Five for Friday no. 45

First world problems of the 1990s. Unnervingly, I can related to most of them.

 

Hipster baby names: find your own. Mine is Argyle. Which I think might be easier to deal with than my real name. 

The 50 ugliest shoes in history. 

 

A slightly odd sartorial website. 

Dream houses built for books and the people who love them.

The Glass Books Of The Dream Eaters

In September, I was given a Kindle for my birthday. In October, I finally got it out of its box and started to use it (it always takes me a while, I'm not one of those people ripping it open and booting it up on the day). I went through the set-up, then started looking through the catalog to find a book to read while travelling to Melbourne. I searched on a few authors whose writing I knew I liked, and came across The Chemickal Marriage, by Gordon Dahlquist. At that point, I'm pretty sure I made a noise only dogs could have heard. It was the third in a series of books I had been dying to finish.

Because, you see, way, way back, in the beginning of time (in 2006), I worked with a woman and we talked about books a lot. We'd read promos for this book called The Glass Books Of The Dream Eaters, and thought it sounded like a good time. Then we discovered that the publisher was releasing the book as a serial; once you subscribed, they would mail you an installment, one week at a time - similar to the way Victorian folks used to get Charles Dickens books, for example. These special installments were only available in the UK, but my friend had an aunt there, so after a few months, I received a lovely package of slender blue volumes in the mail.

The fabulous binding was only a preview: The Glass Books Of The Dream Eaters is a classic adventure-mystery, with bits of steampunk science fiction/fantasy and erotica thrown in. Set in a psuedo-Victorian-era city, the story follows three main characters - Cardinal Chang*, an assassin with bad eyesight and a fondness for poetry; Miss Celeste Temple, a stubborn, independent plantation heiress; and Doctor Abelard Svenson, a chain-smoking army surgeon attached to the prince of his country as he travels. Separately, the three come into contact with a sinister cabal intent on enslaving the upper eschelons of society and taking control of Europe, and when our heroes' paths' inevitably cross, they team up, intent on thwarting the plot. The glass of the title refers to the cabal's main weapon; a blue alchemical glass that can be used to steal memories and record them for others to experience. Using the glass also produces a feeling of erotic euphoria, ensnaring the hapless user in an addictive hallucination. As the story progresses, so does use of the glass, until a shocking and astounding alchemical transformation takes place!

And so, this began my interest in these books. The sequel, The Dark Volume, came out in 2008, and was an intriguing continuation of the story. It had an infuriating Empire Strikes Back-style ending, though, hence my excitement about the 2012 release of The Chemickal Marriage. And now I've finally read them all, and honestly, I found the conclusion totally satisfying. I thought the style and quality of the story and writing was consistent all the way through (it's always so disappointing when the end of a series is crap compared to the beginning, but that's not the case here) and overall, I find these books such an entertaining read!

They won't be what everyone wants in a novel, I suppose. The story is packed with a million characters, and driven by a crazy series of events - death-defying escapes, betrayals, encounters with members of the cabal, plus the detective-style work the three heroes are doing, trying to uncover the cabal's plot. Each chapter throughout the whole series is also told from the perspective of a different main character, rolling through them in a cycle, which has the advantage of uncovering a wider view of the overall conspiracy than a single perspective could portray, and also exploring how the main characters appear to other people, which is always intriguing. Of course, Dahlquist ends just about every chapter right on a cliffhanger, which is completely infuriating (and excellent). The books are also written in a slightly Victorian style, very much after Dickens, or maybe HG Wells or Jules Verne, and the language sometimes contributes a certain convolutedness for the modern reader.

However, if you can get used to the mannered writing, free-wheeling story and the perspective switches, there's plenty to reward you. Conspiracy, steampunk science, dissolute aristocrats, masked balls and murders. The villains, dastardly though they are, are a lot of fun - there's the Comte d'Orkanz, aristocrat-slash-artist-slash-mad-scientist and the creator of the science behind the blue glass. There's Francis Xonck, younger brother of a wealthy arms maker, who plays at being another dissolute aristo but has a greater ambition within the cabal than he pretends. Then there's the Contessa di Laquer-Sforza, a beautiful, enigmatic con-woman, orchestrating and manipulating even within the cabal. There are others, each convinced they are in control of their conspiracy, and the whole thing is naturally a house of cards, just waiting for the co-conspirators to betray each other.

