It's the end of the year (or at least soon will be) and I thought I'd do a little summary now, as it’s unlikely I’ll have time tomorrow.


This year I’ve read 184 books, let me clarify that a bit

 
I started 14 books I didn’t finish (because they were so bad) the worst of those I think was Guns, Germs and Steel my review below.

 
So I read a few pages of this book then decided to throw it in the bin. Not pass it on in any way. Just Dump it.

In the first paragraph - “Why did history unfold differently on different continents? In case this question immediately makes you shudder at the thought you are about to read a racist treatise, you aren’t” As Charlie Brooker pointed out on the 10 O’clock show recently someone introducing themselves as “Not a Racist” is a bit suspicious. Still that wasn’t what made me throw this book at the wall. A few pages later we have this: “New Guineans may have come to be smarter than Westerners. European and American children spend much of their time being passively entertained by TV” hmm that old saw of TV rots the brain, for which evidence is ambiguous at best and many studies actually say that moderate TV viewing actually increases intelligence. But no, Mr Diamond has obviously decided the goggle box is the Devil’s device as a few sentences on he says “irreversible mental stunting associated with reduced childhood stimulation” (the TV being an anti-stimulation device of course) and “mental abilities in New Guineans are probably genetically superior to Westerners, and they surely are superior in escaping the devastating developmental disadvantages that most children in industrialised societies now grow up” (my italics) Oh Really? Can you say sweeping generalisation without any evidence Mr Diamond?

And the reason he thinks New Guineans “may have come to be smarter than Westerners”? Well apparently it’s because they live a hand to mouth style existence struggling to find food (malnutrition in children is actually a cause of mental retardation isn’t it?) and fighting tribal wars so the stupid is killed off before it can breed and in Western society we’ve apparently conquered Maslow’s hierarchy of needs beyond the find food, find shelter level or as Mr. Diamond puts it “Europeans have for thousands of years been living in densely populated societies with central governments, police, and judiciaries where murders were relatively uncommon and a state of war was the exception rather than the rule.” Oh Really? Thousands of years you say, exactly what history books have you been reading Mr Diamond?

This book gets an average of 4.15 stars on LT?!? Most people say it is a must read although there are few thoughtful reviews (from people who actually read the book) pointing out much larger flaws than the ones I’ve highlighted above, and apparently Diamond, a non-historian, tells historians that they’ve been doing history wrong!

It was such an important book that not only is there an abridged version there is also a reading companion, a documentary series AND it won the Pulitzer? My flabber is well and truly gasted

And that’s probably the longest review I’ve ever done for 10 pages worth of reading!

 

I listened to 9 audio books

I read 11 ebooks (this is likely to increase next year now I’ve invested in an e-reader)

I read 41 Graphic Novels (10 of those were a re-read of Sandman to prepare for the new monthlies that are now delayed)

I read 10 ARCs (this is likely to increase next year too as I’m now reading ebook ARCs)

I read 37 books that I’ve owned for over a year without reading

I read 7 books by multiple authors

I read 34 books by female authors

I read 143 books by male authors


Wow that’s a scary gender imbalance there. I don’t deliberately choose books by gender and therefore you’d assume that I’d read roughly 50/50?

 
I rated 28 books “Average”

I rated 109 books “Good”

I rated 33 books “Brilliant”

 
My rating system explained  -

 
Unfinished - self-explanatory really, it was so bad I couldn't finish it

Average - an OK book but one I wouldn't really recommend

Good - a good example of the genre, one I'd recommend

Brilliant- books that everyone should read, really outstanding and memorable

 

Out of those 33 books here are the ones that were not re-reads:

 

 

Gun Machine by Warren Ellis

 

 

 

well written police procedural on the edge of weird

 

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

 

 

The art and story work in combination perfectly as your drawn into Bechdel’s utterly compelling tale

 

Slowly Downward by Stanley Donwood

 

 

 

Highly recommended flash fiction, also check out Household worms

 

 

The poet’s corner (on audio) by John Lithgow

 

 

Brilliant collection of poems read out loud.

 

 

On writing by Stephen King

 

 

Recommended for Stephen King fans and those interested in the writing process

 

This book is full of spiders by David Wong (can’t wait until I can catch the film of John Dies at the end in 2014!)

 

 

Not as funny as John Dies at the end (a 5 star book from 2012) but a much better put together story

 

Jagannath by Karen Tidbeck

 

 

 

highly readable collection of shorts

 

Isle of 100,000 graves by Fabien Vehlmann Jason

 

 

This is a delight to read with fairly simple but fitting art.

