Reading ramble

The news and my favourite websites are strangely un-engaging at the moment, so I'll talk about what I've read over the last 6 months or so. It's not much, and few are probably interested, but what the hey.

* Graham Greene: I have mentioned here before that I was starting to get into Graham Greene. Since then, I have finished "A Burnt Out Case" (a fairly late novel in his career) and liked it quite a lot. It's sort of dark, well and truly within what I understand to be "Greeneland," but with a tragic redemption at the end, which I think reflects Greene's own complicated views on life and religion. I can recommend it, especially for people with a Catholic background.

But then, I read his early popular novel, "Brighton Rock". It has a great opening, but later I thought some of it was really tortured and outright bad writing. For me, it doesn't really ring psychologically true at all, and I am very puzzled as to why it apparently made his name as a novelist. He clearly developed his prose into a cleaner, more direct and psychologically subtle style later in his career, and I would strongly advise anyone interested in him not to start with this book.

I think I will go on to read some of his most famous novels, such as The End of the Affair, and The Heart of the Matter. But there is no doubt he is a bit of a depressing read overall, and it's not like I want to spend all that much time getting to know his world.

* Young adult time. Australian writer John Marsden is famous for his "Tomorrow" novels, featuring Australian teenage protagonists responding to a (very improbable) Asian invasion of the country. I therefore tried the first one in the series (Tomorrow, When the War Began) when I found it in a second hand book shop. (I saw from the name written inside that it probably was a prescribed read for a grade 9 student.)

I don't have any problem with reading "young adult" books; my natural inclination to be bothered/uninterested in lots of swearing and sex in fiction actually makes it something I should incline towards. (And I'll take Heinlein's "juveniles" over Stranger in a Strange Land any day.) But I doubt that much of it now is written as outright entertainment.

Anyway, as for this book: it's not bad, but I did find it peculiar that Marsden should chose to write from the perspective of a teenage girl, even if she is a pragmatic and strong character. There were some sections involving relationship talk which, while I imagine were probably realistic for a modern teen, I could still imagine teenage boys being completely bored with. This relationship stuff seemed to me to be too clearly didactic, in that they seemed an attempt to get teenage boys to understand things from the female perspective.

I was not impressed enough to be bothered continuing with the series, but it wasn't a complete loss.

* Will I ever find an active science fiction writer I like? I gave modern science fiction another go with John Scalzi's "Old Man's War". The reviews (and the man in the bookshop who recommended it to me) noted that it is similar in style to Robert Heinlein; and it's true, especially in the first third or so where there is a lot of wise-cracking, lively character exchanges, and I was initially impressed.

It has an excellent sequence in which our main character gets his mind swapped into a new, cloned, tweaked and improved version of his body.

Yet, by half way through, the improbability of the setup was starting to bother me, as was the idea that in two hundred years time, military training would still use exactly the same psychological approach that has been in the 20th century.

Then back to a good point: the inter-stellar drive was clever in concept.

Then back to the bad: it sort of peters out a bit, and ultimately left me uninterested in reading the sequel.

The extremely patchy appeal of the novel reminded me of my reaction to Peter Hamilton's "The Reality Dysfunction". I really liked some of its passages, found some other parts a bit slow and irrelevant, and in the last substantial section it seemed to change tone completely to a visceral fight which was very unappealing. Basically, he badly needs more severe editing.

Why do I find it impossible to find a current science fiction writer whose novel I like from start to end??

* More Truman Capote: I'm currently reading "In Cold Blood", after earlier enjoying "Breakfast at Tiffanys." I really like his writing style, and am quite enjoying it, despite knowing that it may not be the most accurate account of the event possible. (I haven't seen the popular "Capote" movie about the process of his writing it yet, and I'll save that until I have finished the book.)

Capote himself certainly did not lead the happiest of lives. I like to use the fact that I have had a relatively happy and stable life as the reason why I will probably always be incapable of creating great art!