Audiobook Review: Psycho by Robert Bloch

Psycho

Written by: Robert Bloch

Published: 1959

Audiobook read by: Paul Michael Garcia

Synopsis: It was a dark and stormy night when Mary Crane glimpsed the unlit neon sign announcing the vacancy at the Bates motel. Exhausted, lost, and at the end of her rope, she was eager for a hot shower and a bed for the night. Her room was musty but clean and the plumbing worked. Norman Bates, the manager, seemed nice, if a little odd.


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“Mothers sometimes are overly possessive, but not all children allow themselves to be possessed.”

Psycho is without a doubt a fantastic film, it's one of the fantastic films. But it owes everything it is to Robert Bloch, because without the fantastic foundation he created with his book, the film would have nothing.

But with all that said and done, I never had a burning desire to read the book that started it all. I had always had it on my list of "one day in the future I'm sure I'll get a chance" books but I never searched it out at book sales or book stores or even gave it a thought when perusing the shelves at the library. That changed when I was mindlessly flipping around Audible looking for books to use my credit on. Psycho came up as a suggested book for me and at a meagre 5 hours (I was still a little burnt out from the 30+ hour epic that was The Goldfinch) it seemed like the perfect purchase.

Part of the problem, I expect, is that I knew the twist. I don't have a lot of issues with spoilers, it rarely stops me from enjoying something I read/watch, but the 'twist' in Psycho is so seminal (as is the shower murder to be honest) that I wasn't sure if reading it would actually add that much. I definitely think I would have liked the book more if I didn't know the twist (I'm dancing around it, but everyone knows about Norman Bates' predilections right?) because the final 15% of the book was harrowing enough for me, so I can only imagine how much people reading it when it originally came out must have been glued to the edges of their seats. But knowing or not knowing, this book is a brilliant little thriller. Well written, well paced, and (in the case of the audiobook) well read.

It's hard to avoid comparing the book with the film. For the most part I'd say the film does a brilliant job bringing Bloch's story to life, making only fairly minor changes. One point I do want to raise though is that Film Norman Bates and Book Norman Bates could not be more different. Well, psychotically they're the same, but visually not so much. In the film the dishy Anthony Perkins plays the role, while in the book Norman Bates is described as in his early 40s and overweight. Thanks to Ellie's review last year I know that this was an intentional shift made by Hitchcock but it got me to thinking of Carrie which had a similar shift from overweight and homely to thin and attractive (even if Sissy Spacek isn't exactly your traditional Hollywood beauty) for the leading character.  I don't know if I was more attuned to Carrie because it was a change that stuck out for me personally, but I feel like people seem less critical of the Psycho change than of the Carrie change in reviews and discussions on the film adaptation. Is it because Hollywood has a nasty habit of prettying up every female they can, or is it that we actually care less when they recast a male character as someone more handsome? This isn't a complaint of the book or the film, I think Anthony Perkins was brilliant as Bates, but it was a thought that popped into my head almost immediately and has been sloshing around in there for a week or two now. And now it is in yours.

Psycho is well worth a read, regardless of how well you know - or don't know - the film adaptation. It's a short, sharp thriller which teases out some interesting characters in such a short space of time. It also plays with some interesting ideas, touching on issues relating to familial relationships and obligations, magic and psychology to develop a horror story that has the potential to terrify because of the events (which are definitely more horrific than the film, surprisingly) but also because it so clearly and matter-of-factly lays out why the events of the novel happen.

So this is a pretty short and bland review, but it's always difficult to review books that a) everyone knows about, b)is a thriller with twists, and c) is an audiobook, because I just don't notice writing style nearly enough. So I'm going to sign off with a shrug and hope that you accept my "just read it, cos" as acceptable enough.

