Welcome to this week’s blog, and our roundup of your comments and photos from last week.
Who could resist this description of the glorious mess of Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula, courtesy of paulburns?
Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula. Imagine a world where Dracula hs married the widowed Queen Victoria and vampires have taken over London and installed a vampire governor of India, Lord Varney. Imagine Byron’s Lord Ruthven as a vampire PM, Sherlock Holmes and Bram Stoker locked away in a remote concentration camp. Add most of the characters in Stoker’s Dracula, some human some undead. Toss in Jack the Ripper as a vampire killer, all the detectives and whores associated with him, plus Lulu from (I think) Schnitzler’s La Ronde, Dr. Jekyll and Dr. Moreau as police pathologists. Bring in Sheridan Le Fanu’s Camilla, references to Alan Quartermain, add the Elephant Man as a protector of Queen Victoria, several famous Transylvanian and movie vampires, Mycroft Holmes at the Diogenes Club; and Raffles, Sebastian Moran, Professor Moriarty, Bill Sykes and an un-named Fu Manchu as the Victorian Underworld’s aristocracy. Throw in Newman’s own characters, Charles Beauregard, the spy, and Genevieve Dieudonne a 400 year old vampire who looks 16, who set out to capture Jack the Ripper, dethrone Dracula and save the British Empire. Its a hoot of a book, and if you’re into hunting up literary illusions you’ll love it.
Sticking with the horror theme, judgeDAmNationAgain has been reading Pet Sematary by Stephen King:
King says that he considers Pet Sematary to be the scariest of his books, and the one where he finally wondered whether he had gone too far; and having finished it, I can totally see why. I won’t give anything away for those who have yet to read it, but as a father of young children (and seeing as King wrote it as a father of young children), it makes for horrifying, almost literally peering-at-the-pages-through-your-fingers reading, especially when you first suspect, and then know for certain what is coming, not to mention what comes after...
Sometimes, the horror is all to real, as giveusaclue reminds us in an intriguing reading of The Norman Conquest by Marc Morris:
All we English will have learned the basic facts at school - Edward the Confessor, Harold and the Oath and the arrow in the eye, etc., but this book starts at the beginning of the century giving the background on how England was well before the Conquest; the fighting for the throne; and the threat and invasion of the Danes; how the Godwine family came to prominence so we don’t actually arrive at Hastings until nearly page 200. It then give the awful story of what happened afterwards, the Harrying of the North the starvation and rebellions and the takeover of the land and estates of the English by the Normans... I enjoyed the way Morris reminds us of the sympathies of the writer he draws on in his research and encourages us not to take the writing at face value.
Nor are all the monsters safely lodged in the past. The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson gives a fascinating overview of life in North Korea, as explained by bluefairy:
It follows a character Pak Jun Do (a play on words of ‘John Doe’) who first is in the military on ‘tunnel duty’ (i.e. incursions into the south) and soon graduates to travelling to Japan and kidnapping people. As a reward, he’s then trained in English language with some funny descriptions of him transcribing ‘I would like to purchase a puppy’ and other weird phrases. This is apparently how English is taught in North Korea.
The author, Adam Johnson is a professor of English at Stanford University and has visited North Korea. He also based the novel on some defector testimonies. Some of the story is completely bonkers, but had me thinking - is it unrealisitic or could this happen in North Korea? The part where a well-known national hero is replaced by a different person is one such instance, but propaganda reigns supreme and when the ‘imposter’ is embraced by the Dear Leader, there isn’t any questioning of this at all.
But we can at least retreat into fantasy, like Carlily, who has been enjoying a “raptured wander” through Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast:
It feels like being lost in an incredibly richly detailed dream. So many beautifully observed moments (oh, the Prunesquallor’s party with the professors – wonderful!), I cannot bear to hurry any of it.
Bliss.
Interesting links about books and reading
- Could this discovery be the earliest Shakespeare scholar’s notebook?
- A beautifully scathing review of Amazon’s zombie physical bookstores in the Chicago Tribune.
- Dangerous Minds supply a mad gallery of Michael Moorcock covers.
- Canadian radio dedicates a fine hour to Chekhov. (Hat tip to @katcalls)
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