The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

The problem with reading a Great Classic these days is trying to say something interesting about it afterwards.  I've read it before, but at least I never had to do it at school (who can ever re-read a book they've been forced to study as a teenager?)

So I suppose it's best to just press on as normal, tell you what it's about and what I did and didn't like.  The narrator's called Nick, who's trying to make his way in the New York business world in the 20s.  He rents a place somewhere on Long Island (I think - it's called West or East Egg) next to a millionaire called Jay Gatsby.  You don't meet him at first, but you do meet Nick's cousin Daisy, who's married to a rich buffoon called Tom.  He's especially unpleasant, dressing up his instinctive racism with pseudoscience, but Daisy's not a hell of a lot more likeable.  I much preferred another woman Nick meets at Tom and Daisy's - Jordan Baker, a cheating golf pro flapper who sounds like a lot of fun.

The book really kicks in when you meet Gatsby himself.  He's pretty unassuming, but holds huge parties every night at his mansion for the elite of New York.  Everybody assumes he's some sort of gangster, but the most dangerous weapon you see him use is his smile.  He's a sort of charming, melancholy ghost.  I don't suppose it's much of a SPOILER to say his only goal is to win back his ex-girlfriend Daisy, who lives across the bay.  It's a great image - a lonely man at the centre of a whirl of endless parties, who's simply trying to get a girl to notice him.  Less romantic saps than me may consider him a complete idiot.

The other character I really liked was Nick himself.  He reminds me of a Brett Easton Ellis narrator in his numb, semi-detached approach to everything, but at least he tries to do the right thing at the end when tragedy inevitably strikes.  The plot, though, was the weakest aspect for me.  I liked the set-up and I liked the ending, but the way it got there was clunky as hell - totally reliant on accident and co-incidence.

It's also worth mentioning the writing - there's some great imagery and turns of phrase which make you sit back and ponder before moving on.  Despite that it's an easy read, and fairly short.  Suppose that's why they make kids read it.

I haven't seen any movie version of this, but Robert Redford I could totally buy as Gatsby - he's got an air of sadness and a million dollar smile.  De Caprio in the new version though?  Well, he's usually pretty good in everything.  The new Luhrman movie looks from the trailer like it really goes to town on Gatsby's parties, which I suspect is the right approach.

Use of Weapons by Iain M Banks

I'm still trying to figure out of this is even better than Player of Games...

It's certainly very different - a lot more complicated structurally, and more of a character study than the straight up classic plot of the other novel.  The main character's Zakalwe, a mercenary working for the Culture's Special Circumstances division.  This means he gets his hands dirty changing the history of lesser civilisations while the Culture can stay squeaky clean.  Two things become quickly apparent - Zakalwe's a military genius, and a sick, sick puppy.  He's terrified of chairs, for one thing.  And he has a recurrent vision of a boat, but he won't let himself think about that either.  A great portrayal of a very damaged individual.

There are two strands to this book followed in alternate chapters.  One details him being brought out of semi-retirement by his handler Sma for a new mission; the other works backwards through Zakalwe's life until you learn what the hell's wrong with him.  You get little snapshots of his life - falling in love, discovering the Culture for the first time, going on a drug-fuelled dream-quest, bleeding to death on a desolate island, being decapitated by natives etc.  Very episodic, of course, but it works very well at telling you more about this guy's warped psychology as you follow him through the more straightforward "present day" plotline.  But all the time you're being drawn back into Zakalwe's past, and the demons you know lurk there.  Nice little red herrings along the way, and the denoument doesn't disappoint.

For much of this book, it has a pleasing John Le Carre/Graham Greene feel to it.  Secret agents, exotic locales, moral ambiguity, and damaged heroes who know they're not always fighting for the right side.  My one - small - criticism is that the "present day" plotline looses a little steam and direction towards the end, although it soon picks up again.  The rest of the pretty small cast of characters are also fun - Diziet Sma: a woman very comfortable with her sexuality, if not with the violence sometimes necessary in her line of work.  And the requisite drone Skaffen-Amtiskaw, who's typically sarky, badass and enjoyable.

This is the perfect Iain M Banks book to read after Player of Games I reckon - a sneak peek at the ugliness behind the utopian veil of the Culture.

The Great North Road by Peter F Hamilton

Okay this is the point I really get into Peter F Hamilton.  It's another whopper - well over a thousand pages if you're unwise enough to read a print copy - but this time it's a standalone novel.  No encyclopedic backstory I'm missing out on, and a proper, satisfying ending, instead of a rushed set up for part two.

