h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I keep starting a journal to record what I'm reading. And promptly forgetting all about it, of course! So I think I'll try again and use this one for a change.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Slightly depressing, let's be honest. But there's also quite a lot of humour in there, and one or two nice little digs at attitudes. Fitzgerald's a writer with a gift for a lovely phrase, too. But it was a bit unsatisfying. I know there's only so much you can out in a short story, but the characters were cardboard and the whole thing was driven by the one weird premise of the tale. I'm glad I read it, though.

To follow on, I'm reading The Diamond As Big As The Ritz.

(I've pretty much ignored the Jazz Age boyos like FS FitzGerald since I was about 17, so it's interesting to have another rendezvous with them and see how they seem now.)

at the risk of getting you addicted to another website, have you tried Goodreads?

I've seen it before...but it looks like a time guzzler!

if you are careful it can be a useful tool for cataloging your books and keeping a reading diary

I'm giving it a go. The site seems achingly slow though. And it accused me of being from Manchester by default.

Now reading "It Can't Happen Here", by Sinclair Lewis. The plot's based around a fascist dictator coming to power in the USA.

A very interesting piece of dialogue - bearing in mind this book came out in 1935, mind:

"Remember out war hysteria, when we called sauerkraut 'liberty cabbage' and somebody actually proposed calling German measles 'liberty measles'?"

The more things change...

QOTD from the above book: "It was a town of perhaps ten thousand souls, inhabiting about twenty thousand bodies..."

There's a town like that near me.

This book has its moments, but he does tend to go on a bit. And the satire would be stronger if he handled it a touch more lightly, and didn't bludgeon you with it quite so much.

God, this book goes onnnnn...I'm only halfway through and it seems like I've been reading forever.

stop, if you're not enjoying it. Life's too short for the Magnus Magnusson approach to reading.

I always find it hard to stop once I've started. And I sorta do want to find out what happens. It probably could have been a really good book, if someone took a read pen to it and cut a third or half of the words out...

Maybe I'll skip the middle and go straight to the last chapter.

*red* pen. A *red* pen.

blue pencils for editors

Smart arse!

Like here! Have a look at this sentence :

"He cursed, threw down the New York Daily Corporate, and tried to read a new novel about a lady whose husband was indelicate in bed and who was too absorbed by the novels he wrote about lady novelists whose husbands were too absorbed by the novels they wrote about lady novelists to appreciate the fine sensibilities of lady novelists who wrote about gentleman novelists--Anyway, he chucked the book after the newspaper."

I know how he felt...

This is an intervention.
Step. Away. From. The. Book.

Now reading "The Coming Race", by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton. There's a whiff of "The Time Machine" about it: a separate race of humans have evolved underground and a man finds himself among them.

Some of you may have heard of the Bulwer-Lytton Contest - it's a competition for terrible writing. Now I thought this was a bit unfair. The writing seems stilted in the same way a lot of Victorian-era prose does nowadays....

But then I hit this sentence:

"Nothing had more perplexed me in seeking to reconcile my sense to the existence of regions extending below the surface of the earth, and habitable by beings, if dissimilar from, still, in all material points of organism, akin to those in the upper world, than the contradiction thus presented to the doctrine in which, I believe, most geologists and philosophers concur—viz., that though with us the sun is the great source of heat, yet the deeper we go beneath the crust of the earth, the greater is the increasing heat, being, it is said, found in the ratio of a degree for every foot, commencing from fifty feet below the surface. "

Sorry, but it's too late at night, and I've had one drop of vino too many, to start wrestling with that one.

Oh my goodness that is awesome.

I tend to read in cafés, and have been known to pull my notebook out of my satchel to jot down a felicitous turn of phrase (especially when reading Nuala O'Faolain). But that, my friend, is a monstrosity. A wonderful monstrosity, almost, in its own way, beautiful.

TRiG.

Yes, it's great!

It's not all that bad, though. Some interesting ideas in it, and it's a pretty short novel, so I think I can force myself to the end.

(I've embarked on a scheme to work my way through the development of sci-fi, and this is part of that.)

Rivers Of London by Ben Aaronovitch - one reviewer describes it as what Harry Potter would be like, if he joined the Metropolitan Police. It is a bit like that - but a lot more realistic than that description should allow. Enjoying it so far.

Also, Triplanetary, by E.E. Smith. It's...ehhhhh, pretty much standard space opera pap. And the women - well, make that 'woman' - are of the 'look pretty, be scared and get rescued a lot' school.

Ben Franklin's Autobiography. I'm only one chapter in, but I think I'll enjoy it. I'm impressed with his straightforward style. There's none of that urge to show how damn *clever* he is, which I've been growing more and more weary with lately.