Storyville

Books I have read this year (not actually in order, except the first 20 or so, which are in reverse order with the most recent first (which I know is the definition of 'reverse order', but just to clarify in case there was any confusion. Yes, I'm a pedant)):

1. Timekeepers (Catherine Webb - reread)
2. Creatures of Light and Darkness (Roger Zelazny - reread)
3. Nation (Terry Pratchett - reread)
4. The Doomsday Machine (Catherine Webb)
5. I Shall Wear Midnight (Terry Pratchett)
6. Waywalkers (Catherine Webb - reread)
7. Scott Pilgrim and the Infinite Sadness (Bryan Lee O'Malley)
8. Scott Pilgrim vs The World (Bryan Lee O'Malley)
9. Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life (Bryan Lee O'Malley)
10. Twelfth Night (William Shakespeare)
11. Howl's Moving Castle (Diana Wynne Jones - reread)
12. The Obsidian Dagger (Catherine Webb)
13. The Last Watch (Sergei Lukyanenko)
14. Making Money (Terry Pratchett - reread)
15. Jack of Shadows (Roger Zelazny)
16. Flinx Transcendent (Alan Dean Foster)
17. Mirror Dreams (Catherine Webb)
18. Mirror Wakes (Catherine Webb)
19. The Midnight Mayor (Kate Griffin)
20. The Twilight Watch (Sergei Lukyanenko)
21. The Night Watch (Sergei Lukyanenko)
22. The Day Watch (Sergei Lukyanenko)
23. The Dinosaur Hunters (Deborah Cadbury)
24. Armageddon: The Musical (Robert Rankin - reread)
25. Nine Princes in Amber (Roger Zelazny)
26. The Guns of Avalon (Roger Zelazny)
27. Sign of the Unicorn (Roger Zelazny)
28. The Hand of Oberon (Roger Zelazny)
29. The Courts of Chaos (Roger Zelazny)
30. Trumps of Doom (Roger Zelazny)
31. Blood of Amber (Roger Zelazny)
32. Sign of Choas (Roger Zelazny)
33. Knight of Shadows (Roger Zelazny)
34. Prince of Chaos (Roger Zelazny)
35. The End of Mr Y (Scarlett Thomas - read most of it, got distracted by something else. Will finish it at some point but was not totally fascinated by it)
36. The Tempest (William Shakespeare)
37. A Midsummer Night's Dream (William Shakespeare - reread)
38. The Journal of Gideon Mantell (bit of a skim-read in places, but very entertaining!)
39. Twilight (Stephanie Meyer - easily the worst book I've read this year, by a clear country mile)
40. The Time Traveller's Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
And possibly one or two others I've forgotten.

Hmm, a few themes becoming apparent there. Got into Zelazny in a big way for a while, then Lukyanenko (seriously, that is a bloody good series, you must read it!), and I've been gradually working my way through Catherine Webb's back-catalogue (and I'm insanely jealous that someone several years younger than me has a back-catalogue, and so much talent as a writer - I've always wanted to write, but never been any good! If I could write, her books are pretty much what I would write!).

I seem to have read a lot of books by not many authors this year! And it would have been more, but after an intense period of reading I got a bit tired after I Shall Wear Midnight and took a bit of a break to catch up on some TV watching instead! Got through 2 seasons of Fringe in 2 weeks! Bloody love that show!

Also, there are quite a few books on the list that I've re-read this year. I know a lot of people will read a book once and never again, but there are some books, and some authors, that I adore and can read many times without boredom...when I was a teenager I read the Pratchett/Gaiman masterpiece Good Omens on a semi-annual basis. My copy looks very battered now! Next year I must attempt to read more new books. Already on my list is the next Kate Griffin book, The Neon Court (the third book in the absolutely brilliant Matthew Swift series. Go read it. Now.), which isn't even out until February! I'm quite excited. For those not in the know, Kate Griffin is Catherine Webb's alter ego, the name she uses for her adult fiction (her other works are technically classed as teen fiction, even though they're not really). And she's now one of my favourite authors, in the august company of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.

So, people. The list should give you some idea of my tastes...what other books should I be reading? I'm sure there are many fantastic books that have passed me by over the years, so what do you recommend I read next year? Which authors should I have in my collection?

Let's Kill Music

Before it kills us all!

Or, Gigs Wot I Have Been To In Glasgow...

