Robot-mel London, United Kingdom

So I decided after reading the Dr Who Moorcock novel it would be nice to read some of his other books. I bought the Dancers at the End of Time trilogy while I was in Hay on Wye cause it had such a great title. This was a nice light fun book. A dying decedant society struggles to keep itself amused as they have all the power in the world and the galaxy is ending around them. They've totally lost contact with what it means to be "human", all done in a great ridiculous and light hearted way, as despite their decedance they are all very innocent.

I found the characters mostly appealing, I adored the setting, and found the return to the 19th century quite a disturbing shift. The way Jherek became the ultimate innocent and totally clueless was quite nice. Though I had wish his love interest had had a bit more development.

A nice light novel to read while on holiday and I started the second one right away.

A modern novel, that won the booker prize and yet I still really liked this book. It was so well done, it was the total opposite of The Historian, or Jonathon Strange, but was actually a book about research and literature and the Victorians written by someone who really knew and understood the period!

I must admit my great failing is that I do not appreciate English poetry (unless read by Ron Perlman) so I feel like I did not get as much out of the book as I should, as the poems of the main characters did little for me. But I loved the fairy tales and the fake scholarly discourses. I love the way the story unfoled, and despite a bit of unnecessary melodrama at the end, I still found myself crying a little at the last two chapters.

The story was beautifully and slowly unfolded, the characters getting further dimensions and developing more throughout the story, both in the modern time and in the Victorian era. The books wasn't flawless, but I did really like it and will definitely be reading more books by Byatt and do highly recommend this one.

I was recommended this by <lj user="fracture242"> as her favourite Charlotte Bronte novel. I have to say I did like this much better than Jane Eyre, Lucy Snowe never lost her independence the way Jane did when she fell in love. But there was just something a little off about this book.

I enjoyed the style, there were some amusing and beautiful turns of phrase but I felt like I never quite connected with the character the way I should. I admired her independent spirit, her forthrightness and the way she totally ingnored convention. But her lack of drive and passion felt odd. She was very good at understanding other people, but not so much herself.

The other problem I had with it was that there really wasn't much of a plot. It just seemed to float along with characters appearing and disappearing at will. There wasn't much tension or drama. I realised about 100 pages from the end that it was turning into a romance with the detestable school master. Which I really couldn't stand. I loved that Lucy stood up to him, but any man who says what is "proper" art for a woman to observe, is not my idea of a romantic hero!

I think my biggest problem though was that there was no social commentary. The Victorian novels (and indeed novels from any period) I like the most are the ones that have something to say about society and the injustices and hypocrisy therein. Here there really didn't seem to be any of that, despite the societal characters being shallow.

That said I didn't dislike the novel. It was quite interesting, though not nearly as nice as her sisters books. I will read Shirley though as that seems to be more political and perhaps more than just a governess and her love.

Hong Mai's book Record of the Listener is a collection of strange and supernatural tales from 12th century China. This book analyses the context in which the book was written, looking at the author's life, his prefaces, common themes in the tales as well as a discussion on Zhiguai literature.

Unlike other books about different Zhiguai collections Inglis spends much less time analysing the stories themselves for insight into religion and culture, but rather looks at the context of the book itself. He discusses how Hong tried to make sure all his stories were accurate and his intentions for writing. He looks at Hong's personal history and biases that show up in the accounts. He also looks at where Hong has borrowed from earlier stories. One of the things that makes this book interesting is his analysis of the stories moving from an oral tradition to a print culture. He states how in oral traditions stories have no "original" or "authentic" text but rather many versions survive. He sees this as changing during the Song, when people criticise Hong for borrowing from earlier works. The problem with this argument is that in Chinese society the government had always been trying to find the definitive version of works. The overlap between written and oral culture lasted many hundreds of years. For their was a strong manuscript culture before print, and a strong storytelling tradition long after the development of print culture.

The book contains several interesting example of the stories. One is about a man who is kidnapped by cultists who try to sacrifice him to their serpant god/demon. He is able to keep he monster from attacking him by reciting the Mantra of Great Compassion and the cultists let him go. (While stories of Mantras and Sturas being recited to save someone are quite common this is the first example I've come across of cultists intent on human sacrifice).

Another good story was one of some brothers who found some Taoist immortals and their book of alchemy. It was rare to find a book about alchemy that turned metal into silver, as most alchemy I've come across focuses on immortality. But I liked this story as the man who took up alchemy was told off by the Taoists for not using it to help people but just to make himself rich and as a result sentenced to death, which he was able to fend off for three years by doing good deeds.

I enjoyed the analyisis and it definitely made me want to go find a copy of the actual book at SOAS.

This was the first book I bought while we were away in Hay-on-Wye. It's two nice novella's of Collettes. Of the two I prefered Chance Acquaintances, it was a nice funny and quite strange story about Collette (and her fantastic cat) ending up in a hotel for the summer outside of Paris. The story was quite simplistic with little plot but full of odd characters and I enjoyed it a great deal.

Julie I found I didn't enjoy quite so much. It wasn't written in the first person and was less humourous. The main character was quite sad in many ways. She was in her 40s hanging out with people in their 20s, with no money and no goals besides getting more money to get more things. It really was the downside of decadence. Julie and her friends struck me as the people you always wanted to avoid at parties/clubs as they thought they were more interesting or intellectual than they were. In many ways she reminded me of Emma Boveray, failing without direction in her life. While this novella had more of a plot it wasn't really one that I liked as much. Even though there were more hints of bisexuality ;)

Still I did enjoy both of these translations and I will definitely read more Collette. I hope one day my French is good enough to read her in the original!

So I'm reading the American editions of these books, as that's what I found in the second hand shop. They have an amusing introduction by Harlan Ellison saying how Dr who is brilliant and Star Wars and Star Trek is crap. They were obviously a late 80s attempt to introduce Who to an American audience. But in this case they kinda failed. They said this was a "Fourth doctor" adventure, but by the third time the Doctor had referred to Sarah as "my dear" it was pretty obvious that it was not!

The story was another human versus human tale. London was deserted and over-run with time travelling dinosaurs. Sarah was particularly brilliant in this episode, not only did she figure out who was behind the time travel but of course no one listened to her, but she also managed to escape twice, and convince the majority of the colonists that their ideas were wrong.

