11/22/63 by Stephen King

Possibly the most annoying book title I've ever seen.  Even the correct date would be bad enough - but the 11th of Twentytember 1963?  You try stopping the assassination of John F Kennedy on a ludicrous date like that - see how far you get!

Luckily the rest of the book is great.  It's a simple enough premise - man goes back in time to try and save JFK - but the attention to detail makes it work.  It all starts with a cracking idea - how can a local diner in Maine make such cheap burgers?  Obviously, it's because the owner has a portal to an exact time and place in 1958 out back, so every week he goes and buys the same bunch of mince for a few dollars, takes it back to the present and cooks it up.  For years the customers have been eating the same meat over and over again!  I love it - banal and mindblowing.

Here are the rules - the changes you make in the past affect the present; you can stay as long as you want but when you come back through the portal you've only been gone two minutes; and every time you go back through the portal it resets everything.  You're very aware that every time the hero's doing something in the past, he can always go back and change it.  And if, for instance, he's saved someone's life on a previous visit, he has to go and do it again the next time.  Or he can take a short cut.  This all works really well, especially because of another rule the hero discovers - history doesn't want to be changed.

Clearly King's done a lot of research about Lee Harvey Oswald in this book, and it reminded me a lot of Normal Mailer's Oswald's Tale, which turns out to be one of the main sources.  But before we get to all that, there's a little something fun for the die-hard Steven King fan - a return to Derry, home of Pennywise the Spiderclown.  If anything the feeling of dread in that city is even more pronounced in this book than in It.  This section could easily feel forced, but it's really well handled and possibly my favourite bit.

And with all this going on, it's something of a surprise to discover that at its core, this book is a romance.  The relationship between the time traveller and a teacher he meets in the 60s is well portrayed, so you start caring about these people's lives and futures.  Which I suppose is the real secret to Steven King's success, but it works particularly well here.

And I'm not going to give away any spoilers, but the ending is also good - plausible and yet original.  Good to see King can still knock it out of the park when he wants to.

No One Left to Lie To by Christopher Hitchens

My apologies for the hiatus in blogging, and more apologies for what will surely be a perfunctory and ill-remembered review.

This is a pretty short but action packed phillipic against one William Jefferson Clinton by the Hitchens on the left, Christopher.  The one who has nice things to say about Trotsky and Paul Wolfowitz, but not Mother Theresa or, indeed, Bill Clinton.

There's a couple of main thrusts in this hatchet job - if you can thrust with a hatchet.  One is that Clinton's a hypocrite.  He appeals to the downtrodden as a folksy man of the people, but always sides with the powerful and rich.  This is the famous tactic of triangulation, or what Blair called the Third Way.  Also known as fake left, go right.

I suppose this seems like a perennial complaint of the left against Democratic presidents - Obama certainly, unless you believe the bonkers idea that he's any kind of socialist.  But for some time before Clinton, Democrats were genuinely different from Republicans.  People like Jimmy Carter, or George McGovern.  Actual liberals, and more arguably actual socialists than the current incumbent.  Oh, and as well as being a secret right-winger, Hitchens also suspects Clinton of being racist when it suited him as governer of Arkansas.  Obviously, this was before Toni Morrison bizarrely hailed him as "our first black president."

The second thrust is that Clinton used military action to distract people from more troublesome issues - which I'll get to next.  It does seem like the bombing, without warning, of a medicine factory in Sudan was strangely timed around the Lewinsky revelations, and on the flimsiest of evidence which fell down in a matter of days.  He also puts forward evidence that he only ever took action against Saddam Hussein when it helped him politically.

So, all these are questions of character in Hitchens' book, which brings us to the one thing Clinton will be remembered for - the women.  Supporters of the Democrats urged us all to seperate a man's private indiscretions from his public duty.  But is it really okay that the most powerful man in the world is seducing young interns in the Oval Office?  Or that women's characters are then assassinated by "White House sources" when it looks like they might break cover?  Where are this man's morals, asks Hitchens?  And that's before you get into the real raw meat of this book - the chapter entitled "Is there a Rapist in the Oval Office?"  which looks, not only at the Juanita Broddrick allegations, but also claims from other unnamed women who say they've been too afraid to come forward.

