Best Books Of 2012:

Or rather, the best books that I read during 2012. Some were still hot from the delivery truck when I picked them up, others could possibly be from 2011 and sat on the shelf for longer than intended. Hey, it wouldn't be a list that I made if it was well organised would it: 1. The Tooth Fairy - Graham Joyce 

OK. Having done my research for this post, I see that The Tooth Fairy came out originally back in the mid nineties. Too bad. It's still the best book I've read all year. It's kind of what you think it might be like, but then it goes and does so many different things and walks so many unknown paths that it really is difficult to describe - and it's wonderful on all those levels. I've seen some rough as hell covers for it though. Ignore them. It's an out and out giant slayer.

2. Up Jumps The Devil - Michael Poore

I picked this up at the airport in Colorado (a woman from Derby sold it to me who pinpointed my birthplace accent - I thought I had lost that long ago) and I stripped it down on the plane, train and an automobile. Obviously not whilst driving. Great character, great time spanning story, a slick sense of humour (an American that gets irony - totally worth the entrance fee) and generally a brilliantly fun  - dare I say - laugh out loud novel to lose yourself in for hours on end. Great cover design - bonus!

3. The Lighthouse Keeper - Alan K. Baker

This sounded like every book I would never read. A book about a lighthouse? Written by somebody who sounds like he might be a news-reader? Be fooled no longer. This one is a stealth bomber. Weird as hell. I didn't have clue where it was going, not even on the last page and that's because although it's about er... weird shit that goes on at a lighthouse, the book is more about the keepers themselves and therefore more about human nature and as we all know, when humans are trapped on a rock with a lighthouse and weird shit occurs, anything can happen. And does. Almost as bad a cover as Tooth Fairy but not sure what I would have done differently if faced with the task...

4. Say You're Sorry - Michael Robotham

Sometimes, you simply need a book in which people get bumped off and you can't figure out who it is or why. This is my crime pick of the year because I read it one day and that's a good enough recommendation as you'll get. With a superb lead character who's not a copper or damaged in the way that coppers normally are, the whole Joe O'Loughlin series is worthy of a lot more attention that they're getting. Get off your sofa, go find some and read them in order. No comment on the cover of this - professional "look at me I'm a crime novel' design going on here. Which is what's called for. Michael... write more... faster please.

5. The Wrath of Angels - John Connolly

Well. There's no show without punch and I still say Connolly is the best writer in the country. I think this deserves to be higher on the list but circumstances meant that I picked it up day of release which wasn't necessarily conducive to me paying the best of attention. Thus, it took me a while to get started with it. My fault, not his. If I started it again today it would be a different story. If you're not familiar with Charlie Parker, best go and log onto janetandjohn.com or lookatmepetthedog.com because you're no reader friend of mine. The best crime series, let me think... since McBain's 87th Precinct plus added supernatural elements that mean... well, I still haven't figured out what they mean but it doesn't matter. 'Fucking incredible' is as good write up you'll find. The covers? Pretty good - when the series started they were different and I had never seen anything like them but they brought them into line for the 'stupid people'. I'll let it pass simply because what goes on inside the pages is so damned good.

6. Manhood For Amateurs - Michael Chabon

My latest flame. Currently reading his entire catalogue one after the other. Something I've never done with anybody before. Chabon is phenomenal but something of an acquired taste. This particular book is a collection of essays on being a father - which is as far from as dull as it sounds as I can get. Quite honestly, Chabon is the kind of writer that makes me wonder why I even entertain such dreams but he's so good that you can't help but hand out large plates of respect. He's probably a great guy as well. Bastard. Nice selection of covers on both sides of the Atlantic - which makes a change. He also has out of control hair. I think we should be friends.

7. Gods and Beasts - Denise Mina

Is Denise Mina still the UK's best kept secret? I see a pattern emerging with myself for detective fiction in which nothing is the same as it has been for far too many years with regards to UK crime. Anyway - I'm not going to say anything about this. Go discover her for yourself. There are too few surprises in life without me taking the few that remain. Nice covers too. I can spot a Denise Mina at fifty paces. That's a good thing.

