Book Log 27/2012 - Cory Doctorow: A Place so Foreign

A short story - or maybe novelette (hard to judge the length on a kindle where progress is marked in percentages not pages) - set in a universe where time travel is changing the past. The future is percolating backwards so that 1975 is futuristic. James lives in 1898 in rural Utah, but his father is an ambassador to 1975 and during a visit to the future Dad disappears. With his mother about to remarry James is left to figure out his own life, combining lessons learned in both time periods to work out what he really wants to do. He's a child of both worlds, but doesn't really belong in either

I didn't intend to read this right now, but the first paragraph dragged me in and wouldn't let me go. It's a gentle story about identity and finding your place in the world with some neat forays into the potential effects of time travelling.

Book Log 28/2012 - Chaz Brenchley: Dead of Light

For some reason I missed blogging this book when I first bought it as an e-book from Book View Café, so this is to remedy the omission.

The Macallans run the city, not only as a tough-as-old-boots Mafia-like crime family, but they are magical too. No wonder no one can withstand them. No one except one of their own. Young Ben Macallan has had enough. He wants a normal life, university, a girlfriend who isn't scared witless of his family's reputation. He 'disinvests' from the family firm. And they aren't really sorry to see him go; they don't think he's got the guts for the lifestyle.

It's all going so well, but then members of his family start to die – horribly – and Ben learns that blood is thicker, and stickier, and messier than water, and a damn sight more complex. Like it or not he's drawn back into the family business, seeking the murderer, following clues in true whodunnit style. Not only whodunnit, but whydunnit.

I bought this before I had a kindle and had to read it on screen as a pdf. It says a lot for the book that I stayed glued to the laptop and read it straight through. It's gripping, visceral and nail-biting. The pace is relentless without feeling rushed. Mr. Brenchley makes you care about the characters in spades, and not just the main characters either. Even the innocent bystanders and thuggish members of the family get your sympathy - mostly.

Ben struggles to find his place in life, and in the manner of all good coming-of-age stories undergoes change by the end of the novel.

Highly recommended.

Movie of the Week: The Amazing Spiderman

Does the world need another Spiderman movie?

I wasn't at all sure that a Spiderman reboot was particularly timely - it's not as if the recent movies are old enough to have been done without benefit of CGI or that they bombed out at the box office. Maybe it was a chance to do it in 3-D, but since I hate 3-D anyway and went to the 2-D showing, that aspect was lost on me.

My ambivalence was quickly dispelled. No disrespect to the earlier films, but I really enjoyed this one. It's an origns story which ties Peter Parker's father into a genetic engineering programme so that Parker's visit to the genetics lab and subsequent spider-bite-transformation to Spiderman grow out of his drive to find out what happened to his parents.

Andrew Garfield, who is nearly 30, plays a gawky seventeen year old really well, though my cinebuddy, H, thought he looked too much like Andy Murray. Since I don't watch Wimbledon, I couldn't tell you if she's right. Emma Stone is a good Gwen Stacey, linked into the overall action by being the daughter of the police captain (Dennis Leary). It is, however, Uncle Ben and Aunt May who steal the show, played beautifully by Martin Sheen and Sally Field. Both very much on the topside of being the age to be uncle and aunt to a seventeen year old, (Sheen is 70+) neverthless they make the parts their own, particularly Martin Sheen.

I also really liked Rhys Ifans (the gangly Spike from Notting Hill) as Dr. Curt Connors. Rather than being an obvious villain, he's pushed towards the 'dark side' by his company boss, Rajit Ratha, played by Irrfan Khan. By the way did anyone else notice that the unethical slimeball who sparked off Connors' rash action was played by the only person of colour in the whole movie? (Mind you, being Hollywood, I'm only surprised that the bad guy wasn't being played by a Brit. We do seem to produce villains of choice these days.)

The CGI is seamless. In fact it's so easy to forget that all those wild leaps and swings are not performed by actors at all. At the end of the movie I realised I had more than willingly suspended my disbelief, I'd left it out in the cinema lobby for the duration.

Overall, yes. An intelligent take on Spiderman well worth an hour or two of your time. And if you sit through the credits there's a teaser nscene for a second movie.