Neuromancer

Title: Neuromancer

Author: William Gibson

Number of pages: 317

Started: 29 March 2011

Finished: 7 April 2011

Opening words:

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

"It's not like I'm using," Case heard someone say, as he shouldered his way through the crowd around the door of the Chat. "It's like my body's developed this massive drug deficiency." It was a Sprawl voice and a Sprawl joke. The Chatsubo was a bar for professional expatriates; you could drink there for a week and never hear two words in Japanese.

Ratz was tending bar, h is prosthetic arm jerking monotonously as he filled a tray of glasses with draft Kirin. He saw Case and smiled, his teeth a webwork of East European steel and brown decay. Case found a place at the bar, between the unlikely tan on one of Lonny Zone's whores and the crisp naval uniform of a tall African whose cheekbones were ridged with precise rows of tribal scars. "Wage was in here early, with two joeboys," Ratz said, shoving a draft across the bar with his good hand. "Maybe some business with you, Case?"

Read a longer excerpt here.

Plot summary:

Case was the hottest computer cowboy cruising the information superhighway--jacking his consciousness into cyberspace, soaring through tactile lattices of data and logic, rustling encoded secrets for anyone with the money to buy his skills. Then he double-crossed the wrong people, who caught up with him in a big way--and burned the talent out of his brain, micron by micron. Banished from cyberspace, trapped in the meat of his physical body, Case courted death in the high-tech underworld. Until a shadowy conspiracy offered him a second chance--and a cure--for a price....

What I thought:

This is the book that inspired the film “The Matrix” and I could certainly see the similarities between the two (with an occasional character name change). Science fiction is not really my kind of genre. I like John Wyndham, but he would not have described himself as a science fiction writer as such.

Whilst I found Neuromancer a decent enough read, it did not entirely inspire me and it has not convinced me that science fiction is a genre that I want to indulge it at the expense of others that I enjoy more. That said, this book is a really foundation stone of all sorts of science fiction that followed it and worth reading for that reason alone.

Goodbye to Berlin

Title: Goodbye to Berlin

Author: Christopher Isherwood

Number of pages: 256

Started: 18 March 2011

Finished: 28 March 2011

Opening words:

From my window, the deep solemn massive street. Cellar-shops where the lamps burn all day, under the shadow of top-heavy balconied facades, dirty plaster frontages embossed with scrollwork and heraldic devices. The whole district is like this: street leading into street of houses like shabby monumental safes crammed with the tarnished valuables and second-hand furniture of a bankrupt middle class.

Plot summary:

Written as a connected series of six short stories the book, first published in 1939, is a brilliant evocation of the decadence and repression, glamour and sleaze of Berlin society. Isherwood shows the lives of people at threat from the rise of the Nazis: Natalia Laundauer, the rich, Jewish heiress, Peter and Otto, a gay couple andthe "divinely decadent" Sally Bowles, a young English woman who was so memorably portrayed by Liza Minnelli.

What I thought:

I really enjoyed this book. It was a series or short stories that formed a novel of sorts and was a really well written tale of Berlin in the 1930s. The short story about Sally Bowles, in particular, was a really beautifully written story and you felt the narrator’s loss at the end.

I found this novel far superior to its forerunner “Mr Norris Changes Trains” and each of the short stories were good enough to stand alone or as part of the collective. It was a very good and poignant read.

The House of Mirth

Title: The House of Mirth

Author: Edith Wharton

Number of pages: 368

Started: 8 March 2011

Finished: 17 March 2011

Opening words:

SELDEN PAUSED in surprise. In the afternoon rush of the Grand Central Station his eyes had been refreshed by the sight of Miss Lily Bart. It was a Monday in early September, and he was returning to his work from a hurried dip into the country; but what was Miss Bart doing in town at that season? If she had appeared to be catching a train, he might have inferred that he had come on her in the act of transition between one and another of the country-houses which disputed her presence after the close of the Newport season; but her desultory air perplexed him. She stood apart from the crowd, letting it drift by her to the platform or the street, and wearing an air of irresolution which might, as he surmised, be the mask of a very definite purpose. It struck him at once that she was waiting for some one, but he hardly knew why the idea arrested him. There was nothing new about Lily Bart, yet he could never see her without a faint movement of interest: it was characteristic of her that she always roused speculation, that her simplest acts seemed the result of far-reaching intentions.