It was interesting as it was UNIT vs environmental idealists. The only problem with the idealists were that they were wanting to wipe out generations of humans to achieve their "Ideal Earth". The message being you needed to fix things today rather than try and dream of a mystical past.

I did enjoy this book. There's nothing quite as comforting as old Doctor Who adventures when your sick.

This is a little book of three lectures he gave at the British Library in 2000. The books look at the "lost" books of China. Those that appear in Imperial bibliographies but don't survive in extant copies.

In the first lecture Dudbridge examines how these books were lost, repeated destruction of the Imperial library, and what the loss of these books was blamed on by the Chinese of the Song. Zheng Qiao, a Song historian and bibliographer, blamed the books not being properly classified as responsible for their destruction. His theory was that the books that did survive survived because they were had supporters who read and cherished them. One of the things that was interesting is books were described as "lost" at this time, only if they no longer existed in the Imperial library, and many many books existed outside the library, hence the governments almost continual call for books to be sent to the library to be copied and added to the Imperial collections (and that was before their library burnt down).

The next lecture looked at one specific case of a book that had not survived, Summary documents of three kingdoms, but Dudbridge showed that many of it's chapters had indeed survived being copied into part of a collected history, that had then been recopied into an encylopedia but had been left out of the standard history. He examined the material that was left out, that largely had to do with divination and an Emperor looking bad, and was able to draw conclusions about how controversial material was weeded out of the Imperial collections in the process of collation.

The third lecture examined another book, The four gentleman of Liang, that due to problems of classification had been spread among several different areas of an encylopeia and was still missing many parts.

This was a very interesting brief look at (unintentional?) censorship and collation procedures. It also explains the difficulties for historians today in finding texts that may be scattered through encylopedias and cut and changed throughout the centuries.

This book is one of the reasons I'm very glad I'm a member of SOAS library. It is totally gorgeous, and the cheapest copy of it is £86! It is put out by the Printing Museum of Hong Kong (a place I shall have to visit someday). And is just filled with beautiful reproductions of Chinese books from the earliest period on.

The book is dual language in Chinese (traditional characters) and English. The text is quite brief and supports the idea that printing in China began in the 6th century. Even though the earliest dated book we have from China is several centuries later. In fact it doesn't mention the Diamond Sutra from Dunhuang at all, presumably as it resides in the British Library and not in China. But it talks about other earlier items found in Japan and Korea. There is a little overview of each dynasty and the highlights of their production of books. It also includes a description of different types of bindings. As well as a description of the different types of inventions of moveable type printing in China (but does not mention when they were used).

The text is a little propagandaish in places but that kinda just adds to its charm. I would have to say that it should be read with that in mind as there are many challenges to the ideas that are here presented as "fact". But nonetheless it offers an interesting point of view.

However, the real reason for reading this book is the amazing high quality image reproductions of the old texts. They are simply stunning in their clarity and the book is full of so many gorgeous images.

I must check and see if Malcolm Hulke wrote the other Dr Who book I really liked. This one was particularly good as he added so much back story to the characters, particularly the "evil" characters. Here we had the evil mega corporation of a very cyber-punk style future Earth. Where people were forced to live in tiny apartments unless they worked for evil giant corporations, corporations that seemed to encourage murder as part of their ways to acquire planets. Colonists were viewed as suspicious as they broke away from the norm. It was all pretty great.

That said there was a terrible undercurrent of sexism in this book. The people who worked for the mining corporation were all men, with wives hand selected by the company, and the only thing the women colonists did was serve food! (Which even Jo helped with! You'd think she'd have one of her women's lib rants about that!)

But it was an interesting story where the humans were both the heroes and the villains, the alien race was virtually non-existent and the Master's appearance at the end felt a bit forced. Though I have to say the Doctor and the Master did seem on very friendly terms throughout this. Though the Master did at one point want to kill the Doctor he spent much more time trying to convince him to join him.

This was told as Jo's first adventure, and I have to say there wasn't much time devoted to her adapting to being on a totally alien world in a totally different time period. Compared to the very active role she's had in later adventures, even though I just finished reading this yesterday, I can't remember her doing much in this. Though she did manage to organise an escape when she was captured and get herself and the hopeless male captive free.

Overall though it was a nice adventure to read while sick and I'm looking forward to watching the actual episode it was based on.

I must admit that the Well of Loneliness is my favourite book of all time and I realised I should really read some other books by Hall (even if they aren't about queers). I found an absoultely amazing copy of this book while we were away in Hay-on-Wye, complete with a dusk jacket illustration by Hall's partner Una. The subject matter, an Italian immigrant family in Soho in the early 20th century is not something I'd usually be that into but I thought I'd give it a go.

I have to say I totally LOVED this book! But I have a really hard time expressing exactly why. The characters weren't terribly amazing, they had no witty dialogue but there was something very honest and endearing about the whole thing. I got completely absorbed into the story so that when I was reading about them going through the heat of a summer's visit to Kew Gardens I almost started to fan myself with my bookmark even though there was snow outside. I just got totally absorbed into the book.

It reminded me a little of Zola and a little of Mrs. Gaskell. The Zola in that it seemed like a very frank and detailed portrayal of lives of people who don't normally end up as the protagonists of novels. The scene where they went to Kew reminded me very much of the scene where they went to the Louvre in l'assommoir. But in Zola there are always the forced plot device moments of melodrama where everything has to go terribly wrong, that just didn't happen here it seemed much more normal. Despite the strange tragedy at the end and the general feeling of dispair and disatisfaction throughou the book. It reminded me of Mrs Gaskell in that while Hall presented a very honest description of her characters there was a sense of sympathy for all of them, and even the ones that did terrible things, you could still understand.

In many ways this was a very quiet book, no dramatic plot arc. A boy was born and didn't fit in, grew up uncomfortably and lonely and ended up dying alone. But there was just so much packed into these pages. Simple things became incredibly beautiful and though it was sad it wasn't really tragic.

I bought one other book by Hall while we were on holiday and now I am definitely going to hunt down the last two of her novels that I need to find.

