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"The Time Machine" by H. G. Wells
1895

At first, the far future looks like an enchanting place to the Time Traveller. The graceful Eloi appear to embody contentment, beauty and peace, and the Eden they live in seems to be free of suffering. But he soon comes to understand that the Eloi are fragile creatures, desperately afraid of the dark, and with good reason. For the Morlocks live in the dark, and the Morlocks are to be feared. And the Time Traveller must venture into their subterranean world to find his way back to his own era.

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I'm not much one for classics, as you may know, but this was a stellar book. It's important too - it's the first book to envision that time travel could be possible with the aid of a mechanical machine. It redefined science fiction and practically created a whole genre in itself. Hell, without this book, there is no TARDIS. And it's worth it just for that.

A good book that everyone should read, especially any Doctor Who fans.

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October 21st, 2011

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"Death Of A Gossip" by M. C. Beaton
1985

When society widow and gossip columnist Lady Jane Winters joins the local fishing club she wastes no time in ruffling the feathers - or should that be fins? - of those around her. Among the victims of her sharp tongue in Lochdubh constable Hamish Macbeth, yet not even he imagines anyone would seriously take steps to silence her ladyship's shrill voice permanently - until her body is fished out of the river. Now with the help of the lovely Priscilla Halburton-Smythe, Hamish must steer through the choppy waters of the dead woman's life to find the murderer. But no one seems willing to talk, and Hamish may well be in over his head for some secrets are deadly, and killers when cornered usually do strike again.

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A neat little whodunnit that doesn't match up to the greatness of other crime writers, but does introduce the character of Hamish Macbeth who is impossible not to like, so brimming with innocence and kindness as he is.

The writing is tolerable, but at times you wonder how it got past the editor (at one point, a character "slipped on the slippery boulders" ... well, yeah) but it's not great literature. The author is wildly prolific though, and there's a whole series of these. I might get to them sometime, but I'm not in any hurry.

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September 16th, 2011

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"Grow Up" by Ben Brooks
2011

Jasper wants to get on in the world, but he's got a lot on his plate: A-levels, his mother pushing him to overachieve, weekly visits to his psychologist, comedowns, YouTube suicides and pregnant one-night-stands. Then there's his stepdad - the murderer.

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By default, the author is my new sworn enemy because he's 19 years old and this is his fifth book and it's really good, but that aside, let's be unbiased.

This is a really funny, modern, warm, compelling book about teenagers who take more drugs than any teenagers I've ever known. But the descriptions are lovely, the characters are so good and the references to modern life come thick and fast - everything from QI to Facebook chat gets a mention, showing how integrated these sorts of things are in our everyday lives now.

A clever and witty book that reminds you that everyone goes through the same hormonal imbalance and mess as everyone else. And that there's no harm in asking for help.

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September 13th, 2011

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"The Subtle Knife" by Philip Pullman
1997

Will is twelve years old and he's just killed a man. Now he's on his own, on the run, determined to discover the truth about his father's disappearance.

Then Will steps through a window in the air into another world, and finds himself with a companion - a strange, savage little girl called Lyra. Like Will, she has a mission which she intends to carry out at all costs.

But the world of Cittàgazze is a strange and unsettling place. Deadly, soul-eating Spectres stalk its streets, while high above, the wingbeats of distant angels sound against the sky. And in the mysterious Torre delgi Angeli lurks Cittàgazze's most important secret - an object which people from many worlds would kill to possess...

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Five years have passed between me reading the prequel and this, but mere moments have gone by within the story. Pullman's Lyra, like Carroll's Alice, remains one of the most frustratingly annoying children in all of fiction, but the purpose of the titular knife and the return of the daemons makes the story sparkle.

I make no secret of the fact I envy the daemon idea almost more than anything else I've read, because it works so beautifully. This isn't great literature, but it's pretty damn good. Start with the first one, and then read through.

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September 10th, 2011

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"A Study In Scarlet" by Arthur Conan Doyle
1887

When Dr John Watson takes rooms in Baker Street with amateur detective Sherlock Holmes, he has no idea that he is about to enter a shadowy wold of criminality and violence.

Accompanying Holmes to an ill-omened house in south London, Watson is startled to find a dead man whose face is contorted in a rictus of horror. There is no mark of violence on the body yet a single word is written on the wall in blood.

Dr Watson is as baffled as the police, but Holmes's brilliant analytical skills soon uncover a trail of murder, revenge and lost love...

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@the_who_ru was the person who told me to try some Doyle, but I didn't especially enjoy it. The whole thing is too ... rehearsed? Holmes appears to be plucking clues out of thin air or inventing his own ideas and funnily enough they're all right. I know he's supposed to be a genius but sometimes it just seems too insane to be believable.

I like my crime novels laced with clues so I can work out whodunnit, not have the murderer thrust upon me with no previous indication of them. And then the narrative jumps and it stops being about murder altogether.

Stick to Christie.

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September 8th, 2011

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"One Day" by David Nicholls
2009

15th July, 1988. Emma and Dexter meet for the first time on the night of their graduation. Tomorrow they must go their separate ways.

