Don’t close the book on reading

Wow, it’s Friday already? I’d better write something. That makes me sound lazy, doesn’t it? Well, just because I haven’t been writing, doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about it. That, my friends is called ‘planning’ – an important part of the writing process.

This week’s theme is books for young men who don’t read. That’s not to say women can’t read them too. I simply thought of a few of my male friends whose bookshelves are a tad on the empty side. That’s understandable, reading takes up a lot of time – time that could be spent playing video games or watching football down the pub with all of the other clichés.

To you (and you probably know who you are) I say this - Don’t close the book on reading, turn a new page, let this be the start of a new chapter in your lives, the one in which you switch the TV off and decide to give a book a go instead.
But on saying that, it’s not easy to go from watching mindless action movies to plodding through Anna Karenina or Don Quixote. One needs a transitional period. And that period starts with...

Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk

Why start there? Well I’ll tell you. You’ve probably seen the movie already so you know what happens. The last thing you want when you start your journey into Bookland is a shocking twist that leaves you with palpitations and cold sweats. Stick with the familiar for now.

As book-to-movie transitions go, this one is as good as they get. It’s impossible to read this book without hearing Edward Norton’s narration in your head. With that in mind, if you liked the film, you’re pretty much guaranteed to like the book also.
Another plus point is the brevity of each chapter. At the very least, you’ll manage to squeeze in four or five pages while you’re waiting for the kettle to boil but the chances are, you’ll find yourself starting the next chapter because, hell, it’s only a few pages.

So, you’ve done Fight Club and you feel an overwhelming sense of achievement but you’re still not ready to drift too far from your comfort zone. Why don’t you try...

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson

That’s right, it’s not just a movie, there is, in fact, a book. I don’t know why I’m being so patronising, I’m sure you know about the book by now. The question remains, why haven’t you read it yet?

The story follows the adventures of Raoul Duke who, with his attorney in tow, attempts to cover a motorcycle race in Las Vegas. The assignment is an excuse for a colossal bender on every drug imaginable from the modest buzz of a joint to the reality-shattering trauma of adrenochrome.

The result is a disjointed narrative leaping from one farce to another where mundane situations like checking into a hotel become hideous conflicts and the most severe transgressions become lost in a drug-induced blackout.

By the time you get to the end of the books, you’ll be wondering if it’s possible to have the same level of drug-related fun elsewhere. Well, before you dial that number that you’ve been resisting for so long, go to your local bookshop and pick up a copy of...

Mr. Nice – Howard Marks

It’s not just the story of one of the most notorious drug smugglers of recent times; it’s much, much more than that. Howard Marks should, by all accounts, be languishing away in a dark cell for the protection of civilisation. Instead he is the best-selling author of one of the most fantastic adventure stories you are likely to read.

And the best thing is, it’s all true!

Howard’s import/export business found him rubbing shoulders with the IRA which, in turn led him into the service of her majesty’s secret service. Don’t ask me which one. For some reason, I have trouble remembering all of the details.

But it’s good, I remember this much, and I urge you to read it as soon as possible.

Or you can just stick to your old habits and wait for the movie to come out, which it will on the 8th of October. Make a night of it, invite all of your clichés along on a lads’ night out to the cinema after which you can toddle on down to the pub, drink lots of beer, eat lots of peanuts, fart a lot and talk about football, before starting a fight and throwing up in the back of a taxi.

(You can watch the trailer for Mr. Nice here - enjoy!)

‘Theme’ is just another word for ‘gimmick’

It’s all about books now. I just can’t get enough of them. I’ll tell you my thought progression just so you’re a little closer to understanding. I’ve had this recent ennui regarding my work. Now by my work, I mean the place I go for a few hours out of the day in exchange for money. It’s a terrible habit, but a necessary one. It so happens that I work in a bookshop and it was there that I came across a very liberating idea, in a book, no less.

Stick with me here.

All of this time I’ve been damning the fact that I’m stuck in a measly nine to five retail death-crawl. Such thoughts have plagued my mind for months giving me cause for spasms of panic and seizures of profound anxiety. But just recently, I’ve had an epiphany – and a sickeningly obvious one at that. Instead of longing for a perfect place and purpose, the healthy thing to do is to convince myself that I am exactly where I ought to be.