This is one of her older books but I'd not managed to get around to reading it before. I thought that it was about Neo-Confucians, which I tend not to like, so put it off. But I needed more social history background for my dissertation so picked it up. I'm glad I did. Yuan Tsai was an elite figure in Song China but he was not a neo-Confucian.

This book is divided up into two parts, the first Ebrey's analysis of social history and her interpretations from using the book, the second half is a direct translation of Yuan Tsai's 12th century work. I have to say I enjoyed Yuan's book much more than I thought I would. He came across as a very sensible man. I was also particularly impressed by (some) of his ideas about women, on the down side he did say that widows would sleep around on you, slave girls were prone to gossip etc. But he also said that women could perform the ancestral rites for you and were just as good as men. He also said that if a woman was widowed it was good for her to be able to read and do maths so she'd be capable of running her husband's family and business.

It was interesting to see how very sensible he was about family relations and why people had problems getting on. This was contrasted with his very snobbish opinions about how the lower classes were all out to rob you. There was quite an interesting bit about how to prevent suicide among your servants (because suicide was a common problem for the elite families). As well as the right and wrong way to attempt to revive a servant you found hanging.

From a printing point of view this book was interesting as he said he had many friends copy the work before it was printed and later had it printed because demand for copies was so high. It was printed twice during his lifetime (though none of these copies survive). And was later reprinted in collections in the Ming and Qing dynasty.

I enjoyed this very much. I think this was one of the most readable primary sources I've found and I enjoyed Ebrey's insights.

Where this not German literature I would say this book very much falls into the Gothic category. The stories were full of evil catholics, unwed mothers and unspeakable activities by the church. The style (in translation) seems half way between a William Morris style re-creation of medivael stories and the gothic novels of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Some of the short stories are a little odd in places, the timing seemed strange, stories seemed to end abruptly of go on too long in places. Michael Kohlmas started very strongly, a man's misfortune and his rampage of revenge, but then it dissolves into court cases and politics.

There isn't much in the way of characterisation, but the stories make up for that in atmosphere. While in many ways the stories are morality tales there is an awful lot of gray area, and it is frequently the (Catholic) church itself that hands out the misfortune.

I found this to be an interesting and different collection of stories. As always whenever I read anything translated from German I wish my German were good enough to read it in the original as they do have some wonderfully gloomy stories.

This is a collection of Philip K Dick stories that was obviously put out to promote the movie adaptation with Ben Affleck (which I've not seen). For instance no where on the cover does it mention that Paycheck is actually just one of 12 short stories in this book. But for the most part it is a really great collection of stories.

They are very cold war/nuclear holocaust focused and as a child of the 80s I loved that! It's kinda like a bunch of Fallout stories. The most disturbing was the family who got thrown forward 7 years in time after the nuclear war and had to decide whether they would brave the bombs to get another 3 years of peaceful life or if they'd stay in the horrible future. There were stories of robot fighting nannies, kid's who could see alternate futures, rather strange post-apocalyptic civilisations and pod people.

Also in this book was the very odd anti-abortion story that was set in a world where in the US abortion was legal till the age of 12 and the pound had ceased hunting dogs and cats and was after children. Women ceased to want babies and therefore the world was VERY BAD. It wasn't really satire enough to hold up and just felt rather odd and heavy handed.

The characters were for the most part standard middle America, stereotypes for the sake of social commentary but the situations were interesting and strange enough that it didn't matter much.

Overall a very enjoyable collection. I first started reading Philip K Dick with his short stories (a few of which were repeated here) and I still find them very enjoyable.

Glen Dudbridge is one of my favourite Chinese history/literature scholars. He is interested in stories of the supernatural and how they fit into popular culture. This is an excellent collection of his essays published over a span of 36 years. Unfortunately because I was reading this for dissertation reference I was only able to read a few of the articles. But come January this is definitely one of the books that I'm going to go back and read in full as he writes about so many interesting topics, from Tang vernacular tales to the Journey to the west.

It's been a long time since I've read any Anatole France. He's one of my favourite authors but I'd read pretty much everything I'd been able to find of his in translation. But then on holiday I found about 8 more books (of which I bought 4).

This was a lovely short slice of life novel. It was kind of like a better version of Nana. It focused on a girl who worked as an actress in a theatre and had several rather disastrous affairs. One of the things I liked best was that the girl was rather horrified by the fact that one of the other actresses liked women. When the wise elderly doctor heard this he told her about Plato's Origin of Love story and how it was perfectly natural and normal for women to feel that way. (How much I do love early 20th century French literature for their portrayals of lesbians!). It made me happy that the character who was obviously the author's spokesman felt this way.

The story was good, there were a lot of nice introspective and philosophical bits which were amusing and interesting. It reminded me just how much I love Anatole France and I'm looking forward to reading the rest.

I was very pleased to find a Dr and Romana story that I'd not watched. This one was an interesting sci-fi one about two ships that collided and got phased together when they came out of hyperspace. To make added drama there was a monster on the loose and the universe's most highly addictive drug being smuggled in. It was quite a good little story, though rather low on character interaction. The other characters didn't seem very developed and even Romana seemed highly underused, reduced to the ranks of "companion" instead of super-intelligent time lord. Still it was quite fun and I would still like to see the episode.

I really enjoyed Holmes' book about the beats living in New York and this seems to be the only other book of his in print. This was a story a night in the life of an old alcoholic jazz musician. It felt more literary than beat, despite the long sentence prose. Even without knowing much Jazz the story was still great. Drunken musicians are the same whatever the genre. Disillusioned, imitated, wanting to give up, visionary and fed up. The story follows the main character, the Horn, through one night, but it also focuses in on the people he meets and their back stories. The woman jazz singer who was taken out of the South became a junkie but then got clean, was I think the most interesting. But it was also interesting to see the different takes on racism, and what living in different parts of the US, and belonging to different subcultures affected that. There was a feeling of jazz bringing blacks and whites together, so it was possible for the white people to respect the black men, but it also came across that even in that setting the white men still viewed the black women as exotic creatures.

It was all very interesting, enjoyable and well written. It seemed to hold a lot of insights and truths. Though there felt like something was missing, that it was almost too cleverly constructed to be as honest as it was trying to be. Like maybe there was too much put in together. But definitely worth reading anyway.

