in America I guess) so had loads of time to start/complete another one and I fiddled about with Springsteen and Atwood but then picked this up which a good friend had suggested (though I never take suggestions) and started it 3 days ago.

And it is everything I hate about thrillers and thriller writers yet I liked it and it gripped me more than enough to race through it by the weekend.

So it does the usual thing of having a mystery loner who is super-humanly trained by special forces for wet-work and can recognise the make model and the shop that a gun was sold in by the way a person is walking when it's holstered. The usual OMG he's so cool bullshit that peppers these books.

But I couldn't put it down. It was cliched,  obvious and yet compelling. The fingerprints of a brand obsessed author with a less than funny acerbic 'wit' that comes spewing sarcastically out of people who even barely speak English dot the landscape with machine gun carelessness.

But I still invested and read it all.

In 3 days.

So I'll stop bitching...

In a minute. WTF is with mystery and thriller writers who are so fucking obsessed with showing off their intimate knowledge of 'high end' (expensive and ridiculous) brands? Guns, beds, cars and alcohol? It irritates me.

Now I'll stop.

Way better than I Am Pilgrim - a book in the same fantasy vein.

Recommended in spite of my rant.