Maya Panika's Blog, page 7
March 20, 2013
Review: BATDIG
by Jon Sayer
5 stars
A wonderfully engaging and very well written story about the mysterious BATDIG. What is it? No one seems to know, certainly not the ship-of-fools characters entrusted to bring those mysterious yellow parcels to St Paul’s; none of them seem to know what they’re doing, or why. Only at the very end do we start to sense the nefarious nature of the plan behind it all, and then it all ends, very suddenly.
I have no idea what’s going on in this book, and I wouldn’t tell you if I did. I am glad part 2 has come out since I bought my copy, because part one ends with a bang, and you really shouldn’t embark on it until you have part 2 in your hands, too.
March 19, 2013
Review: The Palace of Curiosities
by Rosie Garland
4 stars
Part historical romance, part surreal fantasy, Rosie Garland brings to life a unique, unforgiving and, at times, horrifying vision of the Victorian freak show. This is the story of 2 ‘curiosities’: Eve, the Lion Faced Girl and Abel, the man who does not bleed. It took me a little time to warm to this. The early chapters are rather slow, and the tale opens with a scene of horrific animal cruelty, before moving on to even worse brutality – to animals and humans too – that I was skipping through whole chunks of text and thinking I might abandon it unfinished. But this strange and beautifully literary tale got under my skin, and soon became completely riveting. At first, it was Abel’s tale, more than Eve’s, that really fascinated me, but when the two came together – as exhibits in Josiah Arroner’s Palace of Curiosities – the story came alive and held me spellbound, completely absorbed in Eve and Abel’s strange, harsh, unique world.
Beautifully written throughout. 4 stars (rather than 5), only because the infrequent, (but very graphic) violence and cruelty was just too much for me.
March 17, 2013
The Daily Routines of Famous Writers.
Still laid up with a nasty bug, too headachey to write, I find myself reading about the routines of famous writers. None of them seem to have the dreary daily Must-Dos that plague most of us, more mundane scribblers. Kerouac, of course, had his mother to deal with, but Murakami doesn’t seem to have anything else to deal with in his day apart from writing and running. Virginia Woolf (and all her Bloomsbury ilk) are just plain annoying.
Henry Miller doesn’t offer schedules, just good advice: work on one thing at a time until finished (Oh, if only…!) and ‘Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.’ See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.’ – Which seems to me the best advice of all.
Perhaps more pertinent to the modern writer, are the wise words of Iain Broome: If you don’t have the time, you don’t have the time. Iain is the author of A is for Angelica (which I reviewed a few months back. He turns out a mean regular podcast, which you should definitely subscribe to if you don’t already. As always, just click on the pic.)
March 16, 2013
So. Neverwhere…?
Did you listen? What did you think? I thought it was rather magnificent, myself. Exactly the right blend of sinister doom and comedy.
I enjoyed the original TV version, but this was better. Better pictures on radio, as they do say (and who are ‘they‘ when they’re at home? Enquiring minds and etc. etc. etc).
Re-blog: The Greatest books of all time
As voted for by 125 famous authors, and why Tolstoy is 11.6% better than Shakespeare. Pretty sure I don’t agree with that last bit, but each to their own, of course. The piece is by Maria Popova at Brain Pickings, which you can read with a clicky on the picky.
I’m laid up with a dreary, deeply unpleasant bug that descended on me with frightening suddenness, when I was happy eating sesame ryvitas and watching Comic Relief. My Mum would have blamed it on the Chelyabinsk meteorite.
Anyway, I’m writing this from my bed, propped up on pillows, a mug of green tea at my side and Poppy sleeping under the covers beside me, curled up against my leg. All is calm, peaceful and actually rather pleasant, in an unwell, feeling dicky sort of a way. No dogs will be walked today, I fear. A pity, as it’s shaping up to be a bit of a lovely day. I’m aching to get into the garden, I have fruit trees sitting in a bucket of water in the garage, and a multitude of bulbs and seeds all waiting for a break in the weather. But there it is. I hope you’re all hale and hearty, my lovelies, enjoying the weekend in bizarre and wonderful ways.