8. Falcons of Fire and Ice - Karen Maitland

I really mean this: Karen Maitland is not for everybody. You'll have figured that out during the first paragraph of any of her books. But if she strikes the chord with you, each and every one of her books comes as some kind of gift that fell off a godlike cloud. Totally unique. I have never read anything like her stories and I adore every single one for all the right reasons. Stellar stories with massive amounts of thought goes into the production right down to the paper and the typeface - and the covers... what can I say about the covers? Among some of the best work ever laid on a cover? Without question. I'm talking hardback here, you don't get the same effect with the paperbacks. Why isn't this at number one on the list?

9. Every One Loves You When You're Dead - Neil Strauss

Strauss returns which a collection of interview snippets with seemingly everybody in the whole world. Strung together with a loose theme, this is one for pop culture guzzlers to get their teeth into (and it serves Klosterman right for not writing something I could put on the list). The guy writes so well, I'd punch him in the mouth if I didn't want to shake his hand for setting the standard the rest of us culture types to attempt to live up to. Like Chabon, he's seems like a genuinely great guy too. I shall not however call him a bastard because he has no hair at all and has therefore suffered enough already. Cover? Not great. Good job I didn't judge it from the cover or it would still be on the shelf.

10. The Prisoner of Heaven - Carlos Ruis Zafon

Zafon. At this point in the run, I'm hardly likely to be able to talk you into loving the man and his work, so if you've been playing the 'Shadow' game, you'll already have been here and nodded sagely to yourself. If not, see the advice at the end of number five. I like these covers even though I think I shouldn't. That means they're working. Ignore me. I'm just bitter than nobody asked me to have a go at them.

•••

An interesting list. I need to tidy it up some thoughts. Nesbo didn't make the list because I didn't think The Bat was very good (for obvious reasons if you're a fan). Rankin returned with Rebus and I made the mistake of going for it on audiobook from audible - where it's read by the most annoying Scot on the planet. Truly dreadful but it's Rebus so I'll return to that one by purchasing something with pages in it. Shit cover. All the Rebus redesigns are shit. I hate them. True fact. That's a lot of hate for a set of book covers but they look cheap and disrespectful. Clive Barker's Abarat: Absolute Midnight nearly made the list but I'm just waiting for another instalment of something that isn't bloody Abarat to be frank. Me and the rest of the world. It will come. Gaiman has been a bit quiet. Was the Graveyard Book this year? That was a good read, but I've read so many kids books this year that I thought I might do a separate list... not that it was strictly a kids book I guess.

It's not right of me to actually name the worst book of the year is it but I think it was Daughter of Smoke and Bone. I made it through maybe a chapter and then decided to wash my hair instead. Sorry. That's the way it crumbles sometimes.

What did we learn here? Two things I think. 1. Brilliantly written original books need great covers so that people will be inclined to pick them up and investigate more. 2. People called Michael write really good books.

Le Fin.

The Global Village

It's the day after my birthday and I officially start the first day of my 2012 holidays. I took a few days in the summer but not since this time last year have I had an extended period of being able to not have to pay constant attention to the day job. I need it, Eleanor and the kids need it - even the house needs it. On one hand, it seems like a mighty long time to wait, on the other, what better time than Christmas to be able to kick back and chew things over. After dropping the kids off at school this morning, on the drive home I decided that I would change a few things - the biggest one being to spend less time online. It crossed my mind that I probably spend far too much time attached to wifi. I might even be a hotspot for others I spend so much of my time there. It strikes me that I need to rejoin the human race at least for a little while but the real reason is that I need to write more without distractions. Sure - there's tools you can use to cock-block the web while you're working on your machine but I am not to be trusted. There's iTunes to mess with and all kinds of garbage that I can be distracted by on here... I'm going to see how it pans out without kicking myself in the head if I fail. It is, at least, a plan.