Short story Reviews: UR by Stephen King, In the Tall Grass by Stephen King and Joe Hill, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

A few months ago I read Stephen King and Joe Hill's short story In the Tall Grass and had no idea how to review it. Short stories are always hard to review, because there isn't a lot to discuss without giving away some of the critical elements, but they usually (or the ones I read anyway) come in an anthology so you can bluff your way through by writing a couple of lines or paragraphs about each story and make up a full review that way. This was a singular story, something I found when I was searching the Stephen King tag on Amazon, and I just couldn't review it in any way that seemed worth it. Lucky for me RIP VIII came along and gave me the perfect platform to write about it and a couple of other short stories I'd been considering reading. So here you go, reviews to In the Tall Grass, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and UR.

Advertisement:  "I use Grammarly to correct grammar because 'ain't nobody got time for that*' 
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In the Tall Grass

Written by: Joe Hill and Stephen King

Published: 2012

Synopsis: In the Tall Grass begins with a sister and brother who pull off to the side of the road after hearing a young boy crying for help from beyond the tall grass. Within minutes they are disoriented, in deeper than seems possible, and they’ve lost one another. The boy’s cries are more and more desperate.

My thoughts: About a year ago I read a comic based on a Joe Hill and Stephen King novella titled Throttle. I really enjoyed seeing their different styles clash and meld, so when I came across this short story I snapped it up immediately.

I really love Stephen King's short stories. I think it's because they tend to be really experimental, either he's playing around with ideas that will later become full time novels or they're something so completely different to what I'm used to from him. At the time of reading this short story, the only Joe Hill I'd read was his comic series Locke and Key (which is a MUST read) and I had loved how much Joe seemed to pay homage to his father while never seeming like he was simply riding that wave of nepotism and fame (his obvious talent also helps immensely).

This story is very short and very quick. Brother and sister duo Becky and Cal DeMuth are driving through Kansas when they hear someone calling for help. They park on the side of a road near a church and look into the field of tall, tall grass and hear a child and his terrified mother calling out. Once they make their way in though, they get lost and no matter how hard they try, they can't get their bearings back.

The premise is all King. It's a quiet story, one that teeters on that thin line between panic and supernatural. Is the grass actually working against them, hiding a killer who is coming to get them? Or are they just overtaken by their own fears of getting lost and it seems like everything is working against them? Joe Hill, I would guess, brings the darker and more gruesome elements. It's not that King often shies away from these sorts of details, but it was, for want of a better phrase, more in your face than he typically writes. The blend of the quiet with the aggressive, the subtle with the dark makes for something of a schizophrenic narrative. It never felt like two people passing the keyboard from one to another as they wrote the story, but if you're as familiar with King as I am, the influence of his son is instantly recognisable. And I loved it.

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The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Written by: Washington Irving

Published: 1820

Synopsis: Sleepy Hollow is a strange little place...some say bewitched. Some talk of its haunted valleys and streams, the ghostly woman in white, eerie midnight shrieks and howls, but most of all they talk of the Headless Horseman. A huge, shadowy soldier who rides headless through the night, terrifying unlucky travellers.

Schoolteacher Ichabod Crane is fascinated by these stories....Until late one night, walking home through Wiley's swamp, he finds that maybe they're not just stories.

My thoughts: I decided to pick up this novella when I watched the first episode of the new TV series Sleepy Hollow. As I watched it I was like "wait, wait, wait, the headless horseman was one of the four horses of the apocalypse?" and "Ichabod's wife was a witch, I didn't think he even had a wife" and I realised that while I know a bit about the Washington Irving story, I didn't know enough (and what I do know maybe came from the Johnny Depp film). I really enjoyed this read, although I'm a little embarrassed to say it took me awhile to get back into the rhythm of pre-20th century writing. There are so many adjectives and lengthy descriptions about absolutely everything, that tree over there, the school hall, the shape of Ichabod's face and when it's been as long between classic texts as it has been for me it's hard not to just be like "why Washington WHY". But once I fell back into the style, I enjoyed the hell out of it, even though it was nothing like I thought it would be.

