Hello St Marks

It took an age for me to finish Guy Gavriel Kay's 'Tigana'; 2 months on and off my reading pile. I'd read something which called this a perfect fantasy novel - just one volume, engaging characters, richly drawn, ripping yarn etc, so I was ready to sink right into it. It's possible my notoriously wretched memory sabotaged me - as I started 'Tigana' I was deflated by a niggling familiarity (have I read this before?). Still don't know, but it came together for me in the end. Great female characters, great everything characters, actually - old, young, men and women, wizardy and not. I recollect where I heard about Guy - on Nancy Pearl's 'Book Lust' podcast - so it must have been Nancy who called it 'perfect'. Nancy has never found a book she didn't like but she's a famous library reviewer goddess, so it's still high praise.

Book 9 of Sookie Stackhouse's vampire saga is now under my belt, and it appears that there are more to come. I had a notion that this was the last book in the series, which added some frisson to the read, but the story ended with Sookie out of one pot of trouble and looking sideways at another, so it's not over yet. With book 9 I proved how fun and forgettable these lovely books are: with two thirds read I left it at M's house, where it was lost under a pile of kids's books.. for 5 weeks. When I recovered it I started right back at the beginning and enjoyed it just as much on the second read as the first, since I'd forgotten almost all of it. Perfect.

Second best book of the year: 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' by Lionel Shriver. Apparently this is a popular book - I picked it off the A&R Top 100 shelf and now find it on reading group lists. I have to say this does not endear me to a book, it takes the gloss of discovering something wonderful, but so be it. This book was a beautiful, distressing journey, a perfectly crafted reveal. I was completely in Shriver's power and just gave myself over to it - which was delicious given the sloppy casual way I've been reading lately. 'Kevin' is written as a collection of letters from the mother of a schoolyard mass murderer. I know another reader would have loathed this mother, but I was on her side. She didn't fall in love with her son as she was sure she should, then couldn't like him. Did he go bad because she couldnt find it in herself to love him, or was guilty detachment a reasonable response to this damaged, sociopathic kid? The mother's voice is s...

Another book written for the movies. There's a flavour to these last two books: very visual, of course, fast-moving, multiple story threads interwoven. 'The Repossession Mambo' is by far the better book, sardonic and cool, but Guillermo del Toro's 'The Strain' is still a cracking read. It's a vampire virus story, wonderfully topical. Written by the creator of 'Pan's Labyrinth', this is a sexy book, bound to get a fair bit of press. It is the first of a trilogy (even that sounds so considered, so marketed), so this book has a great set-up, accelerates to a final confrontation, and ends with a cliff hanger. I don't think it justifies the cover line, "Haunts as much as it terrifies", at all. The first third of the book was teriffic: a jumbo lands at NY airport and immediately shuts down. Every passenger dead, no signs of struggle, very Twilight Zone. Once we meet the vamps it's not as fresh, but still carried me right to the end.

This is a great set-up: when artificial organs become available, people live a very long time. But most people can't afford the organs they need, so they get a mortgage. It's not hard to get a loan when the goods are readily recoverable, which is where the Bio-Repo Man comes in. Defaulting on an artiforg loan has very bloody consequences. Eric Garcia's 'Repossession Mambo' has a gun Repo Man on the run after defaulting on his own body debt. Best part of this very good book: the essay at the end, in which Garcia describes how the book came about. He's written a few books which became movies, and wrote the screenplays. In this case he wrote 'Reposession Mambo' as a longish novella then set it aside, sending it out to a few friends. The friends thought it would be a good movie, so it was optioned, and Garcia wrote the screenplay - 36 or so drafts later, it has been made into a movie coming out later this year. Towards the end of writing the movie, Garcia re...

I read my literary vampire horror novel: 'Let the Right One In' by John Ajvide Lindqvist. It was a cracker. I haven't seen the movie but I can taste it from the novel. Creepy, horrifying writing with not a single sympathetic character to cling to. It was quite wonderful to read a beautifully crafted novel, vampires notwithstanding, and an embarassing contrast to the Sookie Stackhouse series. I'm reading the ninth Sookie right now. Ninth. There's something to be said for the allure of vampire soap opera.

Iain Banks is one of my favourites. I love that he writes in two voices: brilliant sci fi and left-field literature. His sci fi is literary, his literature is often fantastic, but when you choose an Iain Banks you choose one or the other. I had read 'The Business', from the liyterary camp, twice actually, and loved it's wry wit and cynicism. But this one, 'The Bridge', didn't work for me at all. The protagonist is in a coma following an accident. He travels his unconscious to The Bridge, a swarming quasi-Victorian world built on and within a seemingly endless and architecturally eccentric bridge. He's the amnesiac patient of a ambitious Doctor, then falls from his position of privilege and heads off on a journey which maps his return to consciousness. In this clever clever structure I have no clear recollection of the main character, Orr (clever clever name) and Banks doesn't offer any opportunity to connect with the secondary characters of the novel at ...

Boldly invested a share of a book voucher on a punt: the first 'Firebirds' anthology. 'Firebirds' is a fantasy collection, which promised to be interesting and was, in parts. Anthologies are taste tests, samplers of writing styles and story flavours. The problem was that if I liked a story it was over too soon. If I didn't like it, I'd skip it and feel a bit cheated. Overall, a reminder that most fantasy isn't for me. To predictable, too girly. One find: Nancy Farmer. One old favourite: Garth Nix. Queued in my reading list is 'Let the Right One In' by John Ajvide Lindqvist (literary vampire horror, really), Bill Bryson's 'A Short History os Nearly Everything', Iain Banks' 'The Bridge' and one from W: 'The Reposession Mambo' by Eric Garcia.

A fantasy, perfectly forgettable, perfectly good. 'The Spell of Rosette' by Kim Falconer, first in a trilogy I have no urge to pursue. The premise is good: Earth in the near future is decimated by climate catastrophe sped along by human technical 'fixes' applied beyond reason by a power-hungry elite keen to retain a grip on the few remaining resources when the Earth goes to hell. The novel follows two threads: Earth, where a magical resistance bides its time through generations, and Gaela, a classic fantasy pre-tech world of warriors and witches. A sentient super-computer with the power to return Earth to rights is embodied in human form in Gaela, teaming up with the usual suspects to... the usual. To Kim's credit, the book stands alone and is neatly finished. I have just about enough patience for Sookie Stackhouse but can't be bothered with classic fantasy; brain the size of a gnat at the moment.

Only reading junk at the moment. More Sookie Stackhouse: books 5 and 6 now done and dusted and I'm craving more. K has a milder case, sufficient for us to organise a postal service swap of books (my number 5 for her library copy of number 6) and back again. I baulked today at spending $32.99 on book 7, so I've not entirely lost my senses. But how long will I hold out?