 

The Half-made world & The Rise of ransom City by Felix Gilman

 

 

Well told tale in a fantastic and fantastically weird world

 

 

must read sequel but read The half made world first

 

 

Roadside Picnic by Boris & Arkady Strugatsky

 

 

Highly recommended for lovers of SF and the weird

 

You're all jealous of my jetpack by Tom Gauld

 

 

A really quite amusing collection of singe page comics

 

Unbuilt Bristol by Eugene Byrne

 

 

Great resource and very entertaining history

 

The Orphan Master’s son by Adam Johnson

 

 

It blew me away, a definite 5 star read

 

Mechanique by Genievive Valentine

 

 

Beautiful, painful, joyous, adventurous tapestry to be savoured and devoured and thrust into the hands of all those who share your reading tastes…

 

Die Wand by Marlen Haushofer

 

 

A quiet contemplative read, recommended

 

The violent century by Lavie Tidhar

 

 

The world is lovingly detailed and we get to see the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s with an alternative history.

 

The fictional man by Al Ewing

 

 

Highly recommended especially if you like metafiction and stories about the creative process

 

Wonderbook by Jeff Vandermeer

 

 

Stunning & useful, what a great book!

 

Lighter than my shadow by Katie Green

 

 

Highly recommended autobiography

 

The crystal mirror by Tim Malnick & Katie Green

 

 



 

This is a seriously beautiful book

 

Beyond the killing fields by Sydney Schanberg

 

 

Powerfully intelligent writing on the subject of war. Highly recommended. Have a box of tissues to hand when reading though

 

 

 

That’s it for reading but what about writing?

 

Well I attended a Vala book launch in February for Barbara Turner-Vesselago’s book Writing without a parachute  - http://www.valapublishers.coop/writingwithoutaparachute and a random comment from Sarah Bird (of Vala) got me thinking. Sarah and I were talking about creative writing and I said that I should do some but was afraid I’d be bad at it. She replied something along the lines that the only way to get good is to practise and that creative writing was fun and everyone should give it a go. This is not new advice but for some reason, probably as I’d been fired up by the Bristol Festival of Literature the previous October, it struck a spark. 2013 was the year I finally stopped procrastinating and got writing.

As I suspected my first attempt wasn’t brilliant (see below) but given some encouragement from Dave Gullen (who didn’t say he hated it or that I should stop) I kept writing. From there I entered a few competitions, got an honourable mention in the 1000 words one, won the Hodderscape one and got my writing in print for the first time in The Naked Guide to Bristol & a story accepted into an anthology Airship shape and Bristol fashion http://hierath.wordpress.com/2013/09/03/airship-shape-and-bristol-fashion-table-of-contents/ soon to be published by Wizard’s Tower Press. Well if that wasn’t encouragement enough I don’t know what is so I’ve started to write “the thing that may eventually one day, possibly, maybe, end up as a book” (that’s the working title obviously).

In 2014 watch this space – so far I’ve started a 2^nd first draft as the 1^st  first draft (of a different story) stalled at around 20,000 words (I think I need to be a better writer to attempt that story and will return once I’ve done something “easier” and completed a novel). My 2^nd first draft stands at a grand total of 15,784 words. However this time I’m not pantsing and have a journal with an outline and notes which hopefully will help.

 

My first attempt at a short story, a little less than a year ago (written in April – see even after deciding to write in 2013 I spent 2 months working up to it!)

 

Christmas steps

There was a stabbing on Christmas steps. We were both there. It was foggy, and dark, but with that

 orangeade penumbral glow you get from the streetlights. I walked past St Bartholomew’s thinking

 about electric monks  as I usually do when passing that cloaked horseman statue.  The artist David

Backhouse said that the statue is of no particular person but represents “a reminder of people from

the Past”  which seemed appropriate, however he also said that his art “is about the way in which

 nature and humans depend on one another and “the search for balance and harmony” which sounded like

 arty wank to me.  

 I wondered what it would be like if all the statues in the city were sentient, that would be OK for

 

the ones that had other statues nearby to converse silently with in tones of creaking stone or the

 

ping of rain off bronze but it would be terribly lonely for those, like the horseman, who had no other

 

statues close by. I wondered about his lonely thoughts watching road traffic burping past or the

 

random wanderings of shoppers and revellers like ants who have lost their sense of smell. 