To put it the short way, instead of nurturing hope, it’s better to embrace despair and accept that this is as good as it gets.

Don’t try to get what you want, try to want what you have.

Resistance is futile.

There’s no escape.

So being that I spend most of my waking life surrounded by books and book related paraphernalia, it’s only sensible that I should come home and write about them too. So, here it is, a new dawn for Novelty Central – a place where I go to talk about books since it’s now obvious that I can’t avoid it.

But anyway, on to business.

This week’s theme is...hang on, I’d better clarify that I’m going to have a theme every week, why not, right? ‘Theme’ is just another word for ‘gimmick’.
So this week’s loosely-binding gimmick is ADHD. It’s a good place to start, I reckon, with the assumption that everyone else is as easily distracted as I am.

If that’s the case then I offer you my top 5 really short books.

That is if you’re still reading, of course.

All My Friends are Superheroes – Andrew Kaufman

Being that this book is barely 100 pages long, it didn’t seem like that much of a challenge but that’s not why I read it. I was promised by everyone who had read the book that it would literally make me cry with happiness.

Real tears.

Imagine my excitement at such an opportunity – the chance to feel something strongly enough to squirt water out of my eyes.

Needless to say, I was disappointed.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lovely little book, but I came away from it with dry eyes. The story relies on the assumption that the characters’ most prevalent traits are actually super-powers, for example, the Frog Kisser is a girl who always falls in love with the loser. As soon as the relationship takes off, the ‘frog’ turns into a prince and the Frog Kisser loses interest completely.

If you want it boiled down to a genre, I’d call it a Rom-Com for comic book fans.

Fup – Jim Dodge

This has nothing to do with any Fair Usage Policy. It’s actually a book about a duck called Fup, Fup Duck (spot the spoonerism). To sum it up so is to make it sound like Spot the Dog or Little Bunny Foo Foo, it’s a bit stranger than that.

The setting is a small ranch in the American wilderness where 90 year old Jake maintains his immortality with a homebrewed whiskey called ‘Old Death Whisper’. There he lives with his grandson, a giant by the name of Tiny who spends his time building fences for no good reason only to have them torn down by a mysterious nocturnal warthog.

It sounds a little wacky and to be honest, it is, but it’s also very funny and even if the ending makes absolutely no sense, getting there is a fun ride.

Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives – David Eagleman

This does what it says on the tin. Sum is a collection of little musings about possible scenarios you might meet after you expire. Eagleman is a neuroscientist so he’s bound to know what he’s talking about, right? As books for the attention deficit go, it doesn’t get much better than this. Each little chapter shows the hereafter in a different light, some more agreeable than others but mostly they all sound better than ‘lights out forever’.

It’s a good little book to make you think but be careful – you might just get wrapped up in the idea of a five-month spell of sitting on the toilet and attempt to weave a religion around it.

You’ve been warned.

Silk – Alessandro Baricco

This book tells the tale of Hervé, a trader in silkworm eggs and his travels to and from Japan. It’s part romance, part historical fiction and its use of language verges on poetry but if you ask me, it’s just nice. It’s a nice, delicate little story that won’t amaze you or haunt your dreams or inspire you to become a silkworm-egg merchant, but if you’re anything like me, you’ll be glad you read it.

Alternatively you could watch the 2007 movie based on the book but in all likelihood, that would take more time, cost more money and give you one more excuse to hate Keira Knightley. And that would be one excuse more than anyone needs.

And finally...

The Iron Man – Ted Hughes

I think I’ve saved the best for last here. So what if it’s a kid’s book, the Iron Man is a work of genius. If you don’t already know, the book tells the story of a huge robot that somehow arrives in the English countryside to wreak havoc on all of the tractors.

Some might call it a fable masking an anti-war protest but they’re just looking too far into it – it’s a modern fairy tale complete with scary space dragons (it had to come from space as all of the earth dragons were extinct).

