Category: 2014
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The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith (books, 2014, 10)
Always good to get a new JK Rowling, of course, whatever name she's using. I sometimes wonder if she's got loads of other things out there, under other as-yet-undisclosed pseudonyms; probably not, though.
Anyway, in the second Cormoran Strike book, we have more of the same sort of thing we had in the first. This time it’s set in the world of publishing, with all sorts of rivalries between more and less successful authors, agents, editors and publishers. “Write what you know”, Jo.
But can such rivalries drive someone to murder? It seems so.
My main, and very minor, complaint about this was that there wasn’t enough of sidekick Robin in it, I felt.
I don’t know how many of these she’s planning to write, but sooner or later Cormoran has to meet – and presumably solve a crime for, or concerning – his estranged rock-star father. who is a recurring offstage character.
Just got into a train. There’s a log lying on the floor. No sign of the Lady. The owls are not what they seem.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon (Books 2014, 9)
In the interest of trying to catch up, I’m not going to say much about this. You probably know all about this already.
Also, it’s been quite a while since I read it, and although I enjoyed it, it hasn’t really stuck around in my head in a way that leaves me much to say. It’s clever in giving us some idea of what it might be like to live with autism. That might be its greatest strength.
Suzi Q, where are you?
I got a card in the post the other day, from my friends Di and Johnny. Regular readers will know Di as one of the most frequent commenters here (ie, she has commented). We disagreed over The Great Gatsby.
Anyway, the card had a post-it stuck inside, with some writing on it that I couldn’t quite make out. Di wrote, “Been trying to get this for you for ages… can you guess who it is?”
I was slow to realise that the “who” referred to the writing on the post-it. But she also said there was a clue on the back of the card.
On the back she’d written “devilgate.org”.
The post-it looks like this:
And I read it to say, “To Martin. Suzi Quatro.”
I mean, if it says that it makes sense considering my origin story; otherwise, not so much.
Thanks Di and Johnny. It’s a lovely thought.
BBC Music Greatest Covers
This BBC Music "Greatest Covers" poll has some quite good -- and interesting -- choices. It has the right answer, of course, but also Hüsker Dü and The Fall (and not even The Fall's best cover -- that would be "Xanadu").
The Severed Streets by Paul Cornell (Books 2014, 8)
I'm now so far behind in posting these that I'm just going to put very brief notes up for most of them.
As a sequel to the excellent London Falling this suffers slightly from what feels a bit like middle-book-of-trilogy syndrome; though I believe Cornell intends this to be an ongoing series, rather than a trilogy.
That said, there is an overarching mystery, which we must hope will be resolved over the course of several books. And at that point, maybe he’ll stop. But the actual story here is perhaps slight compared to the origin stories of the first one, and the horror that Quill and his wife, in particular, experienced.
A mysterious ghostly figure – invisible to all who don’t have The Sight, of course – is killing people in London. There appears to be little to connect them at first, but graffiti at some of the scenes suggests there might be a link to Jack the Ripper. Has his ghost come back and this time gone after rich white men? Or is it something else entirely?
It’s a fun read, despite my reservations above, with some amusing reference to fandom, and the terrible, terrible abuse of a giant of the fantasy genre.
The tragedy of the Liberal Democrats
It seems like a curious choice for the Liberal Democrats to have their national conference in Glasgow this year, what with everything else that’s been going on in Scotland. I don’t think they’re very popular there.
Then again, they’re not very popular anywhere.
Back before the the coalition, when the Lib Dems were the third party, they always spoke in favour of coalition government. They always said that they would work with anyone if it they ever held the balance of power.
Then when it looked there was going to be a hung parliament, and when there actually was, they still said that they would work with either Labour or the Tories in order to bring a government into being.
The trouble is, no-one really believed them.
OK, I can only really speak for myself; but I’m probably not that unusual. The Lib Dems were always seen as being closer to Labour than to the Tories. There was the Lib-Lab pact back in the seventies. And all through the New Labour years, they were generally seen as being further left than Labour.
So when they held the balance of power in 2010, it was obvious — so we all thought, I say — that they would work with Labour, rather than the Tories.
Alas, it was not to be. Imagine how different the country might be now if Clegg had swung the right way back then. The country wouldn’t have been half-destroyed by Osbourne’s “austerity” measures. (I mean, really: haven’t they learned by now that you don’t cut public spending in a recession?)
Of course, there have been some good things during the coalition: marriage equality; the Scottish referendum (irrespective of how it turned out, Cameron agreed to it). There was even — if you recall — a referendum on electoral reform. Remember that?
No, me neither. It was a fix (since it got voted down), but I don’t recall how. Oh, yes wait: the anti-reform camp made a big thing of how much more complex than first-past-the-post the alternative vote (AV) system would be. When in fact it’s quite simple. And I guess they got the friendly media working against it.
Anyway, now they’ve been all but wiped out in yesterday’s by election. The worst thing about that is that UKIP seem to be in danger of replacing them as the third party.
Scary but interesting times.