There are quite a few of them. I've done a lot of gigging here, because Glasgow is such a great city for live music, with loads of wonderful venues and some amazing home-grown bands. I have quite a collection of tickets, which have built up around the edge of my mirror, thus:

 

So here we have:

1. Dave Gorman @ Pavillion Theatre, 21/09/09 (obviously there are going to be a few comedy gigs mixed in, it's not all music!)

2. The Hot Rats @ King Tuts, 11/10/09

3. Bat For Lashes @ ABC, 19/10/09

4. Skunk Anansie @ Academy, 22/11/09

5. The Bluetones @ King Tuts, 16/12/09

6. The Swell Season @ City Halls, 16/01/10

7. Nick Harper @ Classic Grand, 03/03/10

8. Mark Morriss @ Maggie Mays, 05/03/10

9. Chris Addison @ Citizen's Theatre, 17/03/10

10. The Twilight Sad @ ABC, 02/04/10

11. Evelyn Evelyn @ Oran Mor (and Amanda Palmer's apartment, New York, via webcam), 17/04/10

12. Doves @ Academy, 01/05/10

13. Stag & Dagger Festival @ lots of places!, 22/05/10

14. Bitter Ruin @ Ivory Blacks, 02/06/10

15. Supergrass @ Barrowland, 08/06/10

16. Richard Herring @ Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh (Fringe gig), 05/08/10

17. Arj Barker @ Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh (Fringe gig), 20/08/10

18. Stewart Lee @ The Stand, Edinburgh (Fringe gig), 30/08/10

19. NME Radar show (The Joy Formidable and Chapel Club) @ King Tuts, 01/10/10

20. Sparrow And The Workshop @ King Tuts, 04/10/10

21. Tom McRae @ Oran Mor, 16/10/10

22. The Unwinding Hours (with The Twilight Sad acoustic - absolutely amazing!) @ Oran Mor auditorium, 17/10/10

23. Bellowhead @ Liquid Rooms, Edinburgh, 14/11/10

24. The Bluetones @ Oran Mor, 25/11/10

And a few other bits and bobs including my Gati di Roma calendar (so cute and so cheesy!) and my certificate for climbing the Scott monument in Edinburgh (all 287 steps of it)!

Wow, considering I've lived here for only 16 months, that represents a gig and a half a month! And there were a few months with no gigs at all! And that's just the gigs I bought tickets for, not including free things like the Candy Sessions at Liquid Ship (which I've been to loads of because my friend Shoshana plays them quite often) and Sunday acoustic nights at The Aragon (which I have seen the lovely Hannah O'Reilly at).

And all of them have been brilliant shows, not a duff one amongst them. Particular stand-outs include Evelyn Evelyn (just for the sheer weirdness of watching a gig where half of the act is stuck in New York due to an ash cloud...a random member of the audience had to stand on stage holding Amanda Palmer's laptop so we could see Jason Webley on the webcam! They just about successfully performed a few songs that way!)

Also Bat For Lashes was incredible, Supergrass were EPIC!, The Bluetones were funny and charming, as was Tom McRae (who I'd never seen before, despite liking him for 10 years!)...there are just so many. And what has really made all of them great has been the audiences - there's nothing like a Glasgow crowd. Sure, they're sometimes a little beery and larey, but they are the most enthusiastic crowds I've ever seen! I barely made it out of Skunk Anansie alive, almost lost a shoe in the mosh pit at Doves (!), and was touched by the huge genuine love The Bluetones were shown last night, with Autophilia being a massive sing-along despite not being their greatest song (but don't tell them I said that!).

Sadly that will be my last gig here, because I'm moving back to Bath on Sunday. But I already have gigs lined up there...Chris Addison at the Tobacco Factory in Bristol on Monday! Then a bit of a gap until The Joy Formidable and Chapel Club in February at Thekla (it's a boat! And one of the finest venues I've been to. Mostly because it's a freakin' boat!).

What's A Girl To Do?

There is a recurring phrase in Terry Pratchett's Discworld books: "You do the job that's in front of you", usually used by Sam Vimes, and occasionally by Granny Weatherwax, both of whom have hard jobs to do but do them anyway because somebody has to.

I don't have a particularly hard job; it's an incredible, fun, interesting job that I feel privileged to do every day. But because the place is so understaffed, all of us end up 'doing the job that's in front of us' even when it's not a good idea. Like moving extremely heavy and awkward things when you're recovering from a broken arm. To be fair, I broke it five months ago, and it is well on the way to healing, but this last week I have shifted a lot of large, heavy boxes in cramped, awkward spaces, and it is pushing my recovery backwards. I had a physio appointment this morning and told her that my arm was more sore this week than it has been in a while, but then afterwards went into work and got right back on with carrying things that I know I shouldn't. And this evening I'm back on the painkillers.

