Archive for the 'literature' Category

Monologue of Evil

Published
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blogmywiki
on July 21, 2010
in fiction, literature and recently read
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I’m mulling over writing another book - this one will be a proper grown-up book and one of the themes will be Good and Evil and whether they are two sides of the same coin. And then I just accidentally read this:

The Monologue of Evil by Augusto Monterroso

One day, Evil found himself face-to-face with Good and was on the point of eating him up to put an end to their ridiculous dispute once and for all. But when he saw him looking so tiny, Evil thought:

“This can only be a trap. If I now eat up Good when he looks so weak, people will think that I did evil, and the shame will make me cringe and shrink so much that Good will not waste the chance to eat me up, with the difference that then people will think that he did good. For it is difficult to free them from their preconception that what Evil does is evil, and what Good does is good.”

And so it was that Good got off scot-free yet again.

That Apple Presser in Full

Published
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blogmywiki
on July 16, 2010
in Apple, MacOS X, computers, fiction and iPhone
. 0 Comments

Today Steve Jobs shocked the world by making some unexpected apologies at a press conference in Cupertino, CA.

He announced to a stunned press pack, “I am sorry. We lost our way.”

As reporters dropped their iPhones in shock, he continued, “We made too much money and became too complacent and arrogant. Too many of our employees behaved like Comic Shop Guy out of The Simpsons. Too many of our products contained design flaws which we denied until the bitter end. This will change.”

“For too long I pursued a petty feud against Adobe, forgetting that without Adobe, the Macintosh would never have been a success even in its niche design markets. Today we are allowing Flash on iOS. We are launching low-spec, low-cost versions of the MacMini and MacBook, and we are cutting the cost of the iPad. We’d like to apologise to everyone whose iTunes accounts were compromised. And we promise to answer the phone when you ring us up.”

“One more thing,” he added after a pause.

“We will allow any track on an iPhone to be used as a ring tone or SMS message alert.”

Ok, ok, I made this all up. That last one is utterly ridiculous.

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Recently read

Published
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blogmywiki
on May 30, 2010
in fiction, literature and recently read
. 0 Comments

I only ever meant my ‘Recently Read’ sidebar to have three books in it at any given time, but after a while I found myself reluctant to delete them as I liked having a record of my reading. I probably should have started a reading blog, but purely for my own benefit, here’s a dump of the books I’ve read over the last 18 months or so:

Caedmon’s Song by Peter Robinson. Picked up for a, ahem, song in Oxfam but oddly disappointing. Plus partly set in a village near where I grew up and the place descriptions don’t feel right to me.

The Slaves of Solitude by Patrick Hamilton. Patrick Hamilton is the man.
Before the Frost by Henning Mankell.
Miss Dahl’s Voluptuous Delights by Sophie Dahl. How could you not love a cookery book whose first proper section starts “We begin in the autumn because that’s when everything changed. Autumn is a season I love more than any other; for its smoky sense of purpose and half-lit mornings, its bonfires, baked potatoes, nostalgia, chesnuts and Catherine wheels.” On the other hand a (female) friend of mine points out that the only people who like Sophie are men. She also describes Sophie as a ’simpering blonde’. Like that’s a bad thing…
The Pyramid by Henning Mankell.
Before I Die by Jenny Downham. I wasn’t going to cry. Right up to the bottom of the last page. Then I read the last line and I cried and cried.
The Fifth Woman by Henning Mankell. Much more complex than the TV adaptation.
Every Atom Belonging by Dan McKinnis - on Authonomy. Unfinished but I love it.
JPod by Douglas Coupland. Edgy. Or do I mean ASCII 101,100,103,121? Worthy sequel to Microserfs.
Sidetracked by Henning Mankell
Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky by Patrick Hamilton. So wonderful. London between the wars through the eyes of three very different characters who meet in a pub called The Midnight Bell.
The Ballad of Peckham Rye by Muriel Spark. Diabolical. By which I mean: pertaining to the devil.
The Ill-Made Knight by T H White. Superb.
The Witch in the Wood by T H White. Just marking time - for me and the author I think - until we get to the real deal - the Ill-Made Knight.
Twilight in Eden by David Budd. A wonderful, surprising book. Just wish he’d change the title - but I’m working on that.
The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner. In boot fairs and school fairs I am rebuilding the Alan Garner boxed set lost from my childhood. Trouble was - I just didn’t like this. Not a patch on The Owl Service or Red Shift. Will try Elidor next.
Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton. So good. So, so good. Thums up. 10/10.
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Warming to this very much as I go… dead sinister subtext but deceptively simply told.
Killing Me Softly by Nicci French. Good, but would she, would she have gone off with him like that?!
The Sword in the Stone by T H White - without this there would have been no Harry Potter. Taking me even longer to read… too heavy to read on the train as it’s part of the whole Once And Future King sequence in one volume.
The Ipcress File by Len Deighton - love the writing, the style, the tone. Took me ages to read, though. Very different to the film.
Gemma Bovery by Posy Simmonds. Just perfect, even if I’m not sure about the punchline. But then you need something to smile about at the end.
Bye Bye Birdie by Shirley Hughes - a graphic novel for grown ups by a great children’s illustrator
Tamara Drewe by Posy Simmonds - oh Tamara Drewe, how do I love thee, let me count the ways… always loved Posy Simmonds since The Silent Three strip back in The Guardian but this is on another level. A work of genius, a truly great graphic novel.
Les Belles Images by Simone de Beauvoir
The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers
A Necessary End by Peter Robinson
A Dedicated Man by Peter Robinson
The Body on the Beach by Simon Brett
Bitter Medicine by Sarah Paretsky
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken
Aftermath by Peter Robinson - one of the best of the half dozen or so Inspector Banks novels I’ve read
Raking the Ashes by Anne Fine
Gallows View by Peter Robinson
The Tulip Touch by Anne Fine
The Man Who Smiled by Henning Mankell
Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

