That said, his conclusion — that, after a heart bypass and some independent projects he did without the crutch of Moir to rely on, he was able to properly "find his voice", such as it were — is fitting, and certainly seems in keeping with how much we've seen him by himself over the course of the last decade or so, rather than being "…And Mortimer".

Mortimer's decision to not construct the book as a simple "this is what happened in my life in roughly chronological order" was a solid one. With the initial chapters using a scare over his heart health — and the worry that his heart issues might bring a career he had grown to love to a screeching halt — as a framing device, we get a series of fun snapshots of Mortimer's life, both past and present, and really feel like we're being included in the varied scenes. Mortimer often addresses the reader and encourages them to go and explore certain things for themselves — there are several YouTube videos whose comments sections now largely consist of "Bob Mortimer sent me" now — and the whole thing feels like you're having a story told to you, rather than a "celebrity" on a throne talking down to you, the great unwashed public.

Many folks will likely be familiar with Mortimer's notoriously hilarious appearances on the beloved panel show Would I Lie To You? — and, indeed, many of the stories he tells (and the names featured therein) throughout And Away… will be familiar to those who have heard him spin a tangled tale on the show. Pocket meat, Steve Bytheway, Garry "The Sniper's Dream" Cheeseman, "we do beg your pardon, we are in your garden"… they're all here, and Mortimer admits in a couple of chapters that he's making some of this stuff up. But with the way he tells these stories, I could quite easily believe everything he's written in the book, because his tales are not only memorable for their surreal edge, but also for the fact that he has clearly taken something worthwhile and meaningful away from each and every one of them.

It's particularly heartwarming to hear his tales of how first seeing Vic Reeves' Big Night Out helped him to come out of his shell somewhat, gradually becoming part of the act and growing in confidence as he did so. His description of reaching a certain age and not really having the energy to maintain friendships — and being satisfied with that — also resonated somewhat, although not because I feel like I'm there myself. On the contrary, as I've mentioned on quite a few occasions in the relatively recent past, I've been going through a period where I really do feel exceedingly lonely at times, but I had also become exceedingly weary of feeling like I was the only one putting an effort in. So I guess maybe I was there, kind of. Ah well. Either way, reading Mortimer's reflections on it made me feel… a little better, maybe? I don't know.

Anyway, without getting too maudlin, I found the book very enjoyable. By turns hilarious and relatable, it is a pleasure to read, and confirms what I'm sure many of us have always suspected: that Bob Mortimer is simply a thoroughly nice, hilariously funny man — and one who, finally, is at peace with and comfortable with the person he's always been.

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The post #oneaday Day 605: Bob Mortimer's Pocket Meat appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I mentioned a while back that I'd started reading The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander, the series of novels that the Disney movie The Black Cauldron was loosely based on — and which, in turn, the Sierra adventure game The Black Cauldron (my first encounter with the series) was even more loosely based on.

The other night, I finished reading the second book in the series. Much like the best-known book in the Chronicles of Narnia series is the second one (The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe), so too, it seems, is the case for The Chronicles of Prydain. Because the second book in the series is the one called The Black Cauldron. But if you're only familiar with the Disney movie or the Sierra game, it's around here that things diverge a bit more wildly.

Y'see, in the Disney movie, the Big Bad of the piece was the Horned King. And he was terrifying. He was terrifying in the 160×200 chunky pixel graphics of the Sierra game and, while I haven't watched the Disney movie yet (though I did acquire it on DVD recently) I am given to understand that he is even more frightening in fully animated form.

But in the actual books — spoiler, I guess, though I'm not apologising for it, given that we're talking about a series from the mid-1960s — The Horned King is offed rather unceremoniously at the end of the first book, The Book of Three, and this is well before protagonist Taran and his buddies have come anywhere even vaguely close to the Black Cauldron itself. As the name suggests, it's not until the second book, The Black Cauldron, that Taran and company set off on a quest to deal with the infernal thing once and for all, and the whole situation is resolved rather differently to how things happen in the movie — and in the game, which is different again.

To be clear, I don't mind these differences at all. If anything, it makes experiencing The Black Cauldron in all its different forms all the more worthwhile. It makes sense for the movie to have a more self-contained story with fewer characters — and for the game to be even more limited in scope. The book has no such constraints, meanwhile, and as such there's a much stronger feeling of "fantasy epic" to the whole thing.

Thus far I've found the whole thing to strike an excellent balance between readability and not treating the reader like a moron. Lloyd Alexander respects the intelligence of his readers, but he doesn't overwhelm them with difficult prose, over-elaborate descriptions or pretentious language. Instead, we get a clear story with some well-crafted characters and some genuine stakes to the action.

I particularly want to highlight his character work. While many of the characters in the series are relatively simplistic — Taran in particular is clearly intended for the young male reader to project himself onto — there are some definite standouts. As mentioned in my previous piece on The Book of Three, I am thoroughly enamoured with the Princess Eilonwy, who takes her place alongside Ce'Nedra from David Eddings' The Belgariad/Malloreon and Lady Mandragorina from Douglas Hill's Talents series as one of my favourite spunky, sassy princesses. She might even be my favourite to date. The girl's got bite, but she also knows when to switch it off and be supportive. Since she and Taran are clearly going to end up together, I'll preemptively say that he's a lucky man.

Anyway, I'm yet to start the third volume of the series — I'll likely kick that off once we're on holiday — but I've been really enjoying it so far. Looking forward to reading the rest, for sure — and, as I've previously said, very sorry and frustrated with myself that I've never read it prior to today!

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The post #oneaday Day 454: The Black Crochan appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

After listening to Danny from Game Grumps play Sierra's The Black Cauldron game while falling asleep the other evening, I decided that it was high time to do something I've been meaning to do for… probably several decades at this point, which is to actually read Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain, the books The Black Cauldron is based on. (I've still never seen the Disney movie either, for that matter, but I did collect several of the plastic figures you got free in boxes of Corn Flakes back in the day! The Horned King made a great Chaos Sorcerer for Advanced Heroquest.)

Thus far I'm about 75% through The Book of Three, the first in the series, and I am really enjoying it. Really enjoying it. Like, "wish I'd read this much earlier in my life" enjoying it. I'm finding it kind of fascinating quite how differently it is unfolding from The Black Cauldron game — which I'm sure was partly out of technological limitations necessitating a simpler narrative, and partly out of the Disney movie almost certainly diverging from the source material somewhat — but yeah. Really enjoying it.

As someone with a major soft spot for spunky princess characters (see: Mandra from Blade of the Poisoner, Ce'Nedra from The Belgariad/The Malloreon) I am absolutely a thousand per cent in love with Eilonwy, who has some of the most formidable sass I think I've ever seen committed to paper. The fact that she consistently delivers some truly wonderful withering lines at the expense of our protagonist, Taran, while being incredibly well-spoken the whole time is just… ah, man. I live for it. Absolutely live for it.

But anyway, it's entirely possible that you, dear reader, are unfamiliar with either The Black Cauldron of The Chronicles of Prydain in general, so here's the gist.

We join the story in Caer Dallben, a peaceful little farm seemingly in the middle of nowhere, where nothing ever happens — but with a slight air of mystery around it due to the fact its master is a man of nearly four hundred years in age who is in possession of a magical tome known as The Book of Three.

Taran, an orphan boy on the cusp on manhood who helps out around Caer Dallben, is discontent with this simple life, and wishes to know more of the world. After successfully being granted the rank of Assistant Pig-Keeper to the oracular pig Hen Wen — and after having burnt his fingers attempting to consult the magical Book of Three against Dallben's wishes — finds himself forced to set out on a journey when the aforementioned Hen Wen escapes following some grim omens.