I also really liked all the main characters. Miss Temple isn't a cookie-cutter heroine, and she refuses to be anyone's damsel in distress. She does start out searching for the fiance who threw her over, but continues to fight the cabal long after her interest in him has dissolved. Doctor Svenson is more reserved, even when the story is from his perspective, but his dry wit and ongoing loyalty, even to those who may not deserve it, becomes a welcome relief in such a mad-cap story. His chain-smoking and fear of heights also humanize him in appealing ways. And then there's Cardinal Chang, the consummate antihero; a talented assassin with a well-hidden reserve of courage and self-sacrifice.

So, if you feel in the mood for a thrilling, action-packed story, of sinister villains and a conspiracy that accelerates like a runaway train until it threatens to unseat an entire country, escalating to a horrifying, epic yet deeply personal climax at the end of The Chemickal Marriage, maybe these are the books for you...

(The Guardian has naturally written a better review than mine, if you need further convincing.)

Note: I hope they don't try to make a Hollywood movie out of these books. They'd have to tear them apart, and that would be such a shame. A really well-produced miniseries, on the other hand, akin to Game of Thrones or something, could be amazing.

*Not a real cardinal.

Happy blog-i-versary to us!

On 22 April, Jane and I shared a momentous occasion and we didn’t even notice it. It was our one-year blogiversary. We have been doing this random, who knows what the hell we’re on about blog for over a year now. This is a Big Deal! And we didn’t even know! 

To be honest, that’s kind of indicative of our lackadaisical attitude to this blog in general but we are getting better at it. In the 8 months we were blogging last year we posted 115 times. Now, in the first 5 months of 2012 we’re up to 108 posts and counting. So we may not be up to a-post-a-day level but we’re getting there!

The original purpose of this blog was to force us to read all the books on our bookshelves and then review them as proof that we have done so. Looking at my original list:

One of our Thursdays is Missing – Jasper Fforde
The Alchemaster’s Apprentice – Walter Moers
In Defence of Sin – edited by John Portman
The Heart has its Reasons – the Duchess of Windsor
The Diviners – Rick Moody
Sophie’s World - Jostein Gaarder
The Flaneur – Edmund White
The Subterraneans and Pie – Jack Kerouac
The Group – Mary McCarthy
The Book of Revelation – Rupert Thompson
Soul Mountain – Gao Xinjian
Guns, Germs and Steel – Jared Diamond
Twelve Bar Blues – Patrick Neate
Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
Dangerous Liaisons – Pierre Choderlos De Laclos
The Inheritance of Loss – Kiran Desai
The Red and the Black - Stendhal
Turkestan Solo - Ella Maillart
Man of My Dreams – Curtis Sittenfeld
Harry Potter und die Heiligtumer des Todes – J.K. Rowling

I have read 6 of those and started but not finished 7. I’m thinking that this is a sign and I should just admit defeat and get myself some new books to not read. I might hold a book-swap party and cleanse myself of all the randomness on my shelves, thus completing my challenge in our cheating master-stroke.

We don’t have many followers, though I have been told that people do look at our blog, even if it is just to read the moustache puns. If you are a regular looker but not follower, please consider ‘following’. It will give us a warm glow inside and we might gift you a book to say thank you! 

I have been debating whether or not to continue with this blog. It takes a lot of time and does distract me from writing that best-selling novel I keep putting off. I've been saying to myself that I would wait until we'd done it for a year and then re-evaluate. Well, a year passed without my noticing and here I am, still prattling on.  I suppose I'll keep going. For now, at least.

Five for Friday no.13

Brisbane has our own 100% local online shoe store. I'm so proud!

Zombies, Run! There is an app you can buy that makes running … fun … shudder … by making it an interactive game in which as soon as you step out of your door you're running from the zombies and fighting for your life. Sounds cool but it's not enough to convert me: I don't run.

