Behind the Blog: Bookshelves Edition part 4

Now for the second of my primary bookshelves, the first bookshelf I bought after moving out of home.

This wonderful blue set of shelves are my fiction shelves and I sort it by location...mostly. The top shelf holds the older classics (Chaucer, Dickens etc), my selection of plays, which are primarily Shakespeare and the couple of poetry books I own. From there downward the books move through Africa on to England, Scotland, Ireland, Europe (I don't have enough to specify by country!), Russia and Asia/India. The larger shelf homes my special edition and signed books and below that the books travel through Canada down to the United States and down south to Mexico and South America and then on to a shelf dedicated to Australian fiction. The final bottom shelf is a mish-mash of music books, art books, and short-story collections.  In each country group I tried to organise the books in a basic chronological order with authors work kept together.

My signed books and comics

The Godfather special boxset, Paul Smith (Maximo Park) art book and Ducktor Who

A snapshot of my United Kingdom section

How wonderful is the wooden box that my The Godfather trilogy sits within? It was a christmas present from my mum one year, I remember knocking on the present while it was wrapped up trying to work out what the hell it could be! And the Ducktor Who has a special place in my heart, and not only because it's a duck dressed up like the Doctor! Tom and I had been dating for three weeks when I celebrated my 22nd birthday and he showed up to my b'day dinner with that duck, a graphic novel and a bunch of flowers. After three weeks his present was so 'me appropriate' and far more in-line with my personality than what even my family bought for me! It was one of those 'A-ha' moments for me, and it sits proudly on that shelf in honour of the wonderful relationship that's been right since day one.

So that concludes my bookshelf tour! Technically I have one shelf left but it's full of Tom and my research books and sits in our office and is a complete mess! I'd have to do some MAJOR cleaning, tidying and organising to get it even half-way towards being blog level presentable so it'll remain unseen. In case you're curious though it houses Tom's huge collection of game design, flash and programming books, our horror and writing non-fiction books, some journalism books left from my first year and a bunch of English reference books. Along those fun topics are a few photo albums, my box of past assignments (I've kept them all...no idea why though!) and some other office-y stuff. Exciting right!?

Fanart Friday: American Gods edition

When I read Neil Gaiman's incredible book American Gods earlier this year I was awestruck by the sheer magnitude of the awesomeness that emanate from the pages. You can read my review for the full length love letter to Neil Gaiman about this book but the short version is this book is magnificent. Even without taking into consideration Gaiman's incredible ability to tell a story and masterful word craft, this book is fantastic. It ignites the imagination through it's complex and descriptive use of a litany of gods from across cultures, religions and eras. Since reading this book and hearing that HBO is planning a TV series based around it I haven't been able to stop thinking about what this book would look like visually. Since the series isn't likely to hit our screens for a few years these pictures by some amazing artists will fulfill that desire for now. Actually that do more justice to the source material than I could have imagined/hoped for! Take a peek at the rest of their amazing work by clicking through the links in the captions.

Anubis takes the Subway by Brendan (ElCapoeria)

Mr Wednesday by Faqy

Zorya Polunochnaya by Miso-San

About as soothing as a punch in the face: An interview with J.G Ballard

I've just finished reading J.G. Ballard's Kingdom Come and was amazed at the relevancy of this book in regards to the devastating riots happening in the UK. Kingdom Come follows Richard Pearson into the motorway town of Brooklands after the murder of his father. On the surface the town seems like your typical sleepy, idyllic English town but it soon becomes clear to Pearson that bubbling below the surface is a dangerous yearning to attack, riot and leap willingly into madness. The book looks at issues of boredom, suburbia, consumerism, class, race and football (soccer) hooliganism in an explosive environment. I'll get a review up next week but in the meantime I thought I'd share the interview* which was featured at the back of my edition of the novel. In it Ballard answers questions on the English people and English society in ways that parallels the current global discussion on the cause/reason for the riots.

Kingdom Come, with its cast of marauding hooligans and morality-free 'pillars of the community', dwells on the dark and dangerous side of human nature. Is this sensitivity to the depth our behaviours can plumb attributable to any particular experience you've endured, do you think?