We'll never get to the bottom of all that, I'm sure, but I think it's fair to see Clinton has been less than a gentlemen where women are concerned.  Should that matter?  Well, Hitchens does link it directly to his kneejerk military action when confronted by these allegations.  And he suggests that a man who has no sense of right and wrong in private matters also can't be trusted to do the right thing in matters of policy.

It has made me think about what Democratic presidents can get away with, and the current Obama administration: more extrajudicial killings, more drone strikes, Guantanamo still open despite promises to close it down, and the National Defence Authorisation Act which critics say give the US government the right to detain any citizen without charge for any length of time.  Now that's triangulation!  Clinton's lesson to Democrats has clearly been well learned.  Just a pity we won't get the Christopher Hitchens hatchet job on Obama.

A Violent Professional by Kier-La Janisse

The definitive book on the films of Italian screen icon Luciano Rossi.  And yes "icon" is definitely pushing it.  He's more like the Kurtwood Smith of Spaghetti Westerns; the JT Walsh of Poliziotteschi; or the Harry Dean Stanton of Giallo.  Him out of thingy, except in crazy Italian genre films.

In fact, Rossi's so unknown the author can't even find out if he's alive at first.  No-one in the industry seems to know what happens to him.  When she finally does track him down to the town he grew up in, it turns out he died a few months earlier.  His last known movie is 1987's Long Live the Lady, and the author can't even tell which one is Rossi.  Sad, but also surprising, considering his unusual appearance.  Blond, progressively hunchbacked and generally creepy.  But he's not without his admirers, not least Janisse herself, who awards each of his movies stars for how good he is in them, and hearts for how cute he looks.

So, this is a love letter to a small time actor in cheap Italian b-movies - how cool and romantic is that?  And it's beautifully put together, with tonnes of amazing stills and posters.  It's also a revealing look at the film industry there in the 60s, 70s and 80s.  From sword and sandals to spy thrillers; from westerns to horror films and from crime movies to Nazi films (some genres were more peculiar to Italy than others.)  Janisse has a love of this kind of trash, as do I, and her movie reviews are always interesting and funny.  And it's given me a long list of movies I really want to see.

Just a short review this, so I'll end with some of my favourite movie titles of Rossi's films:  Get the Coffin Ready; Run, Man, Run; Django the Bastard; Five into Hell; Heads I Kill....Tails You're Dead; Death Walks in High Heels (giallo); So Naked, So Dead (well done if you guessed giallo again); Free Hand for a Tough Cop; SS Experiment Camp (nazi movie); Red Nights of the Gestapo (yes! Also nazi.)

Good luck getting any of those on Blu Ray.  And thanks to the Frightfest people for giving this book out free last year - much better than a free book about a forgotten actor in a lot of probably godawful foreign movies has any right to be.

Red Plenty by Francis Spufford

Okay, the "golden age" of Soviet Russia might be pushing it.  But, coming off the back of Stalin, the Khrushchev era was pretty rosy in comparison.  This book's about the new hopes and dreams people had at that time in Russia, and what went wrong.

First off, it's not really a history - it's mostly a collection of short stories, featuring both fictional and real characters.  

You get Khrushchev's thoughts as he visits New York, filled with confidence about a fair and honest competition between socialism and capitalism.  Young, confused party workers visiting the American Exhibition in Moscow.  Starry eyed idealists in a Siberian academy-town who finally think they've got a model for a command economy which actually works.  Black marketeers who walk a profitable but dangerous line between the command economy and the real economy.  Factory owners who wreck their own machines because of the twisted logic of communism.  And factory workers being massacred when everyone's best laid plans have unintended consequences.

I enjoyed all short stories, and some have a real touch of magic.  Some of the economics stuff tends to the abstruse, but the passion of those involved is infectious.  It's a great look into a Soviet Union we never really see.  What's interesting especially is what isn't covered in much detail - the space race;  Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" denouncing Stalin.  That's more for the West - the Russians had different priorities at the time.

In between the stories are small sections of more straightforward history - again, from an engaging and unusual viewpoint - and tiny snippets of Russian fairytales, which seem central to the book:  impossible tasks, capricious kings, and wishes which turn into nightmares.

There's a lot of hope in this book, but with massive lorry loads of melancholy.  Was it doomed to failure?  I reckon so.  Even if you had the perfect system, with banks of quantum computers calculating everyone's needs and abilities, it still needs the iron fist.  You can't risk the people messing up your perfect system.