The Book of Three follows Taran's journey to track down Hen Wen, during which he encounters several thoroughly interesting companions — including the warrior-prince Gwydion, the subservient and obsequious man-beast Gurgi, the bard-king Fflewdur Fflam and the aforementioned Eilonwy — and learns a lot more of the peril facing the world. The setting's great evil is positioned as Arawn, lord of the lands of the dead, but the more immediate threat is the Horned King, a frightening figure who roams the land in search of conquest — and, it seems, Hen Wen.

For context, The Black Cauldron game has none of this — at least, not in the exact same form. The game opens with Taran feeding Hen Wen, then her having a vision of the Horned King, then Taran being tasked with taking her to a safe haven with the Fair Folk to keep her safe from harm. Along the way, he encounters several of the characters introduced in The Book of Three, but in somewhat different contexts. This doesn't make the game a bad adaptation — as I say, for all I know, it's entirely possible that the Disney movie also played this fast and loose with the narrative, since I haven't seen it — but it is interesting to have all this additional context.

So anyway, yes. I am really enjoying The Chronicles of Prydain so far, and I will be moving straigh on to the other four books in the series once I've finished The Book of Three. Which will be pretty soon at the rate I'm going!

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The post #oneaday Day 442: Munchings and crunchings appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Considering my predilection for collecting physical releases of video games, I'm kind of surprised at myself with how readily I took up eBooks in favour of a physical library of books. I still have some physical books — mostly nice "coffee table" ones like the Bitmap Books stuff, plus a number from my childhood that hold sentimental value — but over the years, a huge pile of books I used to own have ended up in the book banks or charity shops. Some of them I've replaced with electronic versions; some I haven't. At this point, there are some books I've only ever owned as eBooks.

I enjoy reading; always have done. I grew up being supported and encouraged by my parents to read, and quickly established a "reading age" well ahead of where I was "supposed" to be at any given point in primary school. I vividly recall spending time reading books from the Ginn 360 Reading Scheme that were much higher in "level" than those of my peers, and being given special "reading comprehension" tests further up the school to test that my proficiency with reading was, in fact, the real deal. (It was.)

I had a lot of books at home, too. I collected the Roald Dahl books for quite a while, and read many of them repeatedly — including the two volumes of his autobiography, which were much more challenging than his work that was explicitly for children. I remember reading the Chronicles of Narnia books. Blade of the Poisoner, of course. Enid Blyton books. Choose Your Own Adventure books. All manner of different things — including some quite challenging titles as I grew older, like the complete Sherlock Holmes stories, recreated as they originally appeared in the Strand magazine, but slightly smaller and thus in obscenely tiny print. Bram Stoker's Dracula. The works of H.P. Lovecraft.

At secondary school, by the time I got to GCSE and A-levels, I was getting extra assignments in English Literature classes encouraging me to read beyond the standard syllabus. (I wasn't thrilled at having to read more John Steinbeck — Cannery Row, as I recall — after having just suffered through Of Mice and Men, but being pleased at being singled out for praise and attention by my teacher counterbalanced that somewhat.) At university, I enjoyed reading some of the books we were assigned, but found myself bouncing hard off anything that involved what I still regard as the "absolute bollocks end of philosophy".

As most of us do, once I was past compulsory education, my rate of reading for pleasure slowed somewhat, but I still enjoyed the odd novel here and there. But I moved house a lot over the course of the years between starting university and getting to a point where I felt vaguely "settled", and moving a big pile of books every time was getting increasingly tiresome. So, eventually, over time, I gradually shed those books, making sure they went to what was hopefully a good home rather than just throwing them in the bin. While I wasn't especially attached to the books themselves as collectibles, I at least wanted to show them the respect of passing them on to someone else rather than discarding them. To me, a book had meaning and value, and even if you didn't want it any more, someone else might still get some pleasure from it.

I can't remember when I got my first Kindle offhand. To my shame, I didn't use it all that much, and I felt a fair bit of guilt about that. A good few years later, I upgraded the Kindle I didn't use all that much to a newer Paperwhite model with a built-in light, and found myself reading a whole lot more. Even more recently, I splurged on a Kindle Scribe, primarily for its "endless notepaper" facility and lovely electronic pencil, but was pleased to discover that the Scribe's form factor is great for reading manga.

Now, while I don't read every single day, I wouldn't want to be without some form of e-reader. I know folks quite rightly have mixed opinions about anything Amazon related, and I don't begrudge them that. Not only that, but Amazon (and the Kindle store) is becoming increasingly filled with AI-generated slop, making "just browsing" for something new to read more of a pain. But if you have at the very least a rough idea of what you might want to read, it's hard to beat the experience of being able to look something up, hit the "buy" button and be reading it a moment later.

I'm honestly not really sure why I'm 100% fine with this when it comes to books, but much more precious about wanting to keep physical releases of video games. Both are essentially "collectible" in the same way, but I guess at some point my brain has just decided that for me, it's the contents of the book that is the most important thing, whereas with video games, the physical package and the tactile feeling of putting in a disc or cartridge is as important a part of experiencing the thing as it is actually seeing the thing on the television and interacting with it.

I suppose it doesn't really matter. I don't have room for a library of books and a library of video games in my house, and the video games have, to date, won. But that doesn't mean my Kindle library isn't bulging with cool and interesting things to read! Now, I just need to pick what I'm going to read when we go on holiday, because that seems like some prime reading time.

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The post #oneaday Day 440: eBooks are a good appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

The other night, I finished reading through Master of Fiends, Douglas Hill's sequel to Blade of the Poisoner. This is a book I've read fewer times than Blade of the Poisoner, since I didn't have my own copy of it growing up, but I remember liking it nonetheless.

Taken as a pair, Blade of the Poisoner and Master of Fiends make for some entertaining, uncomplicated and undemanding fantasy that I am pleased to report was almost as enjoyable today as it was when I was a kid. The breezy young adult-level writing makes the whole thing remarkably quick to zip through — particularly as both volumes are quite short in and of themselves — but it doesn't feel especially "dumbed down" or "childish". There's a good, dramatic tone to the narration — towards the end of Master of Fiends I found myself internally voicing the narrator as the late Tony Jay, which added immeasurably to the experience and makes me sad we'll never hear him do an audiobook reading of these — and the characters, although straightforward and somewhat archetypal, are all likable.

I realise in my past musings on these books, I haven't really talked about the details of their narratives. So here we go, then.

In Blade of the Poisoner, we're introduced to our protagonist: 12 year old Jarral, who is out hunting in the Wellwood, when he comes into contact with a veritable giantess of a woman named Archer that he has, over the years, struck up something of a friendship with. Before long, Jarral discovers that his village has been destroyed by Prince Mephtik, better known as the Poisoner, and he flees the Wellwood with Archer — or at least attempts to, though before long he and his gigantic companion are captured by Mephtik and his monstrous spiders.

During their captivity, Mephtik opts to use his "favourite toy", a magic sword known as the Tainted Blade. It is said that a single scratch from this sword is fatal, with the recipient of the wound dropping dead (or, more accurately, pretty much magically burning to death) when the moon next turns full. It is nearly a full month before the moon is next full, and Mephtik makes it clear that he intends for Jarral to be in his captivity when the time comes, so he can watch the young boy die.

He doesn't get the chance, though, because before long two more of our central heroes enter the picture after being sent to the Wellwood by the mysterious wizard Cryltaur Tabbetang (Cryl to his friends): the blind warrior Scythe, and the fifteen year old Lady Mandragorina, or Mandra for short. Between them — and through judicious use of their mental powers known as Talents, which Cryl trained them in — they manage to free Jarral and Archer, escaping from the Wellwood and getting well clear of Mephtik and his beasts before they can pursue.

There is, of course, a problem that remains, which is that Jarral has been marked by the Tainted Blade, and will thus die in a month's time unless both the Blade and its wielder are destroyed. That sure sounds like an epic quest to me! And, sure enough, things unfold pretty much as you expect — though at kind of a breakneck pace compared to some other works of fantasy fiction.

