Hi, just a note to let anyone reading this that I've stopped writing reviews here for the time being...trying to still do video reviews on the related YouTube channel: Christchurch Review of Books
Friday, November 15, 2024
Friday, September 20, 2024
Justice Warriors/Justice Warriors: Vote Harder
This is the placeholder post for the reviews of Justice Warriors & Justice Warriors: Vote Harder by Matt Bors, Ben Clarkson and Felipe Sobreiro
Scarred For Life Volume Three
This is the placeholder post for the review of Scarred For Life Volume Three: Pop Culture in the Shadow of the Bomb by Stephen Brotherstone and Dave Lawrence
Sum: Tales from the Afterlives
This is the placeholder post for the review of Sum: Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman
Friday, August 30, 2024
Wednesday, August 21, 2024
Friday, June 14, 2024
Quiet
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain (2013 Penguin eBook 352p)
For the last month or two I’ve been trying out the experience of reading several books at once in a vain attempt to get through my ever-growing TBR pile. I think the experiment has been a dismal failure as I became bogged down in three books at once and only now have just finished one of them. So that will probably colour the following review – I don’t think I was sufficiently focused on this book, so take this review with a pinch of salt.
I had Quiet on my Amazon wish list for about a decade and only got hold of a copy when the Kindle version went on sale – yes, I’m cheap. Back in 2012-2013 this book was a best-seller and much talked about for a brief while.
I consider myself something of an Introvert and when I’ve taken the tedious tests I usually come up as some combination of letters that usually start with a capital I. I think it's part of the Introvert experience to feel like an oppressed minority and a perennial outsider.
In this work author Susan Cain does an admirable job of making the Introverts among us feel empowered - as if they wield a super-power that can be used to achieve mighty things.
The early parts of the book are probably the best. We read about how the whole Extrovert vs Introvert thing came about, the history of personality concepts and how society has repeatedly adopted one faulty model after another and indoctrinated us all into the latest psychological fads.
There are very real measurable physiological differences between those dubbed as ‘sensitive’ and the rest of the population and initially at least its very interesting to read about the research into this area.
However, as this book continued on, I feel it became a repetitive slog of ‘meet this quirky scientist and find out how his or her study confirms what we already know…or contradicts it but can be twisted to confirm our ideas’
Soon the text pivots into some form of self-help manual and Cain starts handing out tips to parents of children who may be Introverts and have bad experiences at school. There are examples of great successful business people who claim to be introverts and case studies of corporate failures which could have been averted if only the lowly Introverts had been consulted. An on it goes.
I agree with the general thrust of this book but felt it became dull and pretty much told the reader (it’s very much squarely aimed at the Introvert) what they wanted to hear.
Needless to say, Cain has gone on to write an even more self-help oriented sequel.
Interesting and a bit of an ego boost for some of us but ultimately felt a little hollow to this particular Introvert.
Dangerous Visions
Dangerous Visions edited by Harlan Ellison (1967/2024 Blackstone Publishing eBook 772p)
Harlan Ellison was one of the semi-mythical SF writers I always read referenced and quoted growing up but almost never actually encountered in print. I think my first brush with his fiction was the 1980s Twilight Zone television adaptations of a couple of his short stories. He seemed to be highly regarded but his books simply didn’t seem to physically exist here in the days before online booksellers. One of his claims of fame was the creation of the Dangerous Visions series of so-called ‘New Wave’ science fiction anthologies. As a SF fan you’d read about all the controversies and battles Ellison encountered or indeed created and it left you wanting to see what it was all about. Unique among Ellison’s output, Dangerous Visions always seemed to be in print in one form or another throughout its 57-year history but I never got hold of a copy until a few years ago when the SF Masterworks version came into my possession. I never got around to reading that copy before I had to pack up all my books and put them out of my own reach into storage.
Well-known SF alumni J Michael Straczynski and a couple of publishers seem to be on a mission to bring Harlan Ellison back into the public spotlight. All the Dangerous Visions series (including the 3rd volume that was never published in the early 1970s for reasons that remain unclear) are being republished in new editions and a new collection of Ellison’s short stories (Greatest Hits) has recently been released.
I picked up the Kindle version of the new Dangerous Visions edition and my first surprise is that it contains the full text of ALL the previous editions’ wordy introductions – there’s quite a lot to wade through before you even reach Ellison’s original intro and eventually the 33 stories themselves.
There’s a quite a variety of writers on offer in this volume, some who were already established big names in the field at the time and others who were just up-and-coming and went on to find later fame or infamy. Some disappeared without a trace and seem to be to be eternally associated with the ‘New Wave’ era.
I’m not going to review all the individual stories in this book, some made little impact on me and I’ve now (several weeks after I finished it) already forgotten the finer details. Others switched on a light bulb in my head and produced a desire to read more.
Even with so many stories, Ellison’s words somehow dominate this work – he introduces each story with his trademark half-smug, half-humble style. Sometimes he gets a little much but his little snippets of biographical information on the authors and how he relates to them are on the whole a valuable addition.
I was born just a few years after this book was published and this makes it something of a historical item to me – the attitudes and social upheavals of 1960s America (as most of the authors in here are Americans) are reflected in most of these supposedly ‘dangerous’ short stories. There’s a certain ‘cringe’ factor to a lot of this material for those of us who grew up later and that makes my personal appreciation of it a little more difficult. Racial and sexual issues seem to dominate the ‘dangerous’ side of things, sometimes buried deep behind SF analogies, so be aware this is a very much a period piece.
Some of the stories which have become celebrated later (like Philip Jose Farmer’s Riders of the Purple Wage) really didn’t work well for me and I was often tempted to skip them completely after a mental bad taste started developing in my mind. Maybe that says more about my own current 2020s personal attitudes and tastes than the quality of the writing here.
A few stand-outs in my opinion include the ever-reliable Philip K. Dick’s Faith of Our Fathers which may have been original here but I’m sure was later included in his 5-volume short story collection. Its very clear and polished, standing out from the murk of some of the surrounding stories. Yes, it contains all the sixties obsessions – drugs, the cold war, race and religion but here put together in an entertaining and intriguing form.
For novel and amusing ideas, Brian Aldiss’ The Night That All Time Broke Out takes the cake with its story of time being distributed via reticulated means and becoming a metered commodity – something which can of course go horribly wrong.
I recently was alerted to the existence of David R. Bunch’s Moderan stories by the excellent “Book Pilled” YouTube channel. These are represented here by Incident in Moderan, set in a possible future earth where the dominant species are emotionless cyborgs who wage war on each other as a sport and are bemused by the few remaining humans and their struggle to survive the conflicts.
Jame Cross’ The Doll-House is not really SF at all, instead a fantasy of the ‘be careful what you wish for’ kind. A financially stressed businessman gets desperate and turns to the fantastic for help with all usual consequences you might expect from such a tale.
I won’t go on much further, simply it’s a mixed bag. Not exactly the earth-shattering book you may have been led to expect but I’m glad I finally read it all the same.
Monday, June 3, 2024
Small Gods
Small Gods by Terry Pratchett (1992 Gollancz Hardcover 339pp)
Small Gods is the thirteenth novel in Terry Pratchett’s long-running and extremely popular Discworld series. It’s a pretty-much stand-alone story with only minimal cameos from some series regulars. Published in 1992 it reflects the author seemingly still on an upward curve in writing ability and popularity.
Once again, I have to state I have read very few of the Discworld books themselves, probably four or five at this stage. I seem to have spent half my life reading about how great the author and his books are but I’ve still not caught the obsessive bug that many Discworld fans display. So maybe it’s just me…
This book was basically sold to me by the reviews and comments that stated this was ‘one the greatest scathing take-downs of organised religion in print’ and so on. I was expecting greatness but ended up feeling it was pretty ordinary, alas.
Brutha is a novice priest in the religious order that runs the State? /Nation? /Empire? of Omnia as a theocracy. Laws enforced by the ‘Quisition’ demand total obedience to religious doctrine and the words of the seven prophets who have spoken the will of the god Om. Brutha himself is very naive and obeys without question. He also has a photographic memory and total recall which will come in very handy later in the plot.
One day a tortoise literally falls out of the sky (after a hungry eagle drops it) into the Citadel where Brutha is tending the garden. However, this is no ordinary tortoise, it happens to be an incarnation of Om himself who has lost most of his godly powers. The frustrated Om finds he can communicate only with Brutha and thus they become the driving comedic odd couple of the story.
The main antagonist is Vorbis the sadistic head of the Quisition who strives to ruthlessly stamp out all opposition to the church. Omnia has fought many wars against its neighbours and Vorbis plans a final push to take over nearby Ephebe, which resembles ancient Greece with its multiple gods and philosophers. Brutha becomes part of the plan and soon the misadventures begin – will Om regain his powers? Will events cause a moral awakening for Brutha? Who will become the promised eighth Prophet?
Along the way there’s time for plenty of gags and satire at institutions. Some of the repeated call-back gags ceased to be funny early on.
I could see what Pratchett was trying to do in this book but I constantly felt he was holding himself back so he could retain a certain tone or maybe a typical Discworld style. Yes, he has a lot to say about how organised religion has lost its way and people follow the doctrine rather than the original teachings but I felt this was put across in a very mild pedestrian way. If you find the satire in this book ‘scathing’ I think you may have been living under a very sheltering rock for much of your life. Of course, the other possibility is that I’m just more cynical and jaded than the average Discworld reader, hmm.
Having said all that, there’s a lot of pleasure in reading Pratchett’s words for entertainment. You could tell he was overflowing with ideas and liked his world-building. His descriptions of the titular small gods as feral wild things fighting over potential believers are fascinating as are his thoughts on class and the absurdities of everyday life. Likewise, the scenes where Discworld regular DEATH appears to the recently departed seem a cut above the rest of the text for some reason.
Enjoyable stuff but I don’t think it will change your opinion on any of the issues it tries to tackle – if you’re reading Pratchett, you’ll probably already agree with him anyway.
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