I'm pretty sure I had more to say on this book, but I must've finished it a month ago so it's starting to fade.  A big recommendation though if you're into communists, Russians and beautiful short stories.

Absolution Gap by Alastair Reynolds

Another big science fiction trilogy in the bag!  This is the conclusion to Revelation Space and Redemption Ark, and it's a bit of a funny end.  It's fantastic, certainly, but curiously not entirely satisfying.

Here are the good bits - the main protaganists change again in this one, and I'm glad to say the focus is now on the two most interesting characters.  Scorpio, the hyperpig bandit turned good, and the mysterious and ancient Captain John Brannigan/Nostalgia for Infinity.  This is a masterstroke by Reynolds.  All sci-fi books should have enigmatic and depressed spaceships and borderline psychotic farm animals front and centre.

Scorpio's a great lead because he's your Han Solo Mal Reynolds straightforward gung ho type, which is always fun when done right.  Plus, he seems a lot more human, ironically, than people like Sylveste or Clavain.  Getting the know the Captain is even more enjoyable.  There's one sequence when he morphs through his own history - from an astronaut on Mars which we would recognise, through increasingly bizarre sections of his history.  You begin to appreciate the depth of the world that's been put together by the author, and understand Brannigan's growing disconnectedness with the rest of humanity.  Both characters have really good arcs in this book, and one particular bit at the end actually had me punching the air in joy.

I also loved the new setting for much of this book - an obscure moon which is dominated by a strange religion.  There are massive mobile cathedrals which creep around the world, so as always to keep the gas giant they're circling in sight.  It's very gothic and steampunky with lots of intruige and world exploring.  Quite different to the rest of the series, but it complements it well, although I suspect this may have been intended as a plot for an entirely different novel.

There are a few niggles throughout the book -  a superhuman baby who's only really there to move the plot along.  Pretty clunky I thought. And I was a little confused by one character arc - someone who's being set up as a new leader for the future.  It's handled really well, but just seems to fizzle out.  But it's the ending which doesn't sit right with me.  It's one of those when you realise you're 97% through the book (you can be more exact about these things on the kindle) but there's simply no way everything's going to tied together satisfactorily.  Instead the author throws a whole bunch of new things at us and takes a sideways step.  It's certainly clever, but I can't be the only one who felt just a little shortchanged.  Anyway, can't grumble too much.  A brilliant, exciting and thought provoking end to the trilogy.

Right, I've been busy and my internet was down for a bit, so I have three other books I've already finished which I need to get reviews done of soon before they disappear into the aether - a strange quasi-history of the golden age of Soviet Russia, a book on an unknown legend of Italian cinema and a brutal hatchet job on a widely admired political figure.

Life by Keith Richards

Here's an interesting fact about Keith Richards - he may not even be able to play the guitar at all!  He does this thing called open tuning, so the strings are naturally set to G without fingers. It's the only way you can make Start Me Up and Brown Sugar sounds right, apparently.  And he only uses five strings, rather than six.  It sounds more Guitar Hero than guitar hero to me, but who am I to judge.  All I can play on the guitar is Patience.  And not the Guns and Roses one...

Keith's writing has an easy and seductive flow, and he's got a robust sense of irony and the poet's eye for picking out telling details.  He manages to portray himself as the the sensible, down to earth one in the Rolling Stones, even when he's sleeping with a gun under his pillow, and can only be woken by his seven year old son Marlon in case he opens fire.

So, about those other Stones.  Brian Jones doesn't come out looking good at all.  Manipulative, massively egocentric, out of control and a woman beater.  Keith steals Anita Pallenberg from him (also portrayed in this book).  Bill Wyman - likes 'em young, boring, but once went and bought heroin for Keith, so a point in his favour.  Charlie Watts he has a lot of respect for, and was the one member of the band they really had to fight for in their younger days.  And he gets on well with Ronnie Wood too because they've both got that gypsy/pirate thing going on.

