Pun based title, when I think of one

Provenance is a standalone novel which appeared a little while after Ann Leckie had made a considerable impact in science fiction with what came to be known as the Imperial Radch trilogy . No, I don't know how to pronounce that. Perhaps a bit of Googling might turn up a fan's report of how Leckie pronounced it herself at a book signing. But it's not a bad bit of nomenclature. If it's meant to sound a bit like 'Reich', that suits the story well enough. Provenance is set in the same universe, but outside the Radch realm, and a Radch character only appears briefly. I'll say right out, that Provenance is a weaker book than any of those in the Trilogy; it's slighter, smaller in scale, and even seems somewhat uncertain in its intentions at times. But I'm glad I read it , because I'll be one of the many readers who found the setting intriguing and wanted to see more of it. Also, I wanted to read it before I read  Translation State , set in this univ

I'm stunned by Use of Weapons  by Iain M. Banks . Looking around, this is not an uncommon reaction for readers, to a shock of an ending. I'll say straight off, if there's any chance you'll read the book - if you read SF, if you've heard of it - minimise any time you spend reading reviews. Too bad, that I've already mentioned a shock ending, but... I gather Banks's first try with this story, written I think before his first success with more mainstream fiction, employed a very complicated narrative structure. This later take only appeared as the 3rd in his ' Culture ' series. It still does make demands on the reader, with two interleaved strands, one going forwards recounting the story of mercenary Cheradenine Zakalwe's latest mission for the Culture, the other going backwards to the darkest events of his past. And before even starting you'll notice in the contents the oddity of a book which tails off with an epilogue, some verse, and then a

Writing one of these again? A sort of end of year review ? More a sign of nothing better to do I might think. I don't think I bothered last year. But I am pleased with one or two cultural glimmers from the last 12 months, and I never wrote about some of them, so here's a series of barely connected reports about films and books and; not much else actually. Films - off the top of my head, I saw barely three films. But at least I have been getting to the cinema. The thing is, for reasons of circumstance, the cinema means Manchester, which entails an unfun car journey, or what used to be a train journey I was quite happy with, once. But the train services have been getting poorer in the North West in recent years. It's all a matter of slow deterioration, but the little losses make a difference. In my case, the loss of a particular afternoon train from the timetable meant that for most films of typical blockbuster length, I could no longer get home off peak. For the first film

Watching Napoleon has left me feeling a little sad. It's also left me feeling violently shaken, but more about that later. As it says on the poster, this is a Ridley Scott film. I can't claim to have seen all of his films, but I have seen many of them, in the cinema, and the fact that he was the director was usually the main reason I went and parted with cash, to see a film on the big screen. I'm certainly drawn to science fiction, so Alien and Blade Runner are the films of his which figure most prominently in my mind. But I've enjoyed his work in many other genres as well, Thelma and Louise and Gladiator and so many more. I'd barely heard about Scott before I saw his first film, The Duellists (who are Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel), which made a big impression with its spectacle and its rendering of its almost Shakespearean theme. Interestingly, it also has the Napoleonic Wars as its background. I got to wondering how many times I'd seen Napoleon Bon

Let me just say first that the picture below is indeed a really terrible picture . I'm not pretending for a moment that I'm providing a useful illustration of what these birds look like. The thing is, I was caught by surprise: I wasn't expecting to see any interesting birds at all when I walked up to the service area this morning, for a sandwich. The route passes the small pond where I used to see various species of birds, as written up (according to their Finnish names) in this ridiculous wildlife series previously. I only had my cheap smartphone on me, and taking bird pictures greatly exceeds the practical specs of its camera. You might want to check back through this absurd little series. Most of the pictures were taken at this pond, though any future pics are likely to be taken at the much larger fish pond over on the other side of the dual carriageway here. It just became a thing for me, when I began to spot interesting birds at the small pond now and again, other tha

Do you still read any of the 'classics' of English Literature?  By which I think I mean any of the great monumental novels of the Nineteenth Century. I was wondering about this having just read Scenes of Clerical Life by George Eliot . I looked back through my reading record for the last few years, reading 20-30 books a year, and saw that I read Jane Austen's Mansfield Park last year, and several books by Jerome K. Jerome at various times, though they're not exactly 'great novels'. That's all. Also, there have been a couple by Joseph Conrad, however now we're edging into the Twentieth Century. So it seems I don't read 'classics' that often myself, despite having a Lit degree and being a keen reader. (FYI - there will be a few remarks about Scenes of Clerical Life , eventually, but this didn't turn out to be the usual sort of review I'd planned) Do you remember Heron Books ? You'd have to be quite mature; they were advertised al