T_S_A_R

i started reading it like any normal book. you're meant to read it from the back to the front.

embarassingly i read a full book from back to front by accident once. the pages in chuck pahlinuk's (sp) survivor are numbered with highest number at the front and 1 at the back which is supposed to represent the tape of a blackbox recorder. i just steamed in and read it as you would a normal book. so i pretty much the read the last page first, the 2nd last page next and so on. it was extremely confusing and disconcerting but i just thought 'what a weird book, i'm suprised this is so popular'. by the time i realised how it was meant to be read i was quite into it and the degree of difficulty it posed so i just carried on reading it the wrong round and trying to figure out what was going on.

i finished the satanic verses by salman rushdie a wee while ago. it's a bit hard to explain but half of it is about two indian muslim actors who survive a plane being blown up by terrorists and their varying fortunes afterwards in london. the other half describes the dreams of one of the actors which depicts the beginnings of islam in mecca, a pilgrimage to the sea by an indian village and a strange episode with the shah of iran. i much prefered the dream sequences and the parts set in india to the sections in the uk which don't seem very authentic. the sections in mecca are excellent although you can see why it pissed off muslims. as usual with rushdie the writing excellent but it's nowhere near as good a novel as midnight's children. since then i've been reading gravity's rainbow by thomas pynchon. it's quite slow going as the sentence structure and language are quite complex but it's been pretty enjoyable so far. the basic premise is that the nazi's are launching v2 rockets at london during ww2 and everytime a certain american service man has sex a rocket hits that location not long after. there's a lot of other weird stuff going on as well. i didn't fancy my chances of being able to follow the pynchon book on the bus back from pumping aberdeen the other night so i took less than zero by bret easton ellis to reread. i read the sequel a few months ago and i thought it was gash but i wasn't sure if actually was or if i had grown out of b.e.e. less than zero was as good as i remembered and now i'm really tempted to hammer through all his novels again in order but i need to stick with the pynchon then get further battered into my do list.

i like this as well vince winching trish stratus in front of his doped up wife and i remember watching this and being utterly disgusted what kind of sick mind comes up with this stuff?

i've not watched the wrassling for years. however... .... i'd be extremely suprised if there was any more offensive fued than big show - boss man. they had the big show's da dieing of cancer and the boss man turned up at the funeral and stole the casket with body and drove off with it chained to his truck dragging along behind it on the road. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=UyJ3T5dwOOo

he's like a comedy villain, he just can't help himself. his win at super besse in 2008 was one of the most blatantly doped performances ever, everyone knew right away that that ride was impossible clean but he didn't seem to care. his bird even got caught taking epo last year! contador was innocent on appeal. next move is the uci going to the CoS then contador appealing that and by the time it's all over he'll be ready to come back in due to time served with no admission of guilt.

watched the pilot tonight. it's not quite 100% firing on all cylinders but it has it's moments. wee aj giving it "no fucking ziti!" is priceless.

exactly. it might have been more entertaining if aj was some slick talking, funny guy like seth cohen but it wouldn't have been true to the story. there's a theme throughout the show of the sons of the mobsters - anthony jnr, jackie jnr bobby jnr, vito jnr, carmine jnr - being complete diddies and fucked up. tony always tried to seperate his mob life from his home life but it was impossible and the final message is that even although he truly loves his kids he (and carmela through her complicity) has completely fucked them up.

ghostwritten by david mitchell: a novel consisting of 9 interlinked stories of varying quality. there is a great story about a chinese woman who runs a mountain tea shack during the 20th century and recounts the horrors of fuedalism, japanese invasion, the cultural revolution, famine during the great leap forward and finally capitalism. the common theme connecting the stories is of chance and fate, considering how much control, if any, we have over our destinies. this is the 2nd book of mitchell's i've read and i really like him as an author, 'ghostwritten' and 'cloud atlas' were both very entertaining and i'm looking forward to reading his first single narrative novel 'the thousand autumns of jacob de zoet' when i can get a cheap paperback version. sabbath's theatre by phillip roth: the life story of a 64 year old man recounted as he goes on a bit of a mad rampage following his lover's death. the main guy, mickey sabbath, is a bit of a mad shagger/deviant type and is only really interested in sex and remincising about his childhood. as usual with roth when he deals with family matters he is fantastic but the r rated sections bored me slightly. the book contrasts the endless ideal childhood with the horrors of the adult world which sabbath seems to believe can only be escaped via carnal activity. there's very few redeemable characters in the novel and sabbath generally comes across as pathetic and a bad caricature of a misanthrope. overall it's funny and has some superb sections but as i said the graphic parts seemed a bit pointless, though that might just because i'm part of the youporn generation for whom viewing dp and watersports is a regular occurence and this was written in the early 90s before filth took over the world.

