Freewheeling Andy

I had read in review that it was Bougainville, and I guess early on it wasn't registering that the name wasn't prominent. My bad.

oops

I never read The Third Chimpanzee. I've just finished Mister Pip which I really enjoyed. I don't think at any time he specifically says Bougainville is the location, which is odd. But it obviously is Bougainville, both from the civil war and mining and papuan references, and (on checking an atlas) the town names. It's much darker than I expected. I did like the multiple-levels-of-pip theme; there's Pip, and Mr Watts as Pip, and Mathilda as Pip. I like the slightly fictionalised self that Mr Watts presented and the way you're left wondering if the same was true of Matilda (although it probably wasn't). I've never really been partial to the "I must write my story" style of writing, and this is another book which references books and writing lots, but somehow it wasn't as frustrating as that usually is. I've now started reading a history of St Pancras Station by Simon Bradley.

I've just picked up and started reading Mister Pip, by Lloyd Jones. So far, so deeply impressed. As I was expecting to be after reading his excellent and quite obscure Biografi. What is more odd, though, is how it ties in, entirely coincidentally, I think, with the last book I read. Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond describes itself as a "history of how humanity has developed and succeeded over the last 13000 years". Not, you'd have thought, an obvious crossover point with a book about a civil war torn island off New Guinea, and about one of Dickens more popular character. Strangely, though, Diamond spends a lot of time focussing on New Guinea, and the differences between the mainland and the islands, the differences both racial and cultural, which come from thousands of years of the influence of biogeography. Weirdly, even 20 pages into Mister Pip, I'm finding having read the previous book really useful in giving me a context. All the more oddly, not long before Guns, Germs and Steel, I'd been re-reading David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. Once again there are massive overlaps, with Diamond describing how the Chatham Island Moriori natives were overwhelmed when the Maori turned up with western weapons; something which is at the core of the first/last chapter of Cloud Atlas. And, when describing how the Pacific Islands developed, Diamond also goes on to describe how Hawaii, because of its geography, could develop a miltaristic kingdom of the kind that couldn't develop on the small islands like Chatham; and this resonates incredibly strongly with the central chapter of Cloud Atlas. I wonder, when coming across stuff like this, whether an author like Jones or Mitchell has read Guns, Germs and Steel, and has decided to use his imagination to take himself on from there and create a whole new world on the basis of a few paragraphs in a factual book. The same question occurred to me years back, when I had just read Dava Sobel's Longitude, and picked up Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon. Sobel mentioned, almost in passing, that Mason & Dixon had gone down to Cape Town to observe the transits of Venus. I wondered whether Pynchon had picked up that phrase and realised that the two surveyors hadn't merely drawn the line between Pennsylvania and Maryland which came to define the Union and Confederacy, and produced a huge novel on the basis of the single item from a non-fiction book. Clearly, some books spin off from others, indeed Mister Pip is an obvious example; but I find it intriguing to think that authors have an ability to create worlds out of the smallest initial thought, the grain of sand in the oyster, so to speak.

I really enjoyed Collapse. It's a fantastic and sometimes very scary book. Again, sometimes I think Diamond repeats the key points too often but you learn so much that it's well worth the occasional rehash to keep you focussed.

I finally finished Guns, Germs and Steel. There's nothing much more to add about it than I wrote above. Fascinating and enlightening, but maybe just a little too narrow. The later stuff on how China and Africa, in particular, ended up as they have is truly excellent, though, and allows a very different perspective on racial divisions and so on. Now on to (the hopefully less chewy) Mister Pip.

I remember reading Brian Aldiss once describing Kafka, and The Trial in particular, as proto-SF. I think it's basically about where SF ideas come from, the idea of being perpetually trapped in a non-understandable system. I don't buy the argument, but I've heard it made before.

Cloud Atlas. Of course. Actually, there are fragments of Mitchell's Ghostwritten which are dystopian, too, but most of it is less so. Some weird choices in that list, by the way, Kylie. "I have no mouth and I must scream" is just about my favourite short story, but it's odd seeing short stories on there. The Trial by Kafka is fantastic and dark, but again I'd not call it dystopian. Huxley's Island is more utopian, I'd say. And there are few "alternative history" rather than genuinely dystopian books, too, like The Man In The High Castle or The Plot Against America (both of which are brilliant). Hmm. Perhaps I've read rather too much of this stuff.

The Debt To Pleasure by John Lanchester (although it isn't really that obscure) Novel written as cookbook. Thriller, comedy, nasty, funny. If you can get past the slightly pretentious language, deliberate as the book is written in the first person by an effete chef, then it's just one of the very greatest of all modern novels. I love it. I can't say more because to say more would spoil some of it. Eucalyptus by Murray Bail The modern Australian fairy-tale. A farmer in the Australian outback has a beautiful daughter, and she has many suitors. He decides she can marry the man who can name all the species of eucalyptus on his farm. Strange, and light, and kind of wonderful and romantic. Very out of the normal.

