📗Books 2025, 4: Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen

We started watching Miss Austen, the BBC serial about Jane’s sister Cassandra trying to get hold of Jane’s letters a few years after her death. That made me want to read some more Austen, the only I’ve read before being Pride and Prejudice.

So I tried Northanger Abbey. Which is mainly a spoof of the gothic novels that Austen herself would have been reading at the time, and also, of course, a romance.

I enjoyed it a lot, but it ended very surprisingly. It has the omniscient narrator you might expect for a book of its time, but it’s mostly written in close third-person. We are privy to Catherine’s thoughts and fears. But the thing is, when we get to the climactic scene, when everything is going to be resolved and our heroine end up happy (it’s not much of a spoiler), Austen (or the narrator) turns away.

Instead of being with Catherine as the hero rides to her emotional rescue, we are told about it. We’re kept at a distance, no longer aware of what’s going on in her head. It’s an absolute masterclass in the difference between ‘showing’ and ’telling’ in writerly terms; but the wrong way round for a really satisfying experience.

Perhaps it was a continuation of the style of those gothic romances she was parodying, but read today, it’s a strange choice.

Sweet Smell of Success, 1957 - ★★

This film is at number 95 on this Time Out list of the hundred best films of all time that we've been dipping into.

Why?

It's really quite a bad film. Characters of no merit, dialogue that sometimes reaches snappy but often sits in the leaden cliché realm, and just general horribleness.

It's good for the scenes of New York, the crowd scenes in bars and restaurants, and yes, it has its moments. But overall, no, didn't do it for me.

It's not like amoral characters make the film amoral, but you need to have someone to root for. That should be the gossip columnists's sister and jazz guitarist who were a couple. Sadly they're just too feeble (and too sidelined) as characters.

📗 Books 2025, 3: The Great When, by Alan Moore

I think I read somewhere that this ends on a huge cliffhanger. It doesn’t. Or I wouldn’t describe it in those terms.

It has an epilogue, entitled ‘The Old Man at the End’, set 50 years or so after the main story. Someone we take to be the protagonist fears for his life; and the close-third-person narration hints at or mentions some events that intrigue. But we’re not left hanging.

The book is described as ‘a Long London novel’. though, so we certainly expect additions to the series in time.

The term ‘Long London’ is not used in the book, I think, though our normal, everyday London is called ‘Short London’ at one point. ‘The Great When’ is used, and is one of the terms for another London that exists parallel to ours in some sense. Certain people, with certain kinds of imagination (or damage), can find and use some few portals between the two realms.

You know the sort of thing. Parallel worlds, unseen realities, aren’t exactly new. But Moore is such a good writer, this is a high, fine example of the form, even if there have been others like it before. The richness of his description and believability of his characters make this a five-star affair, if I gave stars to books.

And books are key here. It all kicks of in 1949, when Dennis Knuckleyard, 18 years old, orphaned in the war, and working in a second-hand book shop, comes into the possession of a book that doesn’t exist.

It is imaginary, being named in an Arthur Machen tale. Which means he has to get it back to the other London before very bad things start happening.

Highly recommended, and I eagerly anticipate the next volume, despite not being cliffhung by this one.

Blogging and reading in 2024

A much-delayed summary of last year.

I read 26 books in 2024. One less than in 2023, but one every two weeks on average.

But only 98 posts, which is down on the year before. Here’s the monthly breakdown:

Month Posts
Jan 13
Feb 10
Mar 6
Apr 6
May 8
Jun 5
Jul 6
Aug 7
Sep 10
Oct 12
Nov 9
Dec 6

Light blogging year, then, but I’ve written quite a lot of fiction, so there’s that. To say nothing of things like the currently-1500-word essay on my thoughts and feelings about AI, wherein I try to understand those things. That might appear here one day. I hope so.

📗 Books 2025, 2: Vivaldi and the Number 3, by Ron Butlin

I read about this some four years ago on Jack Deighton’s blog. It sounded interesting enough that I tried to order it via Pages of Hackney. But they told me it was out of print.

