[Books 2007] Iain Sinclair, Terry Pratchett, Christopher Fowler

[inulro]

42.London Orbital by Iain Sinclair

Iain Sinclair walks around the M25 (or as close to the M25 as he can) and writes about it. In a random, stream-of-consciousness sort of way. He is particularly fixated on how many old psychiatric hospitals (and a smallpox isolation hospital) were situated near to what is now the M25, and before that how it was the "right" distance from London for rich people to have their country estates. He uses the word "psychogeography" a lot.

This book rocks, but I had to renew it from the library about three times. It is not particularly easy going and I found that my head had to be in exactly the right place in order to take any of it in. It is, however, full of exactly the sort of useless trivia I find riveting. More than worth the effort.

43. Thud! by Terry Pratchett

I haven't enjoyed a Pratchett book this much in years. I never thought about it before, but I think my favourite Discworld novels are the City Watch ones. I really like all the Watch characters. In Thud! Pratchett takes on immigration and religious fundamentalism, Blackberries and other PDAs (if they had little imps in them, I'd have one) and the Da Vinci Code. On top of that, I found myself genuinely curious about the solution to the mystery.

44. Psychoville by Christopher Fowler

Sunday's Bibliogoth selection and another re-read for me. It suffers a little when you know the ending, but I still ripped through it very quickly.

Comments

[nemesis-to-go.livejournal.com]

I read Thud because my mum bought it for me.

I'd been avoiding Pratchett books after reading a few too many of them. It seemed to me he was writing to a rather tiresome formula. I found myself getting a few chapters in, and thinking, 'Hang on - haven't I read this one before?' And I hadn't. It was just that the over-familiar formula had made me think I was going over old ground.

Plus I was getting a little tired of being constantly walloped over the head with the moral of the story, while the humour, which typically revolves around gormless characters Not Getting It, was becoming downright annoying.

But Thud is better than most. The story is inherently strong, and can be read simply as a rattling good yarn, rather than a thinly-disguised commentary on the real world. The characters are generally quite capable in this one - Captain Vimes is quite the steely-eyed go-getter, a bizarre transformation from his earlier, bumbling incarnation. Nobody wastes time blundering from one misunderstanding to another for allegedly comic effect, and as a result the story rolls forward far more efficiently.

B+, I think.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

I'd been avoiding Pratchett for exactly those reasons, and for those reasons I'm not exactly newly invigorated to hunt down the others that I haven't read yet.