Considering most of the people I know, this is probably
preaching to the converted, but hey, it’s been a slow month. You don’t need to
look to faith, neither do you need to look to Penn, nor Teller for magic. Not
real magic, anyway – that’s merely clever chicanery. Just pop to a book shop,
or a library, and it’s everywhere. The way you can get hooked on the right
words, the way Katie will explode with delighted laughter at the insults Willy
Wonka and Grandma Georgina trade during Charlie
and the Great Glass Elevator, the way an author can leave your head
spinning by merely stringing words together.
Thanks to one of our local libraries, I’ve recently had the
good fortune to read the following:
Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse
5, Cat’s Cradle and Breakfast of Champions,
all three bona-fide classics of American fiction. Vonnegut’s writing style
curiously echoes that of J. G. Ballard, in that it is largely descriptive and
unemotional, but occasionally you get suckered by a passage of such
breathtaking beauty or haunting pain, you feel like you’ve been punched in the
gut; particularly in Slaughterhouse 5
which recounts much of Vonnegut’s experience in World War 2, during which he
was present at the bombing of the German city of Dresden.
Neil Gaiman’s The
Ocean at the End of the Lane, which recently won book of the year, for
obvious reasons. There are some books you read that just hit that sweetest of
spots and transport you to that moment in childhood when you are finally able
to read for your own pleasure and you discover such wonders that you never
suspected your imagination could hold. It’s like that, and every page holds
such joy that the spell it holds you in doesn’t break, even after the final
page is finished. With the exception of Good
Omens, which was written with Terry Pratchett, I’m quite late to Gaiman,
but boy am I glad I caught up. American
Gods, Stardust and Anansi Boys are
all marvellous, if not quite as transformative as The Ocean at the End of the Lane.
Jasper Fforde’s The
Song of the Quarkbeast, which is set in one of Fforde’s wonderful alternate
versions of the UK. Aimed at younger readers, it is not quite as engaging as
his other work, particularly the Thursday Next series and Shades of Grey, but is still great. Fforde is one of those writers
that have such an astonishing grasp of the English language that genius
wordplay and clever puns abound in his novels. The Thursday Next books are, if
you can believe this, as good as Pratchett’s Discworld series. They are out
there, no doubt, but if you’re not put off by all the weirdness then Fforde’s
writing is hugely enjoyable.