Ichabod Crane is not the delightfully weird fellow I expected him to be. He's actually kind of despicable, not a bad guy per say, but he's hardly the person you root for in a love triangle. His "love" is basically motivated by Katrina Van Tassel's father's wealth and standing in Sleepy Hollow, which is made beautifully aware in a scene where Ichabod imagines all the farm animals as tasty meals that Katrina would cook him. The entire story seems to have been written by Washington with his tongue pressed firmly in his cheek, so while quotes like;

"Spare the rod and spoil the child - Ichabod Crane's scholars certainly were not spoiled"

and;

"Balt Van Tassel was an easy indulgent soul; he loved his daughter better even than his pipe"

Are a little "oh right, 1820 was really different," they're also kind of hilarious.

But It's the descriptions that Washington Irving writes about Mr Crane, or the town of Sleepy Hollow and the town's penchant for supernatural goings-on that really makes this story worth reading. They do border on the laborious from time to time, but the people are so wonderfully drawn and the setting so gorgeously painted that it's easy to motivate yourself to keep going past the bits that drag. I mean, tell me this isn't a wonderful description of Ichabod;

"...for he was a huge feeder, and though lank, had the dilating powers of an anaconda" 

See, it's great. So come for the ghost story about a headless horseman and a stuck up school teacher and stay for the gorgeous descriptions. And then recommend other Washington Irving stories to me, because I want more.

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UR

Written by: Stephen King

Published: 2009

Synopsis: Following a nasty break-up, lovelorn college English instructor Wesley Smith can't seem to get his ex-girlfriend's parting shot out of his head: "Why can't you just read off the computer like the rest of us?" Egged on by her question and piqued by a student's suggestion, Wesley places an order for Amazon.com's Kindle eReader. The [pink?] device that arrives in a box stamped with the smile logo -via one-day delivery that he hadn't requested - unlocks a literary world that even the most avid of book lovers could never imagine. But once the door is open, there are those things that one hopes we'll never read or live through.

My Thoughts: This was a spontaneous purchase on my phone's kindle app when I was waiting for the bus and had nothing else to read. It was, if wikipedia is correct, a short story King wrote exclusively for sale for Kindle, and that really shows. It hovers somewhere between being a long ad for Kindle and a cute little way of tying an exclusive deal into the narrative. When lines like "Wesley went to the Kindle shop and bought X" comes up a gazillion times I started to wonder if Amazon had written into the contract a minimum of references that needed to be in the story, and considering the whole story hinges on the Kindle, it grew a little tiring. If you've read Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore it sort of felt like the Google references which almost overshadowed the story by the end. But all that aside, it was still an enjoyable little short story.

Basically, the kindle that Wesley buys to spite his sports coach ex-girlfriend -they broke up after a fight where he called her illiterate (oof) and she said he was out of touch with the world - turns out not to be a real kindle. It has the regular buy and read functions, but it's also pink and has some experimental functions. These functions allow him to search the multiverse for books that his favourite authors may have written elsewhere, and with a student and co-worker, Wesley spends a long night exploring the works of Hemingway, Shakespeare etc that don't exist in his particular world. While the three men have an uncomfortable feeling that they're peeking through a doorway they shouldn't, it mostly just seems like a harmless - albeit addictive - activity. However, things shift suddenly when Wesley explores other UR functions, one of which allows him to read news headlines from the future. It's here that Wesley finds out that Ellen, his ex, and her busload of college girls are going to die when a drunk driver runs them off the road. Wesley's faced with the decision, does he act on this knowledge and try and save his ex (who he still loves) and break the paradox laws, or does he respect those laws and let his girlfriend and a group of students die?

The story isn't particularly tense or scary, but it is fun and there are a couple of neat references to other King books (primarily Dark Tower references, because duh). There's a few interesting looks at the physical vs digital debate that take place during one of Wesley's class, and it's refreshing to have the students be like "who cares if it has binding, books are about ideas and emotions" rather than the typical garbage about us Millennials** only liking digital whatevers. So if you're a fan of King or looking for a fun short story about books that don't exist (but we wish did) then this could be for you. Also, if you're one of the The Corrections readalongers, Wesley is like a breath of fresh air compared to Chip's pretentious teaching style, so have at.

*I may have had this meme stuck in my head when writing this post.

**When did Millennials become a thing btw? What happened with being Gen Y?

Armchair BEA: Introductions and Classics Talk

Hello everyone, I am super excited to take part in Armchair BEA this year! I've seen the posts around the blogosphere the last couple of years but this is the first time I've been organised to actually take part, and I'm psyched to meet some new people.