i watched road to perdition for the first time the other night. it was quite annoying seeing tom hanks playing a merdering mafia enforcer but still occasionally being good old corny tom. the father and son also coped quite well with finding the mum and the other son murdered and then having to leave their corpses to rot. nothing that happened after that really rung true. on the other hand i love prohibition/depression era stuff and the mid west always looks good on film so it was at least nice to watch. for some strange reason i feel i need to see there will be blood. i watched 30 minutes of it a while ago and for some strange reason i've been thinking about it all week.

birds darts on the now. there's a russian munter who looks as if she would struggle to finish a game of around the board. she's averaging about 35.

nazi literature in the americas by roberto bolano a collection of biographies of fictional latin and north american right wing writers. quite a strange book and one that's probably only for bolano fans but i've yet to read to anything by him that i haven't found engrossing and i enjoyed it. while some of the profiles that are quite dry and seem a bit pointless there are quite a few that are superb including a couple about brothers who lead the boca juniors hooligans while self publishing fascist literature, a couple about a pair of colombians who go to europe to fight for franco and hitler and a murderous chilean sky writing pilot cum poet. this cold weather is pretty decent for getting through some books. i have a pile sitting with david mitchell 'ghostwritten', phillip roth 'sabbath's threatre', salman rushdie 'the satanic verses' and thomas pynchon 'gravity's rainbow'. the rushdie and pynchon books are monsters so i expect that'll last me until about the end of february and then it'll be back onto amazon.

recently powered through... god bless you mr rosewater by kurt vonnegut. a good read but not on the same sort of level as his later books and clearly written when he was still learning his trade. all the usual themes of injustice are in there and it's funny but it's not on the genius level of slaughtehouse/champions/mothernight/jailbird/hocus pocus. sanshiro by natsume soseki. i bought this mainly due to the haruki murakami introduction and comparison to norwegian wood. it's a nice wee story about a rural japenese guy going to uni in tokyo in 1908. it's quite frustrating because although there are some great characters the main boy isn't one of them and he's quite passive and nuetral to everything that happens to him. overall i really enjoyed it and i'll probably look into some of his other work more serious work. the power of the dog by don winslow. i don't normally read thrillers and this reminded me why. it takes 600 pages but the good guys win, the bad guys lose and it all gets wrapped up neatly in the end. you know pretty much every character before you even open the book. the hard ass drug agent who was in the cia, is incorruptible, haunted by his demons and estranged from his family. the drug kingpin who has a coporate mindset. the whore with a heart of gold. the stoic street kid who is a lethal killer but a good guy really. it's about the mexican drug cartels and america's anti communist policies in central america and touches on some interesting issues but doesn't go into them at all. i'm not sure whether this is because that would put people off or the author just isn't interested capable. a handy wee reminder to stay away from formulaic genre books, there's no point in wasting time reading stuff like this when there's so much amazing stuff i haven't read yet.

today i watched i love you man - decent enough but pretty similar to about 100 other movies that came out in the past ten years. the education of charlie banks - i thought this was a comedy to start with but it wasn't. there were some decent bits in but it was very over earnest coming to america - the dugs baws. i generally hate 'not as good as it used to be chat' but with movies i think the argument is probably correct. back in the 80s the studios seemed able to to knock out movies like this one after the other and now they can't which is sad. it's probably a combination of an over reliance on effects and more worldly cynical audience but movies in general have went downhill rapidly in the past 10-15 years.

the book thief is great, it's such a simple, sad story but depressing. i loved wee rudy stenier. i actually just finished another book about childhood under the third reich, 'the tin drum' by gunther grass. it's an extremely complex novel of the life story of a very strange, verging on the insane, dwarf. oskar bronski takes you through his strange life story and that of his family which ties in with the rise of nazism in germany and the fortunes of the free city of danzig through to the formation of west germany, it's not overtly political but it has constant subtle allegory linking the fortunes of oskar to that of the peoples of danzig/gdansk. it's a bit of an epic but very rewarding. it's bizaare, vulgar and funny throughout and contains some incredibly poignant moments, it's the sort of novel that has such a scope that i'm amazed anyone could have the vision to create it. 'one hundred years of solitude' and 'midnight's children' are two of my very favourite novels and this is quite similar in it's achievement especially considering this was the first to be published. next up for me is a vonnegut, 'god bless you, mr rosewater'. it's always nice to dip into a bit of kurt v, very good for the soul.

