The old man and the sea by Ernest Hemingway

This is a short book that can easily be read in one sitting (and really shouldn't be read any other way). The story is essentially just an old man alone in a boat, fishing. While the plot can pretty thoroughly be summarized in a paragraph, this is not what the book is about. What really makes this book special is the way in which you feel as if this is a real old man, on his boat in the middle of the sea. That sounds simple and unremarkable, but The old man and the sea really creates a complete reality in a way I've not encountered anywhere else.

At any rate, even if you do find it a boring story about an old dude and a fish, the book is over in a couple of hours. So go read it already.

Born to Run by Christopher McDougal

This is a non-fiction (although it strays dangerously close to the border sometimes) book which is about a mexican tribe of super runners who live in the Copper Canyons. It is essentially an argument that the ability to run (long distances, not sprint) is an important aspect of our evolution and as such of tremendous benefit to our health to do so. He argues that the ubiquity of running related injuries can be linked to using running shoes and poor technique.

There was a lot of times when this book made claims based backed up by anecdotes of one or two freak runners, who "eat nothing that needs to be cooked mannnnnnn" and they did alright, so meat eating==bad. While I found the unsubstantiated hippy bullshit quite annoying at times, it didn't ruin the book for me. As I see it he makes two big claims: that running shoes actually make you more injury prone or at best, do just as well as a pair of sandshoes and that our bodies evolved to make us good at distance running. I think he did a reasonable job at trying to support these claims, although this is not really a "check the footnotes" kind of non-fiction book (the author writes for Men's Health, so don't expect too much in the way of scientific rigour).

Whatever the merit of his claims, it is certainly an amazing story, told with a lot of poetic license with "filling in the gaps", that made me hate modern sport all the more for its hyper competitive bullshit and inspired me to try taking up running again.

The short version is don't expect The rise and fall of the Roman empire and you'll find a highly entertaining and motivating story, with a few plausible theories (and some not so plausible hippy crap ><) thrown in along the way. Thoroughly recommended.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

It seems appropriate writing a blog about this book, as the book itself is full of people "doing their due diligence" and writing up their diaries despite being tired. Perhaps I should explain. Dracula is a book about vampires (dur), but without any of the teenage emo that seems to dominate modern vampire fiction. The book is told through a series of diary entries made by 5 or so main characters. I really enjoyed this book at first, the opening chapters are set in Dracula's Transalvanian (sp?) castle and are very atmospheric and build a sense of dread and suspense.

Unfortunetly, the book really doesn't capitalize on this very well. The sense of a coming climactic resolution just continues to build (I swear I was three quarters of the way through before the word "vampire" is mentioned) and when there finally is a showdown with the undead, it's given about as much attention as "preparing refreshment" and the many other banal events that feature in the journal entries. I guess the justification for the endless "what I had for breakfast" details in the journal entries is to make them feel more genuine, but as the diaries are full of long conversations and detailed descriptions that are meant to be remembered word for word, they are never going to feel truly authentic.

The other thing that really irked me was the prim and proper way in which the characters always behaved even in the most dire of circumstances. With the possible exception of the foreign doctor Van Helsing and Dr Steward, the warden of the local insane asylum, this made the characters very one dimensional and without any real depth.

Ultimately I don't regret reading it and I would probably have enjoyed it if it was 100 odd pages shorter, as it is I was pretty sick of it by the end. Still, the opening few chapters up until the narrative leaves castle Dracula are excellent and worth reading for the obvious influence on all other vampire fiction since.

Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk

This was the second book by Palahniuk that I read and was easily my favorite. The book is essentially one long suicide note, written by the last remaining survivor of a religious cult that hires out their young as life long servants to the rich. The protagonist, Tender Branson, is telling his story to the black box recorder on a boeing 747 he has hijacked before he crashes it in the Australian outback.

The book is full of the dark, satirical humour that is so characteristic of Palahniuk's writing. The page numbers are in reverse as we count down towards the eventual crash. I can't think of much more to say about it. Either you enjoy this style of humour or you don't.

