Bloody Shambles

I really wanted to love this book. It has all the elements I'm interested in, but the writing is just terrible. I've noticed since moving to Northern Australia that a lot of people up here only read a few words from every sentence, and assume that they know what comes in between. This book is written in that way. If you just skim the words, you get a feel for what the author's trying to say. If you actually read all of the words, you find that they're often the opposite of the author's intended meaning.If you're going to go with purple prose, it pays to have a much more solid grip on the English language than this.[I gave up at 16%, and every single sentence of it was painful]

Review pending..

Well, this wasn't quite what I was expecting. I came into this knowing that the book was about the debris left behind by alien visitors to Earth, and that it posed questions around what humankind would do if we couldn't figure its mysteries. What if we found alien technology, and had no idea how to use it or for what purpose it might be used? What if we didn't know how it came to be here, never mind what it all might mean? I was expecting this to be a look at the issues of cross-cultural understanding when neither culture knows anything about the other. I was expecting this to be Ursula LeGuin-esque.While all of those elements are there in the book, they're only there on account of the Foreword written by LeGuin herself, and a conversation between two of the characters about 3/4 of the way through the book. This conversation poses those very questions directly - no subtext, no further thought required. If you removed this single conversation from the book, I really don't think those valuable points would come across very strongly. You might wonder at the characters who devote their lives to trawling through the most dangerous, unpredictable zones in the universe to retrieve objects they can't even fathom, let alone use. You might laugh at the characters who use these amazing light-emitting stones which break all the laws of physics as beaded bracelets, but I don't think you'd be prompted to meditation on what it means to be human unless this single piece of dialogue did it for you. I guess what I'm saying is that the ideas are fascinating. I just wish there had been a more nuanced delivery method.That said, I did really enjoy the Afterword by Boris Strugatsky which gives us a window on what it was like to be a writer in Soviet Russia during the 1970s and 80s. It's also a great example of his writing style - all the warmth and humour and pent up anger that's inherent in the book's main characters, who by the way, are incredibly relatable for those of us outside of Eastern Europe. So I'm torn between a 3 and 4 star review. I'll say 3 stars for any edition which doesn't include this particular Foreword and Afterword, and 4 stars for this edition which has both.

This must have been an interesting exercise for the writer - trying to write from the perspective of an entirely different species. That really doesn't translate well to being interesting for the reader, however.

This one's a creeper. It totally took me by surprise..I bought this book for two reasons:1) It's a contemporary YA novel set in Canberra. This never happens. Canberra is only ever written about in the context of politics or local history.2) The comparison to Puberty Blues on the back cover blurb. I’m not much of a YA fan in general, but Puberty Blues is a sentimental favourite of mine for its gritty, realistic portrayal of growing up in Australia. As it turns out, the story is set in Kambah - a notably dodgy suburb of Canberra, in which I lived for several years. The main character, Jez, is living just a few streets away from my old home. I can't tell you how strange it was to be reading about local icons such as: • the kitschy sheep sculptures on Drakeford Drive (which people like myself used to dress up in costumes for shits & giggles)• the James Court Apartments (which was the height of bogan sophistication if you wanted to party in the city and not have to worry about getting back home or getting kicked out for being rowdy. I threw my partner's 30th birthday there)• the Kambah Village shops, where a single mum once tried to pick up my gay flatmate at the counter, while the checkout chick was screaming at her to go home and tell her daughter she was going to get her head kicked in. This happened while her small child calmly stared up at my flatmate as if to say, "Are you my new daddy?"Anyone who has lived in Canberra will probably find it worth the recommended retail price just to see these details in print, but there is much more to the book.From the beginning, it's clear that Thompson knows her subject matter. There is the ring of absolute truth to her characters and the way in which they live. It's a warts and all coming-of-age story, where the "warts" include multigenerational poverty, drugs, petty jealousies, immature parenting and sexual predators. Anyone who has ever lived on the wrong side of the tracks will instantly recognise this as being authentic. I’m not sure how it will translate to readers from other countries, but from an insider perspective, this is as realistic a portrayal of mainstream, low-income Australian culture as I have ever seen. For the first half of the book, it seemed to me that this was all there was going to be – a snapshot more than a story. In the end though, a narrative does form, and I really came to care about the characters and what would become of them. Since I’m hardly in the target demographic, I’d consider that a win!Watching the film Puberty Blues when I was younger first gave me the idea that even lives like the ones I saw around me were “worthy” of being shown on screen. That came as a revelation at the time, when all I ever saw on screen were people living more.. sanitised lives than mine. Somehow that film legitimised my own culture for me. I hope this book can do the same for people playing Goon of Fortune today.**************************[posted before reading] A YA novel set in Canberra? A title font that gives you seizures? I'm IN!

