24 Hour Party People
This is the novelization of the script of one my favourite films of recent years.
It’s a very entertaining fictional acccount of the true story of Factory Records.
The book is by Anthony Wilson who ran Factory Records and who fills the book with asides that point out the bits of the film that are utterly untrue, kind of true or just plain true.
It’s an enjoyable read
Rating: B
Night Watch
This is among the very best Discworld novels, along with the likes of Small Gods.
A bit darker than normal, and with much less emphasis on the humour, this is an Ankh-Morpork Watch story.
Sam Vimes (who has grown to become perhaps my favourite Discworld character) is thrown into the past to hunt down a psychotic killer and finds he has to relive one of the formative experiences of his youth and take on the mantle of his mentor in order to heal time and get back to his present and his newborn child.
The plot is a device allowing Pratchett to really get under the skin of a character.
It’s a beautiful piece of writing.
Rating: A+
A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away
An essentially silly and massively enjoyable thriller.
It tells the story of Ray, a new father and a new teacher, and what happens when he
sees an old university friend at an airport when the friend is meant to be very
dead.
Littering the story with all sorts of references to pop culture makes this a very
enjoyable read if rather unbelievable.
If you like big dumb action packed thrillers with a very Scottish voice, you’ll like
this creation.
Rating: B
Understanding Comics
This a serious discussion of the nature and potential of sequential art written in
comic form.
It’s a very persuasive and powerful piece of work.
Probably for people who’d like to have some insight into the theory and practice of
comics.
Rating: A
The Sacred Art Of Stealing
Another rather enjoyable thriller, this time mostly set in Glasgow.
Angelique de Xavia, the scots-asian police officer introduced in ‘A big boy did it
and ran away’, is pulled out of a match at ibrox to get involved in an unusual bank
heist in the centre of Glasgow. The plot deals with the implications of the robbery
and the attraction between the lead robber and de Xavia.
It starts off remarkably well, then tails off. Worth a read though.
Rating: B
Pattern Recognition
A near future novel about the implications of branding, guerilla marketing and niche
internet communties set two years before the novel came out.
This is the story of a person whose sensitivity to brands makes her ideal for
marketing companies wanting to know if their strategies are likely to work or not.
She gets involved in an intrigue related to a community she participates in to do
with snippets of film that appear in strange places on the net. With complex and
dangerous results.
This is probably Gibson’s most satisfying novel, if not his flashiest. I’d really
recommend it.
Rating: A