Book review: The Long Earth

Terry Pratchett only seems to have got more prolific in recent years; The Long Earth, which he co-writes with Stephen Baxter, is the first in a planned new fantasy series that plays on the ever-popular theme of parallel universes. But where quantum theory sees every decision spin off into a different reality, so that infinite universes exist with tiny differences, The Long Earth is a multiverse where our Earth - here called the Datum Earth - is the only one that's inhabited, by humans at least. And the multiple other Earths stretch out to a notional East and West. A few years into the future, blueprints for a mysterious device are posted on the internet, and the result is a "Stepper," a machine that allows people to move along by one Earth at a time. Faced with a seemingly infinite number of fresh new planets just as the original one's resources are starting to run out, humanity's instinct is to colonise.

The main thrust of the novel follows Joshua, a young man born between worlds who's acquired a natural affinity for stepping as a result, and his journey with Lobsang, a disembodied entity who claims to be a reincarnated Tibetan, but may in fact be a computer program that's become sentient. They travel West through the Long Earth, partly to research the different realities but partly to be the first to travel millions of steps away from the Datum. There's a few plotlines running through their journey but largely this is a scene-setting novel that builds up the writers' fictional universe, and given how little hard plot it has I found it very entertaining. Beyond things like the design of the Stepper device (it requires a potato to work) there's little of the comic side of Pratchett, but instead there's an interesting central relationship between the loner Joshua and the rather smugly omnipotent Lobsang.

Book review: Frozen Out

Perhaps with an eye on the popularity of Scandinavian crime novels, Quentin Bates sees if Iceland, where he lived for ten years, would also do the trick in his own series of thrillers. It was also one of the first countries to go bankrupt in the financial meltdown, so that offers another dimension to explore in a country whose leaders are suddenly faced with a particularly desperate situation. So Frozen Out, which introduces rural policewoman Gunnhildur or Gunna, sees her investigate an accidental drowning she's sure is actually murder, and find it leading back to a sell-off of government assets.

It's quite enjoyable so I'll be catching up with the next one at some point, although partly because I felt as if there were quite a few loose ends being left and I wonder if they might lead somewhere further in the series. And the Icelandic naming conventions make it trickier than usual to keep up with who the various characters are (instead of surnames Icelanders use patronymic or occasionally matronymic names - I did find it amusing that some Icelanders have surnames, but it's generally considered a bit pretentious.)

Dick Twittington 26: Whatever gets you through the day

This week on my Twitter feed, a trip to Stratford-upon-Avon finally yields a photo of an unfortunately-named rowboat, and I fret over how much of a theatrical secret to reveal online before one of the professional critics cheerfully spoilers it for everyone.

You know, I'm sure we'll all get used to those blue conversation lines once they've been on Twitter for a few months or years... Oh.
11:09 AM - 4 Sep 13

Ugh. When you get hired specifically  to make judgement calls in boss' absence, then get bollocked for doing it #fuckyouWednesday
5:27 PM - 4 Sep 13

Just realised I started University TWENTY YEARS AGO. I'm so old, I'm legally dead.
7:26 AM - 5 Sep 13

Book review: Un Lun Dun

Having seen China Miéville's books highly rated and wanting to try them out for some time, my entry point, as it usually is these days, was decided by which of them was discounted for kindle. This turned out to be Un Lun Dun, his entry in the all-ages fantasy field, which sees two teenage London girls drawn to a battle in a parallel version of the city, UnLondon. When London got rid of its smog problem in the last century, it actually moved over to UnLondon where, like many other inanimate objects. it acquired a conscience and, in this case malevolent, personality. Zanna and Deeba are fated to stop it from taking over both versions of the city.

Although Miéville acknowledges the influence of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere and other alternate London stories, he comes up with enough skewed geography and colourful characters to make UnLondon unique. What I particularly liked though was his messing with the conventions of fantasy, particularly the trope of the "Chosen One" which gets punctured pretty early on. And once we're in a story where the sidekick has to do all the work, it's open to having things like the quest narrative dismissed as well. (Also, the fantasy trope about cats being particularly mystical animals is quickly thrown out of the window. They're just idiots.) In any case I enjoyed this one and will give some of his more adult-oriented work a go as well - I get the impression cities are a recurring theme in his books.

Dick Twittington 25: HIT IT WITH A HAMMER!

This week work has shamelessly got in the way of my talking bollocks on the internet, so my Twitter feed has been on the quiet side.