Ballard:Yes. I think a number of experiences, particularly during my childhood in the Far East during the Second World War, encouraged me to regard the human race as potentially quite dangerous. People brought up in the comfortable suburbs of Western Europe and North America tend to think that human beings are at heart governed by a kind of enlightened self-interest; that they are thoughtful and humane above all. I'm not sure if that is true. If you look at the behaviour of, say, the warring factions in Iraq at the moment with their endless suicides bombings and terrible carnage, or the civil war in the former Yugoslavia, where the most incredible brutality and ethnic cleansing took place, or if you go back to the Second World War in Europe, where tens of millions died in the most brutal way, I'm not convinced that human beings can be trusted beyond a certain point. I think they are quite capable in the right, or rather the wrong, circumstances of behaving irrationally. That's certainly my experience.

People think that the events in Kingdom Come are a bit extreme. But they actually aren't. For example, about two years ago there were riots in an IKEA store near the North Circular road in London. People abandoned their cars and were fighting over sofas; there was a huge riot in which people were hurt. Football hooliganism has been a terrible stain on the national character, and it could come back. Nothing I describe is all that extreme.

It's interesting that you mention the IKEA riots when discussing Kingdom Come because in the British media they weren't reported in a serious way at all.

Ballard: I think it's because we have a sort of Passport in Pimlico view of social behaviours in this country. It's an Ealing-comedy, Dad's Army view of the world: we laugh, but forget that in the real world there is a war going on too, as it were. We like to think of England as a big brown teapot with a nice tea cosy over it but actually we should remember that there isn't always tea in the pot. Sometimes it's something a little stronger.

There's a line in Kingdom Come which says: "Like English life as a whole, nothing in Brooklands can be taken at face value." Was that your experience of English life, when you moved here in 1946?

Ballard: I think the English are great actors, there's no doubt about it, and we're all performing roles whether we're aware of it or not. We don't have the sort of frankness and openness of the Australians, or Americans or Canadians. In England there's a very complex social landscape dominated by the class system, which still seems to be very strong. Here people tend not to say what they think. It's always because we're a crowded island. We behave like people on a crowded aircraft or, if you like, a crowded lifeboat: we put on a face that is designed to lower the temperature, allowing everything to carry on without too much discomfort. The trouble is that this hides the underlying truth about what we feel. Look at how the English are notorious for their pleases and thank yous: when we go into a shop we please and thank you to such an extent that visitors are amazed. After all, you're paying fot the think: you don't need to say thank you. But what the pleases and thank yous actually do is hide an underlying aggression and unease. They are all to do with our desire to paper over the cracks-and there are a lot of cracks.

Kingdom Come seems to have anticipated the recent resurgence of film noir. Is there something in the air at the moment?

Ballard: I think it taps into the same thing. In Kingdom Come Pearson believes that you've got to dip a toe into the waters of psychopathology to provide the kind of high-tension excitement that people need, because everyone in the consumer world is very bored. This is the thing about suburbia: there's enormous boredom, and we've reached the stage where people need something a little frightening, a little deviant, to take notice. It's not enough these days to say this detergent washes whiter; you've got to put a spin on it of some kind. Yes, I think there's something in the air. Compare, say, TV programmes like Inspector Morse, which had a gentleman detective sipping his pint and listening to Mozart as he solved a crossword puzzle, and something like CSI, where you're looking at a corpse on an autopsy table, and ribcages are being opened like suitcases. It's dangerous because I think violence and madness have a huge appeal, and it'll move into the area of politics sooner or later too. We've already seen it, in fact, with the rise of the Nazis.

Your own narrator in Kingdom Come is described as 'beyond psychiatric help'.

Ballard:Yes, although that particular reference is actually a joke at my expense. When I submitted the manuscript of my novel Crash to Jonathan Cape in 1972 the reader was the wife of a psychiatrist and she recommended the book be rejected, saying that I was 'beyond psychiatric help'. I of course took it as the greatest compliment - total artistic success!

Does Kingdom Come match the dictionary definition of a 'Ballardian' novel? Is it concerned with 'dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments'?

Ballard: It's certainly not a bleak novel. It has the bright glitter of big shopping malls, and is quite upbeat in tone, so I don't think one should that dictionary definition too literally. Having said that, if you do believe that England is all cricket grounds and villages and cycling to evensong then you're going to find Kingdom Come about as soothing as a punch in the face.

You're noted as being a writer who's interested in the landscape and how it evolves.

