William Gibson has a new book out called Spook Country* and he’s doing the rounds at the moment doing book signings. Of course, he won’t be visiting that little island off Engerland called Ireland so the nearest location is Forbidden Planet in London on Wed, 29th August. I’m half-tempted to go (I like London) and take a few days hols there but I can’t seem to get a flight out of Dublin for anything less than €150.

The price of the flights are weird because I can do the London–>Dublin route for a fiver plus taxes, but Dublin–>London is €150 for the Sun, Mon, Tues, Wed on both Ryanair and Aer Lingus. Strange.

*Spook Country:
Spook Country is the sequel to his last book Pattern Recognition. It follows several different plotlines concentrating on a man working in information transfer, an investigative journalist, a junkie and a military troubleshooter. Spook Country also deals with themes of espionage and the media. Added to all that this multi-layered political thriller also revolves around a mysterious cargo from Iraq.

Had a lie-in this morning before going to the gym. I spent so long in the jacuzzi that I started to feel a bit sea-sick! But it was worth it because it’s so relaxing and calming. Then it was into town to do a bit of shopping. I got the bus into town since Dublin is such a nightmare for parking these days.

I pressed the button at the traffic lights to cross the road to get the bus stop. Normally there’s an interminable wait for the bus drivers to finish their tea and drive their buses. But today, the lights changed just in time to stop an approaching bus so I had an easy stroll to the bus. Once in town, I found another art of asbestos sticker on Fade street. It’s a bit blurry because I used my camera phone but it reads, I’ve lost my English-Japanese dictionary. Now finding it hard to buy cheap whiskey in Tokyo. If you find it mail me at…’

First stop was Conn’s Camera Shop to buy a new monopod for my camera. I’m really growing fond of the place because of the pleasant staff and the keen prices. And they always have what I want in stock (hello Berminghams!!). A short stroll brought me to the bookshop and, hallelujah, the new Lee Child (Jack Reacher) book, Bad Luck and Trouble, was in stock. I also bought Niall McCullough’s tome, ‘Dublin, an Urban History: The plan of the city‘. The latter one could be heavy going but there’s lots of pictures so that’s alright!

On the way home, I decided to do something vaguely healthy so I got off the bus a couple of stops before I needed to. The bright idea was to walk that little bit extra so I could call it exercise. Of course, that all went out the window when I spotted a man walking out of a shop with a 99 ice-cream. It’s a bit like admitting an addiction but I had to get an ice-cream as well. Ice-cream before noon – what would the neighbours say if they found out!

Once home, I bought new CD’s by Maria McKee and Wilco from CDwow.ie. I don’t know why anyone would buy music from High St shops anymore. They were €12 each on the internet. Some wag will surely point out that Maria McKee isn’t worth a penny but €12 is a big saving over the sticker price in shops.

A couple of weeks ago, I attended an exhibition by Kilkenny-based William Watson in Dungarvan’s Old Market House Arts Centre and put a deposit on one of his paintings. He co-exhibited with his father (Tom) because William couldn’t come up with enough work in time for the exhibition. Artists are such a temperamental bunch. Still, I get to collect it this Friday and I hope I still like it!

Finally, I get to go to the pub tonight to watch a football match. Liverpool are playing in some final in Greece. I think they beat the same opponents in the same competition a couple of years ago and tonight is revenge-time. It was kinda funny when they won the last final because Liverpool could say they were European Champions (just like the English rugby team claiming to be the World Champions a few years ago) and, since then, they’ve lost loads of matches. Still, I get to go the pub, yippee!!

Seeing as how well my day has gone so far, I bought a lotto ticket because there’s a big jackpot tonight.

Today could end up being a very good day indeed! A very good day indeed.

Stephen Leather’s Soft Target is a taut thriller and doesn’t really deserve the throwaway tag. The book contains three storylines that develop seperately for most of the book. Inevitably, these storylines do come together for an exciting finish in the final chapters. Briefly, Dan ‘Spider’ Shepard is a former SAS soldier who’s been recruited to be an undercover agent provocetaur for the police. He does his job extremely well and the book starts with an on-the-job example of his courage and tenacity. In fact, so good is he at his job that his next task (the major part of this book) is to target an elite group of armed police officers who may be corrupt. In addition to his professional duties, he is also a recent widower who has to sort out arrangements for his young boy. These three threads are all developed extrememly well and could stand on their own as mini-novellas. That they spiral around each other until the final few chapters where these seemingly separate stories come together is testamount to the author’s storytelling skills.

