M.G. Harris's Blog, page 5
March 16, 2012
How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World by Francis Wheen – my first Goodreads review
I just joined Goodreads! Here's my first review. I'm only going to review books I liked – I rarely finish books I don't like and it isn't fair to review a book you don't finish.
How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World by Francis Wheen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Did we just imagine the Enlightenment? Because according to Francis Wheen, its enduring power to persuade might be on the wane. This is a riveting account about the 'rise' of emotion-led thinking versus rationality, as evidenced by phenomena such as the fascination with alternative medicine, happy-clappy business gurus, the enthusiasm with collective grief at the death of Princess Diana. The darker side to this is the rise of religious fundamentalism. Written in 2004 whilst the world was still reeling with shock from the 9/11 terrorist attacks, this book stands the test of time. In fact it seems rather prescient. The swivel-eyed thinking of the financial markets are touched upon, but even Francis Wheen didn't anticipate how far and how disastrously 'mumbo jumbo' thinking would go on to affect the world. Read it and weep…
I just joined Goodreads! Here's my first review. I'm onl...
I just joined Goodreads! Here's my first review. I'm only going to review books I liked – I rarely finish books I don't like and it isn't fair to review a book you don't finish.
How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World by Francis Wheen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Did we just imagine the Enlightenment? Because according to Francis Wheen, its enduring power to persuade might be on the wane. This is a riveting account about the 'rise' of emotion-led thinking versus rationality, as evidenced by phenomena such as the fascination with alternative medicine, happy-clappy business gurus, the enthusiasm with collective grief at the death of Princess Diana. The darker side to this is the rise of religious fundamentalism. Written in 2004 whilst the world was still reeling with shock from the 9/11 terrorist attacks, this book stands the test of time. In fact it seems rather prescient. The swivel-eyed thinking of the financial markets are touched upon, but even Francis Wheen didn't anticipate how far and how disastrously 'mumbo jumbo' thinking would go on to affect the world. Read it and weep…
February 14, 2012
Welcome to MG’s website!
MG Harris is the author of the internationally best-selling young adult thrillers, THE JOSHUA FILES. Explore this site for videos, photos, interviews, as well as news of MG’s latest projects.
Also see THEMGHARRIS.COM for extra Joshua Files goodness!
Welcome to MG's website!
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MG Harris is the author of the internationally best-selling young adult thrillers, THE JOSHUA FILES. Explore this site for videos, photos, interviews, as well as news of MG's latest projects.
December 31, 2011
Secret no longer! first chapter of APOCALYPSE MOON
Jacket art for The Joshua Files: APOCALYPSE MOON
Here's an excerpt of the opening of the final chapter of The Joshua Files. You can pre-order the book from Amazon.co.uk
Blog Entry: The Joshua Doomsday Manifesto OR How to deal with the possible end-of-the-world
1. Keep busy. Learn a skill or trade. Do your exams. Take me, for example, I'm learning to be a pilot. OK I'll admit that I'm partly doing it to impress a girl, but also, it might come in handy, especially if the end-of-the-world starts to look likely.
Mainly, keep your mind off the possible impending doom. The trade/skill/exam thing is just a bonus.
2. Stay in denial. The world is NOT going to end. Tell yourself this a few times a day. Thoughts of what might happen may spring up on you when you're least expecting it. In those moments, you'll need that denial to be rock solid.
3. DO NOT look at videos on YouTube about the world ending. Most of them have got it badly wrong anyway. They talk about asteroids crashing into Earth or the Planet Niburu or some other rubbish. You won't find much about a Galactic Superwave and a gigantic electromagnetic pulse wiping out all the computer technologies. That's so much less photogenic. Instead of massive fireballs, there will be a massive no-show. No TV, no InterWeb, no money going through the banking system and no twenty pound notes in the ATMs. No food trucks going to the supermarkets, no power in the hospitals. The whole developed world relies on computer technology. Very definitely don't think about what would happen if there was suddenly a great big OUTAGE.
