Clearing the Decks...

I've been finishing things off recently, clearing the decks for new things and consigning the old to the book cases that used to be kitchen cabinets in the shed, and to big black folders full of dvds.

We limped to the end of The Duchess of Duke Street for one. Slightly disappointingly the second - and final - series tailed off rather than thundering to the finish, with loose ends too conveniently tied up and the emerging storyline of Louisa's relationship with her daughter too quickly settled. It's be interesting to know about the production gossip of the time for this series - was it cancelled with pretty short notice, so that John Hawkesworth needed to cram too much into too little space, perhaps? Lalla Ward as the all singing and dancing daughter is actually much better than I expected (though not a par on the fabulous Gemma Jones or Richard Vernon) but I do find it odd to hear her described as a ravishing beauty, when so far as I can see she has that English Rose quality best summed up as a cross between a horse and a mildly embarrassed bottle of milk. Sort of Gail Tilsley with sex appeal.

I (as opposed to we) also finished the second season of the adult cartoon, Archer. A recommendation from the always reliable Rob, I wasn't sure about this madly OTT tale of a sex mad super spy, his vile, alcoholi cmother and hs collection of psychotic work colleagues, but it grew on me and by the end I was really looking forward to each episode. And is it wrong to find the women in a cartoon a tiny bit sexy?

We (as opposed to I) also finished Endgame (another Rob recommendation), a Canadian mystery show about an agrophobic chess grandmaster. If you've not already seen it, it's probably not worth bothering with since vieweing figures which Channel 5 would be ashamed of led to its cancellation towards the end of season one. Shame, as it was a neat little show, even if the link to chess was too often tangential at best.

Oh and I watched the first couple of episodes of Pathfinders, a seventies drama series about bombers in the war, but it was dully written and acted so I bailed...

A pile of books got read in the last week or so too - best of the set was Ben Aaranovitch's Remembrance of the Daleks, which it turns out I'd never read. Long mentioned as the first (if unofficial) Virgn New Adventure, this book is fabulous, witty and clever - and so has nothing in common with the vast majority of gritty grimefests which most often characterised the NAs.

I also finished off Deadline, sequel to last year's excellent Feed - like Duchess of Duke Street it was very good but ended poorly; George Mann's Paradox Lost, which is easily one of the top few Dr Who NSAs; and read - in draft format - an exciting new project which Obverse might soon be involved with.

And now onto new stuff - Bill Bryson's new book waits plumply by my bed, Upstairs Downstairs sits in the dvd player and I will soon have Pathfinders in Space ordered from Network.

A pleasurable re-read

I'm on a re-reading kick right now, which is both unexpected and, to be honest, a little bit counter-productive. I have enough unread books to build a house obviously (don't we all!) but more immediately importantly I'm supposed to be proof reading the excellent second Shooty Dog Thing collection for Paul and Jon and finishing off reading a really pretty superb fantasy novel which it looks like Obverse Books may soon be releasing (before any of the involved parties get the hump, rest assured I'm half way through both books and I'll have them finished asap!).

But I managed, while negotiating my way to my desk in the glorified corridor I call my office, to kick over a pile of haphazardly stacked paperbacks. They fell like a pack of playing cards, fanned out across the floor (all the way to the guinea pig cage for those who know my house) and right in the middle, shining up at me, was the first Brenda and Effie book, Never the Bride. I reviewed that in another place ages ago so I won't bother doing so again, but one thing which struck me at once is that Brenda and Effie and the rest arrive fully-formed in this first book in the series. There's no feeling, as with many such series, that this is a testing ground, that Brenda may end up a different character as Paul Magrs writes each successive book, honing the eponymous bride to his satisfaction. Instead everybody feels real from their first appearance on the page and, as a result, it's a book which takes no effort at all to read, slipping down even on a second read like an exotically Alan Bennett flavoured sorbet (or something). Looking forward to Something Borrowed now.

Of course, one book re-read hardly makes the promised re-reading kick, but I also put both the full set of Little House books and the full set of Flashman novels on my e-reader when I got it, and sitting outside shops waiting for Julie recently, I found myself dipping into - and then being ensnared by - both series, so that, almost before I realised, I was travelling out of the Big Woods of Wisconsin with Laura and 'defending' a besieged Afghan fort with Sir Harry. Since I'm also just about finished Simon Forward's very enjoyable Evil UnLtd book (review to follow) and writing a secret short story for the Obverse Quarterly (and pondering plotting out a Max Carrados novel - well, you never know, someone might be interested!), I seem to have a pleasantly full book-related calendar ahead of me - which is how I like it.

Which mean, I suppose, that I must stop typing on the Internet and get back into it...

That Peter Kay Trip: A Day Out as a Set of Short Reviews

Every Easter holidays Julie takes the kids and goes with a mate and her kids and stays in a caravan for a few days. While they're away I catch up on particularly dodgy old telly, live off carry-outs and generally slob about. This year, though, we had tickets for Peter Kay in Glasgow on the Sunday, so I drove up to pick Julie up, leaving the kids with Julie's pal and her husband. This, as an 80s US tv show voiceover might say, is our story...