Slightly related to that subject, but not really, yesterday I ran through the blog of Neil Strauss. It's good fun but somehow I found myself clicking through to a site where some dude had detailed his 'digital nomad' gear kit. A digital nomad is, apparently, somebody who works out in the world without a permanent base. This can be a traveller of the world or even somebody that works from home or a cafe etc. I fall somewhere in between these two things. If you check in here often, you'll know that I hate travelling heavy. The lighter I can travel, the better I feel about a trip, so I did the pointy clicky thing and went to see what the kit lit looked like. And here it is with an update of the older list for this year here.

And while that was all very interesting, I thought to myself that aside from my books and vinyl collection, that's actually more stuff than I own. So I thought I might make a better list - along with some thoughts. I guess if you're going on an extended trip, you might need to add some bits, but for short break - even for periods up to a month, I think my list is far superior. Here we go.

When I went to Colorado a little while back - which is something like 7000 miles and therefore classed as 'far away', here's what I had on my original list:

 

And that was pretty much it apart from the clothes I was wearing. I considered taking the iPad but what does it do that this doesn't. Sure it's a bit smaller but I've trained myself to work small for a long time now for these very reasons. Is watching episodes of Grimm going to be less enjoyable on a small screen? Nope. Hell, at one time, I used to watch movies on my iPod - the one that looks like an After Eight mint (was that the original nano?) and that's tiny. I can read a book perfectly happily on the phone too - with iBooks and the kindle app on there, I sure didn't need anything else. I pre-loaded with a few audiobooks just to make sure. Loaded a couple of thousand songs and well, that was me pretty ready to roll out of the door.

I set the phone up to sweep photos and video into dropbox when I hit wifi spots, that was pretty flawless. The camera and video utilities are more than good enough for what I use them for and anything I really needed could be pulled down from there or any of the other spaces I have online for digital storage. I have an external hard drive, but that's for disaster recovery not playing with and at no point did it ever cross my mind to take the MacBook. Those things are heavy. Before I went, I also tested out the voice memo facility for interviews - and again, flawless. What the hell is that kit list from hell about? I dropped it in my jacket pocket and I was ready to roll - and yeah, in the other pocket was the charger. I've also got one of these that negates the need for a wallet too:

Now, my plan was to go in the clothes I was wearing and buy things like socks, pants, toothpaste, shampoo - you know all that stuff that's essential - when I got there because something that a lot of people seem to forget is that... wait for it... there are stores all over the world where the people that live there shop! It's amazing. The idea then is to dump it all before you come home so you don't have to carry it back. Wasteful? Not really. Not if you shop smartly and it's not like there are no people not in need of this stuff everywhere around the world.

This great plan was thrown into turmoil however when more than one person suggested that it might look suspicious getting on a plane to the States with no luggage. I'm not sure how true this is but I ended up taking a bag. This bag from Scaramanga. I put some shirts in, some underwear, a book (but only because I was taking a damn bag) and that was about it. The good thing about a bag like that is that you don't need to check it in and therefore don't have to wait for the luggage carousel - well, technically. My travel partner James had a case, so I ended up waiting for him waiting for his case, but the theory is solid.

If you think hard about what it is you'll be doing when you get there, how you want to entertain yourself and what kind of business you need to do (if any), you too will probably find that any old smartphone will be enough. Just don't lose your phone!

As part of an ongoing purge of garbage in my life, I've also thrown out at least 30 apps from the phone that seemed like a good idea at the time. There were maybe only 40 on there anyway. I've tried every kind of 'word processor' out there on the phone and the pad from Pages right down to well, you name it, I've tried it. Nothing comes close to Evernote. Nothing. Do yourself a favour and sign up to a premium account with them. If you need to work on the road, this is all you'll ever need. Then do yourself another favour and believe that you really can write a novel using only an iPhone.