So I guess I should introduce myself;

Where in the world are you blogging from? Tell a random fact or something special about your current location.
I am in Brisbane, Australia and right now it is absolutely miserable. It's cold and wet but sitting on the couch with a cup of tea writing this post is life at its very best. I can't really think of anything too random or special right now, but we are blessed with pretty amazing weather here in Brisbane. We don't get the turbulent hot/cold/rain/snow/sun mess that Melbourne and Adelaide go through on a daily basis, but we're also southern enough that we don't get the epic tropical heat from the up north. As someone from the tippy top of Australia I can tell you with 100% clarity, tropical heat 70% of the year - it blows.

What are you currently reading, or what is your favorite book you have read so far in 2013?
I am currently juggling about 6 different books, but my two favourite reads for 2013 would definitely be Attachments by Rainbow Rowell and Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Those books are amazing, if you haven't read them yet I highly encourage you to seek them out.

Tell us one non-book-related thing that everyone reading your blog may not know about you.
Hmmmm, I really love buying people presents, everything from the actual gift to the presentation of it. I love to make it personal and just right for that person. You won't catch me buying people socks or gift cards, no siree.

If you could eat dinner with any author or character, who would it be and why?
Ask me this in a week or a month and I'll probably have a completely different answer for you, but right now it'd have to be Beth and Jennifer from Attachments. They're just the lovliest ladies, I love how they care for each other, and how witty they are and how they bounce everything off each other. It would be hands down one of the most enjoyable experiences I could imagine.

What is your favorite part about the book blogging community?
Ugh, so much! The whole community/friend vibe that everyone sends out is pretty fabulous. Like, right now I'm taking part in a Harry Potter readalong hosted by the wonderful Alice of Reading Rambo and it's so great to see what everyone else is thinking as we go through the series, expressing emotions through epic amounts of gifs and having silly arguments and discussions about Sirius or Snape or the school's plumbing.
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Today, tell us all the reasons why you love classic literature. What are your favourite classics? If you could give a list of classics to someone who claims to hate them to make them change their mind, what would be on it? How would you convince them to give classics a try? And why do you keep coming back to those old favorites?

I love to read classics, they're such a fascinating view into how life used to be - which can also be quite confronting or alien at times. I tend to gravitate more towards contemporary classics, I loooove One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn, short stories by H.P Lovecraft, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles and, of course, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Oscar Wilde and co. Recently my classics reading has been a little spotty, a couple of books here and there, but since I finished my literature degree I think perhaps I burnt myself out a little. Regardless I still love to read a classic every now and again and it irks me no end when someone says "nah, I don't really like classics".

The thing is, classics are just like contemporary fiction - just older (I wish I could articulate that better!) You can get classic horror, classic sci-fi, classic romance, classic literary fiction, classic...you get the idea. So when someone tells me they don't like classics, my first step is usually to try to direct them towards a classic in their genre of choice. My second step is to go for more of a contemporary classic, so rather than throw them in the deep end, I edge them into it, maybe with a book from the 1950s or 1920s. Once they've gotten into them I can show them books from the 1800s or maybe even earlier depending on how they're finding it. Typically when someone says they don't like classics it's that the classics scare them a little, or they had to read the super dry ones in high school which turned them off. Of course, some people won't like them full stop but it never hurts to try!

Review: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray 

Written by: Oscar Wilde

Published: 1890

Synopsis: Written in his distinctively dazzling manner, Oscar Wilde’s story of a fashionable young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty is the author’s most popular work.
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You know how you might have tried to read a book  100 different times and a bunch of different ages but for some reason it never resonated, and then the 101st time you take a look at it and *click* suddenly the language and style and characters just...work?