The Complete Peanuts 1955-6 by Charles M Schultz
A Song of Stone by Iain Banks - oh soddit I’m giving up on this on page 77. Over-written. Annoying. I really only like 2 Iain Banks books: ‘The Crow Road’ and ‘Complicity’.
The Hanging Garden by Ian Rankin
Death is not the End by Ian Rankin
Craven House by Patrick Hamilton (wonderful, beautifully written and observed, much funnier than I was expecting but this is an early work before he got bitter)
Canal Dreams by Iain Banks (the trouble with this is that other people’s dreams are never that interesting… I ended up skipping the dreams just to get to the end. Just read that Banks thinks it’s his worst book and I can see why.)
Let it Bleed by Ian Rankin
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (some great ideas but not quite sufficiently well-executed - unlike the characters from Jane Eyre, Mr Fforde’s own characters fail to spring to life)

Best free iPhone apps

Published
by
blogmywiki
on March 10, 2010
in Apple, TV, internet and literature
. 3 Comments

   Captain Haddock

The shame of it… I had my brain surgically removed by a very nice man in the shop and he gave me a shiny new iPhone 3GS in exchange. In case you’ve not heard of the iPhone, it’s a bit like an iPad only it is not only conveniently pocket-sized, but all models come with 3G internet access and it includes a camera and something called a telephone. This is a point-to-point mobile voice telecommunication technology that, due to high take-up, could give Skype a run for its money.

Anyway, get an iPhone, you got to get apps. Five days in, here are my favourite free ones:

Gorillacam - camera that includes a spirit level, zoom, self-timer, time-lapse, anti-shake mode etc.

BBC iPlayer - I got confused by this as it’s not an app, it’s not in the Apple App Store - it’s a web page. But the iPlayer works on the iPhone!

Calendar - okay, this is built-in, but it syncs beautifully with iCal on my Hackintosh and my Google calendar.

iCarRadio lite - it’s an internet radio app. Not sure why you’d pay for a radio app when this seems to work just fine.

Stanza - free eBook reader. Lovely.

FileApp - allows you to get stuff on your iPhone like Word documents and browse them. Needs a computer on the same wireless LAN as the iPhone and an FTP client on the computer. It does not allow you to transfer files by USB (to be fair I think Apple do not allow this). But it’s free and it works.

TVCatchup - like the iPlayer, this is a web site not an app: http://iphone.tvcatchup.com. It allows you to watch live Freeview-type TV. Brilliant! Already used this to catch the top of Newsnight while snoozing.

I also bought my first two commercial apps this morning - the rather stupidly-named iSaidWhat?! (it’s marketed as a toy but is infact a sound recorder and editor) and The Grauniad. The Grauniad app is nice but I was listening to their tech podcast happily on my way to work, about two thirds of the way through, needed to snap a photo and then went back to The Guardian and I seemed to have to start downloading it again - so I’d have been better off downloading the podcast in iTunes and using it as an iPod…

Don’t forget to be awesome!

Published
by
blogmywiki
on March 3, 2010
in fiction and literature
. 2 Comments

Photo on 2010-03-03 at 20.05 Photo on 2010-03-03 at 20.06

I forgot to put my book in my bag today, and so bought a new copy of Before I Die by Jenny Downham in Waterstones on my way in to work.

Inside it there was a handmade, hand-written Valentines card - four felt red hearts and the inscription “to you, Happy Valentines Day, Don’t Forget To Be Awesome! Lots of love!”. Which was a bit odd. How did it get there? Does every copy of this book have this card in? Which teenage girl am I depriving of her card? And how much trouble could this have caused?

Hangover Square

Published
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blogmywiki
on November 5, 2009
in fiction and literature
. 2 Comments

Just started reading Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton this morning. It’s a much darker, more modern book than Craven House. So far, it’s wonderful. I stopped reading it on the train when I got to what I thought was an unimprovably good sentence:

Then he remembered, without any difficulty, what it was he had to do: he had to kill Netta Longdon.