being stuck in the house on my day off work i've been reading about the north atlantic drift and gulfstream and the potential changes in them. weeks like this in winter could become the norm rather than an exception, we might eventually end up with winters that reflect our latitude which is the same as moscow. how long do posters think would it take scotland to man up and deal with the weather the way canadians manage it? from a personal point of view i considering doping my dogs up to get a bit of peace and quiet. they want to go to the park and run about, however i've been told that's a no plus the snow is about a foot deep and my dugs are quite wee. 10mls of metacalm each for them and a snout and a jd and coke for me

cloud atlas by david mitchell - it's a novel featuring six different characters at different points in time who's strories are discovered and rediscovered by each other the stories go 1,2,3,4,5,6,5,4,3,2,1. each section is in a different style and mimics different types of fiction and authors, there's a 'moby dick style 19th century sea story, a very dodgy, dandy 1920s composer, a 70s style corporate thriller, a modern day comedy about old age, a futuristic horror story and a post apocolyptic narrative. the mimicry and borrowing was quite frustrating at times and i often felt i'd be better spending my time reading something more original rather than a novel which seemed to be designed to pack lots of different literary elements into the one novel for less discerning readers. on the whole though it was an entertaining read and the deeper theme connecting the characters - that human nature is naturally destructive and it's up to individuals to attempt to overcome it - was rendered well. alone in berlin by hans fallada - the story of a couple attempting to dissent against the nazi regime by making post cards criticising the war and the regime in wartime berlin. it's had a lot of praise here recently and it does a good job of portraying the paranoia and fear created by the secret police but the characters lack depth and the story is too pg-13 to seem realistic. this is obviously due to it being written for mass publication in 1946 but it comes across as book you'd have a class of 13 year olds read nowadays rather than serious adult literature. it's a shame as well as fallada had a very interesting life and could certainly have written something much more colourful than this given the correct platform. i currently have 50 pages of a rereading of crime and punishment to go then it's into a 18 inch pile of books that arrived from amazon the other day.

contador could have been the only astana rider tested that day. myskin - slating david millar is harsh, he served his time and since his return has been extremely vocal about promoting anti doping education and clean riding. he's had a fantastic season this year with his heroics in finishing the tour with broken ribs and a few other ailments and now getting silver in the worlds (mainly due to martin's mechanical admitedly).

cancellara wins his 4th world time trial championship. david millar came an impressive second. i'm not sure what to make of contador's positive. i've got a feeling it'll be put down to contamination due to the tiny amount involved. it does open him up to allegations of transfusing though and maybe kinds of micro dosing that isn't well known yet. it'll be hilarious if riise's new star signing is banned though. he must have thought he'd hit the jackpot getting contador and his crew now the schleck's and cancellara will be pissing themselves at him.

chances are he's going to end up in jail. he's about to be busted for one of the greatest frauds, sporting or otherwise, in history.

jailbird is another excellent vonnegut book, it's about corruption in the nixon administration and corporate america. that's a cracking to do list, i read fear and loathing, on the road and cuckoo's nest about the same time i started uni and totally loved them.

i've just finished the kindly ones and have been reading a fair bit about it online. it's a novel about an ss officer's experience of the war and documents in great detail his experiences in eizengruppen's in the ukraine and the caucas, in the abandoned 6th army at the end of the battle of stalingrad, adminstering concentration camps and being at the heart of nazi politics. the book has two sides to it firstly documenting the nazi's crimes which is done in great detail and extremely cooly making huge acts of evil seem completely banal. the second side deals with main character's private life and the all the strange deviant impulses he has. a lot of people seem to have a problem with the end of the novel but i liked it and i think i can see what littell is trying to do with it. overall it's a great book and it has been recommended by anthony beevor so the historical side which is probably the strongest stands up under the strongest scrutiny. i'd be very interested to hear what anyone else who has read thinks of it in general and particularly the ending. roberto bolano the savage dectives will be starting shortly on a sun lounger in the back garden. a nice change of pace hopefully after reading almost 1000 pages of genocide, matricide, incest and sodomy over the past month.

i don't really disagree with any of that but i do think that without an eastern front the industrial capacity of the nazis would have been so great that they would eventually conquer GB by mass invasion or otherwise. if GB was the only resistance in europe then they could have massively increased u boat and fighter plane production and have either have overwhelmed us or starved us.

so you think that GB on it's own could have held out for six years? nae chance

aye but if they found 4.5 million troops to invade the ussr and had the workers to supply them it's pretty obvious that if they only had GB to concentrate on they would have been able to increase their industry enough to achieve dominance pretty quickly. they had the whole of western and central europe working for them. we had our island and whatever we could get supplied by sea.