I really liked this book by Stephen Leather and I’ll be looking out for his other books. One quibble and it’s nothing to do with the author. The author’s name is in very large type on the front of the book and the title is so small that it’s almost an afterthought. It’s a shame they’re advertising the author more than the story within but I guess that’s the modern art of selling books.

Ambush by Paul Carson is ok but it is a throwaway thriller. First, I must declare a bias. This book is set in Dublin and I always have a hard time dealing with books set in Dublin. I don’t know whether it’s the dialogue or the characterisations but it never seems to be realistic to be. But then I have lived outside of Dublin for a good ten years so what do I know?

In this book, the two main characters are the ‘brilliant’ doctor and the hard-bitten detective. The unusually attractive doctor with poor social skills is married to the beautiful sister of the chain-smoking, leather jacket-wearing detective. When the wife/sister is brutally murdered in error by an unknown psychopathic drug dealer, the two of them must forget past animosities and join together to catch the killer of the innocent woman they loved so much. So far, so good as a storyline.

But some of the plot devices used to move the story along grated with me. In one section of the story, they use an outbuilding in Garda HQ in the Phoenix Park as a base for one part of their crusade. I won’t reveal much more but it is not credible that this would happen. Why the ‘mad, bad, and dangerous to know‘ detective couldn’t find a safe house or squat to use is beyond me. In several parts of the book, the attractive doctor is always pushing his glasses back up his nose or taking them off to wipe them as the nervous sweat clouds his vision. More than once, this is used to move the story along or to change direction and it’s not credible that a medical doctor would have such defective glasses. At the very least, his wife who worked in P.R. would have forced him to get better glasses. I wear glasses myself and I don’t know why this should bother me so much but it just does!

The oddest part of the book for me occurred when he returned to his parents in America after his wife dies. He’s just made his deal with the devil (the detective) so before he goes back to Ireland, he gets a makeover. By that, I mean, he gets new glasses and clothes that are entirely black. Somehow, this allows the author to make the good doctor tougher, and with a meaner accent. The detective thinks the good doctor is now tough. It just didn’t make sense to me as a way to move the story along. I’m going to see Casino Royale in the cinema later this evening and part of the story, I believe, is the genesis about how James Bond becomes a cold-blooded killer. In one of the trailers I’ve seen, Bond is asked does he like killing people and, in return, he says something like ‘I wouldn’t be very good at my job if I didn’t’. Both Carson’s book and the film are ficticious but I think I can guess which will stand the test of time!

Finally, I have to take issue with the author. Unlike Leather’s book, the medic Carson doesn’t have a ‘light touch’ when it comes to talking about guns, explosives, and medical drugs. Carson’s book could be better and much shorter if he didn’t feel the need to tell the reader the dimensions of certain guns etc.

In summary, then, read Carson’s book if you get it as a present (like I did) but don’t buy it.

Television
I think I’ve mentioned before that I don’t watch much television but, on Tuesday, the Discovery channel had almost a whole day of the American Chopper show. On this show, the company, Orange County Choppers, build a customised motorbike for their client. All the shows follow the same format. The client is introduced and the designers mock him (and it’s always a him). Then they start building the bike and, half-way through the build, the owner (Senior) and the owner’s son (Junior – I’m serious) fight for awhile over whether the bike should have pointy bits or not-so-pointy bits. Meanwhile, some part for the bike is delayed. Finally it arrives and the bike is built just in time to enormous applause for all concerned. Yippee! The shows were mind-numbingly hypnotic and it was brilliant.

To be honest, the best bits were the ads. Because Discovery is not regulated by anyone (?), they can show as many ads as they want. And believe me, they did! But it did allow me to channel hop and see what was on the other stations. I felt a sense of accomplishment for this multi-tasking and it slightly negated the guilt I felt for watching so much crappy TV.