Well that's what The Picture of Dorian Gray has been for me. I first tried to read it at 16 and got about 2 sentences in and had to put it down, the next time I was a little bit more successful but after putting it down one night 2 chapters in I was never motivated to keep reading. I can't say I have a reason why I could never get into it, but something stonewalled every attempt I made and I was mostly resigned to the fact that me and Dorian were never going to get to know each other. As luck might have it, this was one of the reads for the "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Challenge" and when I decided to start it for the 101st time I somehow got straight into it. Weird right?  For whatever reason, this time around I had no issue with the language or connecting with the story. I never really got far enough into it to make any judgements, but this time around I found myself loving everything about it, the language, the characters, the jokes and cynicism, the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) homo-eroticism that Oscar Wilde weaves into the story.

The premise of this book is one all of you probably know already. A young and impressionable dude decides he likes his face and the fact that the youth get all the fun, and when he sees an exceptionally good painting of himself, wishes that he could stay as he is and stain the picture with his age and disgrace and anger. As supernatural and borderline horror as this seems, it really makes up a small part of the story. Even after the deal has been made (to which Dorian is somewhat unaware) and he notices some imperceptible differences to the portrait, the book remains attentive to Dorian and his crazy ego and the crazy ego of his best friend Lord Henry. The why and how of the painting is never explored, and instead is used as a literal marker to demonstrate the deplorable nature of Dorian Gray and how much his actions tarnish his soul and his character.

Dorian Gray, to me, is a pretty boring character. He's snooty and upper-class-y and seems to be in a perpetual funk. He also has an obnoxious habit of making the fault of his actions the fault of someone else. Like when he decides he no longer loves Sybil because he realises she's an actual person and not a constant parade of sad and desperate Shakespearean heroines, he blasts at her that she's destroyed his love and that it is unfair to him for her to do such a thing etc etc. That's one of the mildest of examples, but without spoiling the events of the novels I can't unpack the true extent of his jackassery. Jackassery aside, he's a pretty vanilla character. What makes him interesting, other than owning a painting that does the ageing for him, is how easily shaped he is by the people around him. He's like a sponge or a lump of clay, just bending easily to the thoughts and opinions of whomever his number 1 friend is at the time. It happens that Lord Henry is this friend most of the time and, in some ways, responsible for the entire crap-fest that follows Dorian's regrettable deal with the devil/painting gods.

Lord Henry is amazing. Like, I actively hated him after hearing the first sentence out of his mouth, but he's so god damn entertaining and completely makes the book. He obnoxiously has an opinion on absolutely everything and ALWAYS has to deviate from whatever the popular opinion is. Madame Whats-it thinks love is for losers? Lord Henry thinks love is what makes the world go round. Young Lady Hoo-ha thinks love is lovely, and suddenly Lord Henry thinks it's demonstrative of her youth and naivete and femininity and one day she'll realise there is no such thing as love. His greatest opinion, and the one that sways Dorian the most, is about the importance of beauty over intelligence. Over and over through the story, and you should know this spans about 20 years (maybe a little under), Henry waffles on and on about how unlucky you are if you're intelligent, why it's such a bummer and how lucky Dorian is for being such a pretty faced boy. He champions vanity as truth, and intelligence as the cowardly disregard for what is true and honest in life. Actually, the way he champions this dichotomy in conversation after conversation with Dorian made it feel as though Dorian was a project that Henry had taken up to see how far he could drive a person to think his way. I can practically imagine the young scholar that Henry visits after stopping by Dorian's to spin the same argument but in reverse. This isn't to say Dorian is a victim in this book, he certainly isn't, but I can't help but wonder what would have happened if Basil the painter had had his way and kept Lord Henry from Dorian.

The story is pretty slow-going to start, and there were probably about three conversations between Dorian and Henry in the first section of the book that could have been done away with, but after Dorian falls in (and out of) love Sybil and notices the first difference in the painting it begins to pick up the pace and once it get going it's much easier to stay engaged. Oscar Wilde is a delightful writer, verbose at times, but he manages to be both lyrical and poetic while also very acerbic and sharp prose. The dialogue is where he truly shines, which, you know, for a playwright is to be expected, but seriously, there are zingers and potshots in just about every single conversation line. It makes it much more bearable to read conversations between rich old white dudes, and also makes me think Oscar Wilde and I could have been good friends.

