Nasty evil shit….

As films go, this was a well made one, however I have a real problem with the depiction of the Africans in this film and politically I think it’s propaganda for America justifying it’s foreign policy. At the end of the movie, I wanted those Africans to kill every last one of those arrogant American soldiers. However, my politics aside, the acting was good and the film was well shot. Still bullshit though.

I’ve been trying to read this whole series for just over a year, and I’ve read two and three quarters of the novels, but not in order.

I started reading Adulthood Rites, but then that got lost one night and I haven’t seen it to buy once since then. Then I read the first novel, Dawn. I just finished Imago, but it makes reference to things that happened in Adulthood Rites, that I haven’t finished reading as yet.

As it is, Octavia Butler is very difficult to find to buy anywhere in London. What you get is always The Parable of The Sower, or The Parable of The Talents, but never, ever anything else.

:sigh: Onward ho!

Earlier this month, or late last month, Nalo had a book sale through her blog and I bought four books from her. Mojo Conjure Stories an anthology that she edited, Tesseracts Nine: New Canadian Speculative Fiction also an anthology she edited with Geoff Ryman, and Dark Matter : Reading the Bones edited by Sheree Thomas, and which contains Nalo’s short story “The Glass Bottle Trick”. I also got a literary journal called Social Texts with essays on Afrofuturism, but I don’t see anything by Nalo in it. The other three books were all autographed, and since I’m such an admirer of La Hopkinson’s pen it meant a lot to me. I’m eating through Mojo . Both Mojo and Dark Matter contain short stories by a writer Kiini Ibura Salaam, whose writing I have found cropping up in my life every so often, and whose ability I find stunning. I would love to read a full length novel of hers, but am yet to find one. At any rate, I’m chomping through Nalo’s package of books, now glorious additions to my whopping collection spread over three countries.

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When I was a little girl, living at the bottom of Risk Road, on the beach, my Auntie Gillian lived a few houses down the beach at Alvaro.

Alvaro was a big house, I forget how many bedrooms, but I seem to remember six for some reason. The living room of the house stretched the length of the house and had a twenty foot ceiling (at least it seems that way in my memory). There were French doors that led out to the verandah, and doors that led out into the yard.

My brother and I spent a lot of time with Auntie Gillian when we were growing up. Her and UT. It is mostly at Alvaro I got to know UT. It is mostly at Alvaro, UT and I were at the height of our ‘war days’.

This is all stage setting.

In truth I want to tell you that this evening I found a key to my memories of Alvaro. And it was, Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War Of The Worlds.

Auntie Gillian had a copy of it-in those days it was vinyl-and my brother and I played it almost every time we went over there. We’d sit there, listen, read, play, whatever, but I remember it being in the background during many of our visits (many times many) to Auntie Gillian’s house.

In fact, it is when we were teenagers and Auntie Gillian and UT were living in Tog Tip in Holder’s Hill, that I think I last heard it.

So today when I went to Tesco’s to get toilet paper and a new toothbrush, I happened to pass the shelf with all the music on it, and there it was… a collector’s edition of Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War Of The Worlds.

I saw it and exclaimed, followed immediately by a pang of grief for Auntie Gillian. I bought it and am listening to it, riding a wave of memories.

I’m enjoying it, even though it’s been almost twenty years since I’ve heard it. It’s a progressive rock affair, and it’s got a Moody Blues feeling too, but that’s probably owed to Justin Hayward’s involvement. He’s not alone, Phillip Lynott of Thin Lizzy, Julie Covington and David Essex provide additional vocals to the saga and Richard Burton narrates.

The album is almost hokey 70’s… sounds dated, but again, it’s been nearly thirty years since it’s release. However, this is rock opera….. and it’s interesting despite the obvious dating of the sound. If I didn’t already have it as part of my childhood’s soundtrack, I think I may never have found this album. But as it is, I do and I have, and it’s a pleasure to listen to it again after all these years.

It’s a spooky concept album, and I remember being little and listening enthralled, chills running up and down my spine.

That said, this definitely is not for every one. If there ever was an acquired taste, this album falls into that category. However, sci-fi fans, H.G. Wells fans and well, fans of Jeff Wayne might be interested in this interpretation.

I just finished “The Wolves Of Calla”, and I am about to go dig “Song Of Susannah” out of the box it’s packed in (in preparation for my eighth move in a year).

It’s kind of weird how fast I’m reading these books. It’s like re-reading makes them go faster.

I just finished “Song of Susannah”. I feel beat up. More than any of the others, that one kept me up until a ridiculous hour this morning. I just couldnt put the thing down. It’s when I realised I was falling asleep no matter how hard I had fought that I gave in.

