I am at an age now where I find myself more likely to re-read books I loved when I was young than to seek out new authors. I am not sure exactly why. I suspect that it is because when I was young I read everything much less critically which gave the love a chance to grow. These days I read with a more jaundiced eye particularly towards people working in my own genres. I am much more aware of the tricks used and am much more easily bounced out of my willing suspension of disbelief. I do not for a moment believe that writers working today are less skilled than the ones I used to read, I can actually see that in some cases they are much more so. It's just that these days I set the bar much higher. That's my theory anyway. Of course, there are … [Read more...]
Some of My Favourite Things: the Kindle
I love this device. I really really do. Even though I bought it from Amazon US and a month later Amazon released a more powerful UK version at about half the price I paid for mine (including postage and import duties) I still feel like I got my money’s worth. Why? It lets me carry a library around in my jacket pocket. It’s light, its battery lasts for a month if I switch off the wireless connection and it lets me buy a new book or even get one for free pretty much wherever I am in the world. I am one of those people who dreads being without something to read. I will read the back of a Corn Flakes box if there is nothing else. This device saves me from that awful fate. I have been reading ebooks for a long time, starting with my … [Read more...]
Weekend Reading
At the weekend I downloaded Tarzan At The Earth's Core onto my Kindle and sat outside in the sun and read it in a few hours. This was a book I loved when I was fifteen. It involves Tarzan joining an expedition to the hollow world at the Earth's core, the dinosaur haunted setting of Burroughs Pellucidar novels to rescue David Innes from the clutches of the Korsars. It's an odd book which features a lot of running around, cliff-hanger endings and prehistoric monsters. It ends abruptly as if Burroughs had reached his contractual word count for the project and just shut the whole thing down. There is no real structure, very little characterisation and the writing is clumsy. And still, I not only finished the book, I enjoyed it, even though I … [Read more...]