Then on the way home I found that the sentence that followed was even better:

He was going to kill her, and then he was going to Maidenhead, where he would be happy.

How many dragons did you kill today?

Published
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blogmywiki
on November 3, 2009
in literature and nostalgia
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by Giles Booth, (then) aged 19 and three quarters

How many dragons did you kill today?

‘How many dragons did you kill today?’
Asks Philip Larkin in his turtle-like way,
Scarcely believing he’s worse off than most
Imprisoned by toads and his library post.

But last night I dreamt of his over-grown snakes,
Of clubbing his dragons. I reckon that makes
Six before breakfast, though it might soon be more;
Number seven lies bleeding on his office floor.

I’m researching an essay, but time after time
I’m totally flummoxed by the opaque last line.
His curriculum vitae might yield a clue
As to which of these poems is explicitly true.

Wellington, Leicester, Belfast and Hull,
How could he be so incredibly dull?
I can’t understand what he’s trying to prove,
Getting nearer the scrap-heap with every move.

He’s been out of tune with the Modernist sages
Since, expecting a Pevsner, he scoured the pages
With thick specs and torchlight under the bedding
Of Ezra Pound’s guide book, the one about Reading.

Graphic novels without super-heroes

Published
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blogmywiki
on September 18, 2009
in literature
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Now don’t get me wrong - I think Watchmen is a work of utter genius. And it has more superheroes than you can shake a big, shiny stick at. But I’ve found myself immersed in some great graphic novels lately that don’t match most people’s idea of what a graphic novel should be.

First there was Tamara Drewe by Posy Simmonds. I loved her cartoon in the ’80s and ’90s in The Guardian about middle class family life, the academics and business people portrayed so insightfully and with a gentle but slightly savage edge were so much like the parents of some of my school friends back in Bristol. I tried but failed to follow Tamara Drewe in the paper, and one day I found it in a bookshop and treated myself… devoured it in a day or two, unable to tear myself away from it. Such a compelling story, such wonderful artwork.

Today I had to go shopping to buy a present for someone, found myself in Waterstones, looking at graphic novels. Trying to find to find a new graphic novel by Shirley Hughes. She breaks the stereotype a bit. She is female, she is famous for her picture books for young children and she is 82 years old. Bye Bye Birdie is a sinister, wordless, black and white story of a man being consumed… by a creature he takes to be a woman, a bird… but who is actually a bird.

I also saw Gemma Bovery by Posy Simmonds. Had to get it. Man on till asked me if I’d read it. Said no, just read Tamara Drewe, loved it so much. This is better, he said. And from the first page I’d say he’s right. Perfect first page. Perfect opening paragraph:

Gemma Bovery has been in the ground three weeks. People have begun to forget - or anyway I don’t hear talk in the shop any more. But I - I never stop thinking of her. The nights are the worst. If I sleep, I dream of her eyes which are the blue of stained glass.

Whirl up, sea

Published
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blogmywiki
on September 2, 2009
in literature and nostalgia
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I was clearing out some of my old stuff from my mum’s house - my name’s Alex Drake and this box of old papers has taken me back to 1989 - and, amongst other things, I found this untitled poem I’d written out several times on both sides of an envelope addressed to my then-girlfriend’s mother. I had to look it up to find out who it was by. Good, though.

Oread by H.D.

Whirl up, sea -
Whirl your pointed pines.
Splash your great pines
On our rocks.
Hurl your green over us -
Cover us with your pools of fir.

old NMEs

I also found stashes of NMEs, lots of newspapers from the 1980s, most of which I have no idea why I kept, so I’ve binned them. And a shoebox full (okay, half-full) of letters and cards from an ex-girlfriend. An entire relationship in a box. The one where she tried (unsuccessfully) to end our relationship was a good read. Even better the one where, later, she explains why she cheated on me. Reading between the lines now I think I deserved it and she was doing me a favour. At any rate it made me smile and it’s quite a thing to think that it’s taken twenty years to get from there - standing, alone on Stockport station waiting for a train back home, my life falling apart around me, to now - standing alone in a loft reading her letter about her night with Andrew - with a big, silly grin on my face.

The moon is a she unless it’s a he

Published
by
blogmywiki
on June 18, 2009
in cinema and literature
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It has been suggested that I and a colleague may have now become the Pete and Dud of our office. Tragically I have to admit that Doug probably makes a better Peter Cook than me, although that means he has to go through a couple of bitter divorces and spend his twilight years pretending to be a Swedish fisherman, while I have to develop a club foot and bed a succession of nubile young women. It’s a work in progress.

Anyway, the other day he was on top form. Somehow we were talking about languages which give nouns gender and he said that the moon is not always female - the closer to the equator you get the more likely the moon is to be male. I was amazed by this. “You could write a book about it” he said, generously offering me his idea, “one you get for Christmas with a fake old-style leather cover. Could even be a film. KENNETH BRANAGH is COPERNICUS!”.

Genius, up there with Andy’s “Robert Plant and the Seedlings” line. You read it here first. Hollywood here we come.