This is an excellent collection of essays/articles about the reign of Huizong, the Emperor of Song China who ruled before the country was invaded. The articles look at a huge variety of topiccs, his interest in Taoism, his active role promoting medical education and improving the status of doctors, his use of stele to promote learning. The policies of education and reform. As well as his personal interests in the arts. The widely diverse areas covered provide a deep understanding of the political situation, while also filling in social and economic history as well. It is necessary to have a basic understanding of the period before reading this book as the author's don't take much time explaining the backgrounds but if you already have an understanding of Song history this will definitely deepen it. While focusing mainly on the Emperor himself and his ministers you still get a greater feel of life in general during this time and the different factions that were fighting for power. Definitely recommended.

This is a nice dual language (Chinese simplified and English) book of folk tales. I found it SO much more enjoyable than the simplified short stories I've been reading.

The Chinese had lovely sentence structure and good grammer examples. It was nice and easy to read with only a few unusual vocabulary words, which the English language provided. The Chinese texts were much better than the English. As the English would frequently remove references to the fact that people had been drinking and was much more simplified. But the Chinese text was fun, enjoyable and good practice.

The stories were nice traditional folk tales, mostly about Spring festival traditions. There was one about an absoultely horrid Ming official who became the god of wealth! (Don't want to worship him!) and a very sweet one about the uncle of an immortal who couldn't give up his world ideas (like paying off debts and not wanting to leave his wife) so him and his wife became gods on earth instead of heavenly immortals. There were also dragon kings, door gods, fu dao le, etc.

It was a very nice little collection. There were two illustrations on every page, the style was slightly cartoonish versions of traditional Chinese paintings. But I liked them. This was a great little find and if I find part two I'll definitely buy it.

The latest volume of the Love and Rockets New Stories arrived in the post yesterday and I couldn't wait to read it! I started with Jamie's stories and they were truly fantastic! While there was no Hopey in the story Maggie said she was settled down with a partner and they were wanting to have a baby!!!!! Hopey settling into domestic lesbian bliss? I really hope we see that in volume 4!!!

But we got to see Maggie out on a date with Ray, a nice evening in her life. Then there was an absoultely wonderful story about when they were kids in "Browntown". I normally don't like the children stories as they don't see as realistic but this one was totally perfect. Young Maggie in her rainbow t-shirt! Which two years later was swapped for Kiss! The story of her father's affair. But there was also the tragic tale of her young brother being terribly sexually abused by one of the neighbour kids. The ending was so dramatic and sad. And the flashforward to the present day just made it even more so. I have to say it may be one of the best things Jamie's done in ages. I loved it so much and now it's done all I want to do is go back and read the whole thing again.

Gilbert I'm afraid still remains a mystery to me. His first story was very odd, sexual and violent. Not having read his earlier stories I feel kinda lost with the children and the quest to be a movie star. I know I should go and read his earlier works, but I fear he just doesn't get to me the way Jamie's stories do. Though I really should give them a go.

This book is a great companion book to John Caffee's the Thorny Gates of Learning. Chaffee looked at the schools and academies of Song China and how people studied for the examinations. This book examins the examination system and looks at how the civil service was structured. It looks at routes into the civil service, the civil service rank system and the context of public administration and the evolution of the Song system. He also looks at the regional variations.

The writing is a little dry, but Lo does a good job of comparing the Song system with civil service systems in Europe. This is quite a dense book containing a lot of information. I used it as background reference material for my dissertation and it gave me much more information that I needed but I felt it was still interesting to read. What it lacked was any kind of social analysis of the system, what influence the civil service and the qualification exams had on the larger society, but then this felt more like a political history than a social history. Still it definitely provided much needed background information and was highly useful to me.

I did enjoy this quite a bit. Moorcock said that he'd been asked to write "A Michael Moorcock novel with Dr who in it" and he did. (Though this was much more of the comedy Cornelius Moorcock and much less of the eternal sufferings of Corum and Elric.) I have to say that the biggest impression I got while reading this was that Douglas Adams would have loved it!

For a Doctor who novel written by an American this wasn't bad. (Though it did make me make a face when Amy made a joke referring to American sports teams!) The biggest problem it had was that Moorcock wrote the majority of it before he'd seen any episodes of Matt Smith as the doctor, therefore as this was supposed to be 11 and Amy, the language and mannerisms were so much more like 10, I found I mostly picturing David Tennant in my head, and only occasionally Matt.

The book had a nice big multiverse where Law and Chaos fought each other and balance was needed to be maintained. There was a nice variety of Moorcock characters from other dimensions. A big space feel to parts while other parts were very much sending up modern culture, and in particular "Anglophiles".

I can't say this made me want to read any more modern Dr Who novels, but it did make me want to go back and re-read a bunch of Moorcock. Unfortuantely all my copies have dissapeared so I'll have to keep an eye out in the 2nd hand bookshops.

I thought this book was ok. There were some interesting well written passages and it was a nice insight into the mindset of post WWI Britain. The writing style was easy to read with some nice turns of phrase. But I felt so many things let this book down.

My biggest problem was the lack of characterisation. None of the main characters were likeable and I think the problem came from them trying to fill certain societal stereotypes rather than being real people. There was no interests in Lady Chatterley's life besides sex and babies. Lawerence took great pains to describe her as a "New woman" but she lacked any of the interests or intellectual capabilities of a new woman. Indeed it seemed all she wanted was sex and babies. The lack of interests could be justified to represent the boredom and emptiness of her life, but even with that consideration it seemed too much a literary invention and not enough like real life.

The Lover was just annoying, his switching between Derbyshire and "proper" English was just a bit mystifying. Supposedly representing the "common man" he was just oafish and annoying. While the book tried to bring up the ideas of socialism and bolshevisim it kinda did so in a very classist way. The working class people were portrayed as kinda stupid and annoying, and while the prejudice against them was clear, it almost seemed like Lawerence was trying to justify it. Likewise there seemed to be a blasting of women who wanted more out of life than simply to be mothers and that this was in some way making men "unmanly".

In many ways I felt like this was chick lit or a romance novel, but written by someone who didn't seem to like people much.

I must admit that I don't think I'll be reading anything else by Lawerence anytime soon.

