Don't Judge a Book by it's Cover...?

  When one picks up a novel the very first thing that is noticed is the cover. Title, font and design are the very things that make you pick it up, that (dare I say it) ‘draw you in’. Covers are important no matter what genre you’re searching for; whether romance with a lovers embrace, science fiction with a huge robot or gothic with a dark figure in the corner. Covers define the novel and give insight into plot.

  

  I cannot stand it, therefore, when a cover gets revamped because the story has been used in television or film. I don’t want my Game of Thrones to have Sean Bean on it; nor my Woman in Black to have Daniel Radcliffe. I like the original designs that the author originally decided upon.  Having Christopher Eccleston or David Tennant on my Hamlet doesn’t make me want to buy it any more than before, if anything I’m less likely to buy it…

  

  I understand books can get this awesome re-vamp when they come out into other media, look how far Game of Thrones has got. Written seventeen years ago it’s been brought back to new audiences through the television series; and I even saw a computer game based on it today!

  

  I just wish authors had the conviction to stick to the initial designs that they felt suited their books, the initial image that they felt summed up their creation. It’s just a bit of a cop-out to use some actor in place of a design they probably spent a lot of money and time trying to create.

Applicable to people, not however, to books.

"The Power of Gods in the Hands of Children"

  As an effort to avoid Jane Eyre for another week I thought to buy a short novel that I’ve been excited about for a while; The Midwich Cuckoos. However, in my excitement to buy The Midwich Cuckoos I either bought The Chysalids by mistake or Amazon sent me the wrong one. When I received it I was going to send it back; my joy dulled by receiving a different book, but the sender had written me a little note and I didn’t have the heart to return it.

  As a fangirl of Wyndham, and of Sci Fi generally, I knew I’d love it as soon as I read the blurb. Set in an apocalyptic future of our own world we follow the story of Davie, a child bought up in a small section of the world that has escaped ultimate destruction, the God sent ‘Tribulation’. This agrarian society functions upon fundamentalist Christian values without tolerance for mutations and base their knowledge of normality on the ‘Old people’; a technologically advanced race that destroyed the world through their own nuclear mistakes.

  Living in the country of ‘Labrador’ Davie struggles with his own father’s intense religiosity, as any mutation is destroyed; crops are razed, animals slaughtered and humans thrown to the wild ‘Fringes’ where mutations are rife. As Davie and his friends grow up they not only learn more about the intensely critical society, but how different they are themselves. Discovering at an early age they are telepathic the children learn to live in fear of being identified as ‘Blasphemes’, the worry being that the society will fear them all the more as their mutation is not noticeable at birth as a physical defect.

  The Chrysalids, like many of Wyndham’s novels, shows the nature of humanity in extreme situations. Not only that; but it shows the possible catastrophic futures within the post war era that Wyndham was writing. After reading this book, not only is my love for Wyndham renewed, but I think I’ve found a new favourite book. I would completely recommend this novel.

Midwich Cuckoos just fell into my Amazon basket...

Land Of The...

  Previously I studied Country of the Blind by H.G. Wells (http://www.online-literature.com/wellshg/3/), a precursor to The Day of the Triffids, and an early example of science fiction. I found it an intensely thought provoking read. I thought it was very telling that a Victorian man assumes his attributes are those of one in power, even though the country of the blind had no need for them. His choice at the end, between losing his eyes for the one he loves and death alone on a mountain, was hard hitting and stayed with me; hence this post.

  The story left me wandering about other societies a lone man could find, in which he finds himself ousted instead of hallowed. I thought of mutes, or the deaf, or even a society with missing limbs. Then, I considered women. Throughout history societies of women, such as the Amazons, have been labelled as dangerous and man-hating warriors; however, by the end they are always bought to heel and forced to marry (or worse). What if this hidden society of women is not one of hateful war but just a normal society like Country of the Blind?

  

  I imagine this single Victorian man not believing his luck in finding a society that only he can oppress, he imagines himself soon to be King with a multitude of concubines. Yet he finds himself thought of as a deformed and mutated monster, not to be taken heed of. When he tries to physically subjugate his would-be followers, they fight back, and finally he finds himself in the situation where he himself is the dominated.

  

  Finally, he stops fighting and falls in love, but to stay he has to get the awful growth that the society assume is creating his anger, removed. He has a choice between castration and the life of a eunuch or death in the wilderness.

Who needs love anyway?

"If It's Not One Thing; It's Your Mother."

  As an English student Freud comes up everywhere, and while his theories were part of the last paradigm many still exalt in his ideas. They point at towers, flagpoles and pencils whispering ‘phallic’ and giggle at the idea of willies being everywhere. They raise their eyebrows at Freudian slips, happy in the knowledge you want to have sex with your parents. All the while they smoke cigars promising themselves that, like Freud “a cigar is just a cigar”, and they are exempt from the all-encompassing criticism that is Freudian theory.

  Don’t get me wrong, Freud has a few good ideas; I do think there is some truth in the repressed and the unconscious, sneaky repressed thoughts getting through into dreams or novels disguised as something else. I could even go as far as believing what a phallocentric world we live in, giving women a sense of lacking and an understanding of where their oppression begins.

  What I cannot stand is the Freud swot in the corner, spouting about how Freud is a motherflipping genius. There are so many more applicable theories that are better thought out, better followed through and more important than psychoanalysis. Work towards freeing other countries from the awful things the British Empire did to them in the past, work towards the liberation of women, rise up as members of the working class. Don’t sit there tittering at things that are long and pointy.

I’m sure Freud would have plenty to say about the trains in my last post.

Bastard.

An Empty Crowd

  The place I most like to read is not one of comfort. It’s not a hot bath, it’s not snuggled up in bed nor is it out in the sunshine. I like to read on trains. On trains the world rushes past; the business man and woman talk sternly about work, the women who have been shopping bustle about comparing their bargain buys and the football fans grumble or celebrate depending on the day’s result.

  And you can just sit there. Just take it all in.

  Surrounded by the flux, the life that trains provide. The millions of feet tramping on and off all heading somewhere different, thinking something different, living different lives. I love the crush of strangers, standing so close but so far away. And there I sit, one in a hundred, only knowing what I’m thinking and where I’m going, reading about lives that could be theirs.

  In a crowd like that I wish I could read minds. Glancing at faces and wishing to know their story. Where are they going? Who do they love? What did they do today? The whole of humanity lives on trains, every character that has ever been written about. Alas, I will never know their stories; I will never know what plagues them, what makes them smile or what they wish for.

Maybe I should just stick to books.

Your Mission Should You Choose to Accept it...

  Books. Literature. Pieces of paper with squiggles. Whether you have read one in your life or millions, novels are often a huge part of who we are. As a lover of books first and a Literature student second I always have one in front of my nose.

  There are many ‘100 books you must read before you die’ lists, but I think that a list like that has to be more personal. It’s all well and good to say “I’m gonna read the whole works of Dickens” but if you’re not a fan that’s going to be hard work. Just like if you hated fantasy LOTR is obviously not the trilogy for you. Reading should be fun, not a chore.

  With the help of some friends we have combined a few lists and switched round books we feel each other should read. Overall I’ve read twenty one of the hundred, some of my favourites being Ian Banks’ cringy Wasp Factory, Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four and Shelly’s Frankenstein. 

  Over Summer completing this list is my mission, there are quite a few books on the list that I've been avoiding, and I hope this will help me to get a much wider reading scope than just Sci Fi and Shakespeare. Either that or every book on this list turns out to be Sci Fi and I don't have to widen my horizons, but I think that's pushing it a bit...

Jane Eyre here I come.

Helen