His relationship with Mick Jagger is a bigger issue.  Keith talks fondly of them sitting down, writing songs together, and he rates Mick as one of the best harmonica players in the world.  Says it's the one time he's not striking a pose onstage.  That's his problem with Mick - he always wants to be something else, rather than Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, which Keith feels should be enough for anyone.  His failed attempt at a solo career in the 80s created a pretty big rift between them.  And, of course, the knighthood from Tony Blair is roundly mocked.  He's still got plenty of respect for him, but it's striking that they haven't been to each other's dressing rooms for decades.

A lot of this book is about the drugs, and it's great on the exhausting and humiliating efforts to get enough gear just to make you feel normal.  He remembers how, from his youngest days, he was never knocked out by illness.  You just man up and keep going.  He took that businesslike approach to taking huge amounts of drugs, and still turning up on stage.  Fair enough, he used to regularly vomit behind the speakers, but he says they all did that.  Plenty of others in his life, however, didn't have his stamina, and he tends to skirt the issue of how much responsibility he should feel in introducing these casualties to a lifestyle only he can really maintain.

Thankfully there's also plenty about music - his passion for the blues shines off the page.  As well as how to tune your guitar, there's how he comes up with riffs, meetings with his musical heroes (Chuck Berry, predictably, is a big disappointment), on-stage mishaps, like a firework burning right through his finger on stage as they open with Start Me Up.  He doesn't even stop, but of course he's got that open tuning, so it's not that impressive.  What's also really interesting is who's playing what on those early tracks: on Play with Fire for instance, that's Phil Spector on bass.  And the harpsichord isn't Brian Jones, it's Frank Nitzche - the man who really invented the Wall of Sound!  He also played piano on Paint it Black.  Well....I thought it was interesting.

A very easy and entertaining read this - rock and roll, drugs and sex.  In that order.

Power Play by Gavin Esler

THERE WILL BE SPOILERS

The good thing about listening to books on tape is that no matter how godawful the book is, you can generally push through to the end.  Unless it's the Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson, which unaccountably won the Booker Prize, and even more unaccountably is supposed to be a 'comic novel.'

I doubt Power Play's won any literary awards, and it is rubbish - but at least it's readable enough.  Listenable, anyway.  The hero is the British ambassador to the USA.  There's a very powerful and hawkish Vice President who needs to be massaged by the British.  They take him on a grouse shoot in Aberdeenshire, where he vanishes.  Cue pandemonium.

A pretty nice set up then - lots of potential.  Missing VP on British soil!  What's happened to him?  Kidnapped by jihadists?  Gone nuts?  Is it all a set up to justify another war?

Except the book fails utterly.  Problem one is this Vice President is clearly just Dick Cheney, with maybe a touch of Rumsfeld thrown in.  He even has a tendency to accidently shoot his friends on hunting trips!  A few years on, and we've got nice cuddly Obama pouring over his kill list and no-one bats an eye.  A carbon copy Cheney already seems cheap, trite and old hat.  Here's a theory - Esler's a journalist, and journalists don't have any imagination.  We report what we see, and maybe twist it a bit.  Don't ask us to write a novel.

But that's not the big problem.  Here's the story:  the VP disappears.  Then tapes of him getting Abu Graibed are released on the internet - exciting!  Then he's found chained up naked on a beach on Norfolk, driven half mad.  This is where the big SPOILER comes in. We never find out what happened to him...

Aha!!!  Did you see what he did there?  Not everything's got an answer - not everything comes with all the loose ends tied up in a bow - the world's complicated etc etc etc.   Absolutely unforgiveable, and Esler's editor should probably be sent to Abu Graib for not sitting him down and saying - yes, very clever.  Now stop mucking about and finish the novel.

Just a couple of final quibbles.  Uncomfortable softcore BDSM.  No.  And I'd like to draw attention to one scene which only makes sense if the author was doing it as a bet.  The ambassador makes a speech where we've been expressly told Mike Myers is in the audience.  A fairly feeble joke is made (though I think it's supposed to be witty) and Myers says "groovy baby" to the room.  In, and I quote "his best Austin Powers accent."

This makes no sense whatsoever in the context of scene, or in the book as a whole.  Is this the kind of thing Mike Myers would do?  Neither Myers nor Austin Powers had been referenced in the speech, I should point out.  That would make some kind of sense.

This scene really, really bothers me and I've been trying to figure it out ever since.  I've actually found it online here so if anyone can figure out what's going please let me know.  Start on page 81.  Thanks in advance.