Month / September 2006
A Spot Where Nobody Really Bothers?
Mark Haddon received savage reviews for his poetry collection, The Talking Horse and the Sad Girl and the Village, which followed his amazing novel, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. But does Haddon’s next novel, A Spot of Bother, atone for this misstep?
You wouldn’t know it from the reviews.
The Independent‘s Rebecca Pearson says Bother is “a superb novel, and I was shocked when it didn’t make the Man Booker longlist.” Meanwhile, the Guardian‘s Patrick Ness notes that it’s “a perfectly readable yet strangely undemanding novel of familiar domestic drama.” No starred review from Publishers Weekly, but the PW review insists it’s “great fun.” The Voice‘s Alexis Soloski gives it a lukewarm if positive review.
Like Fade Theory, I find it a bit difficult to gauge the book’s qualities with the current review coverage. Pearson’s review features plenty of ecstatic praise, but it doesn’t attach these plaudits to anything specific in the text. Likewise, the other reviews I’ve cited resort the majority of their space to summarizing the plot. If the reviewers are understandably jaded after Haddon’s poetry chapbook, I can understand. But The Curious Incident wasn’t exactly small potatoes. And if the reviewers can’t be bothered to follow Haddon’s career trajectory, I’m hoping more comprehensive heads might be employed to do so.
RIP Steve Irwin
Steve Irwin has died. He was 44. He died while filiming a segment for a documentary. Unfortunately, while diving in the Batt Reef, he was stung by a stingray and died before medical authorities could arrive in time.
Irwin escaped death more times than any mere mortal should. And yet there was something inherent within his charisma and character which suggested, nay demanded, that he could not and should not die. Not long ago, Irwin dared to carry his month-old son into a den of crocodiles under one arm while tossing meat to a croc with the other. It pissed people off. But it confirmed in my mind that Irwin, more than anything else, was insane. On the flip side, this insanity also translated into a ferocious boosterism of Australia and vociferous protests against hunting. Irwin reminded us that we were part of the food chain and I suppose, with his last stroke, proved just how dangerous getting closer to that role could be.
The world, in its own strange way, needed a guy like Steve Irwin, however vigorously self-promoted, if only to remind the human race that, no matter how picayune or crazed your interests, it’s worth getting excited about. It’s worth it to sometimes leap into the deep end. It’s worth it because nobody else out there will.
We Won’t Settle for Anything Less Than Six Blades!
Maybe I’m alone on this, but I really don’t need my shaving experience to resemble a cut scene from Halo 2.
March of the Linebackers?
Ain’t It Cool News has an MP3 of John Williams’ new theme for NBC’s Sunday Night Football. It sounds like the march from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in a different key.