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A lot of books this month. But you might think that there was a bit of cheating going on.

The Bible: The Biography - Karen Armstrong
This is a book I've wanted to read ever since I saw it published in hardback last year. Actually, it wasn't quite what I expected. I was expecting a lot more about the writing of the bible, but that was all covered in the first couple of chapters. Most of the book was about the history of the interpretation of the bible. It was all very interesting stuff. I recommend it.

The Children of Men - P.D. James
Something else that I had wanted to read for some time. In this case, my interest was piqued by seeing the film adaptation last year. This was one of the best films I saw last year so I really wanted to read the book. This is the first PD James book that I have read and I was very pleasantly surprised. The plot has major differences to the film, but it's a great story and well worth reading. I understand that it's not typical of James's work though so I'm not usre that I'll be rushing to read any more of her books.

Linux Networking Cookbook - Carla Schroder
Linux Server Hacks, Volume Two - William Hagen, Brian Jones
The first little bit of cheating. Neither of these books are really meant to be read from cover to cover, but I skimmed over them both over the course of a few days. Both of them do exactly what it says on the tin and if you're interested in Linux systems administration then you'll find one or both of these books to be useful.

The Fifth Child - Doris Lessing
This is this months book club book. I've read a couple of her books in the past and this has left me wanting to read more. I'll probably start by tracking down a copy of the sequel - Ben in the World.

Lyra's Oxford - Philip Pullman
More cheating here. This book is about twenty pages long. And the pages are tiny. I read it because I'm a big fan of the His Dark Materials books. But this is a pretty pointless extension to that series. I bit of a waste of time to be honest. But not much time.

A Spot of Bother (Mark Haddon)
Like pretty much everyone I know, I read and loved The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime a couple of years ago. That was always going to be a really difficult book to follow. This isn't in the same league at all. But that's not saying it's a bad book at all. Far from it. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone. It's just a shame that its predecessor gives everyone such high expectations which, realistically, were highly unlikely to be met.

Slam - Nick Hornby
A new Nick Hornby book is always a cause for celebration. This is apparently aimed at young adults, but you barely notice that. The protagonist is younger than you'll find in Hornby's others books, but other than that we're on familiar territory amongst the middle class of Islington. There were a couple of chapters that didn't really work for me. I can't go into too much detail without giving spoilers, so I'll just say that Hornby doesn't seem particularly comfortable writing supernatural events.

Update: Removed one book which I realised I'd read in May, not April.

Another month, another list of books read. I know how much you all love reading these lists.

number9dream - David Mitchell
I started this at the end of February. And, surprisingly, found it all a bit of a struggle. I say "surprisingly" because I've loved the previous two David Mitchell books that I've read - Cloud Atlas and Black Swan Green. This (earlier) novel just didn't seem to work as well for me. I didn't find the story engaging and the characters all seemed a bit one-dimensional.

Managing Software Development with Trac and Subversion - David J Murphy
Like January's Catalyst, this is a book that I was sent to review by the publishers, so a longer review will appear elsewhere in the next couple of weeks. All I'll say now is that it's a completely pointless book and you would be wasting your time reading it.

Unweaving the Rainbow - Richard Dawkins
It's only in the last three or four years that I've started reading books by Richard Dawkins. I've read the most recent ones and now I'm gradually going back through the older ones. Unweaving the Rainbow addresses the idea that by studying the universe in depth we remove the mystery and wonder. Unsurprisingly, Dawkins thinks this is complete nonsense and in the book he presents a compelling case for the opposite point of view - that an understanding of science increases the feeling of wonder he gets when contemplating the universe. This would be a great introduction to the works of Richard Dawkins as it doesn't concentrate on evolutionary biology the way that some of his other books do.

The Man in the High Castle - Philip K. Dick
This was this month's book club book. I read a lot of Philip K Dick twenty or thirty years ago, but for some reason I didn't get round to this one. Which is a bit strange given that it's generally considered his masterpiece. Perhaps the "future history" aspect wasn't science fictiony enough for my younger self. Anyway, I'm glad that I've now corrected this omission as this is one of the best books I've read for a long time. It's one of those books that is deceptively easy to read, but which you find yourself thinking about for some time after finishing it. Dick obviously worked out the history of his new future meticulously and I'm pretty sure it's the kind of novel which will be well worth rereading.

The Steep Approach to Garbadale - Iain Banks
I've been a big fan of Iain Banks (not so much Iain M Banks) for many years. But, to be honest, his last few books have been a bit disappointing. Things like Whit, The Business and A Song of Stone seemed a little formulaic to me (even though they were all very different to each other). His last novel, Dead Air, was a lot better and with this novel I think he has returned completely to form. This reads a bit like a cross between The Business and The Crow Road and is exactly the kind of novel that I enjoy reading. If I had to make one criticism, it would be that the ending was a little too neat, but after almost four hundred pages of great writing I can forgive him that.