Ballard: I think that's true. Many people have complained that old town centres are being abandoned because huge retail parks are opening on the outskirts of towns. The whole social landscape of England is changing tremendously, and particularly, I think, around the big motorways. Not that the people who work in newspapers and television ever visit these areas. They come back from their cottages in the West Country and they look down for the M4 at places like Staines and Slough and Houslow and they give a shudder and drive on! But it is happening.

Lastly, I have to ask about your own shopping habits. 

Ballard: I hate shopping! It drives me mad. I do as little of it as possible. A big retail park is my idea of hell. Every so often I need to buy a new washing machine and it leads me into a nervous breakdown.

*The interview takes place between Ballard and Sarah O'Reilly and was featured in the 2007 Harper Perennial edition of the novel, Kingdom Come.

Fair warning

Since I'm in the "epic writing tonnes of stuff" stage of my thesis I'll probably start posting quotes and excerpts up here from it as I'm inspired. Hopefully the literary side of the blog won't falter too much over the next couple of months (I submit it on October 21st! Yay!) but I promise once I'm done I'll amp up the book reviews and dial back the zombie commentary! But to get the ball rolling I thought I'd share this quote with you since it's gracing the beginning of my introduction...

In the many ways it has been deployed in Western popular culture, however, the zombie has slowly been transformed. It has come to signify something much more complex than just the fear of death. Growing out of a wide range of cultural anxieties – From American imperialism to domestic racial tensions, Depression era fears about unemployment, Cold War paranoia about brainwashing, post-1960s political disenfranchisement and AIDS era body horror –the zombie has become, as we will see, a potent symbol of the apocalypse.

-Jamie Russell The Book of the Dead

Review: A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin

A Feast For Crows
(A Song of Ice and Fire #4)
by George R.R. Martin

Published: 2005

Synopsis(from book cover): Bloodthirsty, treacherous and cunnng, the Lannisters are in power on the Iron Throne in the name of the boy king Tommen. The war in the Seven Kingdoms has burned itself out, but in its bitter aftermaths new conflicts spark to life. The Martells of Dorne and the Starks of Winterfell seek vengeance for their dead. Euron Crow's Eye, as black a pirate as ever raised a sale, returns from the smoking ruins of Valyria to claim the Iron Isles. From the icy noth, where Others threaten the wall, apprentice Maester Samwell Tarly brings a mysterious babe in arms to the Citadel.


So assuming you've read my previous reviews I'm sure you're aware that I'm kinda in love with this series and so far have not faulted it a drop. Well hold on to your hats people, things are about to change!

A Feast for Crows begins where the previous book ended, which incidentally was my favourite book of the series so far, so I had pretty high hopes for this one. I've heard from other bloggers and friends that this book was by far the worst in the series but I was hoping they were wrong, or exaggerating or jealous of Martin's god-like storytelling abilities. Unfortunately they were right, well, to an extent. This book was by far the worst of the series, but when the four previous books have received 5 stars from me that doesn't necessarily mean much.

An epilogue from Martin at the end of the book explains that this books is merely half of what he intended to publish. When he realised the book was going to be excessive in size he decided to split it in half but struggled over whether it would be better to take the finished work, cut it in half and slap a "to be continued" at the end or to divide the characters in half and tell the complete story for half of the characters in one book and then release a second book that completed the story for the other half of characters. He decided on the latter, though I'm still debating over whether that was the right move to make or not. For instance in this book we learn that a mid-level character is dead and in the epilogue Martin says that we'll hear from that character. But will it just be telling the story that we heard in this book or does that suggest that there is more to the story and we'll find out perhaps he isn't dead or something else happened before he died which was kept from the Queen and those in King's Landing? If it's the second option then yay! But if it's the first and it plays out as it was told to the Queen then I think it'll be rather boring and something I don't care to read.

So in this book we see a Westeros that has been severely damaged by the war that has nearly petered out completely. The Northmen have died or bent their knee to the Iron throne, Stannis is at the wall but is excluded from this book, Rob is definitely dead and his resurrected mother features very little in this book (though I hope she has a place in A Dance with Dragons), Cersei is losing it and Jaime seems to have had a change of character and is actually proving to be a tough but just lord commander of the Kingsguard. Though the threat of war has been extinguished to the north the Iron men (Theon Greyjoy's family) have taken up arms and are threatening the southern realm, there are more and more outlaws and wolves (the four legged kind) roaming through the kingdom and in Dorne trouble brews.

