How I Write

How I Write

Review coming soon

An Abundance of Katherines

An Abundance of Katherines

Borrowed – unread – unreviewed

Stuart, A Life Backwards

Stuart, A Life Backwards (amazon link)
Just like the book before this (Boy A) its also been subject to a TV programme and it also has to doom ridden small font. The saving grace tho, is the layout. Its rich with paragraphs, good margins, varying font sizes for featured sections and even the odd drawing thrown in to break things up. With a decent font size this could have been waaaay up in the 4 or even 5 stars, but as it stands its only getting a 3 from me. Stuart is a pretty unique book, covering a life in reverse from nutter to lovable child. Hope plenty of people check this one out. I’ve not read it yet, and I’ve only half seen the TV programme, but I’m looking forward to settling down to it.

Review:
I am reading ‘Stuart: a life backwards’. Its about a documented life of a homeless person told in reverse to the point whereby he went from a innocent lad to a twisted psycho, nick named ‘Knife man Dan’. Recommended reading if you care about people caught up in a world and fighting for a way out. This is a funny, yet informative read, which forces you to care about someone you would normally keep well away from.

Last Light

words don’t sell books, pictures do!
(guns don’t kill people, rappers do!)

Last Light
The way to promote mountains of text is through mountains of pictures. Here’s a book that might attract a few visionaries, who happen to ‘gleee’ at the thought of being scared to death about what happens to humanity when the worlds oil runs out.

http://www.scarrow.co.uk

Atomised

Atomised
This grabbed my attention probably because of the ‘3 for 2′ sticker on the front and a black n white blonde in panties. Its a meaty read for me at well over 350 pages of not particularly good paper, however the linespacing is ok, and the margins are decent. There doesn’t appear to be a lot of dialogue in the read, which makes for lots of paragraphs of unappealing chunky text. ergh. I read the back cover (a rarity for me) and found the storyline interesting, plus its been/being made into a ‘major film’ so the sticker on the front cover tells me… and with that sticker comes lots and lots of quotes from influencial sources, further convincing me that it’ll be worth me time purchasing. Fair enough … however I swear the girl in panties did more for me than anything else. I might read this if I ever have enough time on my hands, or catch a terminal illness. Better still, I might buy the DVD and tell everyone I’ve read it.

The Raw Shark Texts

The Raw Shark Texts
This book took a bloody long time to get on here. Why I’m not sure, because I’ve been stalking it in Waterstones for aaages… waiting for it to come up in a ‘3 for 2′ offer no doubt (like it did in Leeds, when I ’should’ have bought it) Grrr. anyways….

this is like a picture book with text… formatted wonderfully… loads of effort gone into making it diverse and interesting. With each turn of the page you’ve no-idea whats coming next… and that’s without reading a word of the story. This is a grand book. A real non-readers book. I will buy this in its hardback version, cause I’m not 100% certain that they’ll continue the formating in a paperback version (I hope they do cause its kinda key to the storyline) … click the cover above and read about it. The story has got flavours of the Matrix and Memento.  

The Turning

The Turning
Not read this yet, but glanced at a few chapters… and messaged the author… I’ll repost my words here:

Quote:

well guess what? I found myself sat in Starbucks hugging a hot chocolate and flicking through the pages of a little black paperback offered up at the counter. I had time to kill so, what the hell etc. I speed-read through a few chapters and got the jist of it, enough to slow down at all the right points of course And its there that I got a ‘moment of clarity’ as I like to call it. (I get these ‘moc’s from time to time… its my little metophorical ‘lightbulb above my head’ if you will)

It stemmed from reading the way that you wrote ‘fiction’ crammed with ‘faction’. Those little sentences of natural logic and similars, made me think a bit. Y’see I’ve been collecting brain spillage for a number of years, and amassed a fair clumpage fit for no-one cept me and that odd guy in the corner of the pub on a tuesday evening when everyone else has far better things to do etc. It was good to read, and I’m not much of a reader, so thats quite a compliment I think…. oh, or is it? bugger… I’ll carry regardless…

Sooo… anyway… I’m thinking that i’ve been inspired, but in what way I’m not entirely sure… cause its not to write, as I’ve been thinking that for days… and its not from subject matter, cause that would be plagiarism (and Dan Browns already covered that one)… I think its inspiration for a use for all those years of random dribble and theories of me, collected from too many £2.79 bottles of screw top cheap red wine and lying on my back in the middle of the night trying to spot Satellites without my glasses on.

Anyways… I’m losing it I think… either way, I’ve not read the book yet, but wanted to say that I’ll probably buy it and read some more. I find it… refreshing? yeah, thats a good word for it.

End Quote

So there you have it. I bought it, the last one on amazon.co.uk I believe. You can still buy it second hand there I believe. Its not arrived yet, when it has, I’ll fill out all the formatting tags.

Shorty Loves Wing Wong

Shorty Loves Wing Wong
Bit of a late find this one, I was almost out of the shop. 90 pages, half of them pictures of odd looking cat figures in modern poses and humanal(?) situations. Read the back cover and it sounded really good, contemporary and relavant to todays world. Easy on the eye. didn’t notice any thing about the paper (so it was probably average) … a little hardback tho if I recall. The only bad point imo was the standard formating of the text (small font, tight kerning, standard linespacing etc) and a complete absence of paragraphs. One could argue that the ‘chapters’ are only paragraphed sized, but c’mon, a little sentence break in the odd place would have helped people (ie: me) a little. That minor detail prevented it getting a full 5stars from me. However, I’m more than happy to give it a generous 4. Turns out it was written by michael smith who also wrote The Giro Playboy which looks equally as readable.

The 5 people you meet in Heaven

The 5 people you meet in Heaven
230 pages, not particularly good paper, and a bit smelly too. Not sure what made me pick this one up, probably didn’t look too thick to read and if I recall the title was a bit odd. Turns out a guy dies and instead of being embraced by everyone at the pearly gates, he’s confronted with 5 key people from his life. Might read this if I get loads of time on my hands.

Snow

Snow
A dinky book, easily readable at 90 pages (ish). I bit like a little hard back with a cover and all that. A nice story too, its about a coming of age story whereby this dude is supposed to become a monk or a warrior, instead he decides to become a poet. I like little books, but I probably won’t buy this. Its a bit lovey for me. Paper was ok, nothing stunning, cheap book, and I don’t recall many paragraphs tho, so a bit fiddly on the formating for my eyes.