Finsbury Park http://twitpic.com/daqr6f
3:37 PM - 28 Aug 13

Ooh, I'm tired. *Hot Boy In Suit walks past with perky nipples poking through shirt* HELLO, I AM WIDE AWAKE.
3:28 PM - 29 Aug 13



Tube train gets stuck halfway along platform at Clapham North. Driver's solution: HIT IT WITH A HAMMER! This strategy is successful :o
9:40 PM - 29 Aug 13

Dick Twittington 24: Jigging like a good'un

This week on my Twitter feed is mainly about the Henriad, which I end up watching over three nights then reliving a bit online.

Theatrical Spot: Jonjo O'Neill at the Globe. SITTING! I didn't think actors were ALLOWED to sit at the Globe!
1 RETWEET Charles Twigger
10:07 PM - 21 Aug 13

"actual cherubim caught on photo." #bloghitsoftheweek I didn't know Arthur Conan Doyle used Google.
1 FAVORITE Alex Ramon
11:20 AM - 22 Aug 13

Apprentice Spot: Either someone actually gave Zeeshan a real job or he's just roaming Canary Wharf in a suit trying to look busy.
2:43 PM - 22 Aug 13

Dick Twittington 23: Reader, I married it

This week on my Twitter feed, I eat a cake then watch some other people baking them on telly.

I'm on the back seat of the top deck*, I must be young & foolhardy! #sevenagesofbus *because that's all that was available
9:01 AM - 14 Aug 13

I don't know who had this keyboard before me but they were a messy eater *shakes out enough crumbs to make a new sandwich*
12:29 PM - 14 Aug 13

Today the work canteen had an almond pithivier. It was basically a pastry with a cake in it. Reader, I married it.
2:58 PM - 14 Aug 13

Book review: Bleak Expectations

One of my favourite Radio 4 comedies is Mark Evans' Bleak Expectations, a spoof of Victorian novels, particularly Dickens', that see their heroes go through endless hardships, surrounded by grotesquely evil characters. So what with needing a bit of cheering up after The Casual Vacancy, Evans' novelisation of the first series was the way forward. Sir Philip Bin, inventor of the bin, looks back on his happy childhood, cut short when his father disappears, his mother goes mad and his new evil guardian Gently Benevolent sends him to St Bastard's, a boarding school with a 100% pupil death rate.

I wouldn't call this a must-read for fans of the radio show, especially if they've listened to it more than once, because not just the story but also the jokes are pretty much exactly the same as in Series 1, and the narrator's voice in my head kept alternating between Richard Johnson and Tom Allen as Pip Bin. The main addition, replacing the radio series' framing device, is a series of footnotes from Evans providing a modern-day explanation of the novel's Victorian "facts." Even if I did know all the best lines in advance I still enjoyed the ludicrous story again as Pip and his best friend Harry Biscuit go round accidentally (ish) killing every member of the Hardthrasher family. I'd recommend this to people with a silly sense of humour who aren't necessarily familiar with the original radio series - this might inspire them to seek it out.

Dick Twittington 22: D'you know who she was fingering?

This week on my Twitter feed: Very little, frankly. I know it's the Silly Season but I'm not the papers, I don't have to say stuff for the sake of it. Which admittedly is what my Twitter feed consists of at the best of times, but shh.

@stephenfry "Stephen Fry is an attention-seeker" says Steven Berkoff. At which point the very concept of irony implodes.
2 RETWEETS Autism N.Ireland, Kirsten SE
10:05 AM - 8 Aug 13

"Dental Surgery & Sunbed." Now there's a combo. Do they offer both services at the same time?
9:09 PM - 8 Aug 13


@merseytart I saw a girl with a pierced cleavage once. I saw it, but I still don't know how it's physically possible.
4:28 PM - 9 Aug 13

Book review: The Casual Vacancy

I do like to be awkward, so while everyone else was going on about J.K. Rowling dragging up as Robert Galbraith, I was catching up with her first non-Potter book written under her own name, The Casual Vacancy. I'd been a bit wary of it as its reputation precedes it, as one of the books most likely to be given up on halfway through and a really dark affair. It's certainly a departure from the family-friendly books she made her name with although anyone who'd paid attention to them would have known the strong feelings she brings to the fore here: The Casual Vacancy is populated almost entirely by characters like the Dursleys.

The story is set in the determinedly middle-class small town of Pagford in the Westcountry, its affairs run by a local council as there's a larger town nearby that deals with bigger issues. The book's starting point is the surprise death of one of these councilors, and one of the few people who seemed to care about the poverty-stricken estate that occupies the borders, and which the insular people of Pagford would like to see offloaded on their larger neighbour as their responsibility.

The barely-concealed reality is that the relatively well-off people of Pagford have contempt for their needier neighbours, as exemplified by the wayward teenager Krystal Weedon, the daughter of a drug addict, and in her attempt to make sense of the world alternately repellent and in some ways admirable. Of course the people of the town only see her as a monster, and with a vacancy on the council they hope to get someone more sympathetic to their cause in to make sure she and her like are no longer their problem.

