The value in repetition.

I’m a repeater. My favourite records are played again and again until they wear out and must be bought again (Definitely Maybe, Parklife, Grace, Is This It?, Different Class, Songs for the Deaf and Appetite for Destruction amongst dozens of others, if you care). Throughout my childhood I re-watched my favourite films to death (The Time Machine (1960), War of the Worlds (1953), Goonies, Gremlins, Ghostbusters and Indiana Jones) and that hasn’t changed much since I’ve got older apart from the addition of a few others – Pulp Fiction, Lord of the Rings, and Fight Club along with many more. The hours I sunk into playing through Sonic the Hedgehog, James Pond, Alex Kidd, Road Rash, Flashback and Street Fighter II and more over and over again in my teens I have no doubt would be terrifying were they ever to be added up, and more recently, I’ve been through the Gears of War campaign more than once and can see myself playing though GTA V again before too long.

There are, I don’t doubt, many people who have quite the opposite point of view; when you’ve seen a film once, you’ve seen it, so what’s the point of seeing it again? But if I love it, why would I not want to see it again? Those records, those films and those games became a support system for me while negotiating the difficulties of adolescence. They were friends, they were retreats – they were my happy place. They still are, in a way.

Books also had their place. I’d like to be able to tell you that I loved books above all those other things; that I used to spend hours, days even, lost in them. Alas, I wasn’t that bright. I did like books – I would read Roald Dahl, comics and adaptations of my favourite films. As with films, music and games, I would re-read my favourites – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, George’s Marvellous Medicine and a junior version of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade – that would all become dog-eared and well thumbed, and later To Kill a Mockingbird would become my favourite. This recent article about books written for children kicked off this whole train of thought. It makes a good point about the validity of children’s books, as they have to be written with repetition in mind. They have to be robust enough to stand up to kids reading and re-reading them over and over again. While as adults we certainly do re-read our favourites, they are never tested to the extremes kid’s books are – I particularly like the Neil Gaiman quote in the article about how while he can’t justify every word of American Gods, he can of Coraline. Does that mean he thinks Coraline is a better book? I doubt it, but it does sound as though he takes special care over his children’s books compared to his adult books, and it’s probably because of the retellings the children’s books are subjected to.

But I didn’t really get into reading until I got into my teens, when I found Robert Jordan, Professor Tolkien and Terry’s Brooks and Pratchett. I am in fact re-reading Pratchett’s Discworld series at the moment. I wrote this this ages ago about how you generally have differing points of view when coming back to something like a book series or TV show later in life, and a similar thing has happened with Discworld. My favourite hasn’t changed – previously it was Small Gods and so it proves to be the case still – the conceit that gods are only as real as they are believed to be and their power diminishes with their belief, leaving them to essentially die along with their last believer is such a stroke of inspired genius that I doubt Pratchett will ever top it (although he’s come close a few times). Taking the series in more general terms, however, my favoured stories were always the ones that involved the wizards of Unseen University, or Death. While they are certainly the funniest ones still, I’m much happier this time round in the company of Watch Commander Sam Vimes and witch Granny Weatherwax. I could be well off the mark here, but they feel somehow truer, as if their righteous fury at the injustices of the world is closer to Pratchett’s true view of the world and echo the points he’s really trying make under the funny. This piece written by Neil Gaiman about Pratchett and his anger being the ‘engine that powered Good Omens’ might suggest I’m not that far off the mark, after all.

As usual, I don’t really have much of a point, but I suppose what I’m getting at is you should spend time in the company of the things you love.

Magic.

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.

Do yourself a favour and read some of them for yourself.