“Susannah-Mio, divided girl of mine. Parked her rig, in the Dixie Pig in the year of 1999.”

I understand what people say about King writing himself into the story, but for some reason I understand why he did it. As a literary device, I find it’s so jarring as to be brilliant.

Because where were my brother and I when we found out Stephen King had been hit by the white van and in critical condition, not expected to survive?

I think we were at home, but we looked at each other and the first thing either of us said, and I now forget who said it, was, “That’s it. He’ll never get to finish The Dark Tower.” I remember the heart hurt, because I was horrified to think that this story was going to remain undone.

It’s amazing that he survived, and it’s funny, but it made reading the remaining three books richer for knowing that he came back from that and finished the story.

In “Song of Susannah”, when King shows up in the story, and clearly becomes part of the quest to reach the Dark Tower, as odd as it was, it seemed right to read it.

Say what, Sai King has me along for the duration.

Now though, I’ve been eyeing up the Dark Tower, the final ‘chapter’ in this story, and having put down “Song of Susannah” mere minutes ago… I feel beat up. I’ve read the first six books of this series in just under two weeks, and “The Dark Tower” dwarfs the other six. More than that, the print in my hardcover version is small…

I am sure the sun will not go down in London tonight before I pick it up and start to read, but right now… my mind is completely swirling with King’s story so far.

I think I am going to clean my flat, before I start the next leg of this little run of book lunacy I’ve engaged in over the last week.

That’s it. It’s done. It took me two weeks and about half a day to read all seven books in Steven King’s Dark Tower.

Again, like before, “Wizard & Glass” was achingly sad and heartbreaking, “Song of Susannah” deeply disturbing, and the immense, phenomenal “The Dark Tower” did what no book has no other has ever made me do. There are very few stories I read that move me deeply, but this story does that and I am glad to have read it all these many times.

Pages 374 through 392 of The Dark Tower brought me to tears. Not slight weeping either. My heart ached as I read.

I will likely have another stab at re-reading it later this year, because I’ve been reading the ones I have twice a year since I first read The Gunslinger six years ago.

Now that it is done, I am sad, I am glad… it has done to me what all good stories should do to it’s readers… made me feel. King’s ability to characterise is quite astounding.

Funnily enough, I am unmoved in any way to read anything else he has written other than The Stand, which I think is his only other really brilliant piece of writing. (Although I thought IT was amazing too, but I NEVER want to read IT again, that shit frightened the bejesus out of me!) None of his other writing even tickles me into wanting to read.

Two weeks of steady immersion in Roland of Gilead’s world has kind of cast a light over everything. I don’t know how else to describe it. Not even The Lord Of The Rings ever made me cry, but those passages between 374 and 392 did it both times I read them.

I don’t know if I can describe this story as pleasant; it’s much too grim for that. Masterfully managed by Sai King, the story has a sense of reality to it. You are there. You experience the characters fears and victories. And pleasant or unpleasant, the story rings true in an odd way, and King manages to make it real in some vital way.

It’s a story with a satisfying crunch.

Say thank ya, big big!

That’s it. It’s done. It took me two weeks and about half a day to read all seven books in Steven King’s Dark Tower.

Again, like before, “Wizard & Glass” was achingly sad and heartbreaking, “Song of Susannah” deeply disturbing, and the immense, phenomenal “The Dark Tower” did what no book has no other has ever made me do. There are very few stories I read that move me deeply, but this story does that and I am glad to have read it all these many times.

Pages 374 through 392 of The Dark Tower brought me to tears. Not slight weeping either. My heart ached as I read.

I will likely have another stab at re-reading it later this year, because I’ve been reading the ones I have twice a year since I first read The Gunslinger six years ago.

Now that it is done, I am sad, I am glad… it has done to me what all good stories should do to it’s readers… made me feel. King’s ability to characterise is quite astounding.

Funnily enough, I am unmoved in any way to read anything else he has written other than The Stand, which I think is his only other really brilliant piece of writing. (Although I thought IT was amazing too, but I NEVER want to read IT again, that shit frightened the bejesus out of me!) None of his other writing even tickles me into wanting to read.

Two weeks of steady immersion in Roland of Gilead’s world has kind of cast a light over everything. I don’t know how else to describe it. Not even The Lord Of The Rings ever made me cry, but those passages between 374 and 392 did it both times I read them.

I don’t know if I can describe this story as pleasant; it’s much to grim for that. Masterfully managed by Sai King, the story has a sense reality to it. You are there. You experience the characters fears and victories. And pleasant or unpleasant, the story rings true in an odd way, and King manages to make it real in some vital way.

It’s a story with a satisfying crunch.

Say thank ya, big big!