My Current Reading
22 November 2011
My season’s reading is already lined up. Having just polished off the extraordinary Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell, about a girl searching for her missing father in the American Ozarks, I’m moving on to Michael Crichton’s last novel, Micro. The files for this final book were found on his computer following his death and in the same way that the gaps in the dinosaur DNA of Jurassic Park were filled by amphibian sequences, so the gaps in Micro were filled by Richard Preston, author of the superb Hot Zone. Not sure if Preston is known to spontaneously change sex though. It sounds like vintage Crichton – microscopic robots run amok – and I can’t wait to read it. Jurassic Park was the book that made me fall in love with books. I devoured his novels as a teenager and have always bought his new releases. It’s going to be sad to say goodbye to these big, fun stories but hopefully they’ll go out with a bang. (Sidenote: I read Robopocalypse by Daniel H Wilson earlier this year. He’s supposed to be Crichton’s successor. It’s really good, not as good as MC in my opinion, but Steven Spielberg is directing the film of it in 2013.)
In December I always read a Neil Gaiman novel and this year I’ve picked out Neverwhere, a tale about a dark, alternative London . Neil Gaiman is a hugely entertaining writer with a giant imagination so I’m sure there are treats in store.
I’m currently writing my third novel and that is taking the front seat at the moment but my reward for finishing is Haruki Murakami’s massive 1Q84. I’ve deliberately avoided reading anything about it, ignoring even plot details, but the three books are in my house, waiting to be opened. They are beautifully designed, but that’s all I can say about them. Murakami is possibly my favourite novelist because he’s produced so many high quality books. Being able to produce over and over again is something I greatly admire. And the way he describes these strange, reality-bending worlds is close to sublime.
Last year I read the superb haunted house story, House of Leaves, by Mark Z Danielewski. This week it was reported that he’s signed a million dollar deal to produce a 27-volume sequence that will be entitled The Familiar, with each segment coming out every three months between 2014 and 2018. His books always experiment with the form of the novel and it’s good that there are people like him out there, especially when the novels are backed up with genuinely good work (House of Leaves is brilliant not only for its original way of telling a story and book production techniques but because of the story at its heart).
And that’s about it for now.
1 comment
Written by jones on 27 November 2011 at 19:47:00
thanks for the recommendations rhyso!