Alrightreads: Driving

Iain Sinclair, Crash

1999 / Ebook / 112 pages / UK

****

I haven't read Ballard's novel to rate it against Cronenberg's damaged film (curiously unarousing even at thirteen), but when the academic write-up has more artistry than the selected quotes, Sinclair's Crash wins. I hope the BFI made a habit of hiring proper writers to bang on about films they like, they're on to a winner.

Geoff Andrew, 10

2005 / Ebook / 88 pages / UK

***

It's always good to go into films blind, but when the background is clearly more interesting than the content, to the point of distraction, you're better off skipping to the "what I was doing there..." and appreciating retrospectively on principle so you don't have to actually sit through the thing.

James Sallis, Drive

2005 / Audiobook / 158 pages / USA

****

Aspirational lifestyle drama in the throbbing vein of American Psycho. High-octane neon noir thrills all the way, until it slows down at the end and reality catches up to spoil the fun.

James Sallis, Driven

2012 / Audiobook / 147 pages / USA

***

Drive leaves you wanting more by design, so I carried on to the customarily unnecessary sequel. Older, slower and paranoid, I enjoyed the change of pace. More reckless thrills would have been boring.

Mark Polizzotti, Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited

2006 / Audiobook / 161 pages / USA

***

Biographical background and speculations about a bunch of songs. It's not something you really need a guide to help you appreciate, but they even have ones for Andrew W.K. and New Kids on the Block, so it'd be weird to skip him.

Ranking the Dream Theater albums

Dream Theater's an interesting band. Not always good, but interesting. And not always interesting.

It Is My The Top 15 Dream Theater Official Studio Albums and E.P. Don't agree? Don't worry. It couldn't matter less.

Alrightreads: More Dead Stuff

Harry Harrison, Deathworld

1960 / Audiobook / 154 pages / USA

***

It's no Dune, but this action-packed survival story in a superlatively harsh setting would've made a fun watered-down Saturday morning cartoon.

Michael Crichton, Eaters of the Dead: The Manuscript of Ibn Fadlan Relating His Experiences with the Northmen in AD 922

1976 / Audiobook / 288 pages / USA

***

I liked the faux scholary commentary and the historical melting pot, but the plot wasn't any more interesting than an authentic saga would have been, without the anthropological value.

Joe Pernice, The Smiths' Meat is Murder

2003 / Audiobook / 102 pages / USA

*

I never got into this particular Smiths album, for whatever reason, so hoped this appraisal might help me to remember and appreciate it. Unfortunately, the writer fancied himself a wild card and wrote an irrelevant fictional novella that gave him an excuse to perv over Lolitas instead. A waste of time, but at least not too much time.

Donnie Eichar, Dead Mountain: The Untold True Story of the Dyatlov Pass Incident

2013 / Audiobook / 288 pages / USA

**

The incredible story of a self-important American who went to the rescue when Russians failed to solve their own mystery for fifty years.

Jeff VanderMeer, Dead Astronauts

2019 / Audiobook / 352 pages / USA

****

This psychedelic post-sense future congeals into clarity as it goes along. Apparently the second book in a series, but I recommend diving in here for optimal disorientation, as well as averting your eyes from blurbs or reviews. Including this one, fuck off.

Alrightreads: D

Robert Aickman, Dark Entries: Curious and Macabre Ghost Stories

1964 / Ebook / 173 pages / UK

***

A mixed bag of vague strangeness in varied settings.

Faves: 'Choice of Weapons,' 'The Waiting Room.'

Worsties: 'The School Friend,' 'The View.'

Paul Huson, The Devil's Picturebook: The Compleat Guide to Tarot Cards: Their Origins and Their Usage

1971 / Ebook / 256 pages / UK

***

Comprehensive context for the pretty playing cards, but not much in the way of divination tips, if that's your thing. The rules seem flexible to the point of being meaningless.

Gene Wolfe, The Devil in a Forest

1976 / Ebook / 224 pages / USA

***

A surprisingly straightforward historical detour for the master of dark science fantasy, unless I'm missing something. The casually evil baddie is pretty chilling, but my enjoyment waned as it went along and the chance of it suddenly getting a lot more interesting got ever slimmer.