If you’re going to get the book, don’t settle for anything that isn’t illustrated by Andrew Davidson – his drawings give the story the weird metallic darkness it deserves. The modern illustrations look like they were scribbled by a child and aren’t in the least bit scary.

So there you have it, five books that you can easily read before you...oh, that’s a funny colour...

‘Desperation’ is an ugly word...

On to business. You’ll notice that there hasn’t been a whole lot of activity here of late. That’s only because I haven’t done anything about it. Don’t attempt to adjust your set; this is purely laziness on my side. Point one is that I’m going to try to spill something into this part of the internet every Friday. I figure that if I give myself a weekly deadline then I might just become a little more productive.
And there’s no room for cynicism, so keep your predictions to yourself.

Point two is that I only had a point one, so I suppose now I’ll just have to waffle on about all of the movies I’ve watched in the last few week.

Is anyone else like me in that they can abstain from watching films for weeks at a time before bingeing on whatever comes to hand?

Yeah?

No?

Whatever the case, it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve done very little in the past couple of weeks other than go to work, play with my superfantastic new phone and watch a host of movies such as...

TRIANGLE (2009)
I’m not really sure what this film is trying to say but it reminds me of an incident that happened just before I left Ireland. A couple of friends and I had gone on a mammoth mushroom picking frenzy and cooked the whole lot up in a thick, pungent stew. This seemed like a really good idea back then, but we were younger and less frightened of petty things like consequences and brain damage and psychosis.

To cut a long story short, the three of us relived the same three minute sequence over and over again for about four hours at the end of which, we assumed we’d broken reality and banished the rest of humanity from existence.

I hadn’t thought of that night in a long time...until I watched Triangle.

In this film, a group of friends are on a sailing trip when their boat is destroyed by a freak storm. As luck would have it, a huge liner happens to be passing by. They board the ship only to find that it is completely deserted, rather old and incredibly creepy.

One thing leads to another and they all die except for Jess, Melissa George’s character who leans over the side of the ship to see herself and all of her friends clinging to their upturned yacht, glad that a huge liner just happens to be passing by.

And so, the loop repeats itself...just like too many mushrooms.
It just gets stranger from there and if you’re looking for something to confuse you, give Triangle a shot. If you just want the fear without the bewilderment, then maybe you should try...

A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET (2010)
As horror remakes go, A Nightmare on Elm Street is about as inspiring as any other. The plot is essentially the same as the 1984 original – Freddy Krueger got burnt to death by a mob of angry parents who didn’t take too kindly to his paedophilic tendencies and then wreaks his vengeance by hunting their children in their dreams. It needs no further explanation.

The new version sees Jackie Earle Haley take up Robert Englund’s role as the dream demon and, to give him his dues, he pulls the role off rather well. Also, the remake lacks the cheesiness that the original had in abundance and in its place is pure darkness.

If you’re expecting an addition to the franchise, then you won’t find it here. This film lacks the tongue-in-cheek humour and takes the idea in a slightly different direction. If you are one of those people who thought the original was a little too slapstick to be scary, then perhaps the remake is for you.

And just because I like threes...

ALICE IN WONDERLAND (2010)
Another remake, and this time, it’s slightly more credible because Tim Burton directed it. This has everything you would expect from a Burton film including the extensive use of black and white check pattern, warped perspectives and spooky trees (not to mention the inevitable Helena Bonham Carter). In this project, you’ll find a little bit more because we have a typically weird director choosing a classically weird story written by a prodigiously weird author.

The story, as you’d expect, has been changed slightly if only to save us all from boredom. Burton’s film is permeated with a definite post-war melancholy – this is Wonderland after the apocalypse and it’s Alice’s job to rescue it from the clutches of the evil Red Queen.

It was a good experience but I found myself ignoring the nonsensical dialogue just so that I could follow the plot. That’s right, there was a plot, so if you’re used to Alice being a wild romp into random, then prepare yourself for a little more effort.

So there you go, three films to try out when you really should be doing other things. I’ll be back next Friday with something else. I’m not sure what that’ll be and I’m totally open to suggestions. ‘Desperation’ is an ugly word, but it’s the only one that’s relevant...