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.

Tom Brown's Schooldays - Thomas Hughes

(This one contains a serious spoiler for 1984 by George Orwell - you're warned).

Currently halfway through an essay on it and have read some interesting lit. crit. stuff about it. It certainly is a didactic, Bible-thumping, Empire-endorsing, cricket-loving toff of a book, and the sentence near the end about how Tom had finally been won over by the headmaster is gut-punchingly reminiscent of the very end of 1984 where Winston has finally been won over by B.B. (this observation went down very well with the Children's Lit. class and lecturer). But there's something about the hopelessly nostalgic portrayal of rural England and the insistence on strong, good principles and all that, that I actually really like.