I actually found the book pretty involving, it's a portrait of a whole town that builds up a lot of individual character studies. It's occasionally witty but mostly it's a very angry book, Rowling's feelings about middle-class NIMBYs never disguised, with barely any character not displaying some pretty horrific side. Even when, as here, I completely agree with the author's politics, I can get a bit frustrated when they hammer it home to this extent so that was an occasional irritant, as was the way Rowling writes Krystal's dialogue, rather overegging her poor grammar. But overall I found it worth a read - although I'll definitely need something a lot lighter next to cheer me up.

Book review: The Complete Sherlock Holmes vol.1

I feel like I've probably read all of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories at some point or another, but how to know for sure if there's any I haven't quite caught? I got a four-volume Complete works downloaded onto the kindle and went back to the start, with the first volume covering A Study In Scarlet, The Sign of Four and the first short-story collection, Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I'd re-read the first novel comparatively recently so it didn't hold many surprises, and its structure is a bit heavy handed (the first half of the novel is the investigation, the second half the background to the case, not exactly a slick whodunnit) but still enjoyable.

The Sign of Four also features an international backstory although Doyle manages to weave it into the investigation part of the novel a bit more successfully this time. The short stories in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes include many I remembered quite well, like "The Five Orange Pips" - it's interesting, and not in a good way, that at the end of the 19th century the Ku Klux Klan are treated as the almost-defunct, entirely obscure fodder for a crime story, but in the following century they'd had enough of a resurgence that the letters "KKK" appearing on threatening letters makes the reader instantly guess their meaning.

By the end of three books in a row I was ready for a break from Conan Doyle but there's no denying these stories are more re-readable than most.

Dick Twittington 21: The huskier gentleman

This week on my Twitter feed the new Doctor is announced. I mean, he's not announced on my Twitter feed. He's announced on a worldwide simulcast live TV show. But I then comment about it on my Twitter feed, which amounts to much the same thing.

"London's Air Ambulance" just drove past. Drove, as in, it's a car. I don't think they get what the"air" part means.
7:08 PM - 1 Aug 13

The new type of Caffe Nero milkshake may have finally discovered a concentration of sugar that's too much for me.
7:28 PM - 1 Aug 13

Wow, there is one bloody aggressive moth in this kitchen! It keeps dive-bombing into my face.
11:08 PM - 1 Aug 13

Dick Twittington 20: Y u no obey the laws of physics?

This week on my Twitter feed: A cat! Like on everyone else's Twitter feed!

Today's corporate madness: We're all working in a different branch today because my boss figured out she could get a free lunch.
2:12 PM - 24 Jul 13

Upside: New selection of Cute Boys In Suits. And the aforementioned free lunch, obvs. Mmm, chicken katsu.
2:13 PM - 24 Jul 13

Nothing confirmed yet, but fingers crossed the Evil Corporate Machine may still want me beyond September, when my current contract runs out.
4:06 PM - 24 Jul 13

Book review: The Buddha of Suburbia

This is another of those cases where a well-known book has been around for a while (since 1990, in this instance) but it takes a special offer to get me to catch up with it. Worth a read though in the case of Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia, a coming-of-age novel about Karim, a bisexual mixed-race boy of English/Indian heritage growing up in the 1970s. The starting point is his father Haroon's midlife crisis, which unusually ends up affecting many more people than his family circle: Reinventing himself as some sort of vague mystic, he leaves his wife for another woman, but his pronouncements are taken to heart by the people of the suburbs who flock to him for advice. Moving with his new girlfriend to somewhere more central, they take Karim with them the couple of significant miles into London, and he tries to make something of himself in his late teens and twenties.

It's an entertaining book built largely around a cast of eccentric characters, both British and Indian in origin; some of its story of course comes about as Karim encounters different responses to his race - being narrated to by someone who's so obviously English in outlook and attitude it's almost bizarre to have him be treated as either excitingly or dangerously exotic by others. But a lot of the story's flavour is dictated by the setting rather than the characters' racial makeup, the fashions and politics of the '70s defining Karim's life as much as anything else. As such it works on a couple of interesting levels.

Dick Twittington 19: The universe's plan for me

This week on my Twitter feed, the Globe is full of actors (and not just on stage) and I'm full of cake. Also, some woman is no longer full of a baby.