Tummel Valley Holiday Park

Arrived there about mid-day and left again with Julie at about one, so didn't really get to see much to be honest. The kids reported it as being nice but a bit small and with not much to do in the evening. The caravan seemed clean, I must say. We left in Julie's pal's husband's...

Audi TTS Quattro

which was like driving a particularly fast ice cream down a particularly smooth knife. I'm not a car person at all, but if all driving was like this, I might be. Frankly, it was such a pleasure that had the car come with the majestic voice of Stephen Thorne as sat nav I wouldn't have been at all surprised. So smooth was the trip, in fact, that in no time at all we arrived at...

CitizenM Hotel, Glasgow

which might well be the best hotel in the entire world, assuming you're not looking for marble check-in desks, little Polynesian waiters in white gloves or other pointless nonsense. Instead, you check-in via a computer, get directed to your room by one of the many tattooed and excellent members of staff who populate the ground floor, and then head for your room having created your own room card by computer.

As for the room...well, if swingers had money and taste instead of being fat, middle-aged plumpers they might design somewhere like this. Spotlessly clean and sparklingly new, our room had a square bed, somewhat bigger than Queen size which ran from one wall to the other, directly in front of a massive picture window (with electronic blinds built into the double glazed glass) and stretching about a third of the way into the pretty large room. Next to the bed was a weird looking remote control, directly in front on the wall was a bloody great HD telly and to the side and down the room a bit was a strange smoked glass oblong which, we soon discovered, contained a two person shower with rain from the roof attachment and no lock to the door (the shower had no door in fact). Separating the shower from the rest of the room was a thin muslin sheet hanging from the ceiling and that, plus a nifty little washhand basin, was the entire room.

The weird remote control mentioned a minute ago turned out to set the room temperature, work the TV (with a load of channels including about 100 pretty much brand new films - and a fair whack of porn - all included in the price), change the lighting intensity - and colour! - in the room and the shower, shut the blinds, lower a big second blind which blocked out all light and, frankly, did everything but light you a fag afterwards.

We played about with it for a while then left for...

Di Maggios Restaurant

which was perfectly satisfactory though nothing special. One thing to note - the KickAss Chicken Wings are hotter than vindaloo. Just a warning. Having eaten we headed off for the main point of the trip...

Peter Kay, The Tour that Doesn't Tour Tour, SECC, 17 April 2011

which was shit. Embarrassingly tired and old fashioned jokes nicked off the internet, misheard song lyrics also pinched verbatim from the internet, a few references to the seventies with no jokes attached and a final fifteen minutes in which Kay did Queen songs while pretending to play a spade. I was genuinely shame-faced for the man, who was once very, very funny but now looks more and more like the biggest rip-off since Milli Vanilli. Luckily, it only lasted a couple of hours so we went to...

The Atholl Arms, Glasgow

for a Magners and a vodka, lime and lemonade. Too brightly lit and too clean (something which always bothers me about pubs nowadays - I miss old and smoky, personally) and virtually empty, but it'd been a good day so I'm inclined to be kind and say it was fine (even if they did add bitters to my second vodka).

And then back to the hotel and, the following day, after some shopping in which I picked up a cheap Oscar Wilde mystery and Julie bought clothes or something, off home again and back to the real world.

Amsterdam next time, I think. Expect reports on Dr Who locations, clogs and quality narcotics...

Current Reading, dispersed round the house

We've been decorating like mad round ours for the past week or two. People have been flooding the house at all hours, building walls and putting up kitchens and moving radiators and every other peace and quiet ruining thing you can do in a house.

As a result, my 'study' (for which read sort of corridor space with a cupboard on one side and bookcases on the other) has been used as a dumping ground for anything which needs taken out of the way of various tradesmen. Which means also that my usual pile of books I'm reading has been disturbed and the various individual titles scattered round the house like a papery Key to Time.

All of which really brought home to me what a lot of books I have going at the same time. Just from last week I'm part way through (in one case just finished, tbh):

• Bowie, Bolan and the Brooklyn Boy (Tony Visconti's autobiography - fascinating and full of great anecdotes but also full of real dribbling nonsense about ghost and auras and the like).
• Memories, Grave and Gay (a memoir published in 1904 by a former Scottish Schools Inspector -odd thought that this book, which I think of as being 'modern' since it was published in the 20th century, is about a period closer to the Jacobite Rebellion than today)
• The Fires of Fu Manchu (continuation of Sax Rohmer's series by his friend Cay Van Ash - there is another in the series which also features Sherlock Holmes, which Paul reckons is even better)
• Connections (chick lit short story collection by Sheila O'Flanagan which is more amusing than most even for a neanderthal like myself)
• Kobayashi Maru (pretty standard Star Trek fayre, though since it's about the awesome first ENTERPRISE crew, it's better than most)
• WG Grace's Last Case (Willie Rushton penned pre-cursor to Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - just started this and it's brilliant)
  
• Mystery Mile (one of the several Campion's I haven't read - good as ever)
• From Hell (a re-read of the graphic novel, after recommending it the other day)
  

plus sundry other things - Faction Paradox short stories, sitcom script books, Senor 105 proof collections and so on - either on the ebook reader or for occasional dipping into beside my bed.

