Saga, saga

I wonder if there is a word that could describe one's attachments emotionally to a cultural artifact? Would it be a single word that conveyed all those human connotations and contradictions? Or maybe a phrase would be better, 'adding the total of one's life to the meaning of x'?

I have quite a few, some I am happy to talk about (well, by the end of this post you will see I am not happy) and others that I will never share. This weekend I went to Leeds Central Library and picked up Saga volumes one, two and three. I also picked up Adventure Time volumes one and two in Burley Library but I have no emotional ties to this. I mean, it's nice and okay.

I picked up Saga for a number of reasons. Mainly because I started reading Brian K Vaughan's We Stand On Guard this week, and figured it was time to get back on with Saga, but there's other reasons. It's a good story, told well, and not easily predictable.

I have read Saga before. Somewhere it my boxes of comic book issues there are the first three issues. I remember the day I bought them, a Friday, because that evening I learnt a friend had committed suicide.

Sylvain was a friend. We had known each other since about 1997, shared a very similar taste in music and cultural references. There had been two breaks when we stopped talking, both came to an end when Sylvain contacted me.

Having read the first volume of Saga I can see how the team set up the situation and the characters. The universe it is contained in is good, not a simple linear, good v bad universe, their universe is full of grey where people can disappear.

The second time Sylvain got back in contact was pretty amazing. The first time was awesome for me, but the second time I had worried too much time had passed. I had moved three times, out and back into and then out of London. In the back of my head there was the lost cord I couldn't connect. Sylvain was more intelligent than me.

Saga is about cultural differences. It starts with birth and violence, love and misunderstanding, and from there it just goes on. Why wouldn't you want your child to see the universe?

One morning before work Sylvain sent me a message on Facebook. We chatted and I said I needed to get to work, I was still in my probationary period. I said we'd talk again, soon.

Now, my memory is sketchy regarding the time line and I don't want to investigate it further. It's my memory, you see, and unlike Hazel in Saga I am an unreliable witness by choice.

The next message I had from Sylvain wasn't from Sylvain. It was from his partner informing me of what had happened. I didn't want to press her but from what I understood Sylvain had been very resolute in his determination. We shared a few words about Sylvain and that was that. I offered if she ever needed to talk I was a message away.

I miss Sylvain. There are a lot of things in life one can't explain or resolve, and I cannot resolve a lot of things about Sylvain without Sylvain's help. So, instead, aside from Saga, I shall share one of the other things that remind me of that dear dead Frenchman: "Wanna grow up to be, be a debaser, debaser."

Saga #1, #2, #3, Brain K Vaughan, Fiona Staples,
Leeds Central Library, Leeds

It is hard to see from the inside

I'm currently reading Richard E Feist's A Darkness at Sethanon. The whole Riftwar trilogy ends with this book, and I've bought all three from secondhand bookshops. About a year ago I set out to read something other than A Dance of Dragons so had a couple of names in mind, Feist, Jordan, Giddings, Hobb, all sourced off the internet with no real indicator of whether I would like them or not. The Magician was the first book I found and read, next up was Jordan and I didn't take to it, so I continued to read through the Riftwar saga.

Sometimes it is difficult finding a particular book in secondhand bookshops. I like reading in order so waiting for The Magician seemed to be a difficult task. When eventually I bought it I immediately started finding copies everywhere, including one to read at the Youth Hostel at Boggle Hole. But then that's part of the joy of discovery, sometimes it's not the thing you are looking for that you will find.

Having said I like reading in sequence I have broken another fantasy series. At the mobile library in Kirkstall I picked up Gotrek & Felix: Road of Skulls. This is book 13 in the Warhammer series, though I am sufficiently confident that it will not deviate too much from the formula that has seen Gotrek seek his doom and Felix chart his saga. The last book I read was book 7.

While we scanned the books at the mobile library we were told that there was some rotation of stock though the non-fiction books we returned would not stay with the library. I guess fiction is only for the outer rim, nearer the galactic centre they can deal with facts. Galaxies are notoriously difficult to see from the inside, whatever shape or form they take is beyond our current capabilities. There are patterns, a doppelganger is never good in fantasy, the quarreling strangers will be lovers at the end of the movie, yet mysteries.

Josh Reynolds, Gotrek & Felix: Road of Skulls

Mobile Library, Kirkstall Morrisons, Leeds

Postscript. Did you know that Leeds Libraries renews library cards every three years?