I've read other plays by Aeschylus and really enjoyed them, particularly the way he writes about gender dynamics. I must admit Agamemnon took me awhile to get into (I think this was partly due to the fact I started with another translation). I enjoyed Clymenestra but found the old male chorus a bit dull. I must say I really liked the portrayl of Clymenestra as the fierce mother and totally was on her side against Agamemnon! But I really Loved Cassandra's speeches. I thought she was great.

The Libation bearers I thought was interesting. But I found it strange that the kids had no sympathy for their mother. Did they not remember or like their sister? I mean she'd have done the same for them (presumably) if their father had decided to sacrifice them to the gods, so why did he get all their sympathy? I must say though I still enjoyed it.

The Eumenides had the best chorus of any Greek play I've read. I LOVED the Furies. I think they were definitely my favourite characters. (I'm sure it must say something about a play when the chorus has the best part). They were just so driven and mad and RIGHT! I was terribly disapointed in Apollo, his whole "mothers do nothing for their children and it's only the fathers who are important" line was pretty reprehensible. All told I think the characters that were condemmed did the right thing and those that were vindicated the wrong. But then I guess that's why it's a tragedy. Despite some very misogynistic feelings it was still and interesting look and gender roles and society roles. The ending where Athena tried to tame the furies seemed odd. Not so much that she tried it, but that they bought it! But I must say there were some fantastic women characters in these plays.

Still enjoyable to read and I look forward to seeing it on stage tomorrow.

Hammet is definitely becoming one of my favourite new authors this year. This is an interesting collection of his short fiction. Not all the stories here are brilliant, some are a bit bizarre and silly (like the detective who goes to a made up Eastern Europe country to start a revolution or the one where he becomes a sheriff's deputy in a cowboy town) but they are all enjoyable. When they are at the best the detective is hard, clever and having a soft spot for his friends/lovers. What I like best about Hammett's hero is that he is not a violent man or a tough guy, despite existing in a world where that is the norm. He gets where he is, frequently by being beaten up and then having to think his way out of or into whatever situation he finds himself in.

One of the stories that impressed me the most was "dead yellow women" with a title like that I was really expecting the worst, something like another Sax Rohmer yellow peril story. But you could tell that it was written by someone who'd spent time in China town and around Chinese Americans. It came across as not-racist, while there were some stereotypes, there were also Chinese characters that went against those stereotypes. He used actual Chinese words and seemed to understand the differences between Manchu and Han, and Cantonese. I was very pleasantly surprised. It was also an interesting mystery (which was not as surprising).

The short stories also included Tulip, which was supposed to be a new novel he was working on before he died but was left unfinished. It's a such a shame he didn't finish it as it was lovely. The same beautiful style, though slightly more mature, more character-driven, less plot and honest.

The introduction by his long time partner was brilliant. It was filled with such love and sadness and understanding.

All told a very good collection of his work. While the short stories don't have as much character development and diversity as the novels they are definitely still worth reading. The writing style is beautiful and gritty at the same time.

So after finishing the Klarkashton cycle I decided I was still in the mood for scary stories so decided to read this volume next. I have to say I think I definitely preferred it. The first few stories were totally brilliant. They were the set in a mythical middle ages where creatures of myth and legend, lamias and vampires roamed the woods, most likely wanting to devour you, possibly just wanting to have sex with you. It was a really good blend of mystery, horror and legends. I have to say I think I definitely prefer Smith's middle ages stories over all his others.

The City of the Singing Flame was next which was a strange extradimensional tale with bombs and a not quite realised threat. It was interesting and different but a little odd. The second entombment was quite creepy but I did enjoy the chain of aforforgomon - a nice story of the doom of a guy throughout reincarnations (or possibly just a bad drug trip).

The last two stories just kinda blended together with horrors and demons and general unpleasantness. I think while I like spooky stories I may not be cut out to read "horror" as I find it begins to bore me after awhile. So much sameness and if you don't care about the characters (as there is no characterisation) no ammount of demons and death will make it more interesting.

Still overall I thought this was a good collection but will be taking a break from Smith for awhile. Though I would like to read more of his stories at some point. Definitely no where near as good as Dunsany or Lovecraft. But when he's on form he's very enjoyable.

Bill found this for me the other day at Orc's nest. I have to say I don't think this is the best collection of Smith's stories. There are not enough fantastical ones and far too many mundane horror but I still enjoyed it. There were three stories here that I'd read before, but they were different versions to the ones published in the old paperbacks. I have to say though while it was interesting to read the earlier versions of the stories, it was in most cases obvious why the extra bits were cut, in one story the middle chapter totally gave away the ending, and in another moving the forward to an afterward gave more of a sense of mystery and suspense to the story.

But I did enjoy the stories, I also enjoyed reading the bibliographic notes at the end saying when and where the story was published and extra things (like if Smith liked it or not). The stories were all written between 1930 and 1933. My favourite story was The werewolf of Averoigne, being one of the few that was written in the middle ages (14th century) and as such suited Smith's style much more. It was a lovely little horror story (despite giving itself away). It felt oppressive and mysterious and I really enjoyed the style. There were also quite a lot set on Mars, which I enjoyed as I love the way Smith combines his sci-fi with Lovecraft style horror. (though they do run together in similarities afterwards). The treader in dust was another nice spooky story.

Not being that into the "mythos" I was quite surprised at what was included here as a lot didn't really strike me as very "Lovecraftian" but I'm sure the editors know much better than me! An interesting collection but I think I prefer the older paperbacks for a more balanced view of Smith's works.

I was really hoping to like this more. I did really enjoy the woman in white but I found this quite disappointing. I was excited about the idea of a morally ambiguous heroine and a witty novel, hoping for another Becky Sharpe, but alas it was not meant to be. The main character was at first at spoilt girl then she decided on “a plan” but her plan was failed immediately and all the scheming came from Mr. Wragge who was rather awful. I felt like him and his wife were straight out of a Dickens novel, with their cartoonish behaviour. His wife’s “condition” just wasn’t written very well. Wragge was just far too clever, conniving, annoying and just generally unpleasant to read. The one interesting and clever woman was the villain. The plot was rather obvious how it was going to play out, so there was just no tension in the different "scenes" very little changed, and even if all the schemeing did eventually get the girls their fortune back, it was mostly through marriage and not through their own ingenuity that they got their rewards. The lesson seemed to be all women try to do to help themselves will fail, they are only rewarded for being beautiful and keeping to their proper place in society. Which needless to say I did not much care for!

