Bright Young Things
Length Of Time in Possession : 3 weeks
Ah, Bright Young Things, I don't know what I make of you. You are no "The End Of Mr Y" and you don't match up to "PopCo" (both by the same author) despite its flaws either; but yet there is something to say for you.
At the beginning of the novel we are introduced to the eponymous Bright Young Things : Anne, Thea, Emily, Jamie, Paul and Bryn all of whom have their own back story - most of whom are recent graduates, and what leads them all to apply for a small job advertisement in The Guardian about which little details are given. Just that it's an "exciting project" for "Bright Young Things"
After arriving to their interview, they all suddenly wake up on a remote island with no idea how they got there and no way off, and no clue as to the 'project' they are supposed to be involved in.
So they end up living a Big Brother/Castaway type hybrid in which they must entertain themselves and to read it is almost like reading a novelisation of one of those reality shows, like a Geordie Marcus voice over set to the page.
In some ways this proves quite dull, as it basically consists of popular culture discussions revolving around the late Eighties into the 90s, basically what people my age (31) were into as teens. I found myself thinking "Wow, had I read this at 42, it would have been an amazing nostalgia trip, but right now it just feels dated"
Certain parts did make me smile, the ZX Spectrum gets referenced and my family had one, on top of this Anne goes on a pretty lengthy diatribe about early Home And Away, something my sisters and I watched religiously, discussing at length a storyline about Bobby and her half brother Alan Fisher with whom she almost entered a relationship both entirely unaware they had the same father, Alan's death and the subsequent publication of his novel On The Crest Of A Wave, that, I did wax nostalgic about, one of my favourite all time storylines. My Home And Away/Neighbours days are long over and I'm now more of a Breaking Bad girl but I do find it sweet and amusing that Alf Stewart of the catchphrase "flaming gallah" is still in it more than twenty years later.
There is a decent if rather preposterous twist at the midway point, yet the ending is a bit empty and feels unfinished. The ending of PopCo is similarly rushed and disappointing and though personally I loved the ending of "Mr Y", other readers have made the same complaint of it, giving rise to the accusation that Thomas gets off to good starts and has difficulty carrying them through to the novels conclusion.
I gave Mr Y a 10/10 and I believe I gave PopCo a 7, Bright Young Things for me is a 6/10 which means somewhat disappointingly Thomas's other novels have failed to live up to what I felt was utter genius in Mr Y, I still have two of her other novels : Our Tragic Universe and Going Out unread but from her output thus far, it is clear to me that there is genuine, if slightly flawed, talent at work and I will continue to keep her on my watchlist.
Destination : Charity Shop
Showing posts with label Nostalgia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nostalgia. Show all posts
Thursday, 13 June 2013
Monday, 15 October 2012
Book #85 Ready, Player One by Ernest Cline
Ready, Player One
As regular viewers of my blog will have noted, I've been having a tough time with the books I've read lately. Out of the last six or seven books I've read, I've failed to finish one, found two seriously underwhelming, and outright disliked three. It's become dispiriting.
Therefore I could literally kneel down and kiss the feet of Ernest Cline, because I adored Ready, Player One , I loved every single page of it, and I powered through it over a matter of hours, I can't think of a single thing I didn't love about this book, it's both a thrill to write about and a massive sigh of relief.
Ready, Player One takes place in the none too distant future the earth is over populated, resources are depleting, there's a Global Energy Crisis. In the midst of this James Halliday; eccentric billionaire computer inventor of the universally used OASIS virtual reality computer universe, dies leaving his fortune to the person who can solve the Easter Egg puzzle he has encoded within the vast system.
Years pass, and the unsolved Easter Egg becomes an urban legend, but many computer geeks still hunt it. They are up against "The Sixers" employees of the dreaded IOI corporation hunting professionally for the egg in order to take control of Hallidays fortune, and the OASIS system, and turn it into a corporate entity.
The genius of Ready, Player One is that while set in a future world within a kind of MMORPG that does not yet exist, the billionaire Halliday was a child of the 80s and the key to the Easter Egg is knowing enough about 80s gaming, films and pop culture to be able to crack his codes.
So rather than a bunch of meaningless references to things that don't exist in the minds of the reader, Ready Player One is grounded within actual history, it's one long nostalgia trip, particularly for people of my generation.