And on that note, here are a few excerpts to demonstrate Mr Wilde's awesomeness;

"A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her"

(on the painting) "The very sharpness of the contrast used to quicken his sense of pleasure. He grew more and more enamoured of his own beauty, more and more interested in the corruption of his own soul"

"We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities"

"I felt that this monstrous London of ours, with its myriads of people, its sordid sinners, and its splendid sins, as you once phrased it, must have something in store with me"

"The basis for optimism is sheer terror. We hink that we are generous because we credit our neighbour with the possession of those virtues that are likely to be a benefit to us. We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets. I mean everything that I have said. I have the greatest contempt for optimism. As for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested. If you want to mar nature, you have merely to reform it"

"Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals"

So yeah as that last quote hints, It's very male-centric, and women get a pretty bad run in it, but aside from that (which was hard to bear from time to time) and a few pacing issues it was an interesting, humorous and provocative story which has some real parallels with life in our modern society.  If, like me, you've had trouble reading this one, maybe pick it up and give it another go and you might find yourself, for some reason, plowing straight through it and thoroughly enjoying it this time around.

Sherlock Holmes: The Final Problem

Sherlock Holmes: The Final Problem
Written by: Arthur Conan Doyle

Published: 1893

Synopsis: Sherlock Holmes strives to destroy Professor Moriarty who is at the bottom of half the evil in London while the criminal genius vows the same for the detective.


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OMG I FINALLY GOT THE CHANCE TO READ ANOTHER BOOK FOR THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN CHALLENGE!!!! I know right! And it took me like 20 minutes to read because I had no idea this one was only a wee teeny tiny baby of a story and all of a sudden my kindle phone app was like "yo Kayleigh you're 78% complete" and I was like "but I'm only halfway to uni, what the hell Arthur Conan Doyle?!"

It's going to be really hard to review this story, and not only because of the teensy size. This is the one and only Sherlock Holmes/Arthur Conan Doyle story I've read. All of my wisdom on the subject comes from the fantastic Steven Moffat series Sherlock and all the old films that used to play at midday on a Sunday. So there are certain parts of this book that I especially liked because I could completely visualise Benedict Cumberbatch saying the lines in that droll voice of his. Case in point;

"My dear Watson, you evidently did not realise my meaning when I said that this man may be taken as being quite on the same intellectual plane as myself. You do not imagine that if I were the pursuer I should allow myself to be baffled by so slight an obstacle. Why, then, should you think so meanly of him?"

So maybe my man B.C would have a slightly more modern line reading, but because I have his characterisation still so fresh in my head I read those lines with all of the the annoyance and peevishness that are so characteristic of his incarnation of the character, where, perhaps, you guys (if you haven't seen Sherlock or are more familiar with the original Conan Doyle series) see none of that stuff and I'm just projecting.

That aside, this really is a thoroughly good story. It's short, to the point and rather emotional. Writing two years after the events that take place, Watson (who I was visualising more as Jude Law than Martin Freeman surprisingly) finally decides to recount the events that transpired between Sherlock and Moriarty, because people are trying to paint Moriarty as a good guy and not the criminal mastermind he actually was. In the short story Watson describes how on edge and aware of looming danger that Sherlock was, and his decision to leave the country for three days until the police would be able to arrest Moriarty and the rest of his criminal crew. Tagging along because, well, because he's Watson, he heads off with Sherlock in what will be their final trip together.

Because he's writing from the perspective of knowing what happens, and being devastated by the events (this is all in the first few pages, so no spoiler warning needed!) Watson's account is rather melancholy and depressing. He recalls moments when Sherlock displayed signs of fear or apprehension which he then pieces together to demonstrate that Sherlock was always aware how this adventure was going to end. It has the advantage of not only showing Watson's tender affection for the world's greatest detective (and at times the story reads like a long eulogy) but also showcasing Sherlock's talent as the world's greatest detective AND his level-headed acceptance of how things will/could be. He does his best to avoid death, but he accepts this reality and doesn't let it stop him from spending three more days with Watson, see the world and crush Moriarty's crime syndicate. That's a dude I can respect.