R.J. Wheaton, Portishead's Dummy

2011 / Ebook / 235 pages / UK

****

The album didn't do much for me, but this exhaustively in-depth write-up – a song-by-song listen-along that works in all the context of its creation, composition and legacy – is the standard all 33⅓ writers should aspire to. It'd be a much briefer series if they had to bother.

Rob Palmer, Dad Hacks: 101 Easy Tips to Save Families Time and Money

2019 / Ebook / 224 pages / Australia

***

Useful and less useful tips, some more patronising than others, some such as the reverse hoodie food trough presumably jokes, though it's not clear whether the credited "researcher" realised this when sourcing tips from reddit via Buzzfeed.

Alrightreads: Kidz Klassix

Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There

1865-71 (collected 1888) / Audiobook / 208 pages / UK

****

I didn't see Disney's take until I was too old and sober to appreciate it. Going back to the sources was more rewarding, but it's probably a bit too tongue-twisting to make it onto the bedtime story list. We'll stick with Lovecraft.

Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

1910-11 (collected 1911) / Audiobook / 375 pages / USA

***

More ambiguously magical than I was expecting, I wouldn't have got much out of this as a boy, but I found it relaxing as a grown-up. For a vintage book, the attitudes aren't bad either.

Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

1961 / Audiobook / 255 pages / USA

**

Starting out like a similarly quirky Alice in Wonderland for boys, this quickly grew tiresome without comparable iconic imagery (I didn't see the illustrations, admittedly). This is coming from someone who normally considers puns the highest form of wit.

Alfred Bestall, Rupert: The Daily Express Annual (1964)

1964 / Ebook / 114 pages / UK

***

I had one or two Rupert annuals as a child, but don't remember ever feeling like reading them once I was able to, so I don't know if this one's typical of the form with its odd parallel prose and poetry streams for the same stories, origami tips and racist magic paintings. Apart from that part, it was quite nice.

Faves: 'Rupert and the Compass,' 'Rupert and the Dog-Roses.'

Worsties: 'Rupert and the Distant Music,' 'Rupert's Pleasure Island.'

Roald Dahl, Matilda

1988 / Audiobook / 240 pages / UK

***

I might have read some or even all of this one as a child, it's one of the less memorable ones for being less ghoulish and comparatively humdrum until the second half, when the precocious prankster's "brain power" gets a sci-fi literalisation. It stands up well as an adult, even without nostalgia.

Alrightreads: Shadows

Roger Zelazny, Jack of Shadows

1971 / Audiobook / 207 pages / USA

**

A nice science-fantasy scenario thrown away on a slapdash story.

Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search for Who We Are

1993 / Audiobook / 528 pages / USA

***

The last of Carl Sagan's books I got around to, as suspected this doesn't have his usual romantic zeal, which might mean he didn't actually write very much of it, or that he should have left the biology to people who get as excited by it as he did about the cosmos.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind (La sombra del viento)

2001 / Audiobook / 575 pages / Spain

**

I'm always down for a book about books, it's just a shame it's the type of books I'm not interested in.

Eliot Wilder, DJ Shadow's Endtroducing...

2005 / Ebook / 100 pages / USA

**

Actually writing a book proved too much for this music journo, so he turned on a dictaphone and let the artist tell his life story, which finally gets around to the album in question towards the end. No doubt this was a more inspiring route for other creators than a comprehensive catalogue of elusive samples, but it didn't really help me to see the art in plunderphonics.

Tim Lebbon, Alien: Out of the Shadows

2014 / Audiobook / 352 pages / UK

***

I knew better, but curiosity got the better of me, and there was a chance these interquels would explore new possibilities rather than just doing Alien again again again. Not this time.

Alrightreads: C

Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood's End

1953 / Audiobook / 214 pages / UK

****

'Guardian Angel' was a nice slice of heavy-handed colonial allegory and this is a very worthwhile expansion. Clarke hadn't yet learned to stretch out the revelations across a lucrative tetralogy, and while I normally prefer to leave some mysteries to mull over, getting full disclosure was satisfying, capped off with an emotionally confounding climax.

Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan, Comet

1985 (updated 1997) / Ebook / 432 pages / USA

****

As eloquent as everything in the most consistently rewarding bibliography out there, this has always seemed like an outlier for its narrow focus on just some rocks. This would've been remedied if Carl had ever got around to writing Nebula, Pulsar and the rest. Why couldn't he live forever?

Kevin Courrier, Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band's Trout Mask Replica

2007 / Ebook / 148 pages / Canada

**

Rather than getting into the spirit and writing an avant-garde treatise, this is a disappointingly earnest appreciation and background to a boring album. The sincere comparison with the moon landing made me chuckle.

Kris Straub and Sarah Pharris, Candle Cove and Other Stories

2008-14 (collected 2015) / Ebook / 84 pages / USA

****

Rightly dominated by the eponymous creepypasta hit, this is a solid assortment of flash horror and epic several-pagers. The best are expertly unsettling; the worst don't deserve posterity, but then it'd be even shorter than it is already. I'd be more critical of the length if he wasn't being prolific with web comics, web series and other things.

Faves: 'Lemon Blossom Girl,' 'Curious Little Thing,' 'Candle Cove.'


Lukas Resheske, The Copywriting Business Formula: How to Build a $250,000/year Freelance Copywriting Business from Scratch, Volume One

2018 / Ebook / 38 pages / USA

**

In a freelance business, time you don't spend earning is time you're spending. Don't I know it. There are lots of valid points here about taking control, focusing on your strengths and going niche that I've worked out over my decade as a freelance writer, but I prefer my laid-back, low-budget approach over aggressively pursuing the big bucks. It's a shame this guy's so dedicated to efficiency that he didn't bother to turn these transcribed chapter summaries into a proper book.

Alrightreads: Five Senses

Robert Sheckley, Untouched by Human Hands

1952-53 (collected 1954) / Audiobook / 169 pages / USA

***

The best stories adopt an alien perspective. The worst are about demons.

Faves: 'The Monsters,' 'Keep Your Shape,' 'Seventh Victim.'

Worsties: 'The King's Wishes,' 'Warm,' 'The Demons.'

Ellis Peters, A Morbid Taste for Bones

1977 / Audiobook / 192 pages / UK

***

The monastic double-act prefigures The Name of the Rose, but this mystery is less compelling. Like all good historical fiction, you laugh at the characters' zany obsessions, then realise it's just a variation on more familiar nonsense. It was mainly worth sitting through for Stephen Thorne's narration, the comforting voice of childhood audiobooks.

Rhys Hughes, The Smell of Telescopes

1996-2000 (collected 2000) / Ebook / 280 pages / UK

*****

Setting myself moronic reading themes pays off every now and then, I probably never would have come across this obscure oddity from a new favourite writer without it. These twenty-six tales of Weird Wales share the occasional irrepressible character, but they're mainly linked by recurring preoccupations and a consistent tone that can't help itself from regularly deflating the unnerving atmosphere with exquisite puns and convoluted twists. Too many faves to bother listing.

China Miéville, Emma Bircham and Max Schaefer, Looking for Jake and Other Stories

1998-2005 (collected 2005) / Audiobook / 303 pages / UK

****

Not as many stand-outs as his next collection, but still an engaging mix of moderately weird tales and successful and failed experiments.

Faves: 'Entry Taken from a Medical Encyclopaedia,' 'Different Skies,' The Tain.

Worsties: 'An End to Hunger,' ''Tis the Season,' 'On The Way to the Front.'

James Acaster, Perfect Sound Whatever

2019 / Audiobook / 304 pages / UK

***

A strange mix of a comedian's 2017 diary and eclectic album reviews. I didn't feel like bursting my synthwave bubble and checking out as many  of the recommendations as I normally would, apart from the irresistibly bizarre ones like gospel black metal and the Flanders band. It never stopped being distracting that he pronounces "record" like an American.