Category: Longform
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📚 Books 2026, 1: The Cold Six Thousand, by James Ellroy
The first book of this year, or the last of last? I started reading James Ellroy’s The Cold Six Thousand a couple of weeks before Christmas, set it aside for some Christmas books, and then went back to it.
I started reading it once before, years ago, and didn’t get far. And I think that’s because of its very strange style. Ellroy uses a chopped-up style of extremely short sentences, much repetition of names, and almost no use of pronouns. For example:
The witnesses were antsy. The witnesses wore name tags. The witnesses perched on one bench.
Or:
Wayne ducked by. Wayne passed a break room. Wayne heard a TV blare.
And that kind of thing is repeated across 600+ pages. It can be hard work at times. The only relief comes in some chapters that purport to be transcripts of phone conversations recorded by the FBI.
We are in the real world here, in the sixties. Right at the start, JFK is assassinated. The three viewpoint characters are all dodgy members of various law-enforcement agencies (Las Vegas police, FBI, CIA) and are all connected to the conspiracy behind that event (spoiler, it was the mob, but certain others, like J Edgar Hoover, weren’t too bothered and/or were sort of involved).
The story carries on through the sixties up to the other to big political assassinations, of Martin Luther King and RFK. And guess what? Our antiheroes — or some of them, at least — are involved in those too.
It’s a novel of the sixties, then, about conspiracies and secrets. Not unlike my beloved Illuminatus! trilogy. So why don’t I love it, then? Mainly, I think, it’s that stylistic choice. I don’t see the point of it, and I found it quite annoying, until eventually it became almost comical. And I did enjoy the book (otherwise I would have stopped reading, what with life being too short to read a book you’re not enjoying). Just not as much as might be expected from the setting.
There’s also this: I learned when I was around half way through that this is actually the middle volume of a trilogy. I’ve noted before, though perhaps only in footnote, that publishers seem to hate putting numbers on books1, or otherwise letting the reader know important details like that. And it doesn’t matter that much here. It works OK as a standalone novel. But I realise now, part of the strangeness at the start may have been a kind of sense that we were expected to know the characters to some degree. I wrote about something like this fifteen(!) years ago, and the sensation I had this time (I now realise) was similar.
Lastly, it’s a very brutal book. There are many acts of extreme violence, described in casual, if not loving, detail. And the casual racism of the language will probably upset some people even more than the violence.
So I’m glad I’ve finally read it, but I don’t see me searching out the other parts of the trilogy.
-
‘The Cold Six Thousand? I haven’t read volumes one to 5999 yet!’ ↩︎
📚 Books 2026, 1: The Cold Six Thousand, by James Ellroy
The first book of this year, or the last of last? I started reading James Ellroy’s The Cold Six Thousand a couple of weeks before Christmas, set it aside for some Christmas books, and then went back to it.
I started reading it once before, years ago, and didn’t get far. And I think that’s because of its very strange style. Ellroy uses a chopped-up style of extremely short sentences, much repetition of names, and almost no use of pronouns. For example:
The witnesses were antsy. The witnesses wore name tags. The witnesses perched on one bench.
Or:
Wayne ducked by. Wayne passed a break room. Wayne heard a TV blare.
And that kind of thing is repeated across 600+ pages. It can be hard work at times. The only relief comes in some chapters that purport to be transcripts of phone conversations recorded by the FBI.
We are in the real world here, in the sixties. Right at the start, JFK is assassinated. The three viewpoint characters are all dodgy members of various law-enforcement agencies (Las Vegas police, FBI, CIA) and are all connected to the conspiracy behind that event (spoiler, it was the mob, but certain others, like J Edgar Hoover, weren’t too bothered and/or were sort of involved).
The story carries on through the sixties up to the other to big political assassinations, of Martin Luther King and RFK. And guess what? Our antiheroes — or some of them, at least — are involved in those too.
It’s a novel of the sixties, then, about conspiracies and secrets. Not unlike my beloved Illuminatus! trilogy. So why don’t I love it, then? Mainly, I think, it’s that stylistic choice. I don’t see the point of it, and I found it quite annoying, until eventually it became almost comical. And I did enjoy the book (otherwise I would have stopped reading, what with life being too short to read a book you’re not enjoying). Just not as much as might be expected from the setting.