So where will they be on this one day next year?

And the year after that?

And every year that follows?

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This truly beautiful book follows Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley from the night they meet in 1988 for the next twenty years, but only by showing us what they're doing on the fifteenth of July every year.

The characters and situations are all too real, and all too relatable. There are few characters I wish to meet more than these.

It's a novel about friendship and love, fame and fortune, hopes and dreams. It's about the heartbreaking gap between the way we were and the way we are. It's about what we want from life, and what we end up with.

A very clever, funny, sweet book that you should have read by now. If you haven't, get on that.

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August 22nd, 2011

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"Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury
1953

Fahrenheit 451: the temperature at which book-paper catches fire and burns

Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to burn books, which are forbidden, being the source of all discord and unhappiness. Even so, Montag is unhappy; there is discord in his marriage. Are books hidden in his house? The Mechanical Hound of the Fire Department, armed with a lethal hypodermic, escorted by helicopters, is ready to track down those dissidents who defy society to preserve and read books.

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Set in my ultimate vision of hell, this masterstroke of genius from Bradbury is a warning to us all about what happens when you worship triviality over greatness. People now live in a world where no one has any time to think, literally. They are force-fed information at all times, but none of it has any value.

This is a world gone bad. A world I don't want to live in, but a book I enjoyed. Bradbury is one of the greatest sci-fi writers of all time.

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August 14th, 2011

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"Ella Minnow Pea" by Mark Dunn
2001

As Ella Minnow Pea writes to her cousin with the latest news on the small, quiet island of Nollop, little does she imagine the crisis ahead. The letter Z has fallen from the statue of Nevin Nollop, revered author of the sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" - and the island's rulers interpret this as a sign of divine displeasure and ban its use in any form. In a novel composed of correspondence, the loss of Z is inconvenient; but far worse is to come as more letters fall and more are banned, until only L, M, N, O, P remain...

The story of a battle against tyranny, this extraordinary novel, written with an ever-shrinking alphabet, is at once a moving love story, a brilliant political allegory and an unforgettable celebration of language.

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I'd heard of his book for some time, and finally got around to reading it. I adore it. As the letters vanish from the statue, so too they disappear from the book. At first, letters like Z, Q and J do little to the text, but then more common letters begin to fall ... D and F ... once those happens, even simple words vanish from the text ... "and", "of", "had", "if" ... all gone.

A very intelligent, well-written book that keeps you gripped as the language becomes more convoluted in various efforts to escape the punishments for using the former letters. Well worth a look, especially if you love language.

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August 5th, 2011

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"The Second Coming" by John Niven
2011

God's coming - look busy!

God really is coming, and he is going to be pissed. Having left his son in charge, God treated himself to a well-earned break around the height of the Renaissance. A good time to go fishing. He returns in 2011 to find things on Earth haven't quite gone to plan.

The world has been rendered a human toilet: genocide; starvation; people obsessed with vacuous celebrity culture; 'and', God points out, 'there are fucking Christians everywhere'. God hates Christians. There's only one thing for it. They're sending the kid back.

JC, reborn, is a struggling musician in New York City, helping people as best he can and trying to teach the one true commandment: Be Nice! Gathering disciples along the way - a motley collection of basket cases, stoners and alcoholics - he realises his best chance to win hearts and minds amy lie in a TV talent contest. "American Pop Star" is the number one show in America, the unholy creation of English record executive Steven Stelfox... a man who's more than a match for the Son of God.

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Hilarious, ruthless, always a little close to the bone, but with an excellent message. A book for religionists and atheists both, as it really shines a light on the un-Christian way some Christians go about their business.

It's full of some genuinely funny insights, such as the explanation of where the 10 commandments came from, a board meeting with the head saints, scenes in Hell's Kitchen, and a wonderful parody of Simon Cowell. You should read this and think about the message within. We could all learn a lot from JC. It's not about praying, this life, it's just about being nice. So do it. And remember, God LOVES fags!

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August 2nd, 2011

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"Finding Myself" by Toby Litt
2003

Bestselling novelist Victoria About has a plan. She's going to invite eleven of her friends to stay in a house by the sea for a month. There'll be games, bed-hopping and other shenanigans. In fact, plenty of material for her next book. Except things don't quite go according to Victoria's wishes. For a start, the house appears to be haunted; her guests do as they like not what she wants; and, worst of all, they discover her hidden cameras. With the game almost up, Victoria must somehow save herself, her book and what's left of her friendships...

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Packed with loathsome characters, each as believable as the next, this book is a brilliant piece of literature with a twist. This isn't the final copy - this is the first draft, complete with ramblings, plans, hurried descriptions and handwritten notes from the editor scrawled in the margins.

A clever book about what happens when you try and turn your life into a novel. Victoria is a character I can relate to, but she is not someone I particularly like. She is an unreliable narrator like no other, but it's not as if the other characters are particularly angelic. Some wonderful lines and a genuinely unique piece of writing.

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July 31st, 2011