It didn’t negate the guilt completely so I read a few throw-away thrillers. You know the sort, they’re usually 3 for 2 in your local bookshop and the lone, grumpy hero is dragged into something horrific or mysterious but he rises to the task and uses all his skills and contacts (Ed – thought he was a loner?) to save the day. I can usually read these books pretty fast because the writing is so cliched. It usually takes the author a paragraph or two three to say that it’s cloudy, or sunny, or a bit of both. So I usually just let my brain process the broad outlines of the book and concentrate only when there’s something happening or being said.

Books
The three books I read were Echo Park by Michael Connelly, Red Tide by G.M. Ford and Never Go Back by Robert Goddard.

In reverse order, I was very let down by Goddard‘s book. Parts of it were set in Swindon, for god’s sake. It was quite cliched and a bit Dad’s army. There was a cast of thousands who were given real names and nicknames. Goddard used them interchangably and it was hard to tell the characters apart. And because the story was so awful, it wasn’t worth the effort to try and remember everyone. Briefly, the story was that, 50 years ago, 15 young servicemen were sent to a remote Scottish castle for three months for an academic experiment in learning. The book starts with the run-up to the 50 year reunion which is to be held in the same venue (now a hotel). Soon, members of the group start dying in mysterious circumstances. The page-turner idea is ‘What really happened 50 years ago in that remote Scottish castle? Only Ossie (Harry) and Chipchase (Barry) can save the day!

The fact that the group members were approaching 70 years of age is the fatal flaw in this book. I won’t spoil the plot but why didn’t the killer(s) just bid their time and let them die natural deaths? It’s incredible that the Goddard has published over 15 books for Corgi, the publishers. And he’s a beardie!

Red Tide by G.M. Forde wasn’t as bad but barely passed into the ‘entertaining’ category. Frank Corso, the grumpy loner with the mysterious past, has to save the day when a biological disaster threatens Seattle. The science in it is laughable so I won’t dwell on it. In another scene, he sends the heroine home in a taxi and pre-pays the driver with a $100 bill. The fare turns out to be about $6 so the heroine uses the $96 balance to force the cab driver to follow a mysterious van. Here’s a random passage from the book. By random, I mean I opened a random page and picked the best passage I could see on those two pages.

And unless I’m mistaken, the good Dr Stafford looked pretty much scared shitless when she wheeled out of here.”

Dean and Sykes were momentarily taken aback. Neither could remember Harry Dobson ever having used profanity before, just as neither had ever heard the undercurrent of bitterness which had worked its way into his tone.

At least, this (goatee) author has only published 4 books before, although he has another coming out in 2007.

Despite Connelly sporting a beard, I can heartily recommend Michael Connelly’s Echo Park. It’s part of the Harry Bosch series of murder mystery books. In this series, Bosch is a grumpy loner who doesn’t have many friends or contacts. He has several psychological problems/hang-ups and nobody really likes or dislikes him. He doesn’t shoot people or beat them up. He just uses his brain as a detective should. In other words, he’s a believeable character.

In Echo Park, an un-solved murder that has haunted him for years could potentially be solved when fellow officers arrest a serial killer for other murders. How all these murders are connected and how they’re solved is the basis of this book. Here’s a random passage from the book. Bosch is interviewing the serial killer about his unsolved case. The serial killer has just described what he did to Bosch’s victim.

Bosch stared at [the serial killer] but couldn’t bring himself to open his mouth. It was moments like these that made him feel inadequate as a detective, moments when he was cowed by the depravity that was possible in the human form. They stared at each other until [another detective] spoke.

Shopping
Christmas was good to me and I got loads of very nice, thoughtful presents. Best is probably not the right word but the best present I got was ‘The Irish Times Book of the 1916 Rising‘ (amazon). It’s a first edition in mint condition and signed by both authors. As far as I know, the authors didn’t do any signings so I am privileged to have a book signed by both of them. The blurb describes the book thus:

Using contemporary diaries and recently released eye-witness testimonies [the authors] tell the story of a tumultuous week through the voices of the men and women who fought on each side, and of a population caught up in days of violence, looting and wild rumour. Reasserting the event as first and foremost a human drama…[the book] adds up to the most comprehensive and accessible account of Easter Week in print.

But there were still some things that only I could buy for myself. Plus, as a good capitalist, I wanted to see if there were any bargains in the sales!

For example, if my knees are up to it, I still aim to run the Dublin marathon in Oct 2007 so I needed to upgrade my runners now that I’m doing more and more running. I’m having trouble running on non-grass surfaces at the moment. I also (ahem) needed to buy a tripod for my camera. I got both, thank you very much, at decent prices.

Town was just mental. I wonder if people are buying things they actually want or are they just buying it because it’s €10 cheaper than it was last week? To be honest, I got caught up in the mood a little bit. I didn’t succumb to temptation but I spent about 3 hours wandering Dublin looking for something to buy. Thankfully, I didn’t buy anything I didn’t actually need but I was sorely tempted.

The saddest moment for me occured when I looked in the window of Maplins gadget store. They were selling a large remote-controlled toy car for €25. In fact, they were selling two of them. ‘Eureka‘, I thought, ‘I’ll buy both of them. One for me and one for my brother‘. My (married) brother lives in a rural area on a acre of land so we could play ‘cops and robbers‘ with the toy cars when I visited him! It made perfect sense until a passerby bumped into me and brought me back to reality. Reality being my brother is married!

Reality, and a sense of shame, drove me into Marks and Spencers. ‘I’ll buy something sensible‘, I reasoned, ‘and that’ll make the day worthwhile‘. M&S had different ideas, though. If the cut of their suits fit, it’s considered a good place to buy a suit because you can buy the jacket and two pairs of trousers at the same time. In theory, your suit should last twice as long. The only problem was that the suits that were on sale didn’t have any trousers while those that were not on sale wanted €100 for the trousers. €100 for a pair of M&S trousers! I don’t think so.

I think my negative brain waves must have set off some M&S sensors because the escalators were disabled when I tried to leave. Luckily, in typical M&S fashion, they disabled the escalators going up rather than those going down! A lucky escape for me.

And that’s why my feet hurt. I spent a fruitless day trapsing around Dublin trying to spend money but to no avail. I’m lucky the traders didn’t set the police on me.

Photo taken today on Henry Street. I know the sign behind the Garda says ‘Mary St’ but as far as I’m concerned it’s Henry Street. OK?

He’s calling it ‘Spook Country‘ for now.

My new novel sort of glances sideways at this “death of cyberspace” meme.

It’s “everting*”, says the French curator of locative digital art to the American journalist, of cyberspace. The journalist thinks the curator said everything”.

They’re both right.

The thing that’s going to be quaint about “cyberspace” (that already is, really) is the inherent assumption that it’s a realm unto itself; that it’s in any way elsewhere or other.

Glancing sideways is becoming more generally recognized as about the best way of doing what we used to call futurism.

There is a god Santa.

everting – the act of turning inside out; a change of position that does not entail a change of location

Please don’t pretend you knew what everting meant

Hi,

About a week ago I had a mad idea about getting Irish bloggers to write about the best books they’ve read this year. I kind of threw it open on my blog dublinopinion.com and so far Sinead Gleeson of Silga and Hugh Green of Most Sincerely Folks have said they’d try and write something. So to make it a bit more interesting I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind giving your opinions too. After all, from reading your blogs and various posts (or perhaps from your catalogues on LibraryThing) I know you read a lot of books.

Now perhaps you want to write about the books you’ve enjoyed most throughout the year on your own blog and I’d certainly encourage you to do so. If you do, however, and don’t want to be part of this, why not add a technorati tag with the post, such as irishblogsandbooks and at the end of the post insert a hyperlink to the technorati search url:
http: //www.technorati.com/search/ Irishblogsandbooks [link disabled by isadub].
That way all the posts with that tag could be read at the same time through the technorati site.

If you know any other Irish bloggers who might be interested in writing about what they’ve read this year then pass this on. In terms of length and format I would suggest selecting the three you enjoyed the most and maybe writing about one that you haven’t read but you wouldn’t mind getting from Santa.

If you’ve an idea about any of this please let me know. I’m open to posting all the contributions together on a blog other than Dublin Opinion, so if you’ve any ideas on where would be the most appropriate in terms of exposure please let me know. I’m interested in collating this as I think it would make worthwhile reading. I’m not bothered about generating hits for my taudry site. All suggestions welcome.

