August Books

Non-fiction: 6 (YTD 35)
Kate Bush: Under the Ivy, by Graeme Thompson
John De Courcy, Prince of Ulster, by Steve Flanders
Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory, by Deborah M. Withers
Second Generations, by Mary Tamm
The Early Life of Samuel M. Wickersham, based on his writings 1819-1862, edited by Edward Wickersham Hoffman
Bloody Sunday: Truth, Lies and the Saville Inquiry, by Douglas Murray

Fiction (non-sf): 2 (YTD 21)
Ben-Hur, by Lee Wallace
Alina, by Jason Johnson

sf (non-Who): 5 (YTD 61)
Grimm Tales for Young and Old, by Philip Pullman
The Time Ships, by Stephen Baxter
The Dispossessed, by Ursula Le Guin
Smallworld, by Dominic Green
Cat Country, by Lao She

Doctor Who, etc: 3 (YTD 20)
Doctor Who: Scratchman, by Tom Baker with James Goss
True Stories, ed. Xanna Eve Chown
The Grandfather Infestation, by John Peel

Comics 4 (YTD 19)
Berlin: City of Stones, by Jason Lutes
Berlin: City of Smoke, by Jason Lutes
Berlin: City of Light, by Jason Lutes
Oyasumi, by Renee Rienties, Coco Ouwerkerk and Kimberley Legito Geelen

5,600 pages (YTD 44,000)
5/20 (YTD 65/157) by non-male writers (Withers, Tamm, Le Guin, Chown, Rienties/Ouwerwek/Geelen)
1/20 (YTD 23/157) by PoC (Lao She)
4/20 (YTD 18/157) rereads (Ben-Hur, The Dispossessed, Berlin: City of Stones, Berlin: City of Smoke)

Reading now
De Bourgondiërs, by Bart Van Loo
Pigs in Heaven, by Barbara Kingsolver
The Devil in Amber, by Mark Gatiss

Coming soon (perhaps):
The Writing Life, by Annie Dillard
Anthropological Studies of Religion: An Introductory Text, by Brian Morris
How To Be Both, by Ali Smith
A Local Habitation, by Seanan McGuire
Cycling in Victorian Ireland, by Brian Griffin
The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell
David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens
Paper Girls Volume 2, by Brian K Vaughan and Cliff Chiang
Be My Enemy, by Ian McDonald
The Bastard of Istanbul, by Eilif Shafak
Frédégonde, la sanguinaire, Tome 1, by Virginie Greiner
The Computer Connection, by Alfred Bester
Two Brothers, by Ben Elton
A Close Run Thing, by Allan Mallinson
"Catch That Zeppelin!", by Fritz Leiber
Being Human: Bad Blood, by James Goss
One of the 28th: A tale of Waterloo, by G. A. Henty
Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
In Time, ed. Xanna Eve Chown

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

  • Sat, 04:41: RT @CoNZealand: #CoNZealand welcomes the decision to rename the Award for Best New Writer, and will administer the Astounding Award on the…
  • Sat, 09:41: RT @campbellclaret: Oh my God. This is on a par with @DominicRaab discovering that Calais-Dover route is significant. ‘We need to start tal…
  • Sat, 10:45: RT @sadydoyle: For all the questions people have asked me about “The Exorcist,” no-one has asked me about my most deeply held opinion, whic…
  • Sat, 11:08: RT @IrishTimes: The British government has not yet tabled any proposals to the European Commission to change the backstop, despite claims i…

Posted in Uncategorised

True Stories, ed. Xanna Eve Chown

Second paragraph of third story (“Fast Contact”, by Matthew Griffith):

‘Hello, my name’s Bernice.’ His skin is not nearly so rough as I was expecting. He bows his head and, anticipating his kiss, I slip my hand away and smile firmly.

Six short stories set in a slightly different universe to Benny’s original environment. I liked the first two most, “Hue and Cry” by Kate Orman and Q and “Never the Way” by Jonathan Blum and Rupert Booth. I might have liked others more if I were more au fait with the continuity. You can get it here.

Only one Bernice Summerfield book left!

