Sean Williams

Another mixed bag, reflecting more books read on planes, books picked up secondhand, recommendations, work reading, and impulse purchases. Not sure what I'll move onto next. There are still ten Patrick O'Brian books in my stack, but I'm savouring them, knowing I'll be devastated when there are none left...

• The Strange Case of Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger (cute)
• Sense & Sensibility by Jane Austen (not as satisfying as Pride & Prejudice but funnier)
• Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler (really wanted to like it as much as other books I’ve read by her, but couldn’t finish it)
• Blacksad by Diaz Canales and Guarnido (brilliant)
• Worth Dying For by Lee Child (as smooth and sharp as an icepick, but much more enjoyable)
• f2m by Hazel Edwards and Ryan Kennedy (terrific)
• Florence & Giles by John Harding (couldn’t finish)
• The Mad Hatter’s Holiday by Peter Lovesey (in progress)
• The Prestige by Christopher Priest (liked it much more than the movie, which I loved--so it gets a huge thumbs-up from me)
• Galileo’s Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson (moving and fascinating)
• The Night Watch by Sarah Waters (the weakest, to my eyes, of her recent novels, but still awesome, and so much better than I could ever write)

BTW, I've started posting this information over at goodreads as well, so if you're interested in watching it unfold in real time, pop by and take a look.

This is also a test cross-post to Facebook and Twitter. Fingers crossed!

So many books, so little time...

Still overloaded with boofy old blokes, and finding female thriller writers remains difficult (as opposed to female crime writers; there's a ton* of those). I have a Fred Vargas lined up soon. She is awesome, but I wouldn't call her a thriller writer, really. Same with Sarah Waters, who I've been meaning to read for years. (It was worth the wait.)

• Phobos: The Robot planet by Paul Capon (thanks Jeff!)
• Doctor Who and the Destiny of the Daleks by Terrance Dicks (thanks Mondy!)
• Choke Point by Barry Eisler (even better than the first two in the series)
• Elidor by Alan Garner
• There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly by Jeremy Holmes (cute)
• Envy the Night by Michael Koryta (a surprisingly beautiful entry in a field that's full of so much average crap--highly recommended)
• Dapper Caps & Pedal-Copters and The Annotated Wondermark by David Malki (with bonus illustrations, huzzah!)
• The Philosopher's Stone: A Quest for the Secrets of Alchemy by Peter Marshall (a bit credulous, and therefore not as good as that book on the Masons I read a while back, but contains loads of material for a new project I'm working on)
• The City & The City by China Mieville (probably the only Hugo nominee I'll get to before Worldcon, alas)
• Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud (like Ways of Seeing but with better pictures--thanks, Scott!)
• Bride Flight by Marieke van der Pol
• Bleed for Me by Michael Robotham (awesome, his best yet)
• Beautiful Lies by Lisa Unger (didn't finish--too much set-up for what was obviously going to be a long-running series)
• The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (like Envy the Night, I didn't want this to end)

* That's clearly not the right collective noun, but something witty refuses to come to me. Any suggestions?

I've been trying to rest my wrist these last few weeks, and travelling, hence the large number of titles here in a relatively short time.

Lots of blokes, again, and some of them missed the mark completely, for me. Does anyone know any good female thriller writers?

• Last Man Standing by David Baldacci (didn’t finish)
• The Bricklayer by Noah Boyd (didn’t finish)
• 61 Hours by Lee Child (wonderful)
• House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (astonishing)
• Hard Rain by Barry Eisler (great)
• Jumper and Wildside by Steven Gould (absolutely amazing)
• Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris (brilliant)
• Liar by Justine Larbalestier (also brilliant)
• The Crime of Huey Dunstan by James McNeish (didn’t finish)
• 1964: The Year of the Great Romance by Evelyn Schiller (actually just my grandmother’s diary of the year my parents’ met, but that’s what I’d call it if it were a book)
• Uglies, Pretties, Specials and Extras by Scott Westerfeld (bubbly!)

This doesn't seem like a month's worth of reading to me, but it doesn't include a couple of books that aren't out yet, which I was fortunate enough to read in ms form.  So that makes me feel a bit better.