There's not a lot of getting bogged down in the details of travelling, Hobbit songs or whatever; it's remarkably soon that the party finds themselves looking upon the city of Xicanti, where Mephtik has his stronghold, and a few chapters after that where, between them, they have defeated Mephtik in a thematically appropriate manner, defeated a Greater Demon using the Tainted Blade — which, conveniently, destroyed it in the process — and decided that rather than going home to celebrate, it would probably be a good idea to go after the world's Big Bad, a "thou shalt not speak his name" evil sorcerer known variously as the Demon-Driver or, you guessed it, the Master of Fiends, particularly as said Big Bad has kidnapped Cryl and promises to keep him alive for an "eternity of torment" or some such equivalent gesture.

Master of Fiends picks up almost immediately after Blade of the Poisoner after the party's second journey is underway. All of them are still present, including Jarral, who, during the climactic battles of Blade of the Poisoner, discovered he had the extremely rare Talent of being able to summon the powerful forces of nature that are Elementals: one of the few Talents that can stand up to honest-to-goodness demons, because demons are weakened and even paralysed with fear in the sheer presence of an Elemental. However, Jarral, being just twelve years old and having had no training in his Talent, is not entirely able to control his ability to everyone's complete satisfaction, so part of the running theme of Master of Fiends is Jarral quickly having to grow up and figure things out under, at times, extreme duress.

Throughout both books, Jarral is very obviously the teenage reader's wish-fulfilment character. Despite being unremarkable and inept, he has The Most Powerful Thing, and he's also the centre of the universe so far as the narrative of Blade of the Poisoner is concerned. As a young reader, I remember feeling like I was supposed to almost "inhabit" the role of Jarral, particularly when it came to his growing feelings towards Mandra — feelings that, I would note, are shot down in flames at the end of Master of Fiends due to the age gap between the pair of them, but with a whiff of hope that when they're both "grown up" something might be able to happen between them, maybe, possibly. I recall feeling a bit put out at that part of the ending when I was younger, but looking at it now, it does make a certain amount of sense, and means that none of us had to sit through any particularly awkward pre-pubescent romance scenes.

One could probably pick many faults with both Blade of the Poisoner and Master of Fiends. We don't learn much — if anything — about the background of any of the characters, for one thing, though I actually found this didn't really matter all that much in the grand scheme of things. The most backstory we get is when Scythe is introduced early in Blade of the Poisoner, and we discover he's been making his living using his ability to "see without sight" (and his formidable weapon-handling skills that come with it) to act as a juggler. We learn nothing about Archer, including why she is regarded as a "giantess"; similarly, we don't learn all that much about Mandra, either, just that she is from a noble background, unlike the others.

It might have been nice to learn a bit more about all the characters — particularly in an epilogue, as Master of Fiends does feel like it ends rather abruptly — but, as I say, these two books weren't really trying to be the next Lord of the Rings. They were just trying to tell an interesting, exciting and accessible story for young adults, and the many holes one can pick in their respective narratives and the overall settings don't get in the way of them achieving that goal. I came away from rereading both feeling vindicated at my longstanding fond memories of them both, and glad that I had taken the time (very little time, as it happened) to reread them as an adult.

So while they're not classics of great literature or anything, nor are they in any way the most amazing pieces of fantasy fiction you'll ever read, they were both perfectly enjoyable — and probably a good introduction to the genre for younger readers who are up to handling the more "horrifying" aspects of both narratives. Perhaps a fun exercise sometime could be to imagine what happened next for these characters, since sadly Hill, having passed away in 2007, is no longer around to do it for us.

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The post #oneaday Day 437: Reflecting on the Talents duology appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

After finishing Jane Eyre, I find myself pondering what I might want to read next. At the moment I am torn between wanting to keep my sufficiently "Victorian-calibrated" reading mind in practice by reading something else from the 19th century — I have several things in mind, including things that are both new and familiar to me — and wanting to read something simple, straightforward and, let's be honest, dumb.

There's a certain appeal to reading something that is well below your ability level. I'm obviously not talking about regressing to See Spot Run or suchlike, but returning to what tends to be lumped under the all-expansive "YA" (Young Adult) umbrella today offers a compelling prospect. Not only are titles from this particular part of the literary sphere easy to read, they also tend to be short, which, after ploughing through Jane Eyre (which had been formatted incorrectly on Kindle so it only displayed the amount of reading time remaining in the book rather than in your current chapter as it is supposed to) is definitely appealing.

One pair of books I'm actually quite interested to return to is Douglas Hill's Poisoner duology, which consists of Blade of the Poisoner and Master of Fiends. These were probably some of my earliest exposure to fantasy fiction, and I remember absolutely loving them as a kid. Well, more accurately, I loved Blade of the Poisoner; I never had my own copy of Master of Fiends, though I believe my friend Matthew had a copy that I borrowed on more than one occasion. I definitely read it at least once.

Blade of the Poisoner is fairly traditional, unremarkable fantasy with a touch of childish wish-fulfilment in there. The protagonist is a 12 year old boy called Jarral who, in fantasy novel tradition, grew up as a country bumpkin. Through certain misadventures, the details of which I forget, Jarral becomes marked by Prince Mephtik's magic blade; specifically, he gets a big letter "M" carved on his chest, and the nature of Mephtik's blade means that anyone given so much as a scratch with it will die on the next full moon, hence his colloquial name, "The Poisoner". You probably see where this is going.

Blade of the Poisoner does indeed go exactly where you expect it to, but that's what made it appeal to me as a kid. I enjoyed the simple, straightforward fantasy story of good versus evil, and even though I knew things were almost certainly going to be all right for the good guys by the end of proceedings, I still enjoyed reading it. Blade of the Poisoner, I recall, stood quite well by itself, but Master of Fiends was a solid sequel that raised the stakes somewhat.

I also remember being quite taken with the descriptions of the Lady Mandragorina as a kid; from what I recall, she was a pretty young woman around a similar age to Jarral (and me, when I was reading the book) and… well, there was definitely some teenage wish fulfilment going on there. These days, I suspect the formidable figure of Archer may have some appeal for me, from what I remember of her powerful thighs and suchlike.

Sorry, where was I? Oh, right. Yes. I think I might actually re-read Blade of the Poisoner (and possibly Master of Fiends also) if it's available on Kindle (it is!) and see how well it holds up to my old, jaded eyes. And then I'll jump back into some sort of Victoriana. Maybe.

Aside: The cover for the Kindle version sucks. Look at this low-effort photoshoot of a dude in an anorak in someone's back garden:

And compare, if you will, to the cover of the version I grew up with:

Yeah. C'mon. That's more like it.

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The post #oneaday Day 429: Past poisonous pleasures appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I finished reading Jane Eyre last night. I can't quite remember exactly what prompted me to read it again — for it was the third time I've read it in my life, having read it once at school, once at university and a third time now — but I'm glad I did read it. I suspect it was most likely on my mind after playing, writing about and making a video about the rather fabulous adventure game, The Excavation of Hob's Barrow, which is very much steeped in the ideas of "the female Gothic" and particularly that style of literature's distinctive breed of heroine.

But I feel like it was also a bit of a challenge to myself; in recent years, all I've really read in book terms are modern English novels and serialised (translated) light novels that originated in Japan — not that there's anything wrong with either of those, but they're not exactly one might call a challenging read for the most part. And that's fine; sometimes you don't want to have to work to enjoy something.