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted in Uncategorised

Alina, by Jason Johnson

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Francis M.N. Cleary is confused, but that’s nothing new. By way of example, just last week, dressed in pyjamas, he walked out of the nursing home, babbling something about losing a door. Three weeks ago, for most of a day, he said he was sure he was in France, and possibly a Frenchman. He threw an onion at the communal television. Many of the staff at the nursing home can’t stand him. Sometimes he’s just too much work.

I picked this up back in 2011, encouraged by the front cover’s description of the author as Ireland’s answer to Irvine Welsh. I should not have bothered. It’s a miserable book about an English chap who hires a Belfast thug to accompany him to inspect his empire of camgirls in Romania; it all goes horribly wrong. The characters are all grotesques, and there is none of the gruesomely compassionate exploration of the darkness of human character that Irvine Welsh has (at least I think he does; it’s years since I read him). You can skip this. If you don’t want to, you can get it here.

This was the non-genre fiction book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves, and also the shortest unread book that I acquired in 2011. Next on those piles are One of the 28th, by G.A. Henty, and Cycling in Victorian Ireland, by Brian Griffin.

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted in Uncategorised

Second Generations, by Mary Tamm

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Graham [Williams] just could not or would not take no for an answer, and although I did not know it at the time, he was in behind-the-scenes negotiations with Tom [Baker], too, who was asking for more control on the programme, and had even threatened to leave the show. Graham asked me if I would stay on if Tom was no longer involved, but my answer was still the same. He never gave up, though, and continued assuming I would change my mind until the very last studio day—talk about persistent!

After reading First Generation, billed as Mary Tamm’s autobiography, I wondered why she had stopped writing when she reached the middle of her time on Doctor Who; a friend pointed out to me that there is in fact a second volume, published in 2014 after her death in 2012, so I went and got it.

It starts very strongly, with The Androids of Tara, which Tamm identifies as her favourite of the six Who stories she was in, challenging her to act in four different roles (and as I noted in 2008, gorgeous in all of them). And she takes us through the higlights of her later career, in particular two linked series called The Treachery Game and The Assassination Run, which I must look out for. But then she goes oddly silent on her subsequent career; maybe she simply ran out of time, but it’s a shame not to find out about her Blanche Ingram in the 1983 Jane Eyre, or her time on Brookside.

She does cover her experiences of motherhood, and of travel (mainly to Doctor Who conventions). It was very interesting to learn that she used the local National Childbirth Trust meetings to get source material for future performances by observing the other new mothers, the experience of pregnancy and birth being a great social leveller in its way. But unfortunately the book was never finished, and ends with a series of warm tributes to her from friends and colleagues (some referring to things we have not previously come across in the book). Still, it fills some of the gap left from the first volume, and you can get it here.

My tweets

Posted in Uncategorised

Tuesday reading

Current
De Bourgondiërs, by Bart Van Loo
Pigs in Heaven, by Barbara Kingsolver
Cat Country, by Lao She

Last books finished
The Early Life of Samuel M. Wickersham, based on his writings 1819-1862, edited by Edward Wickersham Hoffman
True Stories, ed. Xanna Eve Chown
The Dispossessed, by Ursula Le Guin
Berlin: City of Stones, by Jason Lutes
The Grandfather Infestation, by John Peel
Berlin: City of Smoke, by Jason Lutes
Bloody Sunday: Truth, Lies and the Saville Enquiry, by Douglas Murray
Berlin Book Three: City of Light, by Jason Lutes
Smallworld, by Dominic Green

Next books
Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Anthropological Studies of Religion: An Introductory Text, by Brian Morris

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted in Uncategorised

The Time Ships, by Stephen Baxter

Second paragraph of third chapter:

I screamed and buried my face in my hands; but I could still see the light of the enhanced sun, leaking even through the flesh of my fingers, and blazing from the nickel and brass of the Time Machine.