I really recommend Cormac McCarthy's The Road. More "post apocalyptic" than "dystopian", but close enough. Also, I would always recommend JG Ballard for this sort of stuff. Particularly some of the more modern ones, which are all about the fragmenting and destruction of apparently civilised modern society. Go for Cocaine Nights or Super-Cannes.

Into The Wild was OK. A fairly interesting read about a kid who decided to live independently and test himself against the elements in Alaska and eventually dying as a result. But it just wasn't that well written (I tried watching the film on the plane last night and was even more underwhelmed). OK, easy enough, interesting. But not great. Now I'm reading Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, and it's fascinating and wonderful and full of interesting stuff about how history progresses, and what drives societies to succeed. and become dominant. It is, though, a little repetetive. The basic thesis "Societies that develop agriculture first, tend to develop writing, domesticated animals and centralised government first because they tend to have higher population densities; and all of these add to the "advantage", which is why Eurasians, who first developed agriculture and where it disseminated fastest, became the effectively dominant societies". And, really, there you are. The book could be written in a paragraph. Admittedly, you wouldn't get so many fantastic facts and stuff, and it's well worth reading for that, but it feels just a bit repetetive. Four or five chapters to go.

I forgot to mention A Canticle for Leibowtiz by Walter M Miller Jr, which is probably my favourite of all post-apocalyptic future-fiction books.

I've now finished Jonathon Schneer's The Thames (which I interrupted with Singapore Grip). It's, in a number of ways, a fascinating social history of the river. But in some respects a frustrating book. It's well written, and enlightening. But like lots of social history, it's picking too big a subject and has to make do with a load of snapshots. There were pretty much redundant chapters on art and poetry relating to the river, the focus was almost exclusively on London, and so on. And, at the end, the "getting up to date" section felt like the author just felt obliged to comment on recent redevelopment, but wasn't really interested, like those celeb autobiographies where the celeb has to talk about the stuff that's been on TV because that's all that the majority of readers know or care about. That said, I've learned an awful lot about the river, and about some of the interesting stories surrounding it, like the Nore mutiny, like the machinations between GLC and Thatcher government over redevelopment, like how the ice-fairs came to be and won't ever happen again even with a long very cold spell. - Now I'm probably going to read Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer.

I saw the "faith" thing as Pi saying "Here's what actually happened. It was a fairly tedious story of someone surviving. But if you have faith, and believe, then life is more full, more miraculous, you see miracles and wonder and escape the dreariness, and the main part of the story, with the tiger, is the kind of glorious view of the world you have when you believe". Otherwise, the opening of the book where he talks repeatedly about religion, really has no place; and the false ending also has no real place, and you'd be left with the tale of Pi on his boat with the tiger. Which, to be honest, is exactly what I would have preferred, as it was the part of the book I enjoyed.

Hmm. Cycling in England on horrible, cold, wet days? That sounds exactly how I'm going to be in an hour or so commuting to work. I've never heard of Josie Dew, but that sounds very interesting. I enjoy reading travel writing - as in, people writing about their travels, rather than something like a rough guide. It's an interesting genre, though, and hard to do well. Often it's too obsessed with the use of adjectives because the author doesn't really have too much to say about his subject. I came across a terrible example of this in a book by Colin Thubron, In Siberia, which could probably have been 40 pages long if he'd dropped all the "criss-crossing the landscape with a glimmering, shimmering beauty, like an icy spiders web which had trapped the landscape like a monstrous fly no longer able to escape from the watery embrace blah blah blah" nonsense. Another area where writers often get it wrong is to know how much to go on about themselves. Sometimes you don't even know the author is there, so you get no idea at all about the journey, about the travelling, and the author only describes the landscape and the people, and this feels artificial to me; I like to know the author has problems with airports and punctures and so on, and sometimes when this is absent I wonder whether the author has gone in with a massive budget and travelled first class, with body guards, and has basically cheated; on the other hand the writer who is completely self-obsessed and writes entirely about themselves (I fear the newer breed of celebrity travel writer is slightly guilty) pushes the emphasis too far the other way. The ideal travel writing for me should be: A bit of the author struggling to make the journey; some humour; a genuine sympathy for the places he's travelling through; interaction with the locals, but not described in too patronising a way; some history and social commentary on the areas being travelled through; possibly some description of the geography and natural history, too. Last year I read a book with the author travelling through the Sahel, and the subject is fascinating and journey difficult. But the book was just not enjoyable to read because too many of the places being travelled though were just too bleak, and the people inhabiting the areas a bit too unsympathetic, and he always seemed happy to move on and away. When there appears to be almost no love for the place visited it's just not warm. So, what do I like? I have absolutely loved Eric Newby, and particularly A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, a hilarious description of his attempt to climb a mountain in Afganistan with no experience at all; and also on the Afghanistan side, Robert Byron's legendary The Road To Oxiana (although he does go on a bit about architecture). More recently, William Dalrymple's books are always excellent, although his first, In Xanadu, is possible the most fun as it doesn't come so laden with history and is him trying to complete the route of Marco Polo's journey in a university holiday. Patrick Leigh Fermor's two classics, The Time Of Gifts, and Between the Woods and The Water, describing his decision to leave dissolute thirties London, and then walking from The Hague to Istanbul as a way of getting some focus, heading through the rise of Nazi Germany and seeing the end of the real mixing of peoples in central Europe, are magnificent and poignant (although sometimes a bit adjective laden). And Fitzroy Maclean's Eastern Approaches borders on travel writing, particularly when he describes his romps around The Caucauses and Central Asia avoiding Stalin's NKVD/KGB. Back in the more modern era, I really enjoyed Jonathan Raban's Old Glory, where he travels down the navigable Mississippi in a small boat in the early 80s.