Our heroes Parzival, Aech and Art3mis live in the 2040's but need to know as much as they can about subjects like the Atari and all its games, the Commodore 64, the films of John Hughes, the music of the period, the developing reflection of computing within popular culture, and they do, because they study it as if it were a religion.
The research in this novel is mindblowingly meticulous, rich and detailed on every level from the years certain games were released to the names of their programmers, no detail is too minor. It makes for an authentic, dazzling experience. It is the nerds dream novel, and there will be many a nerdgasm had over it and much envy from those who share these obsessions and who will wish they had written it. It is a Herculean effort in terms of factual clarity.
As a minor scale nerd, I too gave little jumps of joy when certain obscure references were made and I understood them. For example when "Setec Astronomy" is used as a password and not explained I knew that it came from the 1992 Robert Redford film Sneakers about a group of off the grid hackers and was an anagram found via Scrabble tiles for "Too Many Secrets" I loved that film, I saw it more than once.
In addition to this rich detail, our characters are great, and uniformly easy to care about, and our baddies, faceless grunts working behind a smarm bucket called Sorrento easy to hate, which means that you root for outcomes and you get excited by developments as well as getting off on all the retro goodness.
I cannot speak highly enough of this novel, I thought it was awesome. If you too were a child of the 80s and you played arcade games and you had an Atari or an Acorn or a Spectrum and you watched these films and you listened to these bands, or watched these shows I think you will love it too. Naturally there's a slightly skewed bias towards American culture, but it really doesn't have a negative effect on the book as a whole. Yes, the outcome is always obvious, it's a hero's journey tale after all, but don't let the inevitable destination spoil the thrill of the journey!
This book is epic. 10/10
As regular viewers of my blog will have noted, I've been having a tough time with the books I've read lately. Out of the last six or seven books I've read, I've failed to finish one, found two seriously underwhelming, and outright disliked three. It's become dispiriting.
Therefore I could literally kneel down and kiss the feet of Ernest Cline, because I adored Ready, Player One , I loved every single page of it, and I powered through it over a matter of hours, I can't think of a single thing I didn't love about this book, it's both a thrill to write about and a massive sigh of relief.
Ready, Player One takes place in the none too distant future the earth is over populated, resources are depleting, there's a Global Energy Crisis. In the midst of this James Halliday; eccentric billionaire computer inventor of the universally used OASIS virtual reality computer universe, dies leaving his fortune to the person who can solve the Easter Egg puzzle he has encoded within the vast system.
Years pass, and the unsolved Easter Egg becomes an urban legend, but many computer geeks still hunt it. They are up against "The Sixers" employees of the dreaded IOI corporation hunting professionally for the egg in order to take control of Hallidays fortune, and the OASIS system, and turn it into a corporate entity.
The genius of Ready, Player One is that while set in a future world within a kind of MMORPG that does not yet exist, the billionaire Halliday was a child of the 80s and the key to the Easter Egg is knowing enough about 80s gaming, films and pop culture to be able to crack his codes.
So rather than a bunch of meaningless references to things that don't exist in the minds of the reader, Ready Player One is grounded within actual history, it's one long nostalgia trip, particularly for people of my generation.
Our heroes Parzival, Aech and Art3mis live in the 2040's but need to know as much as they can about subjects like the Atari and all its games, the Commodore 64, the films of John Hughes, the music of the period, the developing reflection of computing within popular culture, and they do, because they study it as if it were a religion.
The research in this novel is mindblowingly meticulous, rich and detailed on every level from the years certain games were released to the names of their programmers, no detail is too minor. It makes for an authentic, dazzling experience. It is the nerds dream novel, and there will be many a nerdgasm had over it and much envy from those who share these obsessions and who will wish they had written it. It is a Herculean effort in terms of factual clarity.
As a minor scale nerd, I too gave little jumps of joy when certain obscure references were made and I understood them. For example when "Setec Astronomy" is used as a password and not explained I knew that it came from the 1992 Robert Redford film Sneakers about a group of off the grid hackers and was an anagram found via Scrabble tiles for "Too Many Secrets" I loved that film, I saw it more than once.
In addition to this rich detail, our characters are great, and uniformly easy to care about, and our baddies, faceless grunts working behind a smarm bucket called Sorrento easy to hate, which means that you root for outcomes and you get excited by developments as well as getting off on all the retro goodness.