This is a sequel to The Time Machine, authorised as such by the H.G. Wells estate. (I've had more dealings with the estates of deceased writers in the last week than I can remember from my whole life before the Worldcon.) I have previously mentioned that I always appreciate the breadth and scope of Baxter’s vision – the commitment to sensawunda if you like – but that he doesn’t always succeed in communicating it in a human way to me. I thought this book ticked the right boxes. The Time Traveller of Wells’ novel tries to return to the year 802,701 and save Weena, but gets caught up in the parallel universes of the Many Worlds theory, and visits a number of very well depicted possible futures and pasts along with a friendly Morlock called Nebogipfel. Particularly vivid passages are set in a war-torn London of 1938, where the exiled Kurt Gödel is helping the British government, and a Paleocene setting where they become involved in setting up a wildly premature human colony in the past. Other bits are a little duller, but the overall plot of time paradoxes, which seems in danger of veering out of control at one point, is wrapped up very satisfactorily. Apparently there are lots of references to other H.G. Wells stories as well, which I missed due to not being in that fandom. Overall I enjoyed it.

I thought I had read this before, but it didn't seem familiar to me and I wondered if I had been confusing it with The Space Machine by Christopher Priest? Anyway, you can get it here.

The Time Ships came to the top of my list as I get through the BSFA, Clarke and Tiptree Awards of previous years; it won the BSFA for Best Novel in 1995, beating Blood by Michael Moorcock, Chaga by Ian McDonald, Fairyland by Paul J. McAuley, The Nano Flower by Peter F. Hamilton and The Prestige by Christopher Priest. I have to say that I definitely rate Chaga and The Prestige ahead of it; I have also read Fairyland, but can't remember much about it. (On the other hand I love Baxter's shorter piece, "The Ant-Men of Tibet", which was shortlisted for, but did not win, the BSFA Award for shorter fiction.)

The Time Ships also won the other John W. Campbell Award, ahead of Chaga (again) and The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, and also won the Philip K. Dick award ahead of four novels I have not heard of (Sarah Zettel's Reclamation, George Foy's The Shift, William Barton's The Transmigration of Souls and Michael Bishop's At the City Limits of Fate).

The Time Ships got second place in the Hugo vote, losing to The Diamond Age but ahead of Brightness Reef by David Brin, The Terminal Experiment by Robert J. Sawyer (one of the worst ever Nebula winners) and Remake by Connie Willis; I've read all of them but the Willis, and that ranking seems about right.

The Time Ships was also a finalist for the Clarke Award, beaten by Paul J. McAuley's Fairyland with Ken MacLeod's The Star Fraction second. Other finalists were Happy Policeman by Patricia Anthony, which I haven't read, The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson and The Prestige by Christopher Priest. I've read all of these except Happy Policeman, and if I'd been a juror I would have been wavering between MacLeod, Stephenson and Priest, probaly leaning towards Priest.

I read Fairyland only ten years ago, so I'm skipping the Clarke Award for that year and going next to the Tiptree winner, The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell (which also won both the BSFA and Clarke Awards two years later).

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

  • Mon, 10:45: RT @Mike_Batt: Was on the tube last night on the way home to Wimbledon. Some young drunks got on, and it was a little bit intimidating, As…
  • Mon, 11:49: RT @BlockchainforEU: #BlockchainforEU kicks off his new Blogpost Series on “Topics that matter in the #Blockchain-verse” with an intro into…
  • Mon, 11:56: RT @DaveKeating: I’m hearing rumours some commissioners in VdL college may be given portfolios dealing with specific geographies – i.e. Com…

Posted in Uncategorised

Doctor Who: Scratchman, by Tom Baker [with James Goss]

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Harry backed away from them, diving into the shadows. He could hear rats scrabbling frantically overhead. He heard a distant scream, carried on the winds from the farmhouse.

At long last, a project discussed between Tom Baker and Ian Marter in the mid-1970s sees the light of day, with a lot of heavy lifting from James Goss (who as my regular reader knows is my favourite of the current Who writers). Unusually, it is told by the Fourth Doctor in the first person. Goss has done this successfully a couple of tines before – with the Tenth Doctor in Dead Air and Rhys from Torchwood in Ghost Train. It’s been done less successfully for the Fourth Doctor by other writers, notably Keith Topping, the venerable Terrance Dicks, and to an extent Jim Mortimore. The collaboration between Baker and Goss has worked well here, with the authentic voice of Baker’s Doctor coming through strongly.