Who doesn't love a good bookshelf or beautiful library website? I know I do, even though they fill me with bitter seething envy. So, bookshelf site!


A short history of the Calendar. For those of you who weren't in the know.



Slow motion ballet. Two dancers from the Staatsballett Berlin slowed to 1000 frames per second accompanied by Radiohead's Everything in Its Right Place.

Book review: The Group by Mary McCarthy

The Group was written by Mary McCarthy and published in 1963. It stayed on the New York Times best seller list for 2 years and has been an inspiration to decades of women writers since. It was a break through book for women's literature. The style, the subject matter and characterisation were entirely new and revolutionary for the depiction of young women and the realities of their lives in a new America.

The story follows 8 women from the months after their graduation from Vasser in 1933 through the tumultuous 1930's up to the start of WWII. These women mostly come from wealthy families, are 'society' and have had one of the best educations the country can offer them but as the novel runs its course they go through the painful process of dealing with real life and all its mes and disappointments. Each makes drastic compromises in love, ambition or situation as they learn how to deal with, for example; men and the issues of virginity, marriage and that most scandalous topic – female contraception. The Group also deals with a women's place in the workforce, her rights and obligations in marriage and as a mother or daughter – heady issues in the changing America of the 1930s and all of them still pertinent today.

At first I found The Group difficult to read. McCarthy devotes one chapter to a woman and an event in her life, making use of intricate description that can be tiresome to read. Chapter one opens with Group member Kay Strong embarking on an ill-reasoned marriage to an unsavoury hopeful producer. As the chapters progress we move forward in months or years and to a new women and the directions she has taken in life. Somewhere around chapter 4 I got hooked and couldn't put the book down.

I think what has made The Group an enduring 'classic' is that these characters deal with problems and questions about life that are all still pertinent to women in the 1960s, 1980s and now. Even the issues of whether to breast feed or bottle feed, to feed a child on time or on demand are still with us, let alone poor Priss Hartshorn, married to a paediatrician who is determined to use the birth of their first child as a example of his new ideas in child-rearing.

The Group was made into a movie in 1966, starring actresses such as Candice Bergen and Jessica Walters, so it must be due to be rediscovered and remade by Hollywood. I predict a lot of spculation of who will get the roles in this classic ensemble piece, lead roles for Rachel McAdams, Emma Stone, Mia Wasikowska a few other 'hot'names and one or two 'up and comings', just to balance out.

The cast of The Group, 1966.

B's bookshelf update

On 23 April 2011, I posted – for the first time! Sigh! – my list of to-reads. It’s now 6 months on and I thought I should do an update of how the ‘project’ is progressing.

This is what my original list now looks like:

In Defence of Sin – edited by John Portman
The Heart has its Reasons – the Duchess of Windsor
The Diviners – Rick Moody
Sophie’s World - Jostein Gaarder
The Flaneur – Edmund White
The Subterraneans and Pie – Jack Kerouac
The Book of Revelation – Rupert Thompson
Soul Mountain – Gao Xinjian
Twelve Bar Blues – Patrick Neate
Dangerous Liaisons – Pierre Choderlos De Laclos
The Inheritance of Loss – Kiran Desai
The Red and the Black - Stendhal
Harry Potter und die Heiligtumer des Todes – J.K. Rowling

If I’m absolutely honest, I’d forgotten I had some of these books on my shelves until re-visiting the blog post. Also, looking at the list I now have all the very heavy books left. I did start reading The Inheritance of Loss but I got distracted by a much lighter, sillier book. Soul Mountain and The Red and the Black are likewise started but haven’t progressed far beyond the first 100 pages.

I forecast some very thought-provoking Christmas reading this year.

Of those books I’ve read I couldn’t pick out a best or worst. They were all immensely enjoyable, well-written and re-readable.