Just had to get a new Oyster card for the first time. Think the ticket office were shocked the old one had lasted so long.
7:17 PM - 17 Jul 13

Propeller are dealing with the weather by doing the interval entertainment outdoors.
9:02 PM - 18 Jul 13

Theatrical Spot: Hipster Tranio at, funnily enough, Shrew at Hampstead. He's wearing a vest. Calm yourselves, ladies.
9:11 PM - 18 Jul 13

Dick Twittington 18: #toplessmuddywrestling

This week on my Twitter feed it's my annual slightly longer trip to Stratford-upon-Avon. I usually spend the time there grumbling about how there's nothing to do between theatre trips. Have a guess what I do this time. Also it's quite warm out, did you notice?

N...N...NATURAL LIGHT? IN A THEATRE? *hisses*
7:19 PM - 10 Jul 13

Young businessman types at the next table are asking each other "how are you going to make History?"I thought the #apprentice was yesterday.
12:30 PM - 11 Jul 13

Also, there's a primary school party in the canteen. Who thinks "let's go on a school trip to an accountancy multinational?"
12:34 PM - 11 Jul 13

Book review: Down Among the Dead Men

The Kindle daily deal does lead to me choosing some unlikely reading material at times, like when at some point I must have decided a memoir of life in a mortuary sounded like fun for all the family. (Or maybe without realising it I have a thing for medical memoirs, what with this and Sirens a few months ago.) In any case Michelle Williams' Down Among the Dead Men is a pretty interesting read, if not perhaps quite as much of a revelation as the author seems to think (maybe I'm just immune to how bizarre people can really be by now.)

In her book, Williams is working in a care home and not particularly satisfied when she sees a job advertised in a mortuary. Soon she's cutting open and disemboweling cadavers, and dealing with the relatives the dead have left behind. Her attempts to argue that her choice of career doesn't mean she's an especially morbid person aren't exactly successful - I hadn't particularly assumed she would be on the gothy side until she brought it up, I'd just assumed the profession attracts pretty pragmatic people, which she and her colleagues clearly are. There's some sad and funny stories around death, and for the most part it's entertaining, although I thought the sheer level of hilarity that greeted a man who'd hanged himself in an auto-erotic asphyxiation accident while wearing women's underwear took its supposed humour from a trans-phobic place. Overall it's interesting enough, although I don't think Williams is uncovering quite as alien a world as she thinks - even if it's one I'd rather not have to work in myself.

Dick Twittington 17: Friday means lots of things

This week on my Twitter feed, my current job gets in the way of my tweeting. The nerve!

FITE! FITE! http://www.whatsonstage.com/london-theatre/news/07-2013/nicholas-hytner-submits-formal-objection-to-southb_31186.html
12:38 PM - 3 Jul 13

In all this Snowden business everyone seems to be ignoring the key issue, which is that I Would.
1 RETWEET 1 FAVORITE
7:42 PM - 3 Jul 13

Finally in the new Southwark Playhouse main house. Is it really bigger than the old one? I guess appearances are deceptive.
7:57 PM - 3 Jul 13

Book review: The Lost Books of the Odyssey

Growing up in Greece, with Greek mythology someting I've been very familiar with all my life, I'm generally interested to see it reworked and reinvented, so Zachary Mason's The Lost Books of the Odyssey seemed interesting, and often it is. The idea behind it is that it presents fragments of lost versions (not just of the Odyssey, in fact, but quite often of the Iliad as well) which occasionally provide a different angle or context for the events in Homer's epics, but for the most part present an alternate universe entirely: One where the Greeks lost the Trojan War, or won it much faster, or in a different way; Odysseus' journey home ending with Penelope having long since married one of her other suitors, or Ithaca deserted, or his travels going on forever.

Inevitably not all of the stories were to my taste, and the ones where Mason opts for quite a self-consciously literary style didn't do much for me, but there were a few alternate worlds I really liked - some of my favourites saw Odysseus' travels end as the Odyssey says, only for him to be unable to settle after so long away and set off again to revisit past glories and disasters; a retelling of parts of the Theseus myth that for the most part seems unrelated to the Odyssey until it slots in as quite a vital element; and a story that mixes Greek and Jewish mythology to have the invincible Achilles as a golem created by Odysseus to help the Greeks win the war, and the ways that affects the Achilles myth as we think we know it.

Dick Twittingon 16: Things are gonna get classy

This week on my Twitter feed it's London Pride. So I go to it. I don't tweet much about it though so that's all kind of irrelevant. Here's what I did tweet about.

Oops - got an email to say The Drowned Man's been cancelled tonight.
1:42 PM - 26 Jun 13

Alex's umbrella isn't for the rain, he's protecting himself from daylight #apprentice
2 FAVORITES
9:11 PM - 26 Jun 13

Myles clearly trying to rip off Horrible Histories there. But with horrible food. #apprentice
9:13 PM - 26 Jun 13