4. Make a bucket list – a list of all the things you want to do before you 'kick the bucket'. Quietly. Show it to no-one. This is just for you. You'll never have to use it, probably, because the world won't end. It's a just-in-case. Look at it for a long time and think about what really matters, what you really want to DO or BE.
You might surprise yourself. I did.
5. Stop reading this blog. How did you find it anyway? What makes you think I'm not making it all up?
6. Trust the adults to sort everything out and save the world. Hey, they usually do, right?
7. If you've tried all of the above and you still wake at 3am with a cold, vacant pit where your stomach should be, wondering if civilisation is on the brink of destruction – then there's always this: GET INVOLVED.
Chapter One
Lately, I've been having the feeling that people aren't being straight with me. Or some people in particular; my parents.
By 'parents' I mean my mother (Eleanor) and her partner Carlos Montoyo. If it weren't for the fact that my real father died pretty recently, Mum would probably already be married to Montoyo. They fell for each other after a few months. Now they're definitely a couple. But when you marry a widow, I think you're probably meant to leave a polite interval.
Montoyo is an interesting guy and I won't deny that I respect him. He's been on the Ruling Executive of Ek Naab – a hidden, 'invisible city' – ever since the last proper Bakab Ix died – my grandfather. Now I'm the Bakab Ix; I'm next in line to succeed to the Ruling Executive. When I turn sixteen.
That's if Montoyo will give up his place for me. If ever there was a wheeler dealer, it's him. About nine months ago Montoyo played a sneaky trick on me. Since then things have gone downhill. Nine months ago, he tricked me into traveling in time in search of an ancient Mayan codex – the Ix Codex. Montoyo might say he had his reasons for tricking me, but it's not easy to get over being conned into risking your life. It's probably fair to say that if Montoyo could have managed the time travel bit, he'd have done the deed himself. If he could have touched the Ix Codex, that is. Like my dad used to say, if we had eggs, we could have ham and eggs, if we had ham.
Of all the people in the 'invisible city' of Ek Naab, only I can use the time travel device, the Bracelet of Itzamna. Only I can touch the Ix Codex. It's not a magical power, it's a genetic ability: I was born with it.
Until nine months ago, Montoyo didn't think twice about risking me on a dangerous time-travel adventure. If the Ix Codex went missing, I was the guy for the job. It's what I was born for, after all. Prince William doesn't whine about being second in line to the British throne. And I try not to whine about being what I am, the Bakab Ix – genetically tweaked to be the protector of the Ix Codex.
There's an ancient legend that the world-as-we-know-it will end in December 2012. The bad news is that it's true. What is going to happen, has happened before. It will all happen again, too. The good news is that this time, we're meant to be prepared – thanks to the Ix Codex.
The instructions for how to save the world from the coming Galactic Superwave of 2012 are in the Ix Codex. But the cover of the Ix Codex is impregnated with a poisonous gas. Only a Bakab Ix can touch the book and survive.
There were times when it was very hard to carry all that responsibility. I didn't ask for the job; I was born into it. I wasn't always keen. But I did what was needed, I risked my life again and again. I've been shot in the leg, attacked with knives, experimented on, watched people I care about being hurt by my enemies, seen my father in prison, seen him plunge to his death saving my life.
All to try to protect the Ix Codex, to do my bit to save the world from the Galactic Superwave.
So when apparently I'm too young and too inexperienced to play a part in this incredible plan to save the world…when I'm completely side-lined and ordered to 'Get on with your studies and leave everything to us'…
I get pretty annoyed. I get a bit suspicious too.
It has something to do with what happened nine months ago, when I time-travelled. That's when everything changed. Before that, I felt like I was on the inside, allowed to know what was going on, how the 2012 plan was coming along.
Now – nothing. No part in it for me. I'm surplus to requirements.
On the up-side: you can get a lot done in nine months, if you really focus. I had no idea. Nine months of intensive maths coaching and I've covered a decent chunk of the A-levels in maths, further maths, physics.
