The Hell of it All

I once walked into HMV and walked out again clutching Dead Set on DVD and a couple of books called Screen Burn and Dawn of the Dumb. About a week later a show started called You Have Been Watching. As introductions go, it was a pretty immersive one into the world of Charlie Brooker.

Of course, by that point Brooker had been plying his trade for ages and it is, quite frankly, embarrassing, that I'd never heard of him before. Kind of par for the course with me though.

Anyway, cut to now and I am a fully paid up member of the sad case fanboys, the existence of whom no doubt causes Brooker no end of embarrassment. Not a big enough fanboy to actually read the Guardian (never could get into the habit of buying a newspaper) or pick up his latest collection in Hardcover but you know...

Collection number three of Brookers selected columns from the Guardian is much like the first two; really clever, really funny, and really galling in that what he says tallies so perfectly with my own opinions and views but I know that I could never express said views with so much as a fraction of the wit and flair that he does. It's almost enough to make you hate him the way he purports to hate the unwitting victims of his vitriol. But not quite.

The Hell of it All sees him compare The Apprentice to a gangland kangaroo court in which someone gets their knees sliced off with an angle grinder; mock the embarrassingly overblown media furore that erupted over the Ross/Brand/Sachs incident; cast his eye over the Obama/McCain election; have several pops at rolling news stations (he really doesn't like them); and have several rants about such riveting topics as noisy neighbours, old people who don't understand technology and getting old himself. All cracking stuff to be sure.

Oh, and he calls one pseudo celeb a "simpering human perineum". Guess who.

"A genius of spleen" cries out the cover. The words of the Independent, people. The Independent. You know it must be good if those lads are pimping it, so you don't need me to tell you to read it. But I'm going to anyway. Read it. Go on, you know you want to.

Weaveworld

So a few weeks back I read Weaveworld. I've read a fair few other things since then; things which, quite honestly, would be easier for me to write about, but I think I'd be remiss if I didn't at least try to put something up on here about this book.It won't be a long piece though; I'll leave the in-depth analysis to someone more qualified than I.

The problem is that nothing I write is going to do justice to what can only be described as a masterpiece. It almost seems wrong to sully it with my witless ramblings. I don't like to gush, because I can come over all teenage girl at a Jonas concert if I let myself but this novel (shamefully, the only Clive Barker novel I've ever read although that is going to change) really is one of the most beautiful pieces of fiction, fantasy or otherwise, that I've ever had the great fortune to read.

It's one of those big books (clocking in at over 700 pages) that nevertheless manages to be over far to soon. Characters like Cal and Suzanna, Shadwell and Immacolata, even Gluck, who arrives late and has only a small, if pivotal part to play, all seem to exist fully formed on the page within sentences of their introductions and as I neared end of the book they had become so much a part of my life that the thought of saying goodbye to them left me genuinely saddened.

"Nothing ever begins", Barker tells us at the outset (in an opening line that ranks up there with 'Call me Ishmael' and 'It was the best of times...') and as the book draws to it's close we are told that neither shall this story have an ending. With characters as glorious as these, with a world so richly imagined and populated with such wonders, it would be a tragedy if it did.

Just read it. Youll see.