Best books - War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, 1812 by Adam Zamoyski Worst book - Atonement by Ian McEwan Author I discovered last year - Cormac McCarthy, probably, although I only read one of his.

It's released in the UK next week. I can't wait to go and see it, as it's a Coen Brothers film.

This 600 page monster, set in the period from about 1940 until the fall of Singapore, is a fantastic, fantastic novel. The book starts calmly, with families working out how to proceed in their little domestic problems whilst running a major rubber company exporting to Britain. Slowly, as the war progresses around them, and circumstances change, you begin to see the slow breakdown of society, you see the intransigent failings of the later phases of the British empire. All the misplaced arrogance, the confidence that it will last for ever, the subtle racism, it's here. It's hard to do justice to the plot - in many ways you could see it as similar to the first part of War and Peace, you keep being introduced to new characters, there are real and fictional ones, there are love stories and bit part characters, there's the progress of the war. There's a character, Matthew, a heir to part of the company that's the start of this, who could easily be a British ringer for Pierre in Tolstoy's book. Yet it doesn't suffer from the flabbinness or quite the confusing excess of characters that War and Peace does, and therefore is a much easier, less daunting read. As the book continues, amongst the bombing, and with the Japanese getting closer and closer to Singapore, it's fascinating to follow the characters, see them try and focus their lives, see them try and carry on as normal in the chaos, often competely unwilling to accept what is happening. A hugely entertaining and informing novel, this.

****** hell, The Singapore Grip is fantastic. It's quite a bit "War And Peace in Singapore" but one which finishes with the fall of Moscow. It's huge, it's got great plot, good characters, real characters, it's so symbolic of the failure and collapse at the end of empire, of the decadence and cluelessness and arrogance. Oddly, I started off confusing JG's Ballard and Farrell, all the more because of Empire of the Sun and Ballard's view of the fall of Shanghai. Because if you pushed Singapore Grip to the future, it could be a Ballard story, of people carrying on half normally in a totally collapsed society some of the time going mad, and the rest of the time behaving as if nothing had changed. I might expand on this elsewhere. Fascinating stuff.

Hey! I bought an ELO best of a couple of months ago. It's fantastic. Cheesy, yes. But it's just great fun to listen to. Oddly, I feel there's a bit of an ELO revival afoot, I've heard Mr Radio cropping up in all kinds of odd places. And then, of course, you just have to listen to that Mika "Grace Kelly" single to know people are mimicking ELO.

I'd forgotten that Richard Parker was named after Edgar Allen Poe's Richard Parker - it then, I guess, leads me to ask whether Poe's Parker was named after the sailor-mutineer. As that - just checking - was written in 1838, it could well have not been coincidence and the mutiny might been an event Poe was familiar with. Anyway, it would be nice to think that is another rail of meaning to the name.

By the way, and I really don't know if this is relevent to the book and the name, there was a famous Richard Parker who was leader of the Nore Rebellion. The sailors of the Royal Navy finally had enough of the shocking conditions they were kept in, and mutinied, leading to the creation of a minor floating republic, slightly sympathetic to the French. There may be a metaphor in there for the tiger on the boat. But it's a fairly obscure reference, and Yann Martel may not have known about him and it could be coincidence.

I go through phases, but I often go for things that have the high praise - usually it's well deserved (although sometimes it's a lot of effort for little reward). Prizes and praise - particularly from higher-brow sources - tend to be a good start. Another good pointer is recommendations from people you've seen reading interesting stuff, or who've already recommended good books. On a different tack, when reading modern fiction I tend to find that places where interesting stuff is happening, where life is out of the ordinary, tend to produce better books. Authors from, say, the former Yugoslavia, or from Russia in the collapse of communism, have more interesting source material. Of course, British writers writing about those places also have the same material and can produce interesting stuff, but are less immersed. I often find that British writers writing about Britain tend to be very insular and self-absorbed, and focus on the trivial and the domestic - which is very much to some peoples' tastes. But those books which examine the small changes in an environment with which we're all familiar, end up a bit like the old kitchen sink dramas of the 60s, or worse, like a comedy of manners, and I find they drag when compared to people struggling in a collapsing or rebuilding or genuinely fractured society.

Life of Pi really, really annoyed me. - Don't highlight this unless you've read the book, and unless you want to read a whinge about the whole thing -

I'd like to discover another excellent modern author who thinks about outside the box - therefore probably someone foreign. Someone who'll fit my collection of John Lanchester and Tibor Fischer and Haruki Murukami and David Mitchell and Ismael Kadare. Cormac McCarthy looks a good bet, as does Philip Roth, after reading one book by each last year.