And I know I should have not done what I did today, but there is a culture at work of suffering in silence - everyone has bad backs or other (usually work-related) health problems, but because there are so few people to do these things or to ask for help, they all feel they have to soldier on rather than show signs of weakness (or something like that!). And this culture is infectious - I took one week off work when I broke my elbow. One week. I was still in a great deal of pain, and could barely use my right arm, when I went back, but I felt I had to or I'd be letting people down. And I have spent weeks (months, now) struggling to type, and to move drawers or boxes of specimens, but I have kept my mouth shut and kept going, because it's what everyone else does.

Tomorrow I am NOT going to be moving heavy boxes. Either somebody else can help, or they're not going to be moved.


Sorry to get all maudlin and ranty on you today, but sometimes it's nice to get things off your chest! And I haven't written anything here in ages! I have been to lots of amazing gigs recently, so maybe I'll write a post about those later this week. But right now I have to go rest my sore arm because typing is making my wrist hurt!

Me And You Vs The World

What a bad Blog Mistress I am. Yet again, 'Oops, sorry, my bad'.

Films Wot I Have Seen Recently:


Inception:
Wow. There is no other word. Christopher Nolan, you are a genius and I want to make love to your brain. That sounded less bad in my head.


Toy Story 3:
Yes, in 3D and everything. Which was great! It worked really well, and didn't make my eyes hurt at all, unlike the last film I saw in 3D (Coraline. Obviously not the film's fault, it was a great film, but it didn't really benefit much from the 3Dness). The animation was AMAZING, and it had a lovely story. Anyone who didn't have a little tear in their eye at the end isn't human.

Scott Pilgrim vs The World:
This was today's cinema outing. It is a massive slice of awesome from start to finish. I love Edgar Wright, he is also a genius, and he has a wonderful and distinctive style of film-making. I love spotting all the affectionate references to other films/TV shows/games etc. in his movies. Being an American film this time (and based on a graphic novel) obviously it was slightly different in style to the stuff he's made with Simon Pegg (not a Cornetto in sight!), but there are still little touches that mark it out as an Edgar Wright film. And it was funny, and clever, and the effects were amazing, and despite still looking like a teenager (there was some stubble in evidence, so I'll upgrade him from 12 to maybe 14), Michael Cera kicked some serious ass! Is it very wrong that I now have a tiny crush on him? Well yes, obviously, since I just said he looks about 14, which makes me sound like a paedophile. I'll shut up and go away now.

But while I get my coat, just time for a quick rant. I was appalled (if not totally surprised) to see at the cinema today a trailer for Let Me In, an American remake of the Swedish Let The right One In, which was itself based on a Swedish book of the same title. My question is: WHY? From the trailer the remake appears to be a direct shot-for-shot, frame-by-frame replica of the original film. Which makes it totally redundant. But of course some people are lazy and can't read subtitles, so let's just re-do the entire film for them, rather than suggest they watch it dubbed. Bloody typical. I saw the Spanish film The Orphanage a couple of years ago, and while it was still showing at the cinema I heard that an English language remake had been planned. Which thankfully hasn't yet emerged, but I believe is still in the pipeline. That film was superb, and the subtitles in no way distracted from the creepiness or the sentiment of the film (this is all true for Let The right One In, too).
So please, lay off on the crappy remakes of superb non-English language films.
/rant

It's Over

I love reading, and I do get very involved in my books. So while I can happily sit doing little else for days, racing towards the end of a book, it's always disappointing to reach the end, because the story's over and I have to return to the real world. Which can sometimes be a slightly jarring transition, especially if I've been reading an Alan Dean Foster novel, and have to remember that interstellar travel isn't possible, there are no giant talking insects, and no Commonwealth of planets. He has created such a coherent and vivid galaxy in his books that it is sometimes easy to forget that all these things are not real (if you're me, anyway)! My disappointment at reaching the end of the latest Foster novel is compounded by the fact that it's the last book in a series which he has spent nearly 40 years writing. And a series in which the previous few books have been something of a letdown, having lost the thread of the main plot somewhat and headed off on unnecessary and frivolous tangents.

