Illuminations - Gillian Polack

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The Deal: At this point in time, due to an RSI, I can only type for 10 minutes at a time. What you see below is what is hammered out before the timer goes off- and nothing more.

One of the sections in 2666 covers a series of murders occurring in Santa Teresa. It does not attempt to lead the reader into solving the mystery or finding the defendants or figuring out why. It details the bodies of the murder victims when, where, and as they were found. They're all women. They're all raped and tortured. It doesn't take long for the gut-wrenching sexism and misogyny to wear you down, especially if you are a woman.

This divide between the sexes made me want to read something that was woman friendly. I looked at the pile of books I had read, and realised there were two (2) female authors in it. I looked at my shelves, and there were very few female authors sitting there.

How did it get to this? I buy the books that interest me, I read the ones I feel like reading at that moment...why are there so few woman?

Have I become a male reader?

This upset me. I felt I'd betrayed my gender. I wanted a book written by a woman, that was kind to me, the reader. I remembered Gillian saying that her book had been described as 'sitting down to coffee with old friends', and I picked it up and devoured it.

It is a gorgeous book! It switches between letters that Rose - an academic on a research trip in Europe - sends to her mother, and pieces of an manuscript that she has found and is translating, complete with footnotes. The manuscript tells the tale of Ailinn and Guenloie, two young women setting out on a hard journey in Arthurian Britain. Rose finds her personal life strangely mirrored in the manuscript, and between the three of them there are more than a few demons to be conquered.

And it is a wonderful book. Despite the fey evils stalking Ailinn and Guenloie and the all too ordinary evils plaguing Rose, the manuscript that adheres to an older set of narrative laws and expectations in which things do not work out fairly, despite the death and injustice and bitterness of it all, it is a healing book. A wonderful warm book full of love. A book that is, yes, like sitting down to tea (not coffee) with old friends.

It washed the misogyny highlighted in the violence of 2666 right out of my head. Of course women, especially Ailinn and Guenloie, are slighted as less important or capable than men, but this is a story about women who carry on despite that, or perhaps because of that. They do not need to bray their prowess. They simply are.

On top of all that, I also learned a lot about the practices of historians and Arthurian lore.

I do love this book. It's a quiet, quirky and unassuming little thing. It doesn't shout. It won't push you around. It doesn't need to. It will have its way with you gently and leave its mark on you deeply. You won't want to leave the pages when you're finished. I didn't.

Verdict: a gorgeous, lovely, wonderful, humourous, sad, comfortable, small, towering, warm story. Miss Apricot adores this book, she really does, and she has excellent taste. MOAR.

In Patagonia - Bruce Chatwin

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The Deal: At this point in time, due to an RSI, I can only type for 10 minutes at a time. What you see below is what is hammered out before the timer goes off- and nothing more.

If Miss Apricot stretches her neck....she still fails to look like a guanaco on the pampas.

On the back here it says 'The book that redefined travel writing'.

Really? 'cause I just read a book by some Dane that was published 38 years before hand, and it worked better for me. Perhaps I'm just a simple minded fool who likes looking at pictures.

In a way, they both did the same thing: dug up the stories around them. Chatwin told the stories of the towns he passed through, the people who gave him lifts, and the estanicas he visited. And then, occasionally he didn't. Sometimes, he would merely describe the scene before him, and leave it to the reader to cast judgments, if there were any to be made. He go on great tangents, talking of references to the land made in literature, references generally stolen from other references. Or he would narrate some explorers voyage, some hundreds of years ago, and in great ambling loops bring that history back around to the person he was seeking, or the ground he stood upon.

Unlike Mielche, he was quite absent from the text. If he wanted to be there, it didn't show. If he didn't want to be there, it didn't show. Was this the redefinition spoken of? I haven't read much travel writing, so I don't know what the norm is, or was. It felt like I was looking over the shoulder of someone who didn't care, this absence.

I was quite taken by the brontosaurus skin, though. And the unicorn.

Written as it was much later that Mielche's, there are none of the native tribes left, and I felt this absence as well. All the people he talked to were ex-pats and immigrants from far, far away, dreaming of a home they couldn't run any further from. He paints Patagonia as a strange place of exile.

Apparently this is the book people take to Patagonia. I'd prefer Mielche's company.

Verdict: ignoring the pigeon-hole of travel writing, this is actually a very interesting book, and an excellent read.

Journey to the World's End - Hakon Mielche (translated by M.A. Michael)

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The Deal: At this point in time, due to an RSI, I can only type for 10 minutes at a time. What you see below is what is hammered out before the timer goes off- and nothing more.

I went scrummaging around the travel section of several second hand bookshops in the city looking for anything on Patagonia. This book was the only book I found. It has no dust jacket, and it was the phrase 'world's end' that caught my eye and flip the book open to discover that yes, it was specifically about Patagonia. Just look at those lining pages! Aren't they gorgeous?

I bought it for $4.

There's only one copy available second hand on Amazon for 48 pounds. Think I did well?

At first, I wasn't sure what I'd bought. There were marginal illustrations throughout which gave it a faint Disney aroma - multiple on every page. An example below, Mielche's sketch of the loading of cattle onto a ship.



A skim through the pages didn't read like travel writing. It looked a bit like boy's own adventure.

It is Mielche's account of his voyage to Patagonia (given the book was first published in 1939, I'm guessing shortly before then), specifically Punta Arenas (Magallanes), Tierra del Fuego and jaunts into the surrounding channels, including (AND I AM INSANELY JEALOUS) going around Cape Horn in a sail boat. He writes with a wonderful warm voice, a kind and I would say cultured voice, which I admit lead me to assume he would be therefore carrying around all the things that one carries around when one is from a polite and civilised society - a mind assuming the right of colonisation and differentiation between the races and that our way is best, jolly what ho!

I was incredibly wrong, which may be because he is Danish and not British (ooh, further assumptions there), or may be because he really is just a decent, intelligent, and compassionate man. Either way, this made the book less a book of travel writing, and more a sort of long comfortable recounting of an adventure by an old friend.

Chapter 4 is titled "which may be skipped, as it has to do with dry history". He's tongue in cheek, cheeky, and has a keen eye for the absurd. Part of this 'dry history' I was already familiar with, good ol' Magellan, and even so, there was nothing dry about it.

Magallanes made a short stop at Teneriffe in the classic tradition, for it was here Columbus lay for some months while they repaired the caravel Pinta's rudder, and since then it had become the custom to take a breather there and shoot one or two of the aborigines, the Gaunches.

I distinctly remember snorting my drink through my nose on reading that. I say again: cheeky.

He thoroughly covers the history of the region, a somewhat heart-breaking history that he does not attempt to paint as anything but. The growth of sheep farms had, at the time of writing, felled many of the old woods to make way for further pampas for the sheep, aka, white gold, and in turn driving the native tribes out of their lands. The wildlife has suffered. Missionaries with good intentions brought God and civilisation to the natives, and when Mielche visited, some seventy years ago, one of the tribes was dead, the other two in their final handfuls of people. Disease killed them. Civilisation killed them. The sadness and regret is palpable when he visits these people and the missions, and though he does not overtly cast judgment upon any there is no small amount of anger at the injustice there too.

He tells the stories of the towns he stays in, the stories of the estancias he visits and the families that take him in, he tells the stories of the lakes and mountains he sees, the mines he tours, the islands he passes. He tells the stories of the people he meets, the boats he sails on, the rattly old cars he sits in. He tells the story of a mongrel dog, half sheep dog, half otter hunter. He tells his own stories - he had a bit of an Old Tokaido Highway moment himself. He takes an immense interest in the world around him, and how it got to be the way it is, whether that be by the efforts of man or by the careless happenings of nature.

Reading this book was just...wonderful. Mielche is excited by the world he explores, and this love saturates the words he writes. Even when he's half killed himself on a remote island in the Straits, or sick as hell sailing in a storm, or stranded in the prison town Ushuaia waiting for his idle ship back - he loves it. He adores it. He's having the time of his life.

I think I fell a little bit in love with him, to be honest. Oh, the years that separate us...

Verdict: Best surprise book I've dove into. I love this book. I touch it and look at the maps and sniff the pages. Shall definitely keep an eye out for more of his books, purely out of appreciation for intelligent, insightful, humourous writing of course (and not because I have a crush on him, not at all).