Not that I was a huge fan of maths before I came to live in the city, but for trainee pilots, maths is essential. My second cousin Benicio passed his pilot exam when he was fifteen. I'm determined to at least equal that.
And there are only six weeks to go, before I turn sixteen.
There's a knock at the door to the apartment I share with my mother. Right now I'm here alone – Mum is off with some new friends, teaching them Irish cookery, soda bread, Irish stew, things like that. She and I are the only foreigners, the most exotic people to have lived in Ek Naab for over a hundred years. After six months of determined friendliness, my Mum seems to have won over even some of the more xenophobic residents, who weren't too happy when we moved in. But after a while, her relationship with Montoyo made her quite popular – it seems people have been keeping their fingers crossed that he'd marry again – either that or leave town. Being alone didn't suit him; that's what I've heard.
I zip up my flight jacket, empty the pockets of lint and a half-eaten flapjack. Still only half-dressed for my flying lesson, I move out of my bedroom and into the living room, open the door. Standing outside is my girlfriend, Ixchel. She's smiling and carrying a basket of something wrapped in a white linen cloth. It smells delicious
"Surprise!"
"Hey! What are you doing here? I'm supposed to be out. Already late for Benicio."
"You've got time to taste a cookie though, yes? I just came from your mother's class."
I put my head on one side. "Aw honey, you baked!"
She grins. "Try one." The grin vanishes for a second, to be replaced by a look of mock ferocity. At least I'm hoping she's joking. "You'd better be nice. It's the first time I've baked anything."
She opens the cloth and hands me a crisp, warm, shortbread biscuit. I take a bite and the warm, buttery pastry crumbles in my mouth. I close my eyes and give a long sigh of appreciation. She watches with a hopeful expression. I'm silent, experiencing the delicious sensation of the freshly baked biscuit at the same time as gazing at her shoulders and neck. They're tanned the colour of honey, a wonderful contrast to the strappy purple top she's wearing.
"Good?"
"Amazing. Marry me."
Ixchel is momentarily taken aback. So am I. The phrase just tripped off my tongue, a joke, yet not a joke, because for Ixchel and I, the whole subject is a bit tense.
After a second or two, she recovers her composure. "Josh Garcia; you don't get away with proposing as easy as that."
Thank goodness. We're back to joking about it. "Why not?" I mumble, mouth full of shortbread. "We're already engaged after all. I'm the Bakab Ix and you're my betrothed. It's all been agreed."
"Engaged, betrothed. Do you even know the difference?"
"Give us a kiss, sweetness, and I'll tell you."
She plants a kiss on my cheek and grins as she pulls away. "Engaged is when you give me a ring and get down on one knee, and since you're only…what age are you, again?" Silently, Ixchel pretends to compute my age in her head.
"I'm fifteen, almost sixteen," I growl. "And you're already sixteen, I know, I know."
"It's not that you're a few months younger. It's that we're both too young."
"Who says I even want to marry you anyway? I'm just being accurate about our relationship."
"'Betrothed' is just something our parents decided on."
"What's going to swing it for you, my good looks or charm? Or the massive political power I'm going to wield when I'm finally sixteen? They say it makes you irresistible, you know."
She gazes at me. "Josh. Be serious. We both know you don't care about power."
"But they could at least listen to me, right? I know the rules say that Bakab can join the Ruling Executive of Ek Naab when he's sixteen but…"
"…that's never actually happened."
"Right. And can you see Carlos Montoyo letting it happen? He's doing everything he can to keep me out of the planning for 2012."
Ixchel shakes her head in sad agreement. "I know. I've heard that he's going to try to change the law. Make it so you have to be twenty-five. He's arguing that the ancient law exists because life expectancy used to be so short."
"Twenty-five will be about ten years too late. This 2012 stuff is going down in December! Now is when they should be asking for my help."
From behind us a voice calls out lazily, "Maybe they don't need you."
Ixchel and I turn swiftly to see my cousin Benicio standing at the door to my apartment. He gives us a sheepish grin and knocks twice on the door jamb.
