The Book Swede & His Blog

Brave New World

2009-07-17T19:17:00.007+01:00

Brave New WorldAldous HuxleyVintage Classics1932 original publishing date2006 Vintage reprint[I know it's been a long while since I did a proper review, so please forgive the slightly rambly nature of this piece...]A little while back I reviewed 1984, the classic dystopian, science-fiction novel by George Orwell (maybe not that science-fictional since it could be argued that it was used as a sort

Torchwood - Children of Earth: Day One

2009-07-07T11:34:00.004+01:00

BBC One, 9pm. This is the first episode in the five-part series, with each one-hour long episode being shown consecutively over the course of this week. Unless you live in America, in which case you have to wait until the 20th. Muahaha.If you remember, at the end of the last series, half the Torchwood team had been killed off. Tosh, a favourite character, and Owen, not so much, were done away

Death Speaks...

2009-06-29T12:53:00.005+01:00

This is W. Somerset Maugham's retelling of a very old Arabic story I found the other day, which he wrote in 1933, and I thought might be of some interest to at least some of you...Death speaks: There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the market-place

RIP: David Eddings

2009-06-03T12:38:00.005+01:00

Wow. Blimey. Sad news today that David Eddings, aged 77, died yesterday evening.The Belgariad series was one of my favourites when I first discovered fantasy, and I still remember creeping down the stairs into the dingy basement of a used bookshop in my town, and encountering the first book, Pawn of Prophecy, flicking through it, and just reading for hours. This was at a time when my father felt

Swearing in Fantasy (again): Any Thoughts?

2009-03-31T16:07:00.004+01:00

I just received this comment on my review of The Book of Joby by Mark J. Ferrari, which was reviewed way back in October 2007:This was just awful. Nothing origin in here just cuss words which completely destroys the etheral, mythological setting and tone the author is trying to go for. Every 'fuck' that is said just pulled me out of any fantasy setting that was attempted. Imagine if a 'Fuck' was

Win A Copy of "The Siege of Krishnapur"!

2009-03-13T08:38:00.005Z

Win a copy of what? I, at least, had never heard of The Siege of Krishnapur until I bought a wonderful pack containing the six Booker prize-winning novels that had been nominated for the Best of the Bookers award. That pack also contains Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, the much fêted magic-realist post-Indian-partition novel, which is soon to be made into a movie.The Siege of Krishnapur

RIP: Philip José Farmer

2009-02-25T20:08:00.004Z

Darn.The Official Philip José Farmer Home Page is reporting that Philip José Farmer passed away today at age 91. He's probably best known for the Riverworld and World of Tiers series. He wrote some pretty weird stuff, but I liked a lot of it, World of Tiers particularly. Also, if you ever see a book called The Other Log of Phileas Fogg, pick it up! It is good. It'll probably be battered and old;

Stranger Than Fiction: The Cat-Boy

2009-02-24T20:38:00.004Z

Not-a-post, but a desperate filler, while the month of February evaporates quickly. I should, if this world were kind, be eating pancakes tonight... For those of you in places other than the UK who previously thought our standards of journalism were pretty good, I present you with The Sun... All capitals used are theirs.A CAT-BOY has stunned medics with his ability to SEE in pitch black with eyes

Being Human

2009-02-17T14:39:00.007Z

Being Human is a science-fictional comedy/drama/horror currently being shown on BBC3 (one of the non-terrestial, but still popular, channels) at 9pm on Sunday in the UK. I like it a lot. The episodes are 1 hour long, which I occasionally think might be a bit long for what happens in the show, but it's quickly become my favourite hour of television every week.It's about three people living in a

Snow! In Which I Am Not Amused...

2009-02-04T15:43:00.009Z

UPDATE 6/02/2009: We've had about 5" of snow overnight in my little normally-bad-weather-free area of England, and the Army has been called in as people are abandoning their vehicles on many of the roads. It's virtually impossible to get in or out of my village. The main road from my tiny village to civilisation had been closed anyway for repairs -- meaning we were having to go down tiny

Jane Austen Zombies!!

2009-02-01T10:54:00.006Z

I think Tia might find this interesting ;) A US publisher is releasing a new bone-crunching comedy version of Pride and Prejudice in which Elizabeth must face off the dubious social manners of the ravenous undead...From the Guardian article: Oh, Mr Darcy, you're looking tasty ... is that shirt wet? I'm trying to imagine the conversation. "Hey

Puss-In-Boots

2009-01-22T10:37:00.005Z

Puss-In-BootsAngela CarterVintage Booksfrom the collection The Bloody ChamberI'm afraid this is a rather lame post, considering the time it has been since my last (much longer!) review. I chose, for some reason, to get stuck into the biggest non-fiction book in the world -- an enormous 1200 page account of the Third Reich, and haven't yet emerged properly. I did have time to read a short story,

Nineteen Eighty-Four

2009-01-08T13:55:00.003Z

Nineteen Eighty-FourGeorge OrwellPenguin Classics1948355 pagesI'm sure this book needs no introduction to some people. It is the classic depiction of a totalitarian dystopian future -- one planned, rather than accidental -- and it has proved so powerful and enduring because it is so very, very plausible. Some of the things predicted in Nineteen Eight-Four have indeed come to pass, while it has

The Book Swede in a Song!

