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Odd book, this one. It's a "classic", although whether this became true before or after it became famous for being in the pocket of American serial killers whilst they were on gun rampages I am not certain. Despite the fact that it was banned for much of its existence, I got the feeling that because it is an interesting portrayal of American youth, it should perhaps be distributed liberally among ...

"Hundreds of professional and amateur scientists actually believe the Bible pretends to teach science. This is a good deal like assuming that there must be authentic religious dogma in the binomial theorum." "What's really remarkable about science," I interjected to my flatmate whilst reading the excellent Big Bang - The most important scientific discovery of all time and why you need to know ab ...

I've always been very wary of cross-gendered authorship. Not that I'm against it, I mean, I read cross-species books sometimes, and I don't have a problem with them. It's just that I'm very suspicious of the accuracy with which a male author can portray the female experience (and vice versa*), particularly when that experience relates to prostitution (as, curiously, it so often does when a man de ...

The scene I had just witnessed brought back a lot of memories - not of things I had done but of things I had failed to do, wasted hours and frustrated moments and opportunities forever lost because time had eaten up so much of my life and I would never get it back. I envied Yeamon and felt sorry for myself at the same time, because I had seen him in a moment that made all my happiness seem dull. ...

A Confederacy of Dunces is an absolute joy. I had an enormous, goofy grin on my face the entire time. This is the funniest book I've read since The Book of the Film of the Story of My Life- it may, in fact, be the funniest book I've ever read. I kept turning to whoever was around me at the time (even strangers on the bus, like) and saying: "Oh, oh, this is a good bit, you've gotta hear this!" and ...

So I was heading off to Croatia and I realized that I knew next to nothing about the war there. I knew it had something to do with Serbia and Bosnia or Bosno-Serbi-Cromagnon or something, but really didn't have the foggiest idea what it was all about, how it started, how it ended, who was doing what to whom, and that I should really get my head `round it while I was there (so forgive me if you alr ...

"So far, so average." says the narrator about two-thirds into The Player of Games, my first foray into the highly recommended world of Iain M. Banks. "Yup." I internally nodded to myself. Maybe it was my own fault for reading outlandish sci-fi right on the heels of the immacuately-constructed worlds of Infinite Jest and Post Captain. Maybe nothing could live up to those two giants of awesomeness. ...

How much do I love the Aubrey-Maturin novels by Patrick O'Brien? If you're not familiar with them, the film Master & Commander was based on book ten (The Far Side of the World) of a twenty-book cycle that follows the adventures of Captain Jack Aubrey, a brutish by good hearted sailor in the royal navy, and his friend Stephen Maturin, who is variously a surgeon for Jack's vessels and a spy for Bri ...

Infinite Jest is huge. That's the first thing you need to know. If you are the sort of person who goes to sleep with a book balanced on their chest and wakes up when it falls on their nose, Infinite Jest will fall over and give you a black eye. That's how big she is. We're talking War & Peace, here. To give you an idea of how big this book is, there's upwards of 300 footnotes, most of which ar ...

The arrival of a new Chuck Palahniuk novel, while an event that usually happens without any huge PR budget or fanfare, is, to me, an occurance to dwarfs the largest film premiere. Ever since writing the book that more or less defined my generation, Chuck's batting average has been more or less perfect. Yes, he has a tendancy to wander off into the implausible at the end of all his stories, but the ...

I read this bad boy on the plane, in one sitting, and considering it's a book that relies heavily on quoting various facts and figures, that is a good reflection on how the author (Eric Schlosser) manages to keep a handle on your attention. The book is comprised of three essays. The first, Reefer Madness, is a history of America's marijuana laws (did you know that the first US law ever pertainin ...

Heckler: You suck! [pause] Bill: You suck? [long pause, deep breath, seems to be considering something] You fucking cunt, get the fuck out of here RIGHT NOW! Get out! Fuck you! FUCK YOU, you idiot! You?re everything about America should be flushed down the toilet, you fucking TURD! Fuck you! Get out! Get out, you fucking drunk bitch! Take her out! Take her FUCKING OUT! Take her to somewhere ...

The most impressive thing about Vernon God Little, I found, was the narrative voice, which was first person- nothing special about that (although I am finding, more and more, that it's my favourite kind of narrative perspective and third person voice-of-god narrators are starting to bug me a little bit), but typically first-person narrators are somewhat obviously the voice of the author themselve ...

The first thing you should know is: I'm really scared of dying. Not of being dead. I'm sure that whatever's next, be it nothing (which, based on my experiences with unconciousness, I'm sure it will be), or anything else, I'll probably rapidly adjust, I'm good that way ("Only one red-hot poker in my earhole today, Satan? Ooh, lovely. How's the wife?"). But the run-up to being dead doesn't sound so ...

I kind of went off short stories, ah, about fifteen years ago, actually. I'm just a novel kind of guy, I think. I really like that feeling you get, when you finish a novel, like you've been transported somewhere, and you take a journey with the characters, and when it ends, you're sad it's over. That can really only come from spending some serious time with the characters, which only novels can do ...

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