"Whoops. Knock, knock."
Benicio is fully kitted in his flying gear; black trousers and a navy blue flight jacket that hangs open to reveal a clean white vest underneath. All ready for our lesson: me, Benicio and a Muwan Mark 2, the nimble little 'sparrow hawk' aircraft based on the technology of the super-ancient, lost civilisation, the Erinsi, whose writings are inscribed in the Four Books of Itzamna, including the Ix Codex.
"I guess you forgot about the lesson," Benicio says with a nod at my shoeless feet.
"I'm nearly ready. And what do you mean, 'they don't need me'?"
"I'm not denying you're handy when the Ix Codex is around," Benicio says, lightly. He's teasing me, but there's just a bit too much truth to what he says. "But what we need now are grown-ups! Experienced soldiers in the battle to save the world from the Galactic Superwave!"
Ixchel says quietly, "Benicio, don't."
It's too late, I'm already getting annoyed. "People like you, you mean?"
"Hey buddy, I've saved your life more than once."
"I know. I'm grateful. But you know what I'm talking about. You know I've been in dangerous situations, right? You know I can handle myself, yeah? And Ixchel is, like, this total genius with ancient languages. We should be on the team to decipher all those ancient instructions. We should be helping with the 2012 plan."
Benicio's easy grin falls away, to be replaced with an expression of caution. "Yeah. Maybe. I couldn't really say." And I know Benicio well enough to recognise this behaviour – hesitant, as though he's afraid to say any more on the subject. This is how he acts when he's been ordered to keep information from me.
"OK Josh, but right now, let's focus on turning you into a pilot. Today, I'm teaching you a flight manoeuvre that's sure to make you vomit." He snatches a second piece of shortbread out of my fingers before I can put it to my mouth. "So, no more cookies for you."
Protected: Secret first chapter of APOCALYPSE MOON
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December 21, 2011
When MG met LJ
Sometimes I don't blog everything interesting that happens to me right away; I save it up for a rainy day. Back in Nov 2009 I was on BBC TV's Click – a show devoted to all things techie and presented by a fab fellow geek girl, the multi-talented LJ Rich. I made a little video of our meeting, the clip itself and then a chance meeting with a certain children's TV presenter…
LJ asked me to go on the show to talk about the emerging phenomenon of self-publishing, mainly fueled by the print-on-demand revolution. You can see what I thought two years ago. My how things have changed, in only two years. Note how little we talk about ebooks! That's where the action is nowadays.
Maybe I should go on Click again to update LJ on my opinion now… because as some beady-eyed members of the Joshua Files Facebook group may have spotted, I myself will be testing the waters in the brave new world of publishing and putting out an indie-published techno-thriller for older readers, set in the fictional world of The Joshua Files around May 2012…
LJ meanwhile has been developing her talents as a musician. Her latest album features her own gorgeous arrangements of traditional Christmas music, performed by LJ herself. Very tasteful and classically inspired, with a touch of gospel. I think my favourite is "I Saw Three Ships". Perfect background music for a Christmas drinks party or the long drive to visit family, I'd say.
You can preview or download here at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/ljrich3
November 21, 2011
Nostalgia, my mother and Pan Am
My mother (Maria) in her Lufthansa days
I'm enjoying the current TV series 'Pan Am' – not so much for it's alleged similarity to 'Mad Men' but for its personal nostalgia value. My mother worked as a stewardess during the same period – the late 1960s – first for Aeronaves de Mexico (now AeroMexico) and then for Lufthansa. She's pictured here modelling, I think for Lufthansa. Then after being 'grounded' by the twin miseries of marriage and children, she worked in reservations for Lufthansa, in Manchester. When her marriage to our stepfather broke up, she returned to the airlines to keep her three children fed and sheltered, this time working for Pan Am.