Book review: One of our Thursdays is Missing by Jasper Fforde

The sixth book in the Thursday Next Series – One of our Thursdays is Missing – follows a very similar pattern and style to the previous books. A bizarre opening scene leads to a progressively more complex and intricately-woven plot that is explained brilliantly in the final chapters with the goodies getting a satisfying ending, the baddies getting some form of comeuppance, liberally lavished all over with conspiracy theories, evil empires, politics, puns and innumerable literary gags and references.

In One of our Thursdays is Missing, Thursday Next goes…missing…and the plot instead revolves around the fictional Thursday who, thanks to her character/body assimilation looks exactly like the real Thursday, causing confusion to all who meet her. Fictional Thursday must find real Thursday in a matter of days; otherwise the Bookworld will be the scene of a horrendous and fictionally-bloody genre war. Characters and references to the previous 5 Thursday books abound and it’s a delightful for a fan like myself to be treated to so many in-jokes. I love Fforde’s intelligent but off-beat sense of humour, though sometimes I find him just laugh-out-loud funny, such as this paragraph when Thursday visits The Lady of Shallot:

The Lady of Shalott was of an indeterminate age and might once have been plain before the rigours of artistic interpretation for working on her. This was the annoying side of the Feedback Loops; irrespective of how she had once looked or even wanted to look, she was now a pre-Raphaelite beauty with long flaxen tresses, flowing white gowns and a silver forehead band. She wasn't the only one to be physically morphed by Reader Expectation. Miss Havisham was now elderly whether she liked it or not and Sherlock Holmes wore a deerstalker and smoked a ridiculously large pipe. The problem wasn't just confined to the classics. Harry Potter was seriously pissed of that he'd have to spend the rest of his life looking like Daniel Radcliffe.

John William Waterhouse's The Lady of Shalott.

I could believe that some Jasper Fforde readers might get tired of the plot patterns that one sees repeated from book to book. I myself bought One of our Thursdays is Missing many months ago but have only just picked it off the shelf, whereas I once devoured Fforde’s novels as soon as they appeared. That being said, I am not one who is going to complain about Fforde’s now quite usual plot line and style. I love it. I own and have read every novel he’s published and I will continue to purchase them without question. I love the truly bizarre conspiracy theories and plot twists. The strange characters, the gags, the fake ads in the back of the book.

Book reviews compare Fforde to Terry Pratchett or Monty Python and I can certainly see the similarities in the humour and in the construction of alternative worlds that are so beautifully and intricately described you find yourself becoming involved.

For me, the Bookworld is so well-described and so well-known by now that I actually feel bad about putting the book down because the characters are no longer being read anymore. I also get to feel a lovely warm glow of smugness when I get one of the literary references.

I recommend One of our Thursdays is Missing – just read the first 5 books in the series before you begin.

Red Earth and Pouring Rain by Vikram Chandra

I was going to write a review of this book but I now feel completely upstaged by Jane's infinitely better written review of Midnight's Children. So I'll write this instead:

Red Earth and Pouring Rain is an Indian Saga set in multiple centuries and it's huge and great and a wonderful read. But if you're only going to read one Indian novel this year, make it Midnight's Children. Read Red Earth and Pouring Rain next year, because it's still a cracker of a book.

And read Jane's review instead of mine because it's better too. Seriously, a great review.

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

“I told you the truth,” I say yet again, “Memory’s truth, because memory has its own special kind. It selects, eliminates, alters, exaggerates, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent versions of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else’s version more than his own.”


While B and I were in Vietnam, I read Midnight's Children, by Salman Rushdie.

(Given that we were flying Royal Brunei Airlines, which is a Muslim airline, and we had a layover in a Muslim country, this was possibly an ill-advised choice. I didn't think it through until I was already on the plane, though, and no-one seemed to notice, anyway...)

I've had this book in my collection for ages; I've loved several of Rushdie's other books, and I was sure I'd like this one. It was great to finally get around to reading it. It's won a heap of prizes - including the Booker of the Bookers - and in my opinion, deserves all of them.

As so often happens with Rushdie, summing up the plot is difficult, and I feel like I could never encapsulate the depth and richness of the story. To give it a shot, though, Midnight's Children is about Saleem Sinai, a man who was born at the moment of India's independence. It's also about his family, friends and loved ones; it's also about India, Pakistan, Kashmir, China, and the ties between them. It's a satire, an allegory, a bildungsroman, and most of all a tragedy. It's about Saleem's rise and his devastating fall.