Thanks,
Donagh

Sounds like fun. I think I’ll gather my thoughts and recommendations and post them on dublinopinion‘s blog at the weekend. Why not give it a go yerself?

Edit: Oops, forgot to mention. Here’s his original Christmas Books post on his website.

I spent 6 hours today dealing with just one client. They’ve only got about 15 staff yet 5 of them felt the need to phone me independently and give me the verbals about totally different things. Sigh. Eventually I just had to walk out for awhile to remind myself that the sky was blue and the air wasn’t.

I’m going to HQ in the UK tomorrow for a couple of days and it’s going to be difficult. I have to be nice to various people while constructively criticising them and their teams. Then there’s the evening dinner with ‘smart casual’ attire where the politics and mutterings happen. Spooks is on TV in a few minutes so I should be able to pick up a few lessons on how to lie to people!! Although Spooks doesn’t tell you how to cope with 6.30am flights and 11.30pm pints of beer.

Apart from today, Thursday is my only day in Dublin this week but it’s not going to be a respite from the madness. Once I get advice from HQ, I’m probably going to sack one of my guys when I come back. H.R. is a bit touchy-feely about these things, I guess they have to be, but I hope they can give me the advice I want! It’s really weird firing someone I hired.

Later in the week, I’m up North again, in the Coleraine area. Now that will be fun. My staff in the North can be identified as belonging to a particular religion/grouping. Because of my name and accent (I’ve lived outside Ireland for a long time), I’m lucky/unlucky because it’s hard to pin a label on me. The meeting on Friday should be fun because the guy is ‘as black as your boot‘. He’s also a Hun and a left-footer (I believe two women can be ‘left-footers’ as well but in a totally different context). This is obviously derogatory but I don’t know why. He’s also a bit of a bully and that’s not derogatory.

Lazy Day
I’ve even dusted my bookshelves, which prompted me to update my librarything account. Librarything is an extremely geeky web 2.0 project but I think it’s a great idea. It’s a site where you record the books you own and give them tags. The whole site is searchable so you can find other users (& groups like Irish blogs) with similar tastes. And because it’s searchable, it’ll give you ideas for other books to read. For example, Janet Evanovich is an author I really like. Her Stephanie Plum books are about a not-very-good New York bail bondswoman and her hilarious adventures as she tries to catch her absconded criminals. Her books have great titles as well, but she’s probably not responsible for those. Sara Paretsky is another author whose books have a strong female detective lead in VI Warshawski. I found Paretsky by chance but who else is there? Hopefully, this site will tell me.

Housework is boring so I took lots of little breaks. Desperate to avoid hard work, I even channel-surfed the TV. I don’t watch much TV, as I’m not very good at sitting in front of the box and being a passive receiver of information. There’s nothing much to watch anyway. Initially I settled on an ITV motoring programme called Pulling Power. Subtle, boys, very subtle. It’s made on the cheap so they had a couple of footballers from Division Z reviewing five luxury cars. It was interesting and cringe worthy all at the same time. The spell was finally broken when the ads came on so I surfed along to Sky News.

Brave Woman
Sky News had a half-hour documentary about a woman called Jane Tomlinson. Jane Tomlinson, MBE, suffers from metastatic breast cancer and, in 2000, was told that she had six months to live. Rather than hide at home or in a hospice, she’s determined to make every moment count. She has undertaken several cycling challenges to raise money for various cancer charities. This Sky programme was about her most recent charity cycle from the West coast of America to the East coast. It was compelling viewing. I only caught the last 15 minutes but it was a beautifully made programme. Sky repeats everything so it’ll probably be on the TV tomorrow at some point. You should watch it if you get a chance.

The strength of the programme was twofold. The first was the cinematography. There was no attempt to glamourise Jane (e.g., isn’t she brave/doesn’t she look awful). The camera just filmed her but set her, this small statured woman, in wide frame shots against the enormous panorama that is the American landscape. The second strength was that, in an odd way, they didn’t focus too much on her. The journalist did most of the commentary and he kept it simple. Commentary like ‘we passed the 3,000 mile mark today‘. Or untethered dogs kept chasing the cyclists and Jane has a phobia about dogs. So, at one point, he said, ‘Jane decided to stop because she couldn’t overcome her phobia about dogs. But after awhile, she changed her mind and started cycling again‘. And because of this small talk, it subtly reinforced the significance of what Jane was achieving each day.