To me this story was all about Watson and Sherlock and the enduring bond between these two men, but for most (especially if I take into account the film/TV versions of this story) it's all about the rivalry that's set up between Moriarty and Sherlock. And for good reason. They're two sides of the same coin, brilliant, determined, intuitive, commanding and a little mad (although maybe in Moriarty it's more than a little). In the early pages of the story Sherlock recounts their brief meeting to Watson, and it's this fantastic intellectual game of chess, where each plays on the other's move and tries to take command of the situation. The back and forth between them is dynamic yet civil - building the tension required for the rest of the story. It's like a meeting between two muzzled lions, if the two lions went to Oxford and wore neckties.The interesting thing that this story sets up is the respect that they have for one another, they clearly disrespect one another's line of work, but they respect the mental prowess of one another and the thrill that this hunt (for want of a better word) will entail. They're two of the most intelligent men alive, and finally they've each found their match. In other circumstances they could be wonderful friends (and you know that fan-fic has been written).

I'm sad this was quite a short read, because that would be the only fault I have about it. Because it's so short,  there isn't a huge amount of detail about the events - especially since Watson isn't present at the infamous Reichenbach Falls when the two men have their final face off. However because of the tone of the book, and the reason for Watson finally putting pen to paper, it doesn't diminish the quality of the story, it just leaves me wishing for more.

Review: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451 
Written by Ray Bradbury

Published: 1950

Synopsis: Guy Montag was a fireman whose job it was to start fires. And he enjoyed his job. He had been a fireman for ten years, and he had never questioned the pleasure of the midnight runs or the joy of watching pages consumed by flames, never questioned anything until he met a seventeen-year-old girl who told him of a past when people were not afraid. Then Guy met a professor who told him of a future in which people could think. And Guy Montag suddenly realized what he had to do...

"Nobody listens any more. I can'talk to the walls because they're yelling at me. I can't talk to my wife; she listens to the walls."

Wow, there is a lot going on in this book!  Within 165 pages Guy Montag transforms from a man who loves his job as fireman, to a man who questions everything going on around him. He meets a young, whimsical girl, an old professor and college educated tramps. He's chased by a robotic hound, lectured at by his sanctimonious chief and witnesses his wife die and be brought back to life (no spoilers there, it happens in the first few pages). His entire world is shaken in this book, and the result is a complex, and rich short dystopian novel.

In the future books do not exist. Or they do, but owning and reading them is illegal and results in having them, and your house, burnt to the ground. The firemen are responsible for the burning, and are completely unaware of their vocation's previous purpose. There are plenty of rumours around, about firemen putting out flames instead of lighting them, or that books are in fact filled with interesting and delightful words, but this futuristic society is apathetic at best, and too busy killing one another, commiting suicide or staring blankly at their wall TVs. Sounds oddly prophetic right?!

Considering it was written over 60 years ago, Fahrenheit 451 hit pretty close to home on it's idea of a future society. America is at war and is detested by everyone else in the world, people fill their homes with TVs that fill an entire wall (or an entire room in lucky homes),  and stick headphones (known as ear shells) to hear a constant whir of noise all day long. Also, while books are now illegal, it was actually the people who led to that decision. Political correctness reached crazy heights and everyone began taking offence at every little sentence and began hacking away at books until they were bare and unilluminating. All that remained were the cheap stories that had nothing of substance and became the "families" that people watch day in and day out on their TV screens.

As Fahrenheit 451 tells the story of a country bounded by censorship and devoid of intellectual thought or conversation, Ray Bradbury uses the most beautiful, descriptive language to describe it. It adds such weight to the idea of a world without books and imagination to read a book that employs such a diverse range of literary techniques. Of course, words themselves wouldn't be enough by themselves, as Bradbury himself says in Fahrenheit 451;

"Books were only one type of recepticle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid to forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what the books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us"

So joining the exquisite language is a rich story littered with characters who will capture your hearts or wrath within minutes. It really ticks all the boxes, and I'm not surprised this book has captured the attention of so many readers for so many years. If you haven't yet had the chance to read Fahrenheit 451 I highly recommend you take the time to discover it for yourself. I'm eager to read more of Bradbury now, and see if his other books are as prolific as this one.

