Author: Greig

Professional Librarian from Fife who likes books and music.

elderglass?

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The Lies of Locke Lamora

Scott Lynch

The Lies of Locke LamoraThe best fantasy novel I’ve read in an age.
Set in a city reminiscent of medieval Venice, it’s a world full of pampered nobles and organized crime existing cheek by jowl.
Lamora is the head of a criminal gang who secretly flaunt the rules of criminal society by conning nobles out of their money.
The main plot is full of twists and turns putting the hugely likeable central characters through the ringer.
Flashbacks fill out some of Lamora’s history.
The seecondary characters are also rather well fleshed out.
His total disregard for the lives of his characters is something – lots and lots of deaths in this one.
It’s barely fantasy to be honest, barring a couple of central conceits, it could have easily been an historical novel.
I recommend this to anyone without hesitation.

Rating: A+

41?

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Long List 2007
This is the longlist for my 2007 albums of the year.
I’m going to try and pick a top ten (or so) and do a write up for each album, but in the meantime here’s the candidates (in order by album title):

Yeasayer – All Hour Cymbals
Explosions In The Sky – All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone
Andrew Bird – Armchair Apocrypha
Matthew Dear – Asa Breed
Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – Ask Forgiveness
The Besnard Lakes – Are The Dark Horse
Black Francis – Bluefinger
King Creosote – Bombshell
The National – Boxer
Malcolm Middleton – A Brighter Beat
Joe Henry – Civilians
Low – Drums and Guns
iLiKETRAiNS – Elegies To Lessons Learnt
Editors – An End Has A Start
Queens Of The Stone Age – Era Vulgaris
Wheat – Everyday I Said a Prayer for Kathy and Made a One Inch Square
Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
The Octopus Project – Hello Avalanche
Radiohead – In Rainbows
Maria McKee – Late December
Neil Young – Live At Massey Hall
Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
Elliott Smith – New Moon
Interpol – Our Love To Admire
Efterklang – Parades
Phosphorescent – Pride
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss – Raising Sand
Laura Veirs – Saltbreakers
Wilco – sky Blue Sky
Devendra Banhart – Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon
LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver
Okkervil River – The Stage Names
Grant-Lee Phillips – Strangelet
Rilo Kiley – Under The Blacklight
Jackie-O Motherfucker – Valley Of Fire
Mark Ronson – Version
Bjork – Volta
Emma Pollock – Watch The Fireworks
Modest Mouse – We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank
Bloc Party – A Weekend In The City
The Shins – Wincing The Night Away
Trances Arc – XOXOX

Added 6th January 2012
I never did write up a top ten for this year.
So for completeness sake here’s a top ten with the benefit of hindsight.

  1. Radiohead – In Rainbows
  2. Robert Plant & Alison Krauss – Raising Sand
  3. LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver
  4. Wilco – sky Blue Sky
  5. Emma Pollock – Watch The Fireworks
  6. Low – Drums and Guns
  7. Laura Veirs – Saltbreakers
  8. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – Ask Forgiveness
  9. Neil Young – Live At Massey Hall
  10. Rilo Kiley – Under The Blacklight

indecision?

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Love and Other Near Death Experiences

Mil Millington

Love and Other Near Death ExperiencesLate-night Jazz DJ Rob Garland narrowly avoids being killed in an accident and starts to question every trivial decision in life. After unburdening himself on his show he’s contacted by various characters with similar experiences. Prompted by his fiancee he embarks on a ‘quest’ to come to terms with the experience.
The book is occasionally rather funny, but is seriously let down by an obvious and laboured plot.
My verdict? This book cost me the princely sum of £1. About right I reckon.

Rating: C

feather?

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Anansi Boys

Neil Gaiman

Anansi BoysGods are a preoccupation of Mr Gaiman, what with the sheer number of Gods and godlike beings in Sandman, and of course the rather good and rather lengthy American Gods.
This time though the tone is less weighty. In a curious bybrid of fantasy, horror and humour the book relates the story of Charles “Fat Charlie” Nancy. Fat Charlie is a likeable, if rather ineffectual, man who finds out after his Father’s funeral that he was the spider god and trickster Anansi and not only that but he has a brother too.
On a whim he invites this newly revealed brother, Spider, into his life and things start to spiral out of control.
This is a very enjoyable book, wittily written and effectively scary at times. It’s only weakness is a somewhat unlikely denouement.
I’d recommend it as an introduction to Gaiman, maybe only bettered by Neverwhere. I’d also recommend it as a good read to just about anybody.

