Viva La Book!

I’m currently re-reading one of my favourite series - The Dark Tower, by Stephen King. If it seems I’m a bit of a crazy King fan, I’m actually not. I like some of his books, but TDT are the only ones I really love. There is just something about Roland - the gunslinger - and the world he inhabits. It draws you in and makes you feel that same mad passion that he does for his Tower - and also the love he feels for his companions.

I fell in love with these books as a teenager, and waited eagerly as each new book was released. After King had his accident, I, like many others, was distraught - ‘we’ll never learn if Roland reaches the Tower now!!’

But, thankfully, King survived, and so did Roland. To meet an end, such an end… I do believe I cried when I read the final pages of the final book and the conclusion was reached - the only way it could have ended, as King said himself.

Books like these, where the characters come to live in your head, are the most memorable. When a story spans decades, and is full of growing life experience, as these are, they seem to exude a certain truth. Some people bemoan the fact that King wrote himself into these stories - but I personally enjoyed it. To him, these people are real, and he makes them live for us, his readers, too.

Why do so many of us persist in reading a paper book - in other words a physical object we can hold in our hands - rather than just switch to reading on our computer?

Personally, there are a few reasons why I can never foresee myself giving up books. Now, in saying that, I am mostly talking about fiction, that is, novels. As part of the generation who did a great deal of their university education via computer (when I studied externally it was even more so) I tend to look to the internet and digital sources to find information.

Occasionally I will get a resource book from the library, or pick one up at a second-hand shop or book fair, but as a general rule, if I want to learn about something I’ll just grab my laptop and off I go. I know some people will cry - ‘but you can’t trust what you read on the net - and besides, how am I going to write notes in the margins’? Well, if you’re reasonably savvy, you can trust what you read on the net - and as for notes in the margins… you can attach comments to a lot of digital document formats!

And for that matter - since when can you believe what you read in a book?? Just walk into any new-age book store or section to see what I mean

No, what I’m talking about are stories. The type where you get lost, and turn page after page, oblivious to the time passing you by. I don’t know about you, but the thought of reading a novel on my computer doesn’t fill me with joy. Your eyes hurt, you can’t curl up comfortably… you can’t feel the weight of those words in your hand.

I have been partially inspired in this line of thought by the Kindle. Just recently in the US, Amazon has brought out a product called Kindle - a device solely dedicated to reading e-books. Now, we don’t have it here in Oz, but I had a look at it, intrigued. It certainly looks interesting, and I’ll be watching it’s development closely, as a lover of both books and technology. Perhaps it could revolutionise the way we read…

But for me, seeing all my stories lined up in a beautiful bookcase -  and being able to reach out and touch them - will probably never be replaced. What do you think?

Now, I think it’s coming around to that time when I need to pick this nice little story up and read it again. And yes, by nice little story I do of course mean massively long epic!

I remember my teacher reading The Hobbit to me in primary school, and I just loved the story of Bilbo, Golem and the dragon. It was one of my first experiences with fantasy, and it was great. When I was about 12, I found an old copy of LOTR on my parent’s bookshelf. It was a battered old copy of my mum’s from her hippy days in the 70’s, and when I realised it was the ’sequel’ to The Hobbit, I thought I’d give it a go.

Now, for those of you who’ve read it, you’ll realise that it is a bit of a heavy book for a 12 year old to read, but I did quite well… until I got about half way through book 2, and realised that about 70 pages were missing!

That was the end of that reading, and it wasn’t until the movies came out that I thought about the story again. Once I saw the first one, and loved it immensely, I decided that I’d wait until I saw all of the movies before I read the book. Which I did.

And oh, was I looking forward to reading it! I bought myself a copy and settled down… and it didn’t disappoint. Now, I will admit that it drags at times, but overall it really is a massive achievement in fiction. In fact, I pretty much avoid fantasy novels, as they mostly seem terribly derivative of this.

My favourite part of the book, I have to say, was the appendix the “Tale of Aragorn and Arwen”. A lot of the book seemed quite emotionally dry, but this added a lovely element to all that went on. After seeing the movies, where a lot of this was integrated into the main story, I felt like I was missing out - but once I got to it I was satisfied. I have to say, as well, that this is one time that I felt that the movie was worthy of the book - and that is a rare thing indeed!

To me, LOTR is like an old friend that I catch up with every few years, just to re-acquaint myself with them and remind myself why I liked them so much in the first place. I think I’ll find my copy and put it into my reading queue once again!

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One of my favourite SF authors is a fellow Australian - Greg Egan. I think his books are becoming more well known over time, though when I first discovered him over a decade ago, I had a hard time finding his work in regular bookstores. I still do, to some extent, but finding them online and in the Brisbane city council library has been easy, thank goodness.

The first Egan I read was Axiomatic. I first read this book as a teenager, when I bought it with a gift voucher. I have re-read it many times since, as I love all of the stories in this collection. If you like science fiction that has a definite focus on the human element - who are we, what makes us our unique self, how could this be tampered with in the future… you’ll definitely enjoy this book.

His novels include Teranesia, Quarantine, Diaspora, Permutation City and Schild’s Ladder. I have read all of these, and really enjoyed them all. Egan is a very clever guy, and so some of these might fall into the category of “hard” SF; but I personally enjoy the genre.

Egan, like many SF authors, cross-pollinates his stories. Asimov did it with the Multivac, and his Rules of Robotics, and it’s a device that I love, as it helps to build a universe in my head. What I call cross-pollination is the process of taking some thing - a person, new technology, idea, culture (like THE Culture in Iain M. Banks stories) - and using it across multiple stories/novels.