2009-01-04T13:10:00.002Z

So. A couple of weeks ago, John at Grasping for the Wind, who hosts and organises many of the discussions and cool things that go on between the bloggers, had an idea for a meme which has proved very popular and has so far collected almost 200 science-fiction and fantasy blogs, old and new. Now, I was woefully inattentive at the time, and didn't repost the meme here, but The Book Swede was lucky

2009!

2009-01-02T14:51:00.002Z

A happy New Year to you all! Out with the old, and in with the new, and all that... 2009 is the year in which Barack Obama becomes President of the United States of America; not long after that it becomes illegal to possess "extreme pornography" in the UK, whatever that is; it is the International Year of Astronomy; it is the two hundredth birthday of Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln (whichever

Christmas Hiatus

2008-12-18T17:53:00.002Z

I wish everyone a happy Christmas, Mithrastide, HumanLight day, Hanukkah, or whatever festival you will be celebrating :) I hadn't planned to break from blogging this early for the holidays, but my laptop officially died last week, and thus far, I haven't been able to resurrect it.I know, since September onwards, I haven't been blogging nearly as much as I was before, and I expect most of you

Thomas Paine's Rights of Man: A Biography

2008-12-04T20:00:00.000Z

Thomas Paine's Rights of Man: A BiographyChristopher HitchensAtlantic Books158 pagesJune 2006Lately, I can't seem to get into anything that isn't grounded in reality to a certain extent. I'm lucky enough to get nice, shiny books which are in my favourite genre, and I do you (and the lovely publishers and authors) the disservice of not reading them, let alone reviewing them! Forgive me. No matter

Saturday Links:

2008-11-29T11:08:00.005Z

There's a really good interview with Cory Doctorow, author of Little Brother, over at the Guardian.*Charlie Stross talks about where he gets his ideas from, and strongly urges you not to buy a book that he fears will create a whole new generation of super-writers and thus put him out of business...*David B. Coe talks about killing off characters, over at the SF Novelists site, a place I'd

Merlin: the BBC TV Series

2008-11-23T12:06:00.004Z

Merlin, is of course, the wizard from the tales of King Arthur, one of my favourite myths of any culture. There have been many interpretations of the classic story: books, films, plays, musicals, etc. This time it's a 13-episode series by the BBC which has hooked me. It's aimed at the Saturday tea-time family slot and it's by far better than that other reinterpretation the BBC did of a classic

John Jarrold: Two Major US & UK Rights Deals

2008-11-19T22:05:00.005Z

THREE-BOOK US RIGHTS DEAL FOR BRITISH URBAN FANTASY WRITER Susan Howe, Rights Director at Orion, has sold US rights in three dragon fantasies by UK novelist Stephen Deas to Ginjer Buchanan of Berkley Ace in a very good deal. The first book will be published in hardback in 2009. World rights in the series, which opens with Deas’s debut THE ADAMANTINE PALACE (to be published in hardback and

New Moon

2008-11-16T17:15:00.000Z

New MoonStephenie MeyerAtom Books608 pages2007I had a lot of fun reading Stephenie Meyer's Twilight (shortly due to be released in cinemas near you...), the story of Bella and the ... not-a-man-but-a-vampire ... that she loves, and I was eager to get straight into the next, much larger, book in the series: New Moon...Except.It's one of the most frustrating books I've read in a while...When

Dulce Et Decorum Est

2008-11-11T19:22:00.005Z

Remembrance Day, Poppy Day, Armistice Day, Veterans Day. World War I was formally ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 with the German signing of the Armistice. The Great War, to End All Wars, it was called. 21 years later, the world was at war again, and 70 million people, mostly civilians, lost their lives. We remember.Wilfred Owen's Dulce et Decorum Est is one of

Charles Stross, Obama and Me...

2008-11-07T19:53:00.003Z

...A slightly misleading title. First: me. An apology for the now-quite-frequent, nigh hebdomadal delay in posting anything to this site. My life is a rollercoaster and so on right now, but I'll try not to do it again for a while :) A few fun bits of news for you, here.The Stross:CHARLES STROSS will be signing copies of THE CLAN CORPORATE the new book in the Merchant Princes series

Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard

2008-10-28T09:27:00.007Z

Hullabaloo in the Guava OrchardKiran DesaiFaber & FaberThis is a book I've been meaning to read for a while, by an Indian author who I'd heard Salman Rushdie praising very much. Desai's second book, The Inheritance of Loss, also went on to with the Booker Prize, which upped the stakes a little. Would this live up to my expectations?Not quite. Not at all, in fact, I'm sorry to admit. The first

Twilight

2008-10-24T16:04:00.003+01:00

TwilightStephenie MeyerAtom Books434 pages2006Firstly, apologies for the delay. I've found it a bit hard to get into meaty, gritty epic fantasy these last few weeks, and I found myself stalking bookshops looking, hoping, for something that would take my fancy. Nothing did. I felt a little burnt-out on reading and wondered whether I should pick up some DVDs instead. And then I heard a plaintive