Stealing the Wooden Sea

Monday 10th November: At this time of year, I tend to pick easy reads from the rather large pile of books that I have waiting to be read. It helps me bring my average pages per days up (I'm a bit of a closet "statto") and brings the total number of books down a bit more quickly.

Most people I know think that I have strange taste in books. After all, apart from a few forays into crime (generally Patricia Cornwell and Jonathan Kellerman) and the odd horror novel (generally Stephen King), most of the books that I read involve spaceships, ray-guns, elves or magic. It seems to me that if I read a lot of science-fiction, I get a hankering for fantasy. And vice versa.

However, every so often, I like to dip into "contemporary" fantasy (or, perhaps, magic realism). Stories in which elements of the fantastic sit side-by-side with everyday life. It's still fantasy but I like to think of it as a bit more grown-up than the majority of "epic" fantasy. Proponents of this genre include Brit Neil Gaiman, Canadian Charles de Lint (my personal favourite) and Vienna-based American Jonathan Carroll.

The Wooden Sea (2000) tells the story of Frannie McCabe - forty-eight year old Chief of Police for the small town that he grew up as a rebel in. As the book opens his life has taken a turn for the strange. The ugly three-legged dog that he had "adopted" has just died. Two of the town's inhabitants have disappeared, leaving a beautiful feather in their lounge. His stepdaughter has just got a tattoo. The three-legged dog, which McCabe buried in the woods, has turned up in the boot of his car, with the feather, which also happens to be the exact thing that the stepdaughter has had tattooed on her back. Oh, and McCabe's seventeen-year-old self has turned up in the middle of the night.

Reading back that summary of the first couple of chapters, it sounds slightly flippant. As though the book is humorous. There are funny moments. There are also tender, unsettling and exciting moments. McCabe's town is populated with well-rounded, original and likable characters. The story starts quietly, despite the catalogue of events above, but gradually reaches a page-turning ending, along the way leaving the reader desperately wondering what the heck is going on.

In this book, the fantasy elements come thick and fast and I'm not going to spoil it by listing them. Perhaps the best bit, for me, was the idea that we, human-kind, have been a little on the vain side when interpreting the biblical story of the Genesis.

Unfortunately, despite this being a very good book, it was also a bit of a disappointment. I can understand why the ending is unresolved - Carroll couldn't finish this story in a satisfactory manner any other way - but there are too many unanswered questions throughout the story.

Overall, a good book but not up to the standards of Kissing the Beehive or The Marriage of Sticks. Still, Carroll is definitely worth a look if you fancy something different.

The Thief of Time (2002) was Terry Pratchett's 26th Discworld novel. I'm not a huge Pratchett fan, although I have quite a few of his novels published as special editions by the SF and Fantasy Book Club. To me, he just isn't as laugh-out-loud funny as Douglas Adams' Hitch-hikers books.

The Discworld novels that I have read, however, I have liked. There are a few laughs and more than a few chuckles in most of them and Thief of Time if no exception. In it, the fate of the Discworld is under threat when the world's first truly accurate clock is invented, stopping time and allowing the cosmic auditors in. It's up to Death's grand-daughter, Susan, Lu-Tze and Lobsang (two Monks of Time) and Ronnie, the fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse (he left before they got famous) to save the world and, perhaps, the whole of creation.

It's a complex plot, with many, many references and in-jokes some of which I got, others of which I can't believe I missed. I particularly like the character of Susan, reluctant more-than-human heroine and she is joined this time by the two very funny monks. There are some excellent sequences - particular favourites are Susan's meeting with the headmistress of the school she is teaching in and the final battle against the auditors, with the heroes' weapon being...

...well, that would be telling. All I'm saying is that I would have been no good in that fight...

A Full Head of Hair

Thursday 6th November: A weekend of standby for me, together with location and general busy-ness for the others meant that it was going to be impossible for all of us to meet up this week. The others were going out on Friday night at least and you can see a review of their trip to the Duchess by clicking the link on my Blog roll. Not wanting to miss out on live music for another weekend I took a late decision to make my own way to the Duchess to see a couple of bands that I already knew I liked.

The evening didn't start well, however, when Dead Rebellion took to the stage. Rock-style drumming with some sort of small keyboard-type thingy and hip-hop lyrics - not my cup of tea at all, to be honest. I lost interest very early in the first song when I realised that the lyrics were shouted, repetitive and completely unintelligible. The latter may not have been the band's fault - the sound (especially the bass) was up so loud that not only were my clothes vibrating but, I suspect, so was my wardrobe back home. Frankly, the thirty minute set felt a lot longer but that was probably just my prejudice against this genre of music.