I cannot speak highly enough of this novel, I thought it was awesome. If you too were a child of the 80s and you played arcade games and you had an Atari or an Acorn or a Spectrum and you watched these films and you listened to these bands, or watched these shows I think you will love it too. Naturally there's a slightly skewed bias towards American culture, but it really doesn't have a negative effect on the book as a whole. Yes, the outcome is always obvious, it's a hero's journey tale after all, but don't let the inevitable destination spoil the thrill of the journey!
This book is epic. 10/10
Tuesday, 7 August 2012
Book #66 Jamilia by Chingiz Aitmatov
Jamilia
Jamilia by Chingiz Aitmatov has the unusual distinction of being the first book I have ever read set in Kyrgyzstan or by a Kyrgyzstani author. I'd love to be more "globally read" the vast majority of the novels I read and their authors being either UK or USA based, so reading Jamilia feels like an expansion of my literary horizons.
Jamilia is a tender, nostalgic, evocative tale about a painter named Sait, reflecting upon his youth, when the country was at war, and his relationship with his beguiling sister in law Jamilia and the time he spent as a boy working alongside her.
It's a lovely little story, charming and engaging, but little is the operative word, at only 94 pages long, this doesn't even feel like a novella, but more like a short story.
Charming as it is, I think that the cover quote by Louis Aragon that Jamilia is "the most beautiful love story in the world" must rank highly among the plethora of over exaggerated cover quotes in publishing. The best adjective for it is simply "nice"
Additionally, I paid £7.99 for this book, £5.99 on Amazon, sweet as it is, it simply isn't worth paying £6 for, not in the least. 7/10
Jamilia by Chingiz Aitmatov has the unusual distinction of being the first book I have ever read set in Kyrgyzstan or by a Kyrgyzstani author. I'd love to be more "globally read" the vast majority of the novels I read and their authors being either UK or USA based, so reading Jamilia feels like an expansion of my literary horizons.
Jamilia is a tender, nostalgic, evocative tale about a painter named Sait, reflecting upon his youth, when the country was at war, and his relationship with his beguiling sister in law Jamilia and the time he spent as a boy working alongside her.
It's a lovely little story, charming and engaging, but little is the operative word, at only 94 pages long, this doesn't even feel like a novella, but more like a short story.
Charming as it is, I think that the cover quote by Louis Aragon that Jamilia is "the most beautiful love story in the world" must rank highly among the plethora of over exaggerated cover quotes in publishing. The best adjective for it is simply "nice"
Additionally, I paid £7.99 for this book, £5.99 on Amazon, sweet as it is, it simply isn't worth paying £6 for, not in the least. 7/10
Thursday, 19 July 2012
Book #63 The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Virgin Suicides
I read The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides last month and it reminded me how highly I had thought of Middlesex some years ago, remaining then was The Virgin Suicides, a novel which has been lurking about my house unread for at least 5 years, and I decided to pick it up and get it done.
I saw the film featuring Kirsten Dunst with music by the band Air around 12 years ago not long after it came out, so had an idea of what to expect.
In The Virgin Suicides, the five Lisbon sisters are infamous among the boys in their town. Ethereal, enigmatic beauties they intrigue, intice and arouse those boys, who are desperate to know them and their lives.
The tale is told by those local boys, now grown up who reflect on that period of time, those girls and what it all meant in such a manner as if they are writing a biography or notes on an exhibition. Photographs are referred to as if they are visible to the reader which they aren't as well as news articles, again not featured and articles of the girls clothing.
The story of the fascination with the Lisbon sisters began before the first suicide attempt with boys daring each other to steal the girls bras and makeup. Their notoriously strict mother has created an intense prison for her daughters since they hit puberty and they are rarely seen alone or out of the house besides at school which only serves to add to their mystique.
When the youngest Cecelia only 13, attempts suicide, fails, but quickly thereafter succeeds, the chain of events that engulfs her sisters is chronicled by the watching neighbourhood boys.
As Mrs Lisbon's decisions to increasingly isolate her daughters begin to make the family implode, this is reflected in the increasing decay on the outside of their property, and a sweltering kind of emotional humidity within reflected in the gathering filth and later lack of food.
Of the girls only Lux and Cecelia come off the page as rounded characters, with Bonnie, Therese and Mary fading into nothing in the background, just 3 other beautiful, damaged girls which is something of a shame. In addition, though Mrs Lisbon is clearly in some way to blame for the unhappiness of her daughters, the reader never finds out why she behaves as she does, because the neighbourhood boys did not have any interest in her. But the Lisbon sisters were a mystery, and to explain away their deaths with cliched references to emotional abuse is something Eugenides seeks to avoid, both I think in order to avoid that sort of happy-clappy psychology speak and to retain that mystery. It's a shame that we never know why Mrs Lisbon destroyed her daughters in such a way or why Mr Lisbon didn't stand up for them but it does not affect either the quality of the writing or its overall enjoyment.
