Pandaemonium
Christopher Brookmyre

Let me begin by saying that I love Christopher Brookmyre. He’s like the writer that Ben Elton could have been if he was Scottish and had bigger balls. And was also funny. Brookmyre is Elton on crack and then some, but unlike Elton I don’t get the feeling he’s trying really really hard to be edgy. He is edgy, sometimes. And I probably wouldn’t want to met him in a dark alley, because he seems a little mad, but none of it seems put on – he’s just an insane Scottish guy with fifteen opinions on everything and a gift for ranting. He’s also amazingly adept at creating very believable female and adolescent characters and inserting them into these crazy situations without letting them turn into voiceboxes for his ideas.

Pandaemonium is a strange one though. It’s really more horror than crime – which to those of us who were reading Stephen King at 11 isn’t really a bad thing – and for most of the book you have to wonder where Brookmyre, who comes across in everything else he’s ever written as a World Champion Athiest, is actually going with his story of crusty-skinned, pointy-horned demons who manage to escape they super-secret joint-government-church research facility and wreak havoc on a bunch of schoolkids away on camp. Having read Brookmyre’s take on religion and the supernatural in his other books – it’s a favourite topic – it’s hard not to spend the entirety of the book waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Which, of course, it does. Without giving too much away, I don’t know that the ‘rational explanation’ we get is all that convincing, but I guess part of his argument is that if we can believe so readily in God and the Devil and Heaven and Hell, why not _____, which actually has some semblance of scientific backing.

This book is slow to get going, and a little bit too derivative of some of his earlier novels – it feels at times like a cross between Be My Enemy and A Tale Etched In Blood and Hard Balck Pencil, but with priests and demons – to be considered among his best, but I read the (extremely gory) second half of it in one go while I was supposed to be sleeping, and then had some extremely gory dreams, so it definitely sucked me in. A delightful romp.

* Not really. Or was it?

The problem with leaving books lying around without reviewing them is that you forget what you thought about them. I chose Quite Ugly One Morning by Christopher Brookmyre because I’ve enjoyed his other books, but it’s been a few weeks now since I finished it.

This book is regular Brookmyre fare: a mystery story with an element of humour thrown in. This book centres around a particularly bizarre murder and the corruption that the investigation uncovers in the NHS system. It doesn’t sound like it, but there is quite a bit of humour thrown in there as well.

Quite frankly, I was disappointed. I’ve heard brilliant things about this book (one friend told me that the opening scene reduced them to tears with laughter), but itjust didn’t do it for me. I didn’t really care about the plot, possibly because there were no ‘case studies’. Without giving away too much, I can say that the plot centres around large numbers of people not being treated quite the way they should by the NHS system, but they just felt like statistics. As they say, a thousand deaths is a statistic but one death is a tragedy…I think I probably would have cared more about the plot if there had been characters involved on the inside. As for the comedy element, it seemed to rely too much on just being absurd. Absurdity is normally one of the best parts of Brookmyre’s comedy, but in this case, it was just absurd, and not comic.

Another weakness of this book is that it seemed so incredibly British. I have nothing against the Brits (hell, I am a Brit!) but any book with a certain nationality pouring out of it tends to annoy me. I can’t help feeling that there can’t be a huge number of people out there who want to read about a fictional scandal in the NHS. It’s interesting when it happens for real, but somehow it doesn’t make for a terribly scintillating novel.

If you don’t like Christopher Brookmyre’s zaniness but enjoy the rest of him, then this might be a good book to choose. Really, though, while it’s not the worst book I’ve ever read, you would do far better to pass over it for some of his better books.

Attack of the unsinkable rubber ducks

Highly entertaining stuff – good suspense and a few twists along the way. Complete ruthless demolition of cranks, fortune tellers and the spiritualist world – perhaps too determined though as it does feel like polemic at times (entirely legitimate but not quite the right place).

