Zero Credibility

I’m not celebrating this x-mas as it’s different date here in Russia. I’m sitting at work and found free minute to update this empty and useless blog just to cheer up my capitalistic friends and tell them ‘Hello and marry x-mas, bastards!’.

Nothing interesting happened here last month. I’ve finished Bruce Campbell’s “Make Love the Bruce Campbell Way” book. Which was funny and easy reading. It’s somewhat adventure story about Bruce’s acting profession, featuring chases and beating. If you’re fan of him you might find this book amusing. China Mieville’s “Iron Council” was put back to the shelve as I found it very hard to read, so I’d rather wait for the proper hardcore fantasy mood and assault it for the second time. Really, this is very hardcore book, I’d rather read hc sci-fi than this one. I have to order new pack of the books, btw. So, going to the 2008 with the calm mood, see ya there…

Nothing changed in my dark realm for the last month. The weather became cold and snowy, no leaves on the trees anymore, it’s proper russian winter now. I had some connection problems with W0W during one week, so my gaming attention turned to other games, such as Team Fortress 2 where I continued to have immense fun and I also tried Neverwinter Nights 2. NwN2 turned to be a game with slow pace. One must be real solo RPG fan to continue playing it. It has a nice story development and cool gfx though. It’s real gem for the lovers of this style. Maybe I’ll return to it when my WoW connect will break again ;) Surprisingly, there’s no music updates this month, nothing new interested me and I haven’t ordered a single CD, i’m collecting moneys for the next wave of music though.В  I’ve started next book by China Mieville – “Iron Council”. The beginning is quite hard at the moment, but it’s promising. Will see how it develops. Monsieur Bal says the book is worthy, I believe him.

Sadly, but my vacation is over and I’m back to biz. I loved Thailand despite it being hot. The warm Indian ocean, wide Bang Tao bay, nice Laguna Beach resort, palm trees, smily thai people. Bangkok was completely different experience from the beaches. Contrast of the poor and rich blocks of the city is astonishing. We lived on the 51th floor of the 84 floor Baiyoke Sky Hotel and nearby the building there was chinese market with sham jeans and other shit like boiled corn, etc. The city reminded me Bladerunner movie very much. All those japanese type trainways, alot of little shops, heat, steam, crowds of people – asia as it is. Overall it was very pleasant experience to be in Thailand. It was my first visit abroad and it was pretty successful. My host is being silly and won’t give me more than 400 megabytes of the disk space, so I have no space for my Thailand picture gallery at the moment. Maybe there will be ways to store my gallery on the friendly host of Paul, we shall see.

Started reading next Alastair Reynolds book “Redemption Ark”. It’s immersive proper sci-fi from my fave author set in the Revelation Space universe featuring some characters from the other books. So far I’m enjoying it greatly and I hope the trend will contunue through all the 600 pages of it.

Just finished reading this amazing book. I liked the way it was built: divided on three parallel stories that connected to each other very delicately. Every story has its own interesting and unpredictable development and intrigued me till the book’s end. As usual, Banks satisfied me completely and it was a pity such a nice book was going to the end, this is what happens almost every time I read his books. The next book’s gonna be Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Capricorn”. The author who writes very lively about the life itself and one of his primary subjects is women. I’ve read “Tropic of Cancer” several years ago and now going to explore him more.

Started reading this book recently. Returning back to the steam punk universe of New Crobuzon. Or is it weird fiction as some sites call it? Nevermind style, the atmosphere is rather moody there. Rust, industrial fumes, depression and overall old victorian feel, this is what this universe is. At the same time there’s AI that works on steam engines and other weird and sinister things like unspeakable horrors from parallel dimensions and ocean abyss. As I’ve read in the interview with China, The Scar is a pirate book, we’ll see ;)

At last! I’ve returned to my fave Banks :) This book belongs to The Culture universe and tells the story about some elite player of some weird games of future who got bored of life and ignored the saying “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” and went to seek for the never before tried challenge. I’m in the middle of the book already, and I like the nice mix of rather interesting relationships between humans and drones. There’s also new Empire involved with civilisation which has three sexes. I wonder how main hero is going to live with them. The book feels fery fresh and, as usual, with trade mark Banks’ sharp humour and eccentricity.

Well, I’ve just finished this weird book of Poppy Z. Brite titled “Exquisite Corpse”. Hmm, it’s rather controversial. From one point it’s disgusting because it describes acts so bloody awful that I thought WTF with this author. But from the other side such books attract attention of public and might force them to review their look at hidden parts of life, or just plain open their eyes. But I’m not sure it’s gonna have some effect. It could, but on the people who’s able to read this and these people know dark side of life by default already. So, the bottomline of my rant is that I don’t really see any point writing such grindcore books. If one feels gory or perverse, he can just listen to some goregrind music or just watch goddamn news on TV and relax a bit that way. No point wasting time reading about perverts and their problems in detail…

I’ve finished this book recently. Well, this one proved to be very interesting as the first one in the Revelation Space universe. The first half of the book was rather relaxed and longer than required (as it seemed initially). But from the middle things started to be so mind disturbing that I had to return to the book’s beginning to review some facts which didn’t seem so important earlier. The book has rather twisted and interesting plot, which makes you wonder what comes next till the last page. I wouldn’t say what book of the series is better from the two I’ve read but they both are equally worthy to read. I’m looking forward reading next novel from the series. And to change things from the hard sci-fi a bit, I’ll switch to some perverse book by Poppy Z. Brite titled “Exquisite Corpse” just to research dark side of the American literature.

Just finished Consider Phlebas today. Well it was a nice trip. This is the very first book in the Culture series so it was interesting to read with what this Culture series started. Nice unpredictable plot, that proper Banks’ humour, very sci-fi and exact description of the technology and machines and combat. This all makes this book very believable and immersive. I’m looking forward reading his other sci-fi books.

After I checked my mood on what to read next, I decided to stick to sci-fi and choose next Alastair Reynolds book – Chasm City. I was greatly impressed by the first book – Revelation Space, so I’m expecting no less interesting story from this one.

Seems like I went haywire because how could you explain that after receiving that giant pack of music I went and ordered no less giant pack of books from Amazon? Anyway, now i’m fully equipped with hard sci-fi and proper fiction for the coming year hopefully. The books are: Iain Banks – “The player of games” and “Walking on Glass”, Alastair Reynolds – “Redemption Ark” and “Chasm City”, China Mieville – “Iron Council” and “The Scar” and the last weird book I’ve ordered by sudden impulse is Bruce Campbell – “Make Love! the Bruce Campbell Way”. So as you can see, I’m still researching those three sci-fi authors tirelessly. Well, why not if I’m still enjoying them?