I choose to write 'twin miseries of marriage and children' because I noticed that the Pan Am TV series uses themes that would have been very familiar to my mother, and therefore strike me as accurate. 'Pan Am' presents the life of an airline stewardess as one of the few glamorous, exotic escape possibilities for intelligent, attractive women, usually from 'respectable' families. One of the main characters actually runs out on her own wedding in order to escape and work for Pan Am. The leading man, a dashing blond pilot named Dean, even warns his lecherous co-pilot not to 'ground' the stewardesses when they are admiringly talking about the women as evidence of natural selection in action – beautiful women who achieve flight. The implication was that marriage and children were traps to be avoided – unless you snagged a rich, successful bachelor; another good reason to become a stewardess.
My mother had her offers of marriage – they were more or less a staple of the job, my mother said. She'd started working for Aeronaves de Mexico after divorcing my father, and left my sister Pili and I with our grandmother while she worked short haul flights mainly to South America and the USA. There was a pilot named Hans who showed up with what I remember as increasing regularity, but she was never willing to divulge too many details.
When she was more or less forced to stop flying for Lufthansa, I remember she was rather depressed. We'd moved to Manchester then and lived in a freezing cold flat in a Victorian house in Stockport. The walls were unpainted, the floors were bare boards (and not polished or anything). Mummy dressed up in knee-length leather boots and fashionable A-line skirts and silk scarves, then rode the bus to Manchester city centre, to the sleek offices of Lufthansa in St Anne's Square. Often, she told me, she would cry all the way there, mascara running down her cheeks, tears for her lost, globe-trotting life which had been replaced with a desk-based existence. I couldn't blame her. Those years in Stockport were sometimes pretty drab, living through the 3-day week, her husband away on tour with the Halle Orchestra for days and weeks at a time, as well as many evenings. It could have been a very happy time, on reflection; she was in love, she had two healthy little girls who were pretty happy in school, her job relieved her of domestic tedium and brought her in contact with some lovely women, Lufthansa employees who remained lifelong friends; Annie, Ann Samy, Marijke, Maya the dancer.
But for a woman in her twenties, how could that compare to the excitement of flying to a new city, every day, of being responsible for the safety and well-being of airplane loads of well-heeled passengers?
Poor old 'Pan Am' – even back in the 1980s the writing was on the wall for that company. Poor service, an ageing stock and the dread entry into the market of Freddie Laker and frill-free flying; things began to get very difficult. When we were enjoying (?) our family right to free travel on Pan Am (standby-only – it could take days to get to Mexico City, with long waits in airport lounges), my mother used to despair of the low standards of customer service, compared to what she'd been used to provide. The passing years had made her stop pining for the job, too. 'Hours on your feet and being polite to passengers who are rude to you? You can stand it when you're young…'
By then she was studying and researching Spanish and German 18th century Romanticism. Not quite her true vocation either – that would have been singing. But it did seem, finally, to have cured her wanderlust.
My own memories are slight but definitely and powerfully glamorous;living in a stylish apartment in Frankfurt, my mother playing the Getz/Gilberto album
that her cellist boyfriend had given her, looking sharp in a navy-blue, fitted uniform before a flight to the Middle East during which some handsome German or Arab would doubtless ask her out for a drink, or propose marriage. I found it impossible ever to begrudge our mother any sadness she felt for losing that.
October 21, 2011
How I fangirled Haruki Murakami at the #welovemurakami party
Some years ago I wrote a blogpost I am so going to fangirl Haruki Murakami… about my favourite living author. Despite my vow, it turned out to be more difficult than I'd anticipated. I couldn't find an email address or anything. I thought about sending a letter to his UK publisher, Random House, but something told me that they would probably not pass it on. Murakami is obsessive about his privacy, he's probably not that interested in fan mail. Maybe it gets boring after a thousand or so? (Message to my readers – I'm not tired of fan mail yet!)
The desire to celebrate Murakami must have built up into something unbearable because when Zool Verjee (@cadmus08) started tweeting about the upcoming launch of 1Q84, I couldn't resist urging him to organise a party at Blackwell's in Oxford.