Even better - it's largely set in Newcastle 2142.  And you'll be glad to know the clubbers are still wearing t-shirts and miniskirts, despite climate change turning the winters sub-arctic.  This half of the story's a very nicely done police procedural, not unlike The Demon Trap.  A member of the ultra-powerful North family's been murdered but no-one knows exactly who.  That's the problem with clones - they tend to be a bit samey.  The second problem with the investigation is it appears to be the same killer of another North clone twenty years ago and eight and a half life years away.   And they already caught that killer - a young woman called Angela who's been rotting in prison for the past two decades, with some unconvincing story about an alien killing machine.

Now that's giving very little away, because there's so much great stuff going on in this book.  The female badass is a very well worn sci-fi trope, but the character of Angela Tramelo is in a different league to most, both as a woman and a heroine.  I also loved the police stuff in Newcastle - well drawn officers using advanced but limited technology to solve an almost impossible case, while also dealing with office politics and their personal lives.

Then you've got the second major setting - the jungle planet of St Libra in the Sirius system, which is connected via the North family wormhole to Newcastle.  A military expedition is sent there and, of course, things go wrong, but in a really unexpected and interesting way.

The North family are also brilliant.  Three branches of the clan - one based in Newcastle, the other on St Libra and the third doing god knows what in a space station off Jupiter.

And finally you've got the Xanth - some mysterious out of control and unstoppable hyperspace nanovirus which everyone's terrified of.

Amazingly Peter F pulls it all together and pulls it off.  Maybe not everyone will like the ending, but it's proper science fiction and I loved it.

Invisible by Paul Auster

This is going to be tough one to review, as I'm loath to give anything away.  I found a hardback copy in a second-hand bookshop with no dustjacket, so I went in knowing absolutely nothing.  Except that someone might turn invisible.  This never happens.  Spoiler.

I will say that it's really worth reading.  It has a lot of fun playing with different viewpoints, writing conventions, voices, unreliable narrators and the nature of memoir and fiction.  At root, it's all about storytelling really.  And evil.  And love.  All the good stuff.

I used to be well into my Auster in my teens.  I was hooked after reading Leviathan, about an ambigous academic turned Unabomber.  I can't remember if that was before or after watching the great movie version of The Music of Chance, where James Spader and Mandy Patinkin lose a game of poker and have to build a wall.  I especially loved Moon Palace, but all I can remember of that is that the protagonist at one point uses hundreds of books as his furniture.  And his New York Trilogy was a pretty big deal back in the day - three stories deconstructing detective fiction.  Not sure if I ever finished that.  Wasn't as keen on Mr Vertigo though, which had someone learning to levitate.  That's probably the reason I though someone might turn invisible in this one.  He's a great writer though - I'd say if you like Haruki Murakami you should give him a shot.

Alright, that's just a short review but now - finally - this brings me up to date with my reading.  Heading to Florida tomorrow. As well as Banks' Use of Weapons I've got the third Marid Audran novel (currently listening to the second and it's even better than "When Gravity Fails"), the last third of Peter F Hamilton's new one (which is fantastic), the complete GK Chesterton, so I can gorge on some Father Brown, Plutarch's Lives in case I get another hankering for the fall of the Roman Republic (unfortunately he talks about boring Greeks as well), a paperback thriller called The Terror of Living by someone with the unlikely name of Urban Waite (one pound in Asda!), and Orson Scott Card's book on writing science fiction.  Oh, and I'll have two new Audible credits in a couple of days.  Tempted to download a Hitchcock book after watching Toby Jones in The Girl over Christmas.  I'm fairly confident all my bases will be covered for the next fortnight.  I ran out of books on holiday once. Never again.

The Player of Games by Iain M Banks

If you want to start getting Cultured, this is where you should start.  Unlike many of the others in the series, this has one hero, one clearly defined goal and one fantastic ending.

Our hero is Gurgeh - the Culture's top game player, who's grown bored with life on his Orbital.  There are no more games to conquer.  Through a bad misjudgement, he's pressured into joining Special Circumstances (the Culture's Secret Service) to travel to the newly discovered Empire of Azad in the Small Magallenic Cloud.  His mission is to play the most complicated game ever devised, in which the winner becomes Emperor.