The book itself has two very different halves. The first is a bleak and effective horror story with killer scarecrows on a Scottish island, some excellent taut writing and grim visuals. In the second half, the Tardis crew are brought to the realm of Scratchman (ie the Devil) for a succession of surreal adventures which don’t really work quite as well, but are none the less entertaining to read. It’s a fascinating exercise in reviving a 1970s dream, and although it is not perfect it works well enough, with some nice nods to more recent Who and to the Sarah Jane Adventures. You can get it here.

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted in Uncategorised

Kate Bush: Under the Ivy, Graeme Thompson; Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory, Deborah M. Withers

Second paragraph of third chapter of Under the Ivy: The Life & Music of Kate Bush, by Graeme Thomson:

When the light falls a certain way an unlikely pub singer comes into focus, embarking on an enforced, somewhat delayed apprenticeship. Fronting the KT Bush Band, she was a characteristically vivid turn as a lounge bar chanteuse, singing the likes of Hall & Oates’ ‘She's Gone’, Steely Dan’s ‘Brooklyn’, Arthur Conley’s ‘Sweet Soul Music and Free’s ‘The Stealer' to a less than select crowd of lager drinkers, corporate low-rollers and sports aficionados. “We played Tottenham Football Club, where they thought she was the stripper,” says the band’s drummer, Vic King. “At a pub in Putney on the day [before] Scotland beat England at Wembley we had dry ice machines that set off the fire alarm. There was a bit of a riot and a panic. It was a really good evening!” He pauses. “But not really her thing, no.”

Second paragraph of third chapter of Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory, by Deborah M. Withers:

Never for Ever is marked by the same fascinations with taboo sexuality of The Kick Inside and Lionheart. For example, ‘The Infant’s Kiss’ is inspired by the 1961 film The Innocents, which dramatises a governesses’ [sic] obsession with the children she looks after, in particular the young boy Miles who is possessed by the spirit of an adult man: ‘There's a man behind those eyes.’ The BFS performs as the governess to tell a tale of spiritual and emotional obsession, ‘I want to smack but I hold back/ I only want to touch’ (NFE) while the simple orchestration and violin riffs convey the tense, creeping horror of the film.

I'm not a huge Kate Bush fan, but my other half is; I got her these two books for Christmas a few years back and have now got around to reading them myself. Thomson's book is a readable artistic biography, taking us through Bush's career up to the time of publication using public sources and interviews with former colleagues (though not Bush herself as far as I can see). Bush is far from a one-shot wonder, but it's clear that her biggest (and quite extraordinary) success was at the very start of her career, with “Wuthering Heights”, “The Man With the Child in his Eyes” and The Kick Inside. It's extraordinary that those first songs were written when she was a teenager, “The Man With the Child in his Eyes” when she was 16.

After that, she was basically rich enough to do what she wanted, without too much pressure to succeed further (and clearly much more careful with her money than, say, Pete Townshend). And what she wanted was generally studio recording rather than the public stage – between 1979 and 2014 there were no Kate Bush live concerts, and few appearances. Few of her later songs are as successful as the early ones, but some are, and I get the sense that for the last forty years she has been more or less throwing artistic ideas at the wall and seeing what would stick.

I was also very interested to note that despite her eclectic performances and style, she is still very much a music industry insider – an outlier rather than a revolutionary. It was David Gilmour of Pink Floyd who spotted her when she was 16 (here's a 2002 bootleg video of her perfoming "Comfortably Numb" with Gilmour). As The Kick Inside and Lionheart came out she was providing backing vocals for Peter Gabriel (who is co-credited with her on the 1979 Kate Bush Christmas Special). The book includes chummy pictures with Midge Ure and Terry Gilliam. I don't want to exaggerate this, of course – she also cultivated the Trio Bulgarka for The Sensual World and The Red Shoes, well outside the British music industry's normal comfort zone.

Anyway, Thomson's books was an enlightening read even for a non-fan.

Withers' book is her PhD thesis, so it's rather less accessible. The performing personality of Kate Bush is described as the "Bushian Feminine Subject", abbreviated to "BFS" throughout the book, which is rather confusing. Where lyrics are quoted, citations are given to the album rather than to the song in which they appear. More fundamentally, I felt that this was a case where a thematic rather than chronological approach might have been more suitable – like Thomson, Withers goes through Bush's career album by album, but this obscures the interesting questions of whether her approach to sexuality, gender identity, orientalism or colonialism has changed over time. My other half confessed that she had not managed to finish the book; it is only 150 pages, but a bit impenetrable.

You can get Under the Ivy: The Life & Music of Kate Bush here, and Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory here.

Under the Ivy was the non-fiction book that had lingered longest unread on my shelves, and Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory was the shortest book on my shelves acquired in 2011. Next on those lists are Cycling in Victorian Ireland, by Brian Griffin, and Alina, by Jason Johnson.

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

  • Sat, 09:46: RT @taniahershman: Foote wasn’t allowed to read her own paper at the conference because she was a woman. In 2010 a geologist came across he…
  • Sat, 10:02: RT @winterhazelly: Pals and friends from @Dublin2019 and otherwise! I was briefly waylaid by Plague but here are some #HUGOAWARDS! I’ll wra…
  • Sat, 10:45: RT @DmitryOpines: It’s remarkable Elon Musk hasn’t yet jumped into the Brexit debate offering to fix the Irish border in a week using a roc…

Posted in Uncategorised

John de Courcy, Prince of Ulster, by Steve Flanders

Second paragraph of third chapter:

About 50 years later, however, the first William de Courcy of Stogursey granted all of his lands to his own first son, named William after him, undoubtedly expecting him to make some provision for his younger brothers, but keeping the lordship itself in one piece and firmly under Courcy family control. Although the father might have been tempted to provide for all his sons by dividing up his lands, when he passed everything on to his eldest son he ensured that the integrity and strength of the lordship would be maintained. Dividing it up into three parts, even unequal parts, would have substantially reduced the financial and military strength of the lordship and consequently lowered the status of the second William de Courcy amongst his fellow aristocrats. Having established himself in England, the first William de Courcy was clearly determined that his family should maintain its status within the highly-competitive Anglo-Norman aristocracy and for that the new lord, his eldest son, needed as large a lordship as possible.

A very short book about the Norman knight who conquered "Ulster", or rather most of what is now County Down and County Antrim, in the late twelfth century. It's very good on the details of the de Courcy lineage and family holdings in France and England, which goes some way to explaining the drive to expand the family domains. The military details of the crucial capture of Downpatrick in 1177 are examined at length, and lots of other bits and pieces are thrown in, particularly on the record of de Courcy's military patronage and shifting of the centre of gravity of the Ulster lordship to Carrickfergus from Downpatrick.

But lots is left out as well. There is nothing about the attempted mediation role of Cardinal Vivian in the Downpatrick attack, though it's a major part of the narrative in contemporary chronicles. The dramatic story of de Courcy being captured while attending church in 1204 is skipped over. We don't get anything about how the new Norman rulers were able to displace the former Irish chieftains so quickly and so comprehensively. I also think there is a story to be told about de Courcy's wife, Affreca, the daughter of the King of the Isle of Man, and the fact that almost all of the Anglo-Norman fortifications of the Lordship of Ulster are so close to the sea.

It's also frustrating that no sources are given (though at least there are some good maps). Flanders has done some delving into the surviving charters and other records, but unfortunately hasn't shown his work. I learned a couple of things from this, but basically T.E. MacNeil's Anglo-Norman Ulster has far more information and is just as digestible. Still, if you want to, you can get it here.

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted in Uncategorised

Grimm Tales for Young and Old, by Philip Pullman

Second paragraph of third chapter:

If there was any job that needed doing, it was always the elder son who had to do it. But there was one thing the elder son wouldn’t do: if his father asked him to get something as night was falling, or when it was completely dark, and if his way took him through the graveyard or some creepy place like that, he’d say, ‘Oh, no, father, I won’t go there, it gives me the shivers.’