Narrated in a colloquial, eloquent fashion by Saleem, Midnight's Children begins with him at 31, telling the story of his life because he believes he is dying. To begin, he delves into the history of his family, tracing the lives of his grandparents, his parents, and detailing their interactions, passions and mistakes. The history and politics of the country we now call India are woven in, inextricable from Saleem's family's lives. Then he is born, at the stroke of midnight, and he is heralded as a prophetic, significant child, a symbol of India as a new-born nation.

Saleem grows into a self-acknowledged "ugly kid" though - skinny, huge nose, missing some hair and part of one finger. Then, a series of accidents opens his mind to those around him; he discovers he is telepathic. He's not the only one, though, and through his telepathy he discovers the other midnight children, the children born in the first hour of India's independence. He discovers that they're all gifted like him; one girl is a witch, one boy is an avatar for war. Another child can switch gender at will, another was born so beautiful she blinded her parents and the midwife. Saleem tries to work out what their collective destiny is, but these children are still children; they argue, gossip, and cannot agree on anything, and their conference is fairly ineffective. There is also the problem of Shiva, the child born at the same moment as Saleem, who not only challenges his ideas for unity and growth, but represents a bigger, more complicated threat to Saleem's whole family.

Saleem grows, his family grows and changes. Eventually, though, at the insistence of his parents, he undergoes a sinus operation and when he wakes, his ability to connect to other minds is lost - the midnight children are lost to him. As he reaches into adolescence, his family also decamps from India to Pakistan, raising another barrier between Saleem and the other children. He has developed a new ability, though, a preternatural sense of smell that even allows him to smell emotions, and he explores this ability with mixed results in the neighbourhoods of Karachi. The move to Pakistan has other consequences for the family, disastrous ones, and the third act finds Saleem amnesiac, stripped of everything, and lost in the war between India and Pakistan.

The story continues to its fairly horrifying climax, and Saleem remains a strong, unique character throughout. While he has elements of archetype about him - while aspects of the book are defintely an allegory for India's early years of independence, or for the politics, history and social conditions of the people - Saleem's narration is so expressive and idiosyncratic, and his story so emotionally resonant and full of his own mistakes, that the allegory somehow becomes deeply, deeply personal. It's a testament to Rushdie's abilities as a storyteller; this book draws an amazingly clear picture of the time, of the culture and society of India and the people Saleem belongs to, without ever losing its emotional core.

The narration features a constant interweaving of past-Saleem and narrating-Saleem, as narrating-Saleem butts into the story to comment or foreshadow. He openly mentions the bleak ending, his belief that the destiny of the midnight children was not to save the world or run the country, but to be extinguished. And any time past-Saleem's situation even vaguely approaches a point of fulfillment, an end-of-movie tidiness, the veneer of completion is dismantled by narrating-Saleem, warning of what's to come. Rushdie, throughout the story, also dismantles other absolutes, other false veneers of perfection. He doesn't hesitate to crack apart the pillars humans tend to cling to - faith, religion, government, even family or romantic love - exposing and exploring the human fallibility and hypocrisy beneath. Despite the tragedies of Saleem's life, though, the story is also full of humour and forgiveness.

Aside from the rich layers to be found in the story itself, the other awesome thing about a book by Salman Rushdie is the style, the language he uses. Complex, unique, and, as I mentioned, full of idiosyncrasies, Rushdie is one of those authors whose sentences take a left turn you weren't expecting, who chooses words you wouldn't think would work at all, but nevertheless you know exactly what he means. It's a bit denser than your average novel, and the style can take a few pages to get used to, but I always think his books are worth the effort.

Summary/TL;DR: Midnight's Children is a great read. It's a rich, detailed story, with a satisfying, occasionally grotesque plot, and deeply human characters. Rushdie's language is amazingly vivid and full of colour, and he makes you want to go to India but worry you'll be disappointed when you get there.