 

You were walking down Park Row. The smell of fish and chips only partly masked the muffling wet

 dog smell of fog.  Neither of us knew then that our futures were about to spin out of control. You

 were probably thinking of going home, or of dinner or something else mundane. I was constructing

 

a new fantasy in my head as usual. At this point I was wondering what the collective noun for

 

statues was. I was disappointed to find that the Wikipedia entry on collective nouns didn’t have

 

statues. It had a “rout of snails” and a “scurry of squirrels” and a “trip of stoats” but nothing related

 

to statues.

Perhaps I should invent one? A stillness of statues, a silence of statues, a freeze of

statues  perhaps or a pondering of statues since they must  think deep thoughts. A quick search led

me, amusedly,  to @collectivenouns on Twitter and so I had  to immediately follow them, still no

better suggestions there though.  These musings brought me to the bottom of the steps. I checked

the Bristol culture webpage again to start me off.

 

In medieval times, the Christmas Steps was [should that be were? I thought] called Queene Street,

 later becoming known as Knyfesmyth Street after its specialist traders. At its foot for centuries was

 

a statue of the Madonna and child, rubbed smooth by generations of people for luck. The beheaded

statue can still be seen just inside the entrance to St Bartholomew’s Court.

 I was researching a story, about a stabbing, I was going to set it on Knyfesmyth street. It was going

to be about a young man, younger than me so maybe your age, who comes to rub the statue of the

Madonna and child for luck. He’s annoyed a powerful criminal and men are coming for him, the kind

of men I’m probably going to describe as burly. I could also describe them as utterly barking and

very, very dangerous. I wonder if beheaded or disarticulated statues would have their own

 

collective noun. The iconoclasts defaced many statues and the Taliban famously blew up the

 

Buddhas of Bamiyan so an effacement of effigies perhaps.

 I wonder what thoughts swirled around your head as you approached the top of the steps.  I

wondered at the time what thoughts would swirl around the head of my young man as he looked

 

for some superstitious or supernatural aid. Was he a true believer or did the smoothly rubbed

 

statue hold some particular meaning to him. Perhaps he had noted the statue previously whilst

 

shopping for a knyfe? Or perhaps I should develop a scene with a small beggar girl who tells him the

 

magic contained within the statue and how it saved her from some dread disease of the street?

 

Perhaps I should have a fighting of beggars, since I’m still thinking of collective nouns and that’s

 

such a good one.

You were silhouetted at the top of the steps and I assume I must have been the same at the bottom.

I only half noticed you as I was looking at the steps and making mental notes whilst mostly looking

 

at my phone. You paused slightly and started down the well-worn route trodden by many over the

centuries. I stood, hand in pockets, lost in thought wondering about the specialist knife merchants

who used to occupy what I was looking at. I wondered how many synonyms for knife there actually

are and which would fit my story best. A dimly glinting dagger perhaps or a wickedly thin dirk

 

maybe, possibly I should be alliterative; a cruel cleaver, a strident stiletto, ugh, one to play with later

 

I guessed.

Was it an opportunity for you? Did you think I was someone else, people often do, I’ve been told I

have one of those faces that make people think they know me. Did you catch the tenuous half

shaped story as it flitted up and down the stairs or was that only visible to me? Perhaps it caught

 

you and you sleepwalked through actions given fleeting form on the fog.  You approached closer

 

and I finally became fully aware of you and thought I should walk up the steps now. My writer’s

 

glance worked to categorize you and add to my young man at the same time. Your dark ski jacket

 

becoming an oilskin in my imagination, your baseball cap a different, more time appropriate

 

headwear as I tried different shapes in my imagination. You looked straight at me then and I wonder

 

what you saw.

My slightly dreamy but intense gaze illuminated by the screen of my phone is perhaps all you

focussed on. Perhaps you’d had a bad night, perhaps you were angry at the world, perhaps you

 

were high, perhaps you spotted an opportunity, perhaps I had unknown mortal enemies that had

 

paid for an assassin, perhaps you were an escapee from a secure mental institution, I am left with a

 

plethora of perhapses.

I had thought a knife would glint but perhaps there was to be no fog in my story. I had thought my

burly fellows would grunt as they stabbed but you emitted no sound. You slashed and stabbed until

my guts were in ribbons, the fog rolled down the steps and matched the fog of darkness that closed

my eyes as you ran away, my phone taken, your footsteps sounding very fast to my slowing, ever

more slowly, beating heart, at least now I’ll be able to describe what it feels like to be stabbed.