Tag: book review

Book review: Virtual Light

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Virtual Light.Virtual Light by William Gibson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So I’m continuing the Gibson jag I’m on. This one’s the first in the Bridge trilogy, another set of novels set in a future dystopia. This time, though, he’s more tuned into portraiture than hardware.

What’s interesting is that the tech which is so much a part of the fabric of the earlier Sprawl trilogy is here relegated to the background. The virtual light of the title ends up playing a role similar to that of Marcellus Wallace’s briefcase in Pulp Fiction, or the statue in The Maltese Falcon. They’re technical and advanced, yes, but they really exist to provide a motivation for the book’s events. It’s pretty refreshing to see something so fetishistic used for so base a narrative purpose. Continue reading “Book review: Virtual Light” →

Book review: Mona Lisa Overdrive

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Mona Lisa Overdrive.Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the third (and final) entry in Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy, the books which established the appearance of cyberspace. Really, however the internet is imagined, the roots of pop-culture’s interpretation are here. What I’ve found interesting reading these years later is how unimportant the cyberspace part of the stories are. Well, perhaps not unimportant – but less central than the rep would have you believe.

What’s important in these stories? People. Sure, information, hacking, breaking ice, constructed personalities and visualisation is a key draw – this is science fiction after all – but what pulls the attention is the personal side of the tale. Nowhere is Gibson’s portraiture more profound Continue reading “Book review: Mona Lisa Overdrive” →

Book review: Climbers: A Novel

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Climbers: A Novel.Climbers: A Novel by M. John Harrison
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you were a climber and were expecting this to be some kind of literary version of The Eiger Sanction, then you’d probably be disappointed. But then, I don’t think M. John Harrison would care too much, given that many of the readers of this book were probably expecting it to be a sci-fi masterpiece, rather than some kind of Mike Leigh nightmare.

Out of print until recently (it was reissued in 2004) this 1989 novel is less about climbing and its community and more about growth – or the lack of it. Continue reading “Book review: Climbers: A Novel” →

Book review: The Sea

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The Sea.The Sea by John Banville
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Banville’s Booker-winner is a novel which, like the tide, reveals itself by degrees. At once a recollection and a meditation, it’s a journal-styled examination of life after the loss of a partner.

Not a lot goes on in the novel in a narrative sense, but a lot is revealed about its focal character. Following his wife’s death, Max Morden revisits the location of childhood holidays – a seaside town not out of place in a Morrissey Every Day Is Like Sunday Continue reading “Book review: The Sea” →

Book review: Jack Maggs

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Jack Maggs.Jack Maggs by Peter Carey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Peter Carey became one of my favourite authors from my HSC study of Oscar and Lucinda. I suspect the reason behind this was that that work was set in the same period as some of the other (to my younger self) fusty works but brimmed with self-confidence and interest.

I’ve managed to reread it on an almost yearly basis since I first devoured it (the night before a reading diary was due – one I’d supposedly been writing all holidays) though in the years since I’ve discovered that this compulsive consumption is common where Carey’s involved: something certainly true of Jack Maggs.

The book is another interpretation of an existing work. As Oscar and Lucinda is to Patrick White’s Voss, so is Jack Maggs to Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. Continue reading “Book review: Jack Maggs” →

Book review: L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City

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L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive CityL.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City by John Buntin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Read some Ellroy? Like Dragnet? You’ll probably enjoy this book. It’s essentially a history of the LAPD, though that title wouldn’t have half as much excitement as this one: at once piggybacking on the Ellroy novel/flick and evoking the idea of a titanic struggle between good and evil.

The truth is a little less razzle-dazzle. What we have here is the story of the LAPD presented by focusing on the career of two men – William H. Parker, who would rise to head the organsation, and Mickey Cohen, part of a different Organisation altogether. Continue reading “Book review: L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America’s Most Seductive City” →

Book review: Charlatan: The Fraudulent Life of John Brinkley

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Charlatan: The Fraudulent Life of John BrinkleyCharlatan: The Fraudulent Life of John Brinkley by Pope Brock
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If you ever planned on reading a book on goat testicles, it should probably be this one. It tells the story of John Brinkley, a master manipulator who made millions from the mania for manually mixing your own tired testicles with the most succulent slices of goat gonad for the bedroom-blastin’ revivification of your lacking lovelife, ladies and lethargic Lotharios!

Basically, the book is the less effective surgical version of this:

Brinkley’s story is a proper rags-to-riches tale, built on the back of a lot of nutsacks and a cavalier disregard Continue reading “Book review: Charlatan: The Fraudulent Life of John Brinkley” →

Book review: Movie Icons: 365 Day-By-Day

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Movie Icons: 365 Day-By-DayMovie Icons: 365 Day-By-Day
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A short review as there’s not much to review. If you know Taschen’s general attention to production detail, you know that the reproductions of film stills that appear within this book are very fine.

There’s not much else to say. It’s a book with a movie (or star) per day. It’s too nice to write on in a diary fashion, and so it is a little bit of a confusing publication. But if you treat it as I did – a way to create a little cinematic break in which to appreciate films you know (and discover ones you don’t) – then it’s a fine tome.

Book review: Bonjour Tristesse

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Bonjour TristesseBonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

After an intervening couple of decades I revisited Sagan’s novel. I remembered enjoying it greatly when I read it in my teens, and hoped the same memories of cut-glass oceans and desultory fucking-for-effect conniving would hold true.

They didn’t. Continue reading “Book review: Bonjour Tristesse” →

Book review: Deep Kyoto: Walks

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Deep Kyoto: WalksDeep Kyoto: Walks by a number of contributors
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The offshoot of a blog, this book is a collection of loosely-planned walks through the ancient city (and former capital) with a variety of themes. There’s plenty of history, sure – you can’t really avoid it in a place like Kyoto – but there’s also a lot of personal history brought to bear, here. (Sometimes, a little too much – some of the writers’ digressions aren’t as amusing as they presumably believe, but I accept this may just be a personality clash.) Continue reading “Book review: Deep Kyoto: Walks” →