March 11, 2013
The Curse of The Confederacy of Dunces
A Confederacy of Dunces is one of the great comic novels of the 20th century; unfortunately its author did not live to see his work acclaimed. Frustrated by the publishing world’s rebuffs, John Kennedy Toole committed suicide in 1969 unpublished, impoverished and unhinged. Twelve years later it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The book, beloved by the people of New Orleans, whose people and their mores Toole depicted with forensic accuracy, has since become the book Hollywood has tried most to film and so far failed...
Have you read it? I’m afraid I never have, though it’s been on my TBR pile for years. I certainly rec. this 30 minute documentary about the history of the book, and the many failed attempts to film it. A click on the pic takes you to BBCi, where you can catch it any time, until 18th March.
March 10, 2013
Neverwhere!!!
A new adaptation of my favourite Neil Gaiman story starts on BBC Radio Four next Saturday March 16th – thrilling news indeed! If you’re not in the UK, you can still listen via irreplaceable BBCi.
James McAvoy plays Richard, Natalie Dormer is Door, Benedict Cumberbatch is the Angel Islington, Anthony Head is Croup and no lesser figure than Lord Bernard of Cribbins plays Old Bailey. The rest of the cast is just as spectacular. You can read the whole thing at the estimable Mr Gaiman’s blog, read more at the Radio Times and Den of Geek. A clicky on the piccy takes you to the BBC Neverwhere page. All this and Jonathan Strange too. These are exciting times indeed. 
Re-blog:Top novelists look to ebooks to challenge the rules of fiction
Leading British authors drawn to experiment with the scope of interactive storytelling.
Online fiction is a remote world, peopled by elves, dragons and whey-faced vampires. At least that is the view shared by millions of devoted readers of the printed novel. But now serious British literary talent is aiming to colonise territory occupied until now by fantasy authors and amateur fan-fiction writers…
From The Guardian. Click on the pic to read more.
February 26, 2013
Normal service might be resumed
Eventually. Maybe…
After a titanic computer crash I’m having to re-build my poor, tired old laptop from scratch. Much has been lost - a lot was backed up, but a lot wasn’t. The computer is still not as I’d like it. I’m still tweaking and adjusting. At least now – thanks to the computer genius with whom I live – the trackpad driver misery is finally sorted; my cursor no longer leaps and gambles through my documents like a spring lamb, leading to general gibberish and tangled cardi. It’s taking a depressingly long time to get back up to speed. My style is well cramped, let me tell you, and I STILL cannot get into Twitter. It’s all been rather frustrating.
Enforced absence from the computer has meant I’ve been able to catch up with some long-delayed reading. I was finally able to read Jon Sayer’s brilliant BATDIG – review to follow – and am well-esconced in Horton Deakin’s fascinating Time Pullers. Even a computer crash can have a silver lining.
In other news: the computer genius has been busy with a hammer in the kitchen. We have new cupboards! Clutter is banished, the salad spinner and my enormous collection of teas finally have a home. It might not sound like much to you, but my joy is mighty. And spring might actually have sprung in these silly latitudes where we make our home. I’ve got 60 Dutch Iris, 40 Triteleia, a peach tree and some aubergine seeds to plant. If I can only remember where I put my trowel…
It seems even the joy of new cupboards has a downside ::she nodded sagely::
February 23, 2013
Re-Blog: Bring Back the Illustrated Book!
It’s curious how much of literature we are conditioned to consider unliterary. Few would contest the canonization of “Bleak House,” “Vanity Fair,” “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” and “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” but these classics have something in common we may be prone to disregard: each was published with profuse illustrations, and in each case the author relied on the artwork not only to enhance the aesthetic appeal of the book but to add meaningfully to the story.
Posted by Sam Sacks at The New Yorker. Click on the pic to read more.