The last book in the Flinx series was not in itself a letdown at all, in fact it was extremely good (but don't expect a review or even plot synopsis here, because if you haven't read the series it'll mean very little to you, and Mum hasn't read the last book yet, so I'd hate to spoilerise!), but coming to the end is especially disappointing simply because there will be no more. It's taken a long time to get there, but Flinx's story is over, and reaching the end is like losing an old friend. I've grown up with Flinx - I was 16 when I read the first book, about the same age Flinx was at that point, and we're both 26 now - I've always loved him as a character and looked forward to reading his latest adventure (even when it did stray from the major plot of the series), but now I have no more adventures to look forward to! I guess I'll have to go and get a life of my own instead! After I've read the last few non-Flinx Commonwealth books that I just realised I missed somewhere along the way!

Big Cheese

I just read an article on Yahoo Movies blog about films that're so bad they're good. And they do have some corkers! Highlights include Birdemic (the link in their blog doesn't work), which is so tacky it looks like a spoof trailer, Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, which looks like possibly the most awesomist film ever, and Shark Attack 3: Megalodon, starring John Barrowman (which just about tells you everything you need to know: it's gonna be cheesy as hell).

And I can think of a few other films that definitely fall into the category of 'so bad they're good':

Ticks, a wonderful 90's horror film featuring Carlton from Fresh Prince trying to be a badass, Seth Green, and some giant mutated ticks. And plenty of unintentional hilarity.

Piranha, a stunning piece of late 70's cheese that followed in the wake of the success of Jaws. I love the buzzing sound effect they used when the piranhas attack. There is a remake out this summer, which instead of mutated piranhas uses 2 million year-old supposedly extinct piranhas! In 3D!

Zapped!, a large slice of 80's Stinking Bishop starring a very young Scott Baio as a science geek who accidentally discovers a formula that gives him telekinetic powers, leading to all sorts of hilarious high school hilarity.

Flash Gordon. Ah, Flash Gordon. A predictable addition to the list, I'll admit, but it is without a doubt one of the cheesiest movies ever made. And BRILLIANT. What's not to love? It has everything you need: Ming The Merciless, Brian Blessed, and a soundtrack by Queen. Job done.

Any others you think I've missed? There must be millions. I have discounted such gems as Evil Dead, Nightmare on Elm Street, WarGames, Willow, Die Hard, Gremlins, Short Circuit, Dune etc., on the grounds that I think they are genuinely good.

Strange Ones

So that's it. No more Supergrass. My world has a little musical hole in it. Last night they said farewell to Scotland, at the Barrowlands (a wonderfully tacky old ballroom) in Glasgow, as part of their final tour.

And they were wonderful. They were always wonderful, of course, but last night in particular will forever stand out as a great gig for me. It was a true retrospective: starting with the most recent album and working backwards, they played 3 or 4 songs from each, and finished at the very beginning with the first song they ever wrote (Caught By The Fuzz, of course). They even had little video montages to introduce each album.

The crowd were great, by about halfway through the set...they were all a bit static to begin with, and it wasn't until we got to Moving that the whole room started jumping, and after that there was some pretty consistent moshing! But even when people were just standing still, the cheering and the singing along were pretty damn impressive! You could really feel the love in that room. The band played for a solid two hours, and every song was a gem. We got the hits, and some brilliant album tracks that they haven't played in the past when I've seen them.

It was all over far too soon, they took a bow, and then were gone.

Goodbye, boys. I will miss you.

EDIT 11/6/2010: I sat listening back through all their albums at work yesterday (enjoying the wonderfulness of them all over again, and discovering I like Road to Rouen as an album a lot more than I used to!), and have figured out the set list from the Glasgow gig. So for those who are interested, here it is (not necessarily in order within each album):

Bad Blood
Diamond Hoo Ha Men
Rebel In You
Outside
Tales of Endurance
St. Petersburg
Road To Rouen
Kiss of Life
Rush Hour Soul
Brecon Beacons
Grace
Funniest Thing
Moving
Mary
Pumping On Your Stereo
In It For The Money
Richard III
Late In The Day
Sun Hits The Sky
I'd Like To Know
Mansize Rooster
Lenny
Strange Ones

Encore:
Alright
Caught by The Fuzz

I think that's all of it! Pretty impressive. Particular highlights for me included...ah hell, the whole set was a damn highlight! How do you choose out of that bumper assortment of goodies?!

Some videos have turned up on Youtube now, so here are a few gems for your enjoyment: