The Book Tower

Variations on this meme have been doing the rounds, although I first saw it at Stainless Steel Droppings.

Science Fiction, Fantasy or Horror?

Anyone reading my recent posts will know that I’m currently juggling all three of them, but horror probably wins as my favourite.

Hardback or Trade Paperback or Mass Market Paperback?

Hardbacks when I can, trade paperbacks when I can’t. Hardbacks if I were a rich man.

Amazon or Brick and Mortar?

Amazon is always easiest, until you get home from work and you’ve had a missed delivery, or a parcel is soggy from being left in the rain. Trips to bookshops are more exciting, especially when you don’t quite know what you’re going to come away with.

Barnes & Noble or Borders?

Borders, and my daughter enjoys our weekly visit.

Bookmark or Dogear?

Bookmark. Show some respect! People who dogear are also the type of people who borrow books and never return them. They are also the people who tear the last chapter out of a really long book they are reading to take on holiday.

Alphabetize by author Alphabetize by title or random?

Sounds nerdy, but often by genre, or keeping new fiction in one place and classics in another.

Keep, Throw Away or Sell?

Keep forever. My wife is always threatening to clear out lots and lots of books. My solution is to buy an additional bookcase.

Keep dustjacket or toss it?

Keep forever.

Read with dustjacket or remove it?

Keep forever. If I’ve gone to the trouble of purchasing a hardback I will want the dustjacket to go with it. Removed dustjackets remind me of when I worked in a library and always wondered where they’d go…

Short story or novel?

Novel I guess, although I’d like to make the effort to read more short stories.

Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket?

Harry Potter I’m afraid, although I’m growing increasingly bored with him. I didn’t like the Lemony Snicket film, but I suppose that isn’t a proper introduction. After all, I think the Harry Potter films are terrible.

Stop reading when tired or at chapter breaks?

I always try to get to chapter breaks, unless I fall asleep, but then maybe I shouldn’t be reading a book that does that to me. The sign of a good book is when you keep saying just one more chapter.

“It was a dark and stormy night” or “Once upon a time”?

A dark and stormy night, as it usually is.

Buy or Borrow?

I always feel nervous about borrowing books, probably because I hate lending them. Let’s face it, you rarely get them back. True confession: I once stole a book back.

Buying choice: Book Reviews, Recommendation or Browse?

Recommendation, which for a long time was only a trickle of books per year. Until blogs came along. Also browsing, and I’ve found some real gems in secondhand and charity shops.

Collection (short stories by the same author) or Anthology (short stories by different authors)?

Anthologies of different authors (when I get round to reading more short stories).

Golden Age SF or New Wave SF?

Increasingly New Wave.

Tidy ending or Cliffhanger?

Ambiguous ending. Did they get away with it or are they going to slip off the edge of the cliff.

Morning reading, Afternoon reading or Nighttime reading?

I have a slight visual impairment so I need lots and lots of natural light. I’m best at morning reading, although I never find the time. Ditto for afternoon reading, so the most reading I do is at night. By then my eyes are tired and I struggle with lights and lamps. Sigh.

Standalone or Series?

I like a good series, a trilogy to indulge yourself in like His Dark Materials. I’m currently wading through the Gormenghast novels. You might have noticed!

New or used?

I love brand new books, although there is nothing better than an old but lovingly cared for book. Read and cherised by a bookmark and not dogear reader…

Comment

‘Lady Fuchsia! May I join you?’
Behind him she saw something which by contrast with the alien, incalculable figure before her, was close and real. It was something which she understood, something which she could never do without, for it seemed as though it were her own self, her own body, at which she gazed and which lay so intimately upon the skyline. Gormenghast. The long, notched outline of her home. It was now his background. It was a screen of walls and towers pocked with windows. He stood against it, an intruder, imposing himself so vividly, so solidly, against her world, his head overtopping the loftiest of its towers.

Greed, ambition, the desire for self-advancement. Ultimately, evil. In Titus Groan, Steerpike appears to Lady Fuchsia to be larger than the vast castle of Gormenghast, overpowering it and engulfing it, his ambition manifest.

A mere worker in the castle’s kitchen, Steerpike has wormed his way up through the ranks of Gormenghast. Escaping from the sinister servant Flay, he literally climbs his way up to more satisfying heights of the castle and finds himself in Fuchsia’s beloved attic by scaling the ivy growing against a wall. A vertical drop of several hundred feet doesn’t sway him. From there he befriends the eccentric Doctor Prunesquallor, through him the weird twin sisters of Lord Groan himself. And then he hatches his devilish and Machiavellian plot…

Titus Groan isn’t the fantastic tale I’d anticipated. Greed, ambition, self-advancement. We see it every day.

Comment

Well I’ve started Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake. I’m excited by the fact that I really know next to nothing about this book, or the rest of the Gormenghast trilogy. I’m only a few chapters in, but I’m loving it already. In my edition’s introduction, Anthony Burgess describes the writing style as harking back rather than being progressive, and if I understand what he’s getting at I would liken Peake’s style to Dickens. He’s certainly one for describing grotesque and eccentric characters, and Lady Groan comes across as a distant relation of Miss Havisham:

She was propped against several pillows and a black shawl was draped around her shoulders. Her hair, a very dark red colour of great lustre, appeared to have been left suddenly while being woven into a knotted structure on the top of her head. Thick coils fell about her shoulders, or clustered upon the pillows like burning snakes.

And in the context of the weird castle of Groan, she really doesn’t appear strange at all…

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