There’s also this: I learned when I was around half way through that this is actually the middle volume of a trilogy. I’ve noted before, though perhaps only in footnote, that publishers seem to hate putting numbers on books1, or otherwise letting the reader know important details like that. And it doesn’t matter that much here. It works OK as a standalone novel. But I realise now, part of the strangeness at the start may have been a kind of sense that we were expected to know the characters to some degree. I wrote about something like this fifteen(!) years ago, and the sensation I had this time (I now realise) was similar.
Lastly, it’s a very brutal book. There are many acts of extreme violence, described in casual, if not loving, detail. And the casual racism of the language will probably upset some people even more than the violence.
So I’m glad I’ve finally read it, but I don’t see me searching out the other parts of the trilogy.
-
‘The Cold Six Thousand? I haven’t read volumes one to 5999 yet!’ ↩︎
Latter-Day Musical
The Book of Mormon was good: fun, if a bit daft in places. As I said, I had no idea about the story when we set out. Turns out it’s abut two young Mormon men being sent out on their missionary work, to Uganda.
As you’d expect from Trey Parker and Matt Stone, it takes the piss out of the Mormon faith — especially its origin story — and belief systems in general. But it’s surprisingly positive about Mormonism overall. In fact what it’s really about is how schisms in religions form.
And it goes to some unexpectedly dark places, talking about female genital mutilation, and warlords controlling territory by violence.
But the songs are good!
The American President 🎥
The American President is another Sorkin/Reiner collab, and another one we watched over the Christmas break.
it’s also Sorkin’s dry run for
it’s pretty good. Feels weird, having Martin Sheen in the Leo role, but you get used to it.
The Godfather 🎥
Can’t remember if we watched this on Christmas Day or Boxing Day, but it turns out to be a Christmas movie itself. At least in part, and as much as Die Hard is. Or maybe not quite. The point is it does have a scene — quite an important one — at Christmas.
Anyway. I thought I had seen this before. I mean I had, I watched it. But I couldn’t remember anything of the story after the famous horse’s head scene. Maybe that’s because I watched it on my own, so didn’t talk about it afterwards? I don’t know.
It is, of course, very good. There are some strange missed or dropped elements. Michael marries a woman while he’s in hiding in Sicily. She is assassinated by a car bomb, and never mentioned again. Not even as part of his motivation for revenge on the other Mafia families.
I don’t doubt, though, that if (when) I watch it again, I’ll find many parts I missed or have forgotten. That may be the mark of a great film, you can keep going back to it. Or, I don’t know, maybe the mark of a bad one, that you don’t remember it! (I don’t really think that.)
Bowie: The Final Act 🎥
Watched: Bowie: The Final Act 🎥
Very good documentary about Bowie, starting approximately with Young Americans and moving forward — though moving back and forward in time. A lot of focus on the years in which he (hushed tones) wasn’t cool!
Interviews with Reeves Gabrels of Tin Machine, Earl Slick, Tony Visconti and others. Well worth a watch.
📗 Books 2025, 30: Slow Horses, by Mick Herron
It’s interesting to discover that this is a great read even though I’ve seen the TV series. An interesting parallel with early last year, or rather last thing in 2024, when I read Conclave, not long after seeing the film.
If you’re unfamiliar with Mick Herron’s ‘Slough House’ stories, the series is up to four seasons now — or is it five? — on Apple TV. And it’s really good. This is the book that started it all, and it’s excellent. A group of misfit MI5 spies, each of which has been shunted aside from the main track because of some mishap or fuckup.
📗 Books 2025, 29: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, by Simon Armitage
This is, of course, a classic of Old English literature, translated into a modern verse form by the poet Laureate, Simon Armitage.
It’s a deeply weird tale. Why, when an uncanny knight turns up at King Arthur’s court — not just dressed in green, but green-skinned and -haired — and issues a challenge that involves both striking the knight with an axe and agreeing to receive a similar blow from the knight in a year’s time; why would anyone agree to that?
Chivalry, I guess? Or arrogance, we might call it today. Either way, Gawain accepts, and beheads the knight. The knight picks up his head and rides off, saying, ‘See you in a year, you’ve got to find me or you’re a big fat coward,’ basically.
Gawain proceeds to do nothing about it until the year is almost out. This, at least, I can identify with.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved it. I might take issue with the modernness, the casualness of some of Armitage’s word choice. But who am I to do so?