Her dedication to living the moment, to looking forward and not backwards, puts my daily, petty, worries into perspective.

One article that caught my eye for more than one second was the automated shoebox sorter that is used by Holland’s largest shoe distributor. I didn’t read the article so you’ll have to visit their website for more information. There was a photo, of course, but I thought it was strange that the employee had to wear a hairnet to use the automated shoebox sorting machine. I guess it does make sense in a strange, let’s not get sued-sort of way, but hairnets and labcoats are a step too far for a shoebox company. Having said that, in my company, there is a serious proposal to issue our van drivers with suncream. Why? Because during the Summer, they may drive around their routes with their arm resting on the door frame of their van. And-they-may-get-skin-cancer, And that’s Health and Safety, so there.

But, I digress…

On the (almost) back page, they have the obligatory crossword and the ‘funny ha ha’ column. And today it was ‘Quirky Quotes‘:

– Conway’s Law: In any organisation there will always be one person who knows what is going on. This person must be fired.
– Don’t aspire to become irreplaceable – if you can’t be replaced, you can’t be promoted.
– The world is divided into people who do things – and people who get the credit.
– Hard work is the key to success – but most people would rather pick the lock.
– People are willing to do an honest day’s work – the trouble is they want a week’s pay for it.
– If at first you don’t succeed, remove all evidence that you tried.

Skipping quickly to the end…

– You have to be 100% behind someone, before you can stab them in the back.
– Never do today that which will before someone else’s responsibility tomorrow.
– Remember, no one is ever listening to you, until you fart.

And…The finale? The punchline?

…And from David Brent…of ‘The Office’ fame
I thought I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it was just some b*stard with a torch, bringing me more work.

The bizarre thing, to me anyway, is that it’s seems to have been in existence for seven years. Even weirder is the mind who thought of the idea. Even weirder is that they chose to send it to me. I need to get out more often!

Honore starts the book with a good exposition on how time is central to our lives, how our relationship with it has been subtly influenced and made wide-ranging changes on our lives. Early man used the seasons to know when to plant crops and so on. As the centuries progressed, time got broken down into smaller and smaller chunks of time. By the time, the industrial revolution happened, time could be measured in minutes and seconds. Workers clocked in and out. They were paid for how long they worked rather than how much they produced.

Each chapter deals with a different topic (cities, food, sex, work, medicine etc) and he explores what is being done by ‘slow’ advocates around the world. He uses a nice mix of personal and international anecdotes, coupled with not-to-heavy academic research to push his agenda. Agenda may be the wrong word: he is pushing a message but his is more a plea to the reader to, well, slow down. It’s a message that resonates with me considering I’ve just returned from a week’s annual leave.

Sometimes he relies to much on American experiences and this lessens the overall impact. America is such a large country full of (ahem) individuals that you could find one of everything there. Need a grown man who wears nappies all day and believes in UFO’s – go to America.

His website (and blog) is inpraiseofslow.

As I mentioned already, I went for a swim in my local gym this morning. It was the first time I’d been swimming in a pool since I came back from Cornwall. It just reminded me how powerful and relentless the sea is. I used to be a competitive swimmer and I’d spend up to 3 hours a day, every day, training in a pool. You would just swim up and down, up and down. My speciality was backstroke so I knew how many strokes I would take before I’ve had to turn at the wall. I could almost swim my races blindfolded!

It’s an entirely different proposition in the sea and I’ve nearly really been comfortable swimming in the sea. For someone whose second home was the pool (after my swimming career, I played water polo and life-guarded), it’s an bit scary to tread water in the sea yet the sea still pushes you one way or the other.

It’s not too bad when you’re surfing or water-sking because at least you’re out of the water (most of the time!). If you get cramp or whatever, you can hold on to the board or, in the case of watersking, you’ll have a lifejacket. But swimming, it’s just you in a million acres of water. The guy in the picture has a lot of guts.

I’m in awe of those people who swim the English Channel and other mad swims. One time, I read an interview with one of them and part of his training involved swimming through jellyfish swarms to get used to the stings.