[books 2009] various

[inulro]

20. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Last month's Bibliogoth selection, and a re-read. My copy has my scribbles in places, so clearly at some point I meant to write in a Serious Academic Context about it, but buggered if I can remember why. There's very little to it (so little that I debated even counting it, but considered that as Anathem is still sitting on my desk, these things balance out) and I really enjoyed discussing it as it made me feel as if I have a brain for the first time in a very, very long time. It's one that I enjoy dissecting more than I like reading, which is truly unusual for me.

21. Raw Spirit by Iain Banks

Banksie drives stupidly over-powered cars round the distilleries of Scotland. Although I love Banks, the concept put me off when it came out. My loss - this is a really funny book, and only minimally about whisky production. There was more about cars than I really needed to read, but his lifetime's worth of Funny Anecdotes makes it all worth it.

I did not know that Banks went to school with Ken McLeod, whose book Cosmonaut Keep we are reading this month for Bibliogoths.

22. 20th-Century Ghosts by Joe Hill

This is the guy whose novel, Heart-Shaped Box I loved so much recently. This is a collection of his short stories. Like Heart-Shaped Box, there's a lot more to most of them that you at first think there should be. Some of them don't even have a supernatural or horror element. My favourites were "20th-Century Ghost" and "Best New Horror", and there wasn't a dud among them.

I am an out-of-touch idiot who only found out yesterday he's Stephen King's son. I'm pretty neutral on the subject of King (he has written some good books and some really dull books, and a whole bunch I've never read), but Hill is in another league altogether.

Comments

[aoakley.livejournal.com]

The Strange Case of DJ&MH was a very "meh" read for me. I read it fully for the first time about two years ago, and found it very difficult to get excited about. I had always resolved to discard any book as soon as I found it decisively uninteresting (after all, I wouldn't sit through a TV programme or album I disliked) but with J&H being so well recognised and, most of all, freely available as a public domain text online, I did eventually finish it. And I must admit I felt that it was wasted hours that I'd never get back.

It clearly was very shocking at the time, but unlike books such as 1984 or Brave New World which have become more relevent as time passed, J&H seemed to have become more and more irrelevant. The vast, vast majority of the story - if you can call it that - is taken up not with the events, but the characters' reaction to hearsay about the events. The hearsay is so inconsequential, and the reactions so stupefyingly slow-witted, that you have to wonder whether either were really worth their starring roles. It may be trying to build suspense, but it makes the reader wait simply too long. What is the secret of the hobgoblin man, and what is his relationship to Doctor Jekyll? Well, frankly, if they haven't found a substantial clue after two hundred odd pages, the audience should have returned the book to the library unfinished.

It felt more like one of Charles Dickens' less famous books, the ones he wrote only for the money, and spun out interminably to maximise episodic newspaper rights. Or like a Mozart opera; okay, better than most of his contemporaries, but Mozart only ever wrote opera for money - he wrote concertos for love.

Perhaps another good analogy is my view of the Rolling Stones. They perform their songs well, but unlike the Beatles, other artists' cover versions somehow all seem to be better than the originals. Equally, various adaptations, re-interpretations and - above all - abridgements, seem far better than the original Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde.

[50-ft-queenie.livejournal.com]

I must be as out of touch as you, because I've never of Joe Hill and hence had no idea that he was Stephen King's son. I shall chceck out his work.

I just started reading Stephen King last summer. Well, kinda. I read Carrie years ago, hated it, and kind of gave up on King. I read a couple of his short story collections last summer and they were kind of uneven. When he's good, he's very very good.

I finally read his memoir, On Writing, last month, and it's excellent.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

I gave up on King because not only is his output extremely variable, he's too damn prolific to keep up with.

There's a few I'd like to re-read, though. I didn't like The Dead Zone when I was 12, but I bet I'd like it now.