Remember that pledge I made?
I will read a book for at least 20 minutes a day, for 100 days
Well…ummm…yeah…it didn’t go as planned really…
I hit the floor running with great enthusiasm. The first week or so passed without incident and the pages were flying by with gusto. The book (which I shall come to) was a joy to read so there was no feeling of it being a grind.
The first sign of trouble presented itself one day in mid December. I had been at work and I was due to attend Popcorn Comedy that night with some friends near London Bridge. I decided to get the bus which would give me a good 20 minutes to get my bit done for the day.
I got on the bus and there were 2 problems:
1) The bus was full
2) The lights didn’t work
I had a conundrum. I didn’t have room to read my book and even if I did it wasn’t light enough to see the pages. As soon as I got to London Bridge I was due to meet up with some friends and sitting there reading a book would be massively rude and just a bit shit. I didn’t really know what to do so went on with my evening.
I had a lovely night as it transpires and met some fantastically cool people (off shoot of living in London) but there was a problem, I hadn’t read my book! It finally reached 11:30 and I had to make a dashing exit for fear of breaking my vow. So there I was, walking across London Bridge, intently reading a book. So absorbed was I that I almost walked into a lamp post. That night I started reading at 11:39 which turned out to be a signal flare to the monster of my wavering commitment.
The spectre of my rubbishness appeared again….the next day. I was due to attend a Yeah Yeah Yeahs gig in the city of my uni days, Bournemouth. I love Bournemouth, it has loads of trees and everything is just generally nice. It also has a balloon.
Anyway, that morning I had arranged to get a train to Poole for work, the perfect opportunity to get the 20 minutes done. Problem was the train was quite early and I was very tired. When I’m tired my brain becomes massively unipolar. Sleep is all I want and sleep is all I get. So I snoozed my way from London to Poole and the chance was gone. Long story short, the gig was great but I arrived back at my lodgings at…11:35. Again just enough time to get my task completed. Too close for comfort again.
With these scrapes avoided I reached day 19. It was a day of no particular note, to be honest with you I can’t remember a single thing about it. Everything muddled by like it does, I fondled moonbeams and such. I was lying in bed at 1am considering the averageness of the day when I realised something
I’d forgotten to read my book
I was distraught. 19 bloody days. That’s it. My brain is useless. I couldn’t remember to do this little thing. Ugh it stills annoys me thinking about it now. So with that failure did I give up reading my book? OF COURSE I DIDN’T! It would take more than this to stop me, I thought one missed day wasn’t a massive deal really and I was enjoying the book too much to care. So I persevered with the 100 days challenge with the intention of catching up the missing 20 minutes.
This leads me to review the book. I’ve never done a book review before and I’m not really good at reviewing something with any degree of analytical prowess. People go on about writing style and such like but more often than not it passes me by, same with camera shots in films, I’m usually too absorbed with the story to notice. So I’ll give it a whirl, making what I can of the way it’s written and such.
I bloody loved this book. I swear blind Nick Harkaway asked for a requirements document from my brain before writing it. When asked on twitter what the book was about I replied:
It’s a post apocalyptic story of friendship, love, fear, loss, dream, pirates, ninjas and apple cake.
It really is a fantastic story which I got completely swept up in. I was told by the friend who recommended it that I would struggle with the first 200 pages as it’s a grind. I completely disagree. It was a bit slow but it’s all necessary. I have nothing but time for story tellers who aren’t afraid to take the time to establish their characters before they set them off on a journey. It’s important, to me anyway. It’s the same reason I enjoyed the Wire, all the characters were allowed time to grow and express themselves so when it came to changing them or throwing situations at them, you felt the weight of that sufficiently.
The characters in the Gone Away World are all joyous people from all regions of the human spectrum. I don’t want to tell you about them as it would tarnish the process of learning about them. Rest assured there’s someone there for everyone, all described in affectionate detail so by the time the story kicks off you feel though you’re among friends.
I’m always a bit edgy when it comes to things like pirates and ninjas. They have become diluted as talismans of awesome for some time now, same with monkeys. I tend to find them a little obvious now and tend to gravitate away from them. That said they’re appearance in this book are subtle and carefully considered. The pirates aren’t stupidly over the top, just piratey enough. I’m not too fussed about that really, I was more fearful on the use of ninjas. Luckily the ninjas were very narutoesque which is the way it should be. There are some stock ninjas but they don’t figure as much as the true ninjas, give it a read and you’ll see what I mean.
I won’t say anything about the story, which is handy in a book review, as I feel again that it’s there to be enjoyed. The whole thing is a magical journey which doesn’t need to me explain. I so want to gush about it but I won’t, I wouldn’t dare spoil the chance for someone to enjoy it like I did.
That said, we must remain even handed, it can’t all be roses and I do have one gripe. By the end I felt too many masks had fallen to the floor. It reminded me a little of Mission Impossible 2 in this respect. I could see why it was necessary but I felt a bit of a diminishing return as they fell, you’ll probably see what I mean. This is a very minor problem in the face of what is a fantastic reading experience.
You’ll notice I have said “I won’t say anything” quite a lot which makes for quite a thin review but I don’t know how to articulate what’s great about it without spoiling it so I’ll leave it to you to trust me, good luck. It really is a great great great great great (yes, 5) book. It has heart, soul and balls. Enough love to melt a grade A pencilneck’s* heart and enough fight to kick a grade A pencilneck’s* head clean off.
Read it. Please (I need more people to talk about it with).
So where does this leave us? I missed a couple more days between the 19th and finishing the Gone Away World. I’d finished it by the 28th of December and I’ve not read another one since. I chalk this up to the void week between xmas and going back to work where no one really does anything. I guess this was the real test and I have well and truly failed. Truth be told I’m not that bothered as I got to read this wonderful book and all I truly needed was a kick to start it.
Don’t get me wrong, I would have loved to have completed my 100 days, but I’m not overly surprised that I haven’t done it, I’m just not that good at sticking to something like this, my attention wanders so easily. The aim was to read more and I think I’m more geed up to do so. I already have my next book lined up, in fact I’m about a third of the way through it. It’s the Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. I have his Sandman comic series in first print and loved it to bits and the Graveyard Book is of a similar quality.
The main aim for me was to become a habitual reader and that is still my quest. I don’t have the attention span to stick to something on the day to day but I will definitely have a book on the go so to speak. I’m gonna get the bus home more too as it feel it is an environment I’m more likely to read in. The tube is the same but I’m only on it for about 20 minutes and it’s too disjointed.
So what have we learned? Reading is good and my attention span is crap. I think we all knew that anyway. Ah well. *shrugs*
* Read the book to find out what a grade A pencilneck is like