•••

..and now, I am going to find a coffee shop with no wifi. Me and my notebook have things to do. I'll leave you with Dave:

The Global Village

It's the day after my birthday and I officially start the first day of my 2012 holidays. I took a few days in the summer but not since this time last year have I had an extended period of being able to not have to pay constant attention to the day job. I need it, Eleanor and the kids need it - even the house needs it. On one hand, it seems like a mighty long time to wait, on the other, what better time than Christmas to be able to kick back and chew things over. After dropping the kids off at school this morning, on the drive home I decided that I would change a few things - the biggest one being to spend less time online. It crossed my mind that I probably spend far too much time attached to wifi. I might even be a hotspot for others I spend so much of my time there. It strikes me that I need to rejoin the human race at least for a little while but the real reason is that I need to write more without distractions. Sure - there's tools you can use to cock-block the web while you're working on your machine but I am not to be trusted. There's iTunes to mess with and all kinds of garbage that I can be distracted by on here... I'm going to see how it pans out without kicking myself in the head if I fail. It is, at least, a plan.

Slightly related to that subject, but not really, yesterday I ran through the blog of Neil Strauss. It's good fun but somehow I found myself clicking through to a site where some dude had detailed his 'digital nomad' gear kit. A digital nomad is, apparently, somebody who works out in the world without a permanent base. This can be a traveller of the world or even somebody that works from home or a cafe etc. I fall somewhere in between these two things. If you check in here often, you'll know that I hate travelling heavy. The lighter I can travel, the better I feel about a trip, so I did the pointy clicky thing and went to see what the kit lit looked like. And here it is with an update of the older list for this year here.

And while that was all very interesting, I thought to myself that aside from my books and vinyl collection, that's actually more stuff than I own. So I thought I might make a better list - along with some thoughts. I guess if you're going on an extended trip, you might need to add some bits, but for short break - even for periods up to a month, I think my list is far superior. Here we go.

When I went to Colorado a little while back - which is something like 7000 miles and therefore classed as 'far away', here's what I had on my original list:

And that was pretty much it apart from the clothes I was wearing. I considered taking the iPad but what does it do that this doesn't. Sure it's a bit smaller but I've trained myself to work small for a long time now for these very reasons. Is watching episodes of Grimm going to be less enjoyable on a small screen? Nope. Hell, at one time, I used to watch movies on my iPod - the one that looks like an After Eight mint (was that the original nano?) and that's tiny. I can read a book perfectly happily on the phone too - with iBooks and the kindle app on there, I sure didn't need anything else. I pre-loaded with a few audiobooks just to make sure. Loaded a couple of thousand songs and well, that was me pretty ready to roll out of the door.

I set the phone up to sweep photos and video into dropbox when I hit wifi spots, that was pretty flawless. The camera and video utilities are more than good enough for what I use them for and anything I really needed could be pulled down from there or any of the other spaces I have online for digital storage. I have an external hard drive, but that's for disaster recovery not playing with and at no point did it ever cross my mind to take the MacBook. Those things are heavy. Before I went, I also tested out the voice memo facility for interviews - and again, flawless. What the hell is that kit list from hell about? I dropped it in my jacket pocket and I was ready to roll - and yeah, in the other pocket was the charger. I've also got one of these that negates the need for a wallet too:

Now, my plan was to go in the clothes I was wearing and buy things like socks, pants, toothpaste, shampoo - you know all that stuff that's essential - when I got there because something that a lot of people seem to forget is that... wait for it... there are stores all over the world where the people that live there shop! It's amazing. The idea then is to dump it all before you come home so you don't have to carry it back. Wasteful? Not really. Not if you shop smartly and it's not like there are no people not in need of this stuff everywhere around the world.

This great plan was thrown into turmoil however when more than one person suggested that it might look suspicious getting on a plane to the States with no luggage. I'm not sure how true this is but I ended up taking a bag. This bag from Scaramanga. I put some shirts in, some underwear, a book (but only because I was taking a damn bag) and that was about it. The good thing about a bag like that is that you don't need to check it in and therefore don't have to wait for the luggage carousel - well, technically. My travel partner James had a case, so I ended up waiting for him waiting for his case, but the theory is solid.

If you think hard about what it is you'll be doing when you get there, how you want to entertain yourself and what kind of business you need to do (if any), you too will probably find that any old smartphone will be enough. Just don't lose your phone!

