Romantic Fiction

I was astounded to see today that the York branch of WH Smith has a section in its book department labelled "Paranormal Romance". Who on earth (or beyond) let that become a genre? They also have a section for historical romances (called something like "Romance & Saga"!?). As well as the normal plain "Romance" section.

I wonder whether readers of romantic novels are really so single minded that they will only read certain types of romantic novel. "I like to read romantic novels involving dwarves from circus freak-shows" is not a comment I can remember reading on anybody's CV. So why separate the books? Will the historic romancers beat up the present-day romancers? These people should be the prime movers in the Make Love Not War camp. They should be embracing each other not erecting barriers.

Anyway, I just thought it was a little odd.

Incidentally, I was just walking past. Not browsing. Honestly. I only read science fiction novels involving sentient spaceships, sub-lightspeed space travel and robots called Dave.

How to mess up my bookshelf

I've been a big fan of Alistair Reynolds since Revelation Space came out several years back. Great Big stories full of Great Big spaceships. And only sometimes slightly marred by tiny little endings.

But the main problem for me initially was the size of the books. They were roughly normal paperback size but slightly wider and slightly squatter. It meant that when you put them on your shelf they didn't sit there neatly like a nice book. No, they stuck out aways and shouted "Look at me! I'm annoying". A bit like me in the pub which is maybe why I initially put up with it. After a while though you get more and more of the books and when you have five or six, they all sit, oddly-sized but oddly-sized together, on your bookshelf. And the oddness becomes normality.

Today I visited the bookshop and became highly irritated. His new paperback (The Prefect) has changed shape a little. It's taller than the other books. By about a centimetre.

What were his publishers thinking? Are they deliberately trying to deter his existing readers? Or are they simply trying to attract a new audience? An audience who only reads books that are slightly taller than an author's previous books? Insanity!

I for one shan't be buying any more. I'm going to only read Ladybird books instead. You know where you are with Ladybird books. They've been the same size since I was a lad and they'll be same size when I'm a wizened old man.

Sod Reynolds. Book-size-changing-bastard.

Books Read in 2007

I got through a reasonable amount of books again this year but still (again) failed to meet my annual internal target of two per month. Just like last year I've only managed 22 again.

* Pushing Ice - Alastair Reynolds
* Pandora's Star - Peter F Hamilton
* Judas Unchained - Peter F Hamilton
* Learning The World - Ken Macleod
* Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
* Unspeak - Stephen Poole
* Sunstorm - Arthur C Clarke & Stephen Baxter
* Lint - Steve Aylett
* Marvel: 1602 - Neil Gaiman
* Iron Council - China Meiville
* Ancient Shores - Jack McDevitt
* The Meaning of the 21st Century - James Martin
* Watchmen - Alan Moore
* Black Jade - David Zindell
* Lisey's Story - Stephen King
* Dead Air - Iain Banks
* Making Money - Terry Pratchett
* Eternals - Neil Gaiman
* Illium - Dan Simmons
* The Big Over Easy - Jasper Fforde
* Olympos - Dan Simmons
* Resplendent - Stephen Baxter

Eagle eyed readers will spot a couple of graphic novels in there. They do count. My rules.

Best of the year were probably Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained (they're all one story and only split into two books as it would be 2000 pages long if they weren't). Very long but complex and good fun.

Dan Simmons' pair, Illium and Olympos were also a lot of fun, but also completely bonkers, mixing the Trojan War with spaceships, robots, monsters and quantum physics. I would have put it as favourite except that the plot never quite all comes together in the way I'd have liked and a lot of elements are left unexplained (or maybe they just don't make sense).

Books Read in 2006

For the second year in a row, I failed to read 24 books (2 a month) as I would have liked to, but I was close - I read 22 in total. I'll blame the missing two on losing spare time to the running.

Here's what I did get through:

* Thud! - Terry Pratchett
* The Well of Lost Plots - Jasper Fforde
* Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
* The Lightstone 1: The Ninth Kingdom - David Zindell
* The Lightstone 2: The Silver Sword - David Zindell
* From a Buick 8 - Stephen King
* Titan - Stephen Baxter
* Lord of Lies - David Zindell
* On - Adam Roberts
* Paradox - John Meaney
* Context - John Meaney
* Resolution - John Meaney
* Pelican Blood - Cris Freddi
* Something Rotten - Jasper Fforde
* Coalescent - Stephen Baxter
* Exultant - Stephen Baxter
* The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
* Transcendent - Stephen Baxter
* Star Warped - A3R Roberts
* Cell - Stephen King
* The Brightonomicon - Robert Rankin
* Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure

Favourites from these would be Stephen Baxter's Destiny's Children trilogy (in the fiction category) and Richard Dawkins' book (in the non-fiction category).