(Oh good heavens! I've been googling around trying to find out anything him, and I just stumbled upon this. Isn't it gorgeous? He drew it! I recognise his style from all the doodles in my book.)

(And OH MY GOODNESS. His name popped up here. HE HUNTS SEA MONSTERS. BE STILL MY BEATING HEART.)

(He's dead, isn't he?)

(*sad*)

One - Conrad Williams

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The Deal: At this point in time, due to an RSI, I can only type for 10 minutes at a time. What you see below is what is hammered out before the timer goes off- and nothing more.

I told Miss Apricot that this book was all about exploring the father-son relationship, and that the colours suited her outfit perfectly, and she agreed to pose for the photo. Then I told her what it was also about, and she tried to eat my shorts, but I'd already taken the photo, nyah nyah. And the colours do suit her.

No misdirection, that is what the book is about, but it does it against the back drop of the apocalypse. And the bit that comes after the apocalypse. I have not read The Road, but one thing everyone comments on is that it appears to be a lot of very open and bleak landscape. That's what that book is.

This book is less about open and bleak landscape, and more about the catastrophic destruction of history and civilisation, and the horrible things you see and do while trying not to die. And even after the end of the world, that continues. Not much contemplation of landscape, unless you're contemplating sensible things, like what's a like spot for an ambush, are there any exit points, and oh fuckberries did something over there just move I think something moved oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck-

The first few chapters of this book are just...you know, I should have expected it really. It's Conrad Williams, in fact I think he's gone so far as to earn the middle title, so it's Conrad Fucking Williams, and of course the book is going to be like getting a stapler covered in twisted pokey staples shoved down my throat and rumble around in my gut. Of course it's going to flatten you by merely batting its eyelashes at you, and leave you stunned and reeling on the train, not even close to your station yet but having to close the book and look around and confirm what you just read has not happened, and if it did happen you'd be very lucky and die right away, so it's all good, think of rainbows and unicorns and do not lie down on the floor at the horror and futility of it all, because damn, the book is just that powerful.

So it should be. The end of the world is a powerful thing. Tossed about in pop culture so happily as it is, it's losing its teeth. This book is all teeth.

To my utter delight, the book showed signs of tying into that brilliantly cool world first seen in 'Nearly People'. In an odd sort of history lesson, it gives no answers as to what happened, or why, only revealing what it was like in those early days. (The horror, the horror...)

As you can probably tell, the lengths one man stretches his love and hope in order to survive on the inside in such an environment are extreme. It's not a kind book. It won't be gentle with you. It will awe you with the destruction of all things, awe you with the terrifying beauty of what now constitutes 'all things', impress you with its unforgiving, unflinching relentlessness, and when you put it down, you'll feel washed out and used up and wrung dry.

You tell yourself you never want to go through that again (and you know it's a lie).

Verdict: Powerful books will have powerful effects.

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman - Haruki Murakami

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The Deal: At this point in time, due to an RSI, I can only type for 10 minutes at a time. What you see below is what is hammered out before the timer goes off- and nothing more.

I've had a headache all day, which turned into a migraine, so I popped some pills and faceplanted into unconsciousness, and the migraine has scaled back but I just woke up for the second time in a day which is just not done so I'm groggy as all hell and not going to attempt to be insightful or intelligent or witty.

So.

Collection of short stories. Never read Murakami before. Excellent starter. Every story beautifully sculpted. They're delicate things, the most delicate pieces of writing I've ever read, and I don't know that I'm sure I know what I mean by that. Aside from the fact that they're written by and set largely in Japan, they remain very Japanese stories - a great amount is said without saying anything at all, in fact what is not said almost plays a greater role than what is on the page. Also a sense of having taken not one step from the first page through to the last, yet of vast distances being traveled. Things have changed without changing. Blessedly subtle, gentle, soft.

I did want to comment on the use of author as character in a work of fiction, seeing as I'm dreadfully guilty of it, and I love 'Errata' by Jeff VanderMeer and 'Twenty-Six Lies/One Truth' by Ben Peek, but I'm not being intelligent or insightful.

Perhaps it adds some veneer of honesty. That there is nothing we wouldn't do to the things we make up that we won't do to ourselves first.