Okay, now I'm deeply annoyed. I understand that any book written by an American about Australia and its culture is going to be a little.... off. I was able to put my cultural outrage aside for the most part, but for what? For a book that just stops? With no story arc? No conclusion? No resolution? And straight into an ad for her new series? WHY? Dear Gods... WHHHYYYYYY?!I was going to give this two stars, because there is still a little part of me that feels like reading anything set in the Newsflesh universe is a bit like being home, despite the disrespect this author shows to her readership, despite the previous disappointments.... but at the end of the day, I just truly don't see the point of this book. It doesn't tell us anything. It doesn't lead us anywhere. It's obviously just a set-up to some future commercial venture. What a complete waste of time.******************[edit]By the way, THIS is Adelaide International Airport.THIS is the way it's described in the book.

The Tombstone Guide to City of Saints & MadmenThe book lay on the weathered coffee table, pages spilling loosely from its tattered, well-worn binding, a suggestion of mould dotting the cardboard of the inside jacket, close to the spine. The following elements were (barely) contained within:• A beautifully written fantasy/horror novel, complete with intricate world-building, playful (indeed masterful), use of the English language, inexorable creeping dread and a strong sense of whimsy. Comparisons to Lovecraft, Mieville, Peake, Moorcock, Pratchett or Gaiman would not be unfounded.• A highly sophisticated work of post-modern metafiction which uses a range of fictional documents (psychiatric reports, magazine articles, family histories, letters, essays, bibliographies etc) to construct a multidimensional collage, full of hundreds of fully cross-referenced stories-within-stories. Use of the word, “literary”, would not be unfounded, however meaningless that term may be.• An insidious web of conspiracy and secret societies, reaching out and attaching itself to inhabitants of the real world and, inevitably, engulfing the reader. Reference to Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus Trilogy, in describing this aspect, would be unavoidable.• A living creature which has the power to transform and to be transformed by the act of being read. VanderMeer is a character himself, but as he says, "It's not a one-to-one relationship”. He is all of the characters, therefore would not also the reader be an integral part of the story, changing the story, perhaps changed by the story…?• A small purple mushroom with a white stem.A Note About The Cover Design: This reader would have preferred to see a beautifully lavish cover designed by one of the several wonderful artists whose works graced the interior pages of City of Saints & Madmen. In my humble opinion, the paperback cover design is not suited to either the feel of the story or the style(s) of the other artwork. It is definitely not suited to having enthusiastic readers flick back and forth between various appendices without the book rapidly disintegrating in their hands.Dr. R

Abandoned at 12% - Review to come..

This was a giveaway during National Book Shop Day. Not something I would have chosen for myself, but who knows? Maybe one day I'll give it a go..

Yes. I did buy this purely for the cover, with little to no interest in reading it. But how can you resist tag-lines like these?"Lock up your daughters... Darcy's In Town!""Mrs Bennet is on a mission to marry off her five daughters to rich men. Enter. Mr Charles Bingley and his rather fit friend, Darcy.LOVE, LOATHING & BITTERSWEET ROMANCE follow..."Maybe the awesome packaging will one day inspire me to open its pink-rimmed pages..

Listened to "My Russian Education" on The New Yorker podcast, read by Orhan Pamuk. I'm not sure Pamuk was the ideal choice of reader, given his tendency to place emphasis on the wrong syllable in almost every single word - but it was entertaining! I have very little idea what the story was about though..