Scientific research is a very creative and personally satisfying process. However, researchers often find that the inevitable specialisation and concentration on limited aspects of reality can lead to a lack of understanding and appreciation of discoveries in other fields.

Since retirement I’ve appreciated the opportunity to read more widely. I find myself returning to subjects I haven’t considered for decades, or have neglected. I’m learning about the amazing discoveries humanity has made (behind my back) in the meantime.

I was encouraged to check out, and summarise, what I have been reading by the reading lists blogged by Damian and others. The number of books I have got through (in four years) shocked me – perhaps I’m a bit obsessive, or maybe its just the freedom retirement has given me.

I can recommend most books on the list – but definitely not every one (guess which).

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Infidel
Peter Atkins: Galileo’s Finger
Michael J. Behe: Darwin’s Black Box
Sharon Begley: Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain
Sandra Blakeslee, Matthew Blakeslee: The Body Has a Mind of Its Own
Pascal Boyer: Religion Explained
John Brockman (Ed): What Is Your Dangerous Idea?
Christopher Brookmyre: Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks
Hamish Campbell, Gerald Hutching: In Search of Ancient New Zealand
Sean B. Carroll: Endless Forms Most Beautiful
Austin Dacey: The Secular Conscience
Charles Darwin: The Origin of Species
Charles Darwin: The Descent of Man
Paul Davies: The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World
Richard Dawkins: A Devil’s Chaplain
Richard Dawkins: Unweaving the Rainbow
Richard Dawkins: The Ancestor’s Tale
Richard Dawkins: The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition
Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion
Daniel C. Dennett: Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
Daniel C. Dennett: Darwin’s Dangerous Idea
Jared Diamond: Guns, Germs, and Steel
Jared Diamond: Collapse
Norman Doidge: The Brain That Changes Itself
Helen Ellerbe: The Dark Side of Christian History
Barbara Forrest, Paul R. Gross: Creationism’s Trojan Horse
Steve Fuller: Kuhn Vs.Popper
Daniel Goleman: Destructive Emotions
Ursula Goodenough: The Sacred Depths of Nature
Malcolm Gladwell: Blink
Stephen Jay Gould: Rocks of Ages
Alan Grafen, Mark Ridley: Richard Dawkins
Brian Greene: The Fabric of the Cosmos
Nancy Thorndike Greenspan: The End of the Certain World
John Gribbin: The Fellowship
Nicky Hager: The Hollow Men
Sam Harris: Letter to a Christian Nation
Sam Harris: The End of Faith
Christopher Hitchens: God Is Not Great
Robert Henson: The Rough Guide to Climate Change
Edward Humes: Monkey Girl
Max Jammer: Einstein and Religion
Eric R. Kandel: In Search of Memory
David J. Linden: The Accidental Mind
Irshad Manji: The Trouble with Islam Today
Ernst Mayr: What Evolution Is
Kenneth R. Miller: Only a Theory
Andrew Newberg, Mark Robert Waldman: Born to Believe
Christop Norris: Quantum Theory and the Flight From Realism
Michel Onfray: Atheist Manifesto
Andrew J. Petto, Laurie R. Godfrey: Scientists Confront Intelligent Design and Creationism
Steven Pinker: The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
Sheldon Rampton, John Stauber: Weapons of Mass Deception
Martin Rees: Before The Beginning
Matt Ridley: Nature Via Nurture
Matt Ridley: Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code
Matt Ridley: Genome
Oliver Sacks: Uncle Tungsten
Carl Sagan: The Varieties of Scientific Experience
Sahotra Sarkar: Doubting Darwin
Michael Shermer: The Science of Good and Evil
Michael Shermer: How We Believe
Michael Shermer: Why People Believe Weird Things
Lee Smolin: The Trouble With Physics
Dava Sobel: Longitude
Victor J. Stenger: God: The Failed Hypothesis
Kim Sterelny: Dawkins vs Gould: Survival of the Fittest
Ian Tattersall: The Fossil Trail
Chris Turney: Bones, Rocks and Stars: The Science of When Things Happened
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution
Max Wallace:The Purple Economy
Peter Ward, Donald Brownlee: The Life and Death of Planet Earth
Peter Ward: Life as We Do Not Know It
James D. Watson: DNA: The Secret of Life
Spencer Wells: Deep Ancestry: Inside The Genographic Project
David Sloan Wilson: Darwin’s Cathedral
Edward O. Wilson: The Creation
Edward O. Wilson: Consilience
Peter Woit: Not Even Wrong
Lewis Wolpert: Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast
Lawrence Wright: The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
Phillip Zimbardo: The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil
Carl Zimmer: At the Water’s Edge
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Christopher Brookmyre stands alone on my shelf, and I’m sure on all other shelves in the world; I don’t know any books quite like his. He is uniquely unsettling, warped, funny and mind bogglingly clever in his writing of crime fiction (a genre that I would normally never pick up).