I felt the writing style was rather bland. Nowhere was the nice first person prose of the woman in white. While it was supposed to be humorous (I think) I just wasn’t finding it so. Half way through I found myself loosing interest and decided to try and finish it as quickly as possible.

I must say after reading this I much less interested in reading any more Wilkie Collins.

I seem to be spending an awful lot of time with old Dr Who at the moment. Listening to audio books at work, watching a lot of old 1-3 doctors adventures and read this novel in a day! I am really enjoying it though. In many ways I much prefer the older adventures when the doctor wasn't omnipotent and all the minor characters were competent and weren't waiting to be "inspired" by the doctor's brilliance but rather just got on with things and were much more competent in general.

This was an interesting story about an evil chemical company who were trying to make money by improving the quality of oil while making a huge amount of industrial waste, industrial waste that was completely deadly to humans and also produced killer maggots! It was a bit of a silly story, but you could tell they were trying to treat serious issues such as pollution and environmental sustainability, which is quite god for a kids scifi show in the 70s. There was also the political and economic issue of the closure of the mines, not to mention the problems between the Welsh and the English!

Jo was quite odd in this. At first I thought it was an early episode for her when they decided she was going to be a "women's libber" and kept calling people on their sexist terminology (which given Pertwee's tendency to be a bit condescending was probably a good balance). But it turned out to be her last episode. There was a completely unbelievable romance with the hippie scientist. They seemed to have fallen in love after having one conversation and spending the evening together, then they kissed once, then she decided to leave the doctor and marry him! It seemed as silly as when Leela fell in love, particularly as Jo was there to represent women's independence! I know when she returns to Sarah Jane this autumn she's going to have her grandson with her and I'm wondering if he will be related to the same scientist or if it'll be re-written! Still it was nice to see her all competent and active, and not just standing around screaming (though there was a bit of that with the maggots).

The Doctor and the Brigadier were brilliant bickering all the time like an old married couple. (I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere hidden away on the internet is some Brigadier/Doctor) It was interesting to see the Brigadier so much out of his element and having to take orders from the company and the miners.

All in all an enjoyable read and I look forward to watching the episodes, even if they won't be as realistic as I pictured while reading it!

I bought this book as it was an intermediate level text of modern short stories that included pinyin and a cd of the stories being read. However, the problem with this book was the grammer had been simplified so that the sentance structures were terribly basic, and thus all sense of style or even the feel that it was a Chinese text had been removed. On the other hand there was a huge ammount of new vocabulary. So I found myself looking up lots of new words, which also disrupted the flow of the story.

I only managed to read about two thirds of the first story (which was about a 100 pages in length). It was about a modern American Chinese girl moving to China with her family and marrying into a Chinese family and their cultural clashes. It just really wasn't my sort of thing. The other stories seemed to have similar moralistic type stories and didn't seem to have a more interesting or literary style. So eventually I've decided to give up on this, at least for the time being and read some other Chinese language books.

Oursin has been talking about Dame Rebbecca since I've known her and I've been really curious to read her work. I discovered a bunch of her novels in the Crouch End Oxfam and ended up picking this one as it was an autobiographical account of her relationship with H.G. Wells, and as I'd recently read (and not been that impressed with) his book on his relationship with her, I though it would be an interesting counterpart.

This was the first book I think I'd ever read that had me tearing up by p. 16. I guess being somewhat familiar with the people behind the characters brought a kind of closeness much quicker than a book with new characters. The criticism I read of this book complained that while Sunflower was supposed to be stupid, she wasn't. But I don't think Sunflower was stupid at all, I think she saw herself as stupid because she wasn't really valued by the people around her. The way she wrote seemed just full of self esteem issues, constantly comparing herself unfavorably to others, thinking if she could just get with the right man she'd be happy and complete. The writing style was great, while not in the first person it seemed like a total stream of consciousness from Sunflower, what she was thinking, how she'd get distracted when bored, and her wonderful insights into the people around her. It reminded me a little of Kerouac's style, though the subject matter was the total opposite.

The story itself lacks much of a plot. Rather it's a series of scenes, mostly dinners, between the main characters. But it remains interesting thanks to Sunflower's commentaries on the situations. I have to say the men in this book come off as quite hideous. The HG character is pompous and a bit dull, Sunflower's criticisms of him and his world view are very biting and amusing though. I have to say as much as I love HG Wells, I loved to see him taken apart like this. The man Sunflower is pursuing Pitt, is also repulsive and rather uninteresting and you can tell as much as Sunflower idolises him she'd be no better off with him than she is with Wells.

I really did enjoy this book and think I will definitely be getting more by her, and reading the book of her non-fiction writing that has been sitting on my shelf these past few months!

Having enjoyed "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" so much I decided that I would read Agnes Gray, this was definitely the lesser of the two novels and yet it was still interesting and enjoyable. What I liked most about this book was the extreme frankness with which it was written. Anne didn't attempt to hide her contempt for the people around her. I loved her descriptions of how horrible the first set of children she had to look after were. It seemed like something out of the worst of modern reality television. I also liked how she admitted her own deficiency when dealing with them, loosing her temper, getting angry and physically violent. The second family she stayed with seemed much more reasonable and I have to say it felt like Agnes' own prejudices kept her from enjoying that position as much as she did. Yes the daughters came across as dreadfully shallow, but they did also seem to want to be friends. Even if Agnes didn't feel sorry for her pupil marrying the horrible Lord I did.

Agnes as a character was much less outspoken than Helen. She was quiet and awkward. Having read both books I felt like Helen was the ideal and Agnes much more the reality.

The only downfall in this book was the religion and the romance. The religion felt a little heavy handed at times, particularly the long scene in the poor woman's cottage that went on at the difference between the bad rector and the good curate. Likewise the romance felt a bit artificial. It was almost as if it was just there for convention as if a book about a young woman had to have a romance and end with marriage. The wistful longings seemed a bit out of place, though I did laugh as I was getting a bit bored, just as the narration apologized for boring the reader!

It was a very quick read, like Tenant it has a nice light style. While not brilliant it was definitely worth reading.