As part of an ongoing purge of garbage in my life, I've also thrown out at least 30 apps from the phone that seemed like a good idea at the time. There were maybe only 40 on there anyway. I've tried every kind of 'word processor' out there on the phone and the pad from Pages right down to well, you name it, I've tried it. Nothing comes close to Evernote. Nothing. Do yourself a favour and sign up to a premium account with them. If you need to work on the road, this is all you'll ever need. Then do yourself another favour and believe that you really can write a novel using only an iPhone.

•••

..and now, I am going to find a coffee shop with no wifi. Me and my notebook have things to do. I'll leave you with Dave:

Welcome to the Freakshow

I've got an interview scheduled for tonight with Austin from Hinder. I like Hinder a lot - they fulfil the needs that I have for what the lazy people call 'stadium rock' (amongst other things). Alongside of Nickelback, these two bands more than cover the bases required by my soul. What's odd about the situation is that both of these bands are easy to knock by critics and regularly are, but I like what I like and that's pretty much the end of the story. Or is it?

Let me see, it's Wednesday. This week I've listened to this new Hinder album (called Welcome to the Freakshow if you hadn't made the connection) but I've also listened to the first three albums from Kate Bush, spent a few hours on some jazz station trying to understand the damn thing, reverted to type with Soundgarden's King Animal, revelled in the nostalgia of Japan's Adolescent Sex, tried on the revamp of War of the Worlds (which is pretty hot) and nodded my head at James Arthur's victory on X-Factor this year - because despite what you may think of the show, that guy is gonna make something of the shot he's got. That's an off the cuff list too - I use rdio as my main fix these days, so for good or bad, this shit gets data-logged. Realising this means that I need full disclosure that out of curiosity, I tried to listen to the Little Mix album but only got about three tracks in before it had to go -  you can't win 'em all.

There's a big difference between being a critic and just some dude who loves music and happens to write. There seems to be a 'point' to being a critic, like you're trying to build yourself up into something - and while that might have been valid back in the seventies and eighties when there were only a fistful of magazines worth a damn, as we approach 2013, it's not and that's because I can find you over 100 review sites at the flick of a wrist. Each has an opinion, some are better written than others but my point is that if you disagree with a review - be that music, movies or even a watch you bought yourself -  you're just going to head off to find a review site that you do have something in common with to prove your point. Worst still, there is no differentiation between the two. People will take what they need and ignore the rest.

These days, being a critic means very little - so much so that I have backed out of doing them anymore. It's a pointless exercise, I think I would rather say my piece here where it's a part of something else. Part of a bigger story to be had because to do the other thing, is to not love music. It's to love yourself and think your opinion matters.

Anyway, over on rdio, there was a 'critic's review' of Freakshow that seemed to serve nobody but the writer himself. I hope he felt good about himself afterwards. I can picture the scenario because I've been there. Lots of things to do, give the album a listen on radio because it's free and requires no effort. Dip your hand into the pit of dirty adjectives that are in your head and presto! A review that makes you feel as though you pointed out something valuable. I know, I know - everybody is entitled to their opinion.

But I just couldn't keep my mouth shut (click it to make it bigger if you need to):

The original is not even that objective. It reads as though it was on the hate pile before the first track had even finished. Sometimes, I suspect I take this stuff too personally for my own good. It's only rock n roll.

Just keep telling yourself, it's only rock n roll...

INTERLUDE:

Being as that's what we're talking about (no video releases yet from the new album):

•••

I bought a new book yesterday - Everyone Loves You When You're Dead by Neil Strauss. I finished it yesterday too. I lost a lot of the evening, all of the night and closed the book when the temperature hit -3 and it was very, very dark. Sometimes, you need to read a book like this. Sleep can be had any day of the week but when you're into the drag of a good read, it shouldn't be pushed off the road by something that will come around again tomorrow. If you're in the market for a neat Christmas present for the music lover in your life, it's really good and a no-brainer. It's also part of the two for a tenner deal in HMV at the moment, so you could double it up with a copy of Mick Wall's Lep Zep book maybe, which is what I did.

•••

More later. Promise. Things to do right now...