• The White Mountains by John Christopher (an old fave)
• Astonish Yourself: 101 Experiments in Philosophy of Everyday Life by Roger-Pol Droit
• Sum: Forty tales from the afterlives by David Eagleman (mind-blowing)
• The Ode Less Travelled by Stephen Fry *
• Keystone by Peter Lovesey (my favourite crime writer)
• Beards of our Forefathers and Clever Tricks to Stave Off Death (Wondermark) by David Malki (hilarious!)
• The Straw Men, Michael Marshall (awesome!)
• WomanSpeak, Louise Nicholas and Jude Aquilina (clever, and funny too)
• Dark Country by Bronwyn Parry
• The Math Book by Clifford A. Pickover (maths never looked this good)

* In truth, I haven't finished the Fry yet.  I insist on doing the exercises and work unfortunately has got in the way.  I will get back to it, though, and I'll resist the temptation to post the results here. :-)

I've been writing a lot lately, but that doesn't mean I haven't been reading as well. Here's the latest list:

• Amy Barker, Omega Park (terrific)
• Idan Ben-Barak, Small Wonders: How Microbes Rule Our World
• Ronald H. Fritze, Invented Knowledge: False History, Fake Science and Pseudo-Religions (fascinating)
• M. J. Hyland, This Is How (puzzling)
• Stephen M Irwin, The Dead Path (engrossing despite its faults)
• Cate Kennedy, The World Beneath
• Mark Mclaughlin, The Spiderweb Tree (bizarre and lovely)
• Peter McMillan, One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each (A Translation of the Oguta Hyakunin Isshu) (best book I've read for ages)
• Alan Moore, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume III, Part 1
• Finn Nettelbeck Monteath, The Three Little Gazelles and the Big Bad Hyena (not bad at all for a 10-yo!)
• James Stimson, Thirteen O'Clock
• Fred Watson, Why is Uranus Upside Down?

What's have you been reading?  I'm looking for suggestions.

A while back I was interviewed by Valerie at the Sydney Writers' Centre. The podcast and transcript are now available right here.

It's handy having a transcript because sometimes I forget what I've burbled on about. This time I can tell you with 100% confidence (and reveal via the tabs below) that we covered pretty much everything. :-)

Sometimes I feel bad about not reading enough "capital-L" literature.

Then I remind myself that as a mad teenager I once read James Joyce's Ulysses from cover to cover, which surely earned me enough enduring lit-cred to never have to read again.

Everyone should have a book like that, I reckon. Do you? If so, what is it? Gravity's Rainbow? War and Peace? The Grapes of Wrath?

The Victorian Writers' Centre runs a nifty column in its newsletter. Each month an author is invited to track every book he or she buys or is given, then reads, in that month. I was honoured to be writer chosen for this month's edition.

The piece I wrote for their September newsletter is below the cut (for readers outside the subscription area). There's Doctor Who, there's crime, and there's stuff that's hard to classify. As an addendum, I'd say that I didn't much like Robert Goddard, thought the Deaver and Jon Evans books were okay, and am now firmly hooked on Michael Robotham. (And I really must get around to reading more books by women. Whoops.)

I've also become addicted to Slacktivist's critique of the "Worst Books Ever Written": Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins' awesomely awful Left Behind: A Novel of Earth's Last Days. Alternating between hilarious and outraged, the posts are interesting and insightful, and good reading for writers of all stripes. Here's a quote:

"For anyone interested in writing, Left Behind is like one of those grisly films they show in driver's education classes -- offering a graphic illustration of the disasters that can occur from carelessness behind the wheel. On another level the book also illustrates, on nearly every page, the unreality, monstrousness and impossibility of the very ideas it seeks to promote."

So check it out--here, or in chronological order (via an index that doesn't take you quite to the end) here.

It was worth the investment, imho, for this (which explains the second of the two headings to this post).

( A Month of Reading... )

I've talked elsewhere about reading, and in particular how my working life has influenced my reading habits. The latter is definitely reflected in this short list of my stand-out books for the last twelve months:

Sarah Armstrong, Salt Rain
Tegan Bennett Daylight, Safety
Helen Garner, The Consolation of Joe Cinque
John Harwood, The Ghost Writer
Gail Jones, Sixty Lights

Only one of them is remotely genre (The Ghost Writer, although speculation about the future from a 19th Century perspective is an important part of Sixty Lights) and not all of them are new releases. Every one of them thrilled the writer in me as well as the reader. And hey, they're all by Australians.

That's not say that I haven't read any genre novels in the last twelve months or books by authors from outside our borders, or that I don't have a towering to-read pile of the same awaiting their turn. They're just being overshadowed at the moment. I get my genre fix from shows like Lost, Battlestar Galactica, and Dr Who (although these too stand in the shadow of mighty Deadwood).

Whether the tide will turn any time soon depends entirely on what lands on my desk next. Whatever it is, in whichever genre, all I hope is that it's brilliant.