Second on stage were The Runaway Sons. This is the third time I've seen them and they seem to get better every time. This time they only had a thirty minute set and, unlike Dead Rebellion, that wasn't long enough. Most of the set was familiar songs although, towards the end, I thought they played one or two new ones (or, at least, new to me). As usual, the playing was excellent - these guys have a really good stage presence - and this time they seemed to be a bit more comfortable talking to the audience between songs. Most noticeable, however, was the fact that Jim Gipson has had his hair cut and is no longer a Suzi Quatro look-a-like.

Finally, tonight's "head"-line act - the appropriately named The Hair. Last time we saw these guys, they were supporting Hope&Social at Fibbers. Since, then, they have been propelled to the big time by supporting the Kaiser Chiefs on their recent tour. Again, a lot of their infectious pop/rock/alternative tunes were familiar from the last time but, being a longer set, they also played new ones and there wasn't a duff song amongst them. These guys seem to really enjoy performing and are definitely developing their own style. By this time I had met up with another colleague and he admitted that, while he didn't know what to expect from this band, he really enjoyed them. Unfortunately, their forty-five minute set (including two song encore) was over much too soon, ending with each member of the band (except the drummer) in turn eschewing his own instrument in favour of bashing a cymbal. A good end to a really good set. Hopefully they'll be back soon.

Reading, Listening and a Bit of Drinking

Sunday 2nd November: This is the second weekend in a row when I haven't been to see any bands - not that the opportunity wasn't there, but November could turn out to be busy in terms of music so I took the decision to stay in with the family. So, what have I been up to instead?

For a couple of days this past week, I was working in Norwich. This coincided with the annual CAMRA beer festival in the city and my colleague and I decided to wander along to sample an ale or two (or three, or four, or... well, you get the idea). This was my first visit to a beer festival, even though I profess to being a fan of real ale and like trying different ones. I was a little surprised by the payment method used. On entering the hall, you purchase a "starter" kit - a pint glass (used to hold whatever drinks you decide to try) and a number of "tokens", basically a perforated sheet of paper made up of a number of stamps worth 10p each. Each beer then has a token value for either a pint or a half and you hand over the relevant number of tokens for whatever you are trying. This means that all cash is held in one place in the hall and, to my mind, could work better. At the end of the evening, my colleague and I had a small number of tokens left - less than £1's worth but unspendable unless we went back and bought more and, even then, only by careful planning of which drinks to try. The drinks themselves were priced similarly but not all the same - between £2.20 and £2.80 per pint, if memory serves. To my mind, this whole system would work a lot better if the drinks were all priced the same - say £2.50 a pint, £1.25 a half - and tokens were to the value of £1.25, meaning 1 token per half pint bought. Much easier to work out than counting out twenty-eight small paper tokens once you have had a few drinks.

That aside, it was a pleasant evening. We tried seven different beers, after working out that the pint glasses were also marked with half pints so we didn't have to buy a pint every time. It felt a bit strange drinking halves all night but we soon got used to it. Being honest, I don't think I could remember which beers I tried even if I were to look through the event's programme booklet, but I enjoyed all but one of them to one degree or another.

On the way back to York I heard on the radio of somebody who had received eighty different beers for his 80th birthday and has, so far, tried over 750 different British beers. That's a record worth going for, in my opinion. I really must start recording which ones I have tried.

A few days ago I finally finished Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space trilogy - Redemption Ark (2002) and Absolution Gap (2003). I'm not going to write full reviews of them, partly because I didn't make any notes while reading them and partly because I couldn't say too much more than I have in past reviews. Although I read these slowly (normally a sure sign that I'm not enjoying a book) Reynolds writes excellent science fiction. These books are so full of ideas that it is practically impossible to read them quickly. Sentient spaceships; pigs genetically altered to be almost on a par with humans (much like David Brin's Uplifted dolphins); humans genetically altered to be more than human; doomsday weapons; the death of planets; the death of suns; messages from the future; a whole religion based on an accident; mighty cathedrals slowly moving across the face of a moon in order to be constantly underneath the parent planet; far future galactic collisions and, perhaps most challenging of all (for me anyway), the concept of Brane Spaces - multi-dimensional spaces layered on top of each other. All these and much, much more are used to stunning effect to tell the story of a small group of characters, but much larger group of people, against a backdrop of interstellar destruction being wrought against Humanity by the ancient Inhibitors.