Rating: A

beloved?

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The Ghost Brigades

John Scalzi

The Ghost BrigadesThe follow up to Old Man’s War is a curious beast. It’s set in the same context, even features a couple of characters from that first novel, but it’s protagonist is entirely different.
Jared Dirac is a Special Forces soldier in the CDF, what the regular forces call The Ghost Brigades. Unlike every other Special Forces soldier Dirac was created to host the conciousness of another man. Charles Boutin was the brilliant scientist behind the BrainPal and the transfer of conciousness that allows the CDF special forces to exist, but now he’s gone renegade and betrayed humanity to competing alien forces. However the transfer seems to fail and Dirac becomes a regular SF grunt.
The book follows Dirac through basic training and into full-blown combat and on to a confrontation with Boutin himself after he gains access to the man’s memories.
It’s a fun book but flawed in that it lacks a real sense of coherence and succeeds better in providing a satisfying ending to the story in the first book than anything else.
It’s still worth a read if you want a quick blast of Heinlein like old school science fiction, like.

Rating: B+

37?

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The Books I Read in 2007 were (in chronological order):

  1. Earth, Air, Fire and Custard by Tom Holt rated B-
  2. Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azzerad rated A-
  3. Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brien rated A-
  4. Ringworld by Larry Niven rated B+
  5. Only Forward by Michael Marshall Smith rated A
  6. The Pinhoe Egg by Diana Wynne Jones rated A
  7. Breakfast at Tiffanys by Truman Capote rated B
  8. Glasshouse by Charles Stross rated A-
  9. Not A Runner Bean by Mark Steel rated B+
  10. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling rated B+
  11. Pattern Recognition by William Gibson rated A
  12. Unknown Pleasures by Chris Ott rated C+
  13. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling rated A-
  14. Old Man’s War by John Scalzi rated B+
  15. Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About by Mil Millington rated B-
  16. Storm Front by Jim Butcher rated B
  17. A Tale Etched in Blood and Hard Black Pencil by Christopher Brookmyre rated B+
  18. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain rated B-
  19. The Creation Records Story: My Magpie Eyes Are Hungry for the Prize by David Cavanagh rated B+
  20. Making Money by Terry Pratchett rated B+
  21. Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett rated A-
  22. Going Postal by Terry Pratchett rated A
  23. The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross rated A
  24. Mortal Causes by Ian Rankin rated A
  25. The Land of Laughs by Jonathan Carroll rated A-
  26. The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt rated B+
  27. Cosmonaut Keep by Ken MacLeod rated A-
  28. Dark Light by Ken MacLeod rated A-
  29. Engine City by Ken MacLeod rated A-
  30. Rainbow’s End by Vernor Vinge rated A-
  31. The Sandman Companion by Hy Bender rated B
  32. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett rated A+

I also read the five books of the Belgariad by David Eddings but didn’t bother to put them on the blog.

southerners?

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Good Omens

Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

Good OmensThis is one of my favourite books of all time.
It’s a brilliant play on the story of the horror film The Omen, which was about the coming of the anti-christ.
In Good Omens, though, the anti-christ ends up with the wrong family and the well meaning attempts of an angel and a demon to prevent his rise have absolutely no effect. A swirl of sub-plots contain a host of brilliant characters such as Anathema Device – the professional descendent of the only seer to have prophecies that were 100% correct, or Shadwell – the bitterly eccentric leader of the Witchfinder Army (current corps – 2 members), and his well meaning but drippy recruit Newton Pulsifer.
This book is funny, insightful, full of great characters and is a totally great read.
It’s on my ‘give this book to everyone I know and force them to read it list’ – it’s that good.
In an interesting sidenote it would appear that I own quite an unusual edition of the book. Nice to know!

Rating: A+