I really enjoyed this collection of short stories, some were horrifying, but some were surprisingly sweet and even had a happy ending! It was nice to read a collection of Smith's work where not all the characters died horribly at the end. The stories reminded me a lot of Lord Dunsany in this volume. A lot taking place in mystical places with strange gods. I also loved the his scifi take on horror, evil Lovecraftian style hordes in space instead of New England. I would definitely recommend this collection, even though it's volume 2, you really don't need to read volume 1 first, though I will definitely be buying volume 1 and reading it.

A friend loaned me this book as she knows how much I like China and said it was a mystery using the characters from Hong lou meng (A dream of red mansions/The story of the stone). Unfortunately there were SOOO many HUGE historical inacuracies I wasn't able to get more than 36 pages into it before I had to give up!

First, there was a problem with the year on page 3. He said it was "The year of the serpent 3,339 (650) AD". Chinese dates have never been given in thousands of years, but would be given with the dynasty, emperor, and reign period (In this case Tang Ming Huang). Then in the next paragraph he mentioned "The goddess Guan Yin". Now Guan Yin during the Tang dynasty was still the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara and had yet to undergo her gender transformation (which happened in the Sung several hundred years later).

The author then had characters discussing how one woman was persecuted by the "neo-Confucians" now I know that the term Neo-Confucian would never be uttered by Chinese people of the period as it is a western term but could see it being used. But it also didn't start till the Sung!!!!! Hundreds of years after the story. Not to mention she was being persecuted because the neo-Confucians didn't believe a woman could be competent, when a woman had been Emperor, just over 30 years before this story was set!

Then they began talking of the Emperor "Wu Di" by which I was able to determine they meant "Han Wu Di", but just referring to the Emperor Wu, when there were so many who claimed that name (The most recent to 650 being of course Wu Zetian!) seemed ridiculous.

Then there was something about a forgery of Sima Chien's calligraphy and I just gave up! If you're looking for a Chinese mystery set in the Tang I'd definitely recommend Van Gulik's Judge Dee mysteries instead! They also have a few historical inaccuracies (which he acknowledges as they are based on Ming stories) but are done so much better!

I must admit I didn't quite like this one as much as the first book. There was just too much action and much less plot. It still had a reasonable pulp feel to it but the prostitute's with super martial arts abilities seemed to be pushing things a bit too much into the realm of comics instead of the pulp/film noir world.

Still it was a nice short entertaining read. Not emotional or complicated but entertaining.

Given my recent obsession with pulp novels and graphic novels I was very glad to come across a couple of Sin City books at Oxfam. I'd been meaning to read Sin City for ages but somehow never got around to it.

I did enjoy this book a lot. I liked the ugly anti-hero and his quest for revenge for the woman he loved. It felt very pulpy and the style and the narrative was great. I felt the serial killer aspect and the over-the-top violence was not so pulpy. I think I would have enjoyed it more without these modern elements but still it was good overall and I will definitely read more.

I may have a new favourite Bronte! This book was everybit as wonderful as wuthering heights and so much better than Jane Eyre! I loved the writing style, it was very 19th century but light and easy to read. The plot was a simple (yet complicated and tragic) romance story but the characterisation was superb. They all felt very real.

Helen, despite her tendancy towards Christian moralising was one of the greatest women in literature I've come across. Beautiful, intelligent, fiercly independant and always able to speak her mind no matter the circumstances. I loved that she was arguing against enforced gender roles in the begining, when discussing how she should raise her son. That she kept to her own ideas of convention and morality. Even though she was very good I liked the fact that it was a morality she'd decided for herself, and not one that she accepted from society, but would fly in the face of society to do what she thought was right. I don't want to say more without giving too much away but I really loved her. Her speech at the end about the rose brought me to tears.

Even her husband was drawn with a great deal of sympathy and humanity. In Mrs Gaskell's biography of Charlotte I learned how their brother was a drunk and opium addict and he was the inspiration for Helen's husband. Even when Helen hated him when his behaviour was at his worst there was still a spark there that reminded you why he was likeable. He was so far from the charicature of a drunk and unfaithful husband that you read in other 19th century literature.

The minor characters also felt well fleshed out and believable. The incidents of drunkeness and romance, while not as shocking as they might have been back then, still felt very real and emotional.

I loved this book, I think it's one of the best I've read this year and I am looking forward to reading Agnes Grey.

This book comes across as well written even in translation. The prose is easy to read and the level of detail is very high so you can picture what everything looks like perfectly.

The book (at least as far as I've gotten) has no plot, it's all about the characterisation and unfortunately the characterisation is the most regrettable thing I've read in a LONG time.

Imagine if you will a book written less than a century after slavery ended, written by a white man, where one of the central characters was a black man who was fufilled and happy with his enslavement. Who looked on it as a good part of his life. There would be outrage. And yet it is perfectly acceptable for a man to have a woman character totally happy with her bondage. I just couldn't accept this. I've read a lot of books set in misogynistic cultures and time periods and enjoyed a lot of them as the women struggle against or take advantage of the repressive systems. But here there was no questioning, rather the mother was portrayed as the perfect submissive muslim wife, as the husband was portrayed as the perfect tyrannical husband.

Beyond the unquestioning sexism within the pages was the problem of the perfection of all the main characters. The husband was stern at home, beloved of his friends, clever, funny, etc. They didn't come across as real people at all, just stereotypes. It also struck me as odd that the "beautiful" daughter was the described as the beautiful one even though she was going against the cultural ideas of beauty at the time but rather matched late 20th century western ideals of beauty, she was blonde, pale and thin. Which made me wonder who was this book being written for?

I'm afraid it was too much, the only reason I got as far as I did was because I was reading it for a book club and even then every page was an effort. It has been a very long time since I hated a book this much.

This book was written in 1947 when Clarke was on his summer holiday from King's College. It's an interesting piece of propaganda, set 30 years in the future when man is planning his first trip to the moon (using atomic rockets). The book itself is partly fascinating and partly dull. It's an interesting glimpse to see what people thought the future would be like, and what was thought to inspire the rocket engineers of the future. The problem as it's more propaganda than novel there is no real characterisation, the main character is there for people to explain things too. The other HUGE problem with this book is that there is not one woman in the whole thing! I would have thought that Clarke, hoping to inspire people, would have thought to encourage women too! It's not like women scientists were unheard of in his day, particularly at King's where many women scientists had made quite interesting and important discoveries!