I'm convinced that if it wasn't for Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein, then I wouldn't read anywhere near as much as I do. It was through spending my childhood reading those authors (and others like them - but mostly those three) that I developed my love of reading. Oh, I admit that most SF isn't exactly great literature and none of those three authors are literary geniuses - characterisation, in particular, seems to be a closed book to them - but they got me into a habit of always having a book with me. And for that I will always be grateful to them. I don't read much SF these days, but I always think of it fondly.

Clarke outlived the other two by over fifteen years, but he died yesterday at the age of ninety. To be honest, I don't think he wrote anything worth reading for about twenty years, but I still highly recommend novels like Childhood's End[1], Rendezvous With Rama and Songs of Distant Earth.

If you haven't read any Clarke, and want to give him a try then start with the short story The Nine Billion Names of God.

Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.

[1] Which, shockingly, seems to be out of print. There's a new edition due in August. Wonder if they'll bring that forward now.

Fewer books this month. It's a shorter month, of course, but really I got a bit bogged down in a couple of books. I'm still reading David Mitchell's number9dream, but I'll finish it in a couple of days so it will be included in next month's list.

Oh, and I read a few X-Men comic collections. But I'm not going to include those.

Beautiful Code - Andy Oram & Greg Wilson (editors)
I'm told that a good programmer learns a new language every year. If that's true, then I haven't been a particularly good programmer for the last few years as I've largely stuck with my core languages. I picked up this book as an attempt to address that. The book contains articles by a number of well-known programmers writing about what they find beautiful in their favourite programming languages. It is a useful overview of the programming languages that are in current use (there was even an article about FORTRAN - some people still use it). I now have a list of two or three languages that I want to learn more about (Erlang is top of that list) but, more interestingly, it has also reinforced some ideas that I had about languages that I don't want to learn. Michael Feathers talks about the way that the FIT framework breaks all the rules of good Java design and describes code which is pretty much how I would have designed it. Charles Petzold talks about writing code that generates other code in C# and makes me very glad that I use a dynamic language.

A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
This is this month's book club book. But it's something that I would probably have picked up myself eventually. A couple of years ago I was interested in reading Hosseini's first novel, The Kite Runner, but I never got round to it. Having read this one, I don't think I'll bother now. The novel is about the plight of women in Afghanistan under the Taliban. I think that it uses that obviously shocking background to give it emotional impact - which is a bit lazy on the part of the author. This background is really the only thing that the book has going for it. The characters are all very one-dimensional and the plotting is very simplistic ("oh no, the love of my life is dead", time passes, "oh, wait, no he isn't") and the ending is as contrived as anything I've read. The book is getting a lot of publicity at the moment on the back of the Kite Runner film, but I really don't think it's good enough to justify the hype.

Rip It Up and Start Again - Simon Reynolds
Subtitled "Postpunk, 1978-1984", this is a book about one of my favourite periods of popular (and not so popular) music. Postpunk was never really a single movement. It was a number of different styles all of which built on various aspects of punk rock movement. The diversity of postpunk can be seen from the range of bands covered in this book - it starts with Public Image Limited and ends with Frankie Goes to Hollywood. If you were buying slightly alternative music at the time covered by this book, or you appreciate the music of this period, then I strongly recommend reading it. One warning though - it'll almost certainly have a detrimental effect on your bank account as you are reminded of music that you have forgotten and you no longer have copies of.

The first of a (hopefully) monthly series. I say "hopefully" because I've tried do to things like this before. It never works.

Here are the books I read last month:

Atonement - Ian McEwan
I really don't know why I've only just read it. I bought it when it was first published and even started reading it. But for some reason I put it down and didn't pick it up again for about five years. I remembered that I hadn't read it when the film was released last year and wanted to read the book before seeing the film. But I couldn't find it then. It turned up whilst I was looking for something completely different over christmas, so I decided to finally read it.

I love Ian McEwan books. This one isn't quite up to the standard of Enduring Love or The Child in Time, but it's thoroughly enjoyable. And the basic plot device is really clever. If you've seen the film, then you'll know the story. The film is a pretty accurate retelling of the novel. Still worth reading though as books are always better than films. Ok, maybe not absolutely always, but certainly when the book is as literary as McEwan's are.

The Big Picture - Douglas Kennedy
I've joined a book group at work. So you'll see me reading books that you wouldn't normally associate with me. This is the first.

I really didn't like this at all. The initial set-up introduced a number of stereotypical characters that I had no interest in. At times it just read like a shopping list of expensive photographic equipment. Then a Big Thing happens and the book changes direction. It doesn't get any better though. The protagonist goes off and has a big adventure and meets a number of uninteresting people on the way. The book is purely plot-driven and the plot relies on some ridiculous coincidences. The best that can be said of it is that it's a very easy read. I only wasted four or five hours reading it.

This is obviously a minority opinion though. The Amazon reviews are unremittingly positive. I expect they're written by idiots. I recommend avoiding this book at all costs.

On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan
Having taken years to read Atonement, I decided to get in really early with McEwan's new novel. Or, more accurately, novella. It's very short. The story is a interesting study of sexual innocence in the early 1960s and it's full of McEwan's trademark descriptive detail. Like Atonement it's not one of his best, but it's well worth a read.