I couldn’t even find it on Amazon; no Kindle version. So I left it.

Until just recently, when I had cause to by some second-hand books from World of Books. Something made me think of this one. Quick search, and there it was.

And it’s even weirder and more fun than I imagined from reading Jack’s review. It’s a series of short stories, with some interconnections, about various classical composers (plus some philosophers). But it’s all deeply surreal. You’ll find Beethoven living in present-day Edinburgh, for example.

What’s it all for? I don’t really know. But they’re great little vignettes, easily digestible, and lots of fun.

Tales From Right Now

I haven’t really picked up on blogging properly since this year started. I didn’t, for example, write a summary post about last year’s entries, as I generally do. I’m also behind on books updates. The other day’s post was about a book I finished very early in January.

In fact, I’ve been kind of off the whole thing since November or so. Maybe earlier, but the USA’s apocalyptically stupid choice of head of state was the anti-icing on the un-cake of my feelings about the world in general.

I feel like I might be coming out of that downturn now. And strangely, I think I’ve got my new blog theme to thank for it. In part, anyway.

It seems daft, but just freshening the place up can make a difference, you know? So thanks once again to @Mtt, or Matt Langford, for the lovely Bayou Theme.

And we’ll see if things pick up a bit, here on the Bitface.

📗 Books 2025, 1: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, by Agatha Christie

I got this by Agatha Christie for Christmas and started straight after Conclave, so technically last year. But I didn’t finish it till the new year, so 2025 it is.

Another great one from Christie, with a killer twist. Poirot has retired and is living in the country. But that kind of character never really gets to retire, do they?

A Complete Unknown, 2024 - ★★★★★

This is a glorious film. A dramatised version of Bob Dylan's early years on the New York folk scene and ascent into fame.

He visits Woody Guthrie in hospital, where Pete Seeger just happens to be visiting too. Seeger takes Dylan under his wing, encouraging him to focus on folk music.

Clearly some liberties have been taken with the details of events, but it's all in service of the story.

Timothée Chalamet gives an incredible performance as Dylan, and Monica Barbaro is luminous as Joan Baez. Their voices work beautifully together when they harmonise, and it's notable that both actors did all their singling vocals.

We see moments of the next few years, culminating in Dylan's famous appearance with an electric band at the Newport Folk Festival.

For a film set in the sixties, it's surprisingly pure. Not just in the sense of Seeger and the other folk purists on the Newport organising committee. There's hardly any suggestion of sex, and no drugs at all.

No drugs. In the sixties. Unless you count cigarettes (of which there are a lot) and alcohol (most of which Johnny Cash, played by Boyd Holbrook, has already consumed). There are scenes where Dylan, at least, is clearly meant to be stoned, but no consumption.

I think that says something about our times, rather than the time of the movie, but I'm not sure what.

Will you enjoy this if you're not already a fan, and/or know some of the story? Probably not as much as I did, but see it for the beautifully-realised exteriors and interiors of old New York, for the performances, and of course, for the music.

I want to go to a singalong showing now.

Unpleasant Men

This morning I read the whole of the Vulture article about Neil Gaiman. That link’s to an archived copy, because someone said on Facebook that the original has had the references to Scientology removed because of legal threats. And also it’s paywalled.

It’s so depressing that a man who seemed so decent, so generally a positive force in the world, can turn out to have been an abuser all these year. Allegedly, I suppose I must say.

You know, Paul Cornell included Gaiman as a character in one of his Shadow Police stories, The Severed Streets. If I remember the ‘Neil Gaiman’ character was a villain. We took it as fun at the time; but I wonder if Cornell had an inkling that he wasn’t the nice guy he seemed.

In other shitty-men news, Matt Mullenweg has been blowing up most of the good feeling people have about WordPress over the last few months. I’m glad I moved my site off it a few years ago. But now he’s attacked a woman who used to work on WordPress but hasn’t for years. For no very obvious reason, it seems.

Just being shitty.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, 1967 - ★★★½

Surprisingly funny in places, a film about race in America in the sixties. Still relevant today, in some circles at least, I'd imagine.

