Michael’s bid to become a professional photographer floundered; not only did he insist on framing the shot like a scene from the 1960s Batman TV show, but he pointed the camera towards himself instead of the subject.
Fascinating fact: Despite media reports, Michael Buble is not a blood relation of Bubble from Big Brother 2001. They are in fact related by marriage.
So, National Novel Writing Month ended at midnight last night, and if you’ve been taking part, I hope you made it to 50,000 words without going completely bonkers.
On the other hand, if you’re trying to write a novel to a deadline but have two months in which to complete it, there’s a very interesting post which I’d point you towards. It’s called How to write a novel in two months, and is by a chap called Jeff Vandermeer (who, I see, has written Booklife, which I’ve seen positively reviewed elsewhere).
I think it’s a solid article, with some good advice, and the one thing which I thought was particularly of note was point (7), wherein he says:
“Don’t animate what doesn’t need to be animated. This might just apply to any novel, but it’s especially true when you’re under the gun deadline-wise. There’s a lodge in my novel and separate rooms for all of the guests, along with one common room. There’re maybe two scenes in the separate rooms and lots in the common room. So I spent my time detailing the common room and really didn’t describe the other parts of the lodge at all. There was really no point.”
I think this is very astute – I’ve certainly known novels I’ve been generally enjoying but have struggled to complete because every time a character walks into a room we get a half-page description of the furniture or whatever; in fact, now I think about it, I gave up on a thriller I was reading some years ago because a row of cars parked outside a building was described in terms of the makes – three Renaults, a Ford, etc – and it not only slowed things down but, as I’m a non-petrolhead, it didn’t give me enough information to be able to populate the scene in my mind, and in fact there was probably no need to do so in that level of detail.
What I like about Jeff V’s use of the word ‘animate’, though, is that it suggests a writer can choose just to leave some things as background, like the flats in a stage play, whilst others should be active in some way. In the book I’m currently working on, I have a military base, and there are certain places within it which are plot-related – the medical rooms, the sleeping quarters, and the like – but others are only really relevant insofar as they’re potential places for the killer to hide, but they’re not of great interest (and thus probably not worthy of going into detail about) in their own right. So I’ll try to avoid ‘animating’ these locations more than is at all necessary.
Anyway, that’s what I took away from reading the article – hope you find something similarly useful in it.
I’ve only just spotted it, so there’s not much time for you to take this up, but better late than never and all that, eh ?
My point is: you can download the Doctor Who episode ‘Partners In Crime’ from iTunes for nought pence by clicking here, though that offer expires at midnight tonight, so be swift.
And then, by way of wandering backstage after the show has finished and everyone has gone home, you can download a copy of the script from here and see how it was all done.
I think it’s a pretty decent episode, even if the scene where the Doctor and Donna are miming to each other always reminds me of the pictured ‘reunion’ from Halloween H20…
When the Thomas Harris book Hannibal came out in 1999, I was very keen to read it.
I’d enjoyed Red Dragon and The Silence Of The Lambs – even if they were essentially the same story twice (representative of the FBI reluctantly goes to imprisoned serial killer Hannibal Lecter for insight into a current case), they were solid crime thrillers with a good sense of being a race against time, to stop a killer.
In Hannibal, on the other hand, Lecter has escaped, which removes the ticking clock element, and instead of the reality-based investigation, the tone of the book is more one of gothic melodrama, with an ending that left me speechless in the worst possible way (working from memory: Lecter digs up Clarice Starling’s dead dad, drugs her and confronts her with the corpse, and after a bit of her boss’s brains being eaten, she and Lecter become lovers). It was like I’d recorded LA Confidential and found that someone had taped Friday the 13th over the last third of it. Very disappointing. But I guess these things happen.
More strangely, though, there seemed to be a lot of very positive reviews of the book when it come out (as evinced here), often using words such as grand guignol, but hardly ever referring to the ending and making me suspect that they hadn’t actually read it all the way through before getting their reviews in. Anyway, it certainly made me less trustful of reviews, and blurbs and publicity material (I know, it’s appalling that I was 28 before that truth hit home; I like to think of it as a charming kind of naivete, but history will be the judge).
A very similar thing happened to me yesterday in relation to the new John Grisham paperback, The Associate; I used to like Grisham’s stuff a lot, though the further I went through the world of legal academia the less I enjoyed them, until I just stopped reading them.
But The Associate sounded more like The Firm, with its storyline about a newly-qualified lawyer in trouble, and I wondered if this might be a fun read. The print reviews certainly seem to suggest so – look at this gallery of praise taken from the Amazon page for the book:
It’s a damned good read. This is Grisham returning to what he knows best.
Scotland on SundayGrisham paints a fascinating picture. Vintage Grisham, with a really believable ending
The GuardianTense and exciting
Evening Standard
The suspense is there in what is easily his most recognisably ‘back to form’ novel since The Firm. Grisham has returned with a vengeance to his trademark territory: the grim world of corporate law and the sinister machinations of the men on its fringes.