In reference to the chosen mode of narrative, I found it rather unbelievable and excessively morbid that a group of grown men would have clung on to mouldy makeup and rotting rodent bitten candles as keepsakes of a group of dead girls as if they were the relics of saints, but then, I suppose having kept them initially when do you throw them out without throwing away the dead girl with them?
The book is very emotionally moving and I found myself quite physically affected by it too, at moments feeling suddenly cold, or being able to feel the warmth of the summer, or smell the stifling scent of the unclean home. Particularly toward the end the atmosphere and melancholy really impacts the reader, but all along you are as drawn in by the girls as their neighbourhood observers, and in such a way the novel becomes a page turner.
Not a cheery novel by any means, I felt very dispirited by it, but a very well written novel nonetheless 9/10
I read The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides last month and it reminded me how highly I had thought of Middlesex some years ago, remaining then was The Virgin Suicides, a novel which has been lurking about my house unread for at least 5 years, and I decided to pick it up and get it done.
I saw the film featuring Kirsten Dunst with music by the band Air around 12 years ago not long after it came out, so had an idea of what to expect.
In The Virgin Suicides, the five Lisbon sisters are infamous among the boys in their town. Ethereal, enigmatic beauties they intrigue, intice and arouse those boys, who are desperate to know them and their lives.
The tale is told by those local boys, now grown up who reflect on that period of time, those girls and what it all meant in such a manner as if they are writing a biography or notes on an exhibition. Photographs are referred to as if they are visible to the reader which they aren't as well as news articles, again not featured and articles of the girls clothing.
The story of the fascination with the Lisbon sisters began before the first suicide attempt with boys daring each other to steal the girls bras and makeup. Their notoriously strict mother has created an intense prison for her daughters since they hit puberty and they are rarely seen alone or out of the house besides at school which only serves to add to their mystique.
When the youngest Cecelia only 13, attempts suicide, fails, but quickly thereafter succeeds, the chain of events that engulfs her sisters is chronicled by the watching neighbourhood boys.
As Mrs Lisbon's decisions to increasingly isolate her daughters begin to make the family implode, this is reflected in the increasing decay on the outside of their property, and a sweltering kind of emotional humidity within reflected in the gathering filth and later lack of food.
Of the girls only Lux and Cecelia come off the page as rounded characters, with Bonnie, Therese and Mary fading into nothing in the background, just 3 other beautiful, damaged girls which is something of a shame. In addition, though Mrs Lisbon is clearly in some way to blame for the unhappiness of her daughters, the reader never finds out why she behaves as she does, because the neighbourhood boys did not have any interest in her. But the Lisbon sisters were a mystery, and to explain away their deaths with cliched references to emotional abuse is something Eugenides seeks to avoid, both I think in order to avoid that sort of happy-clappy psychology speak and to retain that mystery. It's a shame that we never know why Mrs Lisbon destroyed her daughters in such a way or why Mr Lisbon didn't stand up for them but it does not affect either the quality of the writing or its overall enjoyment.
In reference to the chosen mode of narrative, I found it rather unbelievable and excessively morbid that a group of grown men would have clung on to mouldy makeup and rotting rodent bitten candles as keepsakes of a group of dead girls as if they were the relics of saints, but then, I suppose having kept them initially when do you throw them out without throwing away the dead girl with them?
The book is very emotionally moving and I found myself quite physically affected by it too, at moments feeling suddenly cold, or being able to feel the warmth of the summer, or smell the stifling scent of the unclean home. Particularly toward the end the atmosphere and melancholy really impacts the reader, but all along you are as drawn in by the girls as their neighbourhood observers, and in such a way the novel becomes a page turner.
Not a cheery novel by any means, I felt very dispirited by it, but a very well written novel nonetheless 9/10
Monday, 16 May 2011
Book #35 My Antonia by Willa Cather
My Antonia
I wanted to read a Willa Cather novel having seen her recommended elsewhere, a search in two branches of Waterstones came up dry and the only one of her books available on Kindle was My Antonia, so choice made for me! I'm rather glad it was made for me as I'm not sure I would have necessarily picked it if I'd had options and I'm genuinely glad I read it.