Quite Ugly One Morning is the first book containing Scottish detective Jack Parlabane. It is a fulfilling murder mystery, with scenes so twisted it will have you grimacing through your fingers, trying to work out the case. This book is a departure from the books I would normally read however it was thoroughly captivating and joyfully horrible! I wholeheartedly recommend Christopher Brookmyre to anyone that likes to figure out the story and that has a very dark sense of humour (and strong constitution!).

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Quite-Ugly-Morning-Christopher-Brookmyre/dp/0349108854

L’ultima volta che sono stato alla Feltrinelli ho avuto una bellissima sorpresa: era in vendita un nuovo libro di Brookmyre. La cosa era inaspettata perchè non sono un suo fan accanito ma è stata una lettura bellissima e molto appassionante. Se ne volete un commento più articolato anche se stringato leggete qui.

Well, over the last few weeks, its been Christopher Brookmyre, a Glasgow crime/suspense/humour novelist who has written some astonishingly Glasgowicious stories! Quite Ugly One Morning has one of the most memorable beginnings I have ever read (I mean, ALL the senses are assaulted in that one); Boiling A Frog was a fascinating look at religion, blackmail, and political spin; and Be My Enemy was a little odd, having a slightly lowkey, subdued first half which then explodes into an extravaganza of bizarre conflict. All thoroughly recommended. Currently, am reading Chomsky’s ‘Profit Over People’, a forsensic examination of the workings of globalisation, red in tooth and claw.

And if you really wanna get depressed, read ‘Planet Of The Slums’ by Mike Davis – astonishing, frightening, appalling.

 All fun and games until somebody loses an eye. Αγγλική έκφραση που προέρχεται από τους Ρωμαϊκούς χρόνους όταν στην πάλη επιτρέπονταν όλα εκτός από το να βγάζεις το μάτι του αντίπαλου.

Αυτό το βιβλίο μου το έδωσε ο Κώστας γιατί λέει δεν του άρεσε καθόλου. Εγώ πάλι το καταευχαριστήθηκα. Είναι ένα κατασκοπικό βιβλίο με ηρωίδα μια γυναίκα 46 χρονών, με παιδιά και εγγόνια παρακαλώ που βαριέται αφάνταστα τη ζωή της σε μια μικρή κωμόπολη της Σκοτίας. Ναι, μάλλον καταλαβαίνω γιατί δεν άρεσε στον Κώστα.

Είναι ένα ελαφρύ ανάγνωσμα, για μια ομάδα ανθρώπων που αναλαμβάνουν μυστήριες δουλειές, για έναν επιστήμονα που έχει κάνει μια απίστευτη ανακάλυψη που μπορεί να σημαίνει το τέλος των πολέμων, αλλά και για τη μάνα του.