Going back and reading literature from the past, though, is always interesting. I found with this most recent re-read of Jane Eyre that, as I expected, it took a while to get back into the swing of 19th century English. This is a particularly interesting time for the language when there is a lot that is perfectly recognisable and parsable to a modern audience — we had reached a point where most words were spelled as they are today, for example — but there are a lot of more subtle things, like structural elements, turns of phrase and the way sentences are constructed, which can be challenging to dive headlong into. Take a look at this, for example, which is technically all one sentence:

He was, in short, in his afterdinner mood; more expanded and genial, and also more self-indulgent than the frigid and rigid temper of the morning: still, he looked preciously grim, cushioning his massive head against the swelling back of his chair, and receiving the light of the fire on his granitehewn features, and in his great, dark eyes—for he had great, dark eyes, and very fine eyes, too; not without a certain change in their depths sometimes, which, if it was not softness, reminded you, at least, of that feeling.

(Jane Eyre, Chapter XIV)

I'm willing to bet that, unless you make a habit of reading 19th century literature on the regular, it probably took you a scan or two to read and fully parse that single sentence. There's nothing there that is particularly difficult in and of itself — there are no complex, archaic words to decipher, no random untranslated French phrases (which do occur elsewhere in the book) and not even any particularly complicated concepts to understand — but the sheer number of subordinate clauses, semicolons, colons, dashes and suchlike means that the sentence, as a whole, goes several "layers" deeper into nested punctuation marks than a 21st century copy editor would be altogether comfortable with.

And so it was for me when I started re-reading Jane Eyre. I remember having this struggle when first I beheld it for (I think) A-level English Literature, and being actually quite relieved when it came up early in my university studies, as it was still fairly fresh in my mind, meaning I wouldn't have to go through the whole "calibration" process again. But it had been long enough since those university studies and today that this time around, I did have to recalibrate my mind somewhat — and I wasn't sure I'd be able to do it at first.

But, to my surprise (and delight) it happened a lot quicker than I thought it would. The thing with pre-20th century literature (heck, anything from before the mid-20th century, even) is that you kind of have to bang your head against it repeatedly until it yields enough to let you in. And when it does — because it will, eventually, given sufficient perseverance — you will be rewarded. Because as complicated as that sentence quoted above is, it's also terribly evocative. If you're the sort of person who can derive mental pictures from the words you read — and I'm aware not everyone can do that — then you probably got a pretty strong one from the above description of Mr. Edward Fairfax Rochester.

The thing that makes Jane Eyre particularly enjoyable to me is its first-person narration. You're not just listening to a disinterested narrator explaining what has happened; you are, instead, listening to a participant of the story recount and reflect on the things that happened to them. I've always been rather drawn to first-person narratives — many of my own prior creative works are written in first-person — and I suspect that Jane Eyre was one of several influences on me in that regard. For me, a first-person narrative style really allows you to get to know the protagonist of the work; it's why I resonate so well with Japanese visual novels and light novels today, I think, which are also typically written from the first-person. It gives you the sense of separation that you are not the star of the story — this is a contrast between visual novels and traditional adventure games, for example, as the latter use second-person narration — but also allows you a particularly intimate relationship with the protagonist; one that even the protagonist's closest confidantes in the narrative itself don't enjoy, in many cases.

For example, consider the relationship between Jane and Rochester in Jane Eyre. Many of their interactions between one another take the form of verbal sparring, with Jane's sharp wit matched by Rochester's sarcasm; both spend a significant portion of the novel trying to get the full measure of the other, with each concealing their true feelings for reasons that are their own. If this were presented from a disinterested outsider's perspective, we might not get the same understanding of the situation, as to someone who doesn't know at least part of what is going on, their interactions might look like genuine snippiness with one another.

In the case of us, the audience, we only get to learn the absolute truth of Jane's take on the situation, which is that part of her wants to keep Rochester at arm's length because she senses a certain degree of danger from him (which, it turns out, is not entirely unjustified) but also because she detects he enjoys their repartee. We later, of course, learn from Rochester himself that he has been playing his own little game with Jane — with certain members of high society forming his playing pieces — but without Jane's suspicions about the situation or Rochester's eventual admission, it would have been very easy to misinterpret everything.

It's interesting to contemplate the book's viewpoints on certain matters, given how society has changed since the time it was written. Jane Eyre is often cited as one of the first great feminist works, for example, and it's not hard to see why. Jane herself is a powerful figure who is, for the most part, in control of her own destiny; she learns and grows stronger from hardships and adversity, and it's only at one point in the narrative — where she flees Thornfield Hall after learning of Rochester's mad wife in the attic, then accidentally leaves her meagre worldly possessions in a coach before getting stranded on the Moors in the middle of nowhere — that we ever see her display what one might call "weakness". Even during that time, however, she's shown to have a good head on her shoulders, and makes some wise decisions that ultimately pay off, despite the indignity of collapsing on a stranger's doorstep.

The book is surprisingly scathing about religion — a fact which caused some critics to baulk at it on its original release — but it makes a solid argument. The figure of St. John Rivers, a character from the latter part of the narrative, presents an interesting challenge for Jane; up until now, she has attempted to live her life in a good, Christian sort of way, but St. John shows that one can perhaps take things in that regard a little too far — particularly once he starts proposing a loveless marriage to Jane (who, we have learned by this point, is actually his cousin) on the grounds that she would "make a good missionary's wife". Jane is having none of that shit, of course, and tells him so; even so, the fact that she does start to wonder if she might be coming around to his way of thinking by one point presents a surprisingly potent exploration of how abusive relationships work, because this crack in her resolve is the result of St. John's unrelenting dickishness towards her after her initial rejection of him. St. John is a cunt and I'm glad he died alone in India. There, I said it.

Anyway, yeah. Jane Eyre was a good read. This is, of course, something of an understatement given what a classic work of literature it is considered to be — and how it ranks highly in various "greatest books of all time" polls — but I think it's easy to forget that pre-20th century literature can just be "enjoyable" as well as "great" and "important".

I certainly enjoyed re-reading Jane Eyre. Now I have to determine whether to continue riding this wave of enthusiasm for classic literature, given that my brain has been successfully recalibrated for 19th century prose, or if I should read something for a bit of light relief. I haven't quite decided yet, but I will definitely be making more time for reading.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 427: Reader, I married him appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

When I was a kid, I was really into the Choose Your Own Adventure books. I had a couple of the arguably more popular and/or well-known Fighting Fantasy ones also, but I always sort of preferred Choose Your Own Adventure. I was very much in a minority on this, but I didn't care then, and I don't care now. I am, however, now a bit more capable of reflecting on precisely why I preferred Choose Your Own Adventure to Fighting Fantasy. And, since I have a selection of the relatively recent reprints winging their way to me (one has arrived so far, but there are, I think, 11 more coming soon) I thought I might as well do just that.

To put it simply, Choose Your Own Adventure is effective because its only "gimmick" is the choices part. That means you don't need anything but the book to get started with them. Contrast with Fighting Fantasy, where you need a pencil, six-sided dice and piece of paper to play — or the oft-forgotten (and really enjoyable) Asterix Adventure Games, which came with a plastic wallet full of "props" to use as part of the proceedings.

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't dislike the extra gimmicks of Fighting Fantasy, the Asterix Adventure Games and any of the other similar things I might have engaged with in my youth. Fighting Fantasy, in particular, is a good introduction to the conventions of role-playing games — particularly their use of statistics and chance-based mechanics. The Asterix Adventure Games were just thematically quite nice — with the props you'd do things like track how much magic potion Asterix had left, use a scroll to decipher passwords, and use a translation tablet to translate Latin phrases. But you still needed a bit of space to play them.

Choose Your Own Adventure, meanwhile, you can play in bed, on the toilet, in the back of a car, halfway up a tree, in a tent in your back garden… anywhere you have hands free to read a book. And that, I think, is the chief attraction for me.

But there's more. I also liked that Choose Your Own Adventure, as a series, was thematically diverse. They weren't all swords-and-sorcery fantasy tales. They weren't all horror. They didn't all involve the same characters. There were a couple that acted as "sequels" to each other, but for the most part, they were all self-contained affairs that stood by themselves, required no prior knowledge — and often taught you a few things along the way, too.