One of my main concerns about this book was that it focused so heavily on the lagging kingdom and omitted where the action would be, i.e. the wall and with Daenerys. There is far too much focus on Queen Cersei's insane fear of opposition, desperation and utter stupidity. Seriously, she's the stupidest character in the series (in terms of intelligence) and it seems like more and more people are coming to realise that. It was interesting to watch her plot and plan and think how brilliant she was and then read a chapter from Jaime or another character which demonstrates how stupid her plans are, how transparent her schemes are and how disliked she is by everyone. I'll enjoy it greatly when she finally dies, which is such a horrible thing to say, but it's only fiction so I'm allowed to be heartless and bloodthirsty like that! Though this stuff was interesting and will serve in later books as the catalyst for the Lannister kingdom's implosion I'm sure, it did grow a little tedious to just read over and over about her little schemes and men fawning over her and her and Jaime's constant bickering. Similarly I found the travels with Brienne to be equally tedious. I never warmed to her character and now she's almost overwhelmingly obnoxious, always going on about honour and keeping oaths and freaking Jaime Lannister. Seriously Martin, just make them bang already. Though she isn't as pious as some of the other characters have become her self-righteousness is just as annoying and I'm sick of reading how ugly a maid she is.

I suppose this leads fairly well into my second complaint. Because this book only contains half the stories we've been following we also only hear from half the characters. Unfortunately these characters are some of my least favourite (Cersei and Brienne especially) and for much of the time I was desperately wondering what was happening with Jon and Stannis on the wall. What happened with Tyrion, where did he go and is Varys with him? Will he join with Dany, or plot some other war against his sister? And what about Dany, how is her endeavour going? The few characters that I did really enjoy (Arya, Samwell, Sansa etc) had chapters few and far between and are likely to go undocumented until the book after A Dance with Dragons if Martin's epilogue is still true in intent. A few new characters were introduced and held their own chapters but they were also in the minority. On the plus side A Dance with Dragons should be an absolute cracker since it'll tell the stories of the characters which hold my interest the most.

Complaints aside this was still and interesting book and equally as well written as it's predecessors. There are a few interesting story lines that have begun to be explored namely, without giving away any spoilers, the Ironborn Euron Crow's Eye and his recent trip to the depths of Valyria, what is awaiting Samwell in the Citadel and the hints of collusion and revenge mentioned in Dorne. Although these probably set up the events for A Dance with Dragons and more likely the book that will follow I feel like they could have been explored more thoroughly and earlier, seeing as the Euron Crow's Eye plot was the only one really mentioned earlier than 700 pages in. Obviously ends have to be tied for the new chapter in the tale to begin but I really do think too much emphasis was placed on it, and particularly Cersei, and a few hundred pages could have served a better story.

While the seeds for the new war/uprising/threat have been planted and the secrecy of this series has hit an all-time high I'm a little worried about beginning A Dance with Dragons and coming up against the same thing. Perhaps Martin's story would have been better served to have a 'to be continued' line at the end rather than the split it was published with but I won't know until I begin A Dance with Dragons and find out for certain. I know this review has been a bit of a downer but it was still a great book, just a let-down compared to the previous epic tales of the wars and worries of Westeros. Definitely don't give up on the series or skip this book, just be prepared for a dip in awesomeness.

Monday Links

*The idea that William Shakespeare didn't actually write his plays has been bandied around by academics for years, and even though the chances of ever finding out for sure relies on Doctor Who being real and transporting someone reputable back in time to find some sort of proof it's an idea people don't seem to like to let go of. It's possibly the biggest literary conspiracy theory in circulation today. Anyway, the film Anonymous in this trailer deals with this issue by suggesting old Billy Shakes was just a stand-in so that certain messages could reach the public under the guise of entertainment because words are power.

*Fear and Loathing in Australian Politics. A Blog post about the complexities of gender within politics from someone on the inside. Quite an interesting read.

*When Duty Calls: An unfinished screenplay by Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network).  A short dialogue between Rupert Murdoch and Joel Klein.

*Aussie August! A group of Australian book bloggers banded together and have created a month of interesting posts, giveaways, discussions that all focus on Australia and books.

*The car accident that cost Albert Camus his life in 1960 may not have been an accident afterall. Instead it may have been a murder plot orchestrated by the KGB. (Note: read with a pinch of salt)

*Coma Calm features a new book trailer that she's found online each week. The latest is a short trailer for Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. It's worth a watch just to listen to Neil Gaiman narrate...seriously, how wonderful is his voice?!