I've got my fringe unfurled: Birthday month reading

The intention was to collect together as much Richard Brautigan as possible then read it all after my birthday on 22 November. When I started hoarding the books I had five, there were another seven or so that I had identified as targets before my birthday, though the tendency might be to push it as far as I could. Richard Brautigan had appeared on record in the 1960s.

When I started this I thought the books that I would have most difficulty in purchasing were The Tokyo-Montana Express and Willard and His Bowling Trophies. This was confirmed by a not overly scientific search online and only from one source. Anyway, that was the plan, a list was drawn up in my diary, ticks for the books I already had, small dots for the ones I had to purchase. As I said, the tendency is to push things as far as I could and if this meant buying a collection with a book I already owned then so be it.

That was the plan. I purchased some books, got An Unfortunate Woman from the Headingley Library (Leeds Library should have a full Brautigan stock, no exceptions), everything was running smoothly.

As smoothly as a red Chevy convertible heading full-tilt from LA to Las Vegas.

I figured that as I was building up to Brautigan towards the end of the month I would stop reading The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I had reached the tricky bit just after the rise of the 'primitive' Christian church and found it harder going than last time. I flicked a few pages of Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy, learning about Rupert, before settling on a real plan. This time it would work, this time no one would get nailed to anything.

In November I would read books in my collection that could be loosely clubbed together as 'counter culture'. As genres are ill-definable I best set out my stall. Books with a high degree of substance abuse, marginalisation or that stray from the trend of acceptable social interaction: any book that would read the poster for the Trainspotting film and say, "no".

First up is Hunter S Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I've read this before (though my recollections of the first time were mangled up with memories of seeing the film adaptation), though what has surprised me in this read is the speed of delivery, observations fire quickly, get distracted by one aspect and miss another one totally. This is the come-down from the end of the 1960s, as Hunter suggests, no one wanted mind-expansion in the early 1970s, they wanted to disconnect from reality.

There isn't a great deal of music in Fear and Loathing, though there's one notable seen including Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow. I don't own this lp yet, though it seems the US version is the one I'd prefer to get as it includes White Rabbit.

The second book of this odyssey through drinks and drugs is Renegade: The Lives and Tales of Mark E. Smith. I've always been a bit of a Fall fan when I've heard them on the radio; the two CDs I own are compilations. Whenever I think of the Fall I am reminded of the John Peel quote; whenever I think of Mark E. Smith I kind of imagine some kind of drunk genius poet who just happened to have a backbeat.

Unsurprisingly there's a lot of music mentioned in Renegade, so rather than picking out an lp I'll mention that Totally Wired by The Fall is a song that I think about when I want to run a mile pace under 8 minutes. This usually mashes well with Night Vision by Super Furry Animals, though mostly when I run it is one section repeated.

The last book for being an outsider was Steppenwolfe by Herman Hesse. This is a wonderful book on feeling outside of the normal society and having little care for the things that bring other people joy (about as much care as they have, actually). Hesse has done a fantastic job of fitting so many ideas into the book that it simply screams 'reread me', and it would be difficult to try to capture too many of them. Instead I will include one that chimed a lot with me, that wars are started by countries that do not wish to look inwards and resolve their own problems.

I finished my month starting Acceptance, which is not the tale of a man entering his 39th year with a few white hairs in a beard and a desire to run a 7:00 minute mile 10km.

We are all children of the Revolution

Another Sunday afternoon trip to a library, this time Horsforth. I’ve never really been around Horsforth, the part nearest to where I live seems disconnected to the main part near the park, so this trip is something we’ve put off.

The library is nice, a big airy space for books and information. I didn’t check, I think the building had a dedication to the Brownlee boys and their trainer. At first there didn’t seem many books though the room seems to widen towards the back, with chidren’s books almost furthest from the entrance. This is the second time I’ve actually noticed this, why are children’s books in the back and ‘romance’ nearest to the entrance? Doesn’t matter really, there’s a reading space and lots of books (again, I didn’t check though I assume there is an Artmis Fowl book or two, there had better be, children need to learn the truth about fairies and criminal masterminds, read early and read often).

I came away with Scott Westerfeld’s Behemoth and Peter F Hamilton’s Great North Road. Behemoth because when I was reading the first book in the series, Leviathan, Westerfeld pulled a fantastic trick on me, in the last few chapters I went from not caring what happened to the two characters to I must know the very end or I will not sleep. Westerfeld’s books are steampunk and mostly young adult, though if genre really matters to you there is also revolutionary politics and gender equality. The point I am making is that it is a good read regardless of being steampunk, young adult, or anything else.