I've been struggling to remember exactly which Choose Your Own Adventure books I had as a kid. I definitely remember having Space and Beyond, Supercomputer and, I think, Treasure Diver — the latter was enough to put me off ever wanting to try scuba diving myself thanks to its painfully vivid descriptions of getting "The Bends" — and probably a few more besides. Thus far, the only that has arrived from this new batch is Mystery of the Maya, a South American adventure which, depending on the paths you take, may or may not involve time travel. That in itself is quite impressive — the fact that it is not necessarily a time-travel adventure, depending on one of the first choices you make, should give you an idea of the flexibility of these books. This one alone claims to have 39 different endings; I've seen two so far.

I'm looking forward to exploring these books again, and I think I'm actually going to make some videos of me "playing" them, because I think that will be fun. I don't know how easy it will be to make them visually interesting, but it would seem to me that taking a "Let's Play" format for a Choose Your Own Adventure book could potentially make for an enjoyable video.

I'm going to wait until a few more have arrived before I jump into doing that — I didn't fancy doing it this weekend because I was knackered and just wanted to relax — but watch out for those soon. I can't wait to try some of the books from the series that I always wanted as a kid, but never managed to get hold of!

I've also just learned that the series came about when author Edward Packard used to tell stories to his daughters about a character named Pete, and ask them what they thought "Pete" should do next. It's like it was meant to be!

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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The post #oneaday Day 416: Choose your own adventure appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Every so often, I get really in the mood to Read Stuff. I'm in one of those moods right now; having finished Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow recently, I found myself having a curious hankering to return to a book I haven't read since my university days: Jane Eyre.

I like Jane Eyre. At least, I remember liking it when I studied it at both secondary school and university. I found its first-person narration compelling, its protagonist likeable and interesting, and its multi-phase narrative most enjoyable. I also enjoyed reading it alongside Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea, a more modern (well, 1966) novel that tells the story of the woman who would become the "madwoman in the attic" wife of Jane Eyre's Mr Rochester. That novel was also the one which introduced me to "stream of consciousness" first-person narrative, which is a format I found immediately pleasing, and promptly made use of in the vast majority of creative writing projects I have done ever since.

I haven't read any "literature" for a while, though. By "literature" I, of course, mean "older works". Most people, I'm sure, have a bit of a mental block about reading older literature due to how the language has changed and evolved considerably over time, and how this makes them "difficult" to read. For sure, reading the first few chapters of Jane Eyre on the toilet this evening required a little fine-tuning in the ol' brain to get back into the swing of things, but I remembered that despite being obviously archaic in some of its turns of phrase and lexicon, Charlotte Brontë's (or perhaps Jane's) prose is relatively breezy by the standards of certain other works from a similar period, and once you reconfigure your base frequency to match that of a novel written in 1847, it's a surprisingly easy read.

I'm also starting to feel like it's of increasing importance to keep one's brain "fresh". With how disappointingly widespread bullshit AI-generated "summaries" are becoming, I genuinely fear a bit for the future of literary analysis and study. Now, I'm not particularly intending on doing any more literary analysis on Jane Eyre than I already have done in my life, but one thing I did find during my studies in earlier years is that having an awareness of certain things actually enhances your appreciation of various works when you read them purely for pleasure.

And thus, for the first time in quite a few years, I'm going to be diving back into the literary archives and reading both some books I remember enjoying (Dracula is on my list, and perhaps the Sherlock Holmes stories) as well as some that I have never actually read — Frankenstein and Wuthering Heighs spring immediately to mind. I don't remember having read those, anyway.

It's easy to be all doom and gloom about the state of the world today, and with good reason. But good literature has always been about being able to transport you to another time, place, even world, and I feel like that is going to be of increasing importance as the years go on and our real world becomes increasingly terrible and awful. I mean, Jane Eyre has it pretty rough at various points in her story. But at least she has a degree of agency in her life, and we know her tale is going somewhere. No-one knows where the tale of life in 2025 is going, and with each passing day the possible conclusions feel a little more scary.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

The post #oneaday Day 311: Literary Minded appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I listened to Dave Gorman's audiobook Too Much Information the other day. I've been a fan of Dave Gorman's intelligent comedy ever since I first saw his shows The Dave Gorman Collection and Googlewhack Adventure.

Gorman is a comedian who likes to use facts and evidence to back up the things he is talking about. In The Dave Gorman Collection, in which he travelled around the world seeking out other people called Dave Gorman, he took photographs of every meeting and recorded all manner of stats about his journey. In Googlewhack Adventure, in which he sought out people who had authored Googlewhacks — two-word search terms for which there is only a single result on Google — he again took copious notes and documentary evidence of his journey.

Too Much Information is one of Gorman's most modern works, taking a look at the modern world and the sheer amount of noise we have to put up with on a daily basis. As you can probably imagine if you've been following me for a while, this sort of thing is right up my alley.

Gorman covers a variety of topics throughout Too Much Information, including beauty adverts with hilariously poor survey results in the small print at the bottom of the screen — one product had just 47% of its (admittedly small) sample agree that it was worthwhile — and misleading newspaper headlines. He also looks at how misinformation can spread throughout social media, and has a good rant about some of his favourite bugbears, such as "greatest hits" albums that have all-new tracks on them, and services such as Spotify assuming that we always want to be sharing everything we do with the rest of the world, even if it's listening to The Wombles.

Too Much Information resonated with me a great deal, and it's a book well worth getting hold of in one form or another. It worked well as an audiobook, as the whole thing is written in Gorman's trademark "storytelling" style of comedy, which lends itself well to being recorded, but I can see it working just fine on paper, too.

While you're on, if you've never had the pleasure of experiencing Dave Gorman's past work, do take the time to check out The Dave Gorman Collection, Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure and his most recent series on Dave, Dave Gorman's Modern Life is Goodish. It's a style of comedy that, so far as I'm aware, is unique to Gorman, and it's particularly entertaining for those of us who enjoy facts and figures to go along with our funny words. His "Found Poems" in Modern Life is Goodish, constructed entirely of Internet comments sections, are particularly entertaining, and a good reminder of what a bizarre and ridiculous age we live in these days.

The post 2480: Too Much Information appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Rather than listening to the radio, with its same five adverts and playlist of approximately twelve songs, or the same albums on my phone over and over again, I decided to listen to some audiobooks.

I've listened to audiobooks a few times over the years, most recently when I was in the habit (that I should probably get back into) of taking a long walk most days. They provide a good accompaniment to tedious activities like walking or driving, and I've found they've had a positive effect on my mood overall, even when the M27 is at its most frustrating. The fact that I can tune out the fact I'm moving at approximately 15mph on a road designed to be travelled along at 70mph+ and instead concentrate on an unfolding narrative is pleasurable, and getting to spend more time immersing myself in a story becomes nice rather than frustrating.

The audiobooks I've been listening to most recently belong to a genre I haven't read a lot of in the past: crime fiction. I can't remember how I first came on to the Kay Scarpetta series by Patricia Cornwell, but I've been enjoying them so far: I'm currently about a third of the way through the third book.

For the unfamiliar, the Kay Scarpetta series follows the eponymous heroine, the chief medical examiner for Virginia, and her obligatory "buddy" cop Pete Marino. The two have an enjoyable working relationship and rapport with one another, Kay being rather sensible for the most part — with occasional lapses in judgement and a tendency to attract the main villain of each book to cause some sort of dramatic final confrontation in the closing chapters — and Marino being brash, outspoken and not always entirely tactful.