It turns out that another Oxford-based author, Dan Holloway, had been doing just the same thing. Also that Blackwell's in Oxford is a hotbed of Murakami fans who were delighted at the chance to throw a party for the sheer joy of Murakami-love and shared delight at the appearance of a hotly-anticipated new novel (watch the trailer for 1Q84.)
So last night saw a bunch of Oxford folk gather in the shop for the We Love Murakami party. In honour of Haruki's own obsession with jazz and cocktails, we had the pleasure of a live jazz pianist. And I mixed Cosmopolitans, Coolman Martinis, Sea Breezes and Shirley Temples, with help from newly-recruited mixologist, Steph.
We shared stories of how we came to love Murakami, what his writing means to us, there were impromptu readings of favourite passages from his books. We voted on our favourite books (mine s0 far is The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle). On pink and blue postcards, we jotted down thoughts of what Murakami means to us. There were pop quiz questions with book prizes (I won a copy of Norwegian Wood for our 19-year old daughter).
Euan from Blackwell's recorded videos of the speeches. He's sending footage as well as the postcard jottings to Murakami's publisher who have promised to pass them on to Haruki. (and we believe them!)
Really a special night of great warmth and affection for a writer than I'm pretty sure none of us with ever meet, but whose inner world has touched us to our very core. That's what readings is for, at its very best. I am but a humble entertainer, but even humble entertainers need sustenance to inspire our writing. Any writer that inspires me; Murakami, Junot Diaz, Pedro Juan Guttierrez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Kazuo Ishiguro, well, I'm forever in their debt.
Thank you Blackwell's for such a wonderful evening!
October 10, 2011
Hurray for Oxford! (Kennington Literary Festival and Murakami love)
Well, I'm back on the b
log. An extended holiday packed with houseguests and road-tripping gobbled up July and August, and the edit of Joshua Files 5 gulped down my September.
(Big announcement about Joshua 5 over on themgharris.com, btw)
Rewriting, as any author will tell you, is mentally exhausting. You have the editor's notes that point out all the flaws in your manuscript, all that's needed is to fix things. Sometimes this means breaking your plot and putting it together in a better configuration. I received my editor's notes whilst on holiday in Spain. During a long swim, I mentally put together the new, improved plot. Luckily, it still seemed to work when I returned to my computer.
So after emailing the second draft of Joshua 5 to my editor, I'm now free to write about two exciting upcoming events I'm involved in. Two events which demonstrate the awesomeness of Oxford.
The first, next Saturday, is the 2nd Kennington Literary Festival. In aid of the wonderful little Kennington Village Library, this event is pure 'localism'. You can come along and meet Oxford authors including Bill Heine, Brian Aldiss, Korky Paul and also – me!
Here's the article in The Oxford Times: Literary line-up to aid village library
You can download the full brochure for the Kennington Literary Festival 2011. Or later today you can go pick one up from Starbucks in Summertown or the Jericho Cafe, where I will be dropping some leaflets.
BBC Oxford's Jane Markham interviewed me about Joshua Files, time-travel fiction and the Kennington Festival – you can listen on the interviews page.
My event is on SATURDAY 15TH OCTOBER 2.20pm-3pm. Free for under 16s! Send your teenagers along to hear some Joshua secrets, tea and biccies in the village hall afterwards.
Meanwhile fellow Oxford author Dan Holloway and I seem to have successfully lobbied Blackwell's, Oxford to organise an event to celebrate the launch of our beloved Haruki Murakami's new book, IQ84. Read more about our plans here: We Love Murakami. I'll be making Cosmopolitans and Coolman Martinis, still deciding on which mocktails… Dan might be making Wind-Up Bird spaghetti. Any volunteers to make rude phone calls to him while the pasta cooks?
So much excitement! And Swindon Youth Literature Festival coming up in November!
Meanwhile I will now work on Surprise New Project – an adult techno-thriller set in the Joshua Files universe. More on this soonish! And Ultra Secret New Project, about which I am still keeping mum…