The Ladies of Grade Adieu - Susanna Clarke
This is going to be a love it or hate it book. If you loved Clarke's previous book, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, (as I did) then you'll love this one too. It's really just more of the same. Except that in this case you get a series of short stories instead of a really long novel. All of the stories are set in the same world as Strange and Norrell. Actually, there's one exception - a story that is set in same universe as Neil Gaiman's Stardust. But to be honest, there's not much to differentiate Clarke's universe from Gaiman's. If you like the idea of an alternative history where fairies and wizards exist in England at the start of the nineteenth century, there's a good chance that you'll enjoy this book. If not, then you should probably avoid it completely.

Catalyst - Jonathan Rockway
Something a bit different to finish. This is a technical book about Catalyst, a framework for building web sites in Perl. This was a review copy, so I'll be writing a full review which I'll publish elsewhere on this site. It'll be there soon. Honest.

In 1985 I went to the cinema to watch A View to a Kill. It was one of the worst films that I had ever seen. And on further reflection I realised that it had been years since I had enjoyed watching a James Bond film. I decided to stop wasting my time and stopped going to see Bond films.

For over twenty years I didn't see another Bond film. I only relaxed my self-imposed rule when Daniel Craig started playing Bond. Craig is an actor that I have a lot of respect for so I watched Casino Royale (on DVD obviously - didn't want to waste my money going to the cinema). It was, of course, better than A View to a Kill (that's not exactly difficult) but it wasn't anywhere near as good as everyone else was telling me. I'd still far rather watch the Peter Sellers version.

Thinking about it further, I think my problem is that the recent Bond films (where 'recent' means 'made in the last thirty years') bear little or no resemblance to the books. And I was a big fan of the Bond books when I was growing up. Films never accurately reflect the books they are based on, but from The Spy Who Loved Me onwards, the films take nothing from the books other than the title and a few character names.

Therefore it's interesting that the title of the next Bond film has just been announced as Quantum of Solace. This is the title of a short story (from the collection For Your Eyes Only). Bond is really only a minor character in the story and there's no action in the story at all. It's one of my favourite Bond stories but a film based on it would be nothing like the other films in the series so there's no chance that the plot will have any connection with the original story. Which is, in my opinion, a terrible shame and I'm very unlikely to go and see the film.

I still have a small hope that someone will someday make a new series of Bond films that use the plots from the books, but I'm aware that economics make that unlikely.

But I recommend that you all get hold of a copy of For Your Eyes Only and read Quantum of Solace before you see the film. You can then join me in bemoaning what could have been.

You'll also be able to read the original stories of what will most likely be the titles of the following two Bond films - The Hildebrand Rarity and Risico. You read the rumour here first.

For reasons too boring to go into, I'm currently reading The Big Picture by Douglas Kennedy. I really don't recommend it. It's a rather dull story of a rich American whose life is suddenly changed in dramatic ways.

But one thing interested me in it. That's the way that the topical references in the novel really date it. It was published in 1997 but it already feels really out of date.

The main reason for this is that the protagonist is a NYC lawyer whose hobby is photography. His well-paid job means that he is able to spend whatever he wants on the latest photographic toys. In fact the first few chapters of the book feel, at times, like an up-market photography catalogue. But as this is 1997 this is all "chemical" photography. He spends his money on expensive film. He has a darkroom and a state of the art enlarger. Things that very few hobbyist (or even professional) photographers would be interested in today. Later in the book when he happens to be in the right place at the right time to get some very interesting photographs, time is wasted as the prints are developed.

There's another great topical reference quite early in the book. Our hero is spying on his wife kissing her secret lover and he thinks to himself:

The last time she kissed me like that, George Bush was still president.

Had to read that a couple of times before it made sense.

In December 2004 I bemoaned the fact that god was to be cut from the film versions of His Dark Materials. The first film will be released in a couple of months' time and I see (via MediaWatchWatch) that the cuts from The Golden Compass aren't deep enough the satisfy the Catholic League who have called for a boycott of the film. Apparently children who see the film could be encouraged to read the books and would therefore be introduced to the full force of Philip Pullman's dangerous atheism.

Perhaps we should have a campaign to donate copies of the books to local Catholic churches.

Update: More from the Observer and the National Secular Society (I didn't mention that I'd joined the NSS, did I?). I'm particularly appalled by the quotation from Nicole Kidman:

I was raised Catholic, the Catholic Church is part of my essence ... I wouldn't be able to do this film if I thought it were at all anti-Catholic.

I'm currently reading Rachel's book Out of the Tunnel. You should too. It's really rather good. More details when I've finished it (which won't take long at all - it's a very gripping read).

Two nice surprises yesterday.

Firstly, when I went into Forbidden Planet I found that they had copies of Fragile Things in paperback. I thought it wasn't published for another month or so. Sure, I could have saved a few quid by getting it from Amazon, but I wanted it there and then. So I bought a copy.

Then secondly, when I got it home and opened it, I found that it was a signed copy. Thinking about I remember reading on Neil Gaiman's blog that he passed through London last week so I assume there was a signing that I missed.

Still. Signed copy. That's a result. I'm happy.