Book review: Turkestan Solo by Ella Maillart

As the book jacket says, long before travel to Central Asia was fashionable Ella Maillart did it. Throughout the 1930's, she journeyed across China, from Peking to Srinagar with fellow journalist Peter Fleming; from Geneva to Kabul and reported for international newspapers from Turkey, Iran and Afganistan. During the 1930's. As a woman. We're impressed when women do this today, 80 years later. To top of her extraordinary story during the 20' she was an international skier, on the Swiss hockey team and competed in the 1924 Olympics.

As a book, it's interesting. At the beginning, it reads a little strangely. I think that's more because the voice and style are so different from what travel journals sound like nowadays. Moving on from that, you have to be impressed by what she did. She skied to the top of a mountain 5 people had climbed. Ever. She travels to places that most of us will never see, even now. She meets amazing people and chronicles what ordinary life is like on the steppes of Kazakstan in yurts eating precious potatoes.

She talks a bit about adventure, seeing places before they become something else – a country in line with those around it, a 'modern' place. The advance of Communism is coming to Central Asia and with it huge changes. She saw these amazing places when they were still places one journeyed to. As far as I'm concerned, going to Kazakstan and Bokhara and Samarkand is still an adventure, let alone by myself 80 years ago. I want to go to the last 2 cities, by the way.

Her many books and photographs are considered important historical records of a time and place and come from her unique view point as one of the first 'tourists' in the countries she visits.

If you see any of Ella Maillart's books you should pick them up and read them. She writes intimately about places we can still visit and maybe see a little of life 100 years ago even if there are traffic lights and tall buildings and progress.

Adding to the list…

The original ‘purpose’ of this blog was as inducement for Jane and myself to read all the un-read books on our bookshelves. While Jane is actually managing to do this, I am…kind of…failing. I’ve read 2 books on my list so far and it’s been 3 months. I’ve started another 3 but that doesn’t count for much.

Now I’ve decided to really stuff myself up – bookshelf-wise – and re-read the Harry Potter series from start to finish. This is inspired by watching the 8^th Harry Potter movie over the weekend. See review here.

I’ve re-read parts of the series on and off over the years. Particularly book 7, because I’m reading the German version and it makes me want to read the events in a language I can understand. Yet I doubt I’ve sat down and read any of the books cover to cover since my first reading so many years ago. With Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, that’s totally a deliberate choice because in that book Harry just…shits me. He’s really an annoying little bugger who needs and good punch in the face. Plus, that book needs a good editor to take a good slash at it and cut it in half. All the others I can’t wait to re-read! I suspect sitting down again and really working through them I’ll notice all those signaling moments and events and have lots of ‘AH-HA!’ realisations. Bookshelf project – stalled. Harry Potter re-reading project – begun.

Image courtesy of I Love Charts tumblr.

B's bookshelf

As you may have read, this blog started out as a motivating tool to get Jane and I to read all the unread books on our respective shelves.

Unlike Jane, I’m going to post my full list of books – scary as it is - so that in 2 months time I can re-post it with many books crossed out and so have that delicious sense of achievement one gets from crossing out items form one’s to –do list.

One of our Thursdays is Missing – Jasper Fforde
The Alchemaster’s Apprentice – Walter Moers
In Defence of Sin – edited by John Portman
The Heart has its Reasons – the Duchess of Windsor
The Diviners – Rick Moody
Sophie’s World - Jostein Gaarder
The Flaneur – Edmund White
The Subterraneans and Pie – Jack Kerouac
The Group – Mary McCarthy
The Book of Revelation – Rupert Thompson
Soul Mountain – Gao Xinjian
Guns, Germs and Steel – Jared Diamond
Twelve Bar Blues – Patrick Neate
Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
Dangerous Liaisons – Pierre Choderlos De Laclos
The Inheritance of Loss – Kiran Desai
The Red and the Black - Stendhal
Turkestan Solo - Ella Maillart
Man of My Dreams – Curtis Sittenfeld
Harry Potter und die Heiligtumer des Todes – J.K. Rowling

It’s a pretty heavy list. Very little in the light bed time reading area and a little too much that will send me to sleep after 4 or 5 pages.