The stories are interesting when compared to other crime fiction I've encountered — be it in books, on TV, in games or in movies — in that the main focus isn't on the police investigation, the work of an agent on the case or a private investigator. Rather, Kay is essentially a civilian, albeit one with access to information about the corpses that show up in each novel that the public would probably rather not know about. This doesn't stop her ending up embroiled deep in the mysteries, however, and indeed it's usually her actions that, if they don't outright solve the case altogether, certainly put into motion a chain of events that draws the main villain out of hiding (and usually into Kay's bedroom) in order to be caught and/or killed.

They're formulaic and somewhat predictable at times, in other words, but they're filled with interesting characters, and the narrator for the audiobook versions, one Lorelei King, does an admirable job at putting on unique voices for the different characters — even if all her "male" voices tend to end up sounding terribly serious about everything they say… or perhaps this is a side-effect of Cornwell's male characters?

Anyway. I'm enjoying the experience of listening to audiobooks, and I've been enjoying discovering a series of entertaining crime novels in the process. There's plenty more where that came from, too, so I should be kept reasonably sane on my journeys to and from work for the immediate future, at least…

The post 1796: Read Me a Story appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

For those unfamiliar with Asterix — I'm not sure how well known it is these days — it was (is?) a series of full-length comic book stories based in the era of the Roman occupation of Gaul, circa 50 BC. Originally composed by French duo Goscinny and Uderzo and subsequently translated into a variety of different languages around the world, the stories combine a certain degree of real-life ancient history with material that is played purely for laughs to ridiculous effect. Central to all the stories are the eponymous protagonist Asterix, a cunning Gaul who is usually entrusted with his village's most important matters, and his overweight, somewhat dim friend Obelix who fell into a cauldron of magic potion as a baby and was consequently blessed with permanent superhuman strength.

The books range from relatively small-scale adventures in which Asterix and his friends defend the village from the Roman encampments that surround them to grand adventures that see the indomitable Gauls heading off to places such as India and the Middle East. Elements of sci-fi and fantasy — usually in the form of magic — are incorporated into some of the later books, but the emphasis is always on vaguely plausible but ridiculous situations that poke fun at modern society through the lens of ancient Roman times.

A particularly identifiable characteristic of the English translations — I can't speak for the other languages — is the sheer number of utterly cringeworthy puns used throughout, usually in the form of character names. Asterix and Obelix are pretty self-explanatory, but they're joined by village chief Vitalstatistix, druid Getafix, blacksmith Fulliautomatix, fishmonger Unhygienix, bard Cacofonix and numerous others. The female Gaulish characters have similarly unsubtle names — Vitalstatistix's wife is called Impedimenta, for example — as do the Romans, who usually have amusing Latin names of some description. One story features a centurion called Cumulo Nimbus, for example, while another features an athletic legionary called Gluteus Maximus.

The books are filled with visual gags, too, not just in the panels' artwork, but in elements such as typesetting and fonts, too. An Egyptian adventure in which Asterix and friends visit Cleopatra, for example, features a number of sequences in which Egyptian characters "speak" in hieroglyphics, for example, while in Asterix and the Great Crossing, which sees Asterix and Obelix initially accidentally discovering America and subsequently coming into contact with some Viking explorers on the way home, the language barrier between the Gauls and the Vikings is represented by the latter adding stereotypically "Scandinavian" punctuation to the things they're saying. It's a visual equivalent of the TV series Allo Allo representing characters speaking in different languages through different accents, essentially.

What I've been most surprised about on this most recent revisiting of the few Asterix books I do own is the fact that they hold up very well despite, in some cases, dating back to the 1960s. Not all humour ages terribly well and indeed there are certain elements of the Asterix books that clearly come from a, shall we say, somewhat unenlightened age, particularly when it comes to depictions of people of non-white races, but to be honest, there's a certain appeal to the fact that the early books in particular just don't give a toss about political correctness and end up being often darkly hilarious as a result.

I've never got around to expanding my collection since leaving home, but I've now read the few Asterix books I do own so many times to know them pretty much inside out. Perhaps I should look into getting some of the ones I've never read — if these ones hold up well enough, then it'd be a pleasure to read some completely new ones that I don't know at all.

The post 1530: 50 BC appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Well, first of all, those are two different questions. The answer to the second one, at least, is "yes"; the former? I'm not so sure.

We're already at a point where there is so much Stuff in the world it's impossible to keep on top of it all. Whatever media you're into, be it books, movies, TV shows, music or games, there's enough Stuff out there to keep you entertained probably for the rest of your life in just one of those formats, let alone if you, like most people, spread your time between several. Even if you spend your time focusing entirely on one genre within a single medium, you'll never get to the bottom of the pile. You'll never "finish" culture. You'll never see everything there is to see.

Depending on your outlook, this is either a fantastic thing or incredibly depressing news. For many, there's a degree of "shame" over not having caught up on things that are supposedly "canonical" or "essential" for everyone to have read/seen/played/whatever. The very term "pile of shame" (from which the Squadron of Shame takes its name) is used to refer to one's backlog of entertainment that has been purchased but not consumed — or, in some cases, the definition is stretched a little to include Stuff that the owner of said pile intends to consume at some point in the future, but perhaps hasn't quite got around to just yet.

With books, it's fine. Books are passed down from generation to generation; republished and republished. Today, we can keep a book alive forever by converting it to a digital format and scattering it to the four corners of the Internet. Sure, you lose some of the joy of turning paper pages and that distinctive musty smell they have, but at least the important bit — that's the work printed on those pages, lest you forget — is immortalised. You can read it on your computer; on your tablet device; on your e-reader; on your phone. You can annotate it and share your thoughts with other people around the world in an instant. Books are just fine.

Music, too, has proven itself to be pretty timeless over the years — for the most part, anyway. Throughout history there has been plenty of "disposable" music, but the true greats endure for years. Look how long the works of Bach and Mozart have lasted — people are still listening to, performing and studying these pieces hundreds of years after they were first composed. In more recent years, look at how the music of artists such as Elvis Presley and the Beatles is still interesting and relevant today. In very recent years… well, it remains to be seen which artists (if any) will leave a lasting legacy on culture, but there will almost certainly be some. (And if there's any justice, it won't be anyone who has ever won or been involved with The X-Factor.)

Movies, too, have become increasingly timeless with the improvements in technology over the years. While once a movie only lasted as long as the medium on which it was physically printed, now, like books, we can archive and keep movies forever. Sure, some moviemaking techniques now look antiquated and are unpalatable to modern audiences, but those truly interested in the full history of the medium can trawl back as far as they wish and see how it has developed.

Games, though, are arguably a bit more tricky, as they have an inherent "expiry date" due to the numerous proprietary technologies involved. While emulation technology is getting better all the time, it's still not perfect, and the legal grey areas surrounding it make it something that some people prefer to shy away from altogether. When you consider "PC" games, too, there's even titles that are ostensibly on the same platform that will no longer run on more modern technology. Fortunately, there are places like GOG.com who aim to keep these titles alive for modern audiences, but eventually even their remastered, tweaked versions will "expire" as technology makes the next big leap forward. What happens when computers become wearable and we don't use TVs any more? Will we still be able to play classic titles designed for the flat screen?

With all this, it's easy to wonder how you can possibly get through all those things that you're "supposed" to watch/read/see. The answer is surprisingly simple: don't. Accept the fact that you're never going to read Great Expectations; you're never going to see Citizen Kane; you're never going to listen to anything by The Smiths; you're never going to get caught up on the Assassin's Creed series. Cherry-pick the stuff you're interested in, finish what you start, and don't feel obliged to jump in to things just because they're brand new and everyone is talking about them right now. Get to them when you have time to appreciate them rather than rushing through them in the ultimately futile attempt to feel "relevant".