Verdict: Master wordsmith and story-crafter, he deserves the awards and accolades he receives, plus more.

Fast Ships, Black Sails - Ann & Jeff VanderMeer (ed)

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The Deal: At this point in time, due to an RSI, I can only type for 10 minutes at a time. What you see below is what is hammered out before the timer goes off- and nothing more.

Arr. Arrr. Arr. I think my opinion of pirates has already been well established. Namely, ninjas are better.

This particular theme lends itself to fun, not just for the reader, but for the writer, which is apparent in quite a few of the stories. The pop culture connotations surrounding pirates are hard to fend off, and there isn't always a need to.

I was particularly enamoured of 'Boojum' by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette, which, just, my goodness. It's the first story in the collection, and I had to put the book away when I'd read it because it affected me so much. Some great aching loneliness that can only be triggered when considering the distances involved in space. A gorgeous, powerful, somewhat terrifying and yet comforting tale.

Conrad Williams's '68° 07’ 15"N, 31° 36’ 44"W' was the antithesis of all the fun and jolly mayhem. Horrible, wretched, helpless and hopeless and singularly alarming. But, you know, Conrad Williams, I'm biased. (Which doesn't actually make my opinion invalid. Awesome story.)

Quite fond of 'Pirate Solutions' by Katherine Sparrow (dealing with modern day pirates finding their roots) and 'Araminta, or, The Wreck of the Amphidrake' by Naomi Novik ('cause girl pirates do it better).

A solid collection of miscreants. I'd say worth the price alone just for 'Boojum' and '68° 07’ 15"N, 31° 36’ 44"W'.

Verdict: Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. I rob to pay tithe to my ninja overlord.

Miss Apricot does not wish to witness Shark Puppet giving the pirate on the cover a pegleg.

The City of Dreaming Books - Walter Moers

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The Deal: At this point in time, due to an RSI, I can only type for 10 minutes at a time. What you see below is what is hammered out before the timer goes off- and nothing more.

Sometimes, you look at a title, and you just know the book is for you.

This is apparently the fourth Zamonian book, but having read none of the others I can say it stands alone perfectly. It follows Optimus Yarnspinner, a young and aspiring writer (another point in favour) who among other things inherits a short story from his uncle. The short story has no author, and it is such an astonishingly powerful piece of writing that it consumes his waking life and he becomes fixated on discovering the author's identity, thus seeing him making the journey to Bookholm.

Bookholm is nothing but books.

Oh, for such a city.

There are bookshops, of course, and publishers and printers in order to make books for the bookshops, of course, and shops specialising in the paraphernalia of publishing, of course, and coffee shops in which to take your current book to read in, of course, and to attending readings, of course, and um, that's about it. It's all books. Every life within revolves around books, the reading, making, writing, selling, discovering off.

Oh, for such a city.

Optimus's quest to discover the author's identity leads him strange places, and puts him in no small amount of peril, and through it all he maintains this adorable tone of polite society. In his voice, even when there are threats and knives in the darkness, I can hear the chink of a good china cup against a saucer, a cup of tea being the only civilised drink. There's a lovely armchair-naivety about him, not necessarily ignorance, but that which comes from knowing the world solely through the reading of books.

This books is sufficed with a love of books, and stories, and writing. It is gorgeous, and wonderful, and delightful, and whenever I cracked the pages and started into it again I felt warm and fuzzy.

It's also illustrated. IT HAS PICTURES. I say again, and again - not enough books come with illustrations.

Verdict: A lovely lovely lovely wonderful book for the reader, and you are a reader, in all of us, shall definitely be hunting out more of Moers's work.

Miss Apricot took the opportunity to judge what the Booklings are reading, instead of me. What a stickybeak.

The Death of Grass - John Christopher

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The Deal: At this point in time, due to an RSI, I can only type for 10 minutes at a time. What you see below is what is hammered out before the timer goes off- and nothing more.

Another old science fiction book liberated from my parents' bookshelves, with the significant difference being this book I had heard of and actively sought out, and holy iguana spleens, batman, it is brilliant.