Is this a normal style of reading, I wonder? I bet it is for anyone who really likes to read, after all you need to have something to read close to hand at all times...

All praise the t'internet...

I've been reading all sorts of little bits and pieces recently. Short books and easy reads, tv tie-ins and paperback novelisations, loads of the sorts of books which tend to accumulate in precarious piles in what I laughingly call my study, picked up for a penny plus postage from Amazon Marketplace or on eBay for a pound. Stuffed into second hand padded envelopes, sealed shut with masking tape and with my name scrawled over the top of somebody else's address in huge black felt-tip letters.

Which is one of the best things about the Internet actually. Once upon a time, books I vaguely remembered from my childhood remained forever beyond reach. There was no way of checking the exact title of that book about the two kids hiding in a museum, never mind actually owning a copy. And the only place to buy old books was in second hand book shops, a bus journey away, with no guarantee of anything beyond multiple copies of Catherine Cookson novels and little chance of the sort of thing I wanted to read - pulp science fiction and schlocky horror.

As a result I read and re-read the same 100 or so books over and over again, occasionally adding to that total via jumble sales and presents from relations. Come the internet though...

In the past week parcels have arrived with copies of old Fu Manchu novels, Secret Army novelisations, Sexton Blake short stories and Dads Army annuals. Last week brought a Roald Dahl, a biography of Peter Purves, a pile of magazines and a strange looking little book about killers on Victorian trains. All of which I'm currently reading in my usual half a dozen books at a time style ands which I'll probably mention on here over the next week or two.

And the insttant gratification of it all! Read a blog review of an ancient kids' book or the biography of an obscure 70s sitcom star and two clicks later you're on eBay or Abe or Amazon or Play, typing in your credit card details and buying the book. It may take a day or a fortnight to get into your hands but the ease of purchase and the speed is the thing - maybe it;s just me, but once it's bought I think of a book as mine even if I can't actually read it yet.

Best of all are those purchases you forget about until a bulky parcel arrive sin the postie's hand and it tunrns out to be a passing fancy you can't even remember buying. Bliss!

From the current pile of recent arrivals I just finished the Secret Army book, Kessler, which was excellent - very much John Brason's view of the character and series rather than the one strictly seen on screen but none the worse for that. The story is slight, to be honest, and secondary to a fascinating study of a fictional character who was so well written that it's far easier to believe in his actual existence than it is for many real Nazis in genuine history books. I'd probably never have got a copy of this from a secondhand bookshop - thank God for the internet...

Libraries

I've been reading Nick Campbell's book blog, A Pile of Leaves, for ages, in part with fascination and in part with jealousy at the beautiful way he writes. And when yesterday he wrote about libraries and the need to defend them from closure without recourse to nostalgia, I nodded fiercely (and figuratively - I don't want to look a nutter at work). There's no need for nostalgia to bolster an argument when the premise (that libraries are essential to the well being of our nation) is so obviously and self-evidently true.

But then I got to thinking about the various libraries I have frequented over my lifetime, and recognised that I find it impossible to separate the concept of Libraries from the reality of my Libraries.

From the one in MacDonald Road where my mum says I was the youngest ever member aged two, through the mobile library which pulled into our square once a week when I was growing up, with its little raised bit at the back for books which weren't easily included in General Fiction, and its treasure trove of Tintin hardbacks and Target paperbacks.

Not forgetting the Central Library in town, a massive, ornate Victorian edifice on multiple levels, where the fiction section was a disappointing room with white-washed walls and a series of cheap plastic stands.

Or the National Library, only open to serious scholars like me in the final year of my degree, ostensibly there to read Edmund Morgan on slavery and critical studies of Dickens, but instead filling in slips to have Laura Ingalls and Stanley Elkin books delivered to my desk.

And finally (in terms of regular use at least) the Edinburgh University library, which we used primarily for its cafe, a cheap coffee shop with a pool table and ten pence Shinobi machine, and where I first heard that Thatcher was gone, as a student burst in the doors, arms aloft, like someone declaring the end of the war. Everybody cheered and one girl had tears in her eyes and it really did feel like a wonderful, unexpected victory. Wild hyperbole on all our parts, but there you go - that's what universities are for, university libraries even more so.

I don't go to the library so much now, though I do occasionally take the kids to the one round the corner from the house. But now the internet makes it so simple to buy books - and so cheap - there seems less need for me to wander around the library with my head at an odd angle, looking for that random gem on the shelves. And the introduction of computers and children's sections full of toys has scunnered me a bit on the local library in any case. Give me hard floors, and polished wooden chairs, too high stacks of forgotten novels and strangely selective reference sections over the internet and borrowing cds and small boys playing plastic drums in one corner.

But better toys and pcs than nothing at all - and the mobile library only ever had room for books in any case...