Τέτοια κατασκοπικά δεν έχω ξαναδιαβάσει, ούτε είμαι μεγάλη φαν του Τζέιμς Μποντ. Αλλά αυτό το διασκέδασα ιδιαίτερα γιατί ήταν γραμμένο από την πλευρά ενός απλού ανθρώπου που βρίσκεται μπλεγμένος σε μια περιπέτεια που δε μπορούσε να φανταστεί. Ένα πρωί είναι στην κουζίνα της και σφουγγαρίζει υστερικά προσπαθώντας να μην της ξεφύγει ούτε ένα σημείο και το βράδυ της ίδιας μέρας έχει κλέψει δύο αυτοκίνητα, έχει αυτοτραυματιστεί για να μην την υποπτευθούν και έχει κάνει διάφορα άλλα τέρατα.

Όπως καταλαβαίνετε ξεφεύγει από το τυπικό «αστυνομικό», αστυνόμοι άλλωστε δεν υπάρχουν, εδώ παίζουμε με μεγάλους παίκτες της διεθνούς μαφίας, των εμπόρων όπλων και της βιομηχανικής κατασκοπίας και τους απλούς αστυνόμους καλύτερα να τους κρατάμε απ’έξω.

Το βιβλίο επίσης βρίθει διαφόρων στερεότυπων: η 46αρα περνάει κρίση στο γάμο της, ο σύζυγος είναι λίγο λαπάς, κολλημένος με τον καθολικισμό ενώ αυτή είναι πρώην πανκ, με παραμάνες και αλυσίδες. Από εμφάνιση, μέτρια αλλά όπως καταλαβαίνετε υπάρχει και σκηνή makeover μέσα, όπως κάθε καλό άρλεκιν που σέβεται τον εαυτό του. Ο δε αρχηγός των κατασκόπων είναι ένας άντρας με τραυματική παιδική ηλικία που δε μιλάει πολύ (κλασικά) αλλά ερωτεύεται με τη μία τη Σκωτσέζα.

Αυτό που σώζει την κατάσταση είναι ότι ο συγγραφέας έχει κάνει μια καλούτσικη έρευνα για το εμπόριο όπλων καθώς και το χιούμορ του. Αυτό είναι ένα αστείο βιβλίο που αυτοϋπονομεύεται συνέχεια, που δε παίρνει καθόλου σοβαρά τον εαυτό του και δεν υποκρίνεται κάτι που δεν είναι.

Στη Βρετανία μάλιστα πήρε το βραβείο Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize το οποίο είναι το μοναδικό βραβείο για κωμική γραφή. Και όπως είναι η παράδοση γι αυτό το βραβείο ονόμασαν ένα γουρουνάκι με τον τίτλο του βιβλίου. Στη φωτό ο συγγραφέας και το γουρουνάκι που λέγεται AFAG. Ή έχεις χιούμορ ή δεν έχεις.

Αυτό το ποστ νομίζω απαντάει την απορία της Κλειώς: διαβάζω διαφόρων ειδών πράγματα, άλλα «σοβαρά» και άλλα όχι, τα πιο πολλά μάλλον όχι. Τα υπόλοιπα είναι θέμα γούστου. Επίσης ελπίζω να το διαβάσει η Μαρία για να πειστεί ότι δεν έχω «προχωρήσει» και τόσο πολύ από τότε που συζητούσαμε στη βεράντα της για βιβλία (στο παλιό σπίτι Μαρία, θυμάσαι, πριν κάνουμε μωρά και μάθουμε να φτιάχνουμε ντολμαδάκια;).

All fun and games until somebody loses an eye by Christopher Brookmyre

An entertaining thriller involving a recent grandmother facing a middle-age crisis who gets recruited into an international edge-of-legal trouble-shooting outfit of quasi-superheroes after brilliantly fighting off kidnappers trying to remove her grand-daughter. She is then embroiled in elaborate activities and plots around attempts to rescue a missing scientist who just happens to be her son. Predictable outcome and some dully excessive detail on some of the technology but otherwise really entertaining, rip-roaring, page-turning stuff.