Published in 1918 it is part of Cather's prairie trilogy alongside O Pioneers! and The Song Of The Lark though the storylines are unconnected all the novels take place in prairie outpost settings.
In 'My Antonia' the lead character is Jim Burden an orphaned boy sent to live with his grandparents on their prairie farm. Whilst there he comes across the Shimerda family who are Bohemian immigrants, and one of the themes of the novel broadly speaking is the successes and failures of European immigrants in early America. The fact that the Shimerda's are Bohemian led to my acquiring new general knowledge as Bohemian in their sense is not as it is used today nor as it is used in 'Joe Gould's Secret' but means that they are from the area now known as the Czech Republic. Learn something new every day!
My Antonia is a fictional memoir in which main character Jim looks back upon his childhood and youth in which he knew Antonia Shimerda and the various changes in their relationship as they grew up. It's a fairly uneventful novel, more a portrait of a time, a place and a community though it is not the poorer for that. It is a nostalgic novel that brims with warmth, fond memories, kindness and love, to the extent that it feels like it could be a well written reflective autobiography. It has a sense of realism that is often lost in fictional stories.
Nostalgia seems to be the distinct theme of the novel experienced by multiple characters. Things were better 'in youth', 'in the old country' when they weren't necessarily so, the human trait of putting a certain gloss on the past.
I particularly liked the quote:
'In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions. I did not wish to lose the early ones. Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again."
In later parts of the book Jim avoids Antonia through the fear that 'Antonia now' will ruin his memories of 'Antonia then'. This shows how certain memories become sacred to what made us who we are as a person, what we treasure from our past.
For a story which is essentially simple and not written in an overly challenging way, My Antonia has a resonance in the universal experience of what it is to be human, and as such is a special novel, belonging in the wider novel community to a select and distinguished club.
I enjoyed this novel very much and I'd say it was accessible to all readers and that everyone could find something to identify with in it. I will be on the lookout for other Cather novels if I can find them, O Pioneers! seems to have suddenly appeared on Kindle.
Read this. 9/10
I wanted to read a Willa Cather novel having seen her recommended elsewhere, a search in two branches of Waterstones came up dry and the only one of her books available on Kindle was My Antonia, so choice made for me! I'm rather glad it was made for me as I'm not sure I would have necessarily picked it if I'd had options and I'm genuinely glad I read it.
Published in 1918 it is part of Cather's prairie trilogy alongside O Pioneers! and The Song Of The Lark though the storylines are unconnected all the novels take place in prairie outpost settings.
In 'My Antonia' the lead character is Jim Burden an orphaned boy sent to live with his grandparents on their prairie farm. Whilst there he comes across the Shimerda family who are Bohemian immigrants, and one of the themes of the novel broadly speaking is the successes and failures of European immigrants in early America. The fact that the Shimerda's are Bohemian led to my acquiring new general knowledge as Bohemian in their sense is not as it is used today nor as it is used in 'Joe Gould's Secret' but means that they are from the area now known as the Czech Republic. Learn something new every day!
My Antonia is a fictional memoir in which main character Jim looks back upon his childhood and youth in which he knew Antonia Shimerda and the various changes in their relationship as they grew up. It's a fairly uneventful novel, more a portrait of a time, a place and a community though it is not the poorer for that. It is a nostalgic novel that brims with warmth, fond memories, kindness and love, to the extent that it feels like it could be a well written reflective autobiography. It has a sense of realism that is often lost in fictional stories.
Nostalgia seems to be the distinct theme of the novel experienced by multiple characters. Things were better 'in youth', 'in the old country' when they weren't necessarily so, the human trait of putting a certain gloss on the past.
I particularly liked the quote:
'In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions. I did not wish to lose the early ones. Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again."
In later parts of the book Jim avoids Antonia through the fear that 'Antonia now' will ruin his memories of 'Antonia then'. This shows how certain memories become sacred to what made us who we are as a person, what we treasure from our past.
For a story which is essentially simple and not written in an overly challenging way, My Antonia has a resonance in the universal experience of what it is to be human, and as such is a special novel, belonging in the wider novel community to a select and distinguished club.
I enjoyed this novel very much and I'd say it was accessible to all readers and that everyone could find something to identify with in it. I will be on the lookout for other Cather novels if I can find them, O Pioneers! seems to have suddenly appeared on Kindle.
Read this. 9/10
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