I’m pretty sure The Heart has its Reasons is going to be both light and a bad read. I picked it out of a throw away box out of books more for author interest than s suspicion it had true literary value.

As you may have guessed, Harry Potter und die Heiligtumes des Todes is Harry Potter and the Deathy Hallows in German. I’m re-re-learning German through the Institute of Modern Languages and bought Harry Potter in 2008 when I was over in Germany. When you’re trying to learn a foreign language, you need to read as much as possible to improve understanding. I like to read books that I know in English because that way I don’t spend the entire time wondering what the hell is going on. When I read Harry Potter, I know exactly what is happening and I can concentrate properly on the words. So I bought Harry Potter over 3 years ago, and I’m still only up to chapter 12.

So that's my list. It's long and a little scary. But I've already made a start and am most of the way through The Alchemaster's Apprectice, so my first book review will be coming very shortly.

Jane's Bookshelf

Okay, so hi! Welcome to what will hopefully be the first of many amazing posts. You'll laugh, you'll cry, etc. etc.

But down to business. The point of this whole blog is that me and B both have unread books in our bookshelves, and we thought we could encourage (read: force) ourselves to read them if we set up a blog where we were supposed to review said books for the internet. Or something.

Anyway, this is a post about my bookshelf. I'm aiming to pin down the ones I'm going to read for this blog. I don't want to commit to too many books at once, because we'll be here forever if I get into a serious list of every book I could possibly read. But I can list a few to start with, anyway, so here's the first set of books I'm (probably) gonna read and review:

Apathy for the Devil - Nick Kent. A UK rock writer's memoirs of hanging out and doing drugs with some of the most famous rock and rollers of the 1970s, including Iggy Pop, Chrissie Hynde, the collected Rolling Stones (but mostly Keef), and more. Sounds like it'll be a good time.

Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell - Dave Thompson and All Yesterday's Parties - Clinton Heylin. Continuing on the theme of 70s rock, these two are both about Bowie-era music. The first is apparently about "the dangerous glitter of David Bowie, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed" and the second is about the Velvet Underground (Lou Reed's band, for the undereducated).

The Hunger Games trilogy - Suzanne Collins. YA speculative fiction, and I'm cheating a bit here because I've already read them. But they're super, they'll be a nice contrast to all the 70s rock music going on, and they're making a movie so I'll probably want to re-read them at some point. And whoever ends up reading this blog, you'll get three books in one review! Bonus!

The Book Thief - Markus Zusak. More YA speculative fiction, this time a book that I've had forever and never read. I know I've totally missed the boat, it's been out for ages, but whatever, I need to read the damn thing! Plus I read the first few chapters and it's pretty good so far.

Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk. ...er, it's about fight clubs? But no, I thought I should add something to this list that wasn't rock memoir or spec fic, and I totally loved Invisible Monsters, so Fight Club seemed like a good idea. And I promise not to cheat by just watching the movie again.

Kafka On The Shore - Haruki Murakami. I have no idea what this book is about, but I've had it on my shelves forever and I need to read it. I'll let you know how that goes...

Transition - Iain Banks. Apparently this is about an alternate world secretly run by a shadowy organisation, and featured characters apparently include an unkillable assassin, a day trader, and a torturer. So, you know, it sounds interesting. I loved The Crow Road, and I'm still a little spun out by The Wasp Factory (might have to cheat a little and re-read that one, just so I can review it), so yay for Iain Banks!

That's probably enough commitment for now - B, I can hear you laughing at me, because now I have go and read all of these books. Where's your list, huh? Huh??

In terms of the future, my bookshelf also features a lot of unread China Mieville, a lot of random spec fic books I've picked up, a lot of Henry Rollins, some Joseph Campbell, more music writing of various kinds, and I'll probably muster up the nerve to read The Road at some point, so fair warning. I may decide to include my DVD collection in this mess, by the way, just because I need to watch the stuff I've bought and it all technically lives on my bookshelf...

Ta ta for now!