Review: Great Gatsby (Graphic Novel) adapted by Nicki Greenberg

The Great Gatsby
By F.Scott Fitzgerald

Graphic Novel adapted by Nicki Greenberg

Published: 2007

Synopsis: A wonderful homage to F. Scott Fitzgerald's jazz-age classic that brings to life the glitter, the melancholy and the grand and crumpled dreams of Fitzgerald's unforgettable characters. In the exquisitely realised setting of 1920s New York, a throng of fantastical creatures play out the drama, the wry humour and the tragedy of the novel.

The Great Gatsby is simply one of the finest books ever written. Not everyone may agree with that sentiment but I'm honestly hard pressed to think about a book that means so much to me and is written so well. After becoming a fan of the book, I became a fan of the film (which I'll be reviewing later this week) and after that I became a fan of this graphic novel. Even before reading it I was enchanted with the idea of reading The Great Gatsby as a graphic novel, and was intrigued by the idea of making the characters animals, flowers and monsters. I won't be getting into too much detail about whether the construction of the characters as seahorses (Gatsby), dandelions (Daisy), slugs (Nick) or ogres (Tom) adds much in regards to further edifying the characteristics and qualities of the characters, but let me just say that this bold and slightly bizarre idea does, inexplicably, seem to lend a certain je ne sais quoi to the story. I can't really be certain how, although I do find myself wondering now how I never envisioned Gatsby as a seahorse before!

It seems to be a popular misconception that Fitzgerald was writing about the glory of the 1920s jazz age. I think it's fairly clear that rather than praise the era, it is, for the most part, illustrating the gratuitous and self-serving nature of that hedonistic time. To an extent I do understand the mistake. The beauty of Fitzgerald's writing makes me nostalgic for a time I never knew, and by all account (at least those written within the pages of The Great Gatsby) one which favoured money and social standing over anything of real value or substance. Everything in The Great Gatsby is about hiding away true emotions or thoughts and instead presenting the world with extravagant or superfluous shows. There are several mentions in the text of performances, and the gesticulating, over-the-top theatrics of many of the characters seem to suggest that no-one is free of the desire to shut away their true, smaller self, whether in fear of failure, destruction, or that they'll fade away into obscurity.

The graphic novel does a fantastic job of capturing the heart of the novel and presenting it in a new and entirely fresh manner for audiences. Personally I would recommend reading the book in it's original form, but the writing in the graphic novel is still Fitzgerald, so even if you're receiving primarily the dialogue and the more dazzling gems of Fitzgerald's commentary, you're still receiving something remarkable indeed. The graphic novel tells the story through a series of sepia toned "photos" displayed on the black card of an album, as the narrator, Nick Carroway, recounts the events that took place while he lived on West Egg next door to the mysterious and endearing Gatsby. The representation of the illustrations as old photographs which have been treasured and serve as a reminder to Nick of the better and worst aspects of that time in his life perfectly represents the feel of the original novel. Not only do we get the nostalgic memories seeping through the turns of phrase that Fitzgerald used, or the events of the story, but the visuals used to present the story are the literal manifestation of nostalgia, old, worn, faded and bruised, yet loved. The illustrations are also used to further emphasise the fleeting nature of the whirlwind time that Nick spent in West Egg, such as the photo that has the middle (presumed to be bearing the image of a woman) torn out, which follows the statement, "I even had a short affair with a girl who worked in the accounting department, until her brother began throwing mean looks in my direction. And I let it blow quietly away."

The story of Jay Gatsby and his all consuming love for Daisy, and the events that transpire through the novel when they are finally re-introduced is lovingly replicated in this graphic novel, as is the smaller points made against the frivolity and hedonism of the jazz age and the shifting emotions of melancholy, hope, love and devotion. It's a wonderful homage to a wonderful book and I recommend picking up a copy so that you can fall headlong into the story which is sure to move you to tears, laughter, anger and contentment. A must-read for fans of graphic novels and Fitzgerald alike.