All Hail the New Puritans - Various

Picked it up because of the very intriguing "manifesto" really. I thought the stories were not as groundbreaking and the manifesto and review quotes ("controversial" - really?) suggested, but they are very good, most of them. Immediate, plot-driven, straight-forward and totally unpretentious. Alex Garland's one especially, about a journalist at a Grand Prix race track, is so vivid and photographic (in more ways than one) that it has lodged in my head firmly. The world needs more short stories.

No Logo - Naomi Klein

Best non-fiction book I've ever read (not that I read that many). Calm, coherent, thorough, assertive and enlightening. Not only does it not come across as vitriolic left-wing ranting, it actually succeeds in showing the ultra-capitalist mentality to be the wrong-headed and crazed one. I found it simultaneously empowering - because it makes sense of so many things - and depressing - because it came out 12 years ago and the movement Klein observed seems to have fizzled out.

The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula LeGuin

All-around brilliant. Interesting setting; good, developed characters (though not many); and ever third sentence is so good you want to read it aloud two or three times. And all the sociology and political stuff seems enduringly relevant. "A man who doesn't despise a bad government is a fool, and if there was such a thing on earth as a good government it would be a joy to serve it." It's (along with playing Final Fantasy XIII) made me keen to write some big fantasy or sci-fi story.

On Writing - Stephen King

Second time I've read it. It's lit a creative fire in my brain. Finished a first draft of a story a few days ago, just had a new idea today. I believe King will one day be recognised as the greatest writer of his generation, and will be studied on literature courses.

Peter and Wendy - J.M. Barrie

Not at all what I expected. Violent, bloody and full of tension. There's also an unexplainedness in both the story and writing style that I wouldn't expect in a children's book (especially not one that took over the world and got made into a Disney film). It's like it hints at a hidden world of meaning, a kind of semiotic Neverland, in the way the characters interact and the bizarre comments the narrator makes on them. It was never a big part of my childhood, so I'm glad I got to read it now. It's fascinating as well as fun.

Time's Arrow - Martin Amis

Big spoilers. I strongly recommend not reading this entry if you haven't read the book.

Very disorientating. When people said it's backwards, I expected something like Memento, not backwards backwards. I wish I hadn't known anything about it; the Nazi war criminal stuff would have been a shocking twist. In a way it seems essentially gimmicky; it is too short to tell the life story it tells in any depth, so the only thing that gives it any power is that it's backwards, an so very novel. And the subject matter, of course. Anyway it's a good book. I just feel I've missed out on a six-hundred-page Dickens-style epic told backwards in amazing detail.

The Memoirs of a Survivor - Doris Lessing

Had some disagreement with the girlfriend about this one. I thought the writing style was far too dense and too intellectual - intellectual in a show-offy way - for it to make an entertaining read. She says that's not what it's supposed to be. Anyway it was just about worth the effort, mainly for the setting, which is not so much post-apocalyptic as mid-apocalyptic, and fascinating. It seems, ultimately, to be a book in which the young take over civilisation from the old. It's about the transition from our current, unsustainable way of life to something more down to earth.