The third book, in particular, as the story rushes towards its conclusion, shows how Reynolds uses different styles within one trilogy. Absolution Gap tells its story across three different times and two different planets and the interstellar space in-between. At the end of the trilogy, the Revelation Space universe has been irrevocably changed with many of the locations used in the series being destroyed or totally changed.

At first, I was a little disappointed with the end - a huge, galactic scale war was ended off-page, almost as thought Reynold's had backed himself into a corner and needed a Deus ex Machina device to enable him to complete the story. After a bit a musing, however, I realised that the large scale story had always been in the background. The story I was reading was more to do with the various members of the smaller casts - always involved in the war but only really on the periphery (well, apart from starting it all off in the first novel). Then the ending made sense. I believe that there are a number of short stories and another novel set in the Revelation Space universe, which add to and expand the overall story. I will be looking out for them when my "to read" pile is a bit more manageable.

Since finishing the Reynolds books, I have been trying to get through some smaller, easier to read books in order to boost my total for the year. I'm not going to review them but I have recently just completed a handful of the Doctor Who novels put out by the BBC a while back. I was buying them as they came out but stopped after a while, while the Doctor portrayed was still Paul McGann. The few I have just read are variable to say the least but, in the light of the new version of the TV series, it is vaguely interesting to see the direction that the books were going in, portraying the Doctor as a fallible half-human.

Finally, notes on a couple of the CDs I bought recently. Again, I'm not going to write full reviews but just give some general thoughts.

First up is Asia - Live in the U.S.A. (recorded November 1992 at Chestnut Cabaret, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). This was the seventh show of the Aqua (fourth album) tour, featuring Geoff Downes (keyboards), John Payne (vocals, bass), Vinny Burns (guitar) and Trevor Thornton (drums), with a guest appearance from Steve Howe (guitar). This is a fabulous live recording, the sound is raw and you feel as though you are actually standing in the audience as, at times, you can hear people chatting in the background (thankfully between songs rather than during). Originally, this was one of a three part "official bootleg" series and lives up to that name by not appearing over-produced or tidied up to any great degree.

Apparently, the Chestnut Cabaret was a night-club with a stage for live bands. I have seen it described as a mid-sized room. It no longer exists but sounds as though it could have been a good place for live shows - during the encore of this performance Downes is heard commenting that it's 01:15 and people are still wanting more. Asia are one of my favourite bands (I plan to write more about them when I've had a chance to properly listen to their latest release) but this is the first live album I've bought by them. While definitely a product of it's time - big sounding, keyboard-led prog rock - limited by the size of venue, I consider it to be a very god addition to my collection.

At the other end of the venue scale is Roger Waters' In The Flesh tour from 1999. Originally planned to be held in small venues, tickets sold so well that many shows were upgraded to much bigger locations, despite Waters' apparent disdain for stadium concerts. This two-CD recording is one of those annoying types that, instead of being a genuine representation of a single concert, takes bits and pieces from a number of shows and links then with crowd sounds. Not that you would know from listening to it. I only realised when reading the accompanying booklet.

Without delving too much into the politics and personalities of the members of Pink Floyd (another of my favourite bands), I was a little surprised by how much this concert sounded like a Pink Floyd show. I'm not an aficionado and haven't heard a great deal of the solo releases by either Gilmour or Waters but I did see the recent (shortened) airing on BBC4 of the former's Gdansk show which, although featuring some Floyd songs, was definitely a Gilmour concert. Waters' In The Flesh shows seemed to me to almost channel Floyd and, being honest, most of the tracks on the album are Floyd songs.

Apart from Waters himself, the band comprises of Doyle Bramhall II (guitar, vocals), Graham Broad (drums), John Carin (keyboards, lap steel, guitar, vocals), Andy Fairweather Low (guitar, bass, vocals), Andy Wallace (hammond, keyboards), Snowy White (guitar) and Katie Kissoon, Susannah Melvoin and P P Arnold (vocals). The more musically-knowledgeable may recognise more names from that list than I did.

Overall, a good live album just, tinged with a similar disappointment to finding out that Thin Lizzy's Live and Dangerous wasn't a true live album.