Highly enjoyable, even if the point is extremely heavy-handed at times.

📚 Books 2024, 26: Conclave by Robert Harris

After my recent viewing of the film based on this, my daughter got me the book for Christmas.

It’s surprising how compelling a book can be when you know exactly what’s going to happen, and it’s about something that you wouldn’t normally give a toss about. Though on the latter, I suppose the boy can leave the church, but it always leaves its mark, or something.

Anyway, it turns out this Harris guy can really write. Who’d’ve thought?

I note with interest that the ‘why this story, why now’ question that I mentioned when writing about he film, never even crossed my mind while reading this. I approach a book with a different set of expectations from how I do a film, maybe.

📚 Books 2024, 25: The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

Finished reading several weeks ago, in fact. I’m way behind with the change of year.

Anyway, this is an odd little book. I stress the ’little’ because it’s very short. We’re in Peru. An ancient rope bridge, of Inca origin, collapses one day, killing the five people who were crossing it. A priest, Brother Juniper, witnesses the event and decides to use it to prove God has a plan for humans.

The narrator, however, tells us that Juniper’s eventual vast book on the subject was derided, destroyed, and in any case incomplete. The narrator knows things about the people that Juniper never learned. How the narrator knows these things is never stated — we might assume it’s because the narrator is also the author, though that’s rarely a safe assumption.

That’s the start. The rest of the book consists of the stories of the victims and how they came to be there on that day.

It’s good. Won the Pulitzer.

📚 Books 2024, 24: A Jura for Julia by Ken MacLeod

Short stories by Ken 📚. I mentioned this in my Nineteen Eighty-Four post, since the first and last stories are inspired by Orwell’s novel. The last being the title story.

Both they, and the others, are very good. Ken’s usual concerns are here, of course: the future, politics, Scotland, and more.

Also the cover and internal illustrations are by Fangorn. Highly recommended.

Conclave, 2024 - ★★★½

When I was a kid, brought up in the Roman Catholic Church, my Mum taught me that, when a pope dies, all the cardinals get together to choose a new one. God guides them so they vote for who He has chosen, and it has to be unanimous.

Whether or not that unanimity requirement was ever really true, I can't say. But that's certainly not how it happens in this film. I imagine this tale is closer to the reality, humans being political beings with preferences and schemes. And God not existing, of course. Or, if 'He' does, certainly not taking that kind of hand in human events.

I enjoyed this story of the events after an unnamed, imaginary pope's death. It's well acted and beautifully shot. It does have one or two moments that tend to the over-theatrical, let's say.

But I have to wonder why the filmmakers chose to tell it, and why now. It's an adaptation of Robert Harris's novel from 2016, and could ask the same question of him: why that story, whey then?

And I guess you tell the story you want to tell, and why not? If other people enjoy it, or get something from it, that's all that matters, really.

📚 Books 2024, 23: Death's End by Cixin Liu, Translated by Ken Liu

I laugh gently at my past self, musing that this volume, based on its title, might have a less bleak universe-view.

Reader, it does not.

In fact, that’s the thing I liked least about this whole trilogy, the dark view of the universe, of sentience. The idea that every species that develops intelligence and advances to the point of thinking about space travel and the idea of possibly communicating with other intelligent species; that they would all have a xenocidal1 instinct. Have it, and routinely, casually act on it, by wiping out the star systems of other species they detect.

I’m not saying it couldn’t be so. As one explanation for the Fermi paradox it’s exactly that: one explanation. But it’s just too fuckin bleak for my tastes.

Otherwise, this story, and the trilogy as a whole, is jam-packed with ideas, stuff about relativity, higher and lower dimensions, all sorts of good hard-SF stuff. The characters are kind of blank, undeveloped: I don’t think they’ll be sticking in my memory. But I enjoyed it overall.

Apart from when I was annoyed/disturbed/upset by the dark forest idea.

Your central idea: I do not like it.