It's no spoiler to say the plot revolves around a virus which sweeps the globe, destroying the various strains of grass. Grass, as a family, includes important things like rice, wheat, barley, and the like, which aside from meaning no basic foodstuffs like bread and oh delicious rice, it also means nothing for livestock to eat, so suddenly it isn't just breads that are unavailable, but the majority of meat too. The food remaining isn't enough to feed the whole population of the world, and there is no way around it.

The story follows one man, who lives in London where he and his wife can sit in their armchairs claiming the Chinese are barbarians for rioting about food shortages and why should they be sending them food aid anyway when they need the food here; all of which is well and good until the virus reaches the shores of England, a country that imports most of its food. And things get progressively more horrible and ghastly from there.

This book is just magnificent, it is seriously one of the best things I've read all year. Aside from looking at the wider ramifications of such a food shortage and highlighting the modern world's dependence upon a system of growth and delivery that takes very little to disrupt and leave us helpless, it also looks at the psychology involved in living through such a time. Civilisation, such as it is, has no power over an empty belly.

There are no easy ways out. None at all. All the niceties of modern life mean nothing when your sole priority is food. What the characters go through, what they become and the decisions they make are excruciatingly hard. From here, having just had another splendid piece of peanut butter toast, it's easy to pass judgment on them and their actions, and judge them heinous. Easy, but no comfortable. It doesn't take much analysis of the situation to see there were no other decisions to be made.

That the drought here had gone on long enough to start affecting our own food supply was high on my mind while reading this, and with a tumultuous climate and industry pollution doing strange things to the land and weather, methinks this book is still all too relevant.

Verdict: Magnificent, seriously, a tight story like a kick in the teeth, fantastic pacing, absolutely no mercy for the characters or the reader. Seek it out.

Thanks to Miss Apricot, who was a touch alarmed at the bovine skeleton who she thought she might have recognised as her neighbour's brother's sister-in-law's cousin.

How to Ditch Your Fairy - Justine Larbalestier

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The Deal: At this point in time, due to an RSI, I can only type for 10 minutes at a time. What you see below is what is hammered out before the timer goes off- and nothing more.

I know. The cover is misleading. The book isn't actually about fairies, no, it's about feeding greedy little black billy goats who will eat your shirt off your shoulder if you do not offer them cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off.

(Some of the above paragraph is not true. And by 'some' I mean 'all of it'.)

I picked up this copy of the book at Justine's launch down in Melbourne, and when I started reading it I sent her a note to tell her so. I have to admit, when I have friends who happen to be writers who happen to have books out who happen to have a very strong reaction to knowing people are reading said book at anytime, yes I tell them. Because I am a total turd like that.

This book was a great change in pace from what I'd been reading before. It was fun from page one. Fun! Remember the last book you read that was fun and silly? I do believe we give Serious Works far too much precedence over Not Entirely Serious Works.

Charlie is in high school, and has decided that dammit, she wants to get rid of her fairy. Being that her fairy ensures that she will always get a good carpark and thus means she's dragged to all sorts of places she doesn't want to go just to get a good park and hell, she doesn't even drive, this is quite understandable. Unfortunately, when you're a high school student with a particular inclination towards sports, the means for ridding yourself of a fairy are limited. In fact, they're practically non-existent.

Thus the story unfolds. Apart from the fairy-issues, Charlie has to deal with the fact that she's a teenager, and dude, that's trial enough all on its own.

Charlie is immensely likable. She tries hard, means well, and makes bad choices. I found myself seriously rooting for her the whole way through, and laughing at the mistakes she makes that I know I've made. Especially the ones concerning boys. (Boys, man, who the hell thought they were a good idea?)

It's a fun, fun, fun book, and dammit I need more such books on my shelves.

And seriously, you can't go wrong when the second word is 'spoffs'. Meaning 'boobs'.

Verdict: Yeeeeeeah! How about some stories about the ordeal of being a teenager that aren't super-saturated in angst? Booyah!

Thanks to Miss Apricot, who quite admires Charlie's apricot-coloured singlet.

The Angel In The Darkness - Kage Baker

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The Deal: At this point in time, due to an RSI, I can only type for 10 minutes at a time. What you see below is what is hammered out before the timer goes off- and nothing more.

Maria Aguilar is over-weight, over-worked, and over just about everything. She's the responsible child who never became her own person, growing up only to remain the responsible child looking after the entire family and that being taken for granted.