Still it was interesting to see what was important, focusing on the take off of the rocket, not the actual mission, the moon landing is left unwritten.

Overall it was ok, but not something I have any desire to re-read.

The Glass Key was very interesting and different. There was a much greater distance from the characters, you never really felt you knew what the characters were doing or why until the end of the chapter when they let on to their ploy. At first I was a little confussed as to what the main characters did for a living were they detectives? Politicians? Gangsters? or the powers behind the throne. The main character was just a gambler, a gambler who knew how things should be run and why. He starts the novel on a loosing streak which is broken but then the guy who was supposed to pay him back disappears so he goes after him to get his money. Ned Beaumont then seems to spend the rest of the novel drinking and getting beaten up. After one confrontation with the bad guys that leaves him so badly beaten up he's unconscious in hospital for days, he checks himself out and goes back and deals with them again. But his ideas are always right. The plot is full of mysteries as there are all sorts of double crosses between the two opposing sides of the upcoming election for Senator and District attorney. Ned works for the guy who runs the town, but seems to be loosing out this election. It's a nice contrast between crime and politics. It even, almost, has a happy ending.

This was a random find in Charring Cross road, a lovely old 1950s Asimov novel. I think this might be one of the best of his I've read since the Caves of Steel. The blurb appealed to me as it talked about a mad man who was predicting the end of the world. The world in question ended up being a small colony that faced a repressive colonial government as it's citizen's were being treated like second class citizen's by another world that took their valuable goods and left them with nothing. It had an interesting mystery style plot and a lot of good social commentary. It really examined the whole colonial system and racial segregation and the exploitation of native peoples in an interesting way. That said all the social problems examined were kinda tied up far too neatly with a scientific discovery that changed everything in the last chapter. It had a lot of characters but I never found myself getting lost remembering who was who. The characterisation was a little light, no one really grew or developed, but the characters were for the most part likable, even the murderer. All told I found it to be a very interesting and engaging story.

A friend of mine has long claimed that everything that dark horse touches turns to shit, and I must admit I'm inclined to agree with him. This was the first Dirty Pair comics done for Dark Horse, having lost one of the two American writers. At first I really enjoyed this graphic novel, it seemed like they were trying to add some character depth to the pair, which started nice, but then ended up taking away what's best about them. In this book they enter a strange virtual reality, that turns out to be one twisted man's obsession with them combined with a desire to destroy the world. What's the strangest thing was that the pair didn't kill ANYONE, accidentally or not. There were no unintended mass civilian deaths, not even one! It seemed like they were attempting to write a more serious story, developing the characters while still attempting to leave plenty of visual "cheesecake" but it just didn't work for me and I missed the lightheartedness of the earlier comics. It was ok, but I don't think I'll be reading anymore. Still it was enjoyable to go back and re-read these comics after so many years.

I've loved this movie for years and it was great to read the book it was based on. It's always interesting to see how writing the 30s and 40s was a lot less scrutinized than Hollywood. Not only did they come right out and say that Cairo was gay in the book but he was also in love/lust with the kid who did all the killings. They also explicitly said how Sam and Bridget slept together, and the very unromantic reasons for doing so. In fact if there seemed to be any true romance with Sam in this book it seemed to be with the secretary. Bridget he admired for her ruthlessness but only at the very end did it seem like he might love her. The other great moment was when Sam and Bridget were having a midnight meal, he put his tablecloth on the table before they ate, cause back then even hard boiled detectives used tablecloths!

I liked how Sam wasn't really a tough guy, he was tall and a looked, I loved the description of him as a "blonde satan" but he wasn't even a hard drinker compared with most pulp novels. He got away with everything by just out thinking the police and criminals around him.

All told the book was very enjoyable. I really love every novel of Hammet's that I've read so far and am going to hunt down all that I can find by him.

When I was a teenager me and my best friends in America all collected the Dirty Pair comics, though they had much more than me. So I was quite pleased when I found the first 4 collections of stories for very little money at our local charity shop. I'm afraid the comics weren't quite as funny as I remembered. The premise was quite good, cute young women working on the side of good but killing millions more people than they save.

The first story was an introduction to the pair and their cat, it contained the infamous "bloody card" and quite a bit of cute mayhem. There was a bit of an odd feeling to the stories. It felt that an over-the-top comedy anime pair had been put into a rather big cyberpunk world. In the first collection they go to hunt down a bio-tech operator on behalf of another bio-tech operator.

The third story sees the girls confined to a planet and assigned a reporter to improve their image with a sympathetic piece on them. I think of the three this is the funniest story, particularly the way the reporter envisions the acts of destruction the girls go through. Though this does feel like the biggest difference between the anime comedy and the cyberpunk setting. The villains are pure cyberpunk, obsessed with sex and transferring themselves to different bodies through use of their cyberwear. At one point one of them seems to be using an ipad which considering this was written in the mid-late 80s is pretty cool!

While not a great comic it was fun to go back and read these for the nostalgia.

The second story is probably my favorite of the first three, the pair go up against Shasti, a woman who was engineered to be the ultimate agent, grown in a vat, given split personality and generally royally fucked over by the agency that made her. Eventually she manages to break free of her programming and go rogue. It's interesting as despite her evil she's a sympathetic villain, and all the flashbacks to the early days of the pair are interesting and enjoyable. Plus it has Kei quite drunk which is very amusing!

This is a Pertwee and Jo novel, unlike most of the Pertwee stories he's actually traveling in space into the future in this one. It's a great sci-fi story with war, diplomacy and intrigue. It's set several centuries in the future where Earth and Draconia have colonised the galaxy. The Earth has a female president who wants peace, and yet everything seems to be conspiring to get the two powers to go to war (in this case everything means The Master). It's a great story of deception and intrigue, and though Jo and the Doctor spend most of their time as prisoners as one group or the other there is still quite a lot of action and interesting political debate. I have to say this was one of my favourite of the Who novels, I'd really like to see the episode though I'm sure the aliens would loose something coming out of the BBC instead of my imagination.