Read the whole book here.


Plot summary:

Its heroine, Lily Bart, is beautiful, poor, and unmarried at 29. In her search for a husband with money and position she betrays her own heart and sows the seeds of the tragedy that finally overwhelms her. The House of Mirth is a lucid, disturbing analysis of the stifling limitations imposed upon women of Wharton's generation. Herself born into Old New York Society, Wharton watched as an entirely new set of people living by new codes of conduct entered the metropolitan scene. In telling the story of Lily Bart, who must marry to survive, Wharton recasts the age-old themes of family, marriage, and money in ways that transform the traditional novel of manners into an arresting modern document of cultural anthropology.

What I thought:

The first thing to say about this book is that you need to understand the context of the title. This book is not some whimsical tale, which is not to say that it is some depressing read, but don’t be misled by the title. The title comes from Ecclesiastes – “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth”.

That said, in some ways this is quite a light book in places, but it is also the tale of a woman in New York Society that just does not get what it is that she wants out of life and ultimately her lack of judgement is her downfall.

It’s an interesting read, but one that I found a bit laboured in places. However, this is not my first choice of literature so it is not generally the sort of book that I would be automatically drawn to. I found the ending touching and a fitting end to the tale.

Pompeii

Title: Pompeii

Author: Robert Harris

Number of pages: 396

Started: 1 March 2011

Finished: 7 March 2011

Opening words:

They left the aqueduct two hours before dawn, climbing by moonlight into the hills overlooking the port—six men in single file, the engineer leading. He had turfed them out of their beds himself—all stiff limbs and sullen, bleary faces—and now he could hear them complaining about him behind his back, their voices carrying louder than they realized in the warm, still air.

“A fool’s errand,” somebody muttered.

“Boys should stick to their books,” said another.

He lengthened his stride.

Let them prattle, he thought.

Already he could feel the heat of the morning beginning to build, the promise of another day without rain. He was younger than most of his work gang, and shorter than any of them: a compact, muscled figure with cropped brown hair. The shafts of the tools he carried slung across his shoulder—a heavy, bronze-headed axe and a wooden shovel—chafed against his sunburned neck. Still, he forced himself to stretch his bare legs as far as they would reach, mounting swiftly from foothold to foothold, and only when he was high above Misenum, at a place where the track forked, did he set down his burdens and wait for the others to catch up.


Read a longer extract here

Plot summary:

A sweltering week in late August. Where better to enjoy the last days of summer than on the beautiful Bay of Naples? But even as Rome's richest citizens relax in their villas around Pompeii and Herculaneum, there are ominous warnings that something is going wrong. Wells and springs are failing, a man has disappeared, and now the greatest aqueduct in the world - the mighty Aqua Augusta - has suddenly ceased to flow. Through the eyes of four characters - a young engineer, an adolescent girl, a corrupt millionaire and an elderly scientist - Robert Harris brilliantly recreates a luxurious world on the brink of destruction.

What I thought:

Robert Harris is one of those authors that I am still unsure about. His books are set in interesting and compelling times in history (mainly fairly modern history) and have all the elements of a good read, but sometimes I feel that they lack that final element to really draw me in. What that final element actually is, I find hard to say, but whatever it is means that, for me, some of his books lack the ability to be a really gripping yarn.

This book was set in the days immediately surrounding the eruption of Vesuvius in 79AD, and knowing that the volcano is going to erupt regardless of all the plot that was going on around it did help to build suspense. It was a decent read, but the jury is still out on this author.

The Quiet American

Title: The Quiet American

Author: Graham Greene

Number of pages: 192

Started: 21 February 2011

Finished: 28 February 2011

Opening words:

After dinner I sat and waited for Pyle in my room over the rue Catinat; he had said, ‘I’ll be with you at latest by ten,’ and when midnight struck I couldn’t stay quiet any longer and went down into the street. A lot of old women in black trousers squatted on the landing: it was February and I suppose too hot for them in bed. One trishaw driver pedalled slowly by towards the riverfront and I could see lamps burning where they had disembarked the new American planes. There was no sign of Pyle anywhere in the long street.