  1. The word is Orson Scott Card’s invention, but/and it’s a good one. ↩︎

It Happened One Night, 1934 - ★★★★

Great screwball comedy. Lots of fun. Don't know why the poster is in colour when it's a black & white film.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, 1988 - ★★½

Daft film about con men. I think I saw it back when it came out, but didn't really remember it.

I'm a week or so behind with posting this.

Trumpeting

I was shocked, but not exactly surprised, by the US election result. Or no: I was surprised. I think I had somehow internalised that idea that Kamala Harris would win. It seemed unthinkable that Americans would elect Trump again.

But then, it seemed unthinkable that they would elect him the first time.1

We shouldn’t be too surprised though. Among the presidents in my lifetime, we’ve had Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and W Bush. All of them considered to be dangerous warmongering borderline fascists at the time. And/or comical and incompetent choices, to consider Reagan and W Bush, specifically.

Yet America elected all of them (notwithstanding that the popular vote nearly always favoured their Democratic opponent).

Trump, of course, rolls the ills of all of them up into one great ugly package, and adds narcissism on top. And the times could hardly be worse for women in America in particular, with reproductive healthcare under attack with the overturning of Roe v Wade.

What can you do, though? Life goes on. We’ll get through it, except for those of us who don’t.

  1. For some reason I couldn’t find that post when I wrote this, so I said, ‘I’d link to my post from back then, but apparently I didn’t make one. Only a couple before the election and this general one in early 2017. Sometimes it’s all too much to write about.’ But I did write about it, and used the same title as on this post! Oh dear. ↩︎

📚 Books 2024, 22: The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu, Translated by Joel Martinsen

This is somehow much less obscure and strange than the first one. I don’t know how much that is to do with it having a different translator, but it’s possible. The third one is back to Ken Liu, who translated the first one, so maybe we’ll see.

The other odd thing is that when I added this to Micro.blog’s Bookshelves feature, it came up with a subtitle I’ve never heard of before: ‘Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #2’. On the book’s title page, and in any other discussion I’ve heard of, it’s always referred to as ‘The Three-Body Trilogy’.

Getting to the story itself: perhaps the least believable thing about the whole thing is the idea humans could be convinced to believe that an alien invasion force was on its way to Earth and would arrive in 450 years. To believe and act toward resisting the force or ameliorating the situation by escaping or anything else.

I mean, in the real world we can’t even get people to believe in, get governments and businesses to act on, the climate emergency, and its effects are visible day by day.

The climate is largely ignored in this book, as well, though in the latter part, set two hundred years after the start, we see some extreme desertification in China.

It’s pretty bleak in places, in its philosophy, this one; especially as regards the Fermi paradox, or a solution thereto. But it leaves us at a point where I’m thinking, ‘Where now? That feels like a decent ending.’

But Death’s End (great title, and potentially a much less bleak philosophy, if it matches the title) is sitting waiting, all 700+ pages of it. Why does each volume of a trilogy tend to be longer than the one before?1 So we’ll see where that takes us.

I enjoyed this. There’s a lot of telling, and the characters maybe aren’t very clearly differentiated, but it’s full of ideas.

  1. Not the ur-trilogy, The Lord of the Rings: a large part of The Return of the King was appendices, making it the shortest of the three. ↩︎

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 2000 - ★★★★★

An early showing at the BFI IMAX at 11 am on a Sunday! But the chance to see this incredible film on a giant screen was too good to miss.

I first saw it a year or two after it came out, probably on DVD. So twenty or more years ago; and pretty much all I remembered was the spectacle: the fighters running up walls and flying over rooftops and so on.

I had exactly zero memory of the story. Which is strange, because it's a pretty good one. That 'Sword of Destiny' is actually cursed, in my opinion, but you know: there's always going to be some youngster coming after the greatest gunman; someone trying get the Elder Wand from its current owner. That kind of thing.

I'm giving this the coveted five stars because I don't really see how it could be better than it is. That puts into the group of 'One of Martin's favourite films,' and that's fine, because I think it belongs there.

Panel discussion afterwards with a group of women who work in action films in the UK in various ways, including a couple who are stunt performers. That was good too, though people need to be more conscious of their microphone technique in a big space like that.