The Times
In typical Grisham fashion it does hurtle along at a decent clip
London LiteDon’t wait for the film read the book first this time. The maestro of the legal thriller’s new one centres on a brilliant student with an unfortunate secret.
Daily Sport
A classic Grisham plot, similar to his first major success, The Firm, and told with the same elegance and elan.
The Daily MailGrisham never disappoints and this is another fantastic read
The Sun
In The Associate, John Grisham returns to the legal milieu he explored so vividly in The Firm. Grisham is such a storyteller that you want to turn the page
The Guardian
Grisham’s new book harks back to the one that made him famous, and effectively defined the legal thriller genre: The Firm. Grisham does a fine job of evoking the insanely competitive culture of a major New York law firm.
The Mail on Sunday
… so, lots of praise there, and many of them referring to the book of his which I’d enjoyed so much, which made me feel it could be one for me… until I went onto the Amazon page and saw that the vast majority of the reviews were negative, and repeatedly spoke about one particular failing: the story just ends without resolving anything.
Seriously, check out the customer reviews; over and over again, people say how much they were enjoying the book, wondering where the story was going and how he was going to tie up the loose ends, and over and over they say that he doesn’t, that the book just ends.
And so I don’t think this is a book I’ll be buying (probably for the best, I have a sizey book-queue already), but I find myself remembering the Hannibal experience and starting to wonder how it is that professional reviewers can overlook something so fundamental as a letdown, or an absent, ending.
I’m very keen on stories that reward you for time expended on reading them by showing that, yes, we were going somewhere all along (and even better if the seeds of the end were planted near the start – as in The Shining), and whilst that’d kind of a personal preference, the concept that ‘stories should have a beginning, middle and end’ is a fairly well-known one, and you’d expect that most reviews would refer to a weak or rubbish ending (as Marie did in this review on Wednesday).
Deadline problems aside, is there a good reason why this sort of thing happens? Is it seem as in some way gauche to address such fundamental elements of a novel?
And of course, the alleged absence of a climax certainly makes the Guardian quote (second in the list above) look pretty strange – unless they’re making the point that sometimes life just carries on without tricky situations being resolved, but that seems an odd thing to do in a thriller.
He’s still bringing the funny.
Warning: contains strong language – and weak business propositions.
If you’re a fan of the work of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore (I’m talking about the more mainstream stuff here, not Derek and Clive…), then you might be interested in this offer via the Chortle website.
For £1.99, you can get a CD of their sketches ‘n’ stuff – and that CD itself is nominally free, that’s the postage charge.
Not a bad deal, I’d say (oh, and there are other CDs on that link at reduced prices too). Worth a look.
Besides, it gives me the opportunity to post this photo of the lovable duo.
Five years old: given his state, I wonder if he thought she was a ghost or something.
Ninety-One Years Old and Nude: is anyone else reminded of the man in the bobble-hat who runs out of the house in the film Sideways? No? Ah well, just me then.
And now, over to Derek for the sports update.
So, slightly tucked away in an odd-ish slot of the BBC schedules (8.30pm on BBC2), is a bit of a gem: the sitcom Miranda, starring and written by Miranda Hart – a name you might not recognise, but you’ll probably know her by sight; look, there she is in the picture on the left there, not enjoying a cup of tea. See, told you that you’d recognise her.
Anyway, as I said to m’Mrs yesterday after watching the second episode, it’s an almost classic sitcom – packed with jokes and silly situations, it’s just the sort of thing I’d hope to see in the 8.00pm slot on BBC1, really, but I guess the slightly rude nature of some of it is what’s pushed it to the channel next door. Bit of a pity, as I think this is the sort of show which deserves wider exposure because (a) it’s very funny and (b) I’d rather see this kind of show as the standard, not the exception.
But enough plugging, you’re probably so completely won over by my praise that you’re wondering how you can go about catching up on the series so far. Well, lucky you, the BBC iPlayer is your friend, and you can read more about the programme, and play catch-up, by clicking here.
And if slapstick’s your thing, be aware that she does some of the best falling-over work I’ve seen in quite a while. What with that and verbal gags, I reckon that makes it pretty much something for everyone.
I was interested to see that MP Keith Vaz criticised the recent video game release Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – specifically one bit of it in which undercover soldiers pose as terrorists and are asked to help shoot civilians. He was, apparently, “absolutely shocked” by the violence.
He must, I suppose, be absolutely horrified every time he turns on the TV news or reads a paper, what with their constant reports on the war in Iraq – a war which he voted in favour of. Funny, you would have thought that he’d be against conflicts in which civilians might die, given he’s so worried about their welfare.
I’m also a little bit unsure how he got to play the game in question ahead of its release date (he was appalled about it prior to its release on 10 November), but then again, since Keith’s expense claims from 2004-2007 include £480 on 22 cushions, £2,614 for a pair of leather armchairs and an accompanying foot stool, £1,000 on a dining table and leather chairs, I suppose it’s not too much of a stretch to conclude he’s also got a time machine and games console as well. Maybe the expense claims for those items are still in the system.
After all, there’s no other way he could have come to an informed conclusion on the issue.
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