2025 in Blogging and Reading
My personal tradition requires me to post a brief summary of last year’s posts, early in the new year. I also note how many books I read.
In 2025 I read — I’m going to call it 30 books, even though there are only 28 posts so tagged at the time of writing. I’ve finished two in the last week or so that I consider 2025 books, and I’ll be posting about them soon.
And 134 posts so dated, which is up on 2024. Here’s the monthly breakdown:
| Month | Posts |
|---|---|
| Jan | 6 |
| Feb | 13 |
| Mar | 14 |
| Apr | 27 |
| May | 15 |
| Jun | 15 |
| Jul | 8 |
| Aug | 8 |
| Sep | 5 |
| Oct | 11 |
| Nov | 7 |
| Dec | 5 |
And on we go into the new year.
📗 Books 2025, 28: The Book of Dust vol 3: The Rose Field, by Philip Pullman
I said I wouldn’t say much about the previous book till I’d read this one, since they’re really all of a piece, a single story spread across the two. And now here we are. Oh, and there are spoilers below.
Trouble is… it doesn’t feel like we’re quite finished.
To summarise: I mostly enjoyed the story very much. There were points where I was just wanting it to end, but in the sense of wanting to find out what happened, not of wanting it to be over. Lyra and Pantalaimon can separate, since their adventures in the original trilogy (something I had completely forgotten when I first read volume 2, which is part of the reason I reread the originals back then). And they’re not getting on with each other at the start of volume 2. In fact, Pantalaimon leaves Lyra, goes off on his own, to find, he says, her imagination.
Which sets up the main driver for the two books. Or one of the main drivers. Because there’s a lot going on beyond Lyra and Pan’s life. Specifically, the Magisterium is up to its old shenanigans and a whole lot of new ones, and there’s a war brewing. Or being brewed. But it’s not clear to the ordinary people of Brytain (as they spell it over in Lyra’s world) who or what the war is against.
Lyra and Pan travel east by different routes. Along the way they meet gryphons and witches and humans and, of course, daemons. Some of the humans seem to barely believe their daemons exist, which is odd.
And there are still windows between the worlds — presumably opened by some past bearer of the Subtle Knife — and the Magisterium is trying to destroy them with explosives and some success. Because, they believe (or their new pope-like leader claims to know) the windows let evil into the world.
Or something like that. The ravings of religious nutters doesn’t make much sense. This new pope-like guy is, by coincidence, Mrs Coulter’s brother. That is, he’s Lyra’s uncle. We assume, therefore, they’ll meet towards the end.
Reader, they do not meet. And that’s only the least of what feel like a great deal of loose ends. In fact there are so many points of interest that we might have expected to be resolved that are not, that this feels like the middle volume of a trilogy, not the final one. Which makes sense, considering the first volume of this trilogy was a prequel to the originals, while the second two comprise a sequel. It feels like Pullman wanted to, or should have, written a full sequel trilogy.
I mean, I don’t mind a few things not being resolved. Stories never end, really, they just stop. But there’s just so much here feeling like untold stories. Maybe he’ll release a series of standalone shorts, as he has before with things like ‘Lyra’s Oxford’. Maybe he really has another volume up his sleeve, but if it takes another six years to write it… well, he’s not getting any younger.
Where we’re left is not terrible. Lyra and Pan are back together and reconciled, and the immediate active dangers are stopped. But they’re in another world that doesn’t seem great, and if they go back to their own, they’re a wanted terrorist, thanks to their uncle’s work!
I express the previous paragraph in the way I did to make a point that occurred to me about Lyra’s world. All humans have daemons, which are part of themselves. An externalised part of their personality or psyche. The human and daemon talk to each other, and will talk about themselves doing things, saying, ‘When we sneaked into the catacombs…’ and so on. We. The thing Pullman missed, I think (and I’m sure his Exeter College predecessor, JRR Tolkien, would not have missed) is: language would be different. Ordinary, everyday language. There would hardly be a personal singular pronoun. Or it would still exist, but be used in a different way.
There would probably be different forms of the first-person plural, too. A ‘we’ that means one human and their daemon referring to themselves. And another form of ‘we’ that means a group of people (and their daemons) together.
Anyway. Just a thought about language. And I want more, Mr Pullman, but I don’t expect it. Still a great story, just not quite the ending I was hoping for.