Crucially, enjoy (or at least appreciate) the culture you consume, whatever medium it's in. Your tastes are your own, and no-one has the right to try and change them. People can share their own opinions, sure, and these may help sway your thoughts one way or the other, but ultimately your feelings about the things you like and dislike are entirely up to you. There's no "correct" opinion; no gold standard of cultural awareness you need to aspire to; no "checklist" to complete. The sooner you recognise this fact, the sooner you can get on with working your way through that "pile of shame" — because there's some great stuff in there that you haven't discovered yet. And the stuff that is shiny and new right now will still be here in a few years time.

Take your time. Enjoy it. It's the least you can do for the people who have invested their time, money, blood, sweat and tears into entertaining you.

The post #oneaday Day 995: Cultural Victory appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

That's all I'm going to say on the politics of the matter for the moment, since there are plenty of other commentators out there who can doubtless discuss it in much greater detail than me. As a Brit, too, I'm not someone who will be directly affected by the law, but as we all know by now, the proposed measures will have a knock-on effect that could throw the whole online world out of balance.

What I wanted to talk about was how Wikipedia's blackout has affected the stupid people of the world. Not sure what I'm talking about? Give @herpderpedia a follow on Twitter and you'll quickly see what the problem is.

Wikipedia is an excellent and useful resource, of that there can be no doubt. But the level to which people have come to rely on it is perhaps a little worrying. To some people, it's almost as if Wikipedia is the only source of information. (People who think this are probably the same people who believe that Facebook is "the Internet")

There are, however, many more sources of information in the world than Wikipedia. Many more sources of information in the world than the Internet, for that matter. (Engage Old Fart mode) When I was at school, we had no Internet. Imagine that, you teenage morons! No Internet! If I got a bit of homework to "research" something, then I had to pick up an actual book and look through it. I had to know my alphabet well enough to look stuff up, and I had to know how to spell the thing I was looking up. Dark times? Not really, it was the norm; we accepted it. When the Internet came along, it was a source of information in addition to the knowledge we had in books, not a replacement. When I presented that homework to the class, it was written in my own words, showing my understanding. It wasn't a printout from Wikipedia.

And yes, when I worked as a teacher, on more than one occasion (more than ten, in fact) I received homework from students who thought that I wouldn't recognise a printout from Wikipedia. It showed absolutely no understanding on their part besides the most basic of net-savviest — an important skill in today's society, for sure, but not what I was looking for with the assignments in question.

Technology breaks. Open forms of media are unreliable. Every so often someone will come along and want to censor things. I'm not saying books are immune to these issues, but at least you can still read them when the power goes off.

SOPA sucks. Fortunately, it looks like it might not get through — though we're still a long way off victory at this time. Instead of bitching about not being able to cheat at your homework, try opening one of those dusty old books on your shelf and looking up the thing you want to know more about.

Magic, isn't it? Knowledge without electricity. Who would have thought it?

The post #oneaday Day 729: Stop SOPA, Read Books appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

There are, of course, many means of escapism, and different ones are more or less effective for different people.

There's the escapism of a child giving life to the inanimate lumps of plastic they own. Without a child, they're just potential, models, things to be looked at, without life. Add a child (or, more specifically, someone still in possession of their childish imagination) and something magical happens — those objects come alive, engaging in battles to save the galaxy; heroic adventures; or even just a normal day in a normal street.

Then there's the escapism of a good book. Good readers also have one of the most important qualities of a good creative writer: that active imagination again. But it's partly also down to the writer to create a convincing world, compelling characters and a reason for the reader to commit part of their life to staring at tiny print on paper, e-ink or an LCD display. You know a writer's done their job properly if you can hear the characters' voices, see the places they're in, picture the things they're doing. And as a reader, your interpretation and mental imagery might not be the same as the writer (or indeed the person who designed the book's cover) — but that doesn't make it any less valid.

There's the escapism of interactive entertainment. Instead of passively observing an unfolding story, you become a part of it. It doesn't have to be an explicit narrative as such — a long game of Civilization tells a story just as much as a chapter of Heavy Rain. The meaning the player chooses to assign to the experience is what makes interactive entertainment special.

There's the escapism of film. Increasingly designed as memorable spectacles these days, a good movie plunges its audience into darkness before casting them into a whole new world. It could be a world of giant robots; of CIA agents; of lads on a pulling holiday. For those couple of hours, though, the outside world ceases to matter.

There's the escapism of a good TV show. When you find a show that resonates with you, you want to stick with those characters, to find out what makes them tick, what they want, what they find challenging. You cheer for their successes, feel bad when they encounter adversity. And given the amount of time you spend with the cast of a TV show over an average run of a moderately successful show these days, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that the cast might feel like "friends" by the time you're through.

And there's the escapism of music. Music is a powerful imaginative stimulus, but again it means different things to different people. For one person it might stir up dormant memories. For another it might encourage them to close their eyes and picture themselves in a whole new situation. For yet another it might have an emotional impact that reflects the things that are weighing on their mind at that moment in time. And for others still it might inspire them to push forward, to do their best, to power on through and do that extra set at the gym, or put in that extra bit of effort at homework.

All this isn't even getting into what it means to be a creator as opposed to a consumer of all the above media, either.

The fact is, the world can be, at times, a bit of a sucky place. Having something comforting to escape into, whatever form that escapism might take, is important. No-one likes to feel trapped, so even if it's only for a short while, escape into something awesome and return to the real world refreshed, invigorated and ready to tackle any challenges it might want to throw at you.

And if you don't have anything like that? Then you need to have more fun.

The post #oneaday Day 723: The Escapist appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

But anyway. Enough about Jeff and his Gamertag — what about the book?

It was a great read. It helped a great deal that the book was narrated by a likeable character who was honest about when narrating things which took place at different times didn't quite make sense — how could he possibly remember what was happening when he was born, for example? In fact, the whole cast of the book was made up of strong characters, from our protagonists to some of the more minor people who had a role to play in the story.

The structure was interesting, too — for those unfamiliar with the novel, it's centred around one Jimmy Tock, who entered the world just as his grandfather departed it. Said grandfather came out with a series of chilling predictions on his deathbed, which Jimmy's life then begins to revolve around. We join the tale after four out of the "five terrible days" have already taken place, so there's some tension as Jimmy narrates the events, but we at least know that he's going to be all right — until we reach the last one, that is.

Jimmy, it has to be said, is a bit of a joker and there are at least two occasions in the novel where he outright lies to the reader only to come back with the literary equivalent of "lol jk" at the start of the next chapter. Unreliable narrators are one thing, but having a narrator who outright lies to you is a new one on me. It elevated the prose somewhat above the usual fare you get with first-person narration — it was more like someone actually talking to you. Pretty cool.

I enjoyed the novel a great deal, in other words — and I'm consciously trying not to give away any spoilers here. It was a thrill ride that kept me interested from start to finish. I'd never read anything by Koontz before, but my good experience with this piece is enough to make me interested to try some of his other stuff.

As always, if anyone has any recommendations along those lines, do feel free to let me know.

The post #oneaday Day 595: Life Expectancy appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

Anyway, I read a second book by Giselle Green as I rather enjoyed Pandora's Box, despite its slightly convoluted ending. Also, like Pandora's Box, it was only 99p on iBooks. I'm all for the bargain hunting, especially when I've just blown a large chunk of cash on the deposit for the house I'm writing this to you from.

Anyway. Little Miracles tells the story of Julia and Charlie, and their young son Hadyn. Julia is a stay at home mother, having given up a career, while Charlie is a plastic surgeon who does charity work, particularly with African kids whose faces have been disfigured by a disease I can't remember the name of.

A short distance into the book, Hadyn disappears. (That isn't a spoiler — it's plastered all over the novel's blurb as the central premise of the story.) The remainder of the tale explores Charlie and Julia's different attitudes towards the tragedy as they attempt to come to terms with the possible death of their son.

Structurally it's very similar to Pandora's Box, jumping back and forth between the dual perspectives of Charlie and Julia, both of whom are well-defined, interesting characters with their own backgrounds which come to light throughout the course of the story. And, like its predecessor, it's in possession of a somewhat frustrating ending, albeit for slightly different reasons.