The cross-pollination of Egan’s that sticks in my mind is the ‘dual’, or ‘jewel’ - a device that quietly sits inside your head copying all your brain activity, so that one day you can dispense with your old, worn out biological brain and replace it with the eternal jewel. Egan has used this technology successfully in a number of his stories to really examine what really makes us who we are - and what makes us human.

Australia - Axiomatic is my favourite Egan book - follow the link to check them all out.

International

You can visit Greg’s web site here.

While Rollerblading with my friend Liz along the Brisbane River yesterday (well, alongside it on the path, you know what I mean), I had an almost-literal brush with fame.

That is, who jogged past me with inches to spare? Perhaps our most famous Brisbane author - Nick Earls! I almost fell over as I turned my head to look over my shoulder as he went past, just to make sure - then called out to Liz - but too late. He was already a receding figure in black.

Part of me would have loved to say hello, but the greater part of me didn’t want to bother the guy - he was, after all, just out for a jog on a Saturday morning - no time for a fan to hassle him. I’m a big believer in giving people their space - just because someone is famous doesn’t mean they want people noticing them all the time!

So, anyway, it was a bit of a treat.

The thing I think I loved most about his books - Bachelor Kisses, ZigZag Street, and Perfect Skin in particular, was that they were set right here, in Brisbane. You can read novels set in London or New York till the cows come home, but it’s a rare thing to find good, entertaining books set right here in my home city.

Not to mention they are all funny, irreverent, and fantastic studies of the human condition. A good read, all.

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Well, I thought I should join the Technorati world, so here we go!
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I have again today visited the bi-annual indulgence of book gluttony that is the LifeLine Bookfest. I have never, in my life, seen as many books in the one place (excepting, of course, the previous times I have gone to this particular event). I meant to take a photo to show you, but in my housemate’s and my haste to go, I forgot it!

I had a tad more restraint this year - I only brought home about 12 books - but some of those, like The Complete Australian Gardener, were really heavy!

It’s always great to see the swarms of people who visit the event, and be reminded that books play such an important part in many other people’s lives as well. All sorts of people were there - from the pale, anaemic types who never see the sun, to robust families and old folk.

Perhaps the nicest part of it all is that every book there was donated, and all the money we bibliophiles were spending is going towards a good, charitable cause.

The books that I bought were:

The X-Factor Diet - Leslie Kenton; HelloLand - Nick Walker; Intimate Secrets of a Flamboyant Gardener - Babs Corbett; Press Send - John McLaren; TommyKnockers - Stephen King; Needful Things - Stephen King; Pond Basics - Peter Robinson; The Complete Aussie Backyard Book, and The Complete Australian Gardener.

Can you perhaps glean one of my other passions from this list?

So, it was a successful venture, and time/money well spent.

Viva la Bookfest!

Like many avid readers, I also harbour a on-again, off-again desire to be a writer. So, when I decided to complete my set of The Dark Tower, I also decided to order On Writing. I’m not a huge fan of Stephen King - I absolutely love The Dark Tower books, and I’ve enjoyed most of the other books of his I’ve read, but some, like Gerald’s Game, I didn’t finish (pretty much because I found it too disturbing) - a rare thing for me.

But there is no doubting he is one of the most popular novelists alive today, and he has a distinctive style that attracts many people. So, I was curious to see what he had to say on the subject.

I have to say I really enjoyed it. It starts with a short memoir of his life, followed by the meat of the book - the things to do and not to do. Finally, he recounts how the accident that nearly killed him happened, and how it has affected him and his writing.

The excerpts about his life are fascinating, and the advice he gives is useful and straightforward - in his typical no-nonsense style.

I would highly recommend this to aspiring writers, as it cuts through a lot of the crap that many other ‘how to write’ books are brimming with. It’s nice to climb inside his mind as he shows us how he writes, and why he writes what he does, where some of his ideas come from, and the whole process of writing, editing, and publishing.

And considering his success, he may just be worth listening to!

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Last weekend I went and visited my parents. In the evening, when I felt some reading was in order, I decided once again to peruse their bookshelves. It still amazes me that even though I spent 20 years of my life living with them, and still visit frequently, I still manage to find old books that I swear I have never seen before!

I have, in fact, inherited my parents’ love of reading, and have always been a devourer of books. Most of mine are still in boxes after my last move, and I can’t wait until my Dad has finished building me two big bookcases that he’s been working on for a while now.

So, back to the story - I came across a tattered old edition of ‘The Conquest of Happiness’ by Bertrand Russell.

Now, I’ve studied a bit of philosophy, but I’ve never actually read any Bertie before. What a loss!

It is a pretty short book, and I made quick work of it, but I think I’ll be re-reading it in the not to distant future. His approach to happiness, and the lack thereof, is refreshingly down to earth and appealing.

The first half of the book analyses the causes for unhappiness in the modern, middle-class Western world, and the second half gives solutions - the things that will bring us true happiness. Now, it was written back in the 30’s, so some of it seems a little dated, but overall, it’s a fascinating read. What appealed to me the most was the idea that we are responsible for our feelings - that we can choose to engage ourselves in the kind of life that will bring us happiness - something that I’m sure many of you on the same path as me believe already.

It’s always lovely to come across a find like this… there’s nothing like a good, life-enhancing book.

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