Apparently, Survivor was going to be made into a movie, until 9/11 happened and it was decided that a movie involving crashing a hijacked plane was too sensitive. This is despite the fact that in the book the hijacker lands the plane and lets everyone out before taking off again to crash it himself in a deserted part of the desert. Although I'm not convinced it would have made a good movie, its cancellation is exactly the type of over sensitive bullshit that Palanhniuk satires. Ah well, I'll go watch tribute.wmv and all will be well.

Rant by Chuck Palahniuk

For those of you not in the know, Chuck Palahniuk is the author of Fight Club, which I haven't read, but the movie is kick ass. Anyway, Rant is about the spread of a supervirus in a world where society is segregated between those who sleep during the day/night. The "patient 0" who spreads this virus is known as Rant. The story is told through a series of interviews/accounts of people who met Rant at one point or another. I found this to be one of the books greatest strengths, showing just how differently two people can see a person or event. There was the usual collection of Fight Club esque fringe activities that are often to be found in Chuck's books, which were amusing and vaguely appealing in a 16 year old "rage against the machine" kind of way.

I would have said the book was very good, were it not for the idiotic ending. I've spoken to several people who thought the ending was clever and unexpected, but I found it ridiculously contrived and unnecessarily magical. That said, the book isn't so much about the story as it is the characters telling the narrative, who are consistently amusing. I found the used car salesman's parts particularly enjoyable. If you manage to not let the ending annoy you, this book is well worth a read, although it's not as good as some of his other work. Survivor in particular.

Earthlight by Arthur C. Clarke

I bought this at a second hand bookstore while waiting to see 2001: A space odyssey at the Astor. This is a short book set in the "not too distant" future, and tells the story of a new colonial conflict between Earth and colonies on Mars and Venus. We see this conflict through the eyes of an accountant from Earth, who has been sent to a Moonbase as a reluctant spy for Earth's interests.

Usually I can't stand science fiction writing. 99 times out of 100 "science fiction" is an excuse to throw all pretext for believability and logic out the window and indulge in anything goes storytelling where scientist==wizard, things are given stupid names because they sound "sciencey" or "spacey" and the "twist" usually consists of impressive sounding nonsensical gobeldy gook to conveniently allows the hero(s) to out science the forces of space Mordor. Never mind that anyone worth talking about (ie, not the Harry Potter lady) who does write about wizards and magic has learnt that in order to create an immersive and believable world you have to establish a set of rules that are consistently applied and can't just be changed to suit your latest contrived plot device. Basically, every time I pick up a science fiction book I'm expecting something written by 35 year old fat Star ____ nerds living in their parents basement for other fat Star blank nerds of the same ilk and usually put down the book 100 pages later wondering why I ever thought it could be otherwise.

This is not the case with Earthlight. Arthur C. Clark does a beautiful job of extrapolating from current technology and describing a world that is both socially and technologically believable. Everyone's actions are precisely constrained by the laws of physics and everything from Sadler's first arrival on the moon base, communication within the base, right up to the climactic space battle are thought through to the tiniest detail create a complete suspension of disbelief.

This is not to say that this is a dry technical book where every action is described in detail with regard to being physically correct. The story of colonial conflict is captivating and would be familiar to anyone born from the 19th century onwards. Alright, I'm sick of ranting, but I really enjoyed this book. It was superbly researched, had a compelling storyline, was paced well and was never dull. This is without a doubt the best science fiction book I've ever read and would recommend it to anyone. I look forward to reading more of Clarke's work.

I, Claudius by Robert Graves

I had been meaning to watch the British TV series made based on this book for some time and so when my girlfriend at the time swore up and down that it was one of her favorite books, I finally decided to read the book instead. I don't think it would qualify as one of my favorites, but I certainly thoroughly enjoyed it. The author does a fantastic job of creating a well researched portrait of a time and place full of murderous, promiscuous & incredibly self obsessed people realistically come to life. His depiction of Augustus' wife Livia, who acted utterly without remorse on the assumption that all her sins would be forgiven once she was deified posthumously, was particularly memorable.

That said, the seemingly endless catalog of names made things hard to follow at times. Not that that is really Graves' fault, but it still was a bit of a barrier to following/enjoying things.