It's a slim little volume, and being a novella that I recall devouring on a train trip, I did not spend much time with her, and such she did not get a great chance to imprint herself or her story upon me. But I remember Maria, and the peculiar incidents that disturbed her life, growing in significance and menace, and I remember caring about the extra stress that put upon her, when she had more than enough already. She's an immaculately drawn character. She's a person, she's the sort of person that, when we encounter in real life, we say to each other, "she's a real character."

This novella ties in with Baker's series dealing with time-spanning Company, none of which I've read. This story did intrigue me, however, if this is Maria's only appearance, am I really that interested?

Well, yes. Clearly Baker has characterisation down to a fine art, and there's nothing like being forced to care about someone who doesn't exist to make us feel a story.

Verdict: I'd say this is a good litmus test for Baker's writing. I really enjoyed it, well-balanced and well-paced.

Thanks to Miss Apricot for the photo. She approves of this book far more than Punktown, but only because she hasn't read it and didn't see all the murder and whatnotting going on.

Punktown - Jeffrey Thomas

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The Deal: At this point in time, due to an RSI, I can only type for 10 minutes at a time. What you see below is what is hammered out before the timer goes off- and nothing more.

I'm paying the price for letting the time between reading and writing grow to such ridiculous lengths. I know I had things I wanted to say about this book, and bugger me if I can remember.

Punktown is a collection of stories set in the same tired, brutal, fantastic city, the stories traveling through the various facets of life, from artists to detectives to runaway clones. The flavour made me think of Bladerunner, only with more dirt, more garbage, more violence, and no way out. Neon lights and startling graffiti.

That isn't entirely true. While I do look like a twat for writing about a book I don't properly remember, it means I can quite easily pick out the stories that stayed with me. Heart for Heart's Sake has remained quite clear and strong in my mind. It deals with the question of art, and where the line that divides 'art for art's sake' and 'making a living' falls, a line I believe is so subjective as to be incomprehensible. I had a quick read through of it again before starting this, and it is as resonant now as it was then.

Weaving through the stories is a strong theme of memory, and who isn't a sucker for memory? Thomas deals with the different trials memory offers to us all with greatly varying characters in different walks of life.

I do remember getting to the end of this book and wishing it were bigger. I wasn't done yet.

Verdict: Tasty, different stuff, but be warned, this is an entree, so prepare yourself if you're after a meal.

Thanks to Miss Apricot, who doesn't quite approve of my reading such sordid tales (although secretly she loves it).

Up In Honey's Room - Elmore Leonard

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The Deal: At this point in time, due to an RSI, I can only type for 10 minutes at a time. What you see below is what is hammered out before the timer goes off- and nothing more.

I'm guessing I read this in February some time. I remember it being hot - a lot of books get associated with heat, as I don't want to turn the computers on in summer. Back in 2005, Ellen Datlow recommended Leonard when she was tutoring us at Clarion South. It has taken me this long to get around to reading any of his works. (I am contrary, I like to do things in my own time.)

Reading this was just incredible. It's all dialogue. Seriously! There's not much of anything else in there, it's all conversations between characters, maybe a moment to move from doorway to couch or make a highball, and then more talking. And damned if it wasn't one of the fastest moving books I have ever read. Damn thing just hurtled along. I guess being all dialogue, it wasn't carrying any excess weight whatsoever. It's a gazelle of a book, no, actually, it isn't so prissy, it's more like a jaguar of a book, with saucy patterned fur, claws, teeth, and sassy eyes.

It's been so long since I read it the details of the plot have grown fuzzy, but it involves federal agents, incredible women, SS agents and a man who believes he is, or could be, or should be (at least entitled to all the glory of) Hitler. Plus some more spies. And cross-dressing butlers. And dialogue, endless snappy sparse dialogue that you simply can't stop reading. You don't walk away from an interesting conversation, do you? I couldn't.

It was a great read, but the enjoyment I took from it was purely from a writer's point of view - marveling at the mastery in my hands. As a story, it was entertaining, but it didn't change me, move me. Just killed some time in the heat.

Verdict: I think, should I happen across further of his books in sales and the like, I shall pick them up, because there is a lot to be learned, and damn I need more fun, light books. Very interesting.