This is a selection of stories taken from the Grimm Brothers’ collections of the nineteenth century, reinterpreted with some critical apparatus by Philip Pullman. It includes a lot of the classics – Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Cinderella, The Musicians of Bremen – and lot of others, many of which have justly been forgotten. Pullman supplies a list of alternate sources for each story, along with a short analysis/critique. Still, I was left wondering a little why he had bothered.

Grimm Tales for Young and Old was my top unread book acquired in 2018 and my top unread sf book. You can get it here. Next on those piles respectively are How To Be Both, by Ali Smith, and A Local Habitation, by Seanan McGuire.

Posted in Uncategorised

My tweets

Posted in Uncategorised

The Early Life of Samuel M. Wickersham, based on his writings 1819-1862, ed. E.W. Hoffman

Second paragraph of first letter from third month of correspondence with Fanny:

I would, if it was consistent with the duties now dwelling upon me, have been with you this morning, but I can not, I must forgo for a while that pleasure, that duty.

My second cousin once removed, Edward Wickersham “Wick” Hoffman, inherited from his mother a box which had originally contained bottles of Majorska Vodka. On closer investigation, he discovered that it contained a large number of family documents, which he has done us the great service of transcribing and publishing. In this first volume of four, he has collected the early correspondence of Samuel Morris Wickersham, Wick’s great-grandfather and my great-great-grandfather. Most of this dates from the years 1859-1860, when he was courting his future third wife, my great-great-grandmother Frances Wyatt Belt, and writing to her in Philadephia and Baltimore from points west and north of there. She obviously kept all his letters (including a rather sweet one from his sixteen-year-old daughter by his first marriage); he doesn’t seem to have kept any of hers.

Sam Wickersham had fallen on hard times in 1859. His first two wives had died young, leaving him with two daughters and two living sons, the youngest of whom, a baby, was the future Attorney-General of the United States (his firm, Cadwallader, Wickersham and Taft, is still going – no, not that Taft, his brother). Several of Sam’s business ventures had failed, and he was locked in a lawsuit with his brothers over their father’s estate (he had died in 1858, a few months before Sam’s second wife died in childbirth). He was based in Pittsburgh, Fanny Belt was in Philadelphia where her father was an impoverished itinerant homeopathic doctor. Sam was born in March 1819, Fanny in August 1833, so she was 25 and he was 40 when they got to know each other in mid-1859. The correspondence ends when they married in early 1861, the Civil War having already started. They had five children over the next eleven years, giving him a grand total of nine. The oldest of the five married the metallurgist Sir Robert Hadfieldheavy metal, and also postal chesseclipse). He liquidated that investment for $50,000 (the Internet says that’s about $1.5 million at today’s prices), which obviously made the courtship a bit easier. I found it really interesting that he took his son Tommy with him on this trip (Tommy had his 12th birthday during the journey). It seems that that part of Michigan was considered safe enough for Sam to bring a child with him on a business trip, though it had been settled for less than twenty years.

It’s also striking to read of the looming war, which Sam simply doesn’t see coming. On 1 November 1860, he writes that if Lincoln is elected,

I predict then in one year every southern state will say amen to his election and pronounce it the most constructive republican administration since the days of Washington.

As the election results come in (slowly, of course), he writes on 10 November,

Georgia and South Carolina are passing through the usual periodical display of childish petulancy at being disappointed but if they are only left entirely alone and in no way meddled with they will soon feel ashamed of their course and settle down in quiet for another 4 years

It’s really interesting to realise just how unprepared the North was for the war. But less than a month later, on 7 December, Sam stops by Harrisburg and has “a long talk” with the Governor of Pennsylvania, who tells him that war is inevitable.

Sam’s own base when in Pittsburgh is with his friend and lawyer William Shinn at Evergreen Hamlet, which Shinn had founded, planned and built. There is a rather bizarre exchange where it becomes apparent that Shinn’s wife is briefing against Sam, as a wastrel and bankrupt. Once he gets the money from the Michigan mine, we hear nothing more of that.

It is interesting to reflect that this sort of archive will become impossible to reconstruct for courting couples of the 21st century. Emails are pretty ephemeral, text messages and other apps even more so. My own great-great-grandchildren will not have so much to go on.

You can get the book here