Of course, I told myself, he might have been detained for some reason at the American Legation, but surely in that case he would have telephoned to the restaurant—he was very meticulous about small courtesies. I turned to go indoors when I saw a girl waiting in the next doorway. I couldn’t see her face, only the white silk trousers and the long flowered robe, but I knew her for all that. She had so often waited for me to come home at just this place and hour.

Read a longer extract here


Plot summary:

Into the intrigue and violence of Indo-China comes Pyle, a young idealistic American sent to promote democracy through a mysterious 'Third Force'. As his naive optimism starts to cause bloodshed, his friend Fowler, a cynical foreign correspondent, finds it hard to stand aside and watch. But even as he intervenes he wonders why: for the sake of politics, or for love?

What I thought:

I have a mixed view of Graham Greene’s books. Some of them I absolutely love (such as The End of the Affair) and others leave me somewhat more cold. This book rather falls into the former category. I thought this was such a well written and observed book. There were passages in it that were such a pleasure to read – the emotion that was portrayed or the observations that were made just exactly hit the spot.

It was rather a sad book, but it was a really good example of how sometimes Greene so perfectly captured the true essence of a situation and was able to portray it in such a well observed way. There were some passages that I re-read because I thought he expressed them so well. This is a book I might be tempted to read again one day.

The Third Policeman

Title: The Third Policeman

Author: Flann O’Brien

Number of pages: 240

Started: 13 February 2011

Finished: 20 February 2011

Opening words:

Not everybody knows how I killed old Phillip Mathers, smashing his jaw in with my spade; but first it is better to speak of my friendship with John Divney because it was he who first knocked old Mathers down by giving him a great blow in the neck with a special bicycle-pump which he manufactured himself out of a hollow iron bar. Divney was a strong civil man but he was lazy and idle-minded. He was personally responsible for the while idea in the first place. It was he who told me to bring a spade. He was the one who gave the orders on the occasion and also the explanations when they were called for.


Plot summary:

A thriller, a hilarious comic satire about an archetypal village police force, a surrealistic vision of eternity, the story of a tender, brief, unrequited love affair between a man and his bicycle, and a chilling fable of unending guilt, 'The Third Policeman' is comparable only to 'Alice in Wonderland' as an allegory of the absurd. Distinguished by endless comic invention and its delicate balancing of logic and fantasy, 'The Third Policeman' is unique in the English language.

What I thought:

This was a very strange book. It started well, but then went off into the realms of bicycle worship. I guess the clues were there with the author being compared to James Joyce, but the book was certainly one of the odder books that I have read, and, for me, not in a good way.

This book was only published posthumously because it was turned down by the publisher. I have to say that if they made that decision based on the likely mass appeal of the book, I can see why. A strange read and not one that I would highly recommend.

The Swimming Pool Library

Title: The Swimming Pool Library

Author: Alan Hollingsworth

Number of pages: 304

Started: 3 February 2011

Finished: 12 February 2011

Opening words:

"I came home on the last train. Opposite me sat a couple of London Transport maintenance men, one small, fifty, decrepit, the other a severely handsome black of about thirty-five. Heavy canvas bags were tilted against their boots, their overalls open above their vests in the stale heat of the Underground. They were about to start work! I looked at them with a kind of swimming drunken wonder, amazed at the thought of their inverted lives, of how their occupation depended on our travel, but could only be pursued, I saw it now, when we were not travelling."


Plot summary:

Alan Hollinghurst’s first novel is a tour de force: a darkly erotic work that centres on the friendship of William Beckwith, a young gay aristocrat who leads a life of privilege and promiscuity, and the elderly Lord Nantwich, who is searching for someone to write his biography.

What I thought:

I liked this book, but it was one that I felt slightly uncomfortable reading on the tube! It has quite a lot of fairly explicit sexual references in it and it made me a touch paranoid that someone might peer over and see the content of parts of the book. But, perhaps I need to get out more.

That said, it was a good book. I thought it was well written and touched on some difficult issues and told the story well. It’s just not the sort of book most people would recommend to their mum.