Couldn’t it Have Been a Whole Mouse Running at Half the Speed?

Nearly finished with The Steep Approach To Garbadale – it is indeed steep though quite compelling – I’m not sure of the point of the peripheral first-person narrator who comes into it occasionally and seemingly without meaning – I do hope it’s not just an affectation to sound experimental. In Thinks by David Lodge, the main female character writes a book that is seen as experimental simply because it sticks to a single person, single narrator without any of the wild variations that are present in the book in which she is described; there are transcriptions of tapes – emotionless descriptions of events and standard book like narration. I think this is to reflect the possibility of consciousness developing in computers. This seems to be happening already as described here.

I really will try Cloud Atlas again.

Much Ado About Nothing

As I have mentioned before I love the way that Sefton Library service allow you to reserve books from any of their branches using the web. For some time now I have been looking at a book called “Critical Mass” by Philip Ball and yesterday I finally reserved it. They have to go and get it from Ashworth Hospital library so I am looking forward to some interesting annotations. Actually, that is a joke because they have another copy at a nearer branch. I was going to reserve Iain Banks’ new book The Steep Approach To Garbadale but I actually found it in the local library, it having only been booked out once. The Amazon reviews do use the word “Pants” but I still have a 100% record with Mr Banks’ non-sci-fi books so I will probably finish it. These reviews have also revealed that he likes to alternate “nice” and “nasty” books. Not that I had noticed.

I am into poetry a lot at the moment though I haven’t managed to write any of mine own for ages. I am taking “Staying Alive” with me on the bus because I can’t manage to read longer texts with all the stop-start. The poems seem to alternate between the trendy prose stuff that Stephen Fry rants about and proper, rhythmic things. Now while the former can have spirit and deep meaning, the latter ones always seem to be superior even if they are written about an egg-mayonnaise sandwich.
The title for today is because that very play is on in Liverpool, set in the forties so I look forward to the watch being based on the Warmington-on-Sea platoon of the Home Guard as they were in the Illyria version we saw in the grounds of Speke Hall. Not sure current commitments will allow us to go but it’s nice to dream.