Thanks to Miss Apricot, who approves of this more than she did of House of Leaves.

House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski

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The Deal: At this point in time, due to an RSI, I can only type for 10 minutes at a time. What you see below is what is hammered out before the timer goes off- and nothing more.

Fuck.

You know, this book is insane, and when I say insane, I mean insane with a capital "fuck". It requires a hell of a lot more than ten minutes of typing to even-

But at the same time, it's a well covered book. It's a book that just begs to be analysed and discussed and have essays and articles written about it, and you don't have to look far at all to find all sorts of writing dedicated to what is contained between the covers. For books that are so well chewed over, I generally feel I have nothing to say which has no doubt already been said a hundred times over, so why play that tape again and add to the white noise?

(For your own memory, Tess.)

I say 'contained between the covers' because it is not so easily fitted in the word of 'story'. It's an academic paper. It's the diary of a man losing his grip on the normal shared world. It's a documentary. It's insane, and when I say insane, I mean insane with a capital "fuck". I can't sum up the various stories contained within stories folded into other stories sharing footnotes creeping into each other's page space shuffling each other out of order off the page out of sync infecting each other with different coloured ink. I can't. I won't even try.

This book frightened me. Not the way Conrad Williams frightens me, that I have to sleep with the light on and check there's nothing in the room about to eat my face. It scared me in a less visceral, more emotional level. It made me question sanity, not my own sanity, but the sanity of the world. I had to stop reading it at 7am on a Saturday morning, with the sun high and bright and city waking and happy.

I didn't know if, with all those stories spiraling around each other and out of control, as the stories spiraled down the stairs and into a place that could not exist, the book would be able to carry the weight of what it contained, but it did.

The edition I have is 'remastered full-colour', containing some end errata which, after the main body, didn't quite sate my hunger for more more more I don't understand yet, but was enough for me to step back and say, actually, I don't want to know.

Verdict: also FUCKING OARSUM. Possibly the most challenging book I've ever read. The damn thing will make you work, you have to earn your fuckedupedness. I love it. I'm a sucker for anything that plays with page formatting.

Thank you Miss Apricot, even though she doesn't like the book and disapproves of its existence.

The Scalding Rooms - Conrad Williams

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The Deal: At this point in time, due to an RSI, I can only type for 10 minutes at a time. What you see below is what is hammered out before the timer goes off- and nothing more.

This book was given to me by the author. After finding the mumbojumbo I wrote about one of his previous books, he offered to send me a copy. Really? Authors do that to converts? Because that seems like a terrible waste of ammunition, I mean, I'm already converted. You don't need to convince me further of your awesome. But I have been convinced further of the awesome, and squeeeeeeeed like mad when this landed in the post. I was convalescing after having all four wisdom teeth out, Dad had given me a lift to my flat to pick up some stuff, and I started reading it in the car on the way home, hopped up on painkillers and heatwaves, all the way back in January.

It is, I was delighted to discover, another story set in the post-apocalyptic world established in his novella 'Nearly People', which is a fucking OARSUM story. It follows Junko, who has a job in an abattoir, an uncertain relationship with his wife and a son who is not a child.

As I've come to expect from Williams's writing, it was just superb. A wonderful palpable air of menace that moved through subtle textures psychological and danger wholly overt and physical.

In particular, I fell in love with the world Junko moved through. Red Meadows. A beach full of 'ears. A plain of nothing but shattered glass. Reading it right after Breathmoss made me hungry to create. Macleod made worlds stunningly heart-breakingly beautiful, and Williams made worlds stunningly heart-breakingly wretched, and both were just so full of wonder and mystery, I could not help but be infected.

The last line, though, what a kicker. I read it, and checked the dedication again, and all the horror, despair, misery and relentless inescapable doom in the story was undone.

(Okay, so that was a bit over ten minutes, purely because I was looking for a passage in the book.)

(Only a couple of minutes over.)

Verdict: I babble. I love Conrad Williams's work, and thank him a hundred times over for this gift, and repay him with an RSI and time-delay hampered crappy write up.

Thanks also to Miss Apricot the Billy Goat, who is whispering the recipe for jam drops in that wizened ear.