I love this clear cut plot, and it's handled so well.  Gurgeh's journey from disaffected genius to reluctant diplomat and beyond is always convincing, especially when he realises the true stakes at play in Azad - which is the name of the game, as well as the Empire.  Even the game itself is explained in a great way - you get a feel for the different boards (which are the size of rooms) and the different strategies and tactics, but of course the game itself is always a mystery.  It's almost like a kung-fu movie, with a varied series of opponents the hero has to defeat.  And of course there are plenty of dirty tricks, distractions and genuinely shocking revelations along the way.

One of the great delights in many of the Culture books are the drones.  They're small floating robots who have full AI and personalities, and are considered as much members of the Culture as the meatbags, if not more so.  They're usually great fun, and two in particular shine in this book - the abrasive and sinister Mawhrin Skel, who's a friend of Gurgeh's on the Orbital, and the naive and prissy Flere-Imsaho, who accompanies Gurgeh to Azad, but seems more interested in birdwatching than the mission in hand.

This has been my favourite of the Culture books since I've been re-reading them - it's just a classic story told well without ten different plots going on at once.  Use of Weapons I remember struggling with years back, but it is highly regarded.  I'm off on holiday tomorrow with it packed on to my kindle, so I may be ready to give it another whirl.

Backstory by David Mitchell

I never know what to write about comedy books - or at least books by comedians.  Is it funny?  Yes - David Mitchell's a funny guy.  In fact, I'd rate Peep Show as the best British sitcom in the past ten years (if you include the US, it would be It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.)  So instead of a review, here are some David Mitchell facts I learned from his memoirs.

- He's never read a book by the other David Mitchell who wrote Cloud Atlas, because he's worried people will see him read it on the tube and think he's reading his own book.

- David Milliband once recognised him in a park and said hello, but confusingly mistook him for the other David Mitchell.

- He once slept with a hot groupie while president of the Cambridge Footlights.  And felt terrible about it.

- He drinks more than you'd expect, and taps fags off people when he's drunk.

- He hates Chinese food.

- He thinks the worst person to bump into on holiday would be Michael Palin.  And he likes Michael Palin.

- He actually enjoys going on those comedy panel shows where everyone shouts and the audience laughs loudly.  Awful.

- Robert Webb is straight!  Well, I was surprised.

- He claims Bruce Forsyth has a method for changing trousers in club toilets without dragging them on the urine sodden floor.  It starts by taking the end of one trouser leg between your teeth, but the rest is never explained.

- He's clearly very much in love with Victoria Coren and is quite aware he's batting above his average.

- The audiobook's great because it's read by David Mitchell.  Anyone else would probably be a bit weird.

- The beard's not working.  I didn't learn that from the book - just the picture on the cover.

Surface Detail by Iain M Banks

Banks has got his M hat on again, and he seems to be churning out the Culture novels again at a steady rate.  Good news for all sci-fi fans.

The main theme here is punishment. Not that this is ever an issue in the Culture, where it's an almost impossible concept.  But for some other civilisations in the galaxy it's a very big deal - so big that digital hells have been created.  The trope of uploading your personality at the end of your biological life (or before) is very common in SF these days, but the idea of this being used as eternal punishment in the afterlife is new, disturbing and interesting.  It's certainly a dig at religion, given Banks' strident secularity, but when faith is replaced by technology - is it still a religion?  One character from the pro-Hell side does say it would be the ultimate sacrilege to take eternal damnation out of the hands of God.  He's lying of course, but surely he's right?  Lots to think about.

Punishment also comes to the fore in the main plot line in the book - a slave girl who's murdered by her owner, the richest man in a society a few steps down from the Culture (though still well advanced of us) and who somehow reappears in virtual form on a Culture ship many light years away.  Her revenge is what drives much of the book, and it's possibly the most successful part.  This is largely became the tycoon Veppers is such a colossal bastard you can't wait for his murder victim to get even, despite the Culture's best efforts.  Banks does seem to love these kind of characters, and Veppers does stay just on the right side of panto villain.

The other stand-out character here is a machine - again not a surprise from Banks.  This is the Special Circumstances ship Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints which does exactly what it says on the tin, or whatever Culture ships are made of.  Lots of fun and very badass.

I did find the book as a whole a bit sprawling and confusing though.  Too many storylines going on for my taste, and I never did quite figure out what was going on towards the end.  Still definitely worth a read, but not what I'd recommend for a first time Culture reader.