This doesn't diminish the fact that it's once again a highly readable book based on in depth explorations of Charlie and Julia in particular — but through them we find out plenty about the supporting cast, too. Ironically, the only character who doesn't get fleshed out much is Hadyn, but since he's under the age of two there's only so much you can say beyond "he likes his cuddly elephant called Bap-Bap."

It's a well paced book — perhaps slightly too long if I'm honest — and eminently readable. Green's prose flows well and she has a skill for writing in markedly different voices when narrating from the perspectives of different characters. By the end of the story, Charlie and Julia are like old friends — a good way to be given the lengthy journey the reader is expected to take with them. Both have their own tragic flaws, and both come to terms with the situation in their own way. It's interesting to "watch" — though at times frustrating as you will the pair of them to communicate more.

All in all, though, it was an excellent read and one I'm glad I took the time (and the vast expense) to read. While it won't appeal to those who need a little more sex/murder/explosions in their novels, it's a compelling tale that tugs at the heartstrings without being overly melodramatic.

The post #oneaday Day 592: Little Miracles appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

I'm glad that I've got back into it, though, and I have technology to thank for it — I have now officially read a whole eBook (or iBook if you want to be pedantic about it) on a portable device (my iPhone) and discovered that it's a not altogether unpleasant experience. In fact, it's actually rather convenient — it's a lot easier to get comfortable when reading in bed holding a phone whose pages won't flop all over the place or fall out if you lie in a weird position, lighting isn't a problem with a backlit screen (unless you're in the bright sunshine, but I generally prefer to read indoors) and, crucially, you don't have to remember where you put the book down in order to carry on reading because you probably have your phone with you anyway. (It's also nice to be able to see how many pages are left in a chapter without having to do that "flicking forward while carefully trying not to look at any of the words on the page in case there are OMG SPOILARZ on them" thing.)

The book I read was called Pandora's Box by an author called Giselle Green. It was apparently the debut of this author, who has since been referred to as "the British Jodi Picoult". I've heard Picoult's name before but am not familiar with her work, so I was coming into this pretty blind, but the concept sounded intriguing, so I downloaded the sample (which turned out to be substantial enough to get me hooked, and then the full book was only 99p anyway) and got reading.

The story resolves around 40something mother Rachel and her 14 year old daughter Shelley. Rachel's life is a bit of a mess — her husband's left her, she doesn't really know what she's doing with her life and, most importantly, her daughter has a debilitating (and conveniently non-specific) disease that may or may not be something to do with MS. Despite this, she manages to remain upbeat and strong even in the most adverse conditions — her wheelchair-bound daughter, meanwhile, is mature, headstrong and stubborn.

Unfolding from the perspectives of both Rachel and Shelley, the story tells the tale of the days leading up to Shelley's fifteenth birthday — the day Shelley has decided that she is going to take her own life in order to be free from the pain and suffering she witnessed a friend with the same condition go through a year earlier. It's a tale based largely around characters, and Green creates some distinct, memorable personas to take us through the narrative. Rachel and Shelley themselves both have their own private issues which they let the reader — and sometimes no-one else — in on. But the supporting cast are strong too — Rachel's obnoxious ex-husband being a particularly prominent example, being a character you really want to take a swing at at the first available opportunity.

It's a real page-turner — the story unfolds at a good pace throughout, and each chapter is short enough to make you think "well, maybe I'll just read on a bit…" before noticing that you're actually halfway through the whole thing. It's not perfect, of course; remaining spoiler-free, I'll simply say that the ending is a little contrived, being made up of a series of events that are all a little too convenient given the realistic nature of the rest of the book. And the supposedly central theme — that of the titular "Pandora's Box" (in this case being a box of knick-knacks and memories from Rachel's eloping mother) and the Miseries within — is perhaps a little underused, or perhaps even inappropriate. Rachel is forced to come to terms with some past "evils" which had been left buried for many years, and Shelley is the catalyst for her eventual revelations, but the theme seems a little "forced" and I feel the story would have been better without this particular angle.

Minor gripes aside, the book was immensely enjoyable and I'm keen to have a look at Green's other work — if this was her debut novel, perhaps she hones her craft to a finer point in her later titles. We shall see!

The post #oneaday Day 572: Book 'Em, T and the MGs... No Wait, That's Wrong appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.

The context of the quote was in one of those sections you get on pretty much all online profiles that asks you to list your favourite music, films, TV shows and books. This person's favourite books were listed as "book? lol".

That struck me as rather sad, but perhaps a little unsurprising given the general attention span of most people these days. Why sit down with a book which delays gratification and requires active use of the brain when you can be immediately bombarded with information via TV and the Internet?

It's an age-old argument of course, and one which has probably been running ever since every new information-giving technology came along. However, it seems particularly ironic in the context of the Internet, given that much of it is, in fact, text. Sure, there are pretty pictures and buttons that fart when you click on them and pornography, but it's still fundamentally built on text. You're reading text right now. Is your head hurting yet?

The fact that everyone has a voice on the Internet is one of those things that is debatable as to whether it is a Good Thing or not. But as part of having that voice, everyone has the opportunity to give their thoughts and expand on them as much as they want to. The sad thing is, though, in many cases, people don't feel like they have the time to read (or write) a full, well-considered argument. Instead, they denounce it as a "wall of text" and choose not to read it.

It happens in video games, too. A friend of mine once said that he couldn't get through Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney because there was "too much reading". It's a game about a lawyer. I'm not sure what else he was expecting.

As a writer, as someone who crafts language and bends it to my will in the name of pretentiousness, self-expression, catharsis and humour, this is sad. The English language is a powerful tool that can say many things. As, indeed, are other languages. But it seems that for many these days, the priority is for quick, snappy, "efficient" communication. And sure, there are situations in which this is entirely appropriate. But I say that shouldn't be the norm. People shouldn't be afraid to speak their mind in as much length as they wish.

My mind is particularly drawn to the early days of the Squadron of Shame. Long before we started producing our podcast, we ran lengthy discussion threads on a variety of games on 1up.com's Radio forum. We'd started as a result of one of the 1up Radio features, so that was our spiritual home. Many of the people who populated that forum were articulate sorts who agreed with my thoughts above, so there were plenty of like-minded individuals there who enjoyed taking part in our discussions and posting their own "walls of text".

But one day, the Powers That Be at 1up decided that it would be a great idea to merge all the forums into "Games" and "Not Games". This meant that lengthy, in-depth discussion threads from groups such as the Squadron were crammed into the same space as "OMG HALO IS BETTR THAN KILZONE". Naturally, this led to problems. In one of the last discussions we had on those boards—on the subject of the peculiar PS2 game Psi-Ops—the posting was almost immediately derailed by a particularly notorious troll who posted "OMG FUCKING MASSIVE WALL OF TEXT" in giant red letters. Said "wall of text" was maybe six or seven paragraphs long and was interesting to read, but as soon as troll boy showed his face, the discussion went off track, not helped by many people (including myself) rising to his bait.

It's a pity that to some people the desire to speak in detail, at length and to produce a coherent argument is seen as a negative thing. Personally I would have thought that a forum—by its very nature an asynchronous method of communication in which people can take their time to consider their responses—was the ideal environment in which to have these lengthy discussions. But apparently not.

This is perhaps an unnecessarily negative picture, of course. There are still people who read books. There are still people who like to post more than five words at a time. There are still people who don't decide to ignore all the rules of spelling, punctuation and grammar "just because it's the Internet"—who came up with that stupid idea, anyway? It's just a pity that, at times, they seem to be declining in number.

Oh well. If you read through all that, you can count yourself amongst the élite!

The post #oneaday, Day 217: "Book? LOL!" appeared first on I'm Not Doctor Who.