I picked up Great North Road because I got excited about seeing it in the library.

Peter F Hamilton, Great North Road, Scott Westerfeld, Behemouth,
Horsforth Library

Brattleby telephone box library

In a tiny corner of Lincolnshire, round the back of a RAF base and in a side road in a small village north of Lincoln there is a telephone box library.

Brattleby's telephone box library is a little unloved when we visited. I didn't go in though could see two motorcycle books and little else inside. Nonetheless, my wife left two books there to be bookcrossed. Book crossing is a way of sharing books with absolute complete strangers. I don't know who will pick up the two we left but the Book Crossing website will let us know if anyone logs them.

Where a startling discovery is made and the blogger offers advice

I work for Leeds Metropolitan University (soon to become Leeds Beckett University in September 2014), and as a member of staff I have access to the libraries and materials therein. In two and a half years I've not had a proper look around the library in the Headingley Campus. Even though I was there today I still didn't manage it.

On the way back home I did pop into Headingley Library. This time there's school children seemingly everywhere, though not in young adult (where I found the first part of the Hunger Games) or science fiction (where I picked up Johannes Cabal and the Fear Institute). I only popped in on the suspicion that Johannes Cabal was in.

The Johannes Cabal series is a great series of books. The central character, the necromancer of some little infamy, is rather likeable in a terrible way (if he were to meet me I am sure he'd probably want to do away with me, quickly, for my own good, obviously) and the books are wonderful constructs. Certainly, stop what you are doing at the end of this sentence and read the first book, Johannes Cabal the Necromaner; to paraphrase Ford Prefect, your brain will thank you for it.

The thing is the Johannes Cabal need to be read in sequence. Book two relies on knowledge of book one, book three a combination of both; the forthcoming fourth book will continue this pattern. The fourth book is intriguingly titled The Brothers Cabal, Johannes's brother not making an appearance since the first book.

When I first picked up The Fear Institute I was drawn to the content's page references to the Cthulhu Mythos (sometimes a book just needs tentacles and I'd give it a go). Once home I realised it was book three, so on an off chance I asked the author Jonathan L Howard via Twitter if it was best to start with book one. Yes, for the reasons above.

This is another reason why libraries are good. You can try so many things out, explore landscapes that might be previously unknowable, and if it's not to taste, three weeks later the book is returned.

The Touring Guide To Headingley Library

It was a pleasure to visit libraries. It was a special pleasure to step through the door and find books, local information, book groups, information technology, children's reading area. Headingley Library is a good place to visit.

This was supposed to be a quick visit, drop off two books that were finished and near their return dates. Still, a little look around wouldn't harm. Thirty minutes later, one near collision with a fellow library user (his fault, I was looking in horror as he walked backwards from science fiction) and a librarian asking my wife if she writes books herself later, and I have two new books borrowed. One a sci-fi novel based in the Warhammer 40K universe, Deathwatch by Steve Parker (kind of like who watches the detectives, the detectives being aliens, sorry, xenos). The other a travel guide.

Libraries are important. Libraries are not just about books* and Headingley Library demonstrates this in abundance. There is a children's area where books are read out aloud, and the aforementioned information technology. Headingley also has a travel section, and among the far-flung parts of the world I found The Country Living's Travel Guide to the North East. This book is not perfect, it doesn't seem to do cafés and was published in 2010, but like most travel guides it is useful. Over Easter we will be wandering around Hadrian's Wall, and there's a few points of interest.

That said, I do not think I am a typical reader of Country Living. Try as I might I can't find an entry for Durham's People's Bookshop in the guide. A secondhand bookshop promising to fill the gaps left behind in the headlong rush for bestsellers. I found them on the internet and can't wait to visit.

*Anyone who argues libraries are only 'about books' has, in my view, not stepped in a library for quite some time. Either that or they have an ideological reason for not acknowledging the community and civic roles libraries play, or the personal need for them. If someone tells you libraries are useless and expensive wastes of money ask them about the last time they made personal use of a naval warship or air force bomber.

Postscript. It is a pleasure to reread Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. If I were to travel America reciting a book I would attempt to memorise Richard Brautigan's Sombrero Fallout.

Second Postscript. Rereading through my draft of this post made me remember something that happened near the Kirkstall mobile library in Spring 2013. While checking out our books some university-age men walked passed the entrance they shouted "libraries are gay". These were not children, grown adults whose education has at some point relied on a library. So, next time someone tells you that, say they are wrong both about libraries and for using sexuality as a derogatory term.