It's got Clive Barker's "The Body Politic" -my favourite story from many years ago, which I didn't own a copy of until now. Plus there's James Herbert & David Moody. And it was on sale.How could I NOT buy it?

If I were to commission a short story just for myself, based on all my favourite things, this would be the result. It's like a short version of [b:The Illuminatus! Trilogy: The Eye in the Pyramid/The Golden Apple/Leviathan|57913|The Illuminatus! Trilogy The Eye in the Pyramid/The Golden Apple/Leviathan|Robert Shea|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1349073680s/57913.jpg|813] - metafiction, conspiracies, laugh-out-loud humour, a high creepy factor and enough factual (or factual-sounding) information to make the story temptingly believable - and a penguin. A motherfucking penguin! New. Favourite. Story.

Wikipedia currently defines "Bizarro" as, "a contemporary literary genre, which often uses elements of absurdism, satire, and the grotesque, along with pop-surrealism and genre fiction staples, in order to create subversive works that are as weird and entertaining as possible." This makes bizarro sound awesome. Nowhere is it mandated that a bizarro writer has to be too lazy to proof-read or properly edit. There is no rule to prevent the writer from taking the time to develop their wonderful and bizarre ideas, using their cynicism, irony and wit, and crafting them into something that reads well and makes it point clearly. Yet this seems to be the prevailing attitude of bizarro writers - that they're too cool to edit or refine their work. I get it - it's all very punk to just dash something off and say "fuck you" to the literary establishment. Unfortunately it just reads as a "fuck you" to the person who has just paid to read it.It IS a little unfair to blame Mykle Hansen in particular, for the shortcomings of bizarro as a genre. This collection of three short stories is not the worst bizarro I have ever read, by ANY stretch of the imagination. In fact, (and I think this is what pisses me off the most), the second story (Journey To The Centre of Agnes Cuddlebottom) is actually rather good. There is wit and irony and a story arc and social commentary and all the things that go into a good story. It even appears to have been proof-read. But the first story (Monster Cocks).... forget about it. Just don't even. Unreadable, unedited, a pointless teenage boy's wet dream dressed up with a few half-arsed attempts at social satire. The third story (Crazy Shitting Planet) is.... meh. The basics are there, but it seems to just endlessly repeat the same points, to no real purpose. This section is structured as a series of very short stories, each a couple of pages long. Aimless' Guitar would work well as a standalone story, but otherwise it's like being beaten over the head repeatedly with something very boring and stupid. If you're thinking about reading this, I'd read the second story only (and I do recommend reading at least that part) and give the rest of it a miss.I want to like bizarro. I truly do. I just don't see why putting in effort to write and refine a story should be seen as somehow going against the tenets of the genre.************From my progress updates: The second story's a lot more... mature & coherent than the first. Yeah. Wow. I just described a story set entirely inside an eighty year old crack whore's asshole "mature & coherent".

On the one hand I'd be really curious to read this, being from Adelaide and having spent many a pleasant day out at the Adelaide Zoo. A good friend of mine even got married in the butterfly garden there.Then I realised the author wasn't an Australian. Then I saw that the giveaway was only open to Americans. Then I got to thinking about how misappropriating & profiting from someone else's culture really is a bit of a dick move..I dunno whether to add this to my tbr or my will-never-read shelf. Maybe I should just stop thinking.

In the time it takes you to read a full-length review of this novella, you could have already read a substantial enough chunk of it to see for yourself how great it is. I don't want to be responsible for you losing valuable machado-reading time, so I'll just say this:- It's beautifully written, nicely paced with a wry sense of wit. It didn't contain anything that made me clutch my chest in shock and my brain didn't light up with a thousand new ideas, but it is a very well crafted light farce all the same.- It's a satirical take on the mental health industry and poses the question, "Who decides who is sane and who is not?" which is guaranteed to be fertile ground.- It's a very stylish edition (part of Melville House's "Art of the Novella" series) and contains a code which allows you to access a huge amount of additional content electronically, which I am still happily rummaging through.-It contains little gems like this, "He possessed wisdom, patience, tolerance, truthfulness, loyalty and moral fortitude: all the qualities that go to make an utter madman."Do you really need to hear more? Go read it.