The Carpet Makers by Andreas Eschbach

So, German sci-fi? Metropolis, but that's a film. Anything more and I'm struggling. Kurt Vonnegut? He bummed about in Dresden for a bit, but he was American. Von Daniken? Swiss, and he thinks it's all true.

Luckily we've got Andreas Eschbach. Only one book in English though, but it is a great one.

It starts in the desert, describing a society dedicated to the making of carpets for the Emperor's Palace. They're made from the hair of the makers' wives and daughters, and each one takes a lifetime to complete. The only clue that it's science fiction at the beginning is the rusted and useless rayguns carried by the merchant's guards.

I'm not going to give much else away, because the plot unravels really nicely - each chapter's like a short story focusing on one character, but all the pieces fit together. The sense of scale, both in time and space, is immense and it's contrasted with the second by second ritual of tying these carpets together.

There's also friction between the cynical and gloomy worldview about politics, power and faith, and the role that love plays in changing the rules.

A big recommendation from me - beautiful and poetic with big ideas about science fiction and human nature.

I, Fatty by Jerry Dahl

It's a funny business, celebrity. One minute you're loved around the world by millions of fans who think they know you personally. But if they think you've betrayed them, that love turns to hate pretty quickly.

These are the fictionalised memoirs of Roscoe Arbuckle (never Fatty to his face), one of the very first international superstars of the modern age. A hugely famous film comedian before the twenties - the first star to earn a million pounds a year - he started the careers of people like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. And he invented the throwing of custard pies.

But if you've heard of him know, it's probably about him raping a woman to death with a coke bottle. It's pretty clear he was innocent, and Arbuckle was eventually cleared after three trials. It didn't do his career much good though and he died ten years later a drunk and a junkie (though to be fair he'd been on booze and heroin for quite a while before that.)

This is a fascinating read, and clearly very well researched. I love learning about the early years of filmmaking, and this book shows how seat-of-your-pants it all was. Much of it was just filmed on the street using whatever came to hand. Doing a slapstick routine with a hose while firefighters were actually putting out a blaze may have been step too far, admittedly.

It's very sharp on what it's like to become so famous, and have that fame turn on you. It shows the power of tabloid demonisation. William Randolph Hearst made a fortune from Fatty the Demon, and it's a false image that survives to this day. And it outlines how the nascent Hollywood machine got a scapegoat to placate the moralising mob, and so save the whole industry. Lots here to reflect on in respect to today's celebrity meat grinder.

You should check out Roscoe Arbuckle on youtube - the movies are still funny, and he's surprisingly acrobatic for a big lad. Especially good are the ones he made with Buster Keaton, the only star to publicly support him through it all. A stand up, fall down guy.

Good god, got two more books I've already finished to review and I may also be done with Stone Junction and Freakonomics pretty soon. And I did run out of reading material on holiday and had to read a chick-lit book I found. Comfort Food, by the author of Friday Night Knitting Club. Actually wasn't too bad - got halfway through it, and I kind of want to know who Gus ends up with now.

Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds

Rapidly becoming my new favourite writer.

This isn't set in the same universe as Revelation Space or most of Reynolds' other work - in fact it's set in two other universes. One is a few centuries in the future, in which the Earth's been made uninhabitable by runaway nanotechnology (they call it the nanocaust. I prefer the term nanogeddon.)

So while archeologists of the future make trips to the remains of Paris, universe number two deals with a detective/jazz musician living in Paris in what's meant to be 1959, but which we soon learn isn't the same as our 1959.

It's a great set-up and a very easy read. Not as hard sci-fi as his other stuff but lots of fun. Both sides of the story work well and the characters are convincing and engaging. There's also plenty of interesting stuff about nanotechnology.

Although the plotting is very good, the big minus here is that the nefarious plan from the villains makes no sense at all. The ending's also pretty weak - it leaves too many loose ends. The suggestion is that it's all going to be tied up in a sequel, but there isn't enough loose-endage to warrant another book. Another few chapters would've done it.

What Century Rain really reminds me of is a good episode of Doctor Who. Not one in particular, but the kind where there's a strange version of the past that's really in the future. Worth reading if you fancy some light and fun sci-fi with a bit of romance and noir thrown in.

Okay, I've finished I, Fatty a novel about Roscoe Arbuckle so I'll post that soon, and I'm halfway through some German sci-fi called The Carpet Makers. Starting to worry I haven't brought enough books on holiday.

Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King

Stephen King, but not horror. Not completely, anyway. If you're a fan of the man's work, this is closest in form and style to Different Seasons. Four novellas with just the barest touch of the supernatural.

All four are about retribution. The first book "1922" is about rural murder, guilt and madness. And rats. The second - "Big Farmer" - concerns rape and revenge. The third is "Fair Extension" about envy and a pact with the devil. "A Good Marriage" is probably the one I enjoyed most, about a woman who makes an unfortunate discovery about her husband.

All really enjoyable, and all very different. You can still tell it's King, largely because of the multiple voices for the protagonist, and the repeated phrases which become motifs, but he reins it in well here. What I really liked about the stories was the lack of twist, which is refreshing in suspense tales. The endings are all satisfying and never seem like a quick fix or cheap thrill.

I didn't enjoy it as much as Different Seasons, or the Bachman Books (less pulpy than Bachman, incidentally), but that's possibly just age. Reading Apt Pupil or Rage when you're a teenager makes a big impression. But it's certainly his best work since......oh, Hearts in Atlantis probably. Although I've just checked, and I haven't read Lisey's Story or Cell. And this book's at the other end of the spectrum from his Dark Tower stuff, although there are at least two references to It, so clearly King can't help tying all his work together.

A book on tape, and as usually happens I've just finished a paper book at the same time - Century Rain by Alastair Reynolds, so I'll need to knock off that review before I forget what happened. Now listening to The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria (geopolitics, rather than sci-fi) and finishing off Booky Wook 2. But I'm off to Barcelona tomorrow, so I'll need to dig out some holiday reading.

Embracing Defeat by John Dower

How do you civilise a modern, advanced nation which has proved itself to be uncivilised?

This is the job the Americans gave themselves in Japan after World War Two. Like Germany, it was a country gone mad, but the roots of that madness ran much deeper than with the Nazis - at least that was the thinking.

Dower's history looks at the things from the other side - how a catastrophic defeat affected people and the way they thought about themselves. How being occupied by a different culture - a different race! - for the first time in the history of Japan changed them. And what their hopes were for the future.

Now, in a self-fullfilling prophecy I only got halfway through the book. This part deals with the social history in the first couple of years after the defeat, but it is a great read. It looks at issues like depression and poverty, prostitution, the black market and politics through things like pulp novels, cartoons and (of particular interest to me) radio. The average household listened to five hours of radio every day. There was a regular show trying to re-unite families with returning soldiers and featured a section called "Who am I" for those solidiers who couldn't even remember if they had families.

The impression I got was of the Americans doing their best, through old fashioned colonialism, to drag the Japanese into freedom. It wasn't always pretty, but it could've been so much worse. And it certainly wouldn't have worked if large numbers of Japanese hadn't been keen so create a new democratic, free and pacifistic nation. In fact one of the themes of the book is whether forcing Hirohito to resign would perhaps have been more acceptable to his subjects than the Americans assumed, and whether it would've led to a more mature and honest acceptance of their collective war guilt.

That seems to be a big issue in the second part, which deals with the emperor and the war crime trials. I may get it back out of the library, but the first half is a fascinating snapshot of life in a country halfway between defeat and rebirth, east and west, past and future. And unlike so much history, it makes you feel pretty good about the human race.

Tokyo Station by Martin Cruz Smith

A masterclass in how to write an historical thriller without resorting to cheap plot devices or 500 bloody pages.

It's set in Japan on the eve of the attack on Pearl Harbour and follows an American called Harry - the son of a missionary who's grown up running wild in Tokyo. He's the cynical club owner with a heart of gold, - a fixer, a conman and a part time spy. A real Humphrey Bogart type, but always comes across as a real character rather than a cliche. He's also got a really interesting and ambiguous relationship to his adopted country.

The plot concerns his plan to get out of Dodge before things get too hot for the gaijin. He's also busy playing one side off against the other - the Japanese army and navy, the thought police, big business zaibatsu and the yakuza. Things are revealed slowly and subtly. And, of course, there's more than one woman in his life.

There's also a crazy old school samuari who wants to chop Harry's head off. His eventual appearance is worth waiting for.

Very well written, and the historical details seem part of the fabric, rather than "the setting for a thriller" if that makes sense.

The only downside is that it's possibly a little too short for all the great characters Cruz Smith is trying to bring in. It feels like I'm getting snapshots of fascinating relationships, but I suppose leaving the reader hungry for more is no bad thing.

Thanks to Bryce for his constant nagging for me to read this - it was worth it. And finish your Mao! Turns out he's a rotter (spoiler.)

I finished this a couple of weeks ago, but I've just got my internet set up here. Inspired by Tokyo Station I'm now a few hundred pages through Embracing Defeat - an absurdly big chunk of Japanese postwar social history. It's really good, and I'll write a review even if I don't finish it.

I've abandoned a couple of books on tape - Peter Ackroyd's biography of Poe (turns out he was a whiny wee prick) and the other David Mitchell's book about the Dutch and Japanese in the 18th century. Alright, but not brilliant. Instead I've been listening to dozens of old Russell Brand radio shows. Genius, but not for everyone I'd imagine.

I have just got hold of the audiobook of Al's recommendation - Full Dark, No Stars. More Stephen King short stories but now with 0% haunted paintings.

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

I owe this blog a couple of reviews. They do say moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do, alongside accidently killing a prostitute and World of Warcraft.

First off, we've got some bittersweet campery from the humorist David Sedaris - a book on tape read by the author. If anyone's a listener of the excellent This American Life podcast, you'll know his stuff, in particular his very distinctive voice. In fact, these memoirs start with his experiences with speech therapy at school to try and rid him of his effeminate lisp. Instead he becomes expert and not using any words with an "s" in them. It did make me think about the way some gay fellas speak - is it affected or involuntary? A mixture? And does it still happen as much these days when we're all a bit more chilled? Anyway, David's sorted out his "s" now, though you're never going to confuse his voice with Lee Marvin's.

The best bit of the book is when he gets into crystal meth and conceptual art ("either one of these things is dangerous, but in combination they have the potential to destroy civilisations.") His father heckles him at one of his interminable and pretentious one man shows, and finally gets a good review for the masterstroke of using his dad in the piece.

There are also musings on parents, siblings, family pets and the joy of smoking, as well as a section on living in France and learning the language. This, along with the speech therapy, gives the book its title.

Very funny and very frank about himself and his family. It's also inspired me to dig out some of my old Truman Capote books - presumably a big influence on Sedaris.